What are you reading?

[BurningBeard]

On 8/17/2018 at 6:38 AM, bobholly138 said:

Get in the Van by Henry Rollins

I have owned the first printing of this for a long time but never read it. Then was recently given a ebook version and been reading it a bit each night before bed. Really good read and it is interesting to see where Rollins mind was during his time with Black Flag. 

If you get chance check out the Henry and Heidi podcast about it. Some of his stories from that time are just nuts (buying an axe handle solely for braining people with), really brings to light why he had a rep for being so serious and angry.

Been on holiday recently so managed to get through Lean on Pete by Wily Vlautin (a story about a teen living with his single father who finds work caring for an aging racehorse) which I adored, and Joe by Larry Brown which was beautifully written but I'd have probably enjoyed more if I hadn't seen the film.

Now reading and rereading Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borgia as some of it is over my head and a little hard to follow but I love the concepts of the short stories

[Pete]

Just finished Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis by Mark Montieth. It covers the history of pro hoops in Indianapolis leading up to the Pacers' first two seasons in the ABA. A fun read that delves into the early insanity of the ABA (which in turn got me to start re-reading Terry Pluto's Loose Balls, an absolute must-read), and it's apparently the first of a series that would cover the team's rise to multiple ABA titles and making the NBA cut at the end.

[odessasteps]

Loose Balls might be one of my favorite sports books of all time. 

[J.T.]

Happy birthday, HP Lovecraft.

I will always love your stories.  

However, I would not hesitate to punch you in the liver if I ever met you in person on the occasion that I got swept away by a time vortex, you racist, elitist fuck.

[Contentious C]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

Happy birthday, HP Lovecraft.

I will always love your stories.  

However, I would not hesitate to punch you in the liver if I ever met you in person on the occasion that I got swept away by a time vortex, you racist, elitist fuck.

Well, this was a fun set of Wikipedia jumps.

Lovecraft (btw, there's a sex shop in the Baltimore suburbs called Love Craft; never went inside, probably not tentacly enough) -> Non-Euclidean geometry -> SCP Foundation, where I read about SCP-3008, which is "an IKEA store with infinite interior space and no outer physical bounds, causing all prospective customers to be trapped" and "a rudimentary civilization" that forms.

Given the recent news story about a kid shooting himself with a gun in IKEA, and given any familiarity with the drug-taking/IKEA swerve meme (that I think may be in the "Fabulous Places" thread, or somewhere like that), I would postulate I don't have to read any short fiction at all that insinuates we're already living in SCP-3008, because it's pretty damned clear that's the score.

[J.T.]

36 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Lovecraft (btw, there's a sex shop in the Baltimore suburbs called Love Craft; never went inside, probably not tentacly enough) 

My significant other and I passed this place on the way to meet some people for lunch. 

We didn't go in because we were running late and didn't check it out on the way home because we had to stop by her daughter's house to drop off a few things and didn't want to get caught with sketchy bags in our car.

[supremebve]

2 hours ago, J.T. said:

My significant other and I passed this place on the way to meet some people for lunch. 

We didn't go in because we were running late and didn't check it out on the way home because we had to stop by her daughter's house to drop off a few things and didn't want to get caught with sketchy bags in our car.

I remember checking out at a liquor store and making a joke about it being the only place that gives you those dark, trying to be inconspicuous, but are ultimately the most conspicuous bags.  Without missing a beat the cashier said, yep, just us and the porno store.

[turk128]

Okay, just heard of this from a podcast... there's a reddit called "Humanity, Fuck Yeah!" which is basically about how cool humanity can be (instead of the easy route being arseholes).

And there's a short series on it called Prey:   the premise of this series is that humanity finally goes space exploring... and finds out that the vast majority of the aliens out there are herbivores. So we immediately disguise ourselves (always wearing helmets) to hide the fact that we're predators (facing forward eyes). And then the alpha aliens arrive, 100% carnivores. They're undefeated because every other alien race were essentially their prey.

I've bookmarked it and will start reading, the premise alone is bitchin as fuck! For some reason, I'm thinking David Brin's Uplift.

