50 Book Challenge 2016 Part Three

[southeastdweller]

Thread three of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2016, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it's not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

First thread of 2016 is here and second thread here.

How're you getting on so far?

Wilting It is VERY wrong. Please, please trust me that it is a load of execrable, whinging tripe. And I speak as somebody who thinks he is the finest lyricist the world has ever known.

I've read some absolute stinkers that have won the Booker. The Famished Road stands out in my memory as one of the most boring reading experiences of my life. So i never take it as an indicator a book will be for me. However, like it or not, the long/shortlist is still a good way of narrowing the field of contemporary fiction and getting it talked about, and there will always be gems on there that are deservedly lauded. But, as can be seen in the Wolf Hall debate, one man's prize winner is another man's stinker.

Morrissey love, too, is something you either get or you don't, and I very much don't. Lyrics, music, vocals, persona all uniquely designed to get on my nerves, but I know so many people that worship him. It's weird to be on the outside looking in at these things.

Greymalkin Christopher Lee's narration of The Raven is fantastic. I listen to it regularly.

I am hanging my head in shame. I am finally admitting that James Joyce's Ulyeses has beaten me. I have tried to read it. I am a third of a way through and I have absolutely no idea what the book is about. My apologies to anybody who is a fan but imho it is a pile of crap and reads like the ramblings of someone who is deranged. Next book the Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson

Finally finished The Book of Strange New Things. Took me an age. Quite liked it when i was reading it but it didn't really shout at me to pick it up when I wasn't. After a pretty good start to the challenge this has slowed me down. To be fair Feb and March are mental work wise for me so maybe that played a part too. Ok off to look for something else now!!

How did you like the wanking vicar, Guthrie? I'm still scarred from that book and its relentless tediousness.

Wilting - I thought Shock of the Fall was a really good book. Bleak in parts, but very moving. A bargain at 99p!

Rhu - re "I'm more into the ideas and people and less into action"

Well, there were a lot of fascinating and novel ideas in Snow Crash. I remember when I first read it - Metaverse, avatars, FBI etc I was plodding on, then the Sumerian plot was revealed and my brain went KA-BOOM! I'm itching to say what it was but don't want to ruin it for those who are yet to read it.

Imagine reading Snow Crash in 1992. Internet was in its infancy. Online games, virtual reality, etc were still sci-fi. This book popularised the term 'avatar', came up with the idea of Google Earth (called 'Earth' in Snow Crash), and even presciently told of economic migrants getting on boats in large numbers to get to developed countries.

Try The Diamond Age next, I would say. More ideas and less action than in Snow Crash.

Wilting I wasn't a big fan of The Shock of The Fall. It was okay but nothing special.

You could do worse for 99p though!

I agree with tumble re "OK but nothing special". At least it didn't make me wish I could die & go somewhere with intelligible books, like A Brief History did

Might as well add it to my tbr lists for 99p

Am reading my first Barbara Pym at mo, Quartet in Autumn, really enjoying it. Will definitely read more and many thanks to those who recommended her

Anyone know of more modern Pym like authors?

The new thread is here

Yes Cote, those were the good parts of Snow Crash and it was interesting to read it as a visionary book of its time, what he did foresee. Of course part of the plot has echos in Dawkin's ideas, which I am more or less familiar with. (but I guess is more likely the other way around because Dawkins wrote the selfish gene in 1976, Wikipedia tells me.) I was interested but not mind blown but it's also not 1992 anymore of course and I'm an old hag now.
I'll look up the diamond age.
Enjoying HHhH for now, if I can put it like that but it's good to read something so grounded now.

It's been a while since I read it but I can't remember anything that could resemble the concept of Dawkins' "selfish gene". What do you mean by that?

Not the selfish gene per se but in that book, iirc, he first put forward the idea of religion as a virus. From that he advanced in later writings but the idea made its debut there.

Religion isn't the virus in Snow Crash, though. There is a cult (Reverend X's Pearly Gates?) that distributes the drug Snow Crash, which is also a linguistic virus.

Religion, language, same difference. Is about the distribution in the mind of 'me' in the book or 'memes' in Dawkin's theory. The language is connected to how the world works and should work, as an operating system, tied to beliefs about the right way. He connects everything, language, history, theology. That was the fun part.