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Best and Worst Books of 2003?
Thousandstars writes "I saw the article on the best and worst movies of 2003, and, being a literature geek, I thought it would also be appropriate to ask for the best and worst books of 2003. In fiction, Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is toward the top of my best list. How about everyone else?"
I thought the Lord of the Rings series was a great set of books. I can't wait for someone to make a movie out of it.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
The LOTR trilogy gets my vote. Very faithful to teh movies.
I'd like to nominate the SCO court filings for best work of fiction...and worst work of fiction.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
How about the Divinci Code?
And of course The Art of Unix Programming
My worst reading for 2003 was: The Last Goodbye
.02,
I received the book to review ahead of time... It was absolutely terrible. I don't know about the rest of the world but I am not into reading books written as if I was reading at a third grade level (ie Stephen King's latest works). Trying to be bio-tech and computer savvy when you aren't just does not work.
I was also irked by the author's apparent need to mention the race of the characters in the novel. It was almost as if he was trying to point out that it is possible for those of color to become lawyers and famous musicians (duh). Let the read imagine whatever they like about the characters don't shove it in their face.
Just my worthless
I expect submissions from Daryl McBride soon. Hopefully I don't have to pay $699 for the book.
It is not our abilities that show what we truly are... it is our choices.
In the non-fiction category, Eric S. Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming" gets my vote. It's simply excellent.
anything by him..
author of "Perdido street station"..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Movies have a definitive time they are out and you usually go see them during that period.
Books are much more flexible, you don't need to constrain yourself to a rigid schedule or anything. I usually go out a few times a year a pick several interesting books that I'll read as time allows me to. When deciding what to get, release date (that is, the 2003 books for example) is not even considered; I just search for interesting stuff or previously unknown stuff from interesting authors.
But it may just be me.
If you are into history I recommend this book:
6 70 030759/qid=1072126966//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/002 -1914962-9961668?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Interesting perspective into the role of science in the Nazi regime with moral/philosophical undertones.
Execute? [Y/N] _
I hate to say this, but the Crossroads of Twilight, the 10th Robert Jordan "Wheel of Time" book, really sucked. No major plot advancement has happened at all. Several pages are spent on one of the main characters taking a bath! It seems like in these books, time goes slower and slower. I think the series has gone downhill, since about the fifth book or so, but this one was really bad. I see no way for him to end the series in my life time, at this pace, with so many dangling plot threads, and a release cycle of one book every two years,
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Terry Pratchett's "Nightwatch" wasn't too bad, though it was not IMO as good as the previous 'Nightwatch' books such as "Guards! Guards!" and "Men of Arms", but it is definitely worth checking out if you're a Discworld fan. I haven't read "Monsterous Regiment" yet, anyone have an opinion on how that was?
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Quicksilver was a cool book. However, IMHO it wasn't nearly as good as Cryptonomicon. Here's why:
* The characters feel similar to those in Cryptonomicon (another crazy Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse is akin to the main character from Crypto).
* One of the hardest things to do right when there are parallel plotlines is connect them in a flowing and lucid manner. Cryptonomicon did an excellent job of weaving the past and present together. In Quicksilver, we get large chunks of uninterrupted narration, but there's very little context switching. This left me a little bored at times.
It really felt rushed, like there was a great book in there that needed more time to be distilled.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to read the next two volumes, I was just a little disappointed that Quicksilver didn't live up to the high standards Stephenson has set himself in previous books.
Some books that were "a hell of a lot better than I expected".
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was pretty good - some "duh" moments with the characters that made you want to smack them all in the head and shout "Stop acting like you're 12!", but overall, pretty damned good.
"Wolves of Callah". Go figure - I thought this would suck, since Mr. King seams to have lost something after his accident. But the story, even when I had pretty much figured things out, was still pretty good.
On the "not great but not bad" area I'd put "The Da Vinci Code". Clever as hell idea, some interesting observations that had me going to my art books to check it out - great from that point of view. Great book to get people interested in art and the symbols used in literature, paintings, music, and so on.
But why did the main characters Sophie and Robert suffer such massive brain farts at times? They'd talk about huge ideas in symbology - then 50 pages later, be stumped by a puzzle they had talked about earlier! (Well, and there was the incredible coincidence that a Harvard professor and a cryptologist both happen to be hot - how did that work out?)
I think for my most enjoyed book so far this year was "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" by Al Franken. I don't agree with all of his politics, thought he had some good points, some bad points, and some so-so points - but damn if it wasn't funny and at least thought provoking at times.
Worst book? "Chosen", the novelization for the last season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". I mean - punctuation mistakes all over the place, and somebody used "find and replace" in a bad way. Amazing how the word First and Chosen are always capitzlized, even when "Buffy was First into the room"? Remember, kids - even after you use Command-F, Command-V, Enter, you still need to proof read the damned thing.
Just my opinions, of course. I still have to read Stephenson's "Quicksilver", but it's not out on peanutpress.com yet, and I'm not sure I have space in my backpack for another meatspace book.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
I thought the New Testament was pretty good, but it lacks a lot of the action of the Old Testament. The use of metaphor was nice. Personally, I would have like a better ending. The 4 horseman things has been way overdone...
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I really enjoyed two books by Isaac Adamson -- Hokkaido Popsicle and the earlier Tokyo Suckerpunch. It's hard to describe them, but they're perfect for Japanophiles and other Asia-pop enthusiasts>
Worst book of 2003 is easy -- Hillary Clinton's memoirs. As much as I detest her, she's obviously an interesting person but her book sounded like it was written by her staff and focus-grouped before publication.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I've loved me some Stephenson in the past but this thing was just ridiculous. Bought it the day it came out and still haven't finished it.