 

[BurningBeard]

I've been slowly chipping my way through the Parker series by Richard Stark/Donald Westlake ever since I stumbled across Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptations six years ago, I was reading so many heist books at one point I found myself casing post offices and banks out whenever I walked into the lobbies haha.

Anyway, I recently got down to the last three and rather than meter them out patiently as I have been doing all these years, I've had to binge through the final three as they all ran on from each other.

Heart's are heavy to have finished the series but I suppose I can always start from the beginning again

[OSJ]

44 minutes ago, CreativeControl said:

I've been slowly chipping my way through the Parker series by Richard Stark/Donald Westlake ever since I stumbled across Darwyn Cooke's comic adaptations six years ago, I was reading so many heist books at one point I found myself casing post offices and banks out whenever I walked into the lobbies haha.

Anyway, I recently got down to the last three and rather than meter them out patiently as I have been doing all these years, I've had to binge through the final three as they all ran on from each other.

Heart's are heavy to have finished the series but I suppose I can always start from the beginning again

There's also (AFAIK) four books with Grofield as the main character that are well-worth checking out.

As far as what I'm reading, I just received Jack McDevitt's new novel Long Sunset, which looks to be stellar (no pun intended). Nobody living does hard sf as well as Jack McDevitt, and I could make the argument that he's the best ever. Certainly, his body of work now smokes Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

Also skimming through Harlan Ellison's Watching, just because I miss the guy.  We don't always agree on film, but when we do, (like in the case of the incredibly mean-spirited Gremlins) the vitriol we can bring knows no bounds.

[BurningBeard]

15 minutes ago, OSJ said:

There's also (AFAIK) four books with Grofield as the main character that are well-worth checking out.

I read one of them as it tied into Slayground (both have the same opening) but didn't do much for me. The few Dortmunder books I've read on the other hand are absolutely hilarious

[AxB]

Decided to read every Kitty Norville book by Carrie Vaughn, in order. These probably would have been adapted for TV by now, if True Blood hadn't stunk up the place so badly. They're about a Talk Radio host who's a Werewolf*... and a lot of other things. Although the series drifts into save the world clichés towards the end there. The best bit is where she meets a Vegas Magician who's actually a real magician as well. And he lets slip that although he knows some actual magic, technically he's actually a Gatekeeper. "What's on the other side of the gate?" "Ever read any Lovecraft?" "No." "Never mind, don't worry about it. Forget I said anything".

* In old English, 'Man' meant human. A Werman was a male human, and a Wyfman (word root for both Wife, and Woman) was a female human. Hence Were-wolf, Man-wolf. So technically a female Werewolf should be called a Wifewolf. For my next trick, I will explain how Outlaws and In-Laws used to be mutually exclusive.

[Ultimo Necro]

Beastie Boys Book arrived today, it looks fantastic and the first few chapters are great,

[OSJ]

Thanks to AxB, (at least I think it was AxB), mentioning that his dad liked Jack Vance got me to pull my set of the Underwood-Miller edition of his four-volume Tschai series and give it a re-read for the first time in over a decade.  I was immediately reminded why Vance is my favorite author of all-time. No one else can blend humor and pathos as skillfully as he does and while he does have a tendency to have his world-building follow a similar pattern (he's very much intrigued by the concept of music as an actual language), his aliens are suitably alien and he does a splendid job of constructing logical societies.  I'm just about done with The Pnume, the final volume in the series, then I think I might do the Demon Princes series of five volumes. Damn, but I do love me some Jack Vance. 

[sabremike]

A book on the disastrous rebranding of the Islanders in the mid 90's entitled "We Want Fishsticks" comes out in a few weeks and advance word says it's great. This was probably the biggest fiasco of it's kind in American sports history.

[OSJ]

Just received the hardcover of Volume #2 of the B.R.P.D.: Hell on Earth, I just don't see how they're going to pull this one off as the situation looks pretty damn bad and I don't see how anyone comes out of this one alive. I don't know,  it's Dark Horse and they do some weird shit, maybe we get a crossover and the Flaming Carrot saves the day!  

