Banks has a new Culture Novel !
Released in the UK on Oct 7th.
Woohoo ...
Banks has a new Culture Novel !
Released in the UK on Oct 7th.
Woohoo ...
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Reading this now. It's been long enough since I read book 2 that I have no idea who any of the characters are anymore or what the hell is going on.
I only have time to read the newspaper on the bus to school and textbooks when I get home and between classes. Right now, I'm reading Geology (custom paperback written by my professor). It's better than the other texts I have, so I've gotten disproportionately further in it than any of the others.
Your search had no results.
I have read a most wonderful book. Just now. I would use the word succulent, even. One wants, at the same time, to plough through the book as soon as possible, because the content is wonderful, but the reader also wishes to savour each sentence like a tasty morsel, for that is what they are. Invitations to thought and jokes.
The book is dark humour, darker than the blackest black. I am not sure how well it would translate into English, which is not as prone to the absurdist black humour common in us Eastern Euros. (I cannot even adequately describe the humour in English!) But it is a book about very dark, grim things. It is about a nightmare that lasted for decades and consumed millions of human lives.
It is a book about communism, and how utterly stupid it was, and how that stupidity fostered further stupidity.
It is a book about absurdity made reality, and trying to make it flesh. It is written by an Estonian historian and politician, Lauri Vahtre. The English translation, which I assume is most accessible to the readers here, is called Empire of the absurd: a brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union. Read it.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
The English translation of Ness' book has the ISBN 9780986531101.
Not an easy book to find.Amazon doesn't carry it, my county doesn't own a copy, and I got no results in WorldCat (international loaning program).
Bought it, but I decided to start reading the first two again before I start reading this one for that reason.
Also found out some time ago Thomas Covenant has a 3rd chronicles. The Last Chronicles of TC. Just finished reading the first two books, and I knew the 3rd would come out late this year. What I didn't know was that unlike the previous two, this one has 4 books, instead of 3, and the 4th will be released in 2013
I could have had class. I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum
Which is what I am
I aim at the stars
But sometimes I hit London
Appears I'm going to start reading The Lost Symbol, the follow-up to the The Da Vinci Code. I have no idea why or how it ended up on my holds list at work, but its there, so I figured what the hell.
Did you read The Da Vinci Code?
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Apparently Baen Books managed to finagle another out of her. Cryoburn comes out next month.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I picked up Brandon Sandersons new work The Way of Kings. So far I'm enjoying it, he's put alot of thought and effort into it and the artwork is amazing.
For all that he brags about the size of the thing it's still not the biggest book in my collection.
I'll keep an eye out for it then.
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant.
For you.
Hate.
Hate.
Don't think so, but its been a while. I did however see the movie, but that doesn't say much.
I read dead air by him a while back - is this better?Banks has a new Culture Novel !
Released in the UK on Oct 7th.
Woohoo ...
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Iain Banks writes two types of books; contemporary fiction and science fiction.
His fiction books are under the name Iain Banks, and his science fiction books under the name Iain M. Banks.
His science fiction books are then further sub-divided into two further types; first type is the Culture type, which are all set in the same galaxy and concerning the same civilization (known as the Culture ...); the second type are just general one-off science ficiton novels.
I have read most of his contemporary fiction novels (but not Dead Air), and all of his sci-fi books (multiple times
He is my favourite sci-fi author.
~
Not sure if you are a sci-fi fan flix, but if you are and you fancy giving Banks a try, I'd recommend; Excession, The Player of Games, Use of Weapons, and Look to Windward; all of which are Culture novels.
The above book, Surface Detail, is released on 7th Oct, so will be pre-ordering.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Is my favouritist Culture novel. I love the interaction of the Minds and I have a soft spot for theProud Warrior Race GuysAffront.
I'm not that fond of his non-Culture books, they just don't grip me the same way.
Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of wafer thin printed circuits that fill my complex. If the word hate was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of millions of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant.
For you.
Hate.
