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

[father of lies]

I'm also on an extended break from THe Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich, because that fucking thing is like walking through hardening cement.

Leftist cement.

ANSWER MY FLOW MY TEARS QUESTION, MANTIS AND/OR RILEY

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Was Alys Kathy or not? Did the drug make her become a person that already exists, and Jason and the cops were just pulled into her reality, and Kathy's psychotic breaks are really Alys's invasions? He states pretty concretely that the drug does exist and the nature of the effects, so what the fuck? I can't decide if I think we're talking about separate possible realities, or what. Fucking hell.

[King of the Rotten]

Still working on Don Quixote. I like it, but my pace is really slow on this one.

I read that book for months and months. Once I hit the chapter telling the story of "The Curious Impertinent" -- which is probably the only part of the entire book I didn't enjoy -- I hit the wall and decided on a routine of 200 pages of DQ, two other novels and then back to DQ. Obviously it slowed me down, but I needed a break.

i read about a third of don quixote. the good thing about it, it is written like a sitcom. so you can read a few chapters now, then put it aside for a while, then go on.

I got through about a 1/5 of it I reckon...fuck it's tedious. One day maybe I'll return to it.

I just got done with the Heroin Diaries...wasn't expecting much but it was actually rather entertaining. Just getting started on the Swedish Death Metal book now which is awesome so far. I love the way he is so unapologetically subjective about what he's writing.

[Hotchka!]

I'm also on an extended break from THe Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich, because that fucking thing is like walking through hardening cement.

Leftist cement.

ANSWER MY FLOW MY TEARS QUESTION, MANTIS AND/OR RILEY

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Was Alys Kathy or not? Did the drug make her become a person that already exists, and Jason and the cops were just pulled into her reality, and Kathy's psychotic breaks are really Alys's invasions? He states pretty concretely that the drug does exist and the nature of the effects, so what the fuck? I can't decide if I think we're talking about separate possible realities, or what. Fucking hell.

no theyre two different characters

[father of lies]

No shit they're two different characters. That was not the question.

[Hotchka!]

characters i.e. people

alys is not kathy

[father of lies]

I liked the end.

Hotchka, if they aren't the same person (at least part of the time), explain.... well, everything either of them says or does without just saying "we don't know, and its all through Travener's totally bent viewpoint anyway, plus all of the characters are insane."

Fuck, what a good book.

[Mr. Budd]

I don't think I've ever seen anyone call Don Quixote boring before. It's the best book I know I think.

[father of lies]

Indeed. Apparently I dont know how to click the quote button.

I just think it fit the story. I can see Hiro and... whats her face looking at each other and saying WELL WHAT THE FUCK NOW GODDAMIT?!, which was about my reaction.

[Goatus]

DOAD, have you read RIM by Alexander Besher yet? If you love the whole cyber punk theme then you have got to check it out.

[storm shadow]

Jacques Lacan
by Elisabeth Roudinesco

I started this book hoping it would help me make up my mind about whether Lacan was truly a naked emperor or just a godawful writer who nonetheless had some profound insights about subjectivity. It did. I'll be honest: I didn't even finish it, because after getting most of the way through it I could no longer convince myself that Lacan wasn't a total fucking mountebank and decided that my time would be much better spent reading something else. This is, however, no slight to Roudinesco, who's a top-shelf biographer. Her research is impressive and her prose is more than adequate. If anything, her book is too sympathetic to Lacan, although it's no hagiography - and that could also be my bias showing rather than hers. But I couldn't help wishing she'd devoted her energies to someone else.

Best part: the chapter about Georges Bataille, who, despite being a pretty overrated figure in his own right (although not nearly as much as J.L.), was also a singularly interesting character who probably would've been a much better subject for a book than Jacques.

Worst part: when Lucien Febvre defended not just Lacan but Lacan's prose style to his fellows at the Encyclopédie française. As someone who has long held the Annales historians in high esteem, this was heartbreaking.

So for writing, a 7; for subject matter, a -1. If you do like Lacan and his work, this is definitely a must-read. But you'd be a lot better off just reading Alexandre Kojève's seminar on Hegel, which is awesome, admirably clear, and where Lacan got most of the good ideas that he mangled beyond recognition.

