Now Reading

finished Nathan Ballingrud's The Strange which was really nice to sit with for a while, bit of a Western on Mars thing, sorta sc-fi on the Weird side of things. he normally does more on the horror side, but this was his first full novel and it ended up being a really good read.

read The Key to Deceit, part 2 of a pretty standard mystery series, i've read all this author's stuff (Ashley Weaver), she's a Louisiana writer so always glad to support the locals. she does more period mystery/detective characters. i picked up a bit of taste for that sorta thing from one of my grandmothers. i'm a couple of books behind in this series but when you start them they're quick and fun to tear through.

i drop into Under Alien Skies from Philip Plait and read a chapter or two here and there, about 60% through the book right now. each bit is a little vignette fictionalized of what it would be like to experience some different planet type/etc. space phenomenon, and then he spends the rest of the chapter explaining the physics/reality behind it. highly recommended for the nerds who aren't actual smarties lol

i'm almost 70% through The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll which i forget about immediately after i read it. idk, something about the way it's presented or something, hard to follow a track through it. if it got Mandela Effected tomorrow i'd probably forget it ever existed.

i've read a couple of random Clarkesworld stories, but well behind on that. a recent cover which is just stellar^ ...stories are always interesting, just need to be in the mood for a random sci-fi ish thing. i'll probably binge a number of the stack in Fall/Winter.

i started a random old paperback grab, The Outcasts of Heaven Belt by Joan D Vinge, but man is it a slog so far. i'd like this if it were a movie, maybe, but reading through 'hard sci-fi' ish stuff is often a bit of a trek. may abandon it eventually idk. writing isn't bad, just isn't grabbing me....lots of that era's sci-fi is prone to this...just first draft ideas pushed out to fill the shelves. may be some good stuff in there.

read a few old Machen shorts earlier this year.

Ballingrud's newest just arrived at my doorstep a couple days ago, a novella called The Crypt of the Moon Spider so that's on my next to read queue.

After reading the First Law trilogy by Lord Grimmdark (Joe Abercrombie) and falling in love with the world I went on to read the three standalone novels that are a part of the same world. A few of the characters here which were smaller characters in the original trilogy are far more fleshed out and when it was all said and done wound up being some of my favorites. As expected it also introduces a ton of new faces and places, but the interesting thing was how distinct each work wound up being.

Best Served Cold - As implied this is a revenge tale of Monza Murcatto who is betrayed and witnesses her brother’s brutal murder before being defenestrated down the side of the mountain and left for dead only to wake up to some gnarly ass medieval surgical procedures and an altruisticly-induced opium addiction. After her long and shitty road to recovery she embarks on an even longer and shittier journey to kill off a near score of powerful scumbags by enlisting a crew of equally dodgy sell swords of her own. As a stand-alone this was the best story of the bunch in my opinion and apparently it will be adapted to film (which is cool but I damn I wish this could get the mini-series treatment instead). 

The Heroes- This details a war between union and the northmen spanning only 3 days but resulting in significant carnage and power shifts. The POV characters on either side of the fight range from grizzled Named Men of the north ranging from the tactically minded to the spiritually fervent, a naïve son of a named man who thinks his destiny requires following his father’s footsteps, a disgraced albeit savant-level master swordsman, and of course the leaders of men with differing philosophies and levels of hatred for one another. Oh and also a shitbag corporal who has remained a corporal throughout his entire career due to lack of effort or disciplinary action (just like you would find in any company of any branch of the military). It does a great job of developing the characters, going into the strategies, and detailing some of the major challenges that can be encountered in battle (I.e. supplies, weather, communication/transportation breakdowns, development in weapon technology, etc). This one was a bit of a slower burn with a lot of characters to keep track of but once it got going it was definitely worth the build up.

