Now Reading

  On 5/26/2019 at 7:19 AM, MadellisTheSixth said:

damn, I'm keen to read Porno next. maybe ill give Skaboys the skip.

Porno was great. As in “proper great tradition” type work. Much, much better than Trainspotting, imho, which was vapid  and gimmicky, albeit with some great scenes.

Haven’t gotten around to Skaboys. Probably never will.

  On 5/24/2019 at 12:05 AM, doorjamb said:

NYRB put out a new edition of David Bunch's Moderan stuff from the '70s. For those unaware, it's kinda like PKD's more wacked-out, Exegesis stuff. Brutal cyborgification, plasti-coating the whole planet, etc. Who knows how the hell Bunch kept getting it published back in the day

Just picked this up. I wish NYRB would put out more speculative/genre fiction because they do a really good job of it – the Aickman collection they put out last year was excellent.

the cover alone, not to mention its contents, makes me desperate for a vacay

the driest & possibly most boring text in contemporary archaeological bs, you can tell these people didn't walk to school

https://www.academia.edu/4016588/Social_Theory_and_Archaeology

Speaking of archeology:

Currently plodding through “The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World”

The subject itself is interesting enough: proto-indo-european and the people who spoke it.

But the writing: my goodness. Why do archeologists (this was written by one) insist on bombarding readers with seemingly endless lists of burial sites, numbers of pots found,  types of stone tools registered?

I get that these are their raw data and your peers like to see them, but would it kill you to summarize your findings when you’re writing for a general audience?

It’s something I’ve noticed before with books for laymen written  by archeologists: the endless slurry of repetitive detail without a single overview in sight. Scientists from other disciplines are much better at this, somehow.

Which is a shame, because I would find a birds eye overview of the archeology of a specific region quite interesting. As long as I don’t have to count all the bleeding pots and pans myself.

@rhm...such stuff as dreams are made on *wink

people in the not too distant future will wonder wtf some of these texts were trying to achieve, but material culture, settlements, ritual sites & middens are the typical structured depositions of human remnants down through the millennia. The more ephemeral stuff never really features in the same way time is never fully explored conceptually beyond your standard “wheel” archetype. 

The Eurasian model was pioneered by Gimbutas, then ridiculed for decades b4 recent dna research revised the entire Bronze Age/Yamnaya influence across continental Europe wholesale...80+% displacement in some regions. If your dna tests ever throw up an r1b haplotype, part of your ancestry derives from the Ukraine.

These are probably more of the same stylistically, but the following lecture series combine Bronze Age revisions, previous Neolithic myth lols & some of the archetypal themes in Anthony’s text:

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&channel=ipad_bm&biw=1024&bih=643&tbm=vid&ei=KkvxXMusJs6zsAeRjoPgBA&q=waddell+rhind+&oq=waddell+rhind+&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.3...2217.5758.0.6758.11.11.0.0.0.0.143.953.9j2.11.0....0...1c.1.64.mobile-gws-serp..0.10.868...0j41j0i30k1j0i5i30k1j33i160k1.0.x6GANtmd3-o

and if you can handle it, Bronze Age dna expansion and Western Europe:

  On 5/11/2019 at 12:41 AM, Milwaukeeeee said:

Small Country by Gaël Faye. Very illustrative book concerning the  Rwandan genocide

Will check this out. Thanks!

I've been reading a book of Robert Bresson interviews. Anything Bresson-related is worth a read, imo. Also highly recommend "Neither God Nor Master" by Brian Price. Argues Bresson's ouvre is based in "Radical politics", rather than religion. 

just finished the second book in the Southern Reach trilogy and began the third. so far an interesting change from the first two books.

Stanislaw Lem - Fiasco

I think I need to go easy on translated novels because the language is inevitably awkward. Otherwise an interesting read so far. 

Finished Nathan Ballingrud's Wounds the other day and it was pretty damned good. A couple of the stories were particularly moving, surprisingly given how dark and weird/horrific some of the content is.

Started Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts a day or two ago and already nearing the end. Feels good so far but also feels like there's some subversion/twisting/weirdness ahead still. 

  On 6/1/2019 at 11:34 PM, sweepstakes said:

Stanislaw Lem - Fiasco

 I think I need to go easy on translated novels because the language is inevitably awkward. Otherwise an interesting read so far. 

have you read Solaris? i’ve had it on my shelf for ages but haven’t started yet.

