January 5, 201610 yr Finished Satin Island by Tom McCarthy. I saw it on the shortlist for this year's Booker Prize and the blurb about it intrigued me. I found it profoundly frustrating. It began promising enough: There are flashes of brilliance in the prose and some thoughts so interesting you can't help but wait to see them expounded as the book unfolds. But the brilliance remains only in those brief flashes. The book drones on for page after page (and it is quite short) of nothingness, culminating in a pointless end. Gah.
January 5, 201610 yr [ATTACH=CONFIG]54125[/ATTACH] I've read that one several times. And reading it in the middle of Winter, with the temperature set low in the house: nothing better to make you appreciate what they endured. (& how easy our lives are!)
January 5, 201610 yr How the WWI experiences of Lewis & Tolkien affected their writings & their outlooks. A lot of the gruesome descriptions in The Lord Of The Rings are experiences that Tolkien actually had as he fought at The Somme in 1916 (i.e. faces looking up from the Dead Marshes).
January 6, 201610 yr I've read that one several times. And reading it in the middle of Winter, with the temperature set low in the house: nothing better to make you appreciate what they endured. (& how easy our lives are!) Its really good. And I agree with you about reading it in the winter. I've read a couple other books similar to it (Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides is the best) and I'm amazed by the nerve those guys had to even take those trips. Pretty incredible.
January 6, 201610 yr I enjoyed it I love it! Cannot put it down. It's a Will Robie meets Jack Reacher kind of thing.
January 6, 201610 yr [ATTACH]54143[/ATTACH] How the WWI experiences of Lewis & Tolkien affected their writings & their outlooks. A lot of the gruesome descriptions in The Lord Of The Rings are experiences that Tolkien actually had as he fought at The Somme in 1916 (i.e. faces looking up from the Dead Marshes). Sounds like something I need to find.
January 6, 201610 yr Nearly halfway through and it's just not holding my interest. I almost always plow on to the bitter end, but may have to change horses in midstream. How somebody thought this would make a good movie is beyond me.
January 6, 201610 yr I love it! Cannot put it down. It's a Will Robie meets Jack Reacher kind of thing.I've been debating starting the Jack Reacher series, and you might have just pushed me over the edge.
January 9, 201610 yr [ATTACH=CONFIG]54125[/ATTACH] I've read that one several times. And reading it in the middle of Winter, with the temperature set low in the house: nothing better to make you appreciate what they endured. (& how easy our lives are!) So I finished this today and I was almost welling up in tears at the end. That last hike was incredible story-telling. One of the best adventure books I have ever read.
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