Book Recommendations?

So is the entire trip to Mordor in tTT, but that’s part of the Stockholm Syndrome-engendered charm isn’t it?

All I can say is good on y’all for being able to slog back through LOTR multiple times. While I watch the movies again every year, I couldn’t get through the books more than once.

jdzappa wrote:

All I can say is good on y’all for being able to slog back through LOTR multiple times. While I watch the movies again every year, I couldn’t get through the books more than once.

Ooof. The books get better as the conflict expands. The movies get much, much worse.

Natus wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

All I can say is good on y’all for being able to slog back through LOTR multiple times. While I watch the movies again every year, I couldn’t get through the books more than once.

Ooof. The books get better as the conflict expands. The movies get much, much worse.

Not if you’ve never read the books

I have only ever seen the movies once and that's enough for me as the characters just dont seem right compared to the images carved in my brain from my teenage years, ill probably re read the books again many times in the future though.

I will also say though that as much as I like the LOTR I prefer Gormenghast in my personal pantheon of fantasy literature, that particular view produced some interesting reactions in the University book club I was a member off.

MathGoddess wrote:
Natus wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

All I can say is good on y’all for being able to slog back through LOTR multiple times. While I watch the movies again every year, I couldn’t get through the books more than once.

Ooof. The books get better as the conflict expands. The movies get much, much worse.

Not if you’ve never read the books ;)

I can't believe you're comparing Jackson's increasingly puerile and unimaginative directing with the trilogy as written (not my favorite Tolkien experience, I admit, but the movie of RotK was a desecration.)

That’s my point....I can’t make a comparison, having never finished reading LoTR.
I loved the movies.

My son read the book when he was young, then we got him to watch Fellowship, and he was absolutely horrified at the changes that were made.

MathGoddess wrote:

That’s my point....I can’t make a comparison, having never finished reading LoTR.
I loved the movies.

My son read the book when he was young, then we got him to watch Fellowship, and he was absolutely horrified at the changes that were made.

I actually appreciated many of the changes Jackson made, but as the trilogy went on, more of them seemed driven by lack of time and by the need to cut corners. He couldn't give us The Scouring, but he could give us endless screens of CGI and loving looks between Sam and Frodo. Zzzzzzzz

I love both for what they are. I read the books once a year. and I have about a million problems with the LOTR films, but the soul of the thing is intact in them for me, so I can look past the many details to that.

MathGoddess wrote:
Natus wrote:
jdzappa wrote:

All I can say is good on y’all for being able to slog back through LOTR multiple times. While I watch the movies again every year, I couldn’t get through the books more than once.

Ooof. The books get better as the conflict expands. The movies get much, much worse.

Not if you’ve never read the books ;)

You could just skip The Two Towers and jump straight into Return of the King. That's probably the best of the three books. You won't be lost, because you know the basic story.

FWIW, I always found TTT to be a bit of a slog, myself. I always finished, but it's the low point of the series for me.

Tolkein's vision for Eowyn was much better than Jackson's. God, he messed that character up. The one actual heroic female in the whole series, and Jackson completely whiffed it.

I just listened to the audiobook of Star Wars: From a Certain Point of view. I'm not normally a short story fan, but this was surprisingly fun. The book takes events that happened in Episode IV and looks at them from different characters' perspective. Did you know that the trash compactor monster was force sensitive? There's even a McElroy story in there. There are a few of the stories that I just didn't like, but enough good ones that made it worth it. There's an Empire Strikes back version of this as well that I haven't read yet.

On May 25, 1977, the world was introduced to Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and a galaxy full of possibilities. In honor of the fortieth anniversary, more than forty contributors lend their vision to this retelling of Star Wars. Each of the forty short stories reimagines a moment from the original film, but through the eyes of a supporting character. From a Certain Point of View features contributions by bestselling authors, trendsetting artists, and treasured voices from the literary history of Star Wars:

Gary Whitta bridges the gap from Rogue One to A New Hope through the eyes of Captain Antilles.
Aunt Beru finds her voice in an intimate character study by Meg Cabot.
Nnedi Okorofor brings dignity and depth to a most unlikely character: the monster in the trash compactor.
Pablo Hidalgo provides a chilling glimpse inside the mind of Grand Moff Tarkin.
Pierce Brown chronicles Biggs Darklighter's final flight during the Rebellion's harrowing attack on the Death Star.
Wil Wheaton spins a poignant tale of the rebels left behind on Yavin.