[OSJ]

Well, while putting together an invite list for my guest (maybe permanent) stint as editor of The Weird Fiction Review #10, (that would be the 2020 edition so just put aside a couple bucks every month and you'll have the $30 on hand when it comes out). The theme is EC Comics which has gone over with my invited authors like gangbusters even folks in the UK and Oz have a great love for what EC did. 

Anyway, a name that got brought up in the context of "Do you want monster stories?" Well of course I want monster stories! Well, the name that kept coming up was Orrin Grey and his two are introduced by Gemma Files and John Langan who are both part of my New Weird Posse. So I contacted Mr. Grey and he was cool enough to send me copies of both of his collections which you can get for under twenty bucks each. Damn, this guy is good! His monsters are original and creepy as hell, I can't wait to see what he comes up with for the book-a-zine, but damn, the only guy even remotely in his class when it comes to monsters is China Mieville and that's pretty damn high praise. Check him out, again it's Orrin Grey and the books are Painted Monsters and Guignol y'all need these two books. 

[Curt McGirt]

Burroughs' Revised Boy Scout Manual and The Essential Ellison are now burying Dave Schow's DJSturbia on my computer desk. Guess which one ends up finished first

And BTW, a word of warning: I would not take the Manual on an airplane.

[OSJ]

8 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Burroughs' Revised Boy Scout Manual and The Essential Ellison are now burying Dave Schow's DJSturbia on my computer desk. Guess which one ends up finished first

And BTW, a word of warning: I would not take the Manual on an airplane.

Well, since this particular text has never been published before you are actually getting a first edition (thus) of a Burroughs book for under twenty bucks whereas a paperback first of The Naked Lunch will set you back twenty-five hundred or so for the Olympia Press edition. Wrap your head around that price differential if you will..  Of course of the three seminal books of the Beat  movement Burroughs' entry is the only one that is, ya know, like actually readable ... Howl is that drugged-up and drunken rant by your roommate in college that wouldn't STFU after getting buzzed on thai stick and generic beer and the Kerouac entry isn't really writing so much as it is an exercise in typing... And there's the literary high points of the Beat Generation eviscerated in one paragraph... 

[Curt McGirt]

I can't remember who hipped me to the Manual (was it you John?). I would also not advise letting a cop read it if you get pulled over. And yeah, that price differential is insane. 

Who knows if The Essential Ellison will ever get finished over here. I've burned through a great deal of the stories already so you never know. Also not ashamed to say I openly wept when I opened the package and saw the cover the other night. No one can say sentimentality isn't my strong suit...

[Contentious C]

On 12/26/2018 at 6:33 PM, Curt McGirt said:

Burroughs' Revised Boy Scout Manual

Annnnnnnnd bought. 

Decided, for whatever strange reasons, that reading The Magicians would be faster than rewatching the first 2 seasons, so I could watch S3 now that it's on Netflix and remember what happened. It has been faster, but man, how did these books get greenlit into a TV show in the first place? The show is actually a huge improvement in making the characters more fleshed out and relatable, although the first few episodes of season 3 start to show the overall plot threads fraying pretty damned hard. The first book reads like a fantasy spin on How I Met Your Mother.  And yet George Martin called it whiskey compared to Harry Potter's weak tea. Plastic jug whiskey, maybe. 

[Liam]

https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/02/the75/

I've started a new blog covering my attempts to read 75 books by authors I own books from but have never read.

