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demoncase wrote: his misanthropic inability to use speechmarks

Demon, did you just accuse McCarthy of omitting punctuation because he hates people in general? Hilarious.

I agree, though, it can be tough to read due to that.

I've been reading one of the novels by Thomas Harris the last 3 weekends. Started with Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. This weekend I'll try to finish Hannibal Rising. I'll try to watch the movies again as well to see how they compare, already watched Manhunter.

I also agree "For whom the Bells Toll", is a good read.

tvenuto wrote:

demoncase wrote: his misanthropic inability to use speechmarks

Demon, did you just accuse McCarthy of omitting punctuation because he hates people in general? Hilarious.

I agree, though, it can be tough to read due to that.

Yes, yes I did. :D

The only reason you'd not bother to use punctuation through an entire novel is to be arse

City of God by Augustine of Hippo. An amazingly relevant book.

The Footsteps of the Messiah

Nuclear Showdown In Iran by Bill Salus

I finally finished 'Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carre, and have now started Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

chuckd wrote:I finally finished 'Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carre, and have now started Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

".....You're going to do a little job for me, Peter"

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.

The Harbinger Decoded by Jonathan Cahn

demoncase wrote:

chuckd wrote:I finally finished 'Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy' by John le Carre, and have now started Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

".....You're going to do a little job for me, Peter"

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.

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.

Doc Dan wrote:City of God by Augustine of Hippo. An amazingly relevant book.

This academic biography of Augustine Hippo is excellent : http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520280410" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks. Interesting it is not available in many places where one would think it would be.

I finished 'Slaughterhouse-five' lastnight and have to decide what is next.

Has anyone read "The Onion Field" by Joseph Wambaugh? I am considering this next.

Though, I may read "The Maltese Falcon" in the mean time as it is a short one.

Doc Dan wrote:Thanks. Interesting it is not available in many places where one would think it would be.

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 ...

chuckd wrote:I finished 'Slaughterhouse-five' lastnight and have to decide what is next.

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)?

Hunger Games.

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)?

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.

I still did like it, but not as much as "Cat's Cradle," and probably not as much as it is raved about.

chuckd wrote:

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)?

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.

I still did like it, but not as much as "Cat's Cradle," and probably not as much as it is raved about.

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.

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

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.

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:

1st: Galapagos. Why this isn't his most talked about book I have no idea. Maybe people get tired of the devices and see where it's going? I found his comments on the survival instinct and evolution to be amazingly astute. I also loved "the authors" amoral view (not: immoral), in that all human survival strategies were valid (in the same way we don't vilify the lion and mourn the antelope).
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A far 2nd: Sirens of Titan. Absolutely astounding predictions on technology, written in an era before the handheld calculator! Only far from 1st due to how good Galapagos is.
A close 3rd: Player Piano. Peters out in the end, although lack of satisfying conclusion is a bit of a Vonnegut staple. Probably interested me more than usual being an engineer.
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A somewhat far 4th: Cats Cradle. The concept of church v state and it being the dumbshow that keeps the masses in line is uninteresting to me, although the characters are very alive in this one.
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A similarly far 5th, that's as far from 4th as 4th was from 3rd: Slaughterhouse Five. I just could not get over the jumping around, and I was reading it voraciously, almost desperately, to try to make some sense out of what was going on. It was like dumping a puzzle out onto a table: you try to turn over all the pieces as fast as possible to see where they might fit, but the activity of turning them over is joyless. Honestly I think this one is mostly popular due to its anti-war message and when it was first published (1969). Right place right time kind of thing.

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

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?

I even wrote that the characters were "very alive" in CC, even before I saw your post. I hadn't thought about it this way previously, but obviously had a sense that in some of his stories the characters were not very fleshed out. I don't read much SciFi so I wasn't as aware this was a common issue.

As an aside, I found this to be the worst feature of Dune, where the characters were so ridiculously one-dimensional, or downright implausible, that it was completely distracting. Also, you viewed the entire world from a bird's eye view. There were some amazing features, but no satisfying intimate detail. What's worse is that I am 100% sure that he felt he was fleshing it out wonderfully, and was totally unaware of this shortcoming. But we're not talking about my beefs with Dune here, haha.