What are you reading?

[_MJ_]

"A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James.  It's going to take awhile to get through, but I think it's going to be worth it.

Parts of it remind me of The Wire so far, which is probably part of the reason why HBO option it.

[Randy]

13 hours ago, _MJ_ said:

"A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James.  It's going to take awhile to get through, but I think it's going to be worth it.

Parts of it remind me of The Wire so far, which is probably part of the reason why HBO option it.

It's on my to-read list.  I should be getting to it next month.

[Liam]

My plan is to read the Booker Prize winners. I'll get around to that one at some point.

[_MJ_]

10 hours ago, Randy said:

It's on my to-read list.  I should be getting to it next month.

When it's a big time HBO show in the future, remember we saw it coming.

It's a chapter with a character type of deal, and I have to say, it's pretty intense so far.

[Swift]

Just finished High Fidelity (haven't seen the movie)

I enjoyed the music and record shop parts, but man, the lead character is a self-pitying, pain in the arse, twat.

[AxB]

The movie is better than the book, because John Cusack is likeable. Whereas nobody in the book is even tolerable, really.

[Marty Sugar]

Just finished Tom Holt's Who's Afraid Of Beowulf? and it was so much fun. An all-star team of Viking heroes are magically re-animated in 1980s Scotland to do battle with the greatest evil the world will ever know. Hilarity ensues. It's part of a two-book omnibus I found forever ago; the second of which is My Hero, which is also very funny so far.

[Randy]

On 5/22/2016 at 10:41 PM, _MJ_ said:

"A Brief History of Seven Killings" by Marlon James.  It's going to take awhile to get through, but I think it's going to be worth it.

Parts of it remind me of The Wire so far, which is probably part of the reason why HBO option it.

 

On 5/23/2016 at 0:11 PM, Randy said:

It's on my to-read list.  I should be getting to it next month.

I am just getting to this now.  I just finished the last book on my list before it:  Neverhome by Laird Hunt.  It was an interesting Civil War novel about a woman who pretends to be a man, so she can enlist.

[Roman]

I've been making more time to read again. Work's been crazy lately, but the missus and I have more or less decided to make Friday night a 'switch off our phones, keep the television and computer off, and get comfortable on the couch with drinks and books' occasion. I'm looking forward to Friday nights even more now. A little while ago, we did a count of how many books we have that we haven't read yet, and we added them all up to 173. All those months and years of buying books really sneak up on you... So we've sworn not to buy any new books until we've reduced that pile by at least fifty. The three English-language ones I've read:

-Ilya Vinkovetsky - Russian America: an easy-to-read and very interesting non-fiction book about the history of the Russian colonies in America (i.e. Alaska), ranging from how 'Russian America' differed from the other Russian colonies in its necessities and how they dealt with the natives to its eventual sale to the United States for next to nothing.
-Henry S. Whitehead - Voodoo Tales: collected supernatural/horror short stories, most of them based on voodoo. There were a couple genuinely interesting and captivating stories, but after a while, they began to blend together and the structure of most stories were virtually identical. I gave up at some point, simply because they began to be so similar. I'll be picking it up again to read two or three stories at a time, but right now I've had my fill of it.
-James Scott - The Kept: a very bleak story about a woman who returns to her secluded home in the late 19th century and finds her entire family, save one son, killed. Fundamentally it's a revenge story, although of course there's more to it than that. There is a lot wrong with the book that would not be too bad in themselves, but they stack up and consequently become one larger, noticeable annoyance. It's inconsequential in pivotal moments and some characters are contradictory, but I still found it worth a read because of the bleak and harsh atmosphere. I very much enjoy that. I've seen it compared to some Cormac McCarthy works, but I certainly wouldn't go that far. I can see the comparison, but it's a "poor man's poor man's" McCarthy at best

I'm reading a Dutch novel right now and I've got two Belgian ones lined up after that one. The Dutch language is so boring, but I've made a solemn promise to give it a chance by reading several 'classics' that the missus forced upon me. After these first three, I'm sure I'll run back to English, German or French.

[_MJ_]

On Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 7:04 PM, Randy said:

 

I am just getting to this now.  I just finished the last book on my list before it:  Neverhome by Laird Hunt.  It was an interesting Civil War novel about a woman who pretends to be a man, so she can enlist.

I finally finished reading "Brief History of Seven Killings" this week.  It's...intense at points.  Violent even gruesome; there are certain scenes in it that I don't think HBO would show or maybe just allude to it.  Enjoy it, but obviously not a feel good story.  There are tons of characters in it and I'll admit I sometime lost track of the minor ones at points.  Josey Wales wasn't one of them...you'll see.

