Books - What are you reading?
Discussion
It gets grim doesn't it?Ayn Rand comes up every so often in this thread. Never heard anyone say they loved any of her books. I've heard a lot of people say her output self-indulgent boring pseudo-intellectual horses
t, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.
t, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.Blown2CV said:
Ayn Rand comes up every so often in this thread. Never heard anyone say they loved any of her books. I've heard a lot of people say her output self-indulgent boring pseudo-intellectual horsest, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.
t, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.
Too true. An old Uni friend, who comes from very humble roots but is now fairly successful, is oft to quote her more aggressive libertarian (sic) stuff on farcebook...suffice to say I've had less to do with him over the years.
havoc said:
Blown2CV said:
Ayn Rand comes up every so often in this thread. Never heard anyone say they loved any of her books. I've heard a lot of people say her output self-indulgent boring pseudo-intellectual horsest, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.
t, or words to that effect, however. Books for bellends to be seen holding, rather than to actually be read.Too true. An old Uni friend, who comes from very humble roots but is now fairly successful, is oft to quote her more aggressive libertarian (sic) stuff on farcebook...suffice to say I've had less to do with him over the years.
Fountainhead is one of those things people reference to seem clever. I genuinely tried to get into 'Anthem', mainly because i found a free audiobook on librevox, but the entire thing was written with each character referencing only first/second/third person plural because there is no concept of 'I' in this social utopia. It was so obvious and irritating that it made me want to join the storm troopers and go skull-cracking,
Actually people referencing books in a business context is quite a big peeve of mine. Sun Tzu's The Art of War being a good reason to want to punch your manager.
Women writers- disliked . Hmm. Is that because they have a low alien count , few references to AK47s or space shuttles ? If you are unconvinced by female authors try Goldfinch (Donna Tartt) or Postcards(Annie Proulx) for starters. If you don't like those you should be condemned to read Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer's dire efforts for all eternity!
coppice said:
Women writers- disliked . Hmm. Is that because they have a low alien count , few references to AK47s or space shuttles ? If you are unconvinced by female authors try Goldfinch (Donna Tartt) or Postcards(Annie Proulx) for starters. If you don't like those you should be condemned to read Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer's dire efforts for all eternity!
Interestingly, I read a sci-fi book on kindle unlimited a couple of weeks back.Female author.
Copious quantities of aliens, several space shuttles, various assorted weapons, some interesting ideas on the face of it.
Rave reviews on amazon, too. Ticks all the points you made above. Ticks all the boxes for what should be an entertaining read, surely?
Good god no. It was Dia-f
king-ohmybks-ical.Overly concerned with the main(female)characters relationship with the aliens, a male lead who is supposedly her boss, more skilled than her, who (somehow, god alone knows why because she's remarkably unlikable)becomes besotted with her(unrequited) and is all about 'communication', and the lead being the only one who can do this, mainly because she's, well, female.
In short, moronic female wish/power fulfillment s
te. I can only assume the majority of the positive reviewers are female (and a few minutes spent checking the reviews shows that ~95% are indeed thus).
Now, before I get accused of being bigoted - I'm not of the same view as the author of the original comment, because looking at the last couple of dozen books I've read, I'd say my book list was about 60:40 in favour of male authors - purely because 6 of those were a series by a male author.
What I will say is that men tend to prefer books (and movies) about things happening, women tend to prefer books about relationships.
A gross over simplification, but it holds true enough to show a decent correlation.
So men would tend to prefer books written by men (or by women writing in a masculine fashion), and vice versa.
There are exceptions - immediately after the s
tter above (it was the very next book), I read another book by a female author which was more fantasy toned, so on the face of it even more of a mills and boon fest...but it was infinitely better; witty, well written, highly entertaining. I even went onto the authors blog to see when the next one was due, which is incredibly rare for me.K12beano said:
Blown2CV said:
Actually people referencing books in a business context is quite a big peeve of mine. Sun Tzu's The Art of War being a good reason to want to punch your manager.
"Who Moved My Cheese?"
And that "Bl$$dy Fish Market Thingy"? - you know the one....
You love'em really!!!
I've still got Ubuntu to read that my current company gave to all of us some years ago.
Currently reading "Stapme: The Biography of Squadron Leader Gerald Stapleton", my PHSS present from Papa Hotel last year.
Although a bit dry in places due to the in-text listing of combat stats for every war flight mentioned in the book, it is nontheless a very interesting read and a good tale of the highs and lows of life in wartime fighter service.
Although a bit dry in places due to the in-text listing of combat stats for every war flight mentioned in the book, it is nontheless a very interesting read and a good tale of the highs and lows of life in wartime fighter service.
Just finished Christopher Brookmyre's "A big boy did it and ran away" - Really good, genuinely couldn't put it down at times, took it to work etc... It's also nice to read a book by an author who lives locally and you know the area he writes about really well - a fair chunk of it is about Glasgow Uni students in the west end, that's my life right now...
Moved on to Dracula, completely different but I'm trying to read a mix of classics and new books.
Moved on to Dracula, completely different but I'm trying to read a mix of classics and new books.
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