Book Barn Goons discussion
Goon Book Challenge 2017 - Can we keep talking for more than a week?
I've got a few nitpicks with All the Birds, but on the whole I found it to be a surprisingly nice little book.
Any non-fiction recommendations out there, ideally for music, theory, practice, what have ya? Not reading too much nowadays, but that's something taking up a fair bit of my time that I'm interested in.
William wrote: "Any non-fiction recommendations out there, ideally for music, theory, practice, what have ya? Not reading too much nowadays, but that's something taking up a fair bit of my time that I'm interested..."Music, The Brain and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
How Music Works by David Byrne
The Art of Practicing by M. Bruser
thanks for those music theory recommendations, couple questions:
Is that Bruser book very guitar applicable?
Does Byrne's book get into much actual music theory or is it more high level?
Is that Bruser book very guitar applicable?
Does Byrne's book get into much actual music theory or is it more high level?
Man, the copy of the BOTM is taking forever to arrive. This is the first time a package from someone on Abe has taken this long.
Battaile wrote: "thanks for those music theory recommendations, couple questions:Is that Bruser book very guitar applicable?
Does Byrne's book get into much actual music theory or is it more high level?"
Yes, I play guitar and not piano. It goes into Practice as it's own practice, and can be applied to any instrument, or even other forms of art/performance.
The David Byrne book is more about music and performance as a whole, probably not a lot of music theory. You can take a look at the table of contents and get an idea of what the chapters are about.
If you want actual music theory for guitar, check out the OP on the SA Guitar thread in NMD. There's a whole section for it, including games and quizzes and tests to learn music theory, which is better than only reading about it.
To learn about music theory specifically on guitar, I'd recommend the books "The Christopher Parkening Guitar Method" and/or "Solo Guitar Playing" by Frederick Noad, which base their foundations on learning guitar music theory.
My copy of "My Life and Hard Times" finally arrived, and it's good that it's short because I only have a couple of days to read it.
I just finished the last Lonesome Dove book and now I wanna read the first one again.
Just read some Rumi, want more. Tried White Flock by Anna Akhmatova, but wasn't what I'm after. Anyone want to recommend me something along those lines?
I haven't personally read Rumi (or much else in that vein) but I know Conference of Birds (a previous BOTM) comes from the same time, area and tradition. The author of that, Attar of Nishapur, has other works as well. Maybe that'd work?
CoB is one that I started, but couldn't get trough for some reason. Rumi writes short and bittersweet poems, some of them almost haiku length
Started "The Art of Practice" and loving it, thanks for the recommendation. I bought it to help me with my lifelong struggle to get past intermediate level guitarist, but I'm seeing tons of applicability in other areas.
Battaile wrote: "Started "The Art of Practice" and loving it, thanks for the recommendation. I bought it to help me with my lifelong struggle to get past intermediate level guitarist, but I'm seeing tons of applica..."Glad to hear you're enjoying it and that it's helping!
After GenCon, I'm kind of getting into reading RPG rulebooks right now. It's weird, I know. But some of the new fresh takes on action abstraction and shared narrative frameworks are pretty fascinating. I'm working my way through City of Mist and Blades in the Dark currently. I also picked up the Starfinder pdf (not for the innovative ruleset, more for the sci-fi flavor).
Damn, a day off a week from the last post.So, I've been challenged to read Ulysses on SA, and read A Portrait again to get ready. BUT, I'm woefully behind in my Book Lord challenge, and a friend has lent me a bunch of horror to introduce me to the genre, so I am somewhat derailed from the SHAME challenge (for now).
On the latter, they read relatively quickly so I can catch up for Book Lord, but they are crafted so interestingly that they capture my imagination, even if they don't necessarily scare me. The only story I recall being scared by, other than parts of the Bible as a kid, was a short story in a Twilight Zone anthology read forever ago.
What horror books were given to you?I thought it was interesting how, when I created the Shameful book thread, the majority chose very long and challenging books for themselves and each other.
