50 Book Challenge 2017 Part Six

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the sixth thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2017, 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.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here, the third thread here, the fourth one here, and the fifth one here.

What are you reading?

And Cote, if you even really want to annoy yourself, try All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai. I kept thinking about how much you'd loathe it as I was reading it.

25. The Whisperer In Darkness - Collected Stories Vol. 1 by H. P. Lovecraft

I had never read any Lovecraft before and found his stuff interesting, if somewhat repetitive and wordy. These stories are mostly about an alien race that sleeps somewhere underground, to be awakened when the conditions (never quite explained) are right again. Multiple stories in different cities, eras, and with different characters achieves pretty solid worldbuilding. I was impressed, especially given how long ago they were written.

I have to say, though, that the book was very long and I was getting a bit bored towards the end. I think it is best to read these stories one at a time, spread over several months.

"bardo is the Tibetan word for Buddhist purgatory."

Yeah, well, using foreign words nobody can be expected to know in English-language book titles is not cool. It's gimmicky & special-snowflaky

It's the correct word for the premise and the setting, and it's certainly no more snowflake than Neuromancer. (Yes, I've read it.)

"if you even really want to annoy yourself, try All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai."

Another 1st novel with a special-snowflaky title. Awesome

I read the plot for a bit and I agree, sounds like I would hate it big time.

I think some new words (possibly in the title) are to be expected in books about the future. After all, there are technologies, concepts, inventions that we don't know of yet and hence don't have words for.

I didn't love All Our Wrong Todays, but when I read certain parts, I thought about how you'd hate it with a fiery passion.

Oh goody, Snow Crash discussion!

96. Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson

Finished this earlier this evening. Have read Ontop's review with interest! I pretty much agree with most of hers - not sure what I was expecting, never having read any cyberpunk before, but I thought the characterisation was the weak point too. I do however like the name Hiro Protagonist, although not so keen on Yours Truly. Actually, it's not so much the characterisation - I liked Hiro, YT, Raven, Fido etc and they were all clearly realised as individuals - and more the connections between the characters. Hiro taking YT on as his partner seemed bizarre when they had barely interacted. Ditto Raven and YT's sudden relationship (the dentata was a genius invention, though!) and indeed that of YT and Uncle Enzo. I was creeped out by Enzo to start with because it seemed so unlikely that he would take such a shine to a random Kourier that he'd give her his dog tags and mount a rescue mission to the Raft for her. The cyber/futuristic bit is ridiculously accurate for something written in 1992 - there's even mention of austerity in there somewhere! I do think reading it in 2017 that it doesn't blow your mind in quite the same way as all this radical brand new thinking would have done in 1992, though, so in that sense while it hasn't exactly dated, it has maybe lost some of its wow factor as technology has developed. I metaphorically sat up with a bang at the introduction of the Tower of Babel/Sumerian bit - really liked that. I was less impressed at the endless pages of Hiro explaining it to Enzo, Mr Lee and Ng, though - it was a clumsy way of doing it. I thought the concept and all the little gems of ideas (Fido/Rat Things; the Metaverse avatars; no one recognising the POTUS; the Fedland regulations about toilet roll; YT's plank and all its funky stuff etc etc) were brilliant, though. I could see it as a film (is there a film?) with all the action scenes and gadgets, but I have no idea how you'd simplify all the Sumerian me nam-shub stuff for a film!

I am curious about how the dentata works to (ahem) accommodate a penis, though. It would have to be stretchy yet solid enough to hold the needle in the right place. Plus there would be the comfort factor. I'm picturing a cross between a mooncup and a female condom with mounted needle on the inside. And I can't imagine how you'd get such a thing a) in and b) out without injecting yourself.

I was quite impressed with the dentata, too

And the whole Sumerian legends stuff. I mean, who thinks up stuff like that? That may have been when I realised that Neal Stephenson is God.

I loved the dentata and the Rat Things (imagining chasing their bloody frisbees!) and the whole franchulate concept - indeed, the world. There was overall rather too much fighting, like in those films where you think "Not another car chase". I think the surface plot would make a great action movie but the deep plot would be far too complicated. The Sumerian stuff was at the same time brilliant, bizarre and ludicrous. And absolutely right that so many things are so close to what has happened.

Re Lincoln, I had to look bardo up after finishing the book none the wiser. I kept expecting to discover that the cemetery's nickname was The Bardo. I realised then that at some point I had seen the Tibetan name for the Book of the Dead but had forgotten it. I would have liked the book to explain it in some way e.g. an epigraph.

