Now Reading

[hello spiral]

^yah don't worry about it.

The original is better and tbh the first book is kinda stiff and a bit of an outlier in the series. It's still good though.

Worry more about the growing sense of disappointment as he fucks it all up during the last three books.

 

Also, I'm sure there are online sources for this, but let me know if you want me to fill you in on standalone king books that tie in. Written between DT books. 

 

Insomnia is a pretty important one, and one of my fave SKs

[tec]

Thanks mate. I read it maybe 15 years ago, then listened to the audiobook a few years later when I was on the dole and chose to waste my days walking in random directions. This time I will go further in the series, I'm such a King fan so feel like an imposter for not tackling this yet. Is it like A Song of Ice and Fire? The last two of those were a slog.

[zaphod]

is there a stephen king book for people who don't like him? the few i've read (cell, dolores claiborne, salem's lot, maybe half of the stand) were all pretty bad. does he ever restrain himself and lose the folksy style? he's one of those writers i feel like i should be into but everything seems like a goofy slog to get through. 

[hello spiral]

Man, that is not a great selection of starters lol. Cell is probably his worst book. Dolores Claiborne is part of three 'female perspective/feminist' books he put out in the 90s, probably his wife's influence. Gerald's Game is the best out of those. The Stand is great but the first half is def the best half. 

Hard to comment on 'folksy style'. Been reading him from such a young age I've lost any shred of objectivity there.

Try The Bachman Books for grim and non-supernatural stuff (maybe skip Rage though, that one is kinda adolescent). Pet Sematary is one of his best. Desperation + The Regulators are good fun.

The aforementioned Insomnia I recommend a lot though it has a slow start and the 'plot' is kinda all over the place and very hokey, but it's a cosmic horror thing so you may be into it.

Oh! Under The Dome?

[tec]

I would go with Pet Sematary for King and The Long Walk from Bachman, if you aren't into those he probably isn't for you.

[hello spiral]

Yup good call. Personally Roadwork is my fave Bachman tho

[zaphod]

i've heard those recommended by others, will have to give them a try. the pet sematary movie scared me when i was a kid, so maybe there's hope for the book. is carrie good? i think it's the best movie adaptation, but isn't it his first novel?

[hello spiral]

Yeah very first one. I find it a bit creaky tbh, along with Salem's Lot

[Eggs]

maybe try kings short stories. some of those are purdy cool.

 

skeleton crew

nighmares n dreamscapes

everythings eventual

Edited July 17, 2018 by Eggs

[eryngi]

Hearts in Atlantis (specifically, the novella called Hearts in Atlantis which is part of the book called that - this is NOT what the film is of) might be a good King tale for if you don't like King too.. i really liked that one (though, been years since i read it, maybe it's awful!). it's not even horror, or supernatural or anything like that. except it has this amazing weird doomed atmosphere.. 

Edited July 17, 2018 by wobbegongs

[hello spiral]

^ another Dark Tower tie-in. And yeah all of Hearts in Atlantis amazing tbh

[kichiguy]

David Cronenberg - Consumed

 

Half way through this thriller about a globetrotting journalist couple with technolust who travel the world to interview unusual people. Topical range includes uxoricide, cannibalism, breast-dwelling insect kingdoms, Issei Sagawa, japanophilia and 3d printing. Expect gratuitous sex, fetishes a-go-go, body horror and extreme levels of technology worship. Heres a trailer, NSFW obvs.

 

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by kichiguy

[auxien]

Been reading The Hitchiker's Guide books and they're okay. Occasionally will give me a chuckle, they all seem a bit undercooked though, in terms of actual plot, character, and most importantly, humor. They should be a riot: I've always had a lean towards British humor, I love sci-fi, I love ridiculous shit...but not a single one is really delivering. On the fourth one now and that's sorta skewed away from Dent and Ford (though he just showed up for some reason) and if I get halfway through this and it's not getting better then I'm going to give up. This one is, so far, the worst of them, and I obviously wasn't in love with them anyway. They're quick enough reads, at least, I wouldn't have finished the first one if it wasn't easy to get through. 

 

edit: upside is there's some fun words that would make for good track names :)

Edited July 23, 2018 by auxien

[Tricone RC]

Been reading The Hitchiker's Guide books and they're okay. Occasionally will give me a chuckle, they all seem a bit undercooked though, in terms of actual plot, character, and most importantly, humor. They should be a riot: I've always had a lean towards British humor, I love sci-fi, I love ridiculous shit...but not a single one is really delivering. On the fourth one now and that's sorta skewed away from Dent and Ford (though he just showed up for some reason) and if I get halfway through this and it's not getting better then I'm going to give up. This one is, so far, the worst of them, and I obviously wasn't in love with them anyway. They're quick enough reads, at least, I wouldn't have finished the first one if it wasn't easy to get through. 

 

edit: upside is there's some fun words that would make for good track names :)

HHG is definitely more of a vehicle for Adams' ramblings, and the plot is secondary... The fourth one isn't as good as the first three, and the fifth one is just depressing. 

