Books Thread

I recently finished Clive Barker's Books of Blood volume 1-3 and I've gotta say they're pretty good. I've always found short horror stories better than full-length novels, though perhaps that's just because authors like King and Barker have a tendency to ramble.

 

Things We Lost in the Fire, short fiction by Mariana Enriquez translated into English by Megan McDowell. The stories are set in Argentina scarred by the Dirty Wars, with just the barest vestige of supernatural activity nudged into an environment of extreme inequality, drug violence, and precarious infrastructure. I'm tremendously impressed by how Enriquez bends horror to the service of social commentary while somehow steering clear of didacticism. Really enjoyed these.

 

Just finished reading Imperium (Robert Harris) and started Lustrum.
They're a historical fiction series following the life of Cicero and the end of the Roman republic.
Damn good if you're into roman stuff and I can honestly say it's the first time ever I've enjoyed reading about politics and legal stuff.
They also make me think we need to add "torn apart by angry mob" back in to modern politics.

 

Probably my favorite commentary on Sun Tzu's work is the one by Cao Cao Mengde. It's interesting not only because it's a glimpse at the philosophies of one of history's most controversial leaders but also because of Cao Cao's own relationship to the Sun family.

 

Look, I get it. When you reach a certain level of expertise you are allowed to bend the rules of grammar in favor of an artistic style, but the complete lack of quotation marks in Blood Meridian is more of a "fuck you" to the reader than anything else.

 

I've been reading a bit of Martian Chronicles lately. My copy is a later edition that retconned the dates to be more "realistic" -- further in the future -- seeing as how space travel IRL is pretty much regressing.

 

I think he wanted to create a lucid dream type state in his writing where everything flows together (dialogue included) into a never-ending stream of senseless violence and allegory.

But instead it achieves the opposite effect where I have to stop every time someone talks and put in the goddamn quotation marks myself. And god forbid you have more than two characters speaking in a scene because Cormac decided he's only going to use five dialogue tags throughout the entire goddamn book so fuck you, Attachments, don't even bother trying to figure out which character said what it's futile.

Don't get me wrong, I really like this book, and will no doubt acquire other shit he's written, but my god. Sometimes brilliant people make the most idiotic choices.

 

I read "The Naturalist" by Lunde about how Theodore Roosevelt collected specimens for natural history museums. By "collect" I mean "shoot."

It started when he was a kid and saw a harbor seal carcass for sale (there were still seals in New York Harbor then) - no one bought it and he was able to convince the shopkeeper to give him the head.
Even when he went into law and politics his main interest was in collecting specimens. He never lived up to what he would consider a great naturalist, which is interesting. Successful people don't always get what they want - Bill Gates wanted to learn French but was never able to do it.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/28/technology/bill-gates-regret/

 

Rereading Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson) , I'd almost forgotten how much fun it is.

 

About halfway through reading "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert

so far, it's started off quite well, but is starting to drag a little bit towards the section I left off at, IMO.

 

Halfway through Conan the Barbarian original stories. Its a decent look into basically the start of the sword and sorcery genre, and I find it interesting in retrospect that Robert Howard was pen pals with Lovecraft. Some of the stories are pretty formulaic though, and since they were in pulp fiction zines theres almost no continuity. Conan is everything from a swashbuckling pirate to king of aquilonia.

I also think it might be worthwhile to study a map of the conan world because pretty much every location is either taken from classical history or inspired by it. I might also see if theres a general timeline of conan's life because like I said its pretty confusing.

 

I just finished Infinite Jest and my final judgment is that the parts are stronger than the whole. This is also how I feel about Gravity's Rainbow. As you can probably tell, I seek out experimental fiction from time to time. The dirty truth, for me at least, is that no matter how dazzling the techniques, the parts that stick with me the most are the ones that engage me emotionally. The Franz Pokler sequence from Gravity's Rainbow and the Gately scenes from Infinite Jest will be with me for some time.

 

I read Five Stars by Christopher Null about how to be a film critic. I probably won't be a film critic but it is a pretty interesting look into movies and what makes a good film critic. Also if you want to get free DVDs or go to screenings of a lot of crappy movies it tells you how to do that, LOL

 

Just finished Live by Night, it's an excellent gangster novel full of action, 1920s slang, and other gangster shit. I'm now on to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, the guy who wrote 2001 a Space Odyssey and Childhood's End.

 

I've recently got into Frank Herbert's Dune. Its a bit confusing and really long but I shall soldier on regardless.

 

I listened to Dune as an audiobook and think that helped.

 

I read the book right after seeing the movie and I found that was helpful in my understanding of what was going on. Because at least the book made slightly more sense than the film.