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Bechuga

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    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted · Edited by Bechuga

    Finished Against the Day! My arms are now thicker than a tree trunk!

     

    Now to read something less than a hundred pages long, with only a few sentences per page.

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

    btw I stumbled upon this vid for reasons unrelated to IJ oddly enough

     

     

    sorry about the spam you can keep talking about Pynchon now

     

    Honestly surprised they haven't turned IJ into a mega-dense US TV show by now. An entire episode about Eschaton would be nifty.

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

    the thing with IJ is that when I had absolutely no idea what was going on, and there was nothing resembling a proper plot, it was pretty exciting to see what the next vignette was gonna be about, and what the hell is wrong with these characters, etc. etc.; but now 550 pages in, having caught up to Wallace's tricks and prose, and there being something resembling a proper story to follow what with the samizdat and whatnot, it's becoming a bit more of a crawl. Still a very enjoyable book, dont get me wrong, still love it. But having read nothing but IJ in months and with the initial sense of wonder gone, it's a bit more of a struggle.

     

    You're halfway! Keep going! *dabs at face with wet sponge*

    Datach'i - System

    in New & Upcoming Releases

    Posted

    I love how Datach'i veered away from his angry abrassive sounds to something more dulcet while keeping the tracks sophisticated and absolutely not cheesy, just a delight to listen to

     

    Mmale and Ffemale is my favourite of his and I wish that sound was still what he did, but this new album is peachy as it is. If he did more albums of this type--not forgetting that 19 track bonus disc!--I would be very happy.

     

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

     

    But yeah, I only recently began reading after many years avoiding books.

     

    really? when I think 'Bech' I think 'books'. Can't really picture you not reading at this point

     

     

    btw I'm still reading fucking Infinite Jest at a 3 pages per day basis smh at myself

     

    Reading that book feels like this:

     

     

     

     

     

    tumblr_lryijoUtQ01qlnzs9o1_400.gif

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Yeah, pretty much exclusively comics (if I even read many of those) for many a year before happening upon Vonnegut and Yasutaka Tsutsui (who I highly recommend) and tumbling back into books. After which I promptly began reading books that, unknown to me when I started them, were considered the most difficult to finish... not exactly making it easy for myself. :psyduck:

     

    And lol at IJ. There is an event horizon of interest when it goes from tedium to astonishment, which I suspect you're already at. Why does that book feel so slow to read, we wonder? Some mysterious gravitational property in the prose slows progress down to a crawl...

     

     

     

    because of the footnotes?  first time i read it i read it pretty slowly.  was given to me from a GF as a gift when it came out. it took me a long time and at the end i wasn't even sure what i'd read except that i enjoyed a lot of it.. then i read it again years later after reading all his other books and then he died and i read again and read all his other books again.. so it all is really a comfortable place now.. i guess.. if comfortable is a word.  

    all i can say is, for me, it was worth the work. the pay off was great and i'm going to read it again this winter and if i'm not too sad about it or if it doesn't feel too heavy then i'll read all his other books again too.  some of his short stories are fucken mind games.. complex beautiful mind twisters that i really enjoy.  they're some kind of "how to write about a razor while holding it to your eye" type of things at times.. at least that's what a few of his stories felt like when i read them after he hung himself. 

     

    Consider the Lobster blew my mind completely. not the title story so much but lot's of other stuff in there. the piece that is a review of english grammar and usage i though i'd absolutely hate.. how boring.. it's fucking amazing to me. genius bit of writing. "oblivion" is a sharp tool and embraces so much. 

     

    yada yada yada.. sorry.. ramble

     

     

    IJ is one of the few books I would like to reread, will keep an eye out for a copy to just open and read from a random point, see what I missed first time.

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

    How DARE you talk about books in the reading thread!

     

    *reported to Joyrex*

     

    But yeah, I only recently began reading after many years avoiding books. Hope you enjoy it as much as I am.

    What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

    in General Banter

    Posted

    Finished a run of Death Road to Canada, despite my namesake dying halfway through. I will make it myself one day, all the way to the end, to glorious Canuckland.

     

    Want to play Grow Up but there seem to be day one fuckups needing fixing. Once they're done, I'll be growing my stangely penis shaped plant to the stars one more. 8===D

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

    Darkmans by Nicola Barker is a strange fantastic compulsive book, feels way shorter than its 838 pages. A mix of hilarious, horrifying, embarrassing, disgusting and more besides, definitely give this a go if you're fond of the David Foster Wallace school of headfuckery that confounds but makes sense with a little rereading (although her prose is not as astonishing as his is).

    Definitely will read everything she has done, and looking forward to doing so (In The Approaches next).

     

    But first, The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante which I've been meaning to do for a while. Also have A Wizard of Earthsea on my kindle, for work toilet reading. Nice to have a short book to read for once.

     

    Oh, and Obligatory Pynchon Mention: on page 930 or so of Against the Day.

    This might sound crazy, but it feels a bit short, as if huge chunks of been edited out to make what was possibly a much longer book publishable and holdable.

