'War Stories'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
Anybody read Vellum ? I think I'm almost halfway in, and there does not appear to be a plot. Or a story. Barely any characters. And it's too clever by half.
Hi Raq! - I've read it. It's pretty multithreaded. And very closely tied with some of Neal Stephenson's (not the angels, but.) It does get a little clearer towards the middle.... For me, taking allergy medicine helped.
Where are you in it?
All right, so. I just finished The Warrior's Apprentice.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who cried got a little teary-eyed when Miles buried Bothari.
So I'm only halfway in to The Sewing Circles of Herat.
It's part war-journalism, part history, part women's history, part diary, part travelogue of Afghanistan. The author is a journalist who was there during the end of the Soviet era, and who returned shortly after 9/11. She was hustled around the country by those who'd later become the Taliban, which is just surreal. I'm having a very hard time NOT reading the last chapters first to find out the fate of the Afghan woman who wrote letters to the author (who she did not know-letters are peppered through out) and had them smuggled out.
It's has an almost dreamlike quality, even as it is brutal.
I really recommend it.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who cried when Miles buried Bothari.
When Miles said the line about being able to see everything because he was on Bothari's shoulders, I just sobbed.
When Miles said the line about being able to see everything because he was on Bothari's shoulders, I just sobbed.
Oh man. Just reading it here gets me choked up.
Oh lord yes.
Oh, Bothari.
Certainly the most moving portrayal of a sociopath that I've ever read. (Or is he a psychopath? I'm really not sure...)
Oh, Bothari. Tep, I so envy you getting to read these for the first time. I should reread them, myself. But there are so many books still completely unread.
Speaking of, I started the Harry Potter books, just finished the Chamber of Secrets. They're pretty good! DH is watching the movies with me. I must check the library's web site and see if they have the next ones ready for me to pick up yet...
Oh, Bothari.
Certainly the most moving portrayal of a sociopath that I've ever read. (Or is he a psychopath? I'm really not sure...)
I love Bothari. I mean, if he were real and sat down beside me on the bus, I might edge away and get off at the next stop even if it weren't really my stop.
But as a character? God, I love him.
When Miles said the line about being able to see everything because he was on Bothari's shoulders, I just sobbed.
That made my heart go ping! but it didn't make me cry. And when Miles told Elena, "I can't live without my Bothari," it also made my heart go ping! but it didn't make me cry.
But for some reason, when Miles is burying Bothari, and burning the offerings, and delivering such a fitting elegy, *that* made me cry.
Sox, I think you might be onto something, as Vellum seems to be making more sense now that I'm on cold medicine.
I'm in the middle section, where Seamus is Prometheus.
You're right, it has the whole Assyrian/Sumerian me is equivalent to computer code thing from Stephenson, and there's also a certain amount of similarity to Illuminatus. I am also reminded of the rpg Nobilis, but maybe that's the Scots-Irish authorship.