I've been reading my challenge book, Aunt Julia & The Scriptwriter, and it's very good.
I've been reading Crime and Punishment and I wish I would have read this book sooner. I'd always heard that Russian Lit was dry and dull but this is so good and darkly funny in places.
Billy wrote: "Damn, a day off a week from the last post....and a friend has lent me a bunch of horror to introduce me to the genre...
"
What were you given? I always like horror books, but finding a good one is hard.
If you want a good "scary" book, not so much boogeyman scary but more of a general feeling of grossness throughout, maybe consider Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort? It's basically about mind vampires that get off on mentally dominating people. I liked Dan Simmons a lot when I was younger, but some of his more recent writing has seemed kind of whacky. I seem to remember reading somewhere that he has become a bit racist.
Anyways, moving on to another topic, Franchescanado recommended this book in the thread in SA, and I have to pop in here and recommend it as well. Kenneth Koch's Making Your Own Days is a great introduction to reading and writing poetry that has gotten me very interested in poetry. That's quite a feat, since I'm generally a fan of totally mindless pulp and usually hate actually having to think about what I read. If you are looking for a book to fill in your book lord challenge, it's perfect! The first half is a primer on what poetry is and how to read and write it, and the second half is just a collection of poems that you can read through. The really interesting part is that every poem has a little analysis by Koch so if, like me, you have a hard time reading between the lines, you can see if you are "doing it right."
Recently finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and feel quite conflicted, there were some things really well done and others that were garbage. On the one hand there was some pretty cool worldbuilding in terms of the state of humanity, and genuinely 'alien'-seeming aliens, but on the other hand my god some of the characters are cloyingly irritating, especially manic pixie dream girl Kizzy. I'd also put money on the author being a big Firefly and Mass Effect fan.
Franchescanado wrote: "What horror books were given to you?I thought it was interesting how, when I created the Shameful book thread, the majority chose very long and challenging books for themselves and each other.
"
Yeah I will read Ulysses, I know I can now, but later. I don't really have the mental energy for it at the moment.
First horror was Twenty Days of Turin, which was more weird that chill inspiring. Am now working through a Gemma Files, and am really enjoying it very much, but it's more of a fantasy read (its a really cool world she is creating) than scary. Perhaps taking animals apart as my day job has innoculated me against shock from gore? Honestly though, it's probably more having given up on supernatural anythings (I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian) that makes the thought of spooks not terribly scary anymore. The third is by John Langan.
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I’ve just finished The Gunslinger , which was really great, but I hear they get very bad at the latter end of the series.
Just started Brian Aldiss Helliconia trilogy,which seems like an intriguing concept, a year last 3,000 of our years which means the season are very long. Not dissimilar to Westeros but No magic!
Also reading various political books. Ken Clake’s My Kind of Blue - a Tory MPs memoirs about his time OJ government. He was very senior cabinet minister during black Wednesday when the UK crashed out of the ERM, and later chancellor of exchequer. He also various roles under Thatcher and still an MP now. Fascinating read so far.
Also picked up Shattered, about Clinton’s campaign last year. Essentially Clinton blames everyone else but herself for things that go wrong, and fails to change tact when things go ok but perfect. That view seems supported by her book due out in the next few days.
Gunslinger series IMO - 1-3 are great, 4 is sort of a giant intermission book, and the rest just get a little weird.
While the end of the Dark Tower series did go a little wonky, the series itself is absolutely fantastic and I would recommend reading all of it. I've read and reread it a couple of times and it is always great.
The end of King books going off the rails is a proud King tradition. He's not known for sticking the landing.
It's funny that King's meta-narrative series perfectly exemplifies how his books read individually as well as his entire career.First few books/chapters: Great
Middle Books (mid-80's to accident)/chapters: I like this? Yes. Yes?
Last few books (accident to now)/chapters: What is this? Why?
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Just read a story in the Gemma Files that had a good creepy feel. Really enjoying this book very much. The way the stories are slowly brining the main plot up to the surface is an interesting approach.
