TSF Book Club
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Just finished Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'. Had a goal this year to try and read one of her works, the audiobook available for free online (I assume legal due to its age..but maybe I'm not 100% on that). I put it off for a long time as I normally have problems reading old books, language changes too much and they tend to bore me, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' for example.
The Fountainhead was published in 1943 so predates TKAM by some 17 years so I did not have very high hopes for it and expected I'd give it up after a few chapters. Turns out it is a terrific book, nothing like I'd normally read but I was quickly engrossed in the story. The language wasn't too dated, there was a heck of a lot of 'gay' in its previous meaning and I now intend to try and bring back the word 'bromide' in 2020 as it sounds pretty cool.
There are definitely some deeper political, philosophical and historical undertones to be read into however the story itself isn't reliant on an understanding of those but can be taken at face value. Anyway I highly recommend, will definitely be checking out 'Atlas Shrugged' next year.
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@Rembrandt Atlas Shrugged (parts I, II & III) are on Amazon Prime if you have it.
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@voodoo said in TSF Book Club:
I'm re-reading Tyler Hamilton's book The Secret Race. Not many biographies capable of being re-read, but this one has enough info, data, rich characters, and sheer audacity to still be super interesting the 2nd time around.
I think I read it at the start of every TdF.
It's such a "great" story well told it's easy to re-read
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Finally knocked off another book goal, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago' (Abridged Version)
Took me far too long to finish it. In part was moving to another address which meant I no longer could get a seat on the train but also in part due to some sections being difficult to follow while others I followed all too well but were infuriating to read when parallelled with certain ideas and individuals gaining mainstream appeal today.
There is no doubt this is a masterpiece, having been described as the book that 'brought down an empire'. It should be required reading at highschools today (I believe it is in Russia). We all know the horrors of Nazi Germany but knowledge amongst young people especially seem to be lacking on the unbelievable horrors of socialism and communism.
It's written in a weird sort of prose which can at times be hard to follow. I think I understand why it is written like that, when you have lived through some of the worst horror imaginable, trying to even find a foothold to explain the sheer magnitude of millions of people arrested, exhiled, unpersoned, tortured, enslaved, starved and murdered is almost impossible. Parts are almost written as if he's not so much making a joke of the situation but just that the reality is so insane that you almost have to laugh except you can't because its literally describing hell. It's all that more terrifying in that what underpins it still exists unrealised today in so many people.
"This was the nub of the plan: the peasant's seed must perish together with the adults. Since Herod was no more, only the Van-guard Doctrine has shown us how to destroy utterly - down to the very babes. Hitler was a mere disciple, but he had all the luck: his murder camps have made him famous, whereas no one as any interest in ours at all"
Anyway, highly recommend but it will take time to get through.
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@Crucial @Tim I'm rapidly working my way through these now (up to Book 5). Sometimes Herron's lyricism comes across as Snoopy's "it was a dark and stormy night" and can be a bit jarring. I usually note this in his first chapter descriptions, then either he stops or I get used to it. Can't quibble with his characters though. Bloody brilliant. Plots are real page turners too.
Is page turners going to be one of those weird sayings that live on years after their literal meaning has become redundant? Like taping a TV programme decades after tape died - although that's not the best example as recording stuff is also dated now.
Crucial have you read his other series?
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@dogmeat said in TSF Book Club:
@Crucial @Tim I'm rapidly working my way through these now (up to Book 5). Sometimes Herron's lyricism comes across as Snoopy's "it was a dark and stormy night" and can be a bit jarring. I usually note this in his first chapter descriptions, then either he stops or I get used to it.
I always took that as a deliberate style. Trying to set a banal scene then populating it with fuck-ups.
Can't quibble with his characters though. Bloody brilliant. Plots are real page turners too.
You learn never to get comfortable with the characters. Just as you start feeling sympathetic to them they do something really screwy.
Is page turners going to be one of those weird sayings that live on years after their literal meaning has become redundant? Like taping a TV programme decades after tape died - although that's not the best example as recording stuff is also dated now.
You still 'turn the page' even on an e-book IMO.
Crucial have you read his other series?
No, I keep meaning to though.
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Just finished Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder , hard going all the way through. The only âlight reliefâ in the whole thing was some Stalinist arsehole who created a panic and decided there was thousands of Polish spies operating in his area of Russia so purged people for crimes like having a vaguely Polush surname . Unfortunately the numbers of people he had killed ( around 30000 ) werenât enough to satisfy his superior in the Soviet government who decided the reason he was holding back was that he must also be a Polish spy so he was killed too .
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@jegga said in TSF Book Club:
Just finished Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder , hard going all the way through. The only âlight reliefâ in the whole thing was some Stalinist arsehole who created a panic and decided there was thousands of Polish spies operating in his area of Russia so purged people for crimes like having a vaguely Polush surname . Unfortunately the numbers of people he had killed ( around 30000 ) werenât enough to satisfy his superior in the Soviet government who decided the reason he was holding back was that he must also be a Polish spy so he was killed too .
great book
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@mariner4life said in TSF Book Club:
@jegga said in TSF Book Club:
Just finished Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder , hard going all the way through. The only âlight reliefâ in the whole thing was some Stalinist arsehole who created a panic and decided there was thousands of Polish spies operating in his area of Russia so purged people for crimes like having a vaguely Polush surname . Unfortunately the numbers of people he had killed ( around 30000 ) werenât enough to satisfy his superior in the Soviet government who decided the reason he was holding back was that he must also be a Polish spy so he was killed too .
great book
Have you read any of Vassily Grossmans books? Thinking one of his should be next
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@jegga said in TSF Book Club:
Vassily Grossmans
the name rings a bell, but a quick squiz at Wiki and i don't recognise any of the book titles
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@Crucial said in TSF Book Club:
I always took that as a deliberate style. Trying to set a banal scene then populating it with fuck-ups.
It's the florid style - always a long metaphor to set the scene
âIn some parts of the world dawn arrives with rosy fingers, to smooth away the creases left by night. But on Aldersgate Street in the London Borough of Finsbury, it comes wearing safe-crackers gloves, so as not to leave prints on the windowsillâs and door-knob; it squints through keyholes, sizes up locks, and generally cases the joint ahead of the approaching dayâHe continues with this creeping dawn for over three pages. It's very different to the rest of the book(s). Almost baroque
@Crucial said in TSF Book Club:
You still 'turn the page' even on an e-book IMO.
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@mariner4life said in TSF Book Club:
@jegga said in TSF Book Club:
Vassily Grossmans
the name rings a bell, but a quick squiz at Wiki and i don't recognise any of the book titles
Snyder quotes him a fair bit, I'll see how this goes https://www.audible.com/pd/Life-and-Fate-The-Complete-Series-Dramatised-Audiobook/B005VEQ9VY?qid=1581394358&sr=1-1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=KM47VPYRTRFAF5DENDYD&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1
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Has anyone ever read any Reacher books? I got given one for Xmas, and I finally ran out of other stuff to read so I picked it up. It's called Blue Moon.
Holy shit, is it bad. The plot is ludicrous and the characters are insanely inconsistent - I think it was the swift character transition from regular society member to person capable of being part of murder and decapitation that finally got me.
Such junk. I hope the earlier stuff was better so Child's at least partially deserves his success.