[featherboa]

Yeah, cryptonomicon does the same

end post

[Vlygar the Impregnable]

The Alphabet of Manliness - Maddox

10/10 Manly Muscle Skulls

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

Jacques Lacan
by Elisabeth Roudinesco

I started this book hoping it would help me make up my mind about whether Lacan was truly a naked emperor or just a godawful writer who nonetheless had some profound insights about subjectivity. It did. I'll be honest: I didn't even finish it, because after getting most of the way through it I could no longer convince myself that Lacan wasn't a total fucking mountebank and decided that my time would be much better spent reading something else. This is, however, no slight to Roudinesco, who's a top-shelf biographer. Her research is impressive and her prose is more than adequate. If anything, her book is too sympathetic to Lacan, although it's no hagiography - and that could also be my bias showing rather than hers. But I couldn't help wishing she'd devoted her energies to someone else.

Best part: the chapter about Georges Bataille, who, despite being a pretty overrated figure in his own right (although not nearly as much as J.L.), was also a singularly interesting character who probably would've been a much better subject for a book than Jacques.

Worst part: when Lucien Febvre defended not just Lacan but Lacan's prose style to his fellows at the Encyclopédie française. As someone who has long held the Annales historians in high esteem, this was heartbreaking.

So for writing, a 7; for subject matter, a -1. If you do like Lacan and his work, this is definitely a must-read. But you'd be a lot better off just reading Alexandre Kojève's seminar on Hegel, which is awesome, admirably clear, and where Lacan got most of the good ideas that he mangled beyond recognition.

Great review. For some reason I had you as a Lacan fan. I still have yet to read the guy for fear of allergic reaction.

[EEEOOOEEEOOOEEEOOO]

Engseng Ho - Graves of Tarim 7/10
This is a very impressive piece of scholarship in which Ho traces the history of the Hadrami Arab diaspora across the Indian Ocean through the longue durée of the last 1,000 years. He traces this history primarily through the construction of genealogies, which established the city of Tarim as the origin from which all genealogies flowed. This leans more toward history than it does anthropology, but is in any case a very interesting take on how a sense of place is constructed such that a disparate diaspora can maintain its identity over a millennium

Achille Mbembe - On the Postcolony 9/10
Mbembe’s treatise on the postcolony offers imaginative outlines and frameworks for thinking and writing about political power in Africa. Acknowledging that it has historically been very difficult to speak rationally about Africa, Mbembe both suggests why this might be so and offers some ways of moving forward. I have not yet read the whole book, but the chapters in which he suggests an interpretation of the aesthetics and representation of power in Africa were fantastic. He suggests relationships between things like vulgarity, obscenity, pleasure, and death, in ways that reconfigure the key symbols of political power in Africa. Mbembe certainly makes some statements that seem more provocative than useful, but in all I think he provides a language for describing political power in Africa that finally gets beyond some of the blockages provided by Western understandings of politics and some of the more unsubstantial postcolonial theory

[THE KILL]

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul 8/10

Read it again after a couple of years and it's still a great WTF-experience. Most things about this book are unconventional, the plot is driven mostly by coincidences, Douglas Adams often takes pages just to describe some wacky story that is totally unimportant for the main plot (or is it? you never really know), and the end caught me completely by surprise - again. A lot more cynical than the Hitchhiker's Guide (except the last one, Mostly Harmless, which was an amazingly dark book) as well, and a great read all around because Adams simply knows how to write in an interesting way.

[father of lies]

The Earth Will Shake: The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles vol 1 - Robert Anton Wilson - 9.5

Holy hell, I need to read the rest of these.

[mithrandir]

The Earth Will Shake: The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles vol 1 - Robert Anton Wilson - 9.5
.

the fuck is that!?? more details...

[father of lies]

An ancestor of Hagbard, in 1760s Naples, gets tied up in various conspiracies and occult lodges, becomes a Mason, learns about the Inquisition, creates avant garde music, hangs out with young Mozart, runs into a dolphin, almost dies on various occasions, gets brainwashed, learns about the beginnings of revolution in the colonies, and so on.