[Randy]

I'm just over 100 pages into it.  I can see how the cast of characters in the beginning can help keep track.

Whenever I start a new book, I have to get used to the rhythm of the narrator's voice.  But in this book, with the constant shifting of a multitude of narrators, it can be a bit of a challenge.

You are right about it being intense, but I am sure that I have just scratched the surface.

[_MJ_]

I agree about the difficulty of the narrator voices at points.  There are a couple of character chapters that are particularly difficult to read because their narrator voice and mindset aren't exactly coherent at the time.  It does work sometimes though in big ways when you are seeing it from that person's mindset.

Glad I read it.

[Randy]

On 7/2/2016 at 1:59 PM, _MJ_ said:

I agree about the difficulty of the narrator voices at points.  There are a couple of character chapters that are particularly difficult to read because their narrator voice and mindset are exactly coherent at the time.  It does work sometimes though in big ways when you are seeing it from that person mindset.

Glad I read it.

I assume one of these instances is Bam-Bam's stream-of-consciousness poem describing them doing the deed?  That was a great chapter.

[_MJ_]

Yes, that's the exact chapter I had in mind when I made the post.  It's uncomfortable. I definitely felt the desperate, frantic pace of his mind due to the narrator style used in the chapter.  The whole Bam-Bam story arc is just rough.  Very rough.

[Ace]

Picked up the 2 most recent Rob Sheffield books.

Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke
It's essentially the sequel to Love is a Mix-Tape, dealing with his recovery from the death of his first wife, surrounded by what ties he and his current wife together.

On Bowie
This I haven't started yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

 

[username]

A few people I know were talking up Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun (which seems to actually be four books) so I picked up the first two entries up from the library last week.

[Charro!]

The new one, or the one from the 90s?

Haven't visited for a while so just saw this and it's John's newer one. Now reading Willie Nelson's autobiography. 

[Roman]

A little quote from Per Petterson's Out Stealing Horses. It's simple, but for some reason it's been glued to the inside of my skull for a while now: ‘He is just sitting there, and I can see he misses his father, quite simply and straightforwardly, and I would wish it was as easy as that, that you could just miss your father, and that was all there was to it.’

[OSJ]

I'm going to go back to Roman's post, because he brings up something that a lot of people don't think about and it's pretty damned important..

" Henry S. Whitehead - Voodoo Tales: collected supernatural/horror short stories, most of them based on voodoo. There were a couple genuinely interesting and captivating stories, but after a while, they began to blend together and the structure of most stories were virtually identical. I gave up at some point, simply because they began to be so similar. I'll be picking it up again to read two or three stories at a time, but right now I've had my fill of it"

Couple of things, first and foremost, Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales was a horrible editor. He gets wrongly credited for "discovering" Lovecraft, Howard, Smith, Quinn, Whitehead, and others whereas it's more like the opposite. He drove Lovecraft and Howard nuts with his editorial meddling (which was quite unnecessary), ruined Seabury Quinn and Whitehead by insisting on "more of the same", and made Smith mad enough to quit writing prose, (I can forgive a lot, but this last gets one a special place in Hell.)

The thing is, Weird Tales was called "the unique magazine" for good reason. Each issue was a smorgasbord of science fiction, ghost stories, sword and sorcery, supernatural horror, and whatever else came in over the transom. I had Kathy pick a couple of random dates between 1/27 and 12/32 so that y'all can see what I'm talking about. She gives me 11/29 and 4/32, so let's have a look, bear with me, my memory is pretty damn good, but it ain't eidetic.

11/29 - Cover would have been by C.C.Senf, which means instantly forgettable unless you're talking about his cover art for "The Wicked Flea" which depicts the titular character chasing people around the countryside and is memorable for all the wrong reasons..

The Gray Killer - Everill Worell (Murphy) One of WT's longest serving authors, she was still at in the early 1950's. Weird and original.

The Roc Raid - George Tuttle Well, rocs are big birds and they raid. That's pretty much it.

The Nightmare Tarn - Clark Ashton Smith (verse)

The Curse of Yig - Zelia Brown Bishop: Most of Lovecraft's revision clients were beyond his help, however, Bishop and Hazel Heald could actually write. It's a Cthulhu Mythos thing in my part of the country.

The House Without a Mirror - Seabury Quinn "No mirrors, you say?" You don't suppose that a vampire could be involved?" It's a Jules de Grandin story, so you can be assured that the most obvious answer is the correct one. We can also be assured that the catchphrase "Name of a little blue man!" will be uttered several times.

Skull-face - Robert E. Howard (part 2 of 3). A really cool Howard piece that doesn't get enough love. Howard goes for the Sax Rohmer Asian super-villain thing and does far better than Rohmer ever could have.

