WHAT ARE YOU READING?

[Pagan]

Read Hello Darkness, a new horror anthology from Boom. The highlight was a Garth Ennis/Becky Cloonan story entitled The War Part One. The other stories were fine but not terribly scary or unsettling. A few were Twilight Zone-ish, one was very much about surpassing EC Comics level of gore, and one felt more like an art piece than a story. There was also a Something Is Killing The Children short that was more set up than story. Hello Darkness is a cool concept for a comic but still needs to find its groove.

[Curt McGirt]

Got a lot floating around...

- The Rent Collectors, about the 18th Street gang in California. Kind of grandiose writing for a true story account but the story is bound to eventually be heartbreaking. 

- On the Move, about the MOVE group in Philly and the bombing of an apartment complex they occupied in the '80s, which is notorious -- the cops literally dropped a bomb from a helicopter on innocents because of a political dispute (think Black Panthers). Written by a then-child relative of the founder, John Africa. 

- Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon. Note that I read Thurston Moore's book before and boy THIS is different. Kim comes off extremely honest and like a fairly damaged person, at least emotionally, from the events in her life, and I imagine the Thurston stuff will be pretty damning. 

- Rotting Ways to Misery: The History of Finnish Death Metal. This one is KIIIIIIIIIILLER. So many bands I never ever heard of even though I have an entire chunk of my record collection devoted to Finndeath. I went hog-wild on Soulseek. May be better than the Swedish Death Metal book by Daniel Ekeroth even though a fair bit slimmer. 

- Grave Business, a collection of the EC Comics stories illustrated by "Ghastly" Graham Ingels. Just flipping through this thing creeped me the fuck out. Ingels' art is legendarily nightmarish, I believe the only comparison would be the guy who did the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books (which I still can't read from when I was a kid and they freaked me out so bad). It'll be a nice comparison piece with the EC Wally Wood book I also got, Came the Dawn, which is a collection of his "preachies" as they were known -- stories of sociological, moral consequence, about topics like racism and the death penalty and stuff. This is from a series of artist books of the ECs; I collected the reprints as a kid and don't know why I don't have full hardbacks, but this is a nice consolation prize to paying all that dough. 

EDIT: Oh! And I forgot that I got the Vinnie Stigma autobio, The Most Interesting Man In The World. And boy he's definitely a candidate. Infamous guitarist from Agnostic Front and other projects and seems like the nicest fucking guy you'd ever want to meet. A total OG New Yawk Italian who just loves people, no matter who, and has had a wild wild life. This is crazy: it also contains a crossword puzzle, cartoons, I think a section that's a coloring book for kids too?! You don't come across that every day. 

Edited September 24, 2024 by Curt McGirt

[KriskitaKoloff]

I just finished Phil Schneiders "Way of the Blade" and started Paul Tremblays "The Beast You Are". Ive read every Tremblay book and can never get enough. For those who are unaware, he writes horror yet its far from typical horror. He was the author that wrote "The Cabin at the End of the World" which became the Batista film "Knock at the Cabin".

[Mike Campbell]

After being utterly disheartened at the Chicago Bears loss to Indy on Sunday, I gave up on Football and finished up "The Bar Killer" by HL Anderson. It's a rather fun serial killer mystery, with some pretty ridiculous premises.

[odessasteps]

Now reading book on history of music in Hanna Barbera cartoons. 

[JLSigman]

Han Kang, a South Korean woman, has won the Nobel Prize for literature. I will definitely be looking for her translated works.

http://apnews.com/article/nobel-literature-prize-e52fdabe9379d351d744e121218bddc5

[J.H.]

On 9/27/2024 at 1:00 AM, odessasteps said:

Now reading book on history of music in Hanna Barbera cartoons. 

What's the title? I would definitely like to read it

James

[odessasteps]

Hanna Barbera The Recorded History by Greg Ehrbar. 

[Curt McGirt]

Finally, finally finished Girl In A Band by Kim Gordon, of course right after they re-upped for me at the library. Man what a book. If Thurston's is the ultimate music fanboy book this is the almost exact opposite. Kim is so much more personal and affecting than just a bunch of tour stories and namechecks. She had a retrospectively damaged childhood, particularly due to her brother who eventually went full schizophrenic after years of building to it. She moved around a lot and was always a bit of a fashionista and definitely a free spirit in contrast to probably what people think is a cold persona -- those chilly Nordic looks and her seeming passivity never helped. Hell, she was involved off and on with of all people Danny Elfman for awhile. With her it's really art, art, art, as much as she loves music and fashion. You can see where they overlap at times -- both scenesters who know everyone, road dogs for a lot of their lives, musical partners for sure. Thurston comes off as kind of a simpleton in comparison, a nice guy, but when she finally drops the hammer about their marriage breaking apart due to his secret lover, it's as damning as anything like that I've ever read. In his? He says next to nothing about it and those brief chapters are basically "I met someone else, we tried to work it out, it's over, I'm happy now". She nails his ass to the wall. Text messages, videos, the hiding, the lies. It's nice to know his book came AFTER as well, so any accusations about hers being a response (which any sexist male would throw at it I'm sure) is null and void. And man he barely even says anything about their kid in his book where she goes in depth. I suppose it's not necessary to be either Team Kim or Team Thurston, this is their matter, but it feels like he got played for a chump and she's way smarter and more interesting than him. 