It was the long, long history-lesson-style monologue by Shaftoe's brother immediately followed by a second chapter of Waterhouse presented as a period-style drama that did me in.
I've only got like 120 pages left (out of what felt like several thousand when reading) so maybe I'll finish it. But reading novels shouldn't feel like an uphill battle, you know?
The phrase "Literature Geek" makes me wonder, can you be a "Sports Geek"? Or a "Fashion Geek"?
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Oryx and Crake was a pretty decent number. Anyone who thinks that bio-engineering is out of control will eat this stuff up. Three cheers for pigoons and wolvogs!
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Personally, I'm interested in politics, so I found Dude, Where's My Country? to be a very interesting work. Moore improves on Stupid White Men a lot by incorporating many more references to works cited, and elaborating his position better. For that matter, one of my textbooks made interesting reading: Gov't and Business.
Worst book? Anything by Ann Coulter. She claims in her latest book, Treason, that being liberal is a sin worse than terrorism. If that isn't hateful and just plain wacked, I don't know what is.
#define DRM chmod 000
After a failed venture in high school, I find myself trying to plow through this series once again. Does it ever end? I mean it's a truly remarkable story, but it HAS to end somewhere, right??
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
They're boring, predictable, and are big ego trips for the authors:
Ann Coulter : Treason : Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Al Franken : Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
Michael Moore : Dude, Where's My Country?
Bill O'Reilly : Who's Looking Out for You?
Eric Alterman : What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News
Sean Hannity : Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
Alan Colmes : Red, White & Liberal : How Left Is Right & Right Is Wrong
And a lot more. Surprisingly, lots of these books sell a lot, preaching to the choir of the converted, yet contributing no new ideas or being slightly interesting.
- sigs are for wimps.
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was a lot of fun, even if the Priory of Sion has turned out to be a fraud.
I'm looking forward to his next book which will be about Freemasonry.
Positively Fifth Street was an excellent piece of non-fiction.
People who have witty things here blow.
The Linux zealots guide to getting laid.
Here's a synopsis
After _Cryptonomicon_ my expectations were high. Early on in _Quicksilver_ I realized that there was no way this book could be as good as the earlier one, so I adjusted my hopes downward accordingly...and even then, I was disappointed.
The flaws are numerous.
The one thing that everyone knows about the book is that it contains a frantic pile of trivia. I was actually looking forward to this aspect of the book, given that I enjoy random learning opportunities as much as the next geek, and given that this is one part of _Cryptonomicon_ that I was enthused about. _QS_ disappoints in this regard. To my mind there are two main bins that trivia are sorted in to: (1) those random items that are capable of clicking in an interesting way into the knowledge structure I already have; and (2) utterly random tidbits. NS delivered a few of the former, and a few truck-loads of the latter. In so far as the trivia was interesting, I already knew it (Germanic witch trials, etymology of the word "dollar", the broad outlines and purposes of the various 16th century political structures), and in so far as the trivia was not something I already knew, I found it dreadfully boring (hail-storms of random names of royalty, many of them playing minimal roles in the plot, etc.).
Ah. I used the word "plot", so I've segued onto the next region of disappointment. _QS_ does not have a plot, in the conventional sense. Sure, in a 900 page novel (or a 2,700 page novel, really), one wouldn't expect the broad sweep of the action to be clear by page 50, or 100...but by page 500 or so, one would hope to have an idea of where things might be going. The book has Theme aplenty.
The Theme, however ("Things Really Changed a Whole Lot, Religiously, Economically, Politically, and Scientifically"), is big, but too insubstantial and too vague to construct a huge novel like this on. _A Winter's Tale_ managed to work very well with out a real plot - it could hang off of the Theme that "New York changes a lot, and is magical through the ages". Then again, _A Winter's Tale_ was about 1/9th the length of Stephenson's Inflated Series.
Speaking of inflation, this book needed an editor, badly. Dialogue and exposition are clunky in many many places. For that matter, dialogue and exposition are poorly differentiated. There's a joke about 1950's science fiction that 3/4 of the plot and background information are revealed in "As you know, Bob" asides. The same is true of _QS_. There's some minor variation on a theme: there's "As you know", there is "I need not mention the fact that X ...< 1,000 words
elided >...because you already know that", and there is "as everyone in
the town knew...".
There's a persistent and pernicious meme in the art world that to truly convey some situations you need to recreate those situations for the audience. Thus, the only way to convey tedium is through a four hour movie, etc. NS seemed to be held by this meme: to convey the intellectual ferment and vast scope of the 17th century he felt the need write a book that was adrift in a ferment and vast in scope. Certainly he could not have conveyed these things in a novella, but that does not mean that he could not have pruned perhaps a third of what he wrote.
The book is large enough that there's a Dramatis Personae at the end, which was somewhat useful...but it didn't work wonderfully well for me, because the entries were fairly short and defined the characters (well, historical figures) mostly in terms of descriptors and events that did not take place inside the book. If I come across a character who I know was present 500 pages earlier, but I'm trying to remember whether that character was a alchemist or a merchant, it helps little to learn that the character was a friend of the Duke of Wessex (or what have you). This is not a huge departure from how Dramatis Personae are usu
it's probably an example of the "I'm going to run for President so I need to appear intellectual by writing a book" thing. It probably was focus-grouped before publication - that way she doesn't have anything in writing to embarrass her later. Since the books written by future/current Presidential candidates seem to have had anything interesting strained out of them to avoid conflicts with future political positions, they're probably best avoided anyway. For politics, there are probably better places to go for informed commentary on their plans, and as personal background it probably isn't very useful.
The more interesting version of her book should come out about thirty years from now.
