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re: SECrOTB Book Club: I need a good book to read
Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:01 pm to CheeseburgerEddie
Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:01 pm to CheeseburgerEddie
Devil in the White City wasn't a hard read at all, I just find that I can't read non-fiction as quickly as I can fiction. Part of that is I will stop and Wikipedia people that the book is talking about incessantly. Same thing happened for me with Unbroken, Lone Survivor, American Sniper, etc.
Case in point: DitWC dealt a lot with architecture and landscape design. Not the most interesting topic for me, but FL Olmstead was tasked with designing the grounds for the world fair in 1892. Before that, he was the lead landscape architect for Central Park. I just got back from NYC and had a few jaunts there. Learning about him and all his works was super interesting for me. He's just one of a few dozen guys I got off track learning about during that reading that made it take so long.
Case in point: DitWC dealt a lot with architecture and landscape design. Not the most interesting topic for me, but FL Olmstead was tasked with designing the grounds for the world fair in 1892. Before that, he was the lead landscape architect for Central Park. I just got back from NYC and had a few jaunts there. Learning about him and all his works was super interesting for me. He's just one of a few dozen guys I got off track learning about during that reading that made it take so long.
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Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:13 pm to 3nOut
I do kind of he same thing. When I was younger I read No One Here Gets Out Alive about Jim Morrison - really good book if I remember correctly - but I ended up reading The Doors of Perception by Huxley and some other philosophy book that kept getting mentioned as being influential to Morrioson before I finished the actual biography cause I got distracted
Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:18 pm to CheeseburgerEddie
It's a disease I don't mind having.
Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:32 pm to 3nOut
Just picked up Snow Crash again. Forgot how good that one is. Also,
Neverwhere
Reamde
Up Country
The Lies of Locke Lamora (3 pt series)
The "Dead" series by Adrian McKinty - I liked the narrator for this, Irish based
Sherlock Holmes - "greatest hits" although his entire collection is in one paperback.
It should be obvious by my comments but I do all audiobooks for the most part.
Neverwhere
Reamde
Up Country
The Lies of Locke Lamora (3 pt series)
The "Dead" series by Adrian McKinty - I liked the narrator for this, Irish based
Sherlock Holmes - "greatest hits" although his entire collection is in one paperback.
It should be obvious by my comments but I do all audiobooks for the most part.
Posted on 4/15/15 at 10:50 pm to UMRealist
Casca: The Eternal Mercenary
Posted on 4/15/15 at 11:30 pm to 3nOut
quote:
It's no different than saying I like the avengers. You ought to be able to turn your brain off and just enjoy something, be it a movie, TV show, or book.
Why can't entertainment, even shutting your brain off, come from reading better books, not necessarily more serious or dry or strenuous reading.
Literature's no different than other forms of entertainment. If you choose to listen to Rascall Flats instead of Jason Isbell that's a poor choice. Who you are depends on these choices.
The commercial/pop-mainstream class of entertainment is generally going to be within a certain spectrum of shite. Good shite, or bad shite. Not that there aren't endearing and good things about the good shite, there are, but it's still shite compared to the real thing.
This post was edited on 4/15/15 at 11:32 pm
Posted on 4/15/15 at 11:36 pm to hipgnosis
"Better" books? What if some person genuinely enjoys Rascal Flatts more than Jason Isbell? Do you ever try to be more pretentious than you already come off as? That would be impressive.
Posted on 4/15/15 at 11:49 pm to Patton
quote:
What if some person genuinely enjoys Rascal Flatts more than Jason Isbell?
quote:
pretentious
The pretentiousness of music and all things is absurd. It's annoying, yes. It's all kinds of things.
But I don't think pretentiousness is in play when it's decided that Rascal Flatts is junk and Jason Isbell is better. One is McDonalds, the other is Morton's Steakhouse. McDonalds can taste good, it's enjoyed by people all over the world, but it is, in fact shite. We know this, it's qualifiable. Morton's is better quality. This is undeniable. There are most certainly people out there that would actually rather eat McDonalds, but we know they're making a poor choice. Morton's is better for you, better quality, better tasting. It's real. Mickey D's is fake.
Better books, yes. There are qualifiable, quantifiable, sabermetricfiable better books out there than the commercial pop books sold in airport terminals. That's not pretentious.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 4:21 am to hipgnosis
We all know how universally heralded John Grisham and Tom Clancy are as authors. A majority of their work penned on paper has sold millions and eventually made the big screen. Everybody knows this. However....
I'd like to add that both of them, in my opinion, share the fact that their best work stayed in book form for reasons unknown.
"The Partner" by Grisham and "Without Remorse" by Clancy are amazing start to finish. There's so much ownage in both of them, it just makes it so hard to put down.
Another really good read is by James McManus called "Posetively 5th street" Its a memoir on a dual story regarding a big-time murder trial and himself a simple writer on assignment for a magazine covering the World Series of Poker in the year 2000. It's being turned into a movie coming out next year, I believe. Amazing story. Loved it.
I'd like to add that both of them, in my opinion, share the fact that their best work stayed in book form for reasons unknown.
"The Partner" by Grisham and "Without Remorse" by Clancy are amazing start to finish. There's so much ownage in both of them, it just makes it so hard to put down.