Here's the list:

1-7. ‘In Search of Lost Time’ by Marcel Proust

8. ‘Look Who’s Back’ by Timur Vermes

9. ‘Red Rising’ by Pierce Brown

10. ‘A Death in the Family’ by Karl Ove Knausgaard
11. ‘Gravity's Rainbow’ by Thomas Pynchon
12. ‘Titus Groan’ by Mervyn Peake
13. ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’ by Richard Flanagan
14. ‘The Bone Clocks’ by David Mitchell
15. ‘Anno Dracula’ by Kim Newman
16. ‘Ship of Magic’ by Robin Hobb
17. ‘Papillion’ by Henri Charrière
18. ‘Ring’by Koji Suzuki
19. ‘The Song of Achilles’ by Madeline Miller
20. ‘Under the Volcano’ by Malcolm Lowry
21. ‘My Brilliant Friend’ by Elena Ferrante
22. ‘Ancillary Justice’ by Ann Leckie
23. ‘The Sisters Brothers’ by Patrick deWitt
24. ‘A Little Life’ by Hanya Yanagihara
25. ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje
26. ‘Fates and Furies’ by Lauren Groff
27. ‘Wilt’ by Tom Sharpe
28. ‘End of the Affair’ by Graham Greene
29. ‘Olive Ketteridge’ by Elizabeth Strout
30. ‘Saville’ by David Storey
31. ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri
32. ‘The Sellout’ by Paul Beatty
33. ‘The Axeman's Jazz’ by Ray Celestin
34. ‘Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk’ by Ben Fountain
35. ‘Of Human Bondage’ by W. Somerset Maugham
36. ‘Snow Crash’ by Neal Stephenson
37. ‘Children of Time’ by Adrian Tchaikovsky
38. ‘The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet’ by Becky Chambers
39. ‘Temeraire’ by Naomi Novik
40. ‘The Forever War’ by Joe Haldeman
41. ‘Rebecca’ by Daphne du Maurier
42. ‘The Prestige’ by Christopher Priest
43. ‘Hyperion’ by Dan Simmons
44. ‘The Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern
45. ‘The Black Dahlia’ by James Ellroy
46. ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ by John Irving
47. ‘Alone in Berlin’ by Hans Fallada
48. ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr
49. ‘Never Mind’ by Edward St Aubyn
50. ‘Different Class’ by Joanne Harris
51. ‘Purple Hibiscus’ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
52. ‘Fight Club’ by Chuck Palahniuk
53. ‘The Gallows Pole’ by Benjamin Myers
54. ‘Red Mars’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
55. ‘Flights’ by Olga Tokarczuk
56. ‘Wizard of the Crow’ by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
57. ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov
58. ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison
59. ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ by Kevin Kwan
60. ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Dorris Lessing
61. ‘Milkman’ by Anna Byrns
62. ‘The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle’ by Stuart Turton
63. ‘The Fifth Season’ by N.K. Jemisin
64. ‘The Third Policeman’ by Flann O’Brien
65. ‘Conversations with Friends’ by Sally Rooney
66. ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
67. ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68. ‘Runaway’ by Alice Munro
69. ‘Kavalier and Clay’ by Michael Chabon
70. ‘The Corrections’ by Jonathan Franzen
71. ‘Offshore’ by Penelope Fitzgerald
72. ‘Wool’ by Hugh Howey
73. ‘Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruis Zafon
74. ‘Midnight's Children’ by Salman Rushdie
75. ‘The Master and Margarita’ by Mikhail Bulgakov

[Liam]

Book 1 done - 'Wilt' by Tom Sharpe

https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/05/book-1-wilt-by-tom-sharpe/

TL;DR - unlikeable characters, likeable story, sex toy as main plot point.

[Kuetsar]

Good luck with that. Isn't Gravity's rainbow supposed to be a really hard read? 

For myself, since I started grad school in the fall, I've been able to have some reading on the side, but I haven't been in the mood for history, and have mainly been reading novels and sports bios and such. . . .

[Contentious C]

4 hours ago, Liam said:

Book 1 done - 'Wilt' by Tom Sharpe

https://scalingthetbrpile.home.blog/2019/01/05/book-1-wilt-by-tom-sharpe/

TL;DR - unlikeable characters, likeable story, sex toy as main plot point.

That makes me think of the joke I heard in high school about the difference between a mass murderer and a serial killer.  Bravo for the author for turning that into an entire book, I guess?

Bone Clocks is pretty good, if clearly short of the quality of Cloud Atlas.  I have a bunch of these sitting on my Kindle...which I will probably never read, given the rate I'm going.