I'm not a woman but if you are, you'd probably end up getting way more out of this than me, as well.  

[JLSigman]

So I am reading the Hunger Games trilogy for the first time ever, and why in the world did I not read this like a decade ago? My lord this is great writing.

[JLSigman]

22 hours ago, JLSigman said:

So I am reading the Hunger Games trilogy for the first time ever, and why in the world did I not read this like a decade ago? My lord this is great writing.

OK, so I've read the entire trilogy in three days, and I while the "love" triangle annoyed me at times, I think it ended in the most terrible heartbreaking but perfect way.

[bobholly138]

Finished Prophet TPB Vol 2. 

Ok I had no clue it was this good. Read a tiny bit of the original Prophet run,the S.Platt stuff,back in the day.

This is like someone got the rights to the Extreme characters gave them to some writer and artist from an early 80s issue of Heavy Metal and they went wild.

[JLSigman]

Read A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal, which has been promoted to me a zillion times. Unfortunately, while it was OK enough for the first 3/4ths of it, it got lazy, mushy, and half-assed for the last part, which really ruined it.

[Curt McGirt]

Took a day for the ones I got to show up in the e-mail, but totally worth it

[JLSigman]

Did my periodic re-read of The Lord of the Rings, and I'm trying again to get through the Silmarillion.

[Mike Campbell]

I finally decided to quit putting it off, and I started A Food For A Client by Parnell Hall last night. It's the last book in his Stanley Hastings mystery series. I'm only about twenty pages in and I've already cracked up four or five times from ridiculous discussions like this:

 

I was the last one to see her alive. What about her killer? Well, he was the first one to see her dead.

[JLSigman]

On 11/11/2024 at 4:29 PM, JLSigman said:

...and I'm trying again to get through the Silmarillion.

Ugh, OK, I've read it again. It really just isn't allowed to get going, but that's more because Christopher was slapping unrelated/years apart notes together and calling it a day then anything else.

[tbarrie]

6 hours ago, JLSigman said:

Ugh, OK, I've read it again. It really just isn't allowed to get going, but that's more because Christopher was slapping unrelated/years apart notes together and calling it a day then anything else.

I love the Silmarillion, but you have to approach it knowing it's not at all a novel like Lord of the Rings. Even in-universe, it's supposed to be a slapped-together compilation of various tales and legends about the Elder Days.

Have you read Children of Hurin? The percentage of the text that's J.R.R.'s own words is allegedly pretty high, and it's much more of a cohesive narrative. Pretty bleak though.

[JLSigman]

2 hours ago, tbarrie said:

Have you read Children of Hurin? The percentage of the text that's J.R.R.'s own words is allegedly pretty high, and it's much more of a cohesive narrative. Pretty bleak though.

Not yet. I've read the Beren And Luthien book, tho, but on my phone so I had to hold it sideways to get the lines of poetry to line up right.

[Robert S]

I have started a re-read of the LotR a week or so ago after I realized that I did not read the full thing in like 15 years (I've read the first book about 5-6 years ago but for whatever reason did not continue with the other two parts; I've read the Silmarillion 3 or 4 times in the last 1.5 decades, though). I forgot how the long it takes until Frodo finally leaves the Shire (110 pages). When you think about changes in the movies, you think about the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-downs but tend to forget how much time is spent on the journey from Bad End to Buckland, the "conspiracy" etc.

Before that, I have read The Fall of Númenor, a compilation of Tolkien's writing about the Second Age. Reading what actually would be there (if Amazon Studios would pay for the rights of non-LotR stuff), it hurts even more what The Rings of Power actually is (though I must admit that not everything in that series is bad, even some of the things they came up with instead of adapting is actually both quite entertaining and at least to some degree in Tolkien's spirit).

[Curt McGirt]

I liked Silmarillion almost more than LOTR when I was a kid. Can't explain why, really. It just felt archaic and Biblical -- and yeah, unfinished.

[Mike Campbell]

With the wife in Lubbock with her mom doing Black Friday shopping, and the kiddos basically hibernating in their bedrooms, I managed a reading marathon and finished up A Fool For A Client. Definitely not the best of the series, but a fun enough way to cap off a twenty book series that I stumbled across by sheer chance at the public library.

[ohtani's jacket]

Finished Castle Waiting Vol. 2: The Definitive Edition. I finished the first volume in a week but took a much more leisurely pace with the second volume. Not because there was a drop off in quality, but more the fact that I knew there wasn't anymore after the volume was done and wanted to savor the book for a little longer. There are still a lot of questions left unanswered, but if Medley is unable to pen another tale, she has left us with some of the most charming cartooning you'll ever encounter and one of the warmest comics you'll ever read. 

[odessasteps]

I can't recall seeing her name very often in recent years. 

[JLSigman]

In my attempt to read a bit more non-fiction, I am not about to crack open the First Edition (from 1975) of My Life by Golda Meir