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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 19, 2015 13:14:20 GMT
I hope the readers on librivox are good. I couldn't stand listening to my creative writing teacher. I mean, I like him, and he's good at his job, but when it comes to reading aloud? It's so . . . boring. There's no inflection, like, at all. Put an exclamation point or question mark? If he's reading it, might as well replace it with a period. When he reads things aloud, I'm like, "Can't you let someone else do it?" Cuz there were good storytellers in my class. At least we each got to read our own piece during the workshops (which is most of the reading aloud), but during competitions, no one is supposed to know who wrote what, and so he reads them all. I feel like it takes away the experience. A lot. Eheh, sorry for going on a rant . . .
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rainbowcupcake
Full Member
JA is so absurdly gorgeous it's not even funny anymore. It's ruining my life
Posts: 142
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Post by rainbowcupcake on Jun 22, 2015 0:07:51 GMT
So, I read Laini Taylor's series and I got sucked into the world allright.
Now I've started "False Memory" (don't remember the author's name right now). I heard about it in a book review that I stumbled upon rather randomly and decided to check it out. The review was really positive..but so far I'm not really convinced. I'm not very far into it, so I'll probably give it some more time, but yeah, so far...the plot seems very confused (note, confused, not confusing), and nonsensical and just...yikes. And one thing about the writing, that's really starting to annoy me: the author's use of the word "says", because, so far he's used literally no other variation of it. It's either "says" or nothing at all. It get's a little bland after a while.
It's such a vastly different experience compared to Taylor's books before. With her's, I barely stopped reading, and even then it was often in the wee hours of the morning, because I just couldn't tear myself away. With "False Memory" I'm barely feeling the want to read at all.
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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 22, 2015 18:51:11 GMT
That sounds like me and The Prince and the Pauper. I don't really remember much about the syntax or plotline of the story at all, but I know that it was basically the only one that I've ever read that I really didn't want to keep reading. But I had to, since it was for school, and so it took me around a month to read it when usually books would take me a week if not a weekend.
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rainbowcupcake
Full Member
JA is so absurdly gorgeous it's not even funny anymore. It's ruining my life
Posts: 142
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Post by rainbowcupcake on Jun 24, 2015 3:25:11 GMT
Well, the good thing is that I don't have to read it, and I've officially given up on "False Memory". I mean, the initial premise "girl wakes up without memories" was enough for me to at least check it out, but it just went downhill from there. The whole idea behind the plot just seems so..stupid to me. Just plain stupid. Maybe it makes more sense later on, but Krokos (the author) isn't really giving me anything that will hold me until 'later'. I can't connect to any of the characters, the writing itself is okay, but nothing more, and it feels like a plotless action movie in book form. Not really my cup of tea. So I dropped that and picked up "A thousand Pieces of You". It's one of the books I choose for the 2015 reading challenge, and it's the one where you pick the book just by the cover. I went in completely blind, I didn't read a summary or anything, and so far I'm enjoying it. I don't know a lot about what's actually going on, but it's got something to do with travelling to different dimensions in a multiverse. Interesting enough for me, though I'm not sure how well the science in the book would hold up in the real world Anyway, it's far better than "False Memory", the writing feels more..polished? The characters are more alive and have more personality, and even though it's past 5 a.m. and I haven't slept, I just want to keep reading. Alas, I guess it'll have to wait until tomorrow/later.
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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 24, 2015 3:57:14 GMT
That sounds like the opposite of me with the Books of Umber, with the initial premise being "boy wakes up without memories" and everything going uphill from there.
Just looked A Thousand Pieces of You up and read the summary, and it's sounding really interesting. Maybe I should check it out.
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rainbowcupcake
Full Member
JA is so absurdly gorgeous it's not even funny anymore. It's ruining my life
Posts: 142
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Post by rainbowcupcake on Jun 25, 2015 1:42:19 GMT
I might check out the Books of Umber too, sometime *adds them to evergrowing to-read-list*, but first, the sequel to A Thousand Pieces of You. I finished the first one, and I wasn't sure whether or not it was a series, so I checked, and lo and behold: there's more! A small ficlet and a second book, and a third one in the making.
