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What BOOK(s) are you reading?
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- Cranberries
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From NYT:Beyond the door of the luxurious Hotel Metropol lies Theater Square and the rest of Moscow, and beyond its city limits the tumultuous landscape of 20th-century Russia. The year 1922 is a good starting point for a Russian epic, but for the purposes of his sly and winning second novel, Amor Towles forgoes descriptions of icy roads and wintry dachas and instead retreats into the warm hotel lobby. The Metropol, with its customs and routines, is a world unto itself.
For years, its florist adhered to the code of polite society and knew “which flower to send when one has been late; when one has spoken out of turn.” The barbershop remained a kind of Switzerland, “a land of optimism, precision and political neutrality.” As post-revolution scarcity set in, the chef of the upscale Boyarsky restaurant worked magic with cornmeal, cauliflower and cabbage, while the Shalyapin bar offered candlelight and dark corners so Bolshoi dancers could sneak a postperformance drink. In the lobby, politicians whispered and movie starlets swanned across the floor, dragging recalcitrant borzois on their leashes.
Towles’s novel spans a number of difficult decades, but no Bolshevik, Stalinist or bureaucrat can dampen the Metropol’s life; World War II only briefly forces a pause. A great hotel is eternal, and the tidal movement of individuals and ideas into its lounges and ballrooms is a necessity for one longtime resident. He’s not difficult to spot: a man who enacts a set of rituals and routines, grooming and dining, conversing and brandy-drinking, before ascending each night to his room on the sixth floor, which has barely enough space for his Louis XVI desk and ebony elephant lamps.
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Also I listen to NPR. Not because I really like their spin on things, but because they're the only news announcers that don't feel like they're yelling the news at me.
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- Sagrilarus
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- Pull the Goalie
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S.
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Much more exciting for me is that now I've started PKD's Vallis which I'd been meaning to read for some time. It's damned fascinating so far and probably some of his best writing.
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- Cranberries
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I am now reading Autumn of the Black Snake, which is about the events and choices that led to the creation of a standing U.S. Army, and the U.S. victory in the fighting over the Northwest Territory.
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- Black Barney
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- 10k Club
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I recently read NK Jemisen's The Obelisk Gate, which is book two in a so far spectacular series.
Read some other forgettable bullshit, and I'm taking the new Neal Stephenson (plus co-writer this time) lunchbox-sized book on a plane tomorrow.
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- Matt Thrower
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- Shiny Balls
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I picked it off the shelf recently on a whim for a re-read. It's fascinating in the way it charts his development as a writer. The first couple of tales are clumsy Lovecraft pastiches written as a young teen. He then goes through a long phase of material that's clearly in his own style but is nevertheless very clearly part of the pulp horror genre. The last few stories in the book are very distinct and among the best mythos fiction I've read. They're oblique, amorphous things where the horror is always just out of reach, a shadow flickering at the edge of the eye or the mind.
Given that many of the tales were written when he was very young - late teens and early twenties - they're really very accomplished and imaginative. It's a shame he's not better known as an author. But then, I don't know what his longer work is like.
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The novels I would recommend are:
The Nameless (also a good film. The film has a different ending to the book and Campbell has said he prefers the film ending.)
Obsession
The Influence
the next ones are his most overtly Lovecraftian:
Midnight Sun
The Hungry Moon
Ancient Images
He also wrote some non-supernatural novels which I don't think are as good, except for The One Safe Place which is masterful and The Count of Eleven which is him at his most playful.
Yes, he should be much better known - but his works are harder to translate to film than Stephen King's.
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Not Sure wrote: Return of a King has been on my "to read" list for like a year, and I just can't get to it.
Definitely try to get to it, it is SO readable for history.
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I won't be spoiling anything beyond the first page to say it's a great hefty whack of time-travel. That usually bugs me, but I was willing to give it a try. I was initially dubious about co-authors, but I think it worked well here. There's some Stephenson wonkery, particularly about swords and such, but i think the addition of a female co-author improved the characterization and sharpened the humor.
I skipped the Mongoliad trilogy since I thought the multi-author thing would be a nightmare, but the biggest takeaway I got from this is to go look at Nicole Galland's other work.
If you didn't like Stephenson before, this isn't going to change your mind. I liked Seveneves a lot, but was very unsatisfied with REAMDE. I found this one to be roughly on par with Seveneves, and much tighter in storyline.
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