Now Reading

I reread Flowers For Algernon. the feels. I think I cried the first time I finished it and reading it a second time 10+ years later it still hits hard but man ain't got no more tears to crai.

This was, to put it lightly, a fucking hoot to read. Awesome dude. Great studio anecdotes and a glance into his daily life. Some brilliant moments like: “Woke up at 4.30. Funny thing - in Ireland I rarely get an erection (though I was swimming nude the other morning, fully erect, and that was tremendous - almost non-sexual: like enjoying a muscle being flexed). It must be something to do with all the Catholicism in the air.”

I followed it with this 400 page book which I blasted through in days. Well written and goes album-by-album.

on the final few chapters of Helter Skelter, I had to put it down for a month or so and read a few fishing books because the whole story was beginning to get to me. I'd be trying to get to sleep and that stuff would worm its way into my mind. Even during the day I'd be thinking about it too much that was healthy. 

the chapter when it goes into how Manson thought The Beatles were talking to him via The White Album is totally fucking nuts, but very interesting.

40 Words for Sorrow. Currently on chapter 13. Things are gettign pretty heated right now.

I started rereading ASOIAF books when season 7 was released in the hopes that book 6 might be out by the time I'd finished. Welp I ran out of books the day before yesterday

Decided to read 1984. Not read it since I was 13 or so and I'm not even sure if I finished it. My memory of it is all mixed up with the 80s movie.

eileen's latest is basically exploring the dark web in all it's inferno levels starting with dark (the darknet markets), darker (the murder-for-hire hitmen and redrooms) to the darkest (pedo empires and the notorious daisy's destruction "makers" eventual capture).

interesting read- although eileen isn't exactly the best writer in the world and (imo) i feel like if you aren't aware of these subjects you'll feel a little lost as she skims through stories very quickly with not enough vivid detail eg. if you aren't familiar with VG/mongoose, then you're shit out of luck imagining what he looks like since eileen barely describes him besides "i couldn't believe i was finally meeting mongoose. i felt slightly intimidated"

The Crying of Lot 49 - I don't think I'm a Pynchon dude. Fully admit it might be lack of IQ on my part. I'll stick with Dick for my 60's California fix.

Annihilation - Better than the movie. Felt slightly dumbed down but captivating. I read it all in one day which I haven't done since The Road like 10 years ago.

Neuromancer - Really enjoying it so far. Charming, fun, cheesy, and very 80s. I've read a couple other Gibson novels (Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine) but this has a lot more fun youthful angst. The descriptions of neon Tokyo are inspiring in an unexpected way, I guess because this was before that whole vibe became hackneyed to the point where you can't deploy it without  irony, kitsch, or solemn homage.

burning chrome is good if you want more of that early gibson stuff

  On 4/11/2018 at 6:38 AM, zaphod said:

burning chrome is good if you want more of that early gibson stuff

Yeah I was thinking that next, or Mona Lisa Overdrive. 

I ordered the next Southern Trilogy book though and it just arrived today so I'll probably read that next.

  On 4/11/2018 at 6:04 AM, sweepstakes said:

The Crying of Lot 49 - I don't think I'm a Pynchon dude. Fully admit it might be lack of IQ on my part. I'll stick with Dick for my 60's California fix.

I found Lot 49 pretty underwhelming the first time I read it. Didn't really click with me until I'd read Gravity's Rainbow twice and V and Vineland.

For psychedelic brainmelt postmodern insanity I recommend GR, unfortunately it's 900+ pages of cryptic crossword prose. Worth it imo though.

V is probably the best place to start imo

His new stuff (Inherent Vice and Bleeding Edge) isn't as good, but it's easier to follow than Latke 49. I agree that V is the best place to start though.

Finally finished Mirror of the Marvelous by Pierre Mabille.....intriguing & lucid rabbit hole into myths & transcendentalism, with a succinct set of critiques/analysis of historic & fictional anecdotes.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in psychotherapy, levels of consciousness, animism, voodoo initiation/magic & mythology. The kind of book which psychotherapists like Jordan Peterson could never conjure, because Mabille was both a medical clinician & an anthropologist of paganism. Well worth the shekels for traversing the intersections of objective science, subjective experience & humanity's collective mythologies. Andre Breton's foreword is the cherry on top.

  On 4/11/2018 at 5:16 PM, zaphod said:

V is probably the best place to start imo

its a rip off of Breton's "Nadja", but still a damn good read

no it isn’t, if anything it’s a parody

1984 was good and way more readable than I remember it.

A colleague at work gave me Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent so I've started that now. I'm immediately put off by the prose style, which is adjective heavy and show-offily pretentious to me but I will persevere.

I am bearing in mind that I may just be hating on it in a contrarian fashion as I'm aware it was a super hyped book a few years ago.

The first thing that came to mind though is 'I bet Amelie fans love this book'.

read like 5 of his works in a row a year or two ago and found this in a thrift shop. figured i'd read the book that actually lost him his czech citizenship. funnily enough i didn't really consider the context in which his political criticism was written until now

haven't seen him posted here before so i figured i'd recommend him. especially the unbearable lightness of being

I had a bunch of his books, all picked up from charity shops. Never got around to reading them and I think I've lost them now d'oh

  On 4/20/2018 at 10:42 PM, zaphod said:

no it isn’t, if anything it’s a parody

yes it isn't

  On 4/21/2018 at 9:00 AM, hello spiral said:

I had a bunch of his books, all picked up from charity shops. Never got around to reading them and I think I've lost them now d'oh

i genuinely liked this book. got this impression kundera genuinely tried to write something in the very theme he was theorizing about: variations on repetitions. he proposes some insights about how we laugh at the absurdity of repetition and that we in those repetitions lose sight of what is being repeated, which is literally what happens as the book progresses. it's sweet. was positively surprised

I just ordered some Hammond project enclosures and a Georges Bataille book on Amazon, what kind of government watch lists am I on now?

Picked up Hyperion in a charity shop and keen to get started but I have to finish this fucking Essex Serpent book first.

Currently reading the fourth book (The Citadel of the Autarch) in Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun saga. Apparently a classic science-fantasy novel which somehow had eluded me. Dying Earth type of setting, set millions of years in the future where forgotten tech is to the narrator like magic. It's good stuff and definitely has me considering another read through because it has layers and the narrator doesn't really seem reliable. Great use of archaic words to add some spice and strangeness to the language.

I am also in the process of reading the 4kg omnibus of Jack Kirby's Fourth World comics that came out last year. 70s comics silliness <3

Anyone read any John Barnes? I picked up Kaleidoscope Century, which sounds like it's basically about immortal Droogs in space. It's #5 in a list of crap I have to read so it'll be a while afore I commence