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Whats everyone reading?

Started by Paul faplad Finch, 30 March, 2009, 10:04:36 PM

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JohnW

This sounds pretentious as all hell, but I recently finished the French comic Bérézina by Frédéric Richaud and Ivan Gil, and I liked it so much that I went and got my hands on the accompanying volume La Bataille, which I'm going to start right soon. Quality volumes the pair of them. Excellent production, beautiful art, and thumping good historical drama.
Just so it doesn't sound like I'm showing off too much, here's where I admit that I can't speak French.
I kinda-sorta learned some in school, and started on Duolingo during lockdown, but I can only read French comics slowly, and with a dictionary to hand. Strange thing is though, it gives me a more thorough appreciation of the comic. Being barely literate again takes me right back to childhood, when I'd pore over the pages, closely studying every picture and speech balloon, trying to work out what was going on.
The downside is that it takes effort, which doesn't make for a restful afternoon's reading.

Anyway, I've just seen that both these comics have since been issued in English translation.
Botheration.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Barrington Boots

I can sort of relate to that as I too have been working my way through the French versions of the last few books of Le Scorpion, as Cinebooks didn't finish the story with their translated ones. It's meant a lot of time poring over each panel as I painfully translate each speech bubble, and has meant I've paid a lot more attention to both dialogue and art. Perhaps I should read Hope in French as I might start enjoying it again.

The Scorpion comics are beautiful btw, but Scorpion himself is kinda stuck in in the dickhead mode Dante got out of after a few years. It's all about the supporting cast.
You're a dark horse, Boots.

JohnW

I was sent down this path by Adèle Blanc-Sec. The English translations gave up after four volumes when the movie failed to set the box office on fire.
The stories are pretty nonsensical (even if your French isn't as substandard as mine) but I love the art to bits.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Barrington Boots

I'd never encountered that but it looks great! I shall look some up. My French is épouvantable!
You're a dark horse, Boots.

JohnW

My own own French is – quel est le mot? – lousy.
Adèle Blanc-Sec is a delight, but sometimes a bit of a slog when it comes to deciphering the script. Jacques Tardi is a wonderful artist but an indifferent letterer. Add to that the slangy way some characters speak and – God help us – the severe speech impediment of one of the villains in a later story, and I had my work cut out for me.
I gave Le Scorpion the once-over on Amazon and decided against it for the time being. There's just so much else to choose from. The French do pretty comics and they do them in such abundance.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Jade Falcon

Started reading this rather weighty tome, only a short into it.  I've been rather fascinated with the battle of Jutland.  The endless Jellicoe vs Beatty debate.

When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies. - Valery Legasov

JohnW

Absolutely superb book! I've read it twice.
It's a little too technical (for me anyway) when it comes to the ins and outs of signalling, but even in its details it never loses sight of the greater historical context and never loses the reader.
Best of all, Gordon writes with a light touch. For a serious history of serious things, this is a book with a surprising amount of laughs – or at least smiles of wry amusement, depending on your sense of humour.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Jade Falcon

I picked it up in the Hospice Shop I used to work in till recently, price at £1.25.  When I saw it on Amazon at £40 - £60, I gave the shop a tenner extra as I would have felt a bit guilty, and the Hospice is a worthwhile local charity.
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies. - Valery Legasov

JohnW

I paid full whack for it way back when it available in paperback because, even after I'd read the copy a friend had lent me, this was a book I wanted to own.
I only hope I haven't talked it up too much. I don't want you to regret your nobly-given tenner.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Barrington Boots

I've been reading some Robert Jordan authored Conan books on my commute. He's a far better writer of these than L Sprague de Camp but there's something quite icky about a story where literally every single female character is either naked or essentially naked when they're introduced (and indeed, usually for the bulk of their time on page)
Recommend me your lightweight paperback reads, please!
You're a dark horse, Boots.

JohnW

I read all of Howard's Conans a few years ago and liked them far more than I expected. I wasn't tempted to go beyond Howard though. Old-time pulp can be forgiven for many of its sins, but that doesn't mean they should be replicated by later authors.