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
You get to the last book of a dekalogy only to realize that the author sucks.
Sturgeon's Law, dude, means that you have inverted the true number of Wheel of Time tomes that suck.
Jordan's corollary: Sturgeon was an optimist.
A friend suggested that Jordan's works were a manifestation of his subliminal hatred for trees spawned from the time he fell out of a tree as a child. Why else would so mulch wood pulp be wasted on his dreck?
I was stuck at around the same point as you were for about a month. ( around the sand-sailing ).
;)
I took another run at it a few days ago and was pleased to find out that the plot picked up one page later.
Stephenson books tend to reward the persistent reader. I remember having to convince friends not to burn cryptonomicon after reading the first 200 pages... Keep reading, its worth it...
Same advice for the last 200 pages of this one.
I read Kim Stanley Robinson's _The Years of Rice and Salt_ and I like it a lot. It was a Hugo nominee. It's an alternate history, where all of Europe was destroyed by the Plague (instead of only a third) and world history is shaped by the Chinese, the Indians and the world of Islam.
I'm reading _Quicksilver_ now, and it's actually really cool that they are many parallels. Alchemists, invention of the scientific method, the books keep reminding me of each other. Very nice.
I don't know if there are any people who find the first part of Quicksilver hard going: read on, the second part is brilliant :-)
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
And I have to agree with those bashing Robert Jordan, even though I haven't read his latest pile of crap. WoT is a series that started out so amazingly good, then was ruined by its author. It's his maddeningly slow pace, and more importantly, the fact that every single one of his female characters (except perhaps Min) is an arrogant b!tch. They're all extremely annoying, some more so than others.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
As someone who's been prominently involved in RJ fandom for the last decade, I'd have to say...you're absolutely right.
I'd probably get up to book 7 on the "to read" list, just because of Dumai's Wells, but it's been a cereal-varnished-saucer sled ride from there.
(ObLink: 17 minutes of story after book 10 ends)
Best book published this year that I've read? Probably Brust's The Lord of Castle Black. Most of my reading this year has not been of books written this year, though. Best book I read for the first time this year? Probably either Gaiman's American Gods or Card's Ender's Game.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time :P
I've read this series several times (generally right before a new book is about to come out, so I can have the full plot in mind) and I have to agree. It seems like all the Jordan fans I know agree as well. We all wait now until the new books hit the used shelf at the book store, and grab it at half price.
I'm re-reading them again right now actually, just because I got bored and wanted something to read. It's really, really sad, knowing what they are going to come to, since the first few books are just awesome. He's managed to create this incredibly intricate and believable world, and then proceeds to run all the characters into the ground (SPOILER:Morgase as a fraidy-cat servant?!:SPOILER) and spawn so many plot threads that he ignores entire major characters per book. And yeah, the several pages about a bath, or a bank of fog, or.... that gets kinda annoying too.
The sucker that I am though, I'm gonna finish reading the series as it comes out just because I want to know what happens. I can make some guesses, but he always seems to have a rabbit to pull out of the hat when you least expect it. :)
That's one thing I'll say about the series that is cool, I read over the WoT FAQ recently before starting reading again, and from the discussions in there and having read the later books already, it was truly amazing to me how early he had started laying down the plots that happen 8000 pages later.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
I can't remember seeing any films, other than LoTR's, that really intrigued me this year past. There were lots that I saw, but none that really stand out. It's possible that I just don't remember anymore though, because that is becoming a constant state of affairs.
by Cory Doctorrow.
First there was Neuromancer.
Then Snow Crash took the reins.
"Down and Out..." is the next in the logical procession of futurist novels.
The world is run by ad-hocracies (basically, large groups of fans), everyone has computers in their brains, collaberation happens in the cerebellum, and crygenics is de rigeur.
Awesome, awesome book.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. This book blew my mind. It's the story of a kid with Asperger's Syndrome written from his perspective. You get so lost in his head, the amazing complexity of his world and the techniques he's developed to cope with the people and situations around him, and then you are with him as he is forced out into the raw real world. Perdito Street Station by China Mieville was a strong runner up for me. I think both books are particularly well suited for geeks.
Worst book? I'm past the point where I waste my time with books that suck. I used to push through just to finish the book but now that I'm realizing that life is short I just close the book and move on.
I'm about as enthusiastic a Stephenson fan as they come; I have a hand-xerox'd copy of The Big U, _and_ actually enjoyed reading it. I set my alarm to wake up early and pick up a copy of Quicksilver on my way to work the day it was released.
And I found it to be the most pitiful drek I've picked up in years. I never officially gave up on it, but I put it down around page 300 and haven't picked it back up in some months.
Dozens of completely interchangeable and personality-free "characters" would be problematic enough if they weren't all referred to variously by their given names, their surnames, their titles, their ranks, their relationships to other faceless characters, and various ribald nicknames. I probably couldn't be bothered to keep this bland cast straight in my head even if they only had one name each, but giving them all half a dozen names just made the problem exponentially worse.
Having historical characters make predictions about the future which are either ironically accurate or comically inaccurate has no place outside horrid sitcoms. ("This 'tay' is fascinating, but I cannot imagine the English ever being interested in something so strange.")
The story was clearly intended to be tiered between the obvious, surface-level events, and the occluded, mysterious events driving them, which needed to be inferred by subtle cues. But the supposedly-obvious events were so dependant on endless tiny details of this moment and place in history that they were _also_ occluded, mysterious, and needed to be inferred by subtle details. It's possible that a specialist in post-Cromwell London wouldn't find this troublesome, but my slightly-better-than-average knowledge of the period was quite insufficient for the task.
