#704

I enjoyed this if you are ok with expanding it just from ‘trees’ to ‘plants’

it is a rhapsodic labour of love

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#705

I read it, it is awesome and completely changed how I look at and think about trees. Get this one @Scagden.

#706

Thanks, it’s on the list!

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#707

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Read this recently. Didn’t have this cover though.

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#708

Can’t believe he wrote a book about how trees communicate with each other and failed to name it Tree’s A Crowd

8 Likes
#709

Partial book report

The Bell Jar. I wish I’d read this earlier in my life because I think it would’ve had a huge impact on me if I’d consumed it when I was 19 or so. Think I read the Count of Monte Cristo then, what a waste of time. As is it’s a superbly written and chilling book, one of those filled with metaphor and allusion you’ve never seen used before but make perfect and naturalistic sense. I suppose the most surprising part about is the fact the electrotherapy worked. 9/10.

The Left Hand of Darkness.

“It was Gonk Hour, which meant the Irklefrikt were in ascendance. I met Hep Blap ir Crunk on the Philmitchelling road. I thought to ask him about our case in the Dundlefrink parliament, but at the last moment observed he was in Fuck, and therefore would have lost flaptasm by speaking to him. I hurried along to the Drilhouse where I borbored spenk with some Shplsskrrkshh. Have I mentioned I was freezing my nads off?”

8/10

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#710

I really struggled with this as well; didn’t deliberately give up per se but my progress fizzled to nothing about 20% of the way in and I never picked it up again. Just found it so hard to get into, and utterly unmemorable…

#711

Just read Elemental, an enjoyable enough popular science book on the Periodic Table. Let down by the ‘zany humour’ style and some glaring errors I couldn’t ignore. Still learned a few things, so all is well. Now on Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars before I tackle the last Broken Earth novel.

#712

thinking about buying an actual physical book and reading it in the year of our lord 2020

#713

Came up with an idea for a really cool theatrical production of House of Leaves but it would require access to a big hedge maze, a complex wireless mic set up, a big room overlooking said maze, a complicated lighting set up and audience members to be quite patient

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#714

Please tell me it’s also a musical

:notes: Navidson! Navidson! Don’t go in there!
The shifting walls fill me with de-spair! :notes:

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#715

a physical book? like a medieval monk would read? like an illuminated manuscript?

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#716

Probably the best opening line of a novel ever as well. Easy top ten at least.

#717

From that I’m reading that you liked Left Hand of Darkness but not so much the names and the the mechanics of the society? Go for later Ursula if you want less overt sci-fantasy trappings. Five Ways to Forgiveness would be a good direction if that interested you.

Or The Dispossessed, because everyone should read that.

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#718

I mean I would say Perdido Street Station has that sort of worldbuilding character stuff in spades.

Like @JaguarPirate I think the City and the City was conceptually a noir detective thriller where that sort of thing wasn’t too important.

However, if you’re like me then there are tonnes of books on your to-read list so I’d probably say that not liking his prose in The City & The City will be a deal breaker and I’d just move onto a different author :slight_smile:

#719

I felt like the immersion in a society without explanation was part of the point of LHOD. The narrator is an outsider and so they’re making sure you get the alien nature of world to them.

It was a good book but I didn’t finish with a desire to read the others in the series immediately. Maybe I’ll come back to them but my to-read section is huge.

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#720

The Viriconium books by M. John Harrison are pretty good. Strange though.

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#721

Yeah I do have a bit of a backlog, so you’re probably right. Perdido Street Station was the book I intended to read, but then TC&TC popped up on offer.

I got the sense that TC&TC was supposed to be something of a cross between The Big Sleep and The Trial, but just feel like is missed all the things that make those classics. I also kept thinking what Philip K. Dick would have done with an idea like the two cities, now that’s a book I would love to read!

#722

Yeah not really sure.

While I’ve enjoyed the few Philip K Dick I’ve read my instant response to this is he’d have written the same story he wrote every other time :grimacing: :smiley:

I didn’t really get a sense The City and The City was meant to be anything more than a noir-y story and I guess all of those are The Big Sleep at some point but I enjoyed it. Perdido St Station is kind of everything it’s not: very dense, full of world building and characters and ideas and much more about leftist politics.

But you said you didn’t really enjoy the prose and I don’t think that changes a great deal with any author :smiley:

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#723

Haha, beautiful or innovative prose is not a deal-breaker, but it certainly helps. Philip K Dick’s prose is pretty workmanlike, as is Asimov’s, but they make up for it in other ways and some.

I also don’t really agree that an author’s prose style remains constant from novel to novel, there are countless examples to the contrary!

1 Like