Red Country- My least favorite of the three. Still a good book but compared to the other two it felt like a let down. This was written basically as a western although within the fantasy genre. It’s about a girl basically riding across the frontier plains I order to find her brother and sister who were abducted by a cult. There were a few choices here Joe took that I just found to be uneventful and I’m also pretty salty about how one of the characters turned out when it was all said and done. Still a decent book but easily my least favorite in the entire First Law world (so far at least, up next is the Age of Madness trilogy which is in the same world but apparently set during the rise of their Industrial Revolution. Fortunately I’ve heard very good things)

Void Star by Zachary Mason (2017) - I can't remember where I saw this recommended but I checked it out and its really really good.

Its really 'proper' writing, I suppose some might call it literary. But by which I mean, the author knows how to write. And I don't mean like over wordy flowery descriptions of everything - I mean more like you read some of the sentences and then you think "I never would have thought of describing that thing in that way, but somehow that really makes sense". Somewhat, but not exactly, as if Virginia Woolf had written a sci-fi novel.

The plot is near future sci-fi and narrative switches between three characters. The world building is quite subtle in that not much gets explained but not much really needs explaining - e.g. lots of coastal cities are flooded and abandoned. Doesn't need explaining, its just how it is. The lack of exposition dumps really helps the quality of the writing. Its a real page turner of a plot but its also so much more than that aswell, due to the aforementioned skills of the writer.

Best thing I've read since Children of Time

IMG_4903.HEICFetching info... IMG_4903.HEICFetching info...

Wry, biting & overall a remorseless skewering of hippy yoghurt weavers already ignoring every home truth presented to them, before setting off on a dislocating relocation mission along the west coast of North America.

Layered, complex group dynamics, outstanding insights into back~to~the~earth dreamers constantly forgetting, or ignoring, as dreams all too often morph into self-fulfilling nightmares.

Loved the micro-details in its conversational modes & moments, the underlying unstated content we all experience every time we interact face to face with other people conversationally, ie what isn’t expressed or stated directly. Subtle too, yet full of colour.

The way women are handed around sexually is nailed adroitly so, instead of self actualisation, sex as social currency replaces true intimacy for nearly everyone in their perma-stoned haze. A biting nagging momentum accumulates, persists & pressurises everyone in the commune as the group & their modal quest unfolds.

8.5/10.

That guy has a lot of nice insights regarding sunlight and health optimization, worth checking it if you wanna improve your health

It seems to me that the style of language in writing is the book equivalent of cinematography, and liberal artistic license being taken with language is recurrent in many works I like as of late. It shouldn't be a surprise then that I found this book so engrossing. It's wild to see a relatively brief novel have such an extended fan-made glossary and annotations, many sourced from correspondence with the author, although I didn't find any of it really necessary in order to follow the story. It did shed some light on certain indecipherable phrases and revealed some clever symbology, but most of the time it doesn't really matter. It seems more effective that the people don't understand their words to any great degree and don't even have the right ones to understand their circumstances. This is most poignant in the "origin" story of Eusa. 

At any rate the book's approach and the questions raised keep following me around. 

I just bought 5 Gabriel Garcia Marquez books from Abe, for £15

Currently reading this. I'm a fan so far.

Jung's Map of the Soul An Introduction by Murray Stein

I have read some of Sigmund Freud's works and case studies when in college, never really learned about Jung until now, though. My two favorite American novelists, Cormac McCarthy and Thomas Pynchon, reference him by name and explore his ideas in their works (McCarthy in Stella Maris and Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow), so I was eager to get a decent intro, and the writing is very clear, concise, and comprehensive. A lot of Jung's ideas are very interesting and some of them are kind of mind-blowing, feel like I learned a lot about the human mind, psychology, and culture from reading this, and I also have a good background for checking out Jung's own work in the future. His Red Book and Aion both sound interesting but also a little daunting.

Also the book gave me a better understanding and awareness of my own psychological shortcomings and weak points. Was constantly thinking about as I read all of the times in my youth and even today where my thoughts and behavior are immature or misguided, where I hesitated to accept and pursue adult-level maturity and responsibility.

