What are you reading?

[Blinder Data]

Killers of the Flower Moon - David Grann
True crime non-fiction about murders of Osage Indian people in early 20th century. All about oil, conspiracy, burgeoning FBI. Really short, crisply written - could easily have devoured a much bigger book as the story and characters are fascinating. Pretty brutal and depressing, however. I look forward to Scorsese's film.

Brother - David Chariandy
2017 novel about growing up in ethnically diverse area of Toronto, clearly very autobiographical. Short, economical use of language, feels "real". Pretty good but I'm struggling to really like these worthy award-winning novels.

Politics on the edge - Rory Stewart
Only a few pages in. Hunting for juicy gossip and acerbic putdowns. You'll be surprised to hear Johnson and Cameron are rotters.

[Ray Travez]

Pretty brutal and depressing

This is the thing with Native American history, it's heartbreaking. I've always had an interest in Native Americans, but I know I could never read, say, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. It's the betrayal for me, more than anything; the lies, the promises broken.

[Kankurette]

Robert Jordan - The Dragon Reborn

Not sure if it's going to be adapted or whether they're going straight to The Shadow Rising, but in summary:
 - Rand goes bananas and runs off to Tear to get a magic sword
 - Egwene and Elayne do their Accepted test and Elaida, who will become important soon, really does not like Egwene for some reason
 - Siuan sends Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne off to hunt 13 Black Ajah sisters (this is one of her stupidest ideas in the whole series and will have serious repercussions in the next book)
 - We meet Aviendha and Gaul
 - Perrin meets Faile, his future wife
 - Mat discovers he has mad sword AND luck skills and reunites with Thom, the sex machine gleeman
 - Liandrin continues to be a giant bitch
 - Lanfear continues to be a giant stalker
 - Moiraine warcrimes a Forsaken

[bgmnts]

Finished Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti.

SoaDD stories are, obviously, centered around dreamlike surreal horror.
A lot of them involve a narrator or protagonist that consciously or subconsciously desire the horror, or the madness. To them, it seems it's the world of the mundane that is unbearable and the price of madness is worth paying.

I found some of it experimental, notably 'Notes on the Writing of a Horror Story' which was quite meta. There's a philosophical outlook in these stories, something about horror and the nature of horror.

In terms of the writing, I struggled at first as there is little context beginning some stories and I needed to adjust (too many comic books!), but there is marvellous imagery and evocative language, turning mundane sights or rituals into something horrific or unsettling.

Grimscribe is different, the narrator/protagonist seem to come from the outside, and have some form of knowledge, academic/mystic authority (a privileged position, much like a scribe perhaps), or just play the role of the skeptic. They exist to observe or witness the horror, and write about it. I suppose that is what a grimscribe is.

I'd say perhaps Grimscribe had more interesting things happen but SoaDD had an incredible deep penetration into this mad otherworld where even the most trivial of things is a gateway. I enjoyed the former moreso, although Last Feast of the Harlequin was a real highlight.

[bgmnts]

I'm also partially through Mountains of Madness as the first story in a collection of Lovecraft and I'm already quite gripped. The book is a proper old fashioned 80s book with the right musty smell and coarse pages but look this cover:



Being quite serious when I say I find this cunt extremely unsettling. It's the crazed eye staring back round at me, combined with the what must be an alien grin. I do NOT like this at all.

[Vodkafone]

I'm also partially through Mountains of Madness as the first story in a collection of Lovecraft and I'm already quite gripped. The book is a proper old fashioned 80s book with the right musty smell and coarse pages but look this cover:



Being quite serious when I say I find this cunt extremely unsettling. It's the crazed eye staring back round at me, combined with the what must be an alien grin. I do NOT like this at all.

I used to have that edition, it's a good 'un. The titular story is one of his best, I think, but would be good to hear your thoughts on the whole thing once you've finished it.

[bgmnts]

I think at the moment I'm just going to read the first two stories to give myself some Lovecraftian context to read these two Alan Moore comic booksand then go back to the rest if they're up to snuff.

I actually find this Mountain of Madness tricky: it's dull and scientific in language (by design) and is constantly trying to describe the undescribable, bordering on repetitive. I was gonna do a tally of 'five-pointed', 'blasphemous' and 'Cylopean', but couldn't be arsed.

But the sense of mystery, underlying evil and 'what the fuck is this?' is too gripping to really ignore.

I wonder if Lovecraft himself was a really frustrated bloke who struggled to understand the world around him.

[Vodkafone]

I think at the moment I'm just going to read the first two stories to give myself some Lovecraftian context to read these two Alan Moore comic booksand then go back to the rest if they're up to snuff.

I actually find this Mountain of Madness tricky: it's dull and scientific in language (by design) and is constantly trying to describe the undescribable, bordering on repetitive. I was gonna do a tally of 'five-pointed', 'blasphemous' and 'Cylopean', but couldn't be arsed.