Another really good read is by James McManus called "Posetively 5th street" Its a memoir on a dual story regarding a big-time murder trial and himself a simple writer on assignment for a magazine covering the World Series of Poker in the year 2000. It's being turned into a movie coming out next year, I believe. Amazing story. Loved it.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 5:32 am to hipgnosis
quote:
Better books, yes. There are qualifiable, quantifiable, sabermetricfiable better books out there than the commercial pop books sold in airport terminals. That's not pretentious.
It is pretentious to assume that just because a book is widely produced/consumed that it's not good.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 5:36 am to hipgnosis
What, in your opinion, would be "the real thing"?
Posted on 4/16/15 at 8:11 am to BluegrassBelle
quote:
It is pretentious to assume that just because a book is widely produced/consumed that it's not good.
That's true.
There are definitely lots of widely produced books that are very good. Most classics, new and old, are widely produced.
I think commercial, pop-mainstream refers a certain type of book maybe more than it's level of production, which I know might seem contradicting.
Maybe level of marketing might be a better gauge.
The Grisham's, Clancy's, King's, Crichton's and the abundant many that use their playbook.
When you're trying to gratify a mass market, when that is the intention it's very difficult for the art to be intellectually nourishing, even if the aim is to just entertain.
Note: Entertainment can end up gratifying the masses without the intention to do so, without going through a corporate filter. Not to say that the indie artist isn't hoping to be widely liked, it's more about nonexistent parameters that help make something mass appealing.
This post was edited on 4/16/15 at 8:24 am
Posted on 4/16/15 at 9:10 am to UMRealist
I decided to table House of Leaves until this fall, and instead picked up Catch 22. Read a good chunk of it before my freshman year of college, but didn't pay nearly as much attention to it as I needed to. I had forgotten just how dry and sardonic it was. Very clever.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 9:15 am to hipgnosis
I think it comes with getting paid to put out x number of pages and the pressure for those popular writers to keep cranking it out. I love kings early work though and the dark tower series which I feel he put more effort in to than other recent stuff.
Nothing wrong though with enjoying a "burner" as someone put it.
Same with Clancy IMO and likely most of them though I'm not familiar with Chrichton and Grisham belyond A Time To Kill.
I feel like that plays into it with both those sort of authors and the long series, they have probably had the first five books or so in their heads forever tossing around ideas and reworking the story so it's much harder to produce the same level if work once you run out of your initial ideas. Similar things could be said about some musicians
Nothing wrong though with enjoying a "burner" as someone put it.
Same with Clancy IMO and likely most of them though I'm not familiar with Chrichton and Grisham belyond A Time To Kill.
I feel like that plays into it with both those sort of authors and the long series, they have probably had the first five books or so in their heads forever tossing around ideas and reworking the story so it's much harder to produce the same level if work once you run out of your initial ideas. Similar things could be said about some musicians
This post was edited on 4/16/15 at 9:21 am
Posted on 4/16/15 at 9:23 am to hipgnosis
quote:
I think commercial, pop-mainstream refers a certain type of book maybe more than it's level of production, which I know might seem contradicting.
Maybe level of marketing might be a better gauge.
The Grisham's, Clancy's, King's, Crichton's and the abundant many that use their playbook.
When you're trying to gratify a mass market, when that is the intention it's very difficult for the art to be intellectually nourishing, even if the aim is to just entertain.
Note: Entertainment can end up gratifying the masses without the intention to do so, without going through a corporate filter. Not to say that the indie artist isn't hoping to be widely liked, it's more about nonexistent parameters that help make something mass appealing.
This sounds like a lot of hipster bullshite.
Parameters which make a book appealing:
Good plot
Good dialogue
Interesting concept
Editing
Most of the 'indie' books I have read are good at the concept portion, but really, really, really (cannot say this enough) suffer from lack of professional editing. Most of them also suffer from poor or repetitive dialogue, which is also usually fixed by good editing.
You see this in older 'classics' that were written before major publishing companies became a thing. Robinson Crusoe is a great example of this. That book would be a $.99 on amazon if it was written today.
Back in the day, Asimov, Heinlein, Wilde, etc had great concepts and good editing/plot/dialogue, which is why they have stood the test of time.
However, there is nothing wrong with Grisham, Clancy, King, or Crichton. They are good authors and their books are well done for the most part. Better than 95% of the drivel out there.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 9:26 am to CheeseburgerEddie
I don't think we're really on the same page, but it's cool.
I agree that pressure to continue to put out work has an impact on quality.
I agree that pressure to continue to put out work has an impact on quality.
This post was edited on 4/16/15 at 11:03 am
Posted on 4/16/15 at 11:04 am to CheeseburgerEddie
quote:
Crichton
I think he'll be remembered very well as a prophetic science fiction writer. His books have been popular, yes, and been made into many successful movies. But the themes and elements that he uses are typically quite thought provoking and are extremely well-researched. We're only now starting to see science catch up to some of the themes and warnings that he brought up in Jurassic Park, for instance. Next is terrifying in the sense that much of the "bizarro world" stuff that he describes is already being done, and completely rogue from any semblance of regulation. Airframe completely deconstructed the airline industry, during a time when a number of high-profile crashes had happened.
Yeah, it's burner, but there's a great deal under the surface with Crichton.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 11:49 am to CheeseburgerEddie
Good to know that ST can ruin even a book thread.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 12:00 pm to UMRealist
Reread In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, especially since you probably haven't read it in years. Ask yourself what role environment had in the shaping of murderer Perry Smith's behavior and personality. That would make an interesting topic of discussion on this board.
Posted on 4/16/15 at 4:03 pm to TigerPanzer
Never heard of it.
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