This thread started out as a video posted in the Cool Videos thread, with the video and comment below. It struck a resonant note with so many that tdtz started a new thread, with this post
Originally Posted By: tdtz
A thread to talk about books. All books are game. Fiction, non-fiction, SciFi, literature, etc....
(Since posts show up in chronological order, this video post is first.)
. . . or Asimov, Clarke, Smith, Niven, Williamson, and any number of other greats who are sadly no longer with us. At least Pohl is still around to see it - I think.
And Frederik, along with Cyril Judd, Edson McCann, Jordan Park, Elton V. Andrews, Paul Fleur, Lee Gregor, Warren F. Howard, Scott Mariner, Ernst Mason, James McCreigh, Dirk Wilson, Donald Stacy is still with us.
I am still in occasional email contact with Jerry at Chaos Manor.
I've enjoyed the Niven-Pournelle collaborations since the early-mid 70s. The Mote and Lucifer's Hammer especially have withstood the test of time.
Geek admission, back in the late 80s, I was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFYS). Both Niven and Pournelle were also members at that time. They were both crusty pompous farts holding court at the clubhouse (yes, we had a clubhouse and yes there were a few girls who were members).
I actually hung out with Pournelle's son for a couple of years. He too was a SciFi geek.
Guilty as well, Tom. Read a ton of SF in my time. Even had a regular correspondence going for a couple of years with Asimov back in the mid-seventies (he always responded to fan mail, replying with typed postcards - still have about a dozen of those) .
I still read SF regularly, but I've branched out quite a bit in the past 15 years. So far in 2013 I've jumped around among Faulkner, Kafka, and Hemingway, while squeezing in some Connie Willis and Tim Powers. My bucket list includes someday being able to finish Finnegan's Wake without being completely lost. My other literary weakness is crime noir - Hammett, Mcdonald, and Chandler.
My 13 YO daughter asked me a couple of weeks ago to recommend "some of that old SF you've got" that she might like. This from a kid who blew through all the Harry Potter books by the time she was 10, and was invited to take the SAT earlier this year as part of Duke U's TIP program for gifted seventh-graders (she scored higher on reading and writing than 50-plus percent of college-bound high school seniors - at barely 13. My wife and I in for a wild ride the next few years). I pointed her towards Flowers for Algernon, which she loved, and graduated her to Ender's Game this week.
I have every Heinlein book ever published (even some rare gems). Arthur C. Clarke, all of the main Asimov books,,,Dune...L Ron Hubbard (before he went wacko, and on and on.
I have every Heinlein book ever published (even some rare gems). Arthur C. Clarke, all of the main Asimov books,,,Dune...L Ron Hubbard (before he went wacko, and on and on.
Ha! Bee's a geek too! Who would'a thunk it?
Coincidentally, I recently ran across a poll done by Modern Library back in 1998 that ranked the top 100 novels of all time by their board members. They also ran a populist poll among readers and published those results:
Many of the usual suspects appear on both lists, but there was clearly some ballot-box-stuffing going on with devotees of both Hubbard's Scientology and Rand's Objectivism. Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead commonly appear on "Best Novels" lists, but not the top two spots. But Battlefield Earth and Mission Earth on any best list, let alone 3rd and 9th best novels of all time? Puh-leeeze!
You'll notice a lot of Heinlein on the populist rankings as well, even some of his juvies. Charles de Lint fans clearly had a vote program in place too.
I've got a a ton of Heinlein too, but not all of it. I don't have many of his juvies, but most everything else I do have in hardback (I try to buy only hardbacks, or quality trade softcovers if no HB available - I hate cheap standard paperbacks). The oldest book I own, that I bought new off of the rack, is a paperback Signet copy of Double Star from around 1969. Fifty cents retail cover price. My, how times have changed . . .
FWIW: Stephen King, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, 1982 LE hardback by Donald Grant, Pub. First Ed, First Printing, signed, and in strict NM condition. I believe there were only 500 or 1000 of these issued. Bought it directly from Donald Grant when it was published in 1982 for $20-something. I've listed it 3 times on E-bay, but have always pulled the plug before completing a deal (pissing off quite a few folks, incidently). I've had offers of as much as $2.5K, but I just can't part with it.
I generally am not a rare or signed edition book collector, just a collector of books in good quality formats. Me and Amazon are on really good terms - and have been since they opened their e-doors. I bet I've spent more on books and bookcases over the years than many folks spend on their vehicles. When I'm gone, my daughter is going to inherit one hell of a library. Good thing she loves to read.
