Taste in books

[scribb1e]

pw201: You should read The Player of Games.  It's a bit like The Glass Bead Game.
scribb1e : But you hated The Glass Bead Game!
pw201 : No, The Player of Games is good! It has spaceships!

Comments

[gjm11]

I liked them both, for what it's worth.

[scribb1e]

I have mixed feelings about the Glass Bead Game. It's beautifully written and there are lots of interesting ideas, and yet...

It builds up a really seductive picture of a perfect place where you can pursue the Life Of The Mind. And it dangled in front of me lots of the things I like, like games, and maths and music. (Not that I'd be allowed in, being female. I don't think Hesse considers that women have Minds.)

But this utopia turns out to be all terribly clever, but also irrelevant, sterile and not really going anywhere. I could say the same for the book. The ending annoyed me, and I got bored and gave up on the epilogue.

I read some of the Amazon reviews when I was finding the link and agreed with most of what's written in most of them from 1 to 5 stars...

Probably everyone who reads it likes to speculate on what the game is. I've seen some attempts to create one for real. Someone suggested that "Goedel, Escher, Bach" was an example of a Glass Bead Game. But I also have mixed feelings about that book...

[pw201]

I didn't hate The Glass Bead Game, I just got bored and didn't finish it. Anathem and TPOG are variations on the theme which are both more fun, IMHO.

[scribb1e]

>I just got bored

Cos there weren't any spaceships? :-)

[andrewducker]

Anathem reminded me an awful lot of The Glass Bead Game. I wish he'd put either less or more plot into it though.

Nancy Kress' Steal Across The Sky also has a society which has a central game that everyone plays, but sadly completely fails to use the concept.

[andrewducker]

Player Of Games is very good - but the actual plot is nothing like The Glass Bead Game. It's an excellent introduction to Ian Banks' SF though.

Anathem is like The Glass Bead Game, only far into the future, where the segregations between those who dedicate themselves to knowledge and the rest of the world have become entrenched. It's a fascinating novel, but not one I find entirely successful. Neal Stephenson's works frequently combine fascinating digressions about the world with fun plot, but he does this much more successfully with The Baroque Cycle, which is set during The Enlightenment and uses the backdrop of the transfer of power from the aristrocracy to the merchant classes, and is very, very good, if a bit hard to get into.

[scribb1e]

I have now read Player of Games and a couple of other of Ian Bank's SF. I think he's a good writer, but I have trouble liking his books, because I just can't seem to care about the characters.

Paul likes the Baroque Cycle too. The sheer thickness of the books has so far put me off. The only Neal Stephenson book I've read is The Diamond Age (I loved the ideas, especially the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, but thought it all went off track towards the end of the book).

[andrewducker]

Yeah, Stephenson's endings can be...abrupt. He seems to sometimes get to the point where he's said everything he wants to, and wants to tie off all the loose ends, so he essentially closes all of the brackets he'd previously opened, not necessarily in the most emotionally effective manner.

The Baroque Cycle does have a good ending, IMHO. But I can understand feeling overwhelmed.

Not caring about the characters can definitely be a problem with Banks, but I'm usually having enough fun to notice really care (or notice).