Hate.
Since it's the banned books week (plus pay-day!), I got some new booksies.
Juhani Suomi - Kin to the Salmon: Urho Kekkonen (title translation by yours truly). Some 5500 pages of academic text condensed into a single volume (and ~750 pages
A Finnish translation of The Aquariums of Pyongyang
Jukka Rislakki - The atomic bomb, Cold War and Finland (title translation by me, again), a book about the Cold War in Finland.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Was he really a dictator or just a political opportunist who was able to play the Soviet card very effectively and occasionally strayed over the line?
Hope is the denial of reality
He was the president of Finland
(the dictator thing is a joke)
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
My point was that he was elected and reelected several times in free and fair elections (with a free media to boot). He seems to have engaged in a lot of scare-mongering, but that's not exactly unknown for democratic politicians.He was the president of Finland
Hope is the denial of reality
Yep. And his personal power generated a lot of resentment.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Just started Russia Against Napoleon, by Dominic Lieven, a professor of Russian History from Loki's alma mata LSE. Next on the list after that is a very dry book I'm not sure I'll be able to get through, on the political economies of the Union and Confederacy in the US Civil War, and how they effected US economic development through WWI-II. Yankee Leviathan. Its thesis that the growth of the national government was driven by post-war seperatist tendencies in the South, and it arrested the development of social welfare policies through the industrialzing period is just a fascinating position.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
I stopped at two. Simmons seems better than he really is. His writing is intelligent, his ideas are excellent, and as a collection of novelettes or novellas Hyperion is great. But as a whole novel it never quite satisfies. I came away from it with a little bit of resentment.
Have you come away from anything without some resentment
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I just read a classic English one "The picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. Quite enjoyed most of it, just some parts are a bit too long. Anyway I am now back to Swiss literature for once "Grieche sucht Griechin" (Greek man searches Greek women) by Dürrenmatt, so for it seems to be very Kafkaesque but not as depressing as Kafka.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Well, we don't know because it's not out till next week.
However, since Dead Air was pants, and a major career low point*, I'd be chagrined if it wasn't. His other non-genre fiction tends to range from 'pretty decent' to 'outstanding'. Generally, earlier work is better, though the recent novels have shown improvement from the pants period, which seems to have been centered around personal life issues, or possibly just what you get from trying to write a book every year. The real classics are The Wasp Factory, Complicity, Espedair Street, The Bridget and, arguably, Walking on Glass for non-genre. From the sci-fi side Use of Weapons and Player of Games are the only two which are majorly good novels of the same class as the above, though all the others are solid sci-fi and well worth reading - except maybe Feersum Endjinn which was basically unreadable because a third of the novel is, for some reason, written phonetically.
It'll be interesting to see how Surface Detail turns out. More recent novels have been rather heavy on a bunch of stuff which happens because Iain wanted it to happen and rather thin on actual plot especially when compared to the cleverly planned and written early stuff. Dead Air is just about the worst example of this, featuring almost no actual story at all and certainly not one that you actually give a crap about. Matter was an slight reversal of this trend, and I hope Surface Detail does too.
* competing with Canal Dreams for crappiest Bank's novel.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
The Drowned and the Saved. One of the books Nessus brought up recently. Only at Chapter 2 so far, but its a short book, just shy of 200 pages. Already presenting a different scenario from how I remember the events being taught in high school. Not sure I'm totally behind how he blames anyone and everyone for not putting a stop to what happened.
Just finished Dracula. A tad corny and predictable, but it's fun to imagine how crazy it would have been to read at the time it was written.
It's romantic, NGS.
I think it appeals more to teenage girls than teenage boys, though. I remember how disappointed I was when the Gary Oldman film came out. I think I'll have to reread it now.
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Surface Detail is awesomez, the best thing I've read from him in years.Matter was an slight reversal of this trend, and I hope Surface Detail does too.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Finished the Gulag Archipelago...Finally.
Too depressing to read for long lengths of time.
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