I wondered whether going back to the bardo might have been a purgatorial challenge for the rev and whether he might have redeemed himself.

I'm starting to think I'm the only person on the thread who watched Lost.

I think the bardo was explained in the blurb on my book? I'll have to check. And, that's an interesting point about the Reverend, Ontop.

"The Sumerian stuff was at the same time brilliant, bizarre and ludicrous."

Definitely bizarre & brilliant but no, not ludicrous! It's incredibly well-constructed and consistent throughout, supported with factual snippets, cuneiform tablets, and everything else we know of Sumerian legends & historical figures.

That stuff is pure gold. I have never come across another book with such fantastic connection to ancient history & mythology.

I don't want to give too many Snow Crash plot spoilers so anyone who hasn't read it should probably not read the rest of this post.

The Sumerian idea was brilliant and the research was detailed - but the way in which the idea was used in the plot was in my opinion to some extent ludicrous (chasing ancient artefacts in helicopters? spreading a linguistic virus via blood? via binary code to hackers?) and not really aligned to what we currently know of language and how it works (though I understand that this is fiction, so I suppose that part doesn't really matter as most of the science in the book is imagined so only needs to be consistent within its world).

And a stylistic point - the complex nam shub theory needed to be explained in very long paragraphs multiple times which was turgid to read.

And, rather like James Bond, both YT and Hiro seemed to have the ability to survive leaps from helicopters, various explosions, massive gun battles and chases with nuke wielding Aleuts without a single trip to A&E or even an Elastoplast.

Actually, I believe that the idea in Snow Crash re language & how it programs the brain is quite in line with what we know at present. Research shows that learning languages do indeed change the brain, what the book calls "forming neurolinguistic pathways in your brain.... Deep structures... your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware", which is a pretty good way to put it imho.

"spreading a linguistic virus via blood?"

That is not the virus but the actual (processed) flood of the infected. It's been a while since I read it but my understanding was like the spread of Mad Cow Disease - your brain develops mis-folded proteins which get into your blood and can spread to others who get in contact with it.

So the info-virus changes your brain and those changes can be transmitted to others who come into contact with your blood.

All this Snow Crash talk is making me crave another Neal Stephenson book so I bit the bullet and go his eye-wateringly expensive new book DODO

I'm happy to report that there is mention of cuneiform tablets, magic, and time travel in the first pages

Sounds like a recipe for success! I'm about as far from Neal Stephenson as possible with Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping On diaries.

I think there is a similarity in the language used to describe language acquisition and the language that Stephenson uses, but I think, from what I know, that he interprets it in a way that doesn't really tally with what is generally understood and what is meant by Deep Structure et al. I understood that it was the blood of the infected but again, the suggestion that learning a particular language (or even a mythical proto-language with magical programming powers) would make you manufacture different proteins that could infect others stretches my credulity - but then, although I'm a linguist, I'm not an expert on protein manufacture.

Uh-oh. 4% in and the book started talking about the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Thank you, higher powers, for Neal Stephenson

Ontop - You will enjoy this book, I think. The protagonist isn't called Protagonist is a woman linguist

Re proteins etc, I wasn't suggesting that's what's in the book, but rather that altered brain chemistry can indeed be infectious via blood (as is the case with mad cow disease & badly folded proteins).

32. Those who leave and those who stay Elena Ferrante I find these books hypnotic - the pace is so slow and the characters (particularly Elena herself) irritate the hell out of me yet I'm enthralled all the same.

Cote, I've got a copy of Quicksilver somewhere, which I've never read. Do I need to have read Cryptonomicon first?

I'll have to wait till DODO comes down in price. This thread has given me loads of new authors to read, which is great, and also alerted me to the Kindle Daily Deal, which I knew about but never thought about. Though if I buy a book a day on the Daily Deal it won't be that cheap....

Just marking place. I'm still toiling on with a couple of boring ones - the Stalin one that I've been reading for what feels like years, and which I'm determined will not beat me, and Howard's End is on the Landing which I'm really not enjoying but might as well finish now. I've also just started Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

TooExtra - No, you don't have to read Cryptonomicon first to read Quicksilver.

Quicksilver is an odd one. I have read everything NS has ever written, except Quicksilver's sequels - because I thought it was disappointing. In theory, it should be exactly my kind of book (about scientists, written by NS - what can go wrong? ) but it is weirdly cheesy. Some chick from an Ottoman harem and a romantic pirate? What?

Cryptonomicon is fantastic and not at all cheesy, though.