I liked the little treatise on Summerian languages.. and there were a couple of bits where I felt the whole joke did work really well, like the superweapon where the controlling software was in beta so it would sometimes crash and leave you defenseless - but there were a lot of times when it was like being locked in a room with someone who's just downloaded a rootkit telling you all about his anime collection.
Oddly enough Ada suffers from something a little similar, if you thought some of the 'exquisite and terrible lust for soft and tender nymphets' bits in Lolita were a little overheated then some passages in Ada will just make your jaw drop. You can sort of forgive V.N., because there's some genuine lyricism there, but still. There's a lot of nostalgia, which I hate, and there's a bilge-ridden psuedo-philosophical treatise in the middle. I suppose I keep reading it because it is so obscure and annoying and you always wonder if perhaps you just read it again then you'd finally 'get it'.
sub-William Gibson antics where the author tells you how COOL his characters are
AAAH! Thank you, that's exactly what I'm feeling while reading one of Gibson's collaborations, The Difference Engine. There are parts I love and then I roll my eyes so hard when the lead male characters come around b/c oy, what you said. The characters I really like are the ones he doesn't spend much time talking about at all.
I do believe Wodehouse is one of the best authors when it comes to rereadability. I've been trying to branch out a bit, though, and read more than just Jeeves and Blandings, so I've been acquiring all the stand-alones and shorter series as well. I've really enjoyed them all, even the golf stories which I thought I wouldn't like at all.
I'm totally serious about P. G. Wodehouse being an important modernist author. He should be taught in universities instead of Virginia Woolfe.
Oddly enough I never got that from the Difference Engine, the only l337 haxors in that are Babbage and Ada Byron (and for some reason Theophile Gautier), which is sort of fair nuf as one of them genuinely did invent the differnce engine and the other actually was the first programmer.
I would be thrilled to take a uni class on Wodehouse. Thrilled.
Funnily enough, it's actually the professor character, Mallory, whom I've come to dislike so far. The book keeps alternating between utterly fascinating and exceedingly dull for me, which is frustrating.
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And you've definitely sold me on Ada, or Ador.
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Oddly enough Ada suffers from something a little similar, if you thought some of the 'exquisite and terrible lust for soft and tender nymphets' bits in Lolita were a little overheated then some passages in Ada will just make your jaw drop. You can sort of forgive V.N., because there's some genuine lyricism there, but still. There's a lot of nostalgia, which I hate, and there's a bilge-ridden psuedo-philosophical treatise in the middle. I suppose I keep reading it because it is so obscure and annoying and you always wonder if perhaps you just read it again then you'd finally 'get it'.
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Fear ye not, I like my overblown perversion.
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AAAH! Thank you, that's exactly what I'm feeling while reading one of Gibson's collaborations, The Difference Engine. There are parts I love and then I roll my eyes so hard when the lead male characters come around b/c oy, what you said. The characters I really like are the ones he doesn't spend much time talking about at all.
I do believe Wodehouse is one of the best authors when it comes to rereadability. I've been trying to branch out a bit, though, and read more than just Jeeves and Blandings, so I've been acquiring all the stand-alones and shorter series as well. I've really enjoyed them all, even the golf stories which I thought I wouldn't like at all.
Reply
Oddly enough I never got that from the Difference Engine, the only l337 haxors in that are Babbage and Ada Byron (and for some reason Theophile Gautier), which is sort of fair nuf as one of them genuinely did invent the differnce engine and the other actually was the first programmer.
Reply
Funnily enough, it's actually the professor character, Mallory, whom I've come to dislike so far. The book keeps alternating between utterly fascinating and exceedingly dull for me, which is frustrating.
Reply
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