Picked up any good reads at the bookstore?

[justmyopinion]

I had no idea that Larsson was dead

[Amazed]

Stieg Larsson died suddenly in 2004 leaving his fourth Salander book unfinished. So unfinished that it will never be publshed.

[Repat Van]

The finale was rather quick. I read Duma Key which was absolutely brilliant, and that had a rather loooooong ending.

[lala]

Lines 42-3: In its vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God Himself—they add with grim profanity—could not find out what work a man's hand is doing in there; and you would be free to call the devil to your aid with impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a blind darkness.

These lines are veritably laden with ominous doom. Reality fades away out on the gulf, the solid ship seeming to become ethereal as you traverse the mysterious invisible line from reasoned, substantial sane Europe into the murky and spirit haunted world of Costaguana. Ships, to Conrad, were difficult things. As a sailor, you would have thought he regarded them as solid and reliable, but there is an element of doubt in his regard for them. In The Nigger of the Narcissus, the ship appears to enchant the crew, drawing them into a fatal self regard. In The Shadow Line, 'Youth' and 'The Secret Sharer', the ship seems more than just a mode of transport and nothing as tediously predictable as a living thing itself or a world in miniature. The are more like mysterious hosts in which the parasitical crew make their insignificant lives but whose purpose is is ineffable and only vaguely coincidental with ours. Here in Nostromo - the least shippy of Conrad's novels - this ambivalence is fully realised, with the ship seeming to depart entirely from the sensib le world of sailors and marlin spikes, and slip into a ghostly world of madness. Treasure, the essence of Costaguana, and the object that lures the characters to perdition, is the unreal allure of glittering stones on the riverbed, which convert in moments to dull pebbles in the sun, once plucked from the glamorising water into the world of rationality.

The second sentence above is striking, as Conrad appears to posit a world where darkness seems to be a supreme quality, confounding even the devil, and exists separately from him, or it. It is more like a force or energy that exists - a sort of dark matter, perhaps, as intrinsic and yet alien to the world we live in as light is to dark. God, of course, starts things off in the Bible by saying, "Let there be light." The darkness is primordial and precedes everything. Conrad understood it, and he understood also that barbarity precedes civilisation - but also that civilisation was simply barbarity dressed up in nice clothes and behaving itself at table. This depressing notion finds its fullest expression in Heart of Darkness, of course, but is also present here, in Nostromo, where success requires the loss of one's soul and they only way to preserve the faintest shred of it is to fail, eternally and willingly. Presumably, the gringos mentioned in the opening paragraphs found the treasure they sought, because otherwise they would not have been damned to linger eternally, as Gould and Nostromo and the others will be damned to linger, in the unreal world of Costaguana.

[mids]

Neptune's Brood:

Krina Alizond is a metahuman in a universe where the last natural humans became extinct five thousand years ago. When her sister goes missing she embarks on a daring voyage across the star systems to find her, travelling to her last known location - the mysterious water-world of Shin-Tethys.

In a universe with no faster-than-light travel that's a dangerous journey, made all the more perilous by the arrival of an assassin on Krina's tail, by the 'privateers' chasing her sister's life insurance policy and by growing signs that the disappearance is linked to one of the biggest financial scams in the known universe.

[lala]

Let me guess - Gordon Brown turns out to be behind the scam?

[mids]

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. A non-human cLuNk made from mechanocytes, essentially able to replicate himself in different forms.

[Minge är en jävla besserwisser]

Stoner by John Williams

[Repat Van]

I don't buy books, I borrow them from the library. I just finished The Stranger. Pretty good.

[Repat Van]

Going to try Shantaram. After three false starts...

[lala]

On the subject of false starts, how is Nostromo going, Ming?

[flatandy]

Thinking of the dreary Heart of Darkness, I've finally got around to In The Footsteps Of Mr Kurtz, which is effectively the follow-on to King Leopold's Ghost to get us up through the Mobutu era.

It's infinitely more readable than Conrad's Carry On Up The Congo.

[mids]

Everyone should exclusively read space operas.

[flatandy]

Thinking of Space Opera, I tried to watch Jupiter Ascending on the plane here a couple of days ago. It was quite possibly the most unwatchable, incoherent piece of tripe I've ever seen. Eat, Pray, Love was probably worse, but at least it had a coherent (if hideous) story arc.

[Repat Van]

Edge of Tomorrow is awesome. I watched that on the plane. It was great.

[Minge är en jävla besserwisser]

May 20, 2015 10:11:12 GMT lala said:

On the subject of false starts, how is Nostromo going, Ming?

Barreling through, absolutely barreling through it.

I may get it of storage again. It's time for another bash at it.

[Deleted]

Trainspotting and Zuleika Dobson.

[Marshall]

Re. Space Opera - I'm almost through the Knight's Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton. Very good but would recommend Pandora's Star/Judas Unchained over it. If you like space opera you should give them a go.

Last month I picked up Hawaii by James Michener, something to read on my vacation there. I was surprised at how good it was. It bogged down at the end a bit (~1000 pages) but what a story teller.

Next up is The Razor's Edge.

[lala]

As in Somerset Maugham? I read Of Human Bondage a while back. It was really, really bad.

[Marshall]

Yes, that one.

Really? Haven't read anything by him before but since he seems to be considered one of the "greats" of the last century thought I'd delve in.
What was bad about it?