The Dosadi Experiment is your favorite of all time? I've gotta go back and re-read it - it's been 30 years. I have a hard time naming favorites - it often depends on what I've read recently. I read McMurtry's Lonesome Dove the year it was published in '85, before it won the Pulitzer and was made into the big-deal mini-series (and eventually a virtual franchise), and I've generally stuck with that when I'm asked about my favorite book.
Bee, my SF library has most of the catalogs for: King, Asimov, Heinelin, Powers, Le Guin, Willis (my favorite SF author, actually), Wolfe, McDevitt, Niven, Gaiman, Bujold, Ellison, Bradbury, Cherryh, Martin, Pratchett, Stross, Reynolds, Stephenson, and probably a dozen others. In recent years I've been building a collection of the classics, old and new. Lotta Hemingway, Dickens, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Lawrence, Forster, and Dostoyevsky along with new classic authors like McCarthy and Doctorow. And of course, for the crime/noir buff in me, Chandler, Hammett, Mcdonald, and the mandatory Complete Sherlock Holmes.
Steve, this topic might deserve it's own thread if more literary types pop up!
Me, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. About halfway though it - typical Faulkner, with intermittent streamofconsciousness, shifting POVs, and the occassional section exhibiting complete disregard for punctuation, capitalization, and other traditional grammatical niceties. So far, so good.
Prior to this, I finished Hemigway's The Sun Also Rises. Nice book, but literally half of it takes place at dozens of bars and restaurants throughout France and Spain.
I'm also working my way through Herzog's Annapurna (I generally have one fiction and one non-fiction book going concurrently, and sometimes a third of short stories - drives my wife crazy). The first-hand account of the semi-successful first ascent of the highest mountain yet climbed by man in 1950.
On deck, only slightly lighter fare: Tim Powers' new novel, Hide Me Among the Graves, the sequel to The Stress of Her Regard. The next-up non-fiction, a biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton.
I've been doing a little volunteer work at a local thrift shop which has quite a large inventory of books. I can buy books for 15 cents ea.
If we should happen to meet in meatspace sometime, perhaps you might like to list some titles/authors for yourself & Bri.
Appreciate the offer, Dave. I'll give that some thought before the next Sierra trip this summer. Presumably you won't be in the vicinity of Death Valley next Week? I could put you to work . . . ;-)
I love Faulkner. He knows how to use symbolism better than any writer I can think of. So many characters, names, objects and settings will evoke a subconscious image of something of importance to the story. I remember "Light in August" vividly to this day and I read it 30 years ago.
My son just finished "To Kill a Mockingbird". It was great re-reading that and then going over the meaning of the symbols and the significance of the book.
Tom, that's just nuts - Bri asked me last week if we had a copy of Mockingbird! I ordered it from Amazon for her, and gave her the DVD to tide her over. Of course, I always have to order at least $25 to get free shipping at Amazon, so I threw in Kafka's The Castle and a hardback edition of The Great Gatsby.
Are you familiar with the Library of America? They have a huge classic collection of American authors published in extremely high quality hardback - cloth cover, sewn binding, acid-free paper that will never yellow, and attached silk ribbon bookmark. Each volume contains about 4 novels. They have a complete cataglog for Faulkner and a ton of other American writers. Each volume lists for $35-$50, but they're typically $22 on Amazon. Excellent way to build a lasting, quality collection of American classics. They're sharply designed to look really good on a bookcase, and the cost per novel is about $5.50 for incredible lasting quality.
nope, never heard of the Library of America. Probably not a bad idea to look into it. The world is obviously going electronic for books. But I doubt that I will ever read a book in electronic format. I get lost in books and part of it is the physical/tangible turning of pages. Even the smell of a book plays into the experience.
someday it may be difficult to get books printed on paper.
Definitely with you there Tom. I've got both Kindle and Nook apps on my iPad, and about 100 books loaded (including, yes wagga, several free Project Gutenberg classics!), but I have a hard time enjoying the reading experience. It'll do in a pinch, and it's definitely easier on planes and other public places, but it's just not satisfying. I definitely love the touch-dictionary feature (really handy for Faulkner or Dickens, for instance) and the search/look-up functions, but I swear to God reading any author for any length of time on a screen puts me to sleep.
For me it's not only the feel and smell of handling a book, it's the visual effect of books on a bookshelf. Between my home office and our family room, we've got about 1500 books displayed. Nothing is more warm and inviting to me than a room filled with books. Just seeing those spines, titles, authors dozens of times per day puts a little pep in my step for a moment. There's a subtle, comforting aesthetic to books on a shelf. For me e-books will never replace that.
