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I continue to amuse myself with Good Reads book reviews and discussion threads at lunch time.
1) I inadvertently managed to turn a 50 Shades discussion thread into a discussion about politics. (I made an off-the-cuff comment about how its popularity could potentially be a reaction to current events...such as men telling women they are sluts for using birth control. Wherein one poster, C, stated never in her life had she ever heard that. So I told her about Rush Limbaugh. And several ladies joined in and defended me. This resulted in a rather amusing debate. Ending with:
( Read more... )
2. The Most Disturbing Book You EVER Read Thread" or basically the list of books that made people go..ack or ew or yippee...depending on the individual.
Some of the choices on this list bewildered me. While American Pyscho makes complete sense, seriously...Catcher in the Rye? Or A Hundred Years of Solitude? Or The Color Purple?
Wuthering Heights? Unbearable Lightness of Being??
What are people reading??? Probably nothing but Georgette Heyer and trashy best-selling Regency romance novels.
Although it was reassuring to see the Holy Bible on the list.
There are a few books on this list...that I'm not sure I want to read and would have been happier not knowing about, the spoilery reviews are bad enough. But if you want to share my pain...they are listed below the cut:
( morally depraved and sadistic novels that you wish you didn't know existed and make everything in George RR Martin's series seem relatively tame by comparison. )
3. Under the Skin by Michael Faber is basically what I thought it was about. I figured out the Reveal long before it was revealed, mainly because I've read and/or seen a lot of sci-fi/horror in this vein. ( there lie big spoilers behind the cut )
I know this review most likely makes no sense to anyone who hasn't read the book, because I'm being slightly vague on a few things. It's a hard book to discuss with people who haven't read it. You can't without spoilers. So I'm spoiling and not spoiling at the same time. I did spoil on the reveal...so if you want to read the book, you might want to skip the above.
Haven't really finished it yet, so this is not really a full review. It's more a musing than anything else.
Will state that this is sort of the antithesis of a romance novel or the anti-romance novel. I've managed to go in the opposite direction. It's also violent, graphically so.
And incredibly disturbing.
I may finish reading Feast of Crows by George RR Martin as an anti-dote. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be reading Far from the Maddening Crowd by Hardy...but Hardy writes in that annoyingly formal style that makes you feel like you are sitting at a hard desk in a school room, the stink of chalk dust in the air, while some old guy mutters at the podium about his youth. The formal style is draining for me to read in part because I read and write financial, legal and technical reports for a living. Third person distant gets tiring after a bit.
1) I inadvertently managed to turn a 50 Shades discussion thread into a discussion about politics. (I made an off-the-cuff comment about how its popularity could potentially be a reaction to current events...such as men telling women they are sluts for using birth control. Wherein one poster, C, stated never in her life had she ever heard that. So I told her about Rush Limbaugh. And several ladies joined in and defended me. This resulted in a rather amusing debate. Ending with:
( Read more... )
2. The Most Disturbing Book You EVER Read Thread" or basically the list of books that made people go..ack or ew or yippee...depending on the individual.
Some of the choices on this list bewildered me. While American Pyscho makes complete sense, seriously...Catcher in the Rye? Or A Hundred Years of Solitude? Or The Color Purple?
Wuthering Heights? Unbearable Lightness of Being??
What are people reading??? Probably nothing but Georgette Heyer and trashy best-selling Regency romance novels.
Although it was reassuring to see the Holy Bible on the list.
There are a few books on this list...that I'm not sure I want to read and would have been happier not knowing about, the spoilery reviews are bad enough. But if you want to share my pain...they are listed below the cut:
( morally depraved and sadistic novels that you wish you didn't know existed and make everything in George RR Martin's series seem relatively tame by comparison. )
3. Under the Skin by Michael Faber is basically what I thought it was about. I figured out the Reveal long before it was revealed, mainly because I've read and/or seen a lot of sci-fi/horror in this vein. ( there lie big spoilers behind the cut )
I know this review most likely makes no sense to anyone who hasn't read the book, because I'm being slightly vague on a few things. It's a hard book to discuss with people who haven't read it. You can't without spoilers. So I'm spoiling and not spoiling at the same time. I did spoil on the reveal...so if you want to read the book, you might want to skip the above.
Haven't really finished it yet, so this is not really a full review. It's more a musing than anything else.
Will state that this is sort of the antithesis of a romance novel or the anti-romance novel. I've managed to go in the opposite direction. It's also violent, graphically so.
And incredibly disturbing.
I may finish reading Feast of Crows by George RR Martin as an anti-dote. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be reading Far from the Maddening Crowd by Hardy...but Hardy writes in that annoyingly formal style that makes you feel like you are sitting at a hard desk in a school room, the stink of chalk dust in the air, while some old guy mutters at the podium about his youth. The formal style is draining for me to read in part because I read and write financial, legal and technical reports for a living. Third person distant gets tiring after a bit.