Best and Worst Books of 2003? 719
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?"
My favorite: (Score:3, Funny)
No kidding; GREAT BOOK! (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:No kidding; GREAT BOOK! (Score:4, Informative)
Because we all know dwarves are great at archery.
P.S.
I think you meant Legolas, Gimli is the dwarf.
Not all that much difference... (Score:4, Funny)
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_
Re:Say again? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Say again? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 bee
Re:Say again? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 m
Definitely Lord of the Rings (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Definitely Lord of the Rings (Score:5, Funny)
I say, if you're not going to write the book 100% faithful to the movie, don't write the book at all!
Fiction (Score:4, Funny)
Votes (Score:3, Interesting)
And of course The Art of Unix Programming [catb.org]
Re:Votes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Votes (Score:3, Interesting)
The DaVinci is...well, it's clever, but that's about it. It's a cute idea, sure, but the characters are one dimentional and wooden, the writing leaves absolutely no room for interpretation. It's a solid read, sure, but Best Books of 2003? Meh. Not for me. YMMV, of course.
Triv
Re:Votes (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Votes (Score:4, Insightful)
Da Vinci code, TOTAL DRIVEL (Score:4, Informative)
The Last Goobye... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:The Last Goobye... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing that Stephen King is one of the most popular authors of our time I'd say most of the world disagree with you. All in all a pretty elitist thing to say. I'm not a huge fan but some of his books are really excellent in my opinion. But, I guess it's not cool to like a popular author.
Worst Book (Score:2, Funny)
I expect submissions from Daryl McBride soon. Hopefully I don't have to pay $699 for the book.
ESR's book (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ESR's book (Score:3, Informative)
Good reading for aspiring Unix hackers, or the experienced who enjoy reading insight from old-school Unix guys (Thompson, Ritchie, and several others pepper the book with their opinions throughout).
china meiville (Score:5, Insightful)
author of "Perdido street station"..
Why it don't work like that (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hitler's Scientists (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0
Interesting perspective into the role of science in the Nazi regime with moral/philosophical undertones.
Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked.. (Score:5, Informative)
I would recommend "The Internet Top 100 SF/Fantasy List" [geocities.com] as a good reference for finding alternatives. It's really a fantastic resource (it's where I found "A Song of Fire and Ice" [georgerrmartin.com]). I stopped reading the WOT when it seemed to cross from "great series" to "author's pension plan".
Re:Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) sucked.. (Score:4, Informative)
Fair enough.
Pratchett is always good (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pratchett is always good (Score:3, Interesting)
Monsterous Regiment was not as good. It feels like Terry Pratchett released an alpha version of the book: lots of ideas and characters that could have been developped further but weren't. Overall a very frustrating book, quite below the usual level of the series.
Re:Pratchett is always good (Score:4, Informative)
Quicksilver? (Score:5, Interesting)
* 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.
Re:Quicksilver? (Score:4, Funny)
-russ
Re:Quicksilver? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cryptinomicron: Good book, but still the worst ending of all time.
Re:Quicksilver? You are too kind! (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Quicksilver? (Score:3, Insightful)
It was certainly rushed, and a more thorough job might well have produced a shorter work. Stephenson seems to have a terrible time finishing it, pushing back deadlines again and again; the result would probably have been much better if he'd been able to push it back another year or two.
Re:Quicksilver? (Score:3, Informative)
Some quickies (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:Some quickies (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Some quickies (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons Potter books are so popular is that it is hard to find any other book for children that would deal with issues that exist in the real world but conviniently avoided by the mass literature, such as social injustice, poverty, bullies, racial tension, etc.
The irony is that the book about wizards is actually more down to earth and more realistic than some other books.
When I was growing up, I had a teacher who looked like, dressed like and behaived like Dolores Umbridge. I was freaked out when I read the Order of Phoenix.
Re:Some quickies (Score:5, Informative)
The first books really were kids books. Simple stories, lots of "don't jump to conclusions" moral lessons.
But the later books are becoming more complex, and I just don't see how anyone can call a 900 page tome a "children's book" What amazes me is that kids are still reading it. 12 year olds are going out and reading a 900 page novel.
That is an accomplishment.
Re:Some quickies (Score:4, Funny)
They are 15, not 16. And you only have to look at Slashdot to see what happens when 15 year olds get a little bit of power.
New Testament (Score:4, Funny)
Isaac Adamson/Hillary Clinton (Score:5, Informative)
I really enjoyed two books by Isaac Adamson -- Hokkaido Popsicle [amazon.com] 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.
I haven't read Hillary Clinton's book but... (Score:4, Insightful)
The more interesting version of her book should come out about thirty years from now.
Re:I haven't read Hillary Clinton's book but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's not a religion, why do they call themselves, uh, skeptics, and why do they support "skepticism"?
If it's not a religion, why do they call themselves "plagiarists", and why do they support, uh, "plagiarism"?
Havne't read much Criton (sphere, not great, but readable), but that single quote makes me think he's a drool
"Literature Geek?" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Literature Geek?" (Score:5, Informative)
As for fasion geek, see fung shui (spelling) masters for more information. (I guess, I know less on this topic)
Plenty of tin-foil hat reading material in 2003 (Score:3, Informative)
2 cents. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:2 cents. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:2 cents. (Score:4, Informative)
Review 1 [washingtonpost.com]
Another Review [spinsanity.org]
BTW, that's also a reason why I don't Stupid White Men or Dude, Where's my Country.
Re:2 cents. (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is exactly the problem.