    It's good, but here and there you can see where the razorblade was applied to get the book down to this length, which is pretty fucking long even edited.

    Still fantastic to read though, will be sad when it's done. After this, I only have V. and Bleeding Edge to read before I'm all Pynchon'ed out. :cry:

    What Video Games Are You Currently Playing

    in General Banter

    Posted

    I'd be more interested in a game where the generation process was controlled by someone in real time, say a developer announcing a particular day would be the day 'God' interfered and everyone had to play the game as it was being morphed and fucked with by a human hand.

    As much as the concept is great, whatever a computer can churn out never comes close to what a human does, and have always had more fun with a singular crafted experience by a human than the sometimes fun but often empty feeling procedurally generated games where random runs free (that said, I'm really enjoying Death Road to Canada right now, and I will try No Man's Sky one day).

     

    Yes, I am bigoted against computer intelligence.

    stupid first world problems you're dealing with

    in General Banter

    Posted

    if you have trouble relating to people it's because you aren't trying

     

    everyone is more or less the same

     

    sounds like you're afraid to make an attempt at a real/intimate conversation as you are manifesting roadblocks like "we have nothing in common"

     

    of course you have something in common

     

    We all have things in common

     

    Not a problem of relating, it's a problem of being boring. Not that I find it a problem: I am quite happy here in my little bubble. In that way, it's other peoples problem to solve.

    stupid first world problems you're dealing with

    in General Banter

    Posted

    1) Don't own television, nor will I ever

    2) I don't do irony (unless I have a creased shirt)

    3) 'So bad it's good' television / films make me angry. Why would you watch something you know is bad? I know that's the point but still. I have barely enough time for the good stuff in life, so why waste it watching The Room ten times over? (Like a friend who watches it once a month if not more and I am open mouthed in horror at)

     

    Can you see why I'm boring yet

    stupid first world problems you're dealing with

    in General Banter

    Posted

     

    I'm incredibly boring and all visitors to my flat start doing the jigsaw I leave on my coffee table not long after arriving realising conversation with me is boring. How does one be interesting / have a life?

     

    you either find some common ground you can build a convo upon or talk about yourselves in turns. Or just go full late night presenter and let the other person do the talking, "tell me more" etc. Maybe give up altogether

     

     

     

    I'm incredibly boring and all visitors to my flat start doing the jigsaw I leave on my coffee table not long after arriving realising conversation with me is boring. How does one be interesting / have a life?

    Ask questions. People always want to talk about themselves.

     

     

    The question / dilemma was mentioned mostly in jest but advice is welcomed regardless.

     

    Getting them to talk about themselves is my general approach--and most people don't give a shit about whatever it is I do in my flat so they're not exactly pursuing me conversationally--but it comes down to all the things I can quite happily talk about--music, books, games, creative endeavours etc--are none of the things most of my visitors care about, being more interested in The Only Way Is Essex type social life drama and who's fucked who, which I am sure is fun but not on my radar. In particular, I found not watching television / movies shuts down 90% of all conversational topics. especially with my little brother who does little else than go the cinema.

     

    So it's not really boring in the sense that I am unable to talk--I can happily talk anyone to death as people in CHATMM may have noticed, and I am boring there too--but when it comes to my visitors, we move in too differently shaped circles to talk in depth about anything. And any steps to readdress this--watching films, going out and getting drunk every night--are not exactly worth it. I love my visitors but I am merely aware of how little common ground there is between us, which is all the more prominent when silence takes over.

     

    (That said, people have told me they like coming to my place because it is peaceful and quiet, plus I always have plenty of tea / biscuits to eat so maybe my boringness is the reason they came?)

     

    I'm incredibly boring and all visitors to my flat start doing the jigsaw I leave on my coffee table not long after arriving realising conversation with me is boring. How does one be interesting / have a life?

    Hide the jigsaw puzzle.

     

     

     

    I'm incredibly boring and all visitors to my flat start doing the jigsaw I leave on my coffee table not long after arriving realising conversation with me is boring. How does one be interesting / have a life?

     

    Put a collection of sex toys on the coffee table and see what happens.

     

     

    I suspect that they think the jigsaw puzzle is a sex toy...

    Now Reading

    in General Banter

    Posted

    Broke 50% of Against the Day or, as I call it, Against the Pages. Also Darkmans is very...odd. Nicola Barker might end up my favourite English novelist.

     

     

    Vineland to me is summed up thus: it's a three hundred page flashback with a sixty page conclusion. And the section where he compared the states of being alive and dead to that of binary codes, and 'what kind of programme was the government creating out of the ones and zeroes of all the dead' was a highlight for me. Definitely underrated and misunderstood.

     

    Hope he publishes one more before he passes on!

     

    Funny that you mention that passage as it's probably the first that comes in to my mind when i think of Vineland. 

     

    'If patterns of ones and zeros were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?'

     

    Goddamn. 

     

    Good shit.

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