Now Reading

  On 6/13/2018 at 1:58 AM, cwmbrancity said:

 

  On 6/8/2018 at 7:45 PM, dumplings said:

Slaughterhouse-Five.

 

Not sure what I'm getting myself into but it was recommended to me on goodreads.

 

 

so it goes

 

A running theme it seems, and I'm only a quarter of the way through.

  On 5/4/2018 at 1:18 PM, azatoth said:

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.

thanks for mentioning this, i'd not heard of it but been way into scifi-ish zone lately so i grabbed these. i love them.. so very excellent. i'm halfway through The Urth of the New Sun now.

before these i was reading every CJ Cherryh book i could get my hands on. some of them much better than others but there's something about her stuff i really like.. the emphasis on communication/translation between different modes of thought that runs throughout all her books.. some standouts for me from her 'Alliance-Union' megaseries: Cyteen, and the Chanur sub-series (Pyanfar Chanur must now be my favourite spaceship captain ever).

also, the setting of Heavy Time (1991), set early on in her Alliance-Union timeline... well, The Expanse was surely heavily inspired by this. it's straight up almost the same in so many ways, right down to the hairstyles of belters.

  On 6/6/2018 at 4:51 AM, zaphod said:

this is so alien to me. I'm now wondering how many other dickheads there are out there who think like this.

I breezed past the first time this was brought up, but Amazon/Goodreads basically already has that.

I just started "We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy - and the World's Getting Worse" by James Hillman and Michael Ventura and so far it's really good. Hillman was a Jungian so of course his ideas oscillate between amazingly insightful and completely ludicrous but even the ludicrous once are pretty interesting.

Finished Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun a while back. Nice ending to Severians story and weird. Some scenes on the starship made me laugh with glee how neat it was. Read LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, liked it too. Now thought to continue with Wolfe's Solar Cycle, with Book of the Long Sun and eventually Book of the Short Sun. BOTLS has a different feel to it than the BOTNS, but the prose somehow captures me and makes me want explore the odd far future.

Hey Azatoth, I don't think I've ever mentioned how happy it makes me every time I see the old Oolong/goatse GIF in your signature. 

Just finished up "The Peripheral" by William Gibson. Interesting ideas on events unfolding and affecting different timelines in different ways.

Also re-reading Neal Stephenson's "Reamde". Checked it out from library and forgotten I had read it before.

t.e. lawrence - seven pillars of wisdom

This book is blowing my mind with its eloquence of language, insight and of course the events. I also found the Castle Hill fine print editions, unfortunately out of stock and the price is also incredibly steep, but with this piece of work it would be well worth to own one.

i have a lot of random found books stacked on my table. neil gaiman, burroughs, bunch of random university texts, guns germs & steel, etc etc. i keep finding free books that sound interesting, but the rate i which i actually read them & my aversion to accumulating objects means 80% of them just end up back in the book box, unread

the what if i told you thread reminds me that i want to pick up the second book in the law of one series at some point

re-reading The Place Of Dead Roads (Burroughs) at the moment

also reading The Crossing (McCarthy)

recently finished Book 1 and 2 of Book of the New Sun. Books 3/4 arrived recently so they'll probably be next up.

  On 7/10/2018 at 9:27 PM, QQQ said:

re-reading The Place Of Dead Roads (Burroughs) at the moment

it seems to be the second book in a trilogy. how important is it to have read the first one before reading this?

i actually read that one first too, not sure why i did ... (though I've read all 3 now)

they aren't connected directly by plot, more by ideas and recurring themes throughout the three books. it's a fairly challenging read anyway, but it won't be much more difficult to understand if you haven't read the first. i highly recommend reading the first book either before or after this, though; it's one of my favourites, if not my favourite.

  On 7/10/2018 at 9:27 PM, QQQ said:

also reading The Crossing (McCarthy)

 

recently finished Book 1 and 2 of Book of the New Sun. Books 3/4 arrived recently so they'll probably be next up.

The Crossing is fucking amazing. Hit me so hard, maybe not for everyone, but it's the best of his I've yet read (not many tho)

I've heard good about the Book of the New Sun series or whatever. You liked the first two I guess if you're reading the others?

^thanks! lookin forward to reading it. burroughs is one of those authors who i've read a lot about (just because his weird alternative writing techniques seem very in line with a lot of my personal feelings about art creation), but have yet to actually read much by.

also currently downloading a shitton of random pdfs about chaos magic, a subject which is definitely up there in terms of spawning massive contrasting feelings of "wow this seems like something i want to really explore deeply & devote a lot of energy to" and "holy shit this is dumb, i spend way too much time on the internet"

Borne

I like it.

The Book of the New Sun, is still sticking to me. A few scenes from the book sure, but more so the feel and sense of place that the books evoked in me. Can still imagine in my minds eye how the reddish light from the dying sun paints the ancient cities with the well trodden stones of the streets gleaming with wetness and the vegetation and lichens on the town walls and the oddness of the flora and fauna the characters encounter in their travels. I totally understand why this is considered a classic of science fantasy/fiction. Damn well written stuff. 

not really reading- more like "looking at". this is an art book with images of all the street fighter II characters in different scenarios related to the video game. got it from a friend 

Just read Consider The Lobster. A very fun read as Foster Wallace's always is, but it is almost aways form over substance. Which is not to say that he has nothing to say, he has an interesting perspective and some good insight, but the content never seems to match the quality of the writing itself.

  On 7/11/2018 at 12:28 AM, auxien said:

 

  On 7/10/2018 at 9:27 PM, QQQ said:

also reading The Crossing (McCarthy)

 

recently finished Book 1 and 2 of Book of the New Sun. Books 3/4 arrived recently so they'll probably be next up.

The Crossing is fucking amazing. Hit me so hard, maybe not for everyone, but it's the best of his I've yet read (not many tho)

 

I've heard good about the Book of the New Sun series or whatever. You liked the first two I guess if you're reading the others?

  On 7/12/2018 at 11:11 PM, QQQ said:

the writing is much better than 99.99% of fantasy.

i've picked up so many fantasy books over the years because the cover art + title + chapter titles were hella lush & evocative, but generally speaking the writing has been so dire that five chapters in i'm like "shit this isn't the written equivalent of good electronic music at all, i feel like i've been falsely advertised to"

  On 7/11/2018 at 1:47 PM, azatoth said:

The Book of the New Sun, is still sticking to me. A few scenes from the book sure, but more so the feel and sense of place that the books evoked in me. Can still imagine in my minds eye how the reddish light from the dying sun paints the ancient cities with the well trodden stones of the streets gleaming with wetness and the vegetation and lichens on the town walls and the oddness of the flora and fauna the characters encounter in their travels. I totally understand why this is considered a classic of science fantasy/fiction. Damn well written stuff.

fully. same. i'm up to the last one now, Return to the Whorl.. they've been amazing all the way through, some of my favourite things ever now. as well as the very evocative placeness of them, i love how he sort of, often doesn't explain things which have already been implied. not in a being-cryptic way, but a really natural feeling way. like he almost always omits things which are potentially obvious.

book weird. book good.

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

Ordered me The Book of the New Sun, need to get in on this ever since Zaphod's recommendation.

In the meantime I've finally got round to The Third Policeman, kindly sent by hello spiral in the secret santa. The bit with the boxes in the box was ridiculously funny.

Such a good book