And, most damningly, just when there was starting to be the vaguest hint that there might actually turn out to be the possibility of an actual plot somewhere on the horizon--that your effort slogging through hundreds of pages of drivel might be rewarded with something actually _happening_--he drops it all and starts over from the whole sodding beginning with an entirely unrelated set of characters.
Oh my personal pet peeve are authors that like to hear themselves talk. There is nothing like reading a book about a professor's life that is compared with the Cold War.
.02,
I read My Cold War ahead of time. It was not only unbearably boring I actually felt sorry for the students that this professor lectures to. I am sure he makes them read this novel for a better understanding of him as a person and why he grades them poorly when they tell him that his book sucks.
The rest of his books (listed here on his website) are mostly about music. I am quite confused why he just didn't stick to that genre. He seemed to be putting out quite a few, someone must have been buying them.
He actually mentions in this book that the reason he wrote it was because he couldn't find it in his heart to continue the research/writing for the actual book he was writing and he needed to "find himself" with this one. Great, nothing like reading the book that an author used to fill time in his life.
Two things to be learned from this rant: a) don't take classes with professors that require readings from their own books and b) only you and your family give a flying rat's ass about your life (unless you are famous), don't write about it even if you somehow think you can link it to your line of research.
Just my worthless
You get to the last book of a dekalogy only to realize that the author sucks.
:-) In fact quite true. It's just that I thought the first few books were really good, and like a good junkie "first hit is free", felt that I had invested too much time to just give up, and hope that there may be some salvagable stuff. And to be fair, there are a few good moments in the later books. Last chapter in book 9 in particular. Dumai Wells, as someone else suggested, is another good point. It just seems as though Jordan thought "there are about 200 Aes Sedai in the tower, and I will not stop writing until I name them all." There are some web references (google Encyclopedia WOT) that name all the characters, and there are like 1500 NAMED characters in the book. It's hard to keep track.
Fair enough.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I too bought it the day it came out, and finally managed to finish it the other day. Cryptonomicon on the other hand, took me less than a week. Well, I reached the last page anyway; the book doesn't end in any meaningful way, it just runs out of pages. Some of it is great. As with all of Stephenson's books, I learned a thing or two on accident, but man, there was a lot of space between the good points. One critic stated in his review that it was obvious that Neal needed an editor, and that editor needed a machete. It's a good point.
Awesome series of books about the Royal Navy during the 1800's. Highly recommended.
I 2nd "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime."
Q: Is LoTR really based on Christian Mythology?
A: Yes. Tolkien wanted to demonstrate that even the mentally and physically challenged were capable of success and that therefore we should love everyone, regardless of their defects.
Q: So who represents the mentally and physically challenged?
A: Well obviously the hobbits are the physically challenged ones here, but the central mentally challenged figure is Gandalf, responsible for the most horrible attack plan in literature.
Q: What's so horrible about a poorly armed team of two hobbits infiltrating Mordor?
A: Well, basically it ignores the fundamental strengths of the forces of light. Anyone who's played C&C or Warcraft knows that if you have an advantage in air units, you have to use it. Remember that elves can ride eagles, and that elven archers are incredibly potent - early on, Gimli dismounts a Nazgul with a single shot! With about a thousand eagles (given elven archers on each one), the forces of good would have matched up pretty well in the air against Mordor's air units: all nine of them. While the leader of the Nazgul cannot be killed by any living man, this does not prevent a team of twenty eagles from tearing him to little shreds, especially if Gandalf rode along for help. So basically an air battle would have been brief unmitigated slaughter of the Nazgul as about a thousand eagle-mounted elves blew them out of the sky in a hail of arrows.
Q: But I thought that there was some other book that said that the eagles wouldn't help?
A: We're not talking about some other stupid book here, we're talking about the Lord of the Rings. And in this book, the eagles most definitely help out, first by flying Gandalf off the tower and secondly by pitching into the Final Battle in full force, attacking ground units (stupid!) at great risk to themselves. So obviously they would have been content to take part in a brief airborne slaughter of the Nazgul.
Q: Ok so you defeat all Mordor's air units... then what?
A: Well with air superiority, you command the skies. Which means that you can fly right over Mount Doom and drop anything you want right in there... like a ring. Mordor only had nine airborne units, and with them out of the way Mordor has absolutely no way to prevent anyone from flying anywhere.
Q: But the ring would corrupt the eagles trying to drop the ring in, silly.
A: Actually, the ring can only corrupt those who touch it or those in the nearby area. This is a trivial mechanism to defeat. The first step is permanently bind the ring to a weak and helpless creature, like a rat. Second step is of course to put the rat on a long rope, so that the creature holding the rope is out of the sway of the ring. Then the eagle carrying the rope, having total air superiority, flies over Mount Doom and drops the rat in the volcano. An utterly trivial victory.
Q: Ok, so why the elaborately stupid attack plan? Why send the physical rejects as the only hope of mankind?
A: The lesson is that, though they succeed at great cost and great risk, they are still capable of success. This, of course, was the lesson of the Holocaust - that we should never feel so superior to the weak or inferior that we decide they have no place. Even idiot tacticians like Gandalf and weak, pathetic creatures like Hobbits can add some value here & there.
Q: Wait a minute. I just saw the movie, and there's this scene where they're like "this is the last stand of the Men of the West", and all the men of the west are white, and they face of in total war against Indians on Elephants and "black orcs" (er... maybe we just call them "blacks" for short) and the white Men of the West achieve a total genocidal victory. Doesn't that invalidate what you just said?
