Books: Last Book You Read and Rate It

[Neil Racki]

"For Now But Not Forever" - Chuck Palahnuik

Ive never been the lady when doing the Lady of the Lake but I imagine reading this book is how one might feel afterwards.

Chuck .. my guy ... each new book is your worst book

tired formulaic approach to his plots now -- secret society that pulls strings to make current world events happen for secret underlying reasons looks to end the world order

Same as invention of sound, adjustment day and now this. I imagien one could argeu Fight Club was also following this plot line

anyway .. nice talking with my self

 

[Spring in Fialta]

L’Avalée des avalés by Rejean Ducharme (1966) - In Montreal, a Jewish man and a Polish Catholic woman are husband and wife. They also hate each other. In the midst of a '30-year war' each parent lays claim to a child and raises the child in that faith. As such, first-born Christian belongs to the woman and is raised catholic and second-born Berenice is raised in her father's faith.

This ultimately bears little importance on the actual writing of the book. At just under 400 pages, most of the book focused on Berenice's extreme misanthropic worldview and the bearing it has on her life (refusing to eat and getting seriously sick, killing two of her mother's cats in hard-to-read scenes, borderline incestuous feelings for her brother that get her shipped off to live with her orthodox uncle in NYC before finally getting shipped off to the ME to fight Arabs). All of which are related mostly in monologues written in a first-person POV in which it never gets better and her antisocial behavior steadies in an awful way.

385 pages of misanthropic rhetoric sounds like a tough read. I had to give up on Irvine Welsh's Filth specifically because of how tedious and repetitive his crap got in a massive volume. Well, this is different here. While I think that the book probably could have been trimmed a bit because it's hard not to repeat yourself at some point, Ducharme is on a whole other level compared to most other writers I've read. His voice and sense of rhythm feels singular and he is able to make passages that would seem nonsensical in most hands come across as completely appropriate for his book and the girl's voice. I'm not someone who is into poetry (though I do enjoy prose that can have a poetical lilt) but his prose is littered with sentences that read like a bouquet of roses being tossed even if it is sometimes ugly. Sometimes it's also funny as the girl's confidence and erudition make for a fun contrast with her speech.

Ducharme also does a great job of giving his girl just enough to hang unto to not give it all up. For example, Her love and letters for her brother and a friend are strange and ambiguous when it comes to intent and emotion but her father is so despicable that you can almost appreciate the act of rebellion. The book is littered with little touches like that that add up to a whole that's not always clear to the read, even by the end. Sometimes it feels rather scattered as her thoughts but not her life fills up the book through a period of about 10 years.

It's not the sort of book that would please a casual and/or novice reader but I thought it was superb, unique and highly artistic.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (2011) - A superb book. There's little as satisfying as well-written Westerns. The book does that thing where it sneaks up on you up with little sentences that reward a second or third reading even if they don't seem like much the first time you read them. But the doodling of scenes is so fun that you enjoy re-reading a chapter and come away even more satisfied after it.

The book does well in not focusing at all times on the larger plot, giving a bit of a picaresque adventure with good emotional heft, drawing its own paths at its own pace, much like how a journey at the time might feel like. It doesn't overstay its welcome at around 320 pages but neatly ties everything up by the end of it, balancing well between adventure, violence and original little sidepaths that can sometimes be humorous and intelligent.

Really loads of fun. I find myself thinking about it a lot a couple of days later. Great film too, which I watched when it came out. I think I'll rewatch it next week. Also makes me want to commit to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove (1985) but that's an over 800 pages book.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster (1987) - A decent dystopian novel. Its prose is pretty well-written but for a story written entirely from a single point of view, I thought Auster sometimes focused too much on the general, such as the different types of misery which exist within his world, even if they do not hold much significance to the story or the character's viewpoint. It read like a good thought exercise for his own pleasure, which is fine, I guess.

It's another one that constantly delves into this favorite themes like luck and abandoning one's sense of self. While the twists and turns sometimes feel a bit easy, too easy even, it reads well, has intelligent and meaningful things to say and is paced excellently. Well worth a read.

 

[K Fleur]

Compelling setting, held back by an uninteresting plot and an author that thinks character development is simply internal ranting monologues. 3 out of 5.