  On 6/2/2019 at 12:25 AM, MadellisTheSixth said:

have you read Solaris? i’ve had it on my shelf for ages but haven’t started yet.

Nope, this is actually my first Lem. I've been meaning to read some for ages myself. 

Richard David Precht - On Animals - Animal Rights and Human Limitation

It's insightful

Read both Solaris and Return From the Stars by Lem since fall, and both were a great experience. Especially the former. 

If you've watched Solaris the movie (the Tarkovsky version), the book is more about Kris' self than the planet and its apparitions in comparison with the movie. I.e. more interesting, imo. Return From the Stars is mostly interesting as a concept, where an astronaut returns, from a several decades long trip through space, to find Earth and its inhabitants radically different... Cliffhangers abound.

  On 6/3/2019 at 2:03 PM, splbt said:

Read both Solaris and Return From the Stars by Lem since fall, and both were a great experience. Especially the former. 

If you've watched Solaris the movie (the Tarkovsky version), the book is more about Kris' self than the planet and its apparitions in comparison with the movie. I.e. more interesting, imo. Return From the Stars is mostly interesting as a concept, where an astronaut returns, from a several decades long trip through space, to find Earth and it's inhabitants radically different... Cliffhangers abound.

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i loved the tarkovsky film, glad the book takes a different approach though. keen to read!

reread porno last year, didn't age well - Glue is better 

Finished rereading the border trilogy by Cormac McCarthy fuckin hell I knew what was coming and it twisted a knife into my heart again why

Read Brave New World, thought it was kinda shit

  On 5/26/2019 at 7:46 AM, estragon said:

Just picked this up. I wish NYRB would put out more speculative/genre fiction because they do a really good job of it – the Aickman collection they put out last year was excellent.

Maybe closer to Borgesian surrealism than speculative fiction than you want, but a couple authors they've republished that come to mind for whatever reason are Adolfo Bioy Casares & Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. As for SF, check out Christopher Priest's Inverted World; I love that book.

Casares and Krzhizhanovsky sound really interesting. Added to the list. Thanks.

WATMM: come for the music, stay for the book recommendations.

struggling to finish Jeff V's Acceptance, it's interesting but I think I've just burnt out on all the characters.

I'm diving into Roberto Bolaño's last book every now and then, I'm actually enjoying how unpolished it (apparently) is sometimes.

Blood Meridian audiobook for driving slogs, Story is relentless even after half a dozen previous reads. The period tone, Judge Holden, a hell more horrible than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, all of it, immense, surreal & wise.

^ been thinking of re-reading blood meridian as i read it more as a recommendation than of my own will. good to hear it holds up. was kinda compulsive about reading at that time (and still am, i suppose) and didn't really let myself enjoy it

broke my no-long-books spree and picked up the second volume of the man without qualities AND infinite jest at the same time. don't know if i am to laugh or cry

^ laugh & cry both. thx 4 the tip w. lem's 'return from the stars' - thoroughly ejnoyed, a great story !

been reading hakim sanai - the walled garden of truth. 

Stephen Baxter's Raft. Good so far.

  On 6/15/2019 at 8:08 AM, splbt said:

^ been thinking of re-reading blood meridian as i read it more as a recommendation than of my own will. good to hear it holds up. was kinda compulsive about reading at that time (and still am, i suppose) and didn't really let myself enjoy it

broke my no-long-books spree and picked up the second volume of the man without qualities AND infinite jest at the same time. don't know if i am to laugh or cry

Wahey, I picked up a cheapo Infinite Jest a couple days ago. Looking forward to another run through. I think it tops my list of most viscerally '90s books (that same weird parallel reality feeling I get from Ventolin-era Aphex, kinda).

Did a bunch of Don Quixote this week but then I found my old copy of Giles Goat Boy & got distracted

  On 6/15/2019 at 8:08 AM, splbt said:

^ been thinking of re-reading blood meridian as i read it more as a recommendation than of my own will. good to hear it holds up. was kinda compulsive about reading at that time (and still am, i suppose) and didn't really let myself enjoy it

Been meaning to read that and McCarthy in general, the history of that part of North America - the deserts of the SW US and North Mexico - is fascinating - it's still very vast, hellish, and remote AF but kind of beautiful for that reason as well. I'm reading a book about the Republic of Texas and I'm only now really appreciating just how not just brutal aspects of it's history were but also how bare bones and rough the settlements were for a good part of a century. I had a pretty comprehensive idea of the history of the state but it's often through this romanticized lens that doesn't reflect the stark reality of it's history.