Now Reading

  On 11/15/2023 at 5:28 PM, cruising for burgers said:

I haven't read a single book in my whole life... would u recommend me something? pls and thank u!

well, actually I did read 2 twin peaks books if I'm not mistaken...

Which ones have you read? I'm guessing The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer?

There are two more recent ones by Mark Frost: The Secret History of Twin Peaks, which I really enjoyed, and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier (haven't read it yet).

Mark Frost has also written some detective novels set in Victorian London with a crossbreed of Dale Cooper and Sherlock Holmes as protagonist, The List of Seven and The Six Messiahs. It's been ages since I've read them, but I loved them at the time. Think Conan Doyle meets Alan Moore, with lots of murder, mystery and esotericism, if that's your cup of fine English.

do audio books count? I have them on paper but I listened to the audio instead...

I do believe that I haven't read The Final Dossier yet as well...

Last time I checked, you got 0.75 points for audiobooks and a full point for every "real" book. Get in there, son!

  On 11/15/2023 at 5:28 PM, cruising for burgers said:

I haven't read a single book in my whole life...

what the hell? even when you were a kid? I think u lying...I seem to recall you saying in some thread you read Siddartha

  On 11/17/2023 at 9:28 PM, zero said:

what the hell? even when you were a kid? I think u lying...I seem to recall you saying in some thread you read Siddartha

ah, oh yeah I did indeed read Siddartha, and The DaVinci code...

anyway it's just 2 books...

I read books when I was kid but can't really recall what and they were books for kids so, does that count? I had a collection of Disney books that came with green audio tapes but it was mostly drawings...

shit, why did my parents trew out every goddamn toy that I had... playmobil, legos, micromachines, books, etc... 

Moebius is basically animation right? I have some of his books in a weird format to read with a specific app... I have it on my laptop can't recall what's his face... The Incal and whatnot...

I want fiction/psythriller/madness/paranoia/psychedelia??

I fucking love naked lunch the movie, is there a book out there like that or alike?

  On 11/18/2023 at 3:28 AM, cruising for burgers said:

I want fiction/psythriller/madness/paranoia/psychedelia??

I fucking love naked lunch the movie, is there a book out there like that or alike?

lol Naked Lunch the movie is based on the William S. Borroughs novel Naked Lunch, so that might be a good choice. If you want madness, I recommend the Cormac McCarthy novel Stella Maris (and also its companion novel The Passenger).

  On 11/18/2023 at 2:50 AM, cruising for burgers said:

does that count?

claro! ain't no grey area here, bruv. either you did a thing or you didn't. there's no maybe when it comes to did you read a book or not lol.

  On 11/18/2023 at 2:50 AM, cruising for burgers said:

shit, why did my parents trew out every goddamn toy that I had... playmobil, legos, micromachines, books, etc... 

trust me man, you don't want that burden. my parents did keep a lot of that shit from my childhood, and then dumped it all back on me several years ago. I spent too much time debating what to do with it all, before I ended up donating the majority to goodwill. it is better to let go of that stuff if you ask me...

  On 11/18/2023 at 3:28 AM, cruising for burgers said:

I fucking love naked lunch the movie, is there a book out there like that or alike?

bro r u serious? naked lunch is probably Burroughs most well known book. it was very famous (infamous?) before it became a movie haha. personally, if you've only like maybe read 2 books in ur life, then I wouldn't recommend starting with that one from his canon. either Junky or Queer are better entry points to Burroughs, if you want to read anything by him. or if you do want the psychedelic madness Naked Lunch is known for, you could try the much shorter story The Exterminator - which is where the whacky bug fumigator character came from. but his style takes getting used to, and is not easy reading.