But the sense of mystery, underlying evil and 'what the fuck is this?' is too gripping to really ignore.

I wonder if Lovecraft himself was a really frustrated bloke who struggled to understand the world around him.

Oh yeah, he can be very repetitive. I'm not sure if he ever had an editor: if he did, they were a terrible one. Essentially he was a not-very-good writer with some great ideas, to which the prose sometimes does justice.

[Dayraven]

I'm not sure if he ever had an editor: if he did, they were a terrible one.

Lot of his earlier stuff was amateur-press, his later ones were mostly in Weird Tales, a pulp magazine. Mountains of Madness was in Astounding Stories, also pulp. He'd have had editors there, but standards could be low, and purple prose was more in fashion in those days than after.

'Cylopean' in Lovecraft's descriptions refers to legends about Cyclopses building massive city walls, more than being giants themselves or one-eyed, by the way.

[Famous Mortimer]

Finished Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti.

I may have mentioned this in another thread, but I tried the first three or so stories and just found something rather irritating about the style. I wish I had a better response to it than that...perhaps it was from building it up as the ne plus ultra of horror fiction?

[bgmnts]

I may have mentioned this in another thread, but I tried the first three or so stories and just found something rather irritating about the style. I wish I had a better response to it than that...perhaps it was from building it up as the ne plus ultra of horror fiction?

Yeah I've found it's best to experience something from a position of as much ignorance as you can.

Perhaps that's why I am a bit more critical of Lovecraft, as he is obviously a massive inspiration and his work is all over the place in every media, so I have expectations which won't be met.

[bgmnts]

Yeah just finished it and it is an odd beast. I did find the actual events of the book gripping, and I enjoyed a lot of Lovecraft's descriptions, and allusions to sights, scents and lore.

Then, bam in chapter VII he dumps a shitload of unnecessary lore on you in two chapters basically, that end up, at least to me, demystifying these unknowable old ones, Shaggoths and Cthulu monsters to an absurd degree. By the end of it, these old ones have a rich hagiography of architecture, agrarian reforms, the great shaggoth war of 3 million BC, the Reformed Poor Act of 2.5 million BC and the migration accounts of cities and abysses and blah blah.

I'm sure lots of people love this but I found it genuinely baffling. I was loving the little nods to this fictional Necronomicon tome, and the real life evocation of Roerich and Poe, suggesting a mythos rather than explaining it.

He rescues it at the end, though, with Danforth's babbling madness and writes shit like 'proto-Shoggoth', 'moon ladders' and 'colours out of space' which give it a bit of mystery.

I will say that the lore pertaining to a cosmic battle did almost seem to marry occult otherworldiness to dabbling in almost science fiction maybe?

So yeah, perhaps a poor technical writer who struggled with repetition
but with loads of mental ideas that inspired loads. Saying that, I am intrigued to read the subsequent stories so he captures some imagination.

[bgmnts]

Also I will admit I did feel a weird twinge of guilt at having found these faults with it, much like @Famous Mortimer found Ligotti disappointing or anticlimactic, I suppose same can be said for me and Lovecraft.

Thankfully he was a massive racist apparently.

[Famous Mortimer]

I work for a University, and one of their perks is free tuition, so I thought I'd have a bash at a Philosophy degree in the spring, and to that end I've got a copy of their standard textbook, "Classics Of Western Philosophy".

Starts off with Socrates, and...he sounds like kind of a bell-end. While he was alive and free, it's all "ah, but do you really think that?" to everything anybody says; then when he's on trial he calls the prosecutor a whiny little bitch and says all the cool people are in the afterlife anyway; then Crito comes over to offer to buy him out of jail and he bangs on about the social contract theory before saying no.

I presume there'll be more to it when I actually start doing the classes, but fuck that guy.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

To be fair he was permanently pissed

[Dayraven]

These bits will all come from Plato's dialogues (Socrates wrote nothing himself). They're more about idealising Socrates as a philosopher than a rounded person, and philosophical discussions get jammed in because that's what the dialogues are for. There's also a bit of apologia for some of Socrates' pupils turning out to be notable shits, too.

[bgmnts]

Problem is, we get no account from Socrates himself do we? It all comes from Plato and Xenophon, so we don't know what he thought or felt.

I will always love the Socratic method, though.

[Magnum Valentino]

The Godfather. Interesting comparing it to the film and how many of the scenes are identical with subtle differences such as clarification of genital size (Sonny and Lucy at the wedding) or whether or not anyone shit themselves (Luca's murder, Michael in the restaurant toilets).

Such an easy read though, really enjoyable. About halfway through in less than 24hrs.

[bgmnts]

Quite like how pure evil Luca Brasi is in the book.

[kalowski]

It's been a while but if I remember rightly, just like Jaws, they cut the right bits out of the book.