Edward wrote: "I'll bear that in mind. And will definitely be picking up the next books."Don't get too down on it, I loved the Gunslinger from start to finish and don't think it could have ended any other way. Like I said, it gets a little wonky, but the wonkiness is all "in universe," so to speak.
I didn't have the same visceral reaction that a lot of people did to the last couple books, although I will admit to being a little disappointed in the 4th book. Not so much because it is a bad book (it's actually great and one of my favorite parts of the series on reread), but mostly because I waited so damn long for it to be published and find out what happened after book 3. If/when you get to book 4, just imagine that you waited 6 years between books 3 and 4.
Only read the first in the Gunslinger series, and never had the urge to continue with it. Perhaps I should give it another try
The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemison is pretty dang good so far. I didn't care for her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but the first one of this series was really good.
I need a political book! Not exactly sure what I'm looking for, but it should be something interesting but not all nutty. I graduated as a political science major, so I've done more than my fair share of reading books about politics. I just have been (purposely) avoiding politics since I moved out of the US. So, help me book barn goons, give me a recommendation for a recent political book that blew your mind/made you want to take action/etc.
John wrote: "I need a political book! Not exactly sure what I'm looking for, but it should be something interesting but not all nutty. I graduated as a political science major, so I've done more than my fair ..."
The Nurture Effect by Anthony Biglan. Rather than discussing a specific party or specific person, Biglan does a breakdown of various science-based governmental policies for every level of society. Its optimistic, which is a nice change of pace from the news everyday.
I just finished "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch. It was pretty darn entertaining. Essentially a love story featuring quantum mechanics.It did feel astonishingly short though. Maybe I am just used to meatier epics, but after just finishing "Dune" this one felt like an abridged version of a full novel. Not that anything important to the story was lost, but at times I was craving a bit more detail.
A couple of really nice "holy shit!" moments made up for that.
4 out of 5 stars.
Kaitlynn wrote: "The Nurture Effect by Anthony Biglan"
This... actually sounds kind of interesting. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll add it to my to-read list.
Anyone out there feel like giving me a wild card?
Mike wrote: "Anyone out there feel like giving me a wild card?"If you haven't read it, I just read "My Life and Hard Times," which was a BoTM. It's a short, extremely fun collection of short stories that are all about James Thurber (the author's) early life.
I did read that one with the BOTM. And it was fun.
Mike wrote: "I did read that one with the BOTM. And it was fun."Damn, well then how about either Hyperion (https://smile.amazon.com/Hyperion-Can...), which is one of my all time favorite stories, or The Sympathizer (https://smile.amazon.com/Sympathizer-...), which I thought was a pretty damn good book.
I've read Hyperion so The Sympathizer it is! The library has a copy of it, so that's a plus too.
Cool, be sure to let me know what you think about it.
I've got books lined up for my remaining challenge items:wildcard: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
play: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee
WWI: The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
biography: The Autobiography of Mark Twain by some dude
Now, how to fit all those in with the books I already wanted to read...
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf can be read in one sitting, though, so that one's easy
I'm a terrible person and finished Novermber's BoTM already. David Vann's Aquarium was a really, really good book. To anyone here that had read Vann before, are his other books of similar quality? I may have to get into this guy.
Yes. I've only finished Aquarium and his short fiction, and everything else is as good or better than Aquarium.
Started reading The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, which is a look at how the criminal justice system (namely the war on drugs) has instituted a, well, a new set of Jim Crow laws. It was one of those books that I had on my to-read list for a long, long time, but since I'm such a turd and hate reading anything that makes me think I never got around to it. Anyway, I picked it up cause of this years Book Lord Challenge and... it's really depressing. I know we are almost rounding out the year, but if you need a political book, maybe look into it.
*edit* I guess I should say it's really depressing in a good way. The data seems pretty good, the argument makes a lot of sense, and a lot of the example situations that are taken from actual cases are really horrific.
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Just started All the Birds in the Sky, which Amazon wouldn't stop recommending to me, and so far, it seems like they got it right.