Even Bri, at 13 and possessing and living though every electronic device you can name, still prefers a physical book. She can spend hours with me at B&N, drinking her Starbucks lattes and browsing the aisles (and coming up to me every five minutes to ask if a title is age-appropriate!). I hope that's a lifelong habit.
When I was around Bri's age, I would ride the bike home from school, pick up yesterday's books, ride down to the library & get 2 more (the limit). Mostly exploration & stuff, but I did love Biggles. I think I read Kon Tiki 7-8 times.
Must have been fairly young, though, as I distinctly remember asking for Masters & Johnson & was refused...
Then there was the day when the library moved to the new building - you could take out 20-something books! Nirvana!
Yup: Bee is a Geek. Last summer, I went on a classic Steinbeck bend, but I became distracted by....To Kill a Mockingbird! That book (TKAM) absolutely moves me every time I read it (even went out and rented the movie, again) I have a particular fondness for Arthur C. Clarke's The Deep RangeAND another obsession was/is Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time(and all of volumes that followed) Of course, I read Lion, Witch & Wardrobe (and all the following volumes)HA! I also read Battlefield Earth -- brain candy; it lacked the moral/ethical undertones that Asimov/Heinlein are known for.
BTW, most of the copies of these books are first edition, because the collection that I pull from was purchased as the books came out (Rich is TRULY the Geek that we all think we are; he has read EVERYthing mentioned here and probably thousands of other books. He has Kindle, IPad, and downloads many of the G-project books someone already mentioned. Rich is also known for reading as many as 5 books at a time!)
For me it started with the Hardy Boys series. By the time I had outgrown them I owned the first 40 or so, and had read each one at least twice. Of course, they've long since passed out of my possession. I remember stepping into the kids section at B&N years back (when that was Brianne's only option) and seeing all those blue, uniform, numbered volumes lined up. What a nostalgia rush! I had to exercise immense self-control to avoid scooping up every last one.
Then at about 12 I read Verne's Mysterious Island, and it was off to the races. The Lord of the Rings followed not long after, then I discovered Asimov and went into overdrive. Heinlein and Clarke became icons for me too. Somehow during a move many years ago I lost an entire book box full of vintage Clarke and Asimov. I was so pissed at the movers, but you better believe I replaced them PDQ.
No matter how hard or busy a day I may have, it never ends without me cracking a book to at least fall asleep. I've gone to bed many times planning to read a page or two and looked at the clock a few minutes later and 4 hours have gone by. I stayed up all night reading Stephen King's It. Even on an overnight BP there are always extra headlamp batteries for the express purpose of reading in the tent. I'll spend as much time deciding on which book to take on a trip as I will on some of the gear choices (for DV next week it's a toss-up between Philip Dick and Kurt Vonnegut - something disjointed and eerie to go with the DV landscape. I chose the tent, pad and bag in much less time).
I've found, though, that the mountaineering community is significantly more literate than the population at large. I don't think that's a statistical hiccup.
And wagga, Kon-Tiki was a favorite of mine when I was young as well!
So . . . ? What did you think? It's often ranked in the top 5 on those "best novel" lists. Is it?
I've read some Joyce - Dubliners and Portrait - but not Ulysses or Wake. I want to re-read The Odyssey before I tackle Ulysses. Like I mentioned, I've dabbled with Wake, and even with the modern day version of Cliff Notes to assist it's a morass of incomprehensibility to me. Might as well be in Sanskrit. Hard to believe he worked on that solely for 16 years! It's often called the most difficult read in the English language, but I don't think it qualifies as English . . .
What a terrific collection. I, too, was a Hardy Boys fan. Read all 40 (?? That many!?!?). Could not get through Ulysses, however hard I tried. Moby Dick and all of Conrad ("the horror, the horror!"). Dumas Malone's Jefferson (no, really!).
Endurance. The Last Place on Earth.
SF: Ender's Game and the next two, but couldn't go beyond that. Snow Crash. All of LeGuin, especially Wizard of Earth Sea. McKillip: Harpist in the Wind series; Forgotten Beasts of Eld. And should we have a contest on who's read Lord of the Rings more?? (hint: > 30 -- it's lonely on the frontier...).
Oh. Iliad and Odyssey a couple of times each. And, of course, Huck Fin X 4 or 5. Truly the Great American Novel.
g.
PS: and the Aubrey/Maturin series by O'Brian (Master and Commander etc.) -- truly great.
George, you've got me on LOTR. I read it every year (usually in spring) between the ages of 15 and 35 - it was a seasonal ritual. I've only read it once in the past 20 years, and that was prompted by the first movie. Call it 25 total.