Death Gate - Monroe McGibeny: Huh, you don't say... Stares blankly at screen, looks back to magazine. I know I've read it I can't tell you a single thing about the story or the author. This is one of two such pieces in this issue.

The Tailed Man of Cornwall - David H. Keller: Keller wrote a couple of dozen of these folk-tales, quite different and quite good. Stefan Dziemianowicz and I have talked for years about collecting them in book form. I just dread the data entry and transcribing regional dialect.

Scarlatti's Bottle - August Derleth Pretty weak haunted whatsit story, but the dude was only seventeen or eighteen at the time... He got better, lots better.

Whispering Death - John Impola Neither bad nor good, it's just sort of there. Typical filler.

Thrice Dead - Alston Lovejoy Remember I said that there were two stories that I blanked on? This is the other one and a cursory glance suggests that rather than re-read this my time is much better spent playing video pinball.

The Bed by the Window - E.F. Benson Classic Brit ghost story by one of the masters of the form. It's only mid-range Benson, but that's still pretty damn good.

Mummy - Kelsey Percival Kitchell - Tiresome and predictable, I needn't say anything further.

Lindenborg Pool - William Morris Typical attempt to include a famous name, and in the 1920s William Morris was a famous name. Had it been anyone else it would get written off as routine filler. One of the countless Victorian examples of "let's write up a local legend as a new story and sell it!" This was in the days before Elliot O'Donnell made a career playing Ghostbuster. Check out any issue of The Strand magazine and you'll find at least three examples of this stuff.

Okay, I'm not going to do both issues, there's enough data here to get the point across... Formulaic material such as Whitehead's voodoo stories and Keller's mythic tales of Cornwall, Quinn's Jules de Grandin (basically X-files monster of the week), and even things like Derleth's regional ghost stories were meant to be read in a magazine featuring many different types of weird fiction. Sitting down and reading Quinn's de Grandin stories (something I made the mistake of doing) really pulls their teeth and shows just how formulaic they are. Whitehead's stuff has the advantage of being based on things that the author saw (or thought he saw) and are quite convincing. 

Looking at any typical issue of WT, you see it's usually split 50/50 between truly unique stories (Worrell, Bishop, Keller) and the formulaic (Whitehead, Quinn, Benson). The funny thing is that Worrell and Keller are the most unusual, but Keller is such a clumsy writer that his fables SEEM formulaic when read as a group. Benson is a formulaic as can be, but he was such a good writer that you can easily read a full collection of his ghost stories and not feel cheated at all. Ash-Tree Press collected all his ghost stories in five volumes and the set is a desert island contender, the stories are just that good... Derleth as he matured did the same thing only using Wisconsin as his setting. Probably his only equal for regional ghost stories in the US was Russell Kirk (that's pretty high praise). I guess the take away is "when in doubt, sample..."  I spent $300-something on the Complete Jules de Grandin, read the first volume and it is highly unlikely that I'll ever read the other two. All of Quinn's weaknesses as a writer were exposed and it was just a chore to get through. I learned my lesson. ;-(

[J.H.]

I bought the first 3 Gentleman Bastard books and just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora and haven't that much fun reading a book of this nature in a very long time!

I'm already diving head first int othe second book1

James

[OSJ]

12 minutes ago, J.H. said:

I bought the first 3 Gentleman Nastard books and just finished The Lies of Locke Lamora and haven't that much fun reading a book of this nature in a very long time!

I'm already diving head first int othe second book1

James

I didn't think Lynch could get better, but he does. Probably the best sword & sorcery stuff since Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean series (which was the best thing since Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). That's pretty illustrious company and not a bit of it is hyperbole. I remember getting just a few pages into the first book and exclaiming "He's doing Oliver fucking Twist as sword & sorcery!!! Why has no one thought to do this before? This is brilliant!!!"

[Matt D]

Remind me to read Shea.

[Brian Fowler]

Hey @Matt D, read Shea 

[J.H.]

2 hours ago, OSJ said:

I didn't think Lynch could get better, but he does. Probably the best sword & sorcery stuff since Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean series (which was the best thing since Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser). That's pretty illustrious company and not a bit of it is hyperbole. I remember getting just a few pages into the first book and exclaiming "He's doing Oliver fucking Twist as sword & sorcery!!! Why has no one thought to do this before? This is brilliant!!!"

Lynch really knows how to tear out the reader's heart though because man, I got really attached to some of those characters. I mean they were bright and vivid and fun and then POW! he makes you pay for getting attached!

James

[Matt D]

I like Lynch but it's hard to take seriously a novel whose main protagonist is named after a Final Fantasy VI character.