Chatterbox: Literature Edition

Well, damn. Now to try and get my paying mechanism back in order...

So has anyone else besides me ever read the book Desolation Road by Ian Mcdonald? The reason I'm asking is because I read the book back during summer and I still can't decide whether it was a trainwreck or a masterpiece.

Looking up Persian literature.

I'm really enjoying Kurt Vonnegut's descriptions. "She had legs like an Edwardian grand piano."

Wha-what does that even mean?!

Her legs looked like this◊ of course.

So: Candide (I should really write that page) or Starship Troopers?

Have you read Starship Troopers?

Noper, nor have I read any other book by Heinlein.

Candide is like Voltaire's version of South Park. Read it.

^"Oh my god! They killed Candide!" "You Bastards!"

"Screw you guys, Imma gonna tend my garden."

"Goddamnit Pangloss!"

edited 8th Feb '10 6:45:41 PM by Myrmidon

I like Candide a lot, personally. It's so snarky: "First the cannons battered down about six thousand men on each side; then volleys of musket fire removed from the best of worlds about nine or ten thousand rascals who were cluttering up its surface."

@Mind Screw: can't do better than Borges. Agree with Illuminatus as a good choice as well.

Just started reading Catch-22.

If you haven't read any Heinlein, I'd recommend starting with something else, like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress or Stranger In A Strange Land. Starship Troopers isn't his best, IMO.

edited 8th Feb '10 9:08:18 PM by Taelor

I really disliked Catch-22.

edited 9th Feb '10 6:30:59 AM by Myrmidon

I loved it. Probably for the same reasons that you hated it.

Well, just finished Catcher In The Rye in one night. I'm not sure what to make of it. I didn't hate it for the reasons that most people who are assigned it or anything. Probably because of some reasons, I really think so.

And I'm like 1/3 through Nineteen Eighty Four at the moment. Insomnia is good for reading I guess. ...... I kind of like the writing style of it. It's not hard to read but it's not Beige Prose dull.

edited 9th Feb '10 9:27:06 AM by OuttaTheBLAM

Just read Einstein's Dreams, it's sort of like a cross between Invisible Cities and Braid if that makes any sense. It was pretty good.

edited 9th Feb '10 5:59:21 PM by Myrmidon

Candide is making me feel sort of dense. I can't tell exactly what it's supposed to be satirizing.

It's satirizing the views of some philosopher(s) that we live in "the best of all possible worlds".

That explains absolutely everything.

[1]

I still need to read that book...

The real irony is that, if not for Candide, Gottfried Leibniz would probably be remembered mainly as a mathematician.

I mainly remember him as a mathematician. Don't see why you wouldn't, really, I mean most people don't remember Isaac Newton as an occultist.

Anyone who lived in the late 17th century is remembered for something mathematical. Unless they conquered a whole lot of shit.