What Do you Read

I'm reading Blindsight, by Peter Watts.

For the second time in two months.

Blindsight is hard science fiction (which means that it relies heavily on scientific concepts to explain the characters and further the plot, not necessarily because it's difficult to read), beginning as a First Contact with an Alien Species novel and then eventually exploring the ideas of "what makes us human?" and "is consciousness really a survival trait?".

After late 21st-century Earth is suddenly "photographed" by alien probes, they send a ship to investigate a section of space where the aliens seem to be congregating. The ship's crew are mostly altered humans: a linguist with multiple personalities, a biologist cyborg, a warrior who commands troops via a computer interrface, and an observer who has had a computer substituted for part of his brain. The commander is a Vampire -- an extinct evolutionary cousin of humanity that has been brought back through genetic manipulation. (If you're thinking Jurassic Park, join the club.) Watts even offers an explanation about why vampires react the way they do to crosses, and it has nothing to do with religion. The idea of a futuristic take on vampires was what convinced me to read this in the first place.

The author throws a lot of scientific and social concepts into the mix; if you're not used to reading hard SF, it may be a challenge to get through the whole thing, but I found it worth the effort.

There's even a copy available online at Peter Watts' website: Blindsight. The novel was nominated for the 2007 Hugo Award.
 
I'm still continuing with my Stephen King crusade. I'm on 'Salem's Lot at the moment, while I wait for The Stand and Dark Tower 5 to come to me.
 
I am about five chapters into The Stand... I ordered a paperback version since this giant hardcover is a ***** to carry around.

I'm also trying to figure out what books to order as Audiobooks for my massive roadtrip in two weeks...

So far i'm thinking Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and I want to get one or two more (this is a two-week roadtrip, it will call for a few audiobooks). Any suggestions?
 
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Planet-man said:
Saw what you will, but Harry Potter is a far, far, far more complex and brilliant character than Prince Hamlet.
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Okay, i've been rereading through this thread because I am looking for book suggestions and I must have missed this the first time through, because there is absolutely no way in which that is a true statement.

Harry Potter is definitely a more complex character than most people consider him to be, and you know that I am an avid lover of the Harry Potter series in general. His complexities come from his relationships and how they develop and the way that we see them develop.

Hamlet is a bit machiavellian, he is a young man struggling with the fact that his uncle killed his father, but at the same time he isn't sure that is the case or whether the vision of his father was some sort of dream. He constructs his own insanity as a ruse while he is investigating the case to see whether or not his uncle is a killer, and whether his mother had any sort of hand in this. He is pushed to the edge of everything, which we see in his monologues, and is driven to trick his best friends into their deaths, and his faux madness drives his girlfriend insane. This all comes to a head when his plan begins to fail and he kills an innocent man (ophelia's father) who he believes is his uncle. Hamlet's actions, to me, seem selfish and lead to the destruction of many lives without any true justice being achieved, and that is the tragedy of the play. All of the characters' actions in the play can be called into question, and there are many ways to look at it and unravel their motivations and mindsets. That is the very definition of Complexity.

Harry is developed over many books, we see that development, but in a way that makes him even less complex, because of the slow, easy way rowling turns him into a man. There is no doubting of what he's doing, when Hamlet's motivations are argued about still today.
 
Dr.Strangefate said:
Okay, i've been rereading through this thread because I am looking for book suggestions and I must have missed this the first time through, because there is absolutely no way in which that is a true statement.

Harry Potter is definitely a more complex character than most people consider him to be, and you know that I am an avid lover of the Harry Potter series in general. His complexities come from his relationships and how they develop and the way that we see them develop.

Hamlet is a bit machiavellian, he is a young man struggling with the fact that his uncle killed his father, but at the same time he isn't sure that is the case or whether the vision of his father was some sort of dream. He constructs his own insanity as a ruse while he is investigating the case to see whether or not his uncle is a killer, and whether his mother had any sort of hand in this. He is pushed to the edge of everything, which we see in his monologues, and is driven to trick his best friends into their deaths, and his faux madness drives his girlfriend insane. This all comes to a head when his plan begins to fail and he kills an innocent man (ophelia's father) who he believes is his uncle. Hamlet's actions, to me, seem selfish and lead to the destruction of many lives without any true justice being achieved, and that is the tragedy of the play. All of the characters' actions in the play can be called into question, and there are many ways to look at it and unravel their motivations and mindsets. That is the very definition of Complexity.

Harry is developed over many books, we see that development, but in a way that makes him even less complex, because of the slow, easy way rowling turns him into a man. There is no doubting of what he's doing, when Hamlet's motivations are argued about still today.
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Okay, in retrospect what I said is an exaggeration, however, I still don't think Hamlet(the character) is as complex as you're saying, nor is he that much more complex a character than Harry. His overall play is more complex that way(in terms of character interaction and effect), and he's a much more emotionally vocal character than Harry, but I still don't think he's that much more complex a character. I see Hamlet more as a large-scale and theatricized demonstration of how we forget that our actions affect other people who are just as important as ourselves, and the only reason motivation is called into question in it is the results, half of which are the follies of Claudius' doing anyway.

Hamlet is specifically a poster boy for accidentally going too far for selfish reasons, while Harry is just one for dealing with your own life and the problems we all face. Every event of Harry's life is weighed in each decision he makes throughout the books, which is why he's so real and sentient and complex a character, I'd still say as much so as Hamlet. He just happened to make the right decisions so there isn't as much room for question.

Again, I was wrong in saying Harry was far more when you compare the two, but I still maintain they're roughly equal in their own different ways, especially when you don't hang the results of their actions against each other too.
 
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I am reading The Stand. It is ****ing long.

Also, my Stephen King Universe guidebook thing arrived yesterday. So many connections...
 
I should get one of those guidebooks.

I am now about 175 pages into the Stand, so i'm almost like 1/5 of the way through it or something.

Randall Flagg just showed up. I bet he's up to no good.
 
I love The Stand.

I can't wait to read it again.

I am finishing up my grand Stephen King Exodus I started back in 2005.

I have read every Stephen King novel and short story that ties into the Dark Tower series, and now I am about 3/4 of the way through Dark Tower 3: The Waste Lands (it is slow going). Once I finish Dark Tower 7: The Dark Tower, I think I might go back and read my favorites that I read now nearly 3 years ago: It, The Stand, Insomnia, Desperation, and maybe The Talsiman.

So many connections is right!

At some point I will go back through and reread Harry Potter 1-7. Probably not this year.

Maybe before revisiting King, I might take some time to read some of the novels I've never read that I've been meaning to check off of my to read list, like Life of Pi.
 
Now reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

I don't understand how Doom puts up with you white people.
 
I'm reading "War Through The Ages", which covers Western warfare from the Greeks through World War II... It was written in the forties, but it's just plain awesome.
 
ourchair said:
Now reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

I don't understand how Doom puts up with you white people.
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YES.

Excellent book. It was one of our textbooks in AP US History last year.
 
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