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Pit Book/Discussion Thread

Wakeforest22890 said:
About 2/3 of the way through One Hundred Years of Solitude and it's definitely a good book but it's not "swept me off my feet" good. I enjoy magical realism and it's a good story, but chatting with people before I read it I expected it to be some sort of transformative novel and so far it's just "pretty good."
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I'm currently re-read it and I think it is my favorite book. I just love how playful it is. I'm a big GGM fan.
 
Yeah, 100 Years is his GOAT, but Love is great too.

Go in knowing it's about the prose, not the plot. He's a magician.
 
tiltdeac said:
I want to read one of his soon. I should do 100 YOS over Love in the Time of Cholera then?
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They're both great. Cholera is not really magical realism and is a more traditional story. I would start with that one. There's a bit of a drop-off after those two, IMO. I've read several of his other books but didn't enjoy them quite as much. But Cholera is a flat-out masterpiece.
 
I really dug the Bolivar one, The General in His Labrynth, but it was step below the two mentioned.
 
Think I said it already, but saw ZS speak in the fall and goddam am I smitten.
 
Or you could come to TEXAS and read Gabo's original manuscripts and hand-corrected proofs.
 
Just finished American Gods. I thought it was really interesting with great subject matter and very well written, but I'm not sure I see any reason why it needed to be nearly 800 pages. Overall I really enjoyed it, but it just seems like a lot of scenes could have been trimmed down some or simply removed. Of course, a friend of mine was telling me that Gaiman has written several books in that universe, so if world building was what he was going for then perhaps that would explain the length because he certainly accomplished that.

Next on the docket is Don Winslow's new book, which comes out tomorrow, The Force. I've been waiting a while for this one, as Winslow is one of my favorite authors of historical fiction. Especially since Stephen King's review says "Think The Godfather with cops. It's that good."

Also picked up Al Franken's new book: Giant of the Senate.
 
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Finished Don Winslow's The Force. I thought it was better than Savages but not as good as The Cartel series. I was hoping it would be more like The Wire, but it was actually more like The Shield. Still entertaining, and I thought he did a pretty good job of showing how the Black Lives Matter movement and recent police shootings affect black communities as well as the police force. While this is the first real cop drama I've ever read, I can't imagine it really pushes the envelope too much in that genre.
 
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I finished Rudyard Kipling's Kim last week. The prose was nothing special, although it was competent and had a couple of nice images. The plot wasn't really what I was expecting, as it was about an orphan in turn-of-the-century India who gets swept up into the British colonial intelligence system, but it was fast-paced and entertaining, and the main character was good. The standout, and what the book is apparently best known for, is the picture it gives of colonial India, and that was extremely good, along with the mood and atmosphere that went with it. Nothing about it quite made it to "excellent," except the last, but it was good all the way around, and definitely worth a read, IMO
 
"Swede Levov, it rhymes with the love." I always hated that chant.

Seems like a bad book for a movie unless you knock the Swede character out of the park.
 
The last few pages of 100 Years bumped it up a little in my book. The writing is powerful but, perhaps for the reason Juice pointed out earlier, I wasn't blown away by the story - the plot was repetitive (obviously a theme) and while it was pretty good it wasn't one of my all time favorites.

I still need to read American Pastoral, it's been sitting on my bookshelf for a year or so. About halfway through Lolita and...yeah, it's something.
 
Certainly found some of the stories relevant to our current political situation. Facts not having any real import certainly rang true.
 
Never read Lolita, only a book about women reading Lolita in Tehran that was supposed to be the spark that ignited the flame of social cacophony for 2005 Wake freshmen.
 
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