Plus thirty-four more hilarious, heartbreaking, and astonishing tales from:
Ben Acker
Renée Ahdieh
Tom Angleberger
Ben Blacker
Jeffrey Brown
Rae Carson
Adam Christopher
Zoraida Córdova
Delilah S. Dawson
Kelly Sue DeConnick
Paul Dini
Ian Doescher
Ashley Eckstein
Matt Fraction
Alexander Freed
Jason Fry
Kieron Gillen
Christie Golden
Claudia Gray
E. K. Johnston
Paul S. Kemp
Mur Lafferty
Ken Liu
Griffin McElroy
John Jackson Miller
Daniel José Older
Mallory Ortberg
Beth Revis
Madeleine Roux
Greg Rucka
Gary D. Schmidt
Cavan Scott
Charles Soule
Sabaa Tahir
Elizabeth Wein
Glen Weldon
Chuck Wendig

I am reading the Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith. I’m halfway through Ripley Underground the second book. She is a wonderful writer and Ripley is a fantastic character, if of course entirely sociopathic. I fully recommend anyone at least read the Talented Mr Ripley.

Looks like for 2020 I read 39 books from the library (book or eBook) and 25 of my own copies of books -- one of which was the complete works Poe which I mostly read (I skipped many of the poems).

The Last Human by Zach Jordan is a good scifi read.

What is funny is I learned of the book by reading this short webcomic - The Last Human (In a Crowded Galaxy)

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I'm pretty sure they can't put his name on it if it weren't original, so it's either taken straight from The Silmarillion or The Book of Lost Tales. Maybe both. Either way, I'd just get the original works because you also get more stories.

Vrikk wrote:

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I haven't read that specific book yet, but I did like The Children of Hurin, which was an expansion of the Turin tale from The Silmarillion. Bonus in that it was read by Christopher Lee.

Vrikk wrote:

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I wouldn't have known who Beren and Luthien were if I hadn't come across them in Ready Player Two yesterday, which by the way I finished and thoroughly enjoyed.

Mario_Alba wrote:
Vrikk wrote:

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I wouldn't have known who Beren and Luthien were if I hadn't come across them in Ready Player Two yesterday, which by the way I finished and thoroughly enjoyed.

You are the first person who I have seen respond positively to RP2. Hmmm.

I don't think I liked it as much as the first one, especially the sloooooow beginning, but I ended up really liking the book as a whole.

Also, keep in mind my signature below.

I finally finished The Uncounted by Alex Cobham. Great book, makes some important observations, and has some clear goals to work toward. Not an "enjoyable" read necessarily, but a good one.

On to The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton.

SallyNasty wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:
Vrikk wrote:

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I wouldn't have known who Beren and Luthien were if I hadn't come across them in Ready Player Two yesterday, which by the way I finished and thoroughly enjoyed.

You are the first person who I have seen respond positively to RP2. Hmmm.

I just read it, and was NOT impressed. It's just trivia for 80s popular media, instead of trivia for 80s nerds, and the underlying plot is ... not at all compelling.

Whelp, there it is. Malor is my fiction Ebert.

David Wootton's The Invention of Science makes a clear point to present 'A New History of the Scientific Revolution' as a third path in the Science Wars, and I'm here for it. The explicit thesis is that there was a Scientific Revolution, and in his eyes it mostly occurs between Tycho Brahe spotting a supernova in the 1570's and Newton's Optics around 1700, which, okay, fine. Seems like a tabs vs spaces kinda argument at first.

What's more interesting to me is the manner in which Wootton defends this position: He breaks down science into into its constituent parts like Fact, Evidence, and Hypothesis. Then he shows where these ideas are first conceptualized by tracing the etymology of how the words were originally used for different purposes in the various professions that were getting together to do proper learnin. Assuming he's not cherry picking word usage, I find this a very convincing strategy for pinning down where concepts became what they are now. I think that's really neat.

