Books! The good Reads thread

[omaniphil]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Same problem Neal Stephenson has.

[hector]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Same problem Neal Stephenson has.

You didn't think 7 Eves ended well?

[cgeorg]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Same problem Neal Stephenson has.

You didn't think 7 Eves SEVENEVES ended well?

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Some of my friends liked it a bit less (too nozzle focused), and one proposed it might have been better if it had started in the final part with explanatory flashbacks to the earlier bits. I liked it as-presented.

SpoilerShow

It took me embarrassingly long to get the title. Like, there were somewhere between 0 and 1 living men before my brain said, "hey 7 Eves." Up until then it had only gotten as far as "hey palindrome."

[omaniphil]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Same problem Neal Stephenson has.

You didn't think 7 Eves ended well?

Maybe one of his worst endings? I'd have liked some closure with the diggers, pingers, etc.

[hector]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Same problem Neal Stephenson has.

You didn't think 7 Eves ended well?

Maybe one of his worst endings? I'd have liked some closure with the diggers, pingers, etc.

(Spoilers Caveat)

I loved the ending. Or, at least, I loved the book and didn't feel the end detracted.
I think the conclusion's uncertainty gave the ending a more tenuous sort of feeling in keeping with the tension throughout the novel. After all the humans had been through, and as weirdly as they'd adapted, they may yet still die out.
But yeah, I also wonder what happens to them.

[cgeorg]

SpoilerShow

I question the ability of the pingers to evolve into that

[JonA]

Great, all this talk of Stephenson made me google if he's published anything since Fall and now it looks like I have another book in the reading stack.

[EricK]

I just finished The Stand by Stephen King. I enjoyed it. It was very long without seeming long, although I feel like important parts leading up to and during the climax of the story were a little weak. Right now I'm reading Effortless by McKeown and Dune. Effortless is a fairly typical self-help book, which has helpful perspectives on life things and self actualization that mesh well with a lot of other ideas I've read elsewhere.

IMO, Stephen King struggles to have good endings. Creates amazing worlds, super interesting and complex characters...can't stick the landing. Reading King is about the journey and not the destination.

Seems accurate based solely on my experience with The Stand and It...

Recently finished Peak. There's a lot of overlap with other works I've read, but felt like the detail and serious description of what constitutes "deliberate practice" and how to apply it to more obscure areas of life was helpful.

Also read Game of Thrones and really enjoyed it. I'll read the rest of the series and then join the dejected masses of disappointed fans who yearn for a meaningful conclusion to replace the nightmare of a show finale.

[hector]

Also read Game of Thrones and really enjoyed it. I'll read the rest of the series and then join the dejected masses of disappointed fans who yearn for a meaningful conclusion to replace the nightmare of a show finale.

House of Dragon is outstanding!!!!

[cgeorg]

I'm reading Ordinary Monsters right now, and liking it quite a bit. The prose style reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road which I read last year and fell completely in love with. I have generally tended to get bogged down when writing gets heavily into adverb/adjective soup and eventually start skimming that bit (think Tolkien), but these 2 books just have such clear and vivid use of metaphor or something... I don't think I know the language for critically discussing writing style, but yeah. Interesting story too.

[hector]

reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

I still think about The Road sometimes a decade plus after reading it.
Won't spoil it, but the one captivity scene still freaks me out when I think about it.
McCarthy's No Country For Old Men was phenomenal. Blood Meridian has been on my lost for awhile now.

[cgeorg]

reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

I still think about The Road sometimes a decade plus after reading it.
Won't spoil it, but the one captivity scene still freaks me out when I think about it.
McCarthy's No Country For Old Men was phenomenal. Blood Meridian has been on my lost for awhile now.

Yeah that book struck me deeply. I'm pretty sure I know which scene you mean, that was very disturbing. It's still his only book that I've read, but I'll be going back through some of his other stuff, and I see he has a new double-header that's half-released.

[heidikay]

Blood Meridian

You’ve gotta read Blood Meridian; it's the definitive McCarthy novel and has one of the most evil characters in all of fiction: the Judge.
Speaking of which, I’m reading this right now and some of it reminds me of the worst (horrific) aspects of McCarthy’s books combined with a Beckettian sense of humor:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4309446-last-days

[EggMcMuffin]

Why the fuck do people keep telling me to read the Myth Of Sissyfuss

They should all know by now that I don't know how to read!