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

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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Born To Kill- 6.5
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Troubles - JG Farrell - 9/10
The Nigger of the Narcissus - Joseph Conrad - 6/10
pretty fucking good storm scene as well as general conradisms, but needed to be about half again as long to get more into the nigger's isolation

anyone ever read/like john cheever's stories? i'm into a collection now and it is blowing me away
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Brion Gysin - The Process - 9

Loved every god damn page. The language is open and flowing and airy, and sometimes downright beautiful. I laughed out loud a few times. Somehow it feels pre-beat, which would make sense, I suppose.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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riley-o wrote:i way prefer his earlier "boy-scouts in space saying 'golly' a lot and doing science with slide rules" type shit to his sexual revolution stuff

still going to read cat who walks through walls before i swear myself entirely to that era though
I really like Robert Heinlein, but Cat Who Walks Through Walls is not good at all. The earlier stuff is way better.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Kraken - China Mieville - 3/10
He can write a good scene, but his work has provided diminishing returns with each new offering. He's terribly self-indulgent (never, I don't know, 'swirl of dust' where he could fit in 'striae of particulate') and the overall plotting of the books tends to be incoherent. There are always these groups of liberated artist-types who drink in hip dives and have loud, highly relevent debates on politics and art in the most obnoxious way. This book started out okay but went on for much too long. Mieville is so interested in his world-building that he doesn't spend enough time building characters; the motivation of the main bad guy in the book is totally unclear. He tries to be elliptical in a less-is-more way but it comes off as confusing, especially since he puts so much time into describing all these various monsters and cults and items. Also he has read way too much post-colonial and globalism studies theory. I hated this book by the end of it, and I'd just bought his next before starting this one.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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A biography on Ivan The Terrible - 2/10. Poorly written. Using Russian words and then translating them after every time you use them is trite. Also, I learned that since not much is documented about Ivan IV, most of the book could be false. It seems that every part was "...it may be possible that...". I feel that I really didn't learn anything. Oh well.

Death And The Magician - 8/10 - Really good bio on Harry Houdini.

The Grunts - 7/10. Typical firsthand Vietnam account except this one has the reaction from coming home after the war and being treated like shit.

Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life - 8/10. Extremely detailed bio.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Death in Venice- 9
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Count Zero - 8.5/10

I'm slowly trudging my way through all of Gibson's novels right now. Count Zero being only the second I've read. I'm in love with the way this guy writes prose.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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bj penn - why i fight 3/10
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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electronicham wrote:
riley-o wrote:bj penn - why i fight 3/10
hahaha, can he even write?
he had a co-author

and neither of them could write

it sounded like a transcription of BJ rambling on and on about his life which i assume is exactly what it was, but it was just painfully self-congratulatory
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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The Man in the High Castle, PK Dick - 7/10
Good stuff. I'm going to re-read the ending because I think I missed something. The only Dick novel I've read so far. The VALIS books have been recommended to me, so I'll get to those soon enough.

The Big Sleep, Chandler - 7/10
Fuck yeah, good shit, always naked insane dames trying to fuck Marlowe, but HE DON'T GIVE A SHIT.

A Clash of Kings, Martin - 6.5/10
It was good but not as tight as the first book. The prose improved.