But what's really getting me is chapter 3, Inventing Discovery. For Wootton this is necessary setup, because you can't understand the birth of science without understanding the Age of Discovery. Anyways he throws this idea out there that I can't really wrap my head around: Vespucci landed in Brazil and realized it didn't look like Asia at all, and then had to somehow convey back to Europe this this was a land no European had seen before. And that this is a difficult thing to convey at the time because Discovery had not been a concept in Western Civ for a millenia. There are no new things. All knowledge was just understood to have been already known by 'the Ancients' (Aristotle). Azores? Aristotle probly already knew about it. Compass? Greeks probly had it. New stuff was just kind of reframed as not new. I want to be able to empathize with this, to understand what that transition from the world as a stage play to understanding the dynamism of the natural world would be like. So far I can't do it.

Two consequences I found really neat and easier to understand were eponymy and European cosmology. Apparently naming stuff after people wasn't really a thing before 1500, but then we started naming stuff after people retroactively. Before the 1500's it wasn't the Pythagorean Theorem, it was called something else. Then that became a whole motivating factor, getting a new place or bit of physiology or even an idea named after you. And you don't even have to be royalty!

Then also the shape of the world had to change because the pre-Colombian European 'globe' was real weird (not flat, but Columbus thought he was sailing 'up' https://mappingignorance.org/2017/01...). That's wild to me because we already have this 'known modern misconception' of the 'Columbus thinking the Earth was flat' that also everyone already knows is bullsh*t, but I'd never actually seen what the actual cosmological reconceptualization was.

Overall I think Wootton does a great job of illustrating how these ideas are really hard to think of in their historical context, because so many of them are too natural to us in hindsight. That wraps back around to the conflict of historians in the relativism vs realism debate, which apparently was a whole thing in the 90's. I get the gist of the sides of that conflict but don't really feel like I have enough time put in to speak on it.

Note Wootton had an ancestor that was a historian of science living during the time discussed. This is clearly cheating. Recommended for Robears? Absolutely. 4 Robears out of 5.

Malor wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:
Mario_Alba wrote:
Vrikk wrote:

Should I pick up Beren and Luthien, or is it too much Christopher Tolkein and not enough of his dad?

(I know it has "J.R.R." on the front, but I'm always cautious of picking up anything that isn't one of the core LotR books.)

I wouldn't have known who Beren and Luthien were if I hadn't come across them in Ready Player Two yesterday, which by the way I finished and thoroughly enjoyed.

You are the first person who I have seen respond positively to RP2. Hmmm.

I just read it, and was NOT impressed. It's just trivia for 80s popular media, instead of trivia for 80s nerds, and the underlying plot is ... not at all compelling.

Sooooo like the original book then?

(I never liked Ready Player One. I get it was fun pulpy escapism for children of the 80s, but my eyes rolled so many times I'm pretty sure they are still bouncing down Route 50 to this day.)

I've not yet brought myself to read Ready Player One. I've just never been one to like a lot of pop references in fiction in general, even if nerdy, and to try to get through a whole book chock full of them would likely put me over the edge. I'd rather just move on to the 2080's.

Maybe one day.

I'll take a look at the Wooton. What's his eventual *point* though? It makes me nervous that he's focusing on words more than context or concepts. Hopefully this is not Postmodernist "it's all relative" bullsh*t. If he's on the Relativist side, then I will be highly skeptical of his arguments.

There is a real world. There are false ideas. There are things we don't know now that we will *discover*.

Edit - Looks like his focus is not on words driving the world, but on how science developing changed the world.

The point is that there was a Scientific Revolution, and that it is worth investigating in a way that relativists would strongly disagree with. But also he's not trying to go all the way back to a 'Whiggish History'. His stated goal regarding the realist vs relativist conflict is that both sides would find his position unpleasant. To me it seemed like the relativists would've been far more displeased.

He's using etymology as evidence of conceptual progress that is otherwise hard to acknowledge as having occurred, and specifically as a way of dating when that progress occurred. The Scientific Revolution included and required its own language revolution, which is itself an underutilized historical perspective partially because of relativist shenanigans.

That's a much more reassuring way of putting it. I picked up the book, it's only $9 on Kindle textbooks as it is. Thanks for pointing me in that direction. It looks like it's right up my alley.

I just finished I have no mouth & I must scream by Harry Ellison. It’s the first thing I have read by him and wow did it hit me hard. It’s part of a collection of short stories so I am ploughing straight on with them but are there any of his novels I should prioritise looking at?