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Bob Dylan

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Posts posted by Bob Dylan

  1. The one about JFK/time-travelling was the most interesting SK I've read in a decade, since his memoir. Perhaps because I think that when he goes away from pure horror he's at his best (The Stand, Different Seasons, Misery, etc..)

  2. I have to say every time, house of leaves is incredibly good. Avoid synopsis or reviews , just read the best horror ever.. it's so subtle and a brilliant premise.

     

    But avoid all spoilers!

     

    Under the dome was good as well

     

    FTFY

  3. Never read it! Told myself it was time before I grow too old of "coming-of-age" books :

    norwegian_wood.jpg

     

    Because I like large contrasts between the two books I'm reading, this is my bed book :

     

    forever-war.jpg

  4. Lem's His Master's Voice was an amazing book for me, all the realism it felt like a documentary on first contact. I've got Fiasco somewhere in my bookshelves just waiting for the right moment.

  5. I'm in a post-apocalyptic mood but 50's style. It's probably gonna last half a year, I have a lot to read (Level 7, Alas Babylon, Swan Song, etc...).

     

    But as a start, this is really beautiful :

    Earth_Abides_1949_small.jpg

  6. First Pynchon and it's GR? That's not the good way, but still good job being at half-way point! Most first-reader won't make it pass page 45 or something similar.

     

     

    GR should be the end of a journey through Pynchon.

  7.  

    Currently reading Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. About half way through and I like it even if the verbosity is sometime annoying, which I am familiar with reading a couple of his later novels. Planning to read his Baroque Cycle later and Reamde. But I sometime wish he had an editor, but I guess it's his style.

     

    The Baroque Cycle is full of insight, colorful characters, items of historical interest, modernized excesses of baroque-era prose (NS doesn't really try too hard to hew to historical grammatical or literary convention) and digressive thought, passages of tedium and reward, parodic absurdity, anachronism, humor, &c.

     

    Reamde, in contrast, is honestly about as straightforward as a 900 page beach-reading technothriller complete with underdeveloped islamic terrorist villains and a 100-plus-page shootout sequence gets. The quality of the sentence-by-sentence prose is certainly a step up from, e.g., Tom Clancy, but it's honestly missing most of what makes NS at least idiosyncratic/problematic/interesting. IMO. It's just a bit of fun, I guess. It's sort of just: ooh, more guns. Going from, say, Anathem to Reamde is like you've just gone from watching a full season of the Wire with all of its complex characterization and threading and concern with the function and dysfunction of inescapable institutions to watching some HBO-requested spinoff series in which Brother Mouzone is the central character and just look at how nonchalant and badass he is, wow.

     

    I'm probably being too hard on Reamde because I did have fun reading it. But I was a little disappoint.

     

     

     

    Indeed, Reamde had so much wasted potential, I still think that his prose was wasted with this book. But like you, I finished the book and told myself "ok that was still a fucking nice roller-coaster!"

  8.  

    Just remember to read the "revisited" after it!

     

    please expand... i'm reading the "normal" one (I guess)... what's in the revisited?

     

    He wrote a 100 page non-fiction analysis of the book thirty years later called "Brave New World Revisited". A lot of the versions of the book actually have it attached to the end of the original.

  9. Annoying as shit post incoming, soz:

     

    Not sure what the fuck to read next. I've got these unreads clattering around:

     

    The Recognitions

    Some Remarks (Neal Stephenson)

    The City and The Stars

    Bleeding Edge

    American Gods

    The last couple installments of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, may need to re-read The Black Dossier first, I unno

    About half of the "Complete" works of HP Lovecraft

     

    WATMM, please select, I'm having a shit of a time deciding.

     

    Or recommend something. Something not Cormac McCarthy. I've got 10 bucks left on an amazon gift card.

     

    Autechre, please name my kindle.

     

     

    I would read the A C Clarke book. I remember reading this when I was a late teen, about humanity and how it changes through 1 billion years, and how it was written, like some form of bible. The kind of book you could re-read when you're fifty again.

  10. Oh I'm really waiting for Danielewski's next book, The Familiar, due who-the-fuck-knows when. It's supposed to be a serial book, published each 3 months, and it'll be 27 volumes.

  11.  

    pretty sure everyone on this forum has read house of leaves.

     

    I bought it, but still haven't read it. It look like such a task, I back off every time I go to start it.

     

     

    It's not that hard, House of Leaves is not that of a big book, and there's large portions of text where a page will be read in 30 seconds or less. It's a descriptive kind of writing, it's not that hard to read, thought it demands a lot of imagination on the reader's part.

     

     

    P.s.: Get the hardcover version if possible, it's one of those books where it's just better to have it bigger / more solid

  12. Finished Hugh Howey's Shift, interested to see how it all ties up in the last part, Dust. But until then I will read through the two short story collections from Alistair Reynolds. All happening in the Revelation Space universe.

     

    Thanks, it's great to know (having finished Wool last year) that reading the next book is worth it! :)

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