Alas, I haven't found any pulpy fun to engage me lately. Historical fiction used to be my delight, but I just got plain tired of Bernard Cornwell, who was my go-to guy for years. There are only so many times you can enjoy the same formula. For the rest of it, I maintain that pulp historical fiction is sloppy historical fiction, which makes escapism impossible for us know-alls and nitpickers.

My Kindle is full of randomly-downloaded adventure/supernatural/sci-fi collections – mostly public domain stuff – but little of it grabs me. (That's the greatest virtue of Kindle: picking up and discarding fat disposable paperbacks at a whim. The downside is that there's no physical reminder of what I've just read, so things slip from my memory all too easily.)
These days I read history, I read comics, and occasionally I read proper literature. Damned if I can remember the last time a lightweight paperback wowed me.
However, if you're putting a gun to my head and demanding a recommendation, I have to say that the Brian Aldiss phase I went through last year was rewarding. Fat books (Helliconia), thin books (Grey Beard, Non-Stop) – it was all good.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Barrington Boots

Brian Aldiss is a great suggestion, thank you! I'm not sure I've read anything beyond The Saliva Tree and that definitely fits the category of what I'm after.

I'm a big fan of Howard's Conan books - they're incredibly visceral, but not in a gory way as they're not gory at all but in the very way they're written - really evocative, interesting tales, loacking exposition but still feeling like part of a real world. The writers who came after him really don't seem to get it: L Sprague de Camp for example is really dry, and also has a nasty tendency to always include an unpleasant woman-getting-stripped-and-whipped scene. Robert Jordan definitely gets the breathless, descriptive yet fast moving style to write a Conan I think but he's got what i can only describe as a pervy eye where Howard didn't.
I do like pulp writing, even though it's pretty trashy and incredibly derivative, but there's a definite issue with newer work replicating the sins of old. I don't think there's any excuse for a current writer of, say, heroic fantasy, to pack it full of misogynistic tropes and other horrible world views and I can't enjoy a book like that regardless of when it was written.

Agree re. Cornwell, after a while you realise he is basically writing the same book over and over. Great book at first though!
You're a dark horse, Boots.

JohnW

I paid money for an L Sprague de Camp book back when I never had any money.  I think it was The Incomplete Enchanter. Big fat disappointment of a book. I'd been seduced by the excellent Ian Miller cover.
(That's another minus for Kindle – no more book covers to entice us.)

Speaking of outdated world views and misogynistic tropes, I picked up Asimov's Foundation books cheap a while back. Fascinating ideas but Holy Mother of God – such unattractive characters.
Why can't everybody just, y'know, be friends and everything? ... and uh ... And love each other!

Tiplodocus

Just finished PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir (who also brought you The Martian. I must say, I wasn't a fan. It felt too much like doing homework at points and a lot of the humour isn't as funny as it thinks ("Haha, that's amusing, he made a mistake in calculating that co-efficient!"). There's a twist near the end that justifies it's flashback structure but as far as I can remember doesn't make you re-evaluate everything that's gone before. All plot, very little character.

Some of the great ideas (What would being couped up[spoiler] for fifty years [/spoiler]on a spaceship [spoiler]on your own[/spoiler] do for your mental state?) Are mentioned in passing then discarded.
Be excellent to each other. And party on!

Tjm86

Just finished John Christopher's The World in Winter.  It is remarkably similar to Death of Grass in many respects.  There's a sort of sordid underbelly to the tale.  What was interesting though was the shift in the tale to the plight of European refugees.  Even with the attempt to flip the colonial attitudes, to have the core characters forced into a shanty and reliant on the 'generosity' of their hosts, it doesn't quite manage to land the shift. 

Perhaps it is because it is a bit too 'on the nose' as it were.  Perhaps it is because of the way the African expedition to London is handled.  There are times when they are caricatured.  The conflicts amongst the expeditionaries is a little ham-fisted in its handling.

Or perhaps it is because it is so similar to Death of Grass.  The sort of slow-burn apocalypse.  The predictable challenges and obstacles.  The usual pound-shop Napoleans to be overcome.  The slightly unsatisfactory conclusion.

An interesting curio but its understandable as to why it has drifted off most people's radars ...