Latest Gene Wolfe book you read (1-10 scale)

[Lustmord56]

Boys Will Be Boys by Jeff Pearlman

CHarles Haley was a psycho

[danox3]

The Necronomicon - Donald Tyson -15/10

Must read. I'm basically re-reading it in his Novel "Alhazred", which is a novelization of the Necronomicon. And this isn't the stupid Sumerian paperback you can find in every teenage devil worshipers backpack. Tyson has adapted all of Lovecraft's creations into a sort of "Necromancer's guide to Ancient Middle East".

I must check this out.

I want to check this out, as well. Donald Tyson is the guy that made the Necronomicon tarot deck, which is pretty cool... I think he's the guy that wrote the article about HPL in the Disinfo Book of Lies, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, most of his books are "Practical Magic" crap, he even did a Necronomicon Grimoire, which is pretty silly in my eyes, but whatever.

The Tarot deck is cool as well, if you into that sort of stuff.

[Nissos]

the dark knight returns 8/10

[father of lies]

Somehow I seem to have LOST Children of Men and The Cat That Walks Through Walls or whatever the fuck, so I started on Valis.

First 35 pages? 1000000000/10.

[anfo666]

[caldwell.the.great]

I am still reading the Brothers Karamazov... I just read the section "Rebellion." Holy shit. That chapter alone is a fucking masterwork.

[riley-o]

Somehow I seem to have LOST Children of Men and The Cat That Walks Through Walls or whatever the fuck, so I started on Valis.

First 35 pages? 1000000000/10.

Too low. +it only gets better.

[faggotmachine]

Dream War, The Bush Cheney Junta by Gore Vidal.

Awesome book. Dude makes reading easy. I love his little humor tidbits that he puts here and there, makes for more than just an info read.

[MANTIS]

Somehow I seem to have LOST Children of Men and The Cat That Walks Through Walls or whatever the fuck, so I started on Valis.

First 35 pages? 1000000000/10.

Too low. +it only gets better.

Fuck Yes menz. PKD's best stuff IMO.

[riley-o]

Somehow I seem to have LOST Children of Men and The Cat That Walks Through Walls or whatever the fuck, so I started on Valis.

First 35 pages? 1000000000/10.

Too low. +it only gets better.

Fuck Yes menz. PKD's best stuff IMO.

It's tough to call that, but I love how personal that one is. I don't want to ruin anything FOL DON'T CLICK THIS

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

but the way he keeps switching back and forth between 1st and 3rd person perspective as Horselover Fat and himself, while keeping them seperate characters, is masterful.

[father of lies]

I clicked it. I'm like halfway through, that was no spoiler...

[MANTIS]

yes, excellent blending of "reality" and "fantasy."

I would say from the brief passages of his (non-fiction) Exegesis present in VALIS that I'd love to read all 8000 pages of it or whatever, but in reality... I wouldn't actually be down for that.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Have you read Radio Free Albemuth? I'm curious what the differences are from that version to VALIS.

[riley-o]

yes, excellent blending of "reality" and "fantasy."

I would say from the brief passages of his (non-fiction) Exegesis present in VALIS that I'd love to read all 8000 pages of it or whatever, but in reality... I wouldn't actually be down for that.

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Have you read Radio Free Albemuth? I'm curious what the differences are from that version to VALIS.

I would drop everything and read that if I could get a full version of Exegesis.

I've read Radio Free Albemuth but it was years ago. I need to pick up a copy and read them back to back; I remember RFA was a lot less personal but was much more cohesive, and pretty distinctly a story and less autobiography. It felt more like an extrapolation of the thinks PKD felt he had experienced and what they would mean in the future.

[MANTIS]

I like the VALIS/Cosmic Trigger crossovers. (Intentional?)

[father of lies]

I would say so. Didn't they know each other pretty well? I think it's CT2 or 3 where Bob talks about the break in at PKD's apartment being done by Nixon. Hey, I wonder if Scumfucker knows that.

[Nissos]

VALIS is my favorite book. It's because I relate to the experiences in the book... I thought I found my soulmate in it at the time...

just finished the comic series Preacher. either a 7.5 or 8 / 10.