  On 11/18/2023 at 3:28 AM, cruising for burgers said:

I want fiction/psythriller/madness/paranoia/psychedelia??

maybe try something by Brett Easton Ellis? he's fairly mainstream, and known for most of what you listed above. he wrote American Psycho, you probably know the movie. but Glamorama is much better for madness/thriller IMO... American Gods by Neil Gaiman is also a classic, which is another good entry point for his stuff...there's also Chuck Palahniuk to explore, y'know the guy who wrote Fight Club, since I seem to be on a book into movie/TV show theme atm.

thx dudes that sounds delightful ... and yes indeed I was under the impression that naked lunch was based on a book but I didn't check it out beforehand... this internet is expensive af so I only have 120 free minutes per week... I write my posts first on a text editor, copy, login, paste, logout...

PEak States of Consciousness Volume 1 Theory and Applications By Grant McFetridge

for starters? gonna start reading books that were adapted to some of my favorite movies... do u think I should try to find them in Portuguese? I'm wondering maybe there's gonna be a lot of lost in translation stuff?

I am re-reading Neuromancer for the first time in maybe 20 years. it still packs a punch. William Gibson is 75 years old now, crazy.

 obscenic tours/decline of the west

^ Still my most favorite contemporary author.

I'm doing a big Bret Easton Ellis retrospective atm starting with The Shards (loved it), breezed through Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction, but American Psycho is taking me a while.

Can someone get China Mieville to write a new novel? 

Fascinating approach to Japan's transition out of the Meiji restoration, through the Second World War, and into the present.

Yo I recommend you this book: https://metaxis.digital/libro/yoel-hoffmann-japanese-death-poems

Been reading the expanse series books, currently in the fifth which i believe is where the show left off. They're kinda mid  but want to know where it goes.

Currently reading Steve Hanley's book The Big Midweek about his time in The Fall. Good stuff for the genre. Otherwise, rereading Derek Bailey's book on Improvisation.

  On 1/24/2024 at 9:41 PM, GORDO said:

Been reading the expanse series books, currently in the fifth which i believe is where the show left off. They're kinda mid  but want to know where it goes.

I liked those books.

They do what they do very well. Its like the authors are winking at us saying "OK we know its corny that historic events keep hinging on the actions of these same five characters but keeping the same characters going is what makes this whole 'book' thing interesting so just go with it ok?"

Plus points of the Expanse books:

- actually quite realistic depiction of what a colonised solar system might be like. e.g. people spending a fuck of a lot of time speedng up and slowing down on spaceships, a lot of time living in tunnels.

- actually quite well thought through depiction of what politics would be like in that situation. Also what space combat would be like.

- into that fairly realistic setup they throw a completely mental alien artifact which (as I read someone say somewhere) is actually one of the best sci-fi antagonists ever

- I thought Holden was well written - heroic without being too badass

- Good balance between each book being a book in itself while also moving the series along. You can see that they planned the whole thing out well in advance and it really pays off.

- Same level of quality pretty much all the way through the series.

Minus points:

- For the expanse universe to work, you have to pretend that people would like the endless boring life-or-death maintenance that would be needed to keep the ships and habitats working. Several characters find out to their surprise that that endless maintenance is their life's calling and get really into it.

new Jasper Fforde "Red Side Story" just released. the first part was really interesting it just had a bad fate due to the obviously bad title 

Started re-reading the book Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds by the late American literary critic Harold Bloom. Read it in high school and it definitely inspired my love of classic literature and philosophy. There are short 10-page-or-so articles about 100 of the most prominent authors in world literature, although American and European writers are represented the most. It is a big book, but it has a choose-your-own-adventure vibe, where you can pick which authors you want to learn about without doing too much damage to the overall arch of the book. I like it because it is written from a subjective viewpoint and is not full of literary criticism jargon. It is more the product of lifelong appreciation for imaginative writing that the author has had.

Guess I was unwittingly on a "cli fi" binge lately:

The Lost Cause, Corey Doctorow. Essentially, an extrapolation of political trends pertaining to climate change ~50 years into the future. Weird to read a politically-charged story where I agree with the main character's thrusts but also find him seriously bloody annoying

Termination Shock, Neal Stephenson. Neat exploration of the tech bro solution to climate change, and what its ramifications would look like. Also a prescient look at deepfakes and their political potential. Unfortunately as usual, you can tell towards the end that he doesn't really know how to end the story

you know who does though? Walter Ostanek