Generic Business Oriented Website

"Bleeding Edge" by Thomas Pynchon 8.9/10 great fun but a little anti climatic

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - 7

Based on a True Story: A Memoir - 6

Foundation - 5

God Emperor of Dune - 9
Heretics of Dune - 7.5
Chapterhouse: Dune - 7

Men Among the Ruins - 7
The Hill of Dreams - 8

The Passage - 5.5

Thanks for the rec, wife...

that vampire zombie one?
really kind of ... low-brow, but emotionally manipulative. I read the whole series!

featherboa wrote: ↑Wed Apr 26, 2017 9:25 am that vampire zombie one?
really kind of ... low-brow, but emotionally manipulative. I read the whole series!

Yeah that's the one. I'm reading 1Q84 now and I'm feeling normal again.

Hesiod and Theognis - 8

iron council 6/10 I'm pretty sure that this & kraken are inferior to perdido st station & the scar, not that I'm getting bored of mieville. has anyone read the city & the city? I really don't want to invest in another quasi-dud...

The Cloud of Unknowing - 8
The Gambler (Dostoevsky) - 7

Necrometer wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2017 11:00 am iron council 6/10 I'm pretty sure that this & kraken are inferior to perdido st station & the scar, not that I'm getting bored of mieville. has anyone read the city & the city? I really don't want to invest in another quasi-dud...

I barely remember it now; This is what I posted in here:

The City and The City 7
Page-turner for sure

but what's the point?
For some reason before I started I thought this author wrote in-some-way subversive books, but I'm not really seeing it.

yeah - not really in the mood for pointless page-turner right now

I think his works are not blatantly/aggressively subversive so much as they're bucking the status quo in a way that's subtly transgressive and distinct from what a mainstream author would ever present. the bas-lag trilogy's main characters are a fat dude, a woman (OK, big whoop), and a bi guy. and there's a lot of laborer-sympathizing going on throughout. even though the narrative suffered to facilitate all the allegorical points, I did like the ultimate metaphor of the iron council, presuming I didn't botch this: was your "not subversive" comment in reference to just the city & the city? because I think that's one of his more pulpy books, supposedly written with his literal mom as the intended audience

All I've read is city and city and the scar, so at most those two.

got it

the scar is probably the least political of the trilogy (no coincidence that it's the most fun)

I'd highly recommend perdido st station though

annihilation 6.66/10 this is a decent, short book. fantastical sci-fi that's basically a hybrid of Stalker, Lost, and Sphere. there's two more books in the trilogy and I just read their wikipedia pages... the ex machina guy is making this into a movie starring Natalie Portman so I thought I'd check out the source before I inevitably see the adaptation. pretty curious how well this will translate to the screen...

Art Since 1960 - 6
The Temptation of St. Antony - 10

the claw of the conciliator - 9

Ascent of Mount Carmel - 8

We Are What We Pretend To Be (the first and last works) - 9/10

Dark Night of the Soul - 8
Madame Bovary - 9
The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy - 7
Jesus Now (Martin) - 9
Revelations of Divine Love - 7
The Imitation of Christ - 6
Beowulf: A Verse Translation - 9
The Cement Garden - 8

2666

Hum. Where to begin. You really need to have a pretty large tolerance for continuous negativity to read this. I would say Infinite Jest and Blood Meridian would be prerequisites as it has both the scale of similiar post modern/existential/whatever bricks (it's about 900 pages) plus a pretty huge heaping of nihilistic graphic violence that isn't quite as unrelenting as Cormac's masterpiece but might be even more disgusting because of the sexuality involved. Reading this is like flying a space craft to a tiny moon of incredible beauty and fragility that might fall apart at any moment but to get there you have to pass through a black hole of total filth and despair. I ended up loving it by the end. Can I really recommend this? I don't know. Belano's prose shifts chaotically between almost textbook like dryness to dream like vagueness to gritty realism dripping in rancid body fluids and rotting flesh. Don't start this unless you're ready to invest a lot of time and emotional energy. 1-10 rating? I'm not going to do that so go hump someone else's leg mutt face before I push yours in.

Tao Te Ching (Byrne) - 9
Piers Plowman (Donaldson) - 8
Heart of Darkness - 10
The Idea of the Holy - 9
The Sacred and the Profane - 8
Landscapes: John Berger on Art - 7
A History of Experimental Film and Video - 7
Sculpting in Time - 9
The World is Ever Changing - 9

three body problem 8/10
dark forest 5.5/10
death's end 7/10
... this is a sci-fi trilogy written about a decade ago and only recently translated to english from chinese. it's on the "hard" side of things and has some great, fun ideas. nothing too revolutionary. I'd recommend the first book, but if you're not totally in love with that, you should probably just bail on the series. it shifts from a more character-driven story to almost outline-level dumping of various sci-fi ideas with too little connective tissue or overarching themes.

embassytown 7.5/10 mieville's most sci-fi book, pretty good although I didn't really buy the conceit that drove the plot, so it felt shaky