A: Well, um, no. That's all fine & good, but remember that in the Holocaust we were committing g
I'll often, in debate, equate Michael Moore to being the "liberal Ann Coulter," but in all fairness it's really not the case. Moore is absolutely batshit insane and his ultra-liberal and oftentimes hypocritical/conflicting views on many issues leave much to be desired, but I never got the impression from him, even through that shitfest that was the Oscars, that he blamed conservatives for all of the problems in this country. Sure, he might have named plenty of neocons that he didn't like at various times, but he never set out to imply that conservatives in general were the reason for the sorry state of affairs in America right now.
This isn't meant to defend Moore, by the way; I still can't stand him. It's meant to demonize Coulter for being the hateful, overly-emotional and illogical cunt she is.
My wife started listening to King's Gunsliger Series in the car. Due to her talking about it I took the first four books(paper since I see audio books as something for after I have actaully read the books, for car drives and going to sleep), which us on Vaca as fluff reading(paperback = fluff reading, hardcover = Non-fluff due to weight of book). I had figured that a story bascially boiling down to a western wouldn't apeal to me (That and I have never read a king book before so I wasn't sure I'd like his style)...I was toally surprised, these are damn good books, and it actually makes me interested to read them (something few books do lately, perhaps I am tireing of Sci-Fi Fantasy)...I am in the middle of Wizard and Glass nw, and its shaping up to be as good as the rest, and I am hurriedly trying to get through it so I can red Wolves of Callah(sp?) the next book which my wife has promised (but is getting itchy) to not start on audiobook till I catchup.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
But I've got to vote for my mother's books. She discovered POD (Print On Demand) publishing this year and published 5 novels, three of them being a trilogy starting with "Stones for a Crumbling Wall".e tail.asp ?isbn=0-595-26582-0
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_d
Iuniverse is quite generous with their "browse before you buy" which allows you to read the entire book.
Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan would make the top of my fiction list for 2003. Starts a bit slow, but I still read it in one night. The basic premise is that rich enough people can digitize their consciousness and travel, or be reincarnated, by just transferring the "stack" to a new human "sleeve". But the fun moments are really the details like self aware hotels, catholics as a small right-to-die sect, outdated robots running gun shops etc. A bit over the top in places, but it hangs together pretty well.
Other suggested works of Political Commentary out this year would be "Kingdom Of Fear" by Hunter S. Thompson. While resting a little on his laurels and retaling some tales, Thompson weaves together a series of stories which highlight the current politcal madness. He paints the current political situation as a "Kingdom of Fear". the book also continues thompson chronicle of the death of the american dream. Interesting read with you are an HST fan.
as for dissappoint books, "Diary", by Chuck Palahinuk was a dissappointment. His last book "Lullaby" was brilliant, it was one of the best stories I've read in awhile. "Diary" was just dreck. The "Chuckism" in the book (Greek Chorus like repetition of lines) seemed force. The plot of utterly predictable, andnot very engaging. Only a few parts really worked. It is very disappointing, and is a pale shadow of his other great works, such as Lullabye, Choke, Survivor, and Fight Club.
Well, it's really an older book series, but since the paperbacks only came out in the USA in 2003, I will put forward the most refreshing and amusing books I've seen in a while, The Eyre Affair and its sequel Lost in a Good Book by Jasper FForde.
/.ers heart (which I can't reveal as it is a spoiler.)
A marvelous alternative Britain where everybody is highly literate, and our heroine, Thursday Next, is a Special Operations officer in the LitraTec (Literary crimes) division.
Alas, the latest one, The Well of Lost Plots, can't be recommended quite as highly, even though it centers on a concept near and dear to the
As an unabashed and yet notoriously picky (read: pain in the ass to buy for) sci-fi fan, here are a few of my favorite books of 2003.
I just finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station and I am flabbergasted. Mieville's city-state of New Crobuzon is utterly fantastic and his clarity of vision for his world, in my opinion, is the kind you only come across once in a great while. I will most certainly be picking up his newest novel, The Scar , as soon as I finish a couple of books curently in my queue.
I was delighted that in the last year (or perhaps a little bit more), the great Samuel R. Delany's books have begun coming back into print. Three of his novels, Dhalgren , Nova and the duplex Babel-17/Empire Star , along with his short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah... and other stories are all truly wonderful sci-fi. If you decide to read him, start with Aye, and Gomorrah..., Babel-17/Empire Star and then Nova; when you think you have a handle on him, tackle Dhalgren. Tackling Dhalgren is no easy task, but the journey is completely worth it.
Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow now has two books in print ( Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and A Place So Foregin and Eight Mor e) and a third on the way. Both books (a novel and a short story collection respectively) showcase a writer I am quite sure we'll be seeing a whole lot more of in the future. Doctorow's writing reads very much like the first writer of the next generation of sci-fi writers; you won't be disappointed.
Cyberpunk poster boy William Gibson also had a new book this year, Pattern Recognition . As his writing pressed forward, Gibson has slipped further and further from futurity into today, creating science fiction that happens in today's world. His latest work is an interesting story of Cayce Pollard, a cool-hunter with a severe allergy to brands. The story is, as with all things Gibson, tightly written and as focused as a laser beam on its subject. A great read for all.
I sure hope this helps. I know not all the books came out specifically in 2003, but I read them all in 2003 (along with countless others) and I think that's close enough for me to sneak them in.
James Frey: A Million Little Pieces
A memoir dealing with the author's time in rehab. Very, very raw. Extremely inventive writing style.
Colin Dexter: Train
Set in the 50's, Dexter weaves the lives of a cop, the wife of a murder victim, a black caddy and his friend in a decidedly creepy way. Bagger Vance this ain't.
Paul Auster: Oracle Night
When a book takes over your life. This modern-day fairy tale shows off auster's flair for the...well, the odd. Auster use footnotes to tell two stories at a time...it's kinda hard to describe, but it works.
