Now Reading

  On 7/30/2017 at 7:15 PM, doorjamb said:

 

Recently read:

• Rendezvous With Rama (Clarke) — SF classic. Groovy cover art, too.

 

One of my fav classic scifis that

I'm working through a stack of U K LeGuin, so far read Dispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness. The first is pretty enjoyable save for the ending which is probably the laziest deus-ex-machina I've ever come across. Enjoyed Left Hand too, but didn't think the main theme was all that well-developed. The whole point of the book is famously to compare our society with one that would result if people were androgynous, and that theme is obviously mentioned throughout but nowhere does it really seem to control the plot or even really the underpinnings of the societies it explores (far less than their religions, anyway). Both were good but I was expecting more, I guess

  On 8/7/2017 at 12:19 AM, Nebraska said:

thanks to Lewps for recommending powell's books in portland. was finally able to track down this oop book which i've been trying to get for years

 

Looks like the cover of a secret lost Bowie album from the Station To Station period that got shelved for containing too many occult themes

A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson

I picked up the first The Familiar from Mark Z Danielewski from a charity shop, has anyone dared try it?

  On 8/31/2017 at 6:06 PM, tec said:

I picked up the first The Familiar from Mark Z Danielewski from a charity shop, has anyone dared try it?

There was a podcast I listened to for a while and they started reviewing each volume of this as it came out, I think I heard two or three of the volumes discussed...sounded ridiculous and just overblown and meandering. I definitely had zero desire to read it hearing their descriptions. The only thing of his I've read is House of Leaves of course, and despite it being pretty great, it was a bit of a chore to get through. His style is probably just too much for me in general, though. Curious to see if anyone here has read The Familiar and hear their thoughts.

Many books read, few I have mentioned here. Let's go:

Finished John le Carré's The Looking-Glass War and A Small Town In Germany, completing the omnibus collection I had. Both excellent books, if slightly over detailed, especially A Small Town.... Will continue to read further le Carré books, yet to be betrayed by his work. Also booked a ticket to watch a live-screening of an interview with him, which will be my first literary event. Looking forward to it.

N W and Changing My Mind: Collected Essays by Zadie Smith. I had suspected N W to be a book trying too hard to be out there and weird as some reviews had described it as, but such suspicions were unfounded. Really enjoyable, with a few genuine funny moments.

H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker. Very strange, with another somewhat sudden and not so satisfying ending, although not the worst. Her books just stop, in a way that does not feel quite right. Only Darkmans had a satisfactory ending, considering the content that came before it. To me, the ending of a book is like the last bite of a meal: if you fuck that up, that's all you remember.

Just begun reading Villages of Britain: the Five Hundred Villages That Made The Countryside by Clive Aslet. Consists of short stories about (guess what) villages, and their inceptions. Pretty interesting, I could do with learning a little more about my own country than reading another American book.

Speaking of Americans, I started reading Underworld by Don Delillo at work. Disappointed it has nothing to do with English rave but I think I'll enjoy it.

  On 1/13/2017 at 2:02 PM, Hk47 said:

Finished Biomega... Great series, though I didn't enjoy it as much as Blame!... I'm still going to have to get Abara and Knights of Sidonia soon...

 

 

He starts to introduce cute characters with bio mega which make it kind of hard to read while still his genius way of painting structures makes up for the characters

Pagan Spain by Richard Wright

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Slowly making my way through The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin. It's good, but goddamn I cannot stomach fantasy at all.

meanwhile in Bristol

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-41167296

Are there any good new crime novels? My brothers birthday is coming up and I know sod all about the genre.

  On 9/6/2017 at 8:27 PM, tec said:

Are there any good new crime novels? My brothers birthday is coming up and I know sod all about the genre.

if your brother is into dark, neo-noirish crime stuff, I would highly recommend a trilogy of lesser-known novels by Will Christopher Baer. They aren't new, but they are fucking great. The first one is called Kiss Me, Judas

https://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Judas-Will-Christopher-Baer/dp/0670881759/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0670881759&pd_rd_r=N08SWA0NWC9AEMX38CN8&pd_rd_w=3D04q&pd_rd_wg=0NWG2&psc=1&refRID=N08SWA0NWC9AEMX38CN8

Cool, I work in a pretty big bookshop so hopefully they'll have it there tomorrow.

my "to read" list is growing ever longer because of this thread. 

nicola barker Darkmans.. was a great tip. read that last year due to someone mentioning it in this thread. now i need to get more of her stuff. 

  On 9/2/2017 at 10:22 AM, doublename said:

Pagan Spain by Richard Wright

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

 

Slowly making my way through The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin. It's good, but goddamn I cannot stomach fantasy at all.

I bought the Laird Barron book Occultism. So far I'm on the fourth short story..

Also read I Am Legend which was also neat. 

Once I've done Occultism I'll be read Imajica (Barker). I kind of feel I can't go wrong with Clive Barker tbh. Still need to read more though....I just find if I've done plenty of work and even though I've had the strongest cup of coffee known to man I read three pages and I'm sinking into a deep sleep. My eyelids turn into lead shutters. Hate it. So frustrating.

halfway through 2666, not looking forward to the 200 or so pages of the Part About the Murders I've yet to read. It's like American Psycho but instead of describing people's clothing it's describing rape and murder victims

  On 9/6/2017 at 11:54 PM, span said:

halfway through 2666, not looking forward to the 200 or so pages of the Part About the Murders I've yet to read. It's like American Psycho but instead of describing people's clothing it's describing rape and murder victims

American Psycho also describes quite a bit of rape and murder, as well as a bitchin Whitney Houston review

it's like american psycho except instead of describing putting rats up a girl's pussy it describes a murder.

  On 9/7/2017 at 12:19 AM, zaphod said:

it's like american psycho except instead of describing putting rats up a girl's pussy it describes a murder.

  On 9/7/2017 at 12:19 AM, zaphod said:

it's like american psycho except instead of describing putting rats up a girl's pussy it describes a murder.

what I mean though is that in American Psycho you get these constant, repetitive, almost identical descriptions of people's clothing while in 2666 Bolaño does that with murder victims, just one after the other until they all start blurring together. Not the best comparison but you get it

Found the David Foster Wallace essay The Seminal Importance of Terminator 2 for those that are interested... will give it a read later..

dfw_scanned_essays.pdfFetching info...

But yeah, will read that later.

lol

2666 update: might not even finish before I'm forced to return it to the library

Alright fellas, help me put together a kickass pile of spooky books to read this autumn.

I dug out Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf last night (it was next to a bunch of old Goosebumps books—hell yeah), and before that I reread Alan Moore's From Hell. Plus I got this thing called Powers of Darkness, which I guess is what happened when Bram Stoker's Icelandic translator for Dracula decided to blood-and-gore things up a bit. So that could be fun. or crap, but maybe fun crap.

Suggestions? I hunger for fresh blood

For horror I have recently enjoyed The Croning, The Fisherman, Rawblood, Hex and Apartment 16. Sorry to not state the authors but I'm in bed and my bookshelf is too far away.