recent reads

[rone]

A while ago, i read Alan Moore's "Voice of the Fire", which is an interesting exercise in short stories with differing styles and voices but with common and repeated themes. The stories themselves are hit and miss, a couple of which were rendered unreadable to me by their stylistic conceit (i also have a vague suspicion that i'm not English enough to "get" it). I moved on to re-read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point", which is a fantastic read and, in a sense, shares a lot with chaos theory. I highly recommend it.

I'm currently reading Jorge Luis Borges's "Ficciones" (lent graciously by palecur); each short story is dense and causes me to read slowly, and Borges's broad lexicon is a significant factor (in English, two books have caused me to write words down for future reference: Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" and Aldous Huxley's "Those Barren Leaves"; now Borges causes that in Spanish). At first i was afraid that reading in Spanish was getting harder, but i'm pretty sure now that it's just Borges.

Comments

[jeff2001.livejournal.com]

The Diamond Age is a wonderful book.

Borges in the original is an apparition of incredible richness.

You recommended The Chronliths to me -- I read it recently. Not bad at all -- thanks.

(Were you the one who recommended John C. Wright to me? I can't remember. No soy como Funes el memorioso.)

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Hmm, i neither recommended the Chronliths nor John C. Wright.

Diamond Age was a pretty good book, but it really, desperately needs an ending.

[jeff2001.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- after the carefully thought ought & plotted setup, a payoff would've been nice.

You recommended Steven Brust. I wonder who recommended those other books. Anyway, I'm checking out the Moore, so a recommendation came out of this one way or another.

[gailg.livejournal.com]

The only one of the books that you've mentioned that I've read is "The Diamond Age." What were the words you wrote down?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I don't remember; after i looked them up, i threw the list away. "Bespoke" was one of them.

[purple-terror.livejournal.com]

I moved on to re-read Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"

Ooh. I've found the next book to put on my stack.

[plorkwort.livejournal.com]

i'm pretty sure now that it's just Borges.

This was the major problem when we started reading real literature in my highschool Spanish classes - how could we tell what was our failure at translation/comprehension from what was really just weird in the text?

[denshi.livejournal.com]

I adore Borges. The worlds he posits in 20 pages are bigger than worlds most authors need 600 pages to describe.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

The English translation of "Ficciones" is sitting in my "to be read" pile. I hope the translator did a good job...