Red’s Comments (group member since Apr 06, 2014)

Red’s comments from the Literally Geeky group.

Anyhoo, I've read the book and written a review, and will try to get to the hangout on Tuesday.

So what happened to Murderer's Jazz? ;-P

Red wrote: "And in anticipation of tonight's Hangout, here is my review."
Or Wednesday's Hangout, or whenever... ;P

And in anticipation of tonight's Hangout, here is my review.

With you on that one Beth - despite having read it as a child, it's certainly not reading like a children's book now. Given the initial age of the protagonist I suppose we'd call it a Young Adult book (eugh!) today, but really I'd say its "children's book" moniker came about because it was published at a time when anything of a fantasy bent was seen as juvenile at best

Most recent addition to the Books I've Given Up On list is The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams. Fantasy author heresy, I know, but whilst it is undeniably well written, I couldn't shake the feeling that whilst we were lingering in the Hayholt, it might as well have been set in our world for all the world building that was going on. In contrast, the first chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea sets up its protagonist's origin story with enough economy and interest to keep me hooked, so sadly old Tad's magnum opus went back to the library...

This is one of those books I read when I was very young that I've always wanted to come back to, but never quite got around to doing. Funnily enough, Red_Puppy did have the collected series out of the library a little while ago, and I read the first chapter to see if it was as good as I remembered it, and I'm happy to say that it was, so I'm looking forward to revisiting this book.

Given the book-related nature of this forum, I initially read #deadtome as dead tome...

Oh, and as for Masquerade, I was hugely fascinated by that when I was a kid, although nowhere near clever enough to even begin to figure it out. I was, however, somewhat freaked out by the fact that Bamber Gasgoine was linked to the project - don't know why, although it might have been something to do with this wild, fantastical, almost mythical book being linked to a bloke off the telly that I could see any week...

Was never actually into CYOA (although I might have read one or two) - all of that kind of action for me in the 80s was handled by Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and Sorcery! books. Of these, the Lone Wolf books by the late Joe Dever were the best, because you could take a consistent character through the series of books, rather each book being a stand-alone deal. Vincent, I think you might be referring to the final book in the Sorcery! series, The Crown of Kings, which I always put down to my own stupidity for not being able to complete, but which it transpires was almost impossible to complete in its original edition because of an error in its writing. Sadly Ez, the Richard Taylor CYOA Logical Fatalism book is yet to written...

Only started reading the book a little while ago, and so am not that far through it. But I will say that whilst I am enjoying the evocation of mid 19th century Boston, I'm yet to feel that either the crime or the people solving it are particularly sympathetic. This isn't one of those "you've got to like the nice people in the books" arguments, more just needing to find someone you'd be interested enough to go on the journey with. As with most things, however, time will tell... 😊

Well in the first instance I'd like to chime somewhat with Jens, in that I've just finished reading The Atrocity Archives and enjoyed it very much (and as such would enjoy reading it again with you guys). But whilst we're still in a "just read" mindset, I'd like to throw in Neuromancer by William Gibson (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...) - a book I first read 20(ish) years ago, that I have just reread on holiday, and in the process of which was pleasantly surprised stood up even in the face of a lot of the technological advancements that have overtaken it.

And now that I've finished, my review can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Got to say, I enjoyed it, so thank you Literally Geeky for bringing me a book I wouldn't otherwise have seen!

Well it looks like I'll be losing my nerd license too, 'cos I've not read it either...

My answer is 'no' and 'no', but I have to say that three chapters in, I'm quite enjoying The Incorruptibles.

All I can say is that this all boils down to story, story, story - if an author is giving us something that is not in service of that, it is nothing more than masturbatory navel gazing.

Other than that, this thread is the best thing I've read on t'internet for ages!

Hey, I got thoughts!

Here's my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

Here's my question: just how well do you think you'd do in the type of apocalypse described in Station Eleven? Looking around my house, and indeed pondering every time I turn on a light or a tap, I think I'd last about a day...

Ok, so here's my somewhat pretentious review:

Like most people, this is the second time I've read this book. And I clearly remember thinking during that first reading that it was somewhat disappointing that the scope of this book was so small, in that despite the journey Christopher going on seeming so large from his point of view, he was still living a fairly shitty life in Swindon by the end, his parent's relationship was depressingly over, and nothing much was ever really going to change for him. But in reading it again, I was struck by how this "smallness" really did underline the powerful truth revealed by Christopher's Asperger Syndrome influenced narrative voice - it is in the boring and mundane details of everyday life that we can see the incredible power of what Harvey Sacks called the "inference making machine". Rather than describing a mechanistic linguistic process, Sacks was talking about how it is that a human gets built who will produce their activities such that they're graspable by other people, something that each and every one of us has to do all the time in order to create the reality around us. Yes, for Christopher this ability is "broken", but really we could all do with breaking the chains of inferences that describe and, to a very large extent control, our everyday lives once in a while, and ask questions of what our world actually means. Re-reading this book threw this fact into sharp relief for me (although I, like you, have secretly known it all our lives), and I'm glad I got the opportunity to do so.

And here are two Literally Geeky focused observations/questions:
1. The book provides a pretty accurate description of ordinary life for a lot of people somewhere towards the middle/lower spectrum of British society, which as I say in my review was a bit of a problem for me in my first reading (eliciting a low-level "meh" in me due to its reflection of my own life experience), but for non-Brits, does it read as something more exotic and interesting?
2. Whilst the fact that Christopher is 15 years old could make this seem a good candidate for being a YA novel (ghastly term), the fact that the people in it are realistically sweary seems to mitigate against it as being something aimed at children. That being the case, the only reason for the book being banned that I can see is the swearing, which in turn raises two subsidiary points for me:
a) at what point was it agreed that the age of a book's protagonist automatically indicated the audience it was aimed at, and b) do people really get so offended by "bad words"? If you remove the logical fallacy of point a), then all that is left to say is Jesus Fucking Christ, get a bloody life and try and find something properly terrible to get upset by...

So, when Mrs Alexander offers Christopher some Battenburg in The Curious Incident... I nearly shouted "Battenburg!" out loud...

Alternative colours for Battenburg?! What crazy talk is this?