oh my.


wow.

um.... Honey, is that a badger down yer pants or are you ECSTATIC to see me?

quote:

...Alice strikes me as a bit of a bully.

She's 10; you were expecting a lady?

Well, not everyone is automatically a bully at the age of ten, I think. Some 10-year-olds can be quite nice.

quote:

Originally posted by Hive:

quote:

Originally posted by Maeve:
It's like admitting you like romance books.

Well, just a few posts above yours I had admitted to reading a book whose cover looks like this...

I think I win the prize.

My first thought upon seeing the picture was, "Socks. Lots of socks."

quote:

Originally posted by Cassiopeia:
Well, not everyone is automatically a bully at the age of ten, I think. Some 10-year-olds can be quite nice.

Only when they know they're being observed.

quote:

Originally posted by Maeve:
um.... Honey, is that a badger down yer pants or are you ECSTATIC to see me?

Well, exactly! There is a limit to the "more is better" theory, I think.

They had NONE of the Diana Wynne Jones books y'all recommended! Well, Howl's Moving Castle was there and I might just get that one, too. So I got

this one

Eternals by Neil Gaiman.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mythos,

Just finished Perdido Street Station. Mieville can definitely write, and there were some good ideas in there, but it's really really not my sort of thing - too much like horror fiction. (I go into more detail on my blog, if anyone's interested.)

- Cho
(edited to fix a typo)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chomiji,

yeah, it's pretty grim, isn't it?

*goes off to read the blog*

ETA: in response to your blog, I think a lot of the cruelty from the New Crobuzon establishment comes across as pointless on purpose. He means to create a totalitarian system that sometimes revels in causing pain and suffering. Also, even though he claims his politics don't influence his fiction, Mieville is fairly close to Marxist circles... the idea of the state as a totalitarian monster exploiting and torturing the proletariat must appeal to him.

I agree, Cho.

There's a Mieville thread someplace where we discussed Perdido Street Station briefly, if you're interested.

I'm about to start Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. Not sure if I'm going to like it (it's categorized as a mystery and I'm not a big fan of mysteries.) But the title is cool.

It's funny but I can hardly remember the horrible bits...I just remember the wonderful inventions.

Also:
I just finished Diamond Age!

So how'd you like it, Babs?

- Cho

I really enjoyed the first two thirds, but found the end too esoterical and complicated to understand it.

I think Stephenson has a great sense of humour (I loved the bits with Judge Fang!) but he seems to take himself too seriously most of the time.

I thought the characters were likeable. But Nell as a small kid was a whole lot more believable and likeable than Nell as an adult.

Have you read it?

quote:

Originally posted by Babylon the Bride:
I really enjoyed the first two thirds, but found the end too esoterical and complicated to understand it.

That would work as a review of any Stephenson book. Most of it is great, the end feels like you ran into a brick wall.

Lol - you're the fifth person who's told me that. It has to be true, then!
I want to try Snow Crash, anyway, they tell me it's better.

Snow Crash is worth reading, just for the first chapter.

fuck no... Diamond Age is better on every level than Snow Crash, which is fun, disposable stuff. I'd be interested to find out why people do think that it's better.

i actually, when i've worked out exactly what the hell is actually happening in Diamond Age at the end, like it more and more.

Dude. Deliverator.

Diamond Age was more interesting, but Snow Crash was more entertaining, and since there was less depth, the always-expected sudden ending wasn't as jarring.

Here's what I understand about what happened at the end. Am I right?



Warning: Diamond Age Spoilers

Hackworth was put into the Drummers cave by Dr. X and the Chinese to help develop something new to rival the Feed technology - the Seeds. The Chinese want them, the Victorians want to stop them from getting it.
The nano particles make the Drummers all drugged up and hive-minded and snoozy and they have these wild sex orgies during which nano particles in their bodily fluids gets transmitted and hooks on to other nano particles in other people.

Using this, the Drummers have absorbed Hackworth's know how and Hackworth has passed on the building blocks of this seed technology to other people by fucking them.

It's all supposed to come together at the end because all these males in the ceremony are supposed to bang Miranda, who then absorbs their nanomachines. The heat will then make her combust and they will all drink her ashes and then they will all be a step closer to having complete particles for Seed technology in them.

But Nell interrupts and kills the nano-stuff in Miranda with the help of some anti-bodies that she and the cowboy dude have developed. (She bites her in the lip and exchanges blood with her).

Nell gets rescued (from the heartland Chinese who have taken over Shanghai by violence) by the 100.000s of little chinese girls that were brought up with the Chinese version of the Primer - the mouse army. This primer had alternations that encouraged them not to think for themselves, but to be obedient and Confucian and whatnot, so they now consider themselves Nell's army. The Book told them all about Nell, as it told Nell about the mouse army. Hackworth was doing that because he doesn't want the mainland Chinese to take over the world, he's Victorian.

Um...did I get that right?

What I'd like to know is what that bizzarre improvisation theatre thing was at the end where Hackworth gets his inspiration that he is, in fact, the Alchemist.