The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky - 10/10
It had been ten or so years since I first read it. Even better this time. This is one of the finest novels ever written. Period.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Kurt Russell's Beard wrote:The Man in the High Castle, PK Dick - 7/10
Good stuff. I'm going to re-read the ending because I think I missed something.
you should read about the ending because you probably didn't miss anything -- apparently dick wrote the book using the i ching to make the key decisions and he said the i ching decided that that was where the book ended. it looks like he used a compelling method to write the book but was ultimately dissatisfied with the result.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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riley-o wrote:
Kurt Russell's Beard wrote:The Man in the High Castle, PK Dick - 7/10
Good stuff. I'm going to re-read the ending because I think I missed something.
you should read about the ending because you probably didn't miss anything -- apparently dick wrote the book using the i ching to make the key decisions and he said the i ching decided that that was where the book ended. it looks like he used a compelling method to write the book but was ultimately dissatisfied with the result.
Ha, well, good to know; I'll look it up. I'm all for understated/enigmatic/disappointing endings. Resolution is for chumps. This is my Kafka upbringing and study talking. But I couldn't get the character motivations at all near the end, it was a little frustrating. Still, I loved the whole historical antique vs. "wu" original art, I thought that was a lot of fun. Thanks, Riley.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Bored013 wrote:It's good that they finally put PKD in that Library of America series - right after Lovecraft, I believe? One of our greatest novelists ever, IMO. Maybe the depth/brilliance of plotting that can only come with being a paranoid schizophrenic...but he's like a prophet at this point. VALIS, particularly, fucked me up.
That's the collection I bought, all three at once so as to get the slipcase. Slutty bibliophile, here. Now I'm really looking forward to VALIS. I was going to read some Toussaint next but maybe I'll just go for VALIS.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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I've read some of his short stories, years ago. Loved them. His prose isn't great, but I understand he wrote much without revision, due to money and time and probably passion or whatever, so if this is first draft stuff, he destroys other authors.

His ideas, on the other hand...really top notch.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Bored013 wrote:
Kurt Russell's Beard wrote:I've read some of his short stories, years ago. Loved them. His prose isn't great, but I understand he wrote much without revision, due to money and time and probably passion or whatever, so if this is first draft stuff, he destroys other authors.

His ideas, on the other hand...really top notch.
About, maybe...25-30 years off from being "understood" in the academic mainstream? We have to go through so much first...

I'm not a PKD enthusiast by any means...but I've always found the real inner, secret "meaning" in his work to open up if you just study his life, what he was going through while he was writing, etc. He was a very, very lonely man.
Nice quote from the wiki page for him:
"Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."

Why do you say he was lonely?
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Bored013 wrote:
Kurt Russell's Beard wrote: Why do you say he was lonely?
What a strange question. Research his life? He was as lonely as a schizophrenic way ahead of his time can get. Which is...just enough?

What's weird for me, Matt, is that in my mind when I read his work and about his life...for some reason it resonates in connection with Hemingway. That might just be me...maybe I was reading Hemingway trading off with PKD a long time ago.

RE: what you said about his prose style, quick: name three great science fiction authors known for their style and elegance outside of Gibson.
I know little of his life, that's why I was asking. Also, truthfully, I wanted to know why you thought he was lonely.

I don't read him anything like Hemingway, not his prose or ideas. Their lives? I don't know, both had some issues. I know more about Hemingway than I do Dick so I can't comment.

I'm not a big sci-fi reader. This is really my first foray into the genre, also, with detective fiction. If you'd like to give any recommendations, I'd hear them. I've never read Gibson. I've heard about him, his work, and it didn't appeal to me. Doesn't mean I wouldn't try a novel of his some day.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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i think "alienated" is a better term for dick than "lonely". also i don't think the fact that other sci-fi authors suck at prose is a valid justification for dick sucking at prose-- the frustrating part is that his ideas and where he takes the stories is so, so magnificent but the language just doesn't measure up. i still love him and VALIS is, as i've said a nauseating number of times, an incredibly important piece of literature both to my personal life and the entire world of fiction.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Bored013 wrote:>I know little of his life, that's why I was asking. Also, truthfully, I wanted to know why you thought he was lonely.

I don't read him anything like Hemingway, not his prose or ideas. Their lives? I don't know, both had some issues. I know more about Hemingway than I do Dick so I can't comment.


RE: Gibson, IMO start with Burning Chrome and go into Neuromancer. You'll like the style, you're a writer.

About Hemingway...I recently re-read The Sun Also Rises back to back with Miller's Tropic of Cancer...which makes our modern day hipsters look like absolute retro retread shite. I was really surprised on reading Hemingway's first novel again...because it's such a cliche now, very old, that he was a great writer, but man...that novel is fucking awesome. So much absolute hatred for women in that thing, also, again, linked to his own history. And then if you look at the women in his life at that time...one wishes they were actually more attractive. Ugh, what a bunch of dogs he was in love with. ;)

There's lots of material on PKD's life out there in various novel/collection intros + on the web, it's easy to find.