I love Stephenson as well. Hiro Protagonist had to be the best character name ever penned. I've consumed Diamond Age, Anathem (tough read, but I finished it) and Cryptonomicon too. I've had these huge, daunting hardback editions of Confusion/Quicksilver/System on my shelf for years, and tackled the first one not that long ago. After a week I was only through about 250 pages (each is 800-1000), and decided discretion was the better part of valor.
Shackleton - the greatest story ever IMHO, fiction included. Un-freaking-believable. I've bought every book I know of on the subject and have watched the A&E DVD maybe a dozen times. The determination, courage, honor and endurance of those men - especially Shackleton - is breathtaking. You can't make this stuff up.
Love Twain too. The Library of America catalog I mentioned earlier has all of his writings collected in several super high-quality volumes. Slowly but surely through Amazon at $22 a pop . . .
The Hardy Boys: we thought 40 was a lot. Check this out. Frank and Joe have not let any grass grow under their feet all these years.
Ender's Game + one or two that followed -- Yup! (Drones, anyone??)
I read (and re-read) all of the Hardy Boys AND Nancy Drew. (is it true that they were written by the same author using a pen name??)
I am looking at the leather bound collection of Jack London (which I re-read regularly)(totally unrelated, but the movie that I have watched-watched & re-watched is Jeremiah Johnson...first DVD I ever bought)
I love to bring 'themed' books when I travel, so I read the collection of the Tony Hillerman: Leaphorn & Chee mysteries when I was on the Navajo Reservation. (One of the best nights in my life was spent in the middle of the desert with all of those crazy desert critter sounds -- owls that trill -- and reading about characters who were in the same setting.)
I read (and re-read) all of the Hardy Boys AND Nancy Drew. (is it true that they were written by the same author using a pen name??)
Sort of. Edward Stratemeyer wrote a lot himself, but mostly hired and guided other authors under a whole bunch of names.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate was the producer of a number of mystery series for children, including Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the various Tom Swift series, the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, and others.
During the past week's trip to Death Valley I read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud. OK, but not sure why it won the Pulitzer. At the airport and on the flight back I re-read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Still very, very scary. Just cracked E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, and looking forward to it.
During the past week's trip to Death Valley I read The Fixer by Bernard Malamud. OK, but not sure why it won the Pulitzer. At the airport and on the flight back I re-read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Still very, very scary. Just cracked E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, and looking forward to it.
In some ways, it pleases me that you were left to wonder about The Fixer, as it indicates that you are far enough away -- generations -- from the topic of the book as it relates. Remember in 1966, there were huge HUGE numbers of WWII survivors, immigrants, and largely, a varied group of ethnic Jews with scarred memories of their own and their parents harrowing escapes/tortures/miseries (the Dryfuss Affair has the same affect on the this group of people). This novel spoke to them all. Many of the aforementioned group were in the voting circles that bestowed those awards for The Fixer.
I suppose that makes sense, Bee. It was a worthwhile book, though dark and depressing. Made me damn angry, but it just didn't seem to have that pop you normally expect from a Pulitzer winner. Schindler's Ark left me much more impressed, probably due to the scope of the story versus poor Yakov's plight and circumstances. It was tough sledding reading about his seemingly endless days in solitary for most of the book. But then again, that has a lot to do with me and how I respond to cerebral tales.
The book has a lot of Yiddish tones to it, so I am not surprised that it would leave a reader without that 'proper' (DARK) background to bond with it. It's amusing to read the reviews of the time (and present) beecause you can tell who is Jewish, and who is not. (those who are pre-infused with a certain pessimism embrace the ill-fated character and feel a bizarre sort of kinship.)Hard to explain.
He was sort of required reading in our house. Beecause he just celebrated his 80th birthday, there have been a lot of excellent interviews with him, lately. He is not nearly as cynical in real life as he comes across in his books (remembering that he comes from that same generation infused with pessimism that I spoke of above)
Lots if opposite conclusions from what you might expect : foresting, deforestation, deer, turkeys, bear, roadkill, suburbs, bambi syndrome , NDD- nature deprivation disorder, (humans), hunting and culling, etc.
Thanks wagga - I'll check these out for her. Since I got back from DV I've read Doctorow's Ragtime and am just finishing up Bellow's Henderson the Rain King. Both were enjoyable. I think I'll go the fun route next with Chabon's Kavalier & Clay - I read The Yiddish Policeman's Union a couple of years back and liked it.
Still waiting on the next volume of Martin's Ice and Fire saga to be published. May be a(nother) long wait.