Okay, so, A Thousand Pieces of You. I think it was great. There were some nice plot twists, sometimes with a few more hints, sometimes with a few less. I won't really go into all the sci-fi science tech stuff, because really, when does that ever work out? Just, this one thing, okay. So, to travel between dimensions, they need these special devices. And the whole underlying concept that makes it possible to send people to different dimensions is that you can send energy, but matter is a different thing. But aren't thoses devices matter? And they travel with the "soul" or whatever every time. So - eh, what now?
One thing I liked is, that when they travel, their consciousness basically overtakes the one in the body of their own self in the other dimension (they can only travel to dimensions where they exist, or a version of them, or whatever). Okay, that's not exactly the thing I liked, but rather how the author actually raised doubts about the morality of doing something like that, because, really what the hell are you doing to that other consciousness? It's kind of..cruel. Those doubts came, admittedly, a bit late, but then again, it kinda fit that way, because it was at a pace that I would think was normal for the main character to figure it out, too. Because you don't really think about things like that unless they hit close to home (or you're a very objective reader of a book, but hey)
Now taking a step back and just looking at it from a wider point of view, I'd like to say: Interdimensional travel and infinite possibilities? Hell yeah. Like, even taking aside all the writing and characterization and stuff like that, this is the kind of thing that makes me think about it even long after I've finished reading, or that makes me stop reading randomly, where I'll just stare at the page/screen and think about things that make my brain hurt until my brain hurts. I love that kind of stuff. Even though it makes my brain hurt. This post feels very confusing. I should probably stop, it's too late.
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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 25, 2015 1:49:03 GMT
Lol, sounds like you enjoyed it
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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 25, 2015 19:29:24 GMT
So I thought about getting A Thousand Pieces of You from the library today . . . But the library closest to us has it checked out, the library next closest to us has it missing, as well as a hold when they find it again or get another one, and the third closest/farthest one that we would go to also has it checked out *sighs*
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rainbowcupcake
Full Member
JA is so absurdly gorgeous it's not even funny anymore. It's ruining my life
Posts: 142
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Post by rainbowcupcake on Jun 25, 2015 23:01:08 GMT
Sounds like it's popular^^ And it looks like I mixed things up. The second book isn't actually out yet, it's going to be released at the end of the year. Damn, that sucks, I really wanted to read it
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Post by Nikudou Natsumi on Jun 25, 2015 23:25:49 GMT
Ooh, does that mean the series is somewhat new, then?
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TinyTantei
Full Member
Current emotion: nah.
Posts: 188
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Post by TinyTantei on Jun 26, 2015 1:15:30 GMT
There are so many scifi/fantasy books I want to read...but I'm sitting here reading Les Miserables for, like, the fifth time.........
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rainbowcupcake
Full Member
JA is so absurdly gorgeous it's not even funny anymore. It's ruining my life
Posts: 142
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Post by rainbowcupcake on Jun 26, 2015 1:33:16 GMT
I think the first book came out last year, so yeah, I guess you could call that new.
I know what you mean, Tiny. Though I haven't actually reread any books lately. But I used to when I was younger, especially Harry Potter. I read all of them multiple times, but for some reason I read Order of the Phoenix more than fifteen times (I stopped counting after that), however that happened. Now I'm kind of on a 'devouring new stuff'-roll-thingy.
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neonkoi
Full Member
Does anyone else occasionally fear the wrath of their plot bunnies?
Posts: 166
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Post by neonkoi on Jul 10, 2015 1:58:03 GMT
Currently reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and many others..
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Post by Mikauzoran on Jul 12, 2015 3:24:48 GMT
So I finished reading One Hundred Years of Solitude about two weeks ago, and it was interesting. It follows this family that founded a village and the village down through several generations, and it's really neat. I liked the repetition of themes and tying things together from one generation to the next. The whole format of the story was just so cool. The author is seriously a masterful storyteller. Mad props to him. Unfortunately, while I can appreciate it as a writer as a piece of art that was very well done, I didn't actually like the book. ^.^; Since it's about a family and all of the descendants, there's a lot of who's sleeping with whom. I's all tastefully done (except for maybe two or three instances), but I'm a bit of a prude, and there was just too much sex, and I don't really like books like that. So it was a magnificently done book, but I didn't care for it.