[father of lies]

Alright. Progress. They just went to Sonoma.

This book is fucking with my fucking brains. Maybe a month ago, druga convinced me that I didn't exist, except as a shadow on the memories of a few people. I decided that the only way to truly exist for any period of time is to evolve from human into a purely informational state. Evolve into a metapor, a concept. Information. Living information. Plasmate.

Fuck.

FUCK.

GAH.

[ibn Horowitz]

Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
9.5/10
Deducted a half-point because the subject matter is not exactly my thang. Fucking masterful book, good use of an unreliable narrator of sorts, and probably one of the most subtle books I've read.
This is actually a spoiler, so be warned:

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

The scene where he is serving everyone at that big dinner and the French guy's foot hurts and his dad is dying upstairs? The particular sort of tension he builds out of that is amazing.

[ibn Horowitz]

Lord Jim - Joseph Conrad
7/10
I think I fucked up on this one. Read it too slow, on work breaks and such. I thought the image of Jim the book provides is excellent, and as always Conrad nails the details of the settings of the book and gives the impression he knows exactly what he is talking about. Found the book a little long-winded in its description of Jim's flight and some aspects of the inquiry, but that may be because I went through it in small bursts.

What's better, the Secret Agent or Under Western Eyes? If y'all have ever read anything besides Brett Easton Ellis and Philip K Dick, that is.

[father of lies]

Valis - 10/0
Infinite. Irrational number. Jesus fuck.

Mantis... how could they not be intentional when he MENTIONS Cosmic Trigger?

[ibn Horowitz]

Where should I start with Philip K Dick?

[storm shadow]

John Irving - The World According to Garp
7/10
I'd never read any of this mang so I went on a spree of reading his work, ending with the most famous. He writes wonderfully endearing characters into very carefully orchestrated plots, and there's enough literary gravity and substance to elevate it. But goddamn, he writes the same book over and fucking over again like no other novelist I've read. I can't decide if this or A Widow For One Year was my favorite; probably this one though.

[mithrandir]

His Master's Voice - Stanisław Lem

On the surface its basically about a group of the top minds of earth deciphering a code received from an extraterrestrial intelligence (or is it?) In the end we only really figure out about 2% of the code (and 1/3rd of that is a few pieces we throw in ourselves just to get some sort of results - thus we end up getting something that could have dire consequences if used incorrectly - which humanity is predisposed to do just that.)
Probably one of the most difficult books I've ever read, not that the plot was disjointed, not in the least... that was very linear but it was very technical in both the science and the ideas presented. It read more like personal ruminations of the author (which is fine by me cause find Lem to be a fascinating individual with a ken mind.) So you get a lot of his personal cogitations on linguistics, culture, evolutionary biology, epistemology, physics (a lot of physics!), the corruption of politics in the fields of science, human limitations in both the mind and body...also some satirical and critical jabs at the science fiction genre. I'll have to read this again in the future because some of it didn't quite settle right and in the end I think I understood about only about 70% of it - I know my mental limitations and this one teetered on the edge of that.

you fags need to put down the PKD novels for a while and get into some Lem so I can talk over some of this shit with you all!

[MANTIS]

Valis - 10/0
Infinite. Irrational number. Jesus fuck.

Mantis... how could they not be intentional when he MENTIONS Cosmic Trigger?

I'm saying... which one mentioned the other first?

[Necrometer]

The Necronomicon - Donald Tyson -15/10

Must read. I'm basically re-reading it in his Novel "Alhazred", which is a novelization of the Necronomicon. And this isn't the stupid Sumerian paperback you can find in every teenage devil worshipers backpack. Tyson has adapted all of Lovecraft's creations into a sort of "Necromancer's guide to Ancient Middle East".

I must check this out.

I want to check this out, as well. Donald Tyson is the guy that made the Necronomicon tarot deck, which is pretty cool... I think he's the guy that wrote the article about HPL in the Disinfo Book of Lies, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, most of his books are "Practical Magic" crap, he even did a Necronomicon Grimoire, which is pretty silly in my eyes, but whatever.

The Tarot deck is cool as well, if you into that sort of stuff.

Erm... the "search inside" is revealing this book to be rather homosexual: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0738706 ... eader-link