I'm sure there are more, but I've gotta head to work.
Triv
Quicksilver was a disaster of writing and editing.
My other quip with Stephenson is how pseudo-intellectual the books are. Okay, the "CS for idiots" in Diamond Age was bearable, but all of this "degree in a can" low-brow history/science is tiresome for those of us who have it from original sources.
The fact that so many people lauded this airport-bookstore drivel tells me just how low-brow the reading audience has become. From the mindless cliff hangers (resolved in three pages for the idiots who can't track a plot) to the impossibly silly puzzles to the hocus-pocus Templar BS plot (which has been around for decades)...I kept looking for the "Nancy Drew" logo on the side of this "young readers" crap.
The Art of Deception, by Kevin Mitnick.
Ok, the copyright date on my copy says it was published in 2002 (must have came out **late** in 2002, or my memory is really going, as I could have sworn I haven't had this book a year...), but I didn't read it until this year... anyway, it's one of my favorites and definitely gets a vote for "Book of the Year."
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Or it could just be that his writing has gone downhill so far that the publisher is trying desperately to put together something that makes sense. R.J. wouldn't be the first author to lose it as he aged and even a great publisher can't cover it up forever.
Fortunately there is no correlation between popularity and quality.
I'm re-reading them again right now actually, just because I got bored and wanted something to read. It's really, really sad, knowing what they are going to come to, since the first few books are just awesome. He's managed to create this incredibly intricate and believable world, and then proceeds to run all the characters into the ground ...
I would recommend "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List" as a good reference for finding alternatives. It's really a fantastic resource (it's where I found "A Song of Fire and Ice"). I stopped reading the WOT when it seemed to cross from "great series" to "author's pension plan".
Although they came out in 2002 the paperback versions debuted in 2003.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. My favorite this year. What a fantastic book. It's no wonder many colleges and universities are incorporating it into their required reading cirriculum. An Indian boy becomes lost at sea after a ship he was riding on sinks. His only passenger in the lifeboat - a Bengal tiger.
Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides. Written by the same author of The Virgin Suicides. It's a story about a Greek girl (boy) born as a hermaphrodite in a Greek family and her experiences growing up in that environment and that condition. Won the Pulitzer I believe.
Books rock. They are soooooo much better than the tripe offered on t.v. BTW, is anybody else offended that TLC stands for The Learning Channel? There's nothing learning about that channel anymore. Just Trading Spaces and the umpteen variations on that theme.
What's so good about it?
A very fair question. For starters, the first third of the book has nothing to do with adventure at sea. Rather, it is about Pi's life in his village in India. His views and practices with regard to religion are fascinating and provide for a number of interesting exchanges between him and other characters.
As for the lifeboat sequences that comprise the rest of the book, I can only say this. Yes, one gets the feeling that the story is allegory. That it's meant to Mean Something Else. But it never quite has the feel of the fantastic. It's quite realistic even. Besides, I think you'll appreciate the end. By that point the whole "this can't really happen!" issue is addressed quite adequately.
I understand your skepticism, but I still think you'd like it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
The New Financial Order by Robert J. Shiller argues a way to remake modern economies as we know it by HEDGING THE WHOLE ECONOMY! Imagine if all the risks and shocks of our economy be cushioned by modern risk management techniques on a global scale, and you have a book that talk about such strange concepts as "profession insurance" to "inequality insurance" and "intergenerational social security". It's a must read for anybody who consider themselves at the cutting edge of modern thinking.
In no particular order (And probably none of these books were written this year, oh well):
Life of Pi - Yann Martel: A fantastic book dealing with a little boy on a boat with a tiger. Starts off a bit slow, and for a very long time you aren't really sure where it is heading, but stick with it because the last fifty pages or so are breathtaking. Probably the most thought provoking ending in a book this year.
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Basically a book looking at all the different types of love. Healthy love, obsessive love, unrequited love, family love, etc. Marquez has a typical fantasy-reality style which really works in this book (Imagine people buying a dozen roses for their lover and then eating each one because they love them too much)
Infinite Jest - DF Wallace: A mind job. Extremely dense, this book has 1,000 'normal' pages and an extra 100 pages of footnotes that must be read. Hundreds of characters, tens of plot-lines, no real resolution or plot or point, this book is amazing. The joy is in the characters and the writing, which is phenomenal. Classic first line: I am in a room surrounded by heads with bodies. Beautiful stuff.
Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco: This book is smaller than Infinite Jest, but just as dense. The author is a phenomenally smart man, and it shows throughout this book. He makes thousands of throaway references to obscure medieval places, events, and people, and it all matters. Trying to keep your head around the plot as it spirals out of control is half the fun. Probably the ultimate conspiracy book ever: It ties everything that has ever happened together. What more could you want?
Blindness - Jose Saramago: Saramago is a gifted writer. Everything he writes is so lyrical and poetic, metaphors and symbolism just drips from his pen onto the page. Blindness has a killer plot: For no reason, people are going blind. And it is contagious. An interesting study on humanity, Saramago focuses more on the philosophical side of everyone going blind than the potential hack doomsday plot which perhaps a lesser writer would have chosen. Be warned though, Saramago uses massive paragraphs, little punctuation, and nobody has a name. Once get used to the style, it flows perfectly, but it may provide a stumble to some.
And there you have it. A few of my favourites, give them a try, they are all amazing.
* The characters feel similar to those in Cryptonomicon (another crazy Shaftoe, Daniel Waterhouse is akin to the main character from Crypto).
Close, but not strong enough. Apparently Stephenson was bored with the creative process and couldn't be assed to imagine new characters... so let's reissue a new Shaftoe and a new Waterhouse in a new era. Oh, and in case it wasn't clear enough that we are reusing the same characters lets bring back Enoch Root!
