Now Reading

[Hk47]

I just got done rewatching The Expanse... And have started reading The Churn. I'll probably dive into the other novellas and then back into Cibola Burn after I finish them and go through the series again before reading Persepolis Rising for the first time.

 

The last series I was this into was probably The Dark Tower books... I absolutely love the universe that Abraham and Franck have built here.

[luke viia]

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..)

 

nice, i loved The Space Trilogy. 2nd was my favorite. Ransom... Ransom... Raaannnsoommmm....

 

just picked up House of Putin, House of Trump. So far, lots of detailed history about Trump's financial start, his more or less immediate ties to Russian mafia emigrés in Brighton Beach, and his political aspirations back in the 80s.

[ignatius]

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.

 

 

i liked the movie for inherent vice but i may be the only one.. i should check out the book and vineland too. y to read pile is fucking massive lately. 

[Gnarbot]

PC Jersild - A Living Soul (reading it in Swedish because the English version is like hens teeth). The diary of a brain in a jar basically. Proper weird. Good though.

[Tricone RC]

I just got done rewatching The Expanse... And have started reading The Churn. I'll probably dive into the other novellas and then back into Cibola Burn after I finish them and go through the series again before reading Persepolis Rising for the first time.

 

The last series I was this into was probably The Dark Tower books... I absolutely love the universe that Abraham and Franck have built here.

The expanse is a lot of fun. Not read any of the novellas. Cibola Burn was my least favourite at the time, but three books ahead a lot of the themes from that book are cropping up again, so it's an important step on the journey or whatever.

 

Halfway through Dissolution (Sansom's Shardlake series #1). Fantastic so far

[hello spiral]

Finished GRRM's Dying of the Light and Atwood's The Heart Goes Last. Just started Embassytown. Dunno if this is the best Mieville to start with but it's the shortest one I have (also got Perdido Street Station).

[olo]

FYI. Sorry if posted already. Out Sept. 3rd

 

“Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More”

 

 

Adrian Harte, the blogger whose website, Faith No More 2.0 (www.newfaithnomore.com), has become the pre-eminent source for all things Faith No More, releases the book, “Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More: on Sept. 12 via Jawbone Press.

 

“When I first heard about this Faith No More biography, I didn’t know what to think,” said Faith No More co-founder and bass player Bill Gould. “But I have to give credit where it is due. It’s a quality piece. The man has done his research, and it shows. It provided me with more than a few revelations… and I’m in the band.”

 

 

While not an official book from Faith No More itself, the 376-page offering features interviews with multiple band members, managers and key figures from the band’s 39-year history and has the full endorsement of the San Francisco-based group.

 

“Small Victories…” tells how such a heterogeneous group formed, flourished, and fractured, and how Faith No More helped redefine rock, metal and alternative music. The book chronicles the creative and personal tensions that defined and fueled the band, forensically examines the band’s beginnings in San Francisco’s post-punk wasteland, and charts the group’s ascent to MTV-era stardom. Based on meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, the book combines a fan’s passion with a reporter’s perspicacity.

 

[joshuatxuk]

 

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. 

 

 

Great summary, I love Hitchhikers but in hindsight it's a bit of a lighter read in terms of substance plot wise. Still a crucial read IMO and a British comedy and sci-fi classic.

[joshuatxuk]

Recently finished Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake. Oddball of a book, nice little coda to his bibliography and self-referential / self-deprecating. He had issues trying to write it so he embraced that aspect and centered the book around this fact. So it's scattered, more of a collection of vignettes and musings. Some choice quotes but otherwise no where close to being one of his top books.

[zaphod]

Reading the ivory tower by Henry James. Terrible book. Although his constant shitting on one of his overweight female characters for being overweight is a great bit.

[Lane Visitor]

We've Been Knocking On The Door All Night And No One Quite Knows About It... Except Us

 

... Great book!

[hello spiral]

Embassytown was fucking great, will def read more of his.

 

Now that the synapses are firing from that I've returned to Pynchon's Against the Day, which I stopped at around page 800 almost exactly a year ago

 

[gnarlybog]

Room to Dream - The new David Lynch Autobiography. I inhaled this thing. Some really nice insights for the hardcore fans. Also the second half of each chapter is in Lynch's own words, and they transcribe it very closely to how he speaks, so its a fuckin hoot, baby.

 

The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989 -  Reading this now. I have sort of an abusive relationship with this author in that I rarely enjoy it but I keep coming back because I find it fascinating. The closest writing will get to a nervous breakdown. Should I be scared that I relate so closely to these mumbling, messed up and lost narrators? His early prose was a little more coherent and humorous, which is a real pleasure to discover.

[prdctvsm]

^ they sound fantastic.

 

just finished:

good stuff / 10

[Milwaukeeeee]

Stefan Zweig - The eyes of the eternal bro.  Easy reading, less than an hour and beautiful story

[Guest Ovitus]

Room to Dream - The new David Lynch Autobiography. I inhaled this thing. Some really nice insights for the hardcore fans. Also the second half of each chapter is in Lynch's own words, and they transcribe it very closely to how he speaks, so its a fuckin hoot, baby.

 

The Complete Short Prose of Samuel Beckett, 1929-1989 -  Reading this now. I have sort of an abusive relationship with this author in that I rarely enjoy it but I keep coming back because I find it fascinating. The closest writing will get to a nervous breakdown. Should I be scared that I relate so closely to these mumbling, messed up and lost narrators? His early prose was a little more coherent and humorous, which is a real pleasure to discover.