 

Give Illuminatus a try, I found it in a similar vein to HHG (disjointed plot included), but the lols are taken up a notch

[KovalainenFanBoy]

Reading Kafka's The Trial, it's definitely interesting but I'm not finding it particularly stimulating right now. I might be able to nail down what rubs me the wrong way about Kafka's style later on, but as of right now I'm not quite able to

Edited July 31, 2018 by span

[dingformung]

Kafka flows like constipation, gotta love him

[eryngi]

i like CS Lewis's space trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet / Perelandra / That Hideous Strength. especially the third. the first two are very old fashioned sort of sci-fi with spaceship trips to mars and venus, but the third takes place back on earth and has the best kind of sleepy-english-village-with-SOMETHING-WRONG atmosphere, conspiracy weirdness, cosmic horror creeping in at the edges, comedic farce, slight mushroom trip flavour, druidic ancient elemental power stuff.. of course they're full of sort of but not really, but sort of, christian stuff. my grandpa was a church dude (actually he met CS Lewis once as a kid) and the religious aspect of these reminds me of him - totally open and questioning and interested in everything. so, those are cool books..

 

anyway i just found out about this writer Charles Walter Stansby Williams, who was mates with Tolkien and Lewis, who wrote all these similar sort of occult thriller books in the 1930s - set in current times/real world, with weird spiritual/magic/unknown-science stuff that breaks through and turns everything into fantastical high stakes farce. i read the first few so far, they're great! one was about the holy grail turning up at a rural parish church and bad primal emotional magician guy + his cold, intelligence oriented researcher acquaintance trying to get hold of it, another about archetypal forms becoming material, another about the stone of solomon which could be divided without diminishing the original. ie, break off a chunk and now you have two stones of solomon, infinitely.

 

they're fairly low key, and fairly obvious to someone reading nowadays.. he has a really evocative turn of phrase though.. especially when characters experience visionary, hallucinato times. diggin' em.

 

edit: eg in the book about tarot cards there's an amazing sequence where the primal matter of creation is breaking through into mundane reality and everything dissolves into a golden fog emitted from within the atoms, through which the characters stumble around half corporeal and half not, with archetypal idea forms superimposed on their psyches and bodies, acting out a cosmic battle in an old country mansion (while at the same time sort of wobbling around bumping into the furniture because they, except for the lady who has an extremely jovial and open mindstate, can't see through the fog, and their own bodies appear to have the consistency of pudding..)

Edited July 31, 2018 by wobbegongs

[Cryptowen]

in the book about tarot cards there's an amazing sequence where the primal matter of creation is breaking through into mundane reality and everything dissolves into a golden fog emitted from within the atoms, through which the characters stumble around half corporeal and half not, with archetypal idea forms superimposed on their psyches and bodies, acting out a cosmic battle in an old country mansion (while at the same time sort of wobbling around bumping into the furniture because they, except for the lady who has an extremely jovial and open mindstate, can't see through the fog, and their own bodies appear to have the consistency of pudding..)

this is like a wordcloud of stuff i'm into

 

reading "on the road" a year after "dharma bums" is an interesting experience. i feel like the former lends a certain sense of sadness to the latter that may have only been implied otherwise, ie. seeing these character young & full of life & going on aventures, knowing that several years on they'll still be acting out the same patterns, but with youth gradually fading & a growing sense of existential aimlessness.

 

that being said, dharma bums is definitely more exciting to me in terms of wanting to emulate that lifestyle. i've been on the road & felt like it grew repetitive & lonely v.v.quickly (might be a canada thing though, we only have the one road). whereas the idea of just taking off hiking a trail for months, getting rugged, eating trail mix & making coffee over a campfire - that sounds like the shit

 

[Atop]

Finished Borne this morning. I think it was one of my favorite novels.

 

Really loved it. The film they are making will be amazing if they get the environments and creatures right.

 

 

and I think about to dive into The Book of the New Sun as well. Seems like the time is right.

[Hk47]

=D

The Rick And Morty comics.

[spratters]

Just started reading Black & Blue - Ian Rankin. OK so far, I was looking to find another Richard North Patterson type of author, What are people's opinions on Rankin?

 

Also was given a complete works of Dickins, not sure what to start with there???

[aenamnesis]

Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte
Wading through Either/Or by Kierkegaard

Finished Stoner by John Williams recently (10/10)
Re-rereading a lot of Dostoevsky worked my way back to Brothers Karamazov chronologically.
I read Valis after seeing Sean mention it in the AAA forum, really enjoyed it and The Divine Invasion, still have to read the other book of the Trilogy but does anyone have any other books that gives off those vibes? Lit with Autechre feels?

[Nebraska]

 

it's honestly kind of strange and scary to think of this book as anything other than fiction, but omarosa seems to believe every word of it. and what's even more bizarre is i don't get "why" she'd go along with so much of what she accuses trump about before she got fired. kinda similar to how trump now calls her a "lowlife" and "a dog" when before that he touted her as someone he liked and believed in

 

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1029329583672307712

Edited August 14, 2018 by Nebraska

[zaphod]

reading vineland. after spending time in asheville, nc, this book is speaking to me as a certain elderly hippie, harsh light of day comedown experience that also exists in the background of inherent vice. i also believe this is underrated in pynchon's bibliography and might even be his most fully realized novel in terms of having three dimensional characters and a kind of emotional clarity that isn't present in the early post modern works or his later infinitely dense stuff like against the day. also the prose here approaches realism which is always a plus for me, and it's relatively short. anyway, a gem.

[hello spiral]

Yeah love Vineland