Demon, did you just accuse McCarthy of omitting punctuation because he hates people in general? Hilarious.demoncase wrote: his misanthropic inability to use speechmarks
I agree, though, it can be tough to read due to that.
Demon, did you just accuse McCarthy of omitting punctuation because he hates people in general? Hilarious.demoncase wrote: his misanthropic inability to use speechmarks
Yes, yes I did. :Dtvenuto wrote:Demon, did you just accuse McCarthy of omitting punctuation because he hates people in general? Hilarious.demoncase wrote: his misanthropic inability to use speechmarks
I agree, though, it can be tough to read due to that.
".....You're going to do a little job for me, Peter"chuckd wrote:I finally finished 'Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carre, and have now started Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Ha! I saw the movie prior and always read Smiley's lines in Gary Oldman's voice, and the same for Guillam and Cumberbatch. I will definitely look into those follow ups as I was unaware of them. Le Carre is a great author, this being the first of his I have read, but I also have 'The Looking Glass War' on the shelf.demoncase wrote:".....You're going to do a little job for me, Peter"chuckd wrote:I finally finished 'Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carre, and have now started Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
If you enjoyed it, I'd reccomend the follow ups The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley's People....if the slightly shabby world of British spying in the 50s and 60s tickles your fancy, I'd take a look at Len Deighton's work starting The Ipcress File and going from there.
This academic biography of Augustine Hippo is excellent : http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520280410" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;Doc Dan wrote:City of God by Augustine of Hippo. An amazingly relevant book.
It is available from Amazon. Just keep in mind the fact that the book is a scholarly biography so some might find it to be dry reading ...Doc Dan wrote:Thanks. Interesting it is not available in many places where one would think it would be.
Curious what you thought about it. I'm a Vonnegut fan, but to be honest I read this one with a zeal whose source was something other than joy. I just wanted to get to the point and have done with it. I realize that all of Vonneguts books are allegorical, but many adequately disguise themselves as interesting stories in their own right. This one just felt too disjointed for me to enjoy, and I wonder if you had the same reaction (and if you've read any other Vonnegut)?chuckd wrote:I finished 'Slaughterhouse-five' lastnight and have to decide what is next.
While I totally see what your saying, my reaction was not as pronounced. I read "Cat's Cradle" a month or two ago and loved it, and while "Slaughterhouse-five" had his same style, it did feel more chaotic in a way. It seemed like the chaos in the storyline of "slaughterhouse-five" was to hide the fact that he didn't know what to write about the Dresden bombing (or so it seemed), so he added some weird stuff as filler and distraction.tvenuto wrote:
Curious what you thought about it. I'm a Vonnegut fan, but to be honest I read this one with a zeal whose source was something other than joy. I just wanted to get to the point and have done with it. I realize that all of Vonneguts books are allegorical, but many adequately disguise themselves as interesting stories in their own right. This one just felt too disjointed for me to enjoy, and I wonder if you had the same reaction (and if you've read any other Vonnegut)?
I'll agree with both of you here....It's not so much a story as a series of incidents in a semi-episodic fashion, and when I read it first time around I struggled to understand how Vonnegut was so lauded as a sci-fi writer....It almost felt like some serialised magazine story, collected into a volume.chuckd wrote:While I totally see what your saying, my reaction was not as pronounced. I read "Cat's Cradle" a month or two ago and loved it, and while "Slaughterhouse-five" had his same style, it did feel more chaotic in a way. It seemed like the chaos in the storyline of "slaughterhouse-five" was to hide the fact that he didn't know what to write about the Dresden bombing (or so it seemed), so he added some weird stuff as filler and distraction.tvenuto wrote:
Curious what you thought about it. I'm a Vonnegut fan, but to be honest I read this one with a zeal whose source was something other than joy. I just wanted to get to the point and have done with it. I realize that all of Vonneguts books are allegorical, but many adequately disguise themselves as interesting stories in their own right. This one just felt too disjointed for me to enjoy, and I wonder if you had the same reaction (and if you've read any other Vonnegut)?
I still did like it, but not as much as "Cat's Cradle," and probably not as much as it is raved about.
Interestingly, I also liked Cat's Cradle better, but of the books I've read of his, S5 was last place, and CC second to last place. Of the books I've read, I'd rank them thusly:chuckd wrote:I still did like it, but not as much as "Cat's Cradle," and probably not as much as it is raved about.
Yes, and that's certainly true, especial of S5, and Sirens of Titan. However, I felt that Galapagos, Player Piano, and Cats Cradle give you a much more intimate view of the characters. I wonder if you've read any of those?demoncase wrote:If anything, Vonnegut's writing suffers the 'ill' of many of his SF contemporaries in tending toward '1 dimensional charachters' that are there to move the story around and not much else....Though nowhere near as bad as Clifford Simak or Arthur C.Clarke who I enjoy the stories of but both of them fail to develop anything like a relatable charachter in either their short or long-novel stories....Guess they were all too busy building worlds for the people to inhabit that they forgot to build the people too