But of course there need to be characters that weren't in previous novels... how can Neal accomplish this without excerting any creative effort? Simple, just throw in a bunch of historical characters and make them do silly things. Dull moment in the plot? Hey look, Issac Newton's at the door. Getting bored are we? Let's chill with Ben Franklin! It's not interesting to read because there is nothing new here... it seems like he's competely given up on the creative process altogether.
* One of the hardest things to do right when there are parallel plotlines is connect them in a flowing and lucid manner. Cryptonomicon did an excellent job of weaving the past and present together. In Quicksilver, we get large chunks of uninterrupted narration, but there's very little context switching. This left me a little bored at times.
The problem with this style is not the style itself, but with how Stephenson executes it in this case. In Cryptonomicon I actually cared enough to keep reading the next page, but in this case it was tedious slogging through the pages. I'd put it down and pick it up again a few days later and it would keep jumping around and didn't ever allow me to build any sort of context. This in turn made me care even less which increased the time before I would try picking it up again, which made the context jumping even more painful, etc etc.
As you might be able to tell, I didn't finish the first volume, nor am I remotely interested in the next two. I'm just hoping that after he's done with this stupid "epic" he'll go back to writing books that are readable and interesting and contain characters who aren't simply reruns and references to historical figures. Because I really really liked his work in the past, and I'm bitter now.
501 Not Implemented
Actually, I'd nominate Quicksilver for worst book of the year. Sure, it has everything -- sex, adventure, politics, etc. -- but all this stuff is so jumbled, random, disorganized and pretentious that reading the book feels like nothing more than a tedious chore. At least Cryptonomicon had encryption in it. Bah.
>|<*:=
Worse yet, Stephenson never seem to leave enough room at the end of the book to tie things up - you suddenly realise there's only six pages left under your right thumb, and there's no possible way the story can be wrapped up in time. I felt this way about Snowcrash and Cryptonomicon. I have seen a friend literally throw Cryptonomicon down after realising this same point while reading it. Has this problem been solved in Quicksilver?
However, if you want an uphill novel battle experience that will never ever end, I suggest Atlas Shrugged. I read in response to a criticism that I should read it all the way through before bashing it, and that bastard stole nine months of my life.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Ok, shoot me, mod me down, whatever you gotta do. I liked this book. Yes, I'm a 29 year old netadmin, and yes, it isn't cool to like this kind of stuff. But hey, I'm a freaking nerd.
I'm sorry, but the Harry Potter books are extremely well written, and are highly entertaining to read, even as an "adult".
Ok, I'm going into hiding now.
There's always the Top 10 Books I Did Not Read This Year.
All of the above posts are spot on, except they leave out the most excruciating part of the books: the "love scenes," wherin the female main character gets it on with every single male in a position of power over her. Offensive in the extreme, uninteresting, and thrown in every few hundred pages to keep the lowest of lowbrow interested in the plot. Awful. I just stopped a few hundred pages from the end because I was tired of enduring that shit.
Cthulhu loves you.
Oh my god, there are kids who have watched the movie and don't know about the books! Oh no! That's so awful! Maybe you should assault them - that would teach them, right? It's disgusting that you're taking this elitist view. If you pass some kids who don't know about the books or who haven't been following the development of the movie and who wrote the screenplay and whatnot, why not just give them a friendly tap on the shoulder and tell them? Why be an arrogant asshole about it?
Arrogance like yours astounds me. The books are good but they're not some sort of holy tome that a person must have read in order to be considered even somewhat a functioning member of society. Remember there are probably plenty of classic pieces of literature that you've never read and are not familiar with. If someone made a movie based on one of these works, would you want some guy directing bitterness at you rather than just saying simple like, "If you liked that, you should check out the movie."
Grow up for fuck's sake. And yes, they sell plastic swords. Kids like plastic swords. I'm sorry if that's horrifying to you but you should probably based your religion on a piece of work that hasn't become so embedded in pop culture.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Nothing like using Stephenson's 900 page opuses to give your place that geek chic flair.
No, I don't stand outside the theater ranting at people. I rant on some website precisely because it's a fucking website, not reality -- do you think I really take things that seriously?
I enjoyed the movies. I'm not trying to spoil anybody else's enjoyment of them. I just think that Tolkien has been inadequately credited. I would have very much enjoyed seeing a scrolling message at the beginning of the film, describing the origin of the story. Out of a three hour film they could have invested one single minute in that. For a total of nine hours of film and probably billions in revenue I feel that Tolkien deserved a bit more that a split-second flashing of his name on the screen.
If you're interested in slightly more detailed descriptions of what I've read this year, you can check out my reading diary.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Tom Clancy used to be a master of the "techno thriller," a genre he arguably created (if you ignore Forsyth, Ludlum, etc.). His characters were a bit wooden but the plots crackled with action and authenticity, and his morality was predictable but not preachy. His character Jack Ryan started out as a pretty regular, commonsense guy, but his importance became increasingly inflated as Clancy's fame and fortune grew. In recent tomes Clancy's become increasingly verbose and much more willing to espouse his extremist political agenda.
Now the Ryan character is the former U.S. president, and "The Teeth of the Tiger" attempts to catapult Ryan's teenage son Jack Jr. to do the world's work. Sad to report that this is Clancy's worst book yet, and it's a shadow of the brilliance he showed with "The Hunt for Red October."
Too bad Clancy suffers from "successful writer syndrome" (he's too powerful for editors to get through to him) and it now appears that he's relying on ghostwriters to finish his works. It seems he's so rich that nowadays he's got better things to do with his time and money than do what he's best at.
