Intimidating Books

[LucidElement]

I’m reading Blood Memory by Greg Isles . It’s going good.

And after reading these replies I’ve looked into a couple of book titles spoken about, some sound great and others , lets just say , bettter you then me.

[+Not A Rockstar]

8 hours ago, LucidElement said:

Off topic... can’t believe the refs missed that helmet to helmet and the pass interference . If that was the patriots, there would have been 10 flags thrown lol. Ok, back to the topic at handD. 

But I feel for ya brotha. And I like your logo.

 

Thanks!

It was a disappointment, and with 2 refs standing right there facing it and hearing it, and with Sean screaming and pointing, they did not throw a flag. I am not sure if it was missed. But, idk. Still, bad calls happen. Blame the refs and scream. if need be. You cannot seriously believe not one ref was looking and watching where the fool BALL was going. I get it if they miss something over here or there, but the BALL is kinda meaningful for at least one ref to be watching sail down into the penalty action.

But, I don't blame the Rams. That is ridiculous, and all the crying now in Atlanta is a disgrace IMO. I think every team has a bad call, or missed one that ruined a game for them. Get over it before someone gets hurt.  

And to bring it back on topic, word is some refs cannot read the Book of Game Rules for the NFL  

[Daughter of the Nine Moons]

On 1/23/2019 at 4:09 PM, bison said:

Dune, by Frank Herbert.

I don't know if intimidation is the right word for it but it is definitely a book that I have repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to read  

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

On 24/01/2019 at 9:19 AM, Piney said:

I've read all the books so many times I lost count. Frank's not Brian's. Brian's suck

In defence of Brian and Kevin ... it does pick up some things laid down by Frank (such as the Machine Empire, snd Duncan as Kwizatshadderach), UTTERLY messes up the major plot point left by Frank (Matty and Daniel EXPLICITLY and speaking only to each other refer to themselves as Face Dancers) and are far more “spaceships and sandworms” then Dune is. 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

I found Foundation to be hard going on the first read, but loved it on the second.

[Space Commander Travis]

 Foucault's Pendulum., I did have it but gave it away I think. 

[Piney]

2 hours ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

In defence of Brian and Kevin ... it does pick up some things laid down by Frank (such as the Machine Empire, snd Duncan as Kwizatshadderach), UTTERLY messes up the major plot point left by Frank (Matty and Daniel EXPLICITLY and speaking only to each other refer to themselves as Face Dancers) and are far more “spaceships and sandworms” then Dune is. 

That's what got me so mad.

Matty and Daniel were Face Dancers  who stored up thousands of memories and gained sentience and the Honored Matre's enemy was the group of Face Dancers who they were part of. Not the former Machine Empire. But they also portrayed Murbella as being more immature and not as wise and Murbella's daughters as twits. 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

2 minutes ago, Piney said:

That's what got me so mad.

Matty and Daniel were Face Dancers  who stored up thousands of memories and gained sentience and the Honored Matre's enemy was the group of Face Dancers who they were part of. Not the former Machine Empire. But they also portrayed Murbella as being more immature and not as wise and Murbella's daughters as twits. 

They could have easily worked “Omnus” into the plot even while keeping Matty and Daniel as Face Dancers, The Honoured Matres we’re running from the Machines, voila - Omnus. Matty and Daniel think they’re important but they’re functions of the evolution of humanity - all our sins remembered and repayed. Omnus is the ultimate end, humanity forgiving its children and those children forgiving them.

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

They could have easily worked “Omnus” into the plot even while keeping Matty and Daniel as Face Dancers, The Honoured Matres we’re running from the Machines, voila - Omnus. Matty and Daniel think they’re important but they’re functions of the evolution of humanity - all our sins remembered and repayed. Omnus is the ultimate end, humanity forgiving its children and those children forgiving them.

Kinda Battlestar Galactacky! I don't think the Machines coming back into the picture was in Frank's mind. 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

9 minutes ago, Piney said:

Kinda Battlestar Galactacky! I don't think the Machines coming back into the picture was in Frank's mind. 

The reference to the machines chasing the HM suggests a seed being planted to me, but the idea of “the last threat” foreseen by The God Worm being something we did to ourselves (Face Dancers, Machines, Keith Richards) fits. 