Mark Hollis biography ‘A Perfect Silence’ by Ben Wardle finally reprinted by Rocket88

Can’t recommend enough alongside the book Spirit of Talk Talk to anyone who likes Talk Talk’s music

nice! I recently got more into Talk Talk. need to check out their history.

'Camp Concentration" by Thomas M Disch is currently blowing my mind.

  On 10/2/2024 at 7:19 AM, DyeMyBlueBlack said:

Mark Hollis biography ‘A Perfect Silence’ by Ben Wardle finally reprinted by Rocket88

Can’t recommend enough alongside the book Spirit of Talk Talk to anyone who likes Talk Talk’s music

I definitely need to check this out

  On 10/2/2024 at 10:47 PM, Atop said:

nice! I recently got more into Talk Talk. need to check out their history.

 

'Camp Concentration" by Thomas M Disch is currently blowing my mind.

Spirit of Talk Talk (also Rocket88) is better for people less familiar with the band to read first. It’s a higher level look at their career with interviews and lots of hi gloss photos of the band, artwork, and miscellany (their longtime artist collaborator James Marsh collaborated on the book). 

  On 10/2/2024 at 10:51 PM, milkface said:

I definitely need to check this out

Buy it now! Just came back into print for the first time since the original release in 2022 and it’s so good. 

I’m almost 100 pages in and Talk Talk haven’t even recorded their first album yet - they only got their name a couple pages ago 

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - has only had one small mention in this thread as far as I can tell. This book came out in 2013 and won a fuckton of awards - Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Arthur C Clarke and Locus. Its the only novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards.

If you're into sci-fi in any way, this is a great read. How to describe it without giving too much away? Ann Leckie is a very good writer.  It takes place in a very stratified empire setting, lots of scenes of people drinking tea in a ceremonial way with each other, and judging the quality of each others gloves. This makes it sound dull, but really, its fucking gripping. The dialogue is very well written. Now and again very satisfying bursts of action occur. The narrator is an AI, somewhat like a warrior zen monk and has a very unusual but nonetheless compelling perspective on things. When you find out what an 'ancillary' is, its pretty dark, but that darkness is only alluded to from an angle. And it has the best (and most darkly humourous) "inscrutable aliens" I've ever seen in a sci-fi universe - The Presger.

Two other books followed to complete the trilogy and they pretty much keep to the same high standard.

I'm currently reading "Translation State" (2023) which is a new novel in the same universe, but quite different, enjoying it a lot so far, will write more on that later.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Shibumi.jpg

HAS ANYONE READ THIS?

how am I supposed to read this? this is basically an encyclopedia... can't carry this around with me... another collectors item to go on the shelves... anyway, 30 bucks, not that expensive right?

  On 10/5/2024 at 11:34 PM, zazen said:

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie - has only had one small mention in this thread as far as I can tell. This book came out in 2013 and won a fuckton of awards - Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Arthur C Clarke and Locus. Its the only novel ever to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke awards.

If you're into sci-fi in any way, this is a great read. How to describe it without giving too much away? Ann Leckie is a very good writer.  It takes place in a very stratified empire setting, lots of scenes of people drinking tea in a ceremonial way with each other, and judging the quality of each others gloves. This makes it sound dull, but really, its fucking gripping. The dialogue is very well written. Now and again very satisfying bursts of action occur. The narrator is an AI, somewhat like a warrior zen monk and has a very unusual but nonetheless compelling perspective on things. When you find out what an 'ancillary' is, its pretty dark, but that darkness is only alluded to from an angle. And it has the best (and most darkly humourous) "inscrutable aliens" I've ever seen in a sci-fi universe - The Presger.

Two other books followed to complete the trilogy and they pretty much keep to the same high standard.

I'm currently reading "Translation State" (2023) which is a new novel in the same universe, but quite different, enjoying it a lot so far, will write more on that later.

