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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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 Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:05 am |
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| shrugtheironteacup wrote: |
| I use Snow Crash as my litmus test for Being A Grown-Up. Whenever I think I might be getting there I pull it down and get to reading. Pretty soon the "holy shit this awesome oh christ did he just-?! HE DID!" starts to roll and I am assured that I am safe from ever be a grown-up at all. |
I love Snow Crash for pretty much the same reason.
I read Jose Saramago's Blindness the other week and it was, in a word, intense. But the first half and the second half of the novel felt really strangely discontinuous, and not in a "hey cool discontinuity" sort of way, but a "I wish I were still reading the first part" way. It had enough of an impact on me, though, to where I picked up another one of his novels, The Double. I'm looking forward to reading it after I finish The Human Stain for class.
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 8:32 am |
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| rabite gets whacked! wrote: |
The Human Stain is quite nice!
But mostly I just posted cause I noticed your sig is from Sim Tower and therefore [you are likely] categorically awesome. good on ya. |
SimTower and its successor, Yoot Tower, are the most haphazardly playable simulation games that I've enjoyed and so they hold a very special place in my heart.
I'm enjoying The Human Stain thus far but I think I prefer American Pastoral.
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 5:22 am |
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I just finished Haruki Murakami's After Dark in one sitting. Compared to Kafka on the Shore, it's a refreshing read, and evokes the same kind of resonance that his better short stories have for me (i.e., 100% Perfect Girl, Year of Spaghetti, Second Bakery Attack).
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 12:57 am |
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| skonrad wrote: |
| ...in the end Nakata's story struck me as being the more compelling part of the book... |
This is how I feel about the book too. I enjoyed it a lot, and I've read it three times now, but in terms of storytelling, the momentum felt a little flat compared to Hard-boiled Wonderland..., which I had reread just before Kafka on the Shore was released, or the better of his short stories (also: "Kidney-shaped Stone that Moves Every Day"!). But, that makes sense, since the story marked a movement away from the Japanese everyman as a protagonist or narrator. It seemed Murakami was flexing his creative muscles, experimenting a little bit, and it worked in some ways and didn't in others.
After Dark, coming after Kafka, is extremely sharp; it's Murakami exploring new narrative territory, again, but also revisiting the usual tropes and themes. It's concise, and reads more like a long short story than a novel, which for me and my perspective on this author, is a compliment. The pacing also has a lot to do with how the novel is structured, sequences arranged according to the time they take place over the course of a single night.
It's also very sentimental, but it feels appropriate due to the age range of the protagonists.
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 5:46 am |
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I felt Catch-22 was great, but mildly unreadable in some strange way. I read half of it, then put it down and finished it a couple of months later.
All this Murakami talk and people keep on pimping his novels, but I personally think his short stories are his strongest works. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is an extremely strong collection, and then there's Underground, which is an amazing piece of nonfiction.
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Fri May 25, 2007 12:21 am |
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| rf wrote: |
I thought The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon were Stephenson's best books. The Diamond Age is technically in the same universe as Snow Crash, though that doesn't really mean much since it has a much more sober tone. In these two books he gets a great stride going, where some real feeling emerges naturally from the comic style somehow. I'd like to be able to describe this better, but I've sat at the keyboard for about ten minutes now and can't think of how. I couldn't stand his new books, though--they feel like a mimicry of his style that's built on a misunderstanding of why it works, as if the earlier stuff was just him getting lucky.
I've got a copy of Nabokov's Speak, Memory that someone gave me. I wonder how I'll like it--it's his autobiography. I've read Lolita and Pale Fire. I loved the former but disliked the latter because the protagonist's delusions are more about brute physical facts than how people work or his own mental capabilities and social standing. |
I haven't read Cryptonomicon but I loved the Diamond Age; it resonated with me much more than Snow Crash, though Snow Crash was a lot of fun and pretty much exemplified the pulp aspects of the cyberpunk genre. I don't have a problem with either approach.
The Nabokov autobiography sounds interesting! Lolita ranks up there on my list of all-time favorites, but I haven't made the time to explore the rest of his works.
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wpham
Joined: 17 Mar 2007
Location: California
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 6:59 am |
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Put Kafka on the Shore away and read After Dark!
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