If you want a really good belly laugh, go read the often hilarious reviews of The Teeth of the Tiger on Amazon. They're a lot more enjoyable than the book itself.
"Folks just call him Buckethead." -- Les Claypool
There's also an interesting third-party discussion of Moore's response on kuro5hin.
Ian McEwan is one of those very rare authors who seems never to have written a bad word. He is a master of deep characterization and psychology, and Atonement is certainly his most ambitious and arguably his best book so far: a fine WW2-era historical novel, with engaging battle scenes and portrayals of life in wartime hospitals.
Look, I don't walk around "in real life" calling people morons, okay? I'm sorry if you miscontrued my comment to be some kind of personal attack against you. There's a text box on the screen, I type a rant into it, it's a web site. I'm sure you've had your moments where you think everybody around you is an idiot, considering your "liberals need not reply" sig (which has mysteriously disappeared from this post).
Also, does that "Foe" setting make you feel any better? Maybe I'll start using it.
The Myth of Homeland Security by Marcus J. Ranum. Shows the essential truth about homeland security.
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson was the book I enjoyed the most this year. He did make a few mistakes and he does gloss things over but it's an excellent read for anyone that wants to know about most of the major scientific advances in the last 300 years and the people that have made them. For me the real strength of the book is the way he brings these people to life with his anecdotes and the fact that he makes the very important point of how incredibly little we know.
The best book, by far, that I read this year (and I read many good books) was "The Student Conductor", by Robert Ford. Here's a review I posted at Amazon: "If this novel did not have a masterfully intricate plot, intriguingly human characters, and the liquid, powerful feel of absorbing a symphony in bed, I would read it for the language. The language is such that occasionally I was stopped in the middle of an established rhythm to find myself rereading a sentence, struck by how perfectly it expressed itself. My only warning to a potential reader would be to wait until you're willing to spend some time with it. With work piling up on both sides, I sat down for a break with this book and read it in its entirety within the span of an afternoon, evening, and night. Having finished, I wanted to sit down with the author - or any of his characters - over coffee. Well written, Mr. Ford. " It's not a technical book, in the electronic sense, but it's definitely a worthwhile read.
Marcus du Sautoy's The Music of the Primes, and John Derbyshire's Prime Obsession are two books on the history and lore of the Riemann Hypothesis (after the solution of Fermat's Last Theorem, now generally considered the foremost oustanding unsolved mathematical problem). Surprisingly different, each has content which is mathematically substantial but aimed at a general (OK, ambitious) audience with enough biographical and historical background to suggest the point of this conjecture, and give reasons why a solution may be forthcoming.
You started off well, but wouldn't the eagle (try to) eat the rat?
If we were ants living on a Rubik's cube, differential geometry would be a little more confusing.
It's actually a 2002 book, but I believe it's first US printing is 2003, so here goes: "It Must Be Beautiful, Great Equations of Modern Science". Edited by Graham Farmelo, this book is a collection of essays by 11 of todays best and brightest. The readings aren't dry at all, and science/mathematics buffs will be struck by how palatable this book is. For me, it drove home one thing I always knew to be factual, but never considered in philisophical terms, that formulae aren't just tools for calculations, they're expressions of ideas. That point is well made in chapter one when Einstein is compared to Planck, especially in that they both came up with the same E=hf formula, but applied to nearly unrelated areas of physics (cavity radiation vs quantum radiation). Then the point is further illustrated in talking about the Drake equation, a formula well blasted for its uselessness, but highly lauded for it's ability to provoke deep scientific discussion on topics from astrophysics to cosmology to sociology and philosophy.
I'm about half way through this book right now, and I find myself going back to dwell on previous chapters I've already read. While I don't exactly have a hard-on for this book, it is interesting enough that I'd recommend it to anyone with a menial mathematics and physics background who is interested in a new insight into the mundane triviality of text-book errata.
Frito yelped as the great bird swooped low and snatched them both from death with its rubberized talons.
"Name's Gwahno," said the Eagle as they climbed sharply awy from the disintegrating land. "Find a seat."
"But how -" began Frito.
"Not now, mac," the bird snapped. "Gotta figure a flight plan outta this dump."
- _Bored of the Rings_
- The Marx Family Saga (Juan Goytisolo)
- The Viceroy of Ouidah (Bruce Chatwin)
- Ka (Roberto Calasso)
- China: Empire of the Written Symbol (Cecilia Lindqvist)
- The Visual Display of Quantiative Information (Edward Tufte)
- The Earthsea Trilogy (Ursula Le Guin)
Of course none of those were published this year, but my reading is rarely "cutting-edge".Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Amazon has a best of 2003 booklist.
All as may be, but I still have often problems selecting my next book to read. Even books appraised by awards of site aren't always up my alley. Because I'm a bit of a slow reader, I want to make sure that the book I select is good.
Therefor I'd like to see a site for books like what allmusic.com does for music. (Allbooks.com brings you to Amazon.) Amazon is not exactly the same. It's ways to search for books are too limited.
Also I would like to choose my next book to read a bit like I select a recipe to cook on some recipe sites: I want a recipe with ingredient A and B, what recipes do you got with those.
Does any of this exist? (Maybe I should start such a site?)
"Treason", by Ann Coulter. That guy has issues. And breasts.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
my God but you are an arrogant, self-righteous, hypocritical little prick. The guy's original comment was perfectly valid and you presume to take it and figure out his life view? Logical inconsistency?? That's the funniest shit I've heard in a while. I have a feeling rational argument with you isn't even possible, and I'd end up just kicking your dumb ass. Oh and your .sig is lame too. cheers,
~mantis