I think he was lonely because I've read about his life. He was a stranger to his family, his fellow writers, his time, his place as an author, in any community he could easily call upon. He was isolated, mentally ill, he felt terrible about his own writing, he thought it would never be appreciated, he didn't know his own place in the world, his history, his tradition, etc. That's the lot of innovators, right? It's a cliche but when that cliche becomes real and it's something one has to live, every day, it becomes something else...

>I'm not a big sci-fi reader. This is really my first foray into the genre, also, with detective fiction.

Aye.

RE: Detective stuff, well you're into Chandler. That's one of the Big Three. The others are Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain. After that it's all about Jim Thompson (fucking awesome) and James Ellroy.

Ellroy is about as dark as anyone would ever want to get.

Chandler is my favorite. :)

You're out there in California (I think) so you'll love this shit...
Thanks, man.

I actually bought the Library of America editions of Chandler and Hammet. I'm next reading Red Harvest by Hammet, I think. West coast noir, I just love this stuff. I also hunted down a nice first edition Jim Thompson omnibus with four novels upon recommendation by one of my fellow gamers who spent a summer reading every single novel Thompson wrote. Weirdo. I have one Cain novel in another Library of America collection; I'll get to that too.

The Sun Also Rises is really the only Hemingway novel I loved, and I've read them all. But that book is so so good. I read some of Chandler in Hemingway, but I do know he was a fan so I'm not coming up with any amazing observation there, ha.

Huge graphic, the history of science fiction, take a look: http://i.imgur.com/vztJH.jpg
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Christopher McDougall - Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Better than I expected. This is the kind of page-turning, literary reportage that a lot of novelists wish they could dream up. "Literary" is a bit too heavy a word to lay on this one, as the author is more of a word-savvy extreme bro than a chin-stroking New Yorker essayist. I don't run, but this book really does make you wanna blitz off into the wilderness like one of its many zany characters. Even if you view its central premises with a skeptical eye, it's still a great read because of the vivid characterizations: this book is full of people (like the big-hearted and nearly superheroic Olympian Emil Zatopek) that deserve entire books of their own. 7.5.
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Good to see Machen and Dunsany! My buddy collects rare books and one of his prizes is an ancient Machen The Great God Pan, which goes for somewhere around $1,000, I think. He lets me touch it when I come over.

Oh, forgot to add (Umesh reminded me)...

White Jazz, Ellroy - 8.5/10
I don't imagine this type of fiction getting any better. In a way I ruined myself reading this first. I read 50 pages of Black Dahlia after this and couldn't sustain interest. White Jazz is just beyond any sort of morality compass, you don't know which way is up. Cop throws guys out windows and various murders for money, and that goddamn sword scene, ugh, amazing. Clipped prose, otherworldly effect. Any of his other books even half this good?
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Kurt Russell's Beard wrote: White Jazz, Ellroy - 8.5/10
I don't imagine this type of fiction getting any better. In a way I ruined myself reading this first. I read 50 pages of Black Dahlia after this and couldn't sustain interest. White Jazz is just beyond any sort of morality compass, you don't know which way is up. Cop throws guys out windows and various murders for money, and that goddamn sword scene, ugh, amazing. Clipped prose, otherworldly effect. Any of his other books even half this good?
I liked The Black Dahlia, but White Jazz is definitely Ellroy at his peak. The language is so disorienting and invigorating that it's almost like Beckett decided to write a crime novel. I never understood why people got so excited about the next phase of his writing -- American Tabloid, The Cold 6000, etc. -- which, in comparison to the L.A. trilogy, just seems boring on every level.
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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Read Of Mice and Men recently and that was real nice. Now I'm reading Snow Crash and I just can't get overly excited about it. I've never done much sci-fi, but I tend to compare most contemporary stuff to Neuromancer and haven't found anything that measures up. Any fans out there with recommendations?
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

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TheDOAD wrote:snowcrash
Is that better than Snow Crash?
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Re: Latest book you read (1-10 scale)

Post by delmuerte »

Snowcrash was pretty fun.

I've been reading a lot of trashy SciFi lately, all bu Iain M. Banks. Consider Phlebas, The Player Of Games, Use Of Weapons, Excession and now I'm on Look To Windward. I guess I like space operas. Anyone recommend any more of this kinda garbage?
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