A book that built and built and built to a meh climax. Not the worst horror/thriller I’ve read but just ok. 3.25 out of 5

 

[Osprey]

I just finished Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy and really enjoyed it. I've owned the first book for over 30 years, but, for some reason, never read it. I'd give it a 7/10 because I liked it but I wasn't sure that I liked certain additions (especially the ysalamiri) and the number of references to the movie trilogy were a little out of hand. I'd give the second and third books 8/10 because I got used to the additions, the movie references were fewer, the plot really picked up and the character of Mara Jade became more important and interesting. Overall, I really enjoyed the trilogy and wish that I'd read it 30 years ago, when I was a teenager and starved for Star Wars content... though having it now to wash away some of the bad taste of Disney Star Wars is nice, too. I may even read Zahn's follow-up novels.

 

[Hippasus]

Sets and Groups: a first course in algebra, by J.A. Green 375

In the preface, Green bills this is as a book for freshman age mathematics majors, but I think it is too advanced for that. I read it because it is a small book and treated a wide range of topics from set theory to linear and abstract algebra. I was hoping for a concise treatment of fundamental matters, and this I got because the book is formally-intensive (e.g. tons of indices in the way of superscripts and subscripts), but I think this book is more like a supplement to other texts in said subjects, which should have a fuller treatment and more worked-out exercises. I pretty much skipped the exercises and just read for concepts. This was sort of a review and refresh book for me, while I was killing time and whatnot, but I don't think it's a good stand-alone.

200: distasteful and pathetic
300: mediocre or subpar
400: average, but decent
500: very good
600: superb
700: transcendental

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Mercier et Camier by Samuel Beckett (1970) - Initially wrote Camier et Mercier which feels like a funny cosmic joke as the novel's two main characters, Mercier et Camier, two old men looking to leave town, are in symbiosis for the entirety of the story.

The structure and the story itself start and end completed and without progress. It has no real conventional narrative sense but the plot's unpredictability always feels fair. Sweet twang to it too, as the banter style, the pirouettes - and subsequent contrast with the soliloquies - makes for smiles and smirks while also asking that you concentrate on its content.

I'm sure I didn't understand most or all of its points but so what. It was entertaining purely as writing, I like reading different shit, even I don't understand all of it.

 

[Hippasus]

A History of Algebra: from al-Khwarizmi to Emmy Noether, by B.L. van der Waerden 525

This text is divided into three parts: (1)Algebraic equations (2)Groups (3)Algebras. I found the narrative to have somewhat of a zigzag pattern in its chronology, but I think there was a method to the author's madness. In regards to van der Waerden, I can only imagine how much is wrapped into the ability to coalesce notations across Millenia in a seamless and transparent account of the state of affairs of ancient history. I have to marvel at how one can, successfully, be a historian of mathematics. It is a matter of interpretation of times long past, memory, cognition/analyticity, and thoughtfulness in one's exposition. This book did not seek to give full proofs, but rather the flavor of an essential part of mathematics as it led up through the present. I feel like its purpose is largely a mere reference for further exploration for students.

Unknown Quantity: a real and imaginary history of algebra, by John Derbyshire 450

Derbyshire is not a professional mathematician, but I think that makes this book's contents more approachable and digestible. Compared to van der Waerden, this one has a lot more extra-mathematical history and biographical anecdotes about the mathematicians it discusses. Although the tone was a bit too chatty and came off as less than professional at some points, overall, it was a real page-turner for me. There are a lot of good explanations and illustrations to feed the imagination. This makes the material feel alive even though it is rather abstract.

 

[kihei]

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushie

When Booker Prize winning novelist Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, he offended in great numbers defenders of the Muslim religion and the Qur'an who saw the novel as a blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad and Muslim beliefs in general. In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini, then leader of Iran, issued a fatwah (a formal and binding ruling based on Islamic law) calling for the death of Rushdie and the book's publishers. While Rushdie received many threats over the years, it wasn't until 2022 that a religious fanatic, referred in the book as simply "the A," attempted to actually kill him during a knife attack while he was on stage speaking at a literary conference. The book recounts in detail the attack in which he was stabbed 15 times, the author's long process of recovery, and Rushdie's various thoughts about the assassination attempt's significance personally and socially. He includes a section where he creates what a likely conversation between him and his would-be assassin might have sounded like. Given the subject matter of Knife, the memoir is a rather restrained and succinct effort, an extremely rational and articulate man looking as clearly as possible at a supremely irrational event that happened to himself.

