Books that Matter

Jan 28, 2007 22:17

So I've been thinking about trying to put to an actual, unchanging medium one of my stories, likely much altered with the exception of Gravity, which due to its simplicity always knew very precisely what it was about. In part toward this end and in part because it just happened that I had a gift certificate to Borders and some books, I recently ( Read more... )

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Comments 18

noradannan January 29 2007, 03:31:09 UTC
The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop. I still can't accurately put into words what I thought of it, or what it meant to me, but it is probably the book that most... hit a note with me. Amazing book. Means something terribly important. I think relevance will sign on with me on that one (lo, he's the one that made me read it).

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ornithoptercat January 29 2007, 07:24:13 UTC
I have read it and it is good. If you like it, also China Mieville's Bas Lag books, which are the same kind of weird. I don't know if they will give you a better understanding of the world, but they will probably give you a larger vocabularym and Iron Council will certainly give you a new understanding of golems.

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marcus_sez_vote January 29 2007, 12:00:38 UTC
I really liked Perdido Street Station and the Scar but was less enthused with Iron Council.

Be well.

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OK. redcrosse January 29 2007, 18:43:22 UTC
Sounds good. Have read Perdido, and that was enough. Mieville's a great conjuror, but in the end, I feel like he likely understands less about the architecture of the universe than I do, by a lot. The whole "life is what happens BETWEEN chaos and order! Don't you see!" climax was groansome, and naturally his definition of neither chaos nor order could adequately account for, say, a forest, which leads me to believe he's been in cities in his head for too long. Etched City sounds potentially interesting, though.

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hilariarex January 29 2007, 04:32:57 UTC
Til We Have Faces, by C.S.Lewis
The Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler

(which you may have already read)

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redcrosse January 29 2007, 04:42:59 UTC
Til We Have Faces is the best, and least read, book of C.S. Lewis. It really is the best, though. Better than Narnia, better even than Perelandra. Just Better. It blew my small, small mind. The other, however, I have not read, and so I thank you.

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aumshantih January 29 2007, 18:52:24 UTC
I will second anything by Octavia Butler. Her work is rather amazing. I quite liked The Xenogenesis and Patternist trilogies by her.

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mazarin January 29 2007, 05:29:42 UTC
While these are fairly mainstream and thus likely to be books you have read, I will suggest Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Shelley's Frankenstein. Also, while I have not yet finished the entire book, I did enjoy the chapter on the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov.

Thank you for posting this, by the way. It is nice to see someone articulate a form of book I spend much time searching for myself.

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mazarin January 29 2007, 07:04:10 UTC
You should also play the interactive fiction Photopia by Adam Cadre if you have not.

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ornithoptercat January 29 2007, 07:46:27 UTC
House of Leaves, by some guy with a completely impossible to spell last name who also happens to be the singer Poe's brother. Bonus points for reading it somewhere public and confusing everyone by flipping back and forth, turning the book upside down while reading, and other normally-crazy things that you can't read the book without doing.

And The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, which has entries written by many fantasy authors you will have heard of, and is just plain amazing. I suspect you will particularly like the entry about Bone Leprosy and the resultant colony of boneless monks.

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