Which Book Are You Reading Now? Volume XII

[Lillefix]

That may be part of the problem I had with it. Bad science-fiction writers will bury the reader in empty jargon, and it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between a subtle or impressionistic style of world-building and simple bad writing.

One difference is that good things tend to make an impact
Cyberspace anyone?

 

[Takhisis]

Well, I've just caught up on Interviewing Leather and its ongoing sequel, Interviewing Trey. I'd heartily recommend them, but you read at your own peril.

 

[Kyriakos]

The Nuttcracker, by E.T.A. Hoffmann. I already knew the plot (no, it isn't the same as the eponymous classical music composition, which was adapted from a different version written decades later by someone else), but i generally liked it, since i like ETA Hoffmann. That said, this was not as hardcore as his other stories, such as The Sandman, Counselor Krespel or Elixirs of the Devil

Still, it did have a seven-headed mouse.

 

[Arakhor]

Spoiler huge images please.

 

[Kyriakos]

^The nutcracker was a king, have some respect

 

[Paul in Saudi]

I just finished A Fine Mess by T R Reid, a discussion of tax policy around the world. I am not on The Soprano State, about corruption in New Jersey.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm reading Midnight's Furies, about the partition of India as my 'regular' book. I'm also reading sections of Rousseau and Revolution by Will Durant until I make it through the end. More casually I am listening to Wil Wheaton read Redshirts, about crewmen on a spaceship in a federation who begin to think they're on a badly-written TV show.

"In all my research there's only one spaceship I've found that has remotely the same sort of statistical patterns for away missions. It's from the United Federation of Planets."
"Who are they?"
"They don't exist. And neither does this. This is the Starship Enterprise. It's fictional. It was on a science fiction drama series...and so are we."

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Das Seelenhaus - Hannah Kent

The story of the last execution in Island in the 19th century, based on true accounts.
Telling us about the destiny of an orphan girl, whom the community was to be taken care of. By giving her grinding work, by giving her love and an actual mother only for fate to destroy it, by having her be a work and sex slave. Until Nathan saves her. And...... Whatever happens. It is a fantastic story portraying the simple primitive farm civilization life. Laying light on what that means when means are tough, when authorities are as above as their titles, and when simple musings get in between those gears of the simple life.

I absolutely loved it. The story telling changes between a female first-person-narrator taking the place of the to be executed and being as pictures as honest and straight-forward. A poet of consciousness. All enlightened by a relater telling historical documents as well as impressions of various other characters such as her priest, the female head of her captors and her daughter.

And immense amalgam of perspectives, leading to a richness of human interaction which seems to approach the richness of its presumable real hot pot of human intertwines.

Praise all through. Get it.

 

[JohannaK]

What Island? Cuba, Java, Madagascar, Sicily, Ireland?

 

[Lillefix]

What Island? Cuba, Java, Madagascar, Sicily, Ireland?

I think he forgot to translate it from German or whatever other language he's reading it in. It's Iceland.

 

[JohannaK]

Ohhhh, that makes sense. Sorry for the stupid question.

 

[Traitorfish]

It was pretty good. Miéville pointedly stays away from theorising about the revolution, instead presenting a ground-level view of events, mostly in and around Petrograd, and the style remains engaging and writerly without slipping into historical fiction. A conscious effort is made to avoid lionising the Bolsheviks, who spend most of the book bumbling around and arguing with one another, and while this does occasionally save the purpose of casting Lenin and Trotsky in a more heroic light when things eventually go their way, Miéville clearly identifies his protagonists as the working class militants out in the regiments and the factories, rather than as any heroic leader or, perhaps equally as insidious, a faceless "People". Not a scholarly work, by any means, but unlike most popular accounts, Miéville is willing to take the Revolution as it was experienced by its participants, rather than as a prologue to Stalinism, and in that sense is a very strong introduction.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I think he forgot to translate it from German or whatever other language he's reading it in. It's Iceland.

You are correct

 

[Takhisis]

Valerio Massimo Manfredi's Le paludi di Hesperia, translated into Spanish as ‘La conjura de las reinas’ for some reason. I must have read it ten years ago.

 

[Arakhor]

Given that its title in English is The Talisman of Troy, I had no idea to which book you were referring prior to a 'net search.

 

[Cutlass]

The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Tad Williams.

I was in the library the other day and remembered that I had never seen the 3rd book in the series. So tracked them down in another library, and since it's been a number of years since I read 1 and 2, I'd read those first to refresh my memory before reading the 3rd.

 

[Takhisis]

Given that its title in English is The Talisman of Troy, I had no idea to which book you were referring prior to a 'net search.

All hail the FWSE!

 

[Arakhor]

I use DuckDuckGo.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I'm reading an introduction in C++ because I got it into my head to teach myself programming in my mid thirties and maybe one day implement some of my ideas for games. Half of it makes sense, the other half might as well be black magic.
Maybe I should better start with Java.

 

[Tahuti]

I'm reading an introduction in C++ because I got it into my head to teach myself programming in my mid thirties and maybe one day implement some of my ideas for games. Half of it makes sense, the other half might as well be black magic.
Maybe I should better start with Java.

If games programming is what you wish, I recommend starting with C++ right away if you already have some programming knowledge.

The issue that makes C++ hard is the memory stuff (proper usage of * and &, representing 'sides' of the memory you're loading the variable from).