 

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Got this randomly as well last week - it’s really awesome 

Just started The Overstory by Richard Powers (lol dick powers). It's been on my to-read list for a few years. Really good so far... the first story had a darker ending than I expected. Beautiful prose though. 

I have too much to read on my shelf but I'm really tempted to buy David Bentley Hart's new book All Things Are Full of Gods or to try to find an affordable good edition of F.H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality. 

Really oughta be reading something spooky though, considering the season... I'm midway thru the Michel Ghelderode anthology Spells - it's eerie, especially "The Sick Garden," but I need some more Ligotti or something... Teatro Grottesco has been on my tbr list for a while... anyone have some (non-King) weird horror recs? I don't really like gore, just weirdness.

  On 10/14/2024 at 6:48 PM, Atop said:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Shibumi.jpg

HAS ANYONE READ THIS?

Nice! I’m not into comics but I’m a Jordorowsky, Moebius, DUNE, HR Giger, and Alien fan so I’ve been meaning to read this.
 

Have seen  it called the greatest comic of all time.

The Invisibles is the best comic ever imo...

The Shibumi I'm talking about is a thriller novel by Trevanian.

It heavily influenced John Wick.

The Banquet Years about the belle epoque etc. 

Slowly going through House of Leaves 

never heard about these 

  Quote

That's a creative comparison! If Greg Egan is the Autechre of books—delivering intricate, intellectually stimulating science fiction with a focus on hard science and complex ideas—then identifying the literary counterparts of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada involves looking for authors who embody similar qualities in their writing.

### **Aphex Twin of Books: Thomas Pynchon**

**Why Thomas Pynchon?**
- **Experimental Structure:** Like Aphex Twin’s unconventional and innovative approach to music, Pynchon is renowned for his complex narratives, non-linear storytelling, and experimental structures.
- **Layered Complexity:** Pynchon's works are dense with themes, references, and intricate plots, mirroring Aphex Twin’s multifaceted soundscapes.
- **Cult Following:** Both Pynchon and Aphex Twin have dedicated fan bases that deeply appreciate their challenging and avant-garde creations.

**Notable Works:**
- *Gravity’s Rainbow*
- *The Crying of Lot 49*
- *Against the Day*

### **Boards of Canada of Books: Haruki Murakami**

**Why Haruki Murakami?**
- **Atmospheric and Nostalgic:** Boards of Canada evoke a sense of nostalgia and create rich, atmospheric soundscapes. Similarly, Murakami’s novels often blend the mundane with the surreal, creating a dreamlike and evocative atmosphere.
- **Emotional Depth:** Both the music of Boards of Canada and Murakami’s writing tap into deep emotional currents, often exploring themes of memory, identity, and the subconscious.
- **Accessible Yet Profound:** While their works are accessible, they carry layers of meaning and subtle complexity that invite deeper exploration.

**Notable Works:**
- *Kafka on the Shore*
- *Norwegian Wood*
- *1Q84*

### **Alternative Suggestions:**

- **For Aphex Twin:**
  - **Mark Z. Danielewski:** Known for his experimental novel *House of Leaves*, which plays with narrative structure and form.
  - **William Gibson:** Pioneer of the cyberpunk genre, offering innovative and boundary-pushing ideas.

- **For Boards of Canada:**
  - **Neil Gaiman:** Creates atmospheric and richly textured worlds, blending the real with the fantastical.
  - **Italo Calvino:** His works often explore imaginative and whimsical themes with a strong sense of atmosphere.

### **Conclusion**

Just as Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada each bring distinct flavors to electronic music, authors like Thomas Pynchon and Haruki Murakami offer unique and compelling voices in literature. Pynchon parallels Aphex Twin with his experimental and complex narratives, while Murakami mirrors Boards of Canada through his atmospheric and emotionally resonant storytelling. These authors push the boundaries of their genres, much like their musical counterparts.

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