[Piney]

7 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

The reference to the machines chasing the HM suggests a seed being planted to me, but the idea of “the last threat” foreseen by The God Worm being something we did to ourselves (Face Dancers, Machines, Keith Richards) fits. 

I think Frank intended it to be a group of Tleilax creations run by Face Dancers with thousands of absorbed memories and some of their own creations.  Why would a Machine Empire have to breed Futars? Diseases?  They could just build "Terminators". 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

1 minute ago, Piney said:

I think Frank intended it to be a group of Tleilax creations run by Face Dancers with thousands of absorbed memories and some of their own creations.  Why would a Machine Empire have to breed Futars? Diseases?  They could just build "Terminators". 

OHH EVIL reflections of thr BG and Paul and “other memory”, works for me. 

Building to a future where humanity is free of the past and protected from the future (invisible to precognition). 

[Piney]

17 minutes ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

OHH EVIL reflections of thr BG and Paul and “other memory”, works for me. 

 

Think about this. Knowing Frank's brilliance, I think mankind's first threat was the machines but it's second threat was our manipulations of genetics and nature.

This was the man who created a working self contained ecosystem (biosphere) when a team at NASA couldn't. 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

26 minutes ago, Piney said:

Think about this. Knowing Frank's brilliance, I think mankind's first threat was the machines but it's second threat was our manipulations of genetics and nature.

This was the man who created a working self contained ecosystem (biosphere) when a team at NASA couldn't. 

Man's inherent desire to be controlled/let someone else make the decisions was always the problem for Herbert (there's a lovely clip of him on YouTube calling Nixon the best President you ever had because he showed how fallible the office was), first that resulted in the Machine Uprising (we created machines because we were lazy, eventually we were so lazy we let them think for us) which was defeated by man's expression of self determination, only for that to be corrupted into the Imperial system by the forces of commerce and sex (the Guild and the Bene Gesserit). Then we got the era of Prescient Emperors, who broke those previous two controls, while once again shackling man to a powerful demagogue. The last demagogue did his damnedest to make sure all of humanity never fell under the heel of another demagogue. 

That leaves the question though - has humanity learnt it's lesson? Herbert had a low opinion of the common humanity. But he was also fundamentally optimistic. Man, to Herbert, will never become Star Trek's enlightened socialists, but it'd also never become the Warhammer 40k single, easily replaceable cog, in a system that's forgotten why it exists in the first place. 

 

You're right, the first threat was the machines we created to do the thinking for us, the second threat was the god we attempted to create to do the thinking for us (the Kwitasahadderach (it's too late in the evening to look the correct spilling up). the third threat then … would be the result of us thinking for ourselves. Face Dancers are mostly human.....

[Jodie.Lynne]

The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Took me forever and a day to get through them

"Frodo was tired from carrying the ring, Carrying the ring was a strain for Frodo that made him tired. Sam was worried that Frodo was too tired from carrying the ring; the ring that weighed him down and made him tired..."

I don't know if it was Tolkien's design, but I was as exhausted as frigging Frodo, just from reading how tired he was.

[SHaYap]

For myself, among Tolkien's many tomes , it was The Silmarillion that was the hardest to get through.
 

Quote

 

~

The Silmarillion - Wikipedia

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion

The Silmarillion is a collection of mythopoeic works by English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, edited and published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien, ...

Pages‎: ‎365

Editor‎: ‎Christopher Tolkien‎; with ‎Guy Gavriel K...

Cover artist‎: ‎J. R. R. Tolkien‎ (device)

Preceded by‎: ‎The Father Christmas Letters

‎Quenta Silmarillion · ‎Mythopoeia · ‎Beleriand · ‎Of the Rings of Power

 

~

 

 

[Orphalesion]

On 1/23/2019 at 9:50 PM, Vlad the Mighty said:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (provide accents and things where appropriate.) What I have read of it is often quite funny, but it keeps wandering off into sort of magical surreality and stuff, and seems to take ages to make any progress. 

I'm so struggling with that book! I don't like Realism (as in the literary movement popular during the mid/late 19th century) to begin with, but with the "Fantastic Realism" employed by Marques I'm not even sure what of the more surreal elements of the book I am supposed to take seriously  or metaphorically. My South American friend was able to put some things into context (such as how none of the inhabitants seems to know where their damn village is located precisely), but that doesn't really make me more engaged in the rest of the tale.