After that I read Lord of the Flies. Like Animal Farm, this is another one of those books that I'd read excerpts from in school but had never actually read the book in its entirety. I think it was pretty okay. It had some neat concepts. I feel like we definitely need to implement a conch system in my household, and I feel that whenever someone mentions asthma from now on, I'll think "Sucks to your asthma." and giggle. I actually listened to this in audiobook format read by the author himself, and that was a really neat experience. I liked the little intro and epilogue the author did at the respective beginning and end of the audiobook. It just gave a little insight into what he was thinking, and it, like I said, was just really cool to have the author reading the book to you.
So while it wasn't a super special awesome book, I liked it well enough. The concept was cool, and certain parts were enjoyable. I liked the characters well enough. I liked the twins and Piggy best.
Right now I'm working on a collection of 300 of Aesop's fables. I never bother to read the Preface or Intros to most books when I physically read them, so listening in audiobook format has been really cool. I'm learning all sorts of background that's super interesting. I've just finished with the intro, so I'll start the actual fables on Monday at work.
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Post by Mikauzoran on Jul 12, 2015 3:45:38 GMT
Oh! I also read some ancient Greek plays! Lysistrata, Electra, Hecuba, and Hippolytus. Also from librivox. The acting one the first one was so-so, but the others were pretty good. They're each about an hour and a half.
Lysistrata was interesting. I'd heard about the play back in high school, but I'd never seen/read it. The premise is that Athens and Sparta are at war, and the women want to stop the war. Lysistrata comes up with a plan to withhold all manner of love and affection from the men until the guys make peace. Some parts were interesting, some were humorous. Some were quite bawdy! I was surprised, but it was kind of funny.
One thing that really surprised me about Greek drama in general (as I had had very, very little exposure to it) was the chorus. There were parts in all of the four plays where a chorus would all start speaking the same lines at once, as if they were the same character but were clearly there to represent and speak for many. So yeah. Nowadays we have an ensemble, and they'll take turns making comments, delivering lines. Very rarely does the ensemble say the same thing (sometimes very, very lengthy blocks of text) at the same time in a kind of almost chant. I might have to investigate the role of the Greek chorus in ancient dramas some more. I feel like I'm missing a big cultural/symbolic thing that the chorus is accomplishing.
Electra was a cool story. I honestly always thought that she was in love with her father because of the phrase "Electra complex" (like an Oedipus complex but with a girl and her father), but it turns out that her mom and her mom's lover killed her father because her father sacrificed her sister to the gods because her father did something that offended them. And now the queen and the new king treat Electra badly. Electra is waiting for her brother who she has sent off in order to save his life from their mother and her new husband to come back so that Electra and her brother can together avenge their murdered father. This one was interesting too.
Hecuba is the ex-queen of Troy, mother of Paris (yeah. That Paris with Helen and all that craziness). She's now a slave after Troy falls, and they want to sacrifice her daughter to Achilles's tomb after all of her other children and her husband have been killed. Well, except for the one son she sent off with a bag of gold to stay with a friend in order to keep the boy safe. So her daughter nobly allows herself to be sacrificed, and when Hecuba is mourning her daughter's brave sacrifice, her son's (the one she sent with the gold to stay with the friend) body washes up on the beach. Because the friend killed the young man for the bag of gold. Hecuba takes her revenge.
Lastly, Hippolytus is about Theseus's (on the island of Crete with the labyrinth and the minotaur) son Hippolytus. Theseus marries a new woman who falls in love with Hippolytus. When he rejects her, she hangs herself and leaves a note saying that he forced himself on her and that's why she killed herself. So Theseus has Hippolytus killed. And then Artemis comes and straightens things out.
They were all pretty interesting. I'd heard bits and pieces of the stories before, but it was cool to listen to some ancient plays.
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