You would probably not like Pete Dexter's Deadwood then.

I am not much of a fiction reader. I read sci-fi, some specific writers (Vonnegut, Bukowski) but otherwise I mostly read non-fiction books, usually about science, cognition, or identity.

I am also a fan of proper punctuation, and do not find it "clever" or "avant-garde" to write without punctuation like McCarthy does. I find that shit pretentious and distracting.

I agree when it comes to McCarthy. He's got a head full of interesting images and ideas, but often seems to fall short when executing them, at least in my opinion — the No Country for Old Men film is the best thing associated with his name — but in other instances I can totally get behind writing that is unhindered by the rules of punctuation/style. Specifically with Karoac. His unstructured approach is what gives On The Road such a unique sense of abandon. Truman Capote can gripe about it all day long, it's fucking glorious.

You must not like Celine much...a true misanthrope and racist...GAUL WILL RISE AGAIN!

I finished Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.


cool and sad and eye-opening. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...ns-can-go.html

Yo Sevs,

I found an original paperback printing of Claw of the Conciliator at Half Price Books for $.75 !!

Shit yea\h. I also found 3 of the Robert E. Howard Ace paperback printings from the 70's of Conan the Barbarian. sweeet

Classic (if a tad fluffy) neuroscience-pop classic. A good read indeed, though I long for a bit more hard science in my cognition based non-fiction.

DUDE.

I appreciate you keeping me up to date and all, but seriously, just read the damn Bool of the New Sun! There's this dumb website called Amazon were the compiled volumes (Shadow & Claw, Sword & Citadel) can be purchased any day of the week for $1-3. Bite the bullet and read them shits. Buying one novella at a time is just going to make you drag this thing out for god knows how long.

There are four core novellas and a coda novella in BOTNS alone! The "extended" arc contains a total of TWELVE little books (four more in Book of the Long Sun, followed by three in Book of the Short Sun). If you're gonna do this thing, do it.

But for now I guess it's good that you have Concilloator, which is, what, like 100 pages? And I thought you already had this from the library? And I thought you had Shadow & Claw like five months ago! Anyway, just read that shit and then let's talk about it!

I had shadow and claw from the library, but had to return it. (due dates and all)

Read the duck out of that shit. Thank me later.

The more I grow to know you, the more certain I become that you will truly love and appreciate this.

Just finished reading Neil Gaiman's The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...o-mind-of.html




As soon as I finish up Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer, I am diving headfirst into the WOLFEEEEEEE

i used to not like rereading but now i love it and have made the point to reread all the novels from my shelf and the various stacks and boxes i have everywhere.
currently rereading Clive Barker Sacrament remembering why i have always adored reading Clive Barker

agreed. i prefer novels with at least some sense of direction. my favorite are those that follow Dumas tradition of blending several story lines together plopping back and forth between each chapter so that you're brain is keeping vivid track of each character and story in ways you're brain just doesn't do with even superb films

all stephen king books suck. the dialogue is total garbage. the stories shallow and lacking character development. the "twists" too obvious and predictable. its why it translated so well into cheesy horror flicks

You have been saying that for months. Less talkie more readie.

Months!

Months.

one cannot force the mind's appeal!!!

But one can, apparently, lie about what one is going to read as soon as one is done with what one is currently reading. ;)

Get it done.

Pussy.

reading ligottis conspiracy against the human race, which i think is a different version to the one i first read. <slams pdf on desk "this is what we believe!" exits room and does arms deal with the saudis>

I read that again recently and I think I prefer his short stories. His world-view works best for me in fictional form, in stories like 'The Frolic', rather than the more straight-forward philosophising he delivers in Conspiracy.

there is nothing in his worldview that can be logically disputed

I've tried so hard to get into Clive Barker but apart from a couple of short stories in the Books of Blood series I really can't get what all the fuss is about. I don't think I've ever managed to even finish any of his novels. Stephen King can be infuriatingly hit and miss but I've loved enough of his books to consider myself a fan.


I'm not questioning its validity, I just think he presents it far more interestingly in his fiction

Stephen King does suck pretty goddamn bad. There were elements of Green Mile that I liked. Same with the Shining (probably his best from a literary perspective), but goddammit... Have any of you guys ever read fucking Christine? What the fuck! It's like a Goosebumps book! It's bloody absurd! I laughed with my whole fucking body when I read that shit. Every little piece of dialogue was utterly contrived, flat, utilitarian. NO thought went into those characters, which ASTOUNDS me since one of them is a fucking CAR.