The last time I gave up was when that one son of someone or the other  gets busy with that old village woman...

Has anybody read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms?

I've been thinking about reading it lately, since I've never read a book written in China. Though I'd like to know what others who have read might have thought about it. Also I'd like to know...

1)Are there interesting female characters in it?
2) On the characters in general: are they complex and interesting? Do we learn what makes them tick and all, or are they more like the very broad strokes characters in, let's say, the Iliad?

Edited March 16, 2019 by Orphalesion

[LucidElement]

On 1/23/2019 at 4:38 PM, Impedancer said:

In my opinion read these Douglas Adams - The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse nr 5, George Orwell - 1984 , George Orwell - Animal farm,  Joseph Heller - Catch 22, Albert Camus - the stranger all good books some is not that intimidating but you cant stop reading them.

Only saw the movie for the hitchhikers guide .... book was better i take it eh?

 

Animal Farm was awesome.

['Walt' E. Kurtz]

1 minute ago, LucidElement said:

Only saw the movie for the hitchhikers guide .... book was better i take it eh?

 

Animal Farm was awesome.

The book is way better than the movie the movie is sort of partly based on the book. Yes animal farm is great :-)

[+Desertrat56]

I never found a book intimidating, if I start a book and put it down it is usually because it is boring or poorly written or I am too busy to read for a while.  There are books I find difficult because of the style like The 12th Planet by Zachariah Sitchen, dry as a bone, though the subject interested me it was hard to read.  But The Illiad, that was a good book.  It took me 3 weeks to read it when I was in 9th grade because it is thicker than War and Peace.   Another one I didn't get far in was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, what a bunch of tripe.  Anyway, I am a bibliophile and love good writing and good stories.  I have not read Game of Thrones, though it has been recommended to me by a lot of people.  Only two other books I have started and quit after finishing the 4th chapter and they were Bringers of the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak and The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle.  Not intimidating, just annoying.

I even read A Course in Miracles which is hard to read with all the double and tripple negatives, and long sentences.  But I did get something out of it, just could have been written in better language, but then it would have been 1/3 the length and no one would have needed study groups to get the messages. 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Desertrat56

[+Desertrat56]

On 1/26/2019 at 12:08 AM, LucidElement said:

That’s funny, I came across that book on shelves and there was a big gasp about it in reviews. Something  told me not to buy it, and I didn’t .. guess it was the right call. Lol

I didn't read that one but I did read The Martian.  It was fun and Andy Weir is a fairly good writer but the whole thing seemed like a book you would give junior high students to read for science class so you could get them to think about science. 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Desertrat56

[+Desertrat56]

On 1/23/2019 at 1:50 PM, Dumbledore the Awesome said:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (provide accents and things where appropriate.) What I have read of it is often quite funny, but it keeps wandering off into sort of magical surreality and stuff, and seems to take ages to make any progress. 

That sounds like Lord of the Rings.  5 chapters to walk up a hill. 

[+Desertrat56]

On 1/23/2019 at 2:09 PM, bison said:

Stranger in a Strange Land  by Robert Heinlein. It was very popular and much acclaimed in its day. I found it unreadable, despite my fondness for science fiction. I had the same reaction to the similarly famous classic Dune, by Frank Herbert.

Some of my favorites.  Maybe it is a generational thing.  Stranger in a Strange land was like Once and Future King.  Heinlein was making a statement about society.  If you didn't live in the time that he wrote it in the U.S. it would just be confusing.

[+Desertrat56]

On 1/23/2019 at 2:09 PM, Piney said:

I read that several times. Although there is some goofy points it still took me a few months to initally to get through. 

I must be a weirdo, I read those books in my "book a day" high school days, along with a lot of other classics.  I found Isaac Asimov to be an easy read, no matter what he wrote.  Of course I was the girl in the back of the library reading during luch or hanging out with the nerds. 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Desertrat56

[+Desertrat56]

On 1/23/2019 at 7:00 PM, Jenn8779 said:

For me, it's The Davinci Code. Let me say that I LOVE to read and will read anything. But I just can't with this book. And I've never seen the movie because I want to read the book first... LOL I don't get it....

I thought the Da Vinci code was tripe.  Old ideas and hack writing.  I did finish it though I figured out who the bad guy was by the middle of the book.  Dan Brown is not a writer.  That was one instance where the movie made the story a bit better but it was still boring.