Cantr II Discussion Forum

Since we have a "what are you listening to" thread, I think we need a "what are you reading" topic.

I'm halfway through reading Jane Austen's <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>. It is highly recommended. If you're (gasp) <i>not</i> reading something presently, you ought to find <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> at the library. Jane Austen uses words and language perfectly: every word is exactly fitting and descriptive. I am envious.

I also recently read Ernest Hemingway's <i>A Farewell to Arms</i>, but did not enjoy it . . . honestly, I just wanted the book to end. I just generally didn't like it (and I've concluded that I don't care for the whole war-type genre--<i>Cold Mountain</i> was not enjoyable to me either). Part of the reason I didn't like it, is that he failed to make me <i>care</i> about the main characters, so when a main character died, I really didn't feel anything . . .

Orwell's <i>1984</i> and <i>Animal Farm</i> were also great. <i>1984</i> more so than the other . . . I was forced to reread <i>Animal Farm</i> and write an essay about it . . .

King Arthur and His Knights, by Sir James Knowles.

Wasn't there a topic like this before?

Anyway at the moment I am, or should be reading for an exam, the title poorly translates into Laboratory services as support for medical care.

The last fictional book I read was Patricia Cornwell's Omnibus, which is in fact two books in one. Postmortem and All That Remains. The first one I read last year but then I had a looong break in reading.

Practical Skills in Biochemistry at this very instant.
But I'm reading the encyclopedia of weaponry(Various), Small arms (Chris Chant), several horrible history books (Terry Derry) and book on the rennaissance (can't remember) to improve my cantr gaming and suggestiongs.
I'm reading the world according to Clarkson (Jeremy Clarkson), the annotated Flatland (Edwin A. Abbott, annotated by Ian Stewart) and the Science of Discworld 3 (Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen) for fun.

Miltons "Paradise Lost" 'cos i'm 'ard...

Also "Seventy Two Virgins" by Boris Johnson which is hilarious and cheers me up after reading to much depressing poetry... *sighs*

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is my bedside-table book right now.

My commute reading (audiobooks are my friends) is Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King. Yesterday I finished Susanna Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell which was really enjoyable-- I recommend it to anyone who likes fantasy and eighteenth century England.

What? Milton? I wrote that book!

Son of a......

Endurance (FA Worsley). Awesome story that I'm sure many of you have heard about. It's the account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Polar Expedition gone way wrong and how he brought all the men under is command out alive. Truly amazing story.

Niel Gaiman's Sandman series.

Neuromancer - William Gibson

*has only just stumbled across cyberpunk...

schme wrote:What? Milton? I wrote that book!

Son of a......

For Milton to have ripped you off you would have to be at least (lord i hate math) well over 450 years old anyways... you'll have a hell of a time proving that to a patent office...

Edit: and i've never been sure exactly what cyber punk is as a Genre... Enlighten me Farmer?

Edit: (i know the edits are annoying, but not as annoying as triple posting ) Who was it who named one of thier Charries Thomas Covenant? i just started reading that series, good so far!

hallucinatingfarmer wrote:Neuromancer - William Gibson

What's it like? I have it on my bookshelves, but never got to read it ...

I'm always reading too much at once. Currently:

Dostoyevsky, "Crime and Punishment" (I need more time - not suitable for 'ten-minutes-before-sleeping' read)
James Gleick, "Faster" (boring; might never finish)
Judith Barad, "The Ethics of Star Trek"
Peter Hamilton, "The Neutronium Alchemist" (already reading this one for over a year, I think ...)
Patrick Sueskind, "Das Parfum" (thanks to it being in German I haven't gotten much further than page 2 yet ...)
Everett Rogers, "Diffusion of Innovation" (study related)

Well, most of them are at a kind of standstill, me just watching startrek episodes ...

Milton sux0rz - real hard...
He's a bit like Joyce in that respects - so far up his own bum he can see what he had for breakfast...

I've been enjoying neuromancer - nearly finished it - I would say it's worth a read (though I prefer the more disjointed feel of the other books in that trilogy) - it's well written and good sci-fi, and worth it just on those merits I think

[nerd alert]Cyberpunk is less of a genre and more of a (sub)culture, or style. I'm not sure how to describe it exactly - it's usually based in the near future, usually far from utopian, often describing the widening rich/poor gap of the world. It's also a world where the 'cyber' (cyberspace/technology) is the most prominent from of expression/communication etc. Often quite a violent and bleak future.

I actually read the other two books in Gibson's trilogy first before I got round to finiding a copy of his more famous neuromancer... Bruce Sterling and John Shirley are other cyberpunk authors I've read. I also recomend the Sytem Shock (1 and 2) games - very good - the original has a nice relisation of 'cyberspace'. Also check out a game 'uplink' (on a similar note - the PC game version of 'Blade Runner' is actually VERY good)

Gibson also wrote episodes of the X-Files (can't remember their names - but they were good...)

Blade runner, The Matrix, Total Recall, a clockwork orange, the landmower man, Mad Max, the terminator, alien etc. could all be said to come under Cyberpunk...

Ok, so make it less *just discovered* and more *has been really getting into it since about christmas when he started to play Uplink and System Shock*[/nerd alert]

I have to say crime and punishement is definatly the most challenging book i've ever read, i think Theodor (yes i know him personally...) was just trying to show off a little when he wrote that book... or maybe it was the translation from cyrillic, who knows?!

And as for you Farmer the cyber punk, i have to say that Milton wrote the most beautifull poetry of his time, and Joyce wern't to bad niether, so nuts to you!

And it's a well known fact Milton didnt eat breakfast, so Paaaaaaarp!

I'm not much of a fan of Joyce, and I have to admit, Milton gave me a lot of trouble when I read him as an undergrad. I just didn't "get it." For grad school, though, I had to read him-- and Joyce-- because you just don't get out of an MA program without the two of them.

When I gave Milton an honest chance, I found him to be wonderful-- after the first ten pages. It took that long for me to pick up the "ear" for his cadence. Until then, I was really floundering and felt, really, the pretension that you complain about (and which I had complained about as well). If you never pick up the cadence, then it'll be like listening to opera when you hate all classical music-- boring and trite and altogether a frustrating experience.

When I gave Joyce an honest chance, however (in the form of <i>Ulysses</i>).... I quit in the seventh chapter, I think. I never "got it" the way I got it with Milton, though I'm hopeful for the future. I think, though, that it bothers me to need three or four additional books just to read one (the Bloomsday Book, a notebook for taking notes, <i>Ulysses</i>, a copy of Homer's Odyssey, and <i>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</i>).

Incidentally, if you want to talk about pretension-- cyberpunk? Holy cow, that stuff is full of itself!