Seriously, how can you write 500 pages about an evil talking car without doing some serious brainstorming about, you know, what the fuck an evil fucking car might say?

I liked the Gunslinger, book one of the Dark Tower abomination. I liked the iconic good/evil imagery, the mescaline trip, the man in black... But books 2 and 3 were so Fucking terrible that I gave up.

Seriously, man. SFAD's on point with this one. Stephen King is the most basic voice in horror.

Neil Gaiman does Stephen King a million times better than King ever has.

Just finished Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.



review is up http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...-are-more.html

barker is like the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of modern horror/fantasy.. its dense but what makes it good is the depth of character development and the sheer surreality of the plot and setting. he perfectly blends very mundane settings with insane twists. and when he goes for horror, its truly horrific.

Much of Barker's early work was a direct exploration of the blood fears that AIDS had created among people. Books of Blood.

Lots of hypersexual horror stuff, very very different from what was being done by Straub and King and Koontz.

The Weaveworld book used to freak me out.

Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock

I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music And The Politics Of Identity

both by Theodore Gracyk

He's a professor, but the books aren't overly dense. A few Kant references but nothing you can't handle. Pretty hip references, and I think he's a better writer than most of his academic colleagues. Many of the issues that come up in this forum are treated with deep scholarship. Lots of food for thought. Available at fine universities.

Neil Gaiman just retweeted my tweet about my review of his newest book! shyeah shyeah!!! http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...o-mind-of.html

@rob - hey, that's some nice bit of attention from a good direction!

read the review and enjoyed the unabashed enthusiasm you convey. will keep an eye out for the book!

@ evolver - that looks good too!

damn you peoples on a roll

Wow, congrats friend. That's bigger than anything I've ever had in the way of social media reinforcement from the folks I've written about. I know Black Bug favorited a post of mine praising Reflecting the Light once. But you probably have no clue who or what that is, and they've broken up anyway. :(

How's THAT BOOK coming along? Certainly you're well past Claw of the Concilliator by now. Not to pile on the pressure, but... pile pile, bitch. ;)

Ha! I am only about 50 pages into Claw. I slid right into it after finishing stranger things and Penny Dreadful TV shows.....

What? Now you're putting the Wolfeman on hold for TV? That doesn't even make sense! There's TV time (1-2 hours a day max, during times of extreme boredom and luxury), and then there's reading time (as many hours as you can possibly fit into your life on any given day; absolute minimum 1, even if that means blowing off sex).

Get it together RXTT. Your intellectual journey is not going to be televised. ;)

Really I'm just glad you're finally back at it. How about just plowing through the final three "novellas" in one go instead of pausing to take a swan dive into a bunch of comparatively inconsequential drivel this time? Johnny Rotten bios are not going anywhere, and nobody's asking you to read them. Meanwhile, I'm foaming at the mouth waiting to have an intense philosophical discussion about the meaning, structure, symbolism, science, religion and all around awesomeness of BOTNS.

You can save the coda for later if you want. I did. It goes down well after being Severian-less for a few years. Also it's weirder than shit. But you have to stop diddling around and read the initial books, like, last month.

I expect a report on my desk by the end of the month.

The Journey is not pre-planned! ha!

110 pages into this so far so good so swept up back into the damn story again so fast!

BTW, this one has a lot more of what I read as satire about small town governance....

Yay!

im halfway through blood & guts in high school.

when i first tried to read it ages ago i found it "badly written" and ultraboring.

now aeons later i'm starting to realize its genius.

what's your take on cassavetes?

I started to read this at one point, when I was about 18. I'm not sure if it was my mindset at the time — wanting to be a writer of the deconstructionist persuasion, and probably looking for a style that would hide my total lack of confidence in my own creativity — but I was reading the weirdest things I could get my hands on, and definitely looking for something.

However, I dropped that book like a bad habit (the kind that you actually want to drop because it doesn't afford you any fleeting sense of euphoria to make its badness worthwhile). Jesus fucking Christ. If I had a souped up time machine I'd go back and convince myself never to pick it up, paradox be damned.

I will never read that ... thing. That's a promise.