There are, of course, omissions, understandable ones. There is no discussion of what in The Satanic Verses caused such a violent response in the Muslim world. Allegedly Rushdie believed that a few mullahs would be pissed off at him for a couple of months, but that whatever controversy that arose, it would blow away soon enough. I never got beyond eighty pages of The Satanic Verses, but it seems a bit naive that he wouldn't have realized the nature and depth of the offences with which he was flirting. I am not suggesting in any way, shape or form that fatwahs are an acceptable response to literary controversy--the whole notion is abhorrent and barbaric--but Rushdie is a smart guy; he should have known what he was risking. That being said, though, no one's life should be threatened by what they write in a book--about anything or anyone. Rushdie is the victim here, and his comments about what happened and its immediate and long-term aftermath are candid and revealing in a way that lesser writers might well have struggled to achieve.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

8/10

 

[The Macho King]

I just finished Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy and really enjoyed it. I've owned the first book for over 30 years, but, for some reason, never read it. I'd give it a 7/10 because I liked it but I wasn't sure that I liked certain additions (especially the ysalamiri) and the number of references to the movie trilogy were a little out of hand. I'd give the second and third books 8/10 because I got used to the additions, the movie references were fewer, the plot really picked up and the character of Mara Jade became more important and interesting. Overall, I really enjoyed the trilogy and wish that I'd read it 30 years ago, when I was a teenager and starved for Star Wars content... though having it now to wash away some of the bad taste of Disney Star Wars is nice, too. I may even read Zahn's follow-up novels.

Eh... you can probably pump the brakes. I think there is a Hand of Thrawn Duology which isn't *terrible*, but... yeah, you've read the best of the old school EU.

I devoured all of this shit back when I was in middle and high school. I think I had some 50+ odd Expanded Universe books or so? One of the more prolific authors went on to pair with Brian Herbert to write the abysmal Dune prequels/sequel.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

6/10

 

[Hippasus]

A Book of Abstract Algebra, by Charles C. Pinter 525

Of the handful of books in this subject area to which I have recently been exposed, this text has by far the best balance of readability, on the one hand, and depth along with comprehensiveness, on the other. Pinter is as concise as can be about the relevant topics and carefully builds them up in the sequence of his many, short chapters. He helpfully often repeats important concepts from previous parts of the exposition to facilitate one's memory.

The contents of this book are divided (by me) into (i)group theory (ii)ring theory and field theory preliminaries (iii)applications of field theory and the emergence of Galois theory. In a way this progression is a gradual build-up of symbolic systems in terms of the complexity of axioms and rules of inference involved in them. There is an interesting history behind modern algebra, as well as a number of surprising applications, but that was not the focus of this book. Rather, this book beautifully displays the theory of the subject in the author's rapid-fire style, and is much better for it. The one downside: the important final three chapters on Galois theory are considerably less approachable to me than the other, earlier parts of the book. It may just be the sort of thing that requires repetition and the aid of other texts that cover this area.

 

[Babe Ruth]

A great hardcover history of surfing. From its earliest (speculative) origins, to its early development in Hawaii, thru the most recent decades.
Heavy, high quality, reference book for surfers & fans. Cool photos also.

 

[Hippasus]

Abstract Algebra, third edition, by I.N. Herstein 450

I found this book to be quite formally intensive, and a couple+ of the six chapters are mostly over my head, but nevertheless I think this book will prove to be a useful reference for me going forward. For instance, the lengthy chapter four on ring theory often, implicitly or explicitly, utilizes previous results but without a reiteration of those contents. As such, I felt like a spider on crack trying to spin a web in attempting to reconstitute the steps of the given argument. Regardless, there is a decent index, the book is laid out clearly, and thus it would be easy to delve into particular topics in the future. Herstein is like a strict taskmaster who wants the reader to do the exercises, for which solutions are not given, and to reconfirm many of the results for herself. I chose to more or less read for concepts, flow, and flavor rather than to heed such advice. He was obviously a talented mathematician and expositor, and for that I am grateful.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson (1992) - Finished this a while back. I thought it was lovely. It's a short story collection centered around a drug addict through a non-linear narrative and a somewhat surreal glow under its slice-of-life stories. But this isn't a case of the universal speaking through the individual or the individual morphing into the universal. It's very much a story of the individual that keeps circling into the individual.

There's not much direct substance abuse in the book. Most of it are fuzzy renderings of moments in the narrator's life through the years (and subsequent recovery) that don't have much of a direct link to the other besides the overarching theme of drug addiction. The book doesn't ask you to like or dislike its main characters, it simply kind of drifts without emotional masquerade and describes the narrator's happiness at doing actual physical labor for drug/alcohol money and his physical abuse of a girlfriend or rape fantasies of a stranger he spies on with the same tone all the while retaining an original voice. That same tone hides a deceptively effective prose style. Great read. I'll be reading his debut novel Angels (1983) next while I'm juggling Nathalie Sarraute's Childhood (1982).