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Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

You ever read any Laird Barron, Beerwolf?

  On 2/2/2017 at 8:36 PM, doublename said:

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

 

You ever read any Laird Barron, Beerwolf?

Nope

Just had a quick look on amazon, looks good and my cup of tea. I'll give him a go.

  On 2/2/2017 at 8:20 PM, beerwolf said:

My promise to myself of getting back into reading, hit the buffers (after a very decent spell) with three books that were binned because I just couldn't gel with them and were killing my enthusiasm. On the Road, Carrion Comfort and 11 22 63 (Stephen King) were all ditched. Thankfully I'm back on track with Clive Barkers Books Of Blood volume 1 to 3, and after a week or two I'm almost done.

 

Have to be honest I'd like to find a couple of authors I could really get stuck into, but I'm struggling to find them.

have you read Blood Meridian by Cormac?

its yuuuuge, head & shoulders above his other work & would personally guarantee you finish it in days (ideal 4 a rainy weekend)

visceral & ungodly one sec, landscape diary the next, with a snaking plot, philosophy, genius characters & fate all in 1

get some

i think capote was pretty accurate in his criticism of on the road.

though maybe he didn't actually say it the way people report it: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/18/typing/

  On 2/2/2017 at 11:15 PM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 2/2/2017 at 8:20 PM, beerwolf said:

My promise to myself of getting back into reading, hit the buffers (after a very decent spell) with three books that were binned because I just couldn't gel with them and were killing my enthusiasm. On the Road, Carrion Comfort and 11 22 63 (Stephen King) were all ditched. Thankfully I'm back on track with Clive Barkers Books Of Blood volume 1 to 3, and after a week or two I'm almost done.

 

Have to be honest I'd like to find a couple of authors I could really get stuck into, but I'm struggling to find them.

 

 

have you read Blood Meridian by Cormac?

 

its yuuuuge, head & shoulders above his other work & would personally guarantee you finish it in days (ideal 4 a rainy weekend)

 

visceral & ungodly one sec, landscape diary the next, with a snaking plot, philosophy, genius characters & fate all in 1

 

get some

 

I'll check it out, thanks

Bought The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities edited by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer because it contains the last Ted Chiang story I have yet to read (but now have and feel sad there is no more Chiang to find :( ). Looking forward to reading the rest of the stories and hopefully finding a few new authors to follow.

I think unless you're reading it as a teenager On The Road is pretty shite.

Took a break from reading about Jack the Ripper to finish The Fisherman by John Langan. Echoes of Pet Semetery and not as effective but it mixes personal loss with huge Lovecraftian horror well. Has a nice sitting round a campfire being told a story vibe too.

  On 2/4/2017 at 9:01 AM, tec said:

I think unless you're reading it as a teenager On The Road is pretty shite.

 

Not exaggerating but On The Road lasted about a dozen pages. The other two were perhaps mid-way before my patience finally ran out.

Perfume by P Suskind was the one before these and was a 9/10.

Saramago's "Blindness" is turning out to be pretty bad... Was expecting it to be more insightful than it is, considering the author deems it an 'essay'. Turns out it's just a run-of-the-mill apocalypse story

reading kingdom come by ballard but it's a lot less interesting than what i'm used to from him

cwmbrancity, just ordered Blood Meridian

Finished PKD's Martian Time-Slip. It was OK. It was a slow build, it had some good descriptive trippy scenes surrounding an autistic boy, but the antagonist and protagonist were too two dimensional.

I started PKD's Dr. Futurity right after and it was already engrossing 2 chapters in. I've been focusing on PKD's novels for the past 5 years and I still can't get enough of the time manipulation, precogs, telepaths, future drugs, androids, paranoia, alternate realities, etc.

btw: can't wait for this to be released

The Samurai by Shusaku Endo.

Slaine The Horned God - Simon Bisley is the boss, totally awesome.

  On 2/7/2017 at 9:09 PM, dumplings said:

The Samurai by Shusaku Endo.

i recently finish The Left Hand Of Darkness which was pretty good, though one strech of the story lasted way too long and got far too repetitive. the first half of the novel was better.

reading The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler at the moment.

fin: The Little Sister

reading: Money by Martin Amis

So Saramago's Blindness was pretty bad, I might have to read the novel that earned him a Nobel just to see if it's just me or the guy really isn't that much. It was supposed to be this amazing insight into human nature and it's just a subpar apocalyptic novel with sappy writing, run-on sentences and a dozen proverbs and sayings per chapter. "Everyone went blind and some people became real cunts and the world went to shit" well gee whiz give this man a Nobel goddamn. "Well maybe even if we aren't blind we are blind either way cause we dont LOOK at stuff real deep" god DAMN!!

Now on to McCarthy's The Road

Reading DNA: The Secret of Life by James Watson, which is for research (copy is stuffed with post-it notes). Also bought a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare from the same charity shop, a thousand page hardcover I don't suspect I will read soon but looks impressive.

At work, reading Granta 106, which features short stories by Eleanor Catton and Ha Jin. Pretty good, might get more of these Granta magazines.

@span

I remember thinking Death With Interruptions was better than Blindness, but that's not saying a whole lot.

Any of you mans read[ing] Lincoln at the Bardo? I ended my preorder (hardcovers are stupidly expensive) and joined the long af wait list at the library. 

i finished it today. it's pretty good, little bit cutesy in places but most saunders is like that. i don't think it's a good place to start with him and the format is really weird, like a transcript and then long passages written in the style of nicholson baker's human smoke, with primary source documents serving as fodder for the narrative. it's very pomo, but good. if you like saunders this is a lot better than his recent short story collections, which were a dead end for me.

Never heard of him, he sounds interesting. Good place to start?

civilwarland in bad decline and pastoralia are his first two collections and also his best.

thanks!