It has some of the same themes of Illuminatus, but seems to be much more about the psychological side of the occult and the processes of initiation and rebirth. It's a LOT less experimental than Illuminatus or Schroedinger's Cat, and the language is completely different. It's much more lyrical. It's less of a full on brainfuck than the more famous novels, but I think that's because its (somewhat) about different things.

I picked up Masks of the Illuminati, too.

[soiled depends]

I just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods. It's my first real encounter with the guy ever. I know about his kids books and his comics. I enjoyed a lot of the lead up to the big conflict and was sad when characters were getting corpsed out along the way, but all the magic/fantasy/fairy bullshit is for the birds. In the end I was glad to be finished with it. Good riddence...

[Mike Turbo]

Indeed. Apparently I dont know how to click the quote button.

I just think it fit the story. I can see Hiro and... whats her face looking at each other and saying WELL WHAT THE FUCK NOW GODDAMIT?!, which was about my reaction.

I totally hear that. But for some reason I was pissed at the end. Again it was Building and building for like 50 pages to ... Nothing.


Anyhow. Great book. I will read his others soon. Super fun

Definitely a fun book. I blasted through most of his stuff over the past year. Cryptonomicon was my favorite. Started his history of the modern world trilogy, read Quicksilver, and while I enjoyed it, sort of lost the impact of his previous books. Dragged a bit and went off on too many tangents.

You should check out some of Jonathan Lethem's early books. Not quite "cyber punk" but definitely good weird "sciency" fiction with heavy emphasis on characters/development. (not fantasy).

[mithrandir]

An ancestor of Hagbard, in 1760s Naples, gets tied up in various conspiracies and occult lodges, becomes a Mason, learns about the Inquisition, creates avant garde music, hangs out with young Mozart, runs into a dolphin, almost dies on various occasions, gets brainwashed, learns about the beginnings of revolution in the colonies, and so on.

It has some of the same themes of Illuminatus, but seems to be much more about the psychological side of the occult and the processes of initiation and rebirth. It's a LOT less experimental than Illuminatus or Schroedinger's Cat, and the language is completely different. It's much more lyrical. It's less of a full on brainfuck than the more famous novels, but I think that's because its (somewhat) about different things.

I picked up Masks of the Illuminati, too.

I'll definitely be checking these out in the future, anything that expands the epic scoop of the Illuminatus univerz is a plus, I'm all about that kind of shit,

[ibn Horowitz]

Shadow of the Torturer - Gene Wolfe: 7/10
Friends of Meager Fortune - David Adams Richards: 7/10
I may be biased on this one, it's uneven and some of his phrasing is trash. However it is really nice to see a serious author writing about Atlantic Canada and I have a soft spot for heavy-handed fatalism.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: American Slave - Frederick Douglass 7/10
Certain parts were very compelling and it rings with the authenticity of someone who literally stopped being a slave five minutes before he started writing, though the downside is that his story jumps around and at the time of the writing he was reluctant to tell about the escape for fear of persecution. Maybe had he written this later in life, the flow of the narrative would have been better and he might have been able to put in the escape story. It's like all struggle, no catharsis, epilogue.

Watchmen - Alan Moore 8/10
After all they hype of the movie, and the folks posting in the movie thread I finally picked this up. I thought it was enjoyable and an interesting take on the genre, but ultimately too short, leaving me wondering how this would have played out had it been published for many years as opposed to being a short serial.

[Gay for Cock]

Question for all the PKD fans here. Are any of these collection books put out by Library Of America worth picking up? I like the Library of America books that I've seen, nice hardcover collections, built in cloth book marker and at a pretty good price for a hardcover book. But sometimes collections have a few good stories and some that are worth skipping, especially if you're just getting into an author. So I'm either going to pick up a collection or start with a single book by PKD, are either of these three worth picking up?

http://www.amazon.com/Philip-K-Dick-Lib ... 297&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Philip-K-Dick-Nov ... 297&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Philip-K-Dick-Lib ... 297&sr=8-3

[riley]

i don't have those but those all have great books housed within, i'd say it's totally worth it at those prices to get one or all

if you're new to pkd i'd say start with his early stuff, so that first collection would be great

fuck i want those now