 

I've only read Molloy by Beckett. I just remember one long passage where he goes into great length describing his so called sucking stones and the redistribution between various pockets.. his description of this process was incredibly exhaustive. if anyone would write a novel about seemingly pointless thoughts and observations, this was it.. some real OCD prose within that novel.

 

Currently reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World. someone here had recommended it a little while back. enjoying it

[zkom]

I'm reading The Complete Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino and it's great. Hard to describe, but if you're into stuff like Borges then check it out (also you probably know Calvino at that point already). 

 

Also I read the afro-futuristic scifi series by Nnedi Okarafor called Binti. It was interesting but started to feel like Hogwarts in space at some points, just more violent for sure. Still entertaining.

 

I've been reading also the Budayeen series by George Alec Effinger. It's cyberpunk noir set in Middle-East. I think I've read the first part When Gravity Fails a long time ago, but couldn't remember any of it (except for some vague memories of transgender muslim strippers) so basically same as brand new. A bit dated for sure but entertaining. Worth the read if you're into cyberpunk.

 

Edit: Ah, also the Box Man by Kobo Abe, which I think was recommended by somebody itt. Thanks, for the recommendation.

Edited October 8, 2018 by mokz

[Nebraska]

 

a how-to-manual on being a contract killer; originally written by a divorced housewife from florida who needed the advance to pay her property taxes, the book became notorious when a street preacher used it as his guide when he was hired to "take care" of some guy's wife and son so he could cash out of a million dollar life insurance policy.

 

as for the book: besides being a little outdated, i'd say the author (and publisher?) did their homework 

[Enthusiast]

Beatlebone by Kevin Barry. I highly recommend the audio book read by the author, it's hysterical.

 

[auxien]

I've been listening to an audiobook of Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and I'm just terribly bored by it. Near half through and I feel like eventually it might get somewhere interesting but so far it's felt like mostly set up, or worse, filler.

 

Is it worth following through?

[diatoms]

Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East, Vol. I

 

Baird T. Spalding

[doorjamb]

I've been listening to an audiobook of Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and I'm just terribly bored by it. Near half through and I feel like eventually it might get somewhere interesting but so far it's felt like mostly set up, or worse, filler.

 

Is it worth following through?

I argued with my brother about this one just the other day. He loves it, but I say any book that manages to make moonmen chucking giant rocks at the earth just feel boring & preachy is doing something seriously wrong.

 

I've been reading a ton of old school spooky stuff for October: Poe, Stevenson, Lovecraft, Machen, Bradbury (Something Wicked), Henry James… Found a JC Oates collection titled Nite-Side that doesn't totally suck.

 

I hunted down The Greater Trumps based on somebody here's recommendation, but it's not my cuppa; too much "power of love will overcome all adversity", not enough grist behind the imagery for me. Felt a bit like A Wrinkle in Time, actually, or the sequel, I can't remember now.

 

Also bought Book of the New Sun 1/2; hope it lives up to the hype.

Edited October 29, 2018 by doorjamb

[auxien]

 

I've been listening to an audiobook of Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and I'm just terribly bored by it. Near half through and I feel like eventually it might get somewhere interesting but so far it's felt like mostly set up, or worse, filler.

 

Is it worth following through?

I argued with my brother about this one just the other day. He loves it, but I say any book that manages to make moonmen chucking giant rocks at the earth just feel boring & preachy is doing something seriously wrong.

 

I've been reading a ton of old school spooky stuff for October: Poe, Stevenson, Lovecraft, Machen, Bradbury (Something Wicked), Henry James… Found a JC Oates collection titled Nite-Side that doesn't totally suck.

 

I hunted down The Greater Trumps based on somebody here's recommendation, but it's not my cuppa; too much "power of love will overcome all adversity", not enough grist behind the imagery for me. Felt a bit like A Wrinkle in Time, actually, or the sequel, I can't remember now.

 

Also bought Book of the New Sun 1/2; hope it lives up to the hype.

I remember really liking the second Wrinkle In Time book, but I haven't re-read it in probably 20 years so I dunno if I could get into it these days. Machen is so perfect for this time of year (others as well of course, but the Machen I've read really hits the vibe for me). Heard lots of good about the Book of the New Sun stuff, in here as well as plenty of other places, one day I'll get around to it.

 

Thanks for the little insight to you/brother's impression of that Heinlein, if I can find something else soon I'll probably just drop it...if you remember it as being preachy and boring then it's only going to get more preachy from where I am and that doesn't sound good.

[doorjamb]

I mean, SF is often a narrative vehicle for cool or interesting ideas first, & a compelling story second—& hey, fair enough, not always a bad thing by any means. But, in Harsh Mistress, the ideas Heinlein seems most interested in kicking around are not the gravity/physics, the moontown tech, or anything like that, but instead his pet anarchist talking points (like, the anti-atomic family stuff gets an absurd amount of attention for having nothing whatsoever to do with the plot). It's not that he's wrongheaded, necessarily, but that's not what I'm looking for from the book (YMMV).

[KovalainenFanBoy]

i've a question for anyone into mark fisher's stuff: i want to read his Capitalist Realism book - is it collected in the 900-ish pages long "k-punk" volume? or is it a standalone book?