Saddam Hussein murdered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, in cold blood, often simply because they disagreed with him, or he thought they might have disagreed with him.
Bush conducted a war in which under ten thousand people were killed. I don't like war, and I don't like killing. But in exchange, he managed to stop Saddam's murder express. By this time next year, the war will have saved many more lives than it cost.
In the end, Iraq and Iraqis are way better off then they were before the war, and the situation in their country is set to improve substantially over the next few years.
I am not saying that everything is perfect over there. Of course there are problems, and of course there are situations unfavourable to us. But at the same time, they are no longer under Saddam. They can say what they want. They can believe what they wish.
Much of the State Department opposed the war, preferring diplomatic solutions to the problem. Here [state.gov] is their report on the human rights record of Iraq and Saddam.
Getting rid of that beast of a ruler is, in my opinion, the best investment we could make for a better, safer middle east.
You are, of course, free to disagree with me.
But to say Bush is just as bad a ruler as Saddam Hussein is simply not a supportable argument, even as hyperbole.
D
Re:2 cents. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously though, next time maybe you could provide specific examples -- what exactly about "Bowling for Columbine" is non-fact?
Re:2 cents. (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of them (the kids didn't really go bowling that day!) are silly, but the cut and paste jobs on the Willie Horton ad, and particularly the shredding of Charlton Heston's words [hardylaw.net] are utterly, flagrantly outside anything acceptable in documentaries. It is appalling that the documentary community and the Academy tolerated it.
All political pundit books (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:All political pundit books (Score:5, Funny)
Re:All political pundit books (Score:5, Informative)
I frequently read "spinsanity.com" and they covered all of these books. They try to be fair and objective, and what I've concluded is that the wave of books from the left, which followed the wave from the right, tend to more factually supported and less fanciful. Moore is a bit flamboyant and admittedly exaggerates, but Al Franken does mix in good satire with his solid facts, and Joe Conason was really sincere in his attempt to shed light. Compare those three to the rants of O'Reilly, Coulter, et al, that serve no other purpose than to revv folks up for war.
right here... (Score:3, Informative)
I read My Cold War [amazon.com] 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 [tompiazza.com] on his
The Da Vinci Code (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm looking forward to his next book which will be about Freemasonry.
Re:Life of Pi (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Quicksilver is leaden (Score:5, Interesting)
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
The history of science is "in" (Score:4, Interesting)
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 :-)
Linux From Scratch (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Score:3, Interesting)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Patrick O'Brian - Historical Fiction (Score:3, Interesting)
Shocking But True: The Gunslinger (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably I'm biased (Score:3, Informative)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Jasper Fforde (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Best Books I've read this year (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [amazon.com] 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 [amazon.com] , 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 [amazon.com] , Nova [amazon.com] and the duplex Babel-17/Empire Star [amazon.com] , along with his short story collection Aye, and Gomorrah... and other stories [amazon.com] 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 [amazon.com] and A Place So Foregin and Eight Mor [amazon.com] e [amazon.com]) 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 [amazon.com]. 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.
Non-stereotypical geek books (Score:3, Interesting)
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
The Art of Deception... (Score:3, Interesting)
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."
Life of Pi and Middlesex (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Life of Pi and Middlesex (Score:3, Insightful)
Big Idea Book of the Year -The New Financial Order (Score:3, Interesting)
Quicksilver (Score:3, Interesting)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Score:3, Funny)
Post Anony is too damn close to Submit! My rep is ruined!
Damn you Slashdot! Damn you!!!
Oh, this isn't the *real* ShortedOut... no, I'm his co-worker.. yeah, that's it... A co-worker that likes Harry Potter, yeah...
The real ShortedOut is way cool, he dates Carmen Electra, has a 12 inch peen, drives a Harley, and is on Linus's phone-a-friend list for Who Wants to be a Linux Programmer.
Re:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't worry about it -- screw people who don't like it just because it's popular. It's a great series of books. I'm with Stephen King when he says the series is "one for the ages" that will stand the test of time along with Tolkien, Wizard of Oz, or name your classic of literature.
Or alternatively, (Score:3, Informative)
The Scar, Ilium, The Knight, Fourth Mansions (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're interested in slightly more detailed descriptions of what I've read this year, you can check out my reading diary [io.com].
Best book is a wakeup call... (Score:3)
A Short History of Nearly Everything (Score:3, Interesting)
Two Mathematics books (Score:3, Interesting)
It Must Be Beautiful (Score:3, Informative)
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.
of 70 books reviewed this year... (Score:3, Insightful)
- The Marx Family Saga [dannyreviews.com] (Juan Goytisolo)
- The Viceroy of Ouidah [dannyreviews.com] (Bruce Chatwin)
- Ka [dannyreviews.com] (Roberto Calasso)
- China: Empire of the Written Symbol [dannyreviews.com] (Cecilia Lindqvist)
- The Visual Display of Quantiative Information [dannyreviews.com] (Edward Tufte)
- The Earthsea Trilogy [dannyreviews.com] (Ursula Le Guin)
Of course none of those were published this year, but my reading is rarely "cutting-edge".Danny.
The worst? (Score:3, Funny)
- A.P.
Re:Quicksilver (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Quicksilver (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re:Quicksilver (Score:3, Interesting)
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 realisi
Quicksilver a total disaster (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
And another thing regarding Quicksilver... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Quicksilver (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Michael Moore (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Non-fiction, correct? (Score:4, Offtopic)
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.
Re:Answer: The Bible (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Worst: Clancy's "Teeth of the Tiger" (Score:3, Insightful)