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September 03
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Ryan
gave
to:
Perdido Street Station (Mass Market Paperback)
by China Miéville
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my rating:
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recommended for: People who like M. John Harrison, or want to read a more disturbing than usual fantasy novel.
read in June, 2004
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July 25
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Ryan
gave
to:
I Am Legend (Paperback)
by Richard Matheson
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my rating:
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Ryan said:
"I liked this one a bit more than Kat did, I think, but I agree that it's got some problems. I'm actually fascinated by the day-to-day life parts of the story. I want to know what Neville goes through in a day trying to live life in a world surround...more
I liked this one a bit more than Kat did, I think, but I agree that it's got some problems. I'm actually fascinated by the day-to-day life parts of the story. I want to know what Neville goes through in a day trying to live life in a world surrounded by vampires. Still, the details weren't really the ones I was interested in, and unfortunately, I still found the book awkwardly paced, which made things seem a bit dull. I can definitely see a good movie coming out of it though....less
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Ryan
gave
to:
Stumbling on Happiness (Paperback)
by Daniel Gilbert
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my rating:
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Ryan said:
"An excellent book that, a little to often, reads like a list of weird and interesting psychological experiments. Ultimately, it really made me want to be the subject of a study, so I can find out if I really do react as predictably as he seems to th...more
An excellent book that, a little to often, reads like a list of weird and interesting psychological experiments. Ultimately, it really made me want to be the subject of a study, so I can find out if I really do react as predictably as he seems to think I would. I'm willing to acknowledge the possibility. If nothing else, Gilbert describes the experiments cleverly, with strong prose and good humor. He also has a fairly unlikely point to make about happiness: that the best way to determine how happy something will make you is to find out how happy it's made other who've already experienced it. It's a short read, and you'll learn a great deal about how the brain works to imagine the future, so I recommend giving it a shot....less
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Ryan
gave
to:
Adverbs: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Daniel Handler
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my rating:
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Ryan said:
""This is a novel about love," says the back cover. Well, it's half right. It is about love, but calling it a novel is a bit of a stretch. The book has no central character or plot, just a series of stories, sometimes connected, about a b...more
"This is a novel about love," says the back cover. Well, it's half right. It is about love, but calling it a novel is a bit of a stretch. The book has no central character or plot, just a series of stories, sometimes connected, about a bunch of different people who sometimes pop up in each others' stories. I think maybe someone might say that love is the main character, but having a main character who's schizophrenic and/or prone to wild mood swings is a difficult task to pull off without a plot as a guide, and so it fails in that respect. As a set of short stories, the constant attempts to link things together (by mentioning characters from the other stories) seems like kind of a halfassed sort of connection. Nevertheless, every once in a while, you'll stumble upon a sentence, or passage, or paragraph of startling beauty, grace, style, and humor, and that kind of makes up for the flaws, at least to some extent....less
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Ryan
gave
to:
The Nicomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics)
by Aristotle
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my rating:
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recommended for: Anyone interested in ethics
Ryan said:
"Aristotle is pretty great. I mean, there's just no getting around that. His system of ethics, based on virtue, is one that sort of faded from popularity (or even recognition) for a long time. Recently, it's made something of a comeback, so I was c...more
Aristotle is pretty great. I mean, there's just no getting around that. His system of ethics, based on virtue, is one that sort of faded from popularity (or even recognition) for a long time. Recently, it's made something of a comeback, so I was curious about getting to the source of it. Overall, it's pretty much brilliant, with a few exceptions. First, the translation. They've translated eudaimonia as happiness throughout, when there really is no good English equivalent. Yes, it means happiness, but also good fortune, and is tied to concepts of virtue and right action. It would be easier to keep track of that if they just left the word in Greek with an explantory footnote. Also, the guy just loves to throw in a bit of Latin. He's always using phrases like "to value goodness qua goodness." Qua? Really? Now that word does have a perfectly useful English equivalent: "as." Also the footnotes tend to be singularly unhelpful, for example "the language here is confusing." Well, that's why I looked at the footnote, jackass. Explain it. But, of course, he doesn't. Nonetheless, the ideas are fascinating, and they don't seem to get discussed that much in most modern systems of ethics....less
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June 15
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Ryan
gave
to:
Zodiac (Paperback)
by Neal Stephenson
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my rating:
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Ryan said:
"I don't think I could honestly say that this book deserves 5 stars, but I love it, so that's my rating anyway.
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Ryan
gave
to:
Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1)
by Neal Stephenson
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my rating:
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read in May, 2007
Ryan said:
"As is obvious from looking at these books (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, which comprise the Baroque Cycle), stepping into this series is a little daunting. At close to 3,000 pages, the series can seem overwhelming. Once you s...more
As is obvious from looking at these books (Quicksilver, The Confusion, The System of the World, which comprise the Baroque Cycle), stepping into this series is a little daunting. At close to 3,000 pages, the series can seem overwhelming. Once you start though, it seems to go by pretty quickly, for the most part. Stephenson uses some hints at period language, but keeps his prose moving along pretty quickly. That's partly a result of the Jack Shaftoe plot, which is a nice, adventurous diversion from the extensive discussion of finances in Eliza's plot or philosophy (natural and otherwise) in the Daniel Waterhouse stuff. Not that I minded that stuff either. Everything blends together fairly well. I would recommend reading them as three volumes, rather than the 8 books in the mass market paperback series. I'm pretty sure it's mostly the same stuff, except that in The Confusion, the two books are merged together as alternating chapters, so that they both move forward together. ...less
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Ryan
gave
to:
The Architecture of Happiness (Hardcover)
by Alain De Botton
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my rating:
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read in June, 2007
Ryan said:
"Botton is certainly a clever writer, although his refusal to split infinitives sometimes drove me a little nuts. The only problem that I really had with the book was that it spent very little time on residential buildings. It does put forth a usefu...more
Botton is certainly a clever writer, although his refusal to split infinitives sometimes drove me a little nuts. The only problem that I really had with the book was that it spent very little time on residential buildings. It does put forth a useful system for evaluating architecture (and, to a lesser extent, art in general). For that reason, it seems more like an invitation to further study than a work that stands up well on its own....less
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Ryan
gave
to:
The Confusion (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 2)
by Neal Stephenson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Ryan
gave
to:
The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 3)
by Neal Stephenson
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my rating:
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