OK! Finally on the last chapter of



http://www.historytoday.com/iain-r-smith/frontiers

this is a great book. So well written. Follows the colonization of Africa from the earliest Vasco de Gama days down until the final black vs white battles in the 1850's. Beautiful characterization and scenery. As a long time reader of history, this is truly one of the best histories I've read. Some of the characters were just so fascinating, a fairly minor chief named Makomo and his tribe suffers years and years of land and cattle theft by the English, he overcomes a serious alcohol addiction and brings all the tribes together for a last pitched war against the colonists. Likely would have won except for the scorched earth policies of the English and their willingness to murder women and children. Mostert brings his modern sensibilities to the book at the right times, seeing the conflicts with 20th century eyes. Although at almost 1400 pages, it never dragged and I wasn't tempted to skip ahead.

i alternate between reading a physical book and listening to an audiobook.

the last few years have mostly been occupied by sci-fi

a few robert heinlein favorite: stranger in a strange land (first audiobook, then picked up an expanded version with the original manuscript)
every single kurt vonnegut book - favorites in order: sirens of titan, cat's cradle, slaughterhouse 5
any and always anything new by chuck palahniuk - favorites: rant and choke
i'm several books in on arthur c clarke's bibliography. favs: childhood's end (of course! though i read that back in highschool), the rama series, odyssey series. currently on the last theorem.
i'm always collecting my favorite all time author hermann hesse. favs: glass bead game, der steppenwolf, siddhartha. i bought a few short story collections. currently reading narziss & goldmund for the 2nd time since highschool.

i've tried several other books. i don't always get far into them before getting bored. i liked neal steaphonson's snow crash and larry niven's ringworld. i listened to the entirety of the dune series. wasn't impressed. a lot of asimov, couldn't get into it.

Rereading this for the millionth time..I forgot how great Clive Barker novellas can be.. all moneyshot no dragging out in-depth character development. Now while normally I really dig Barker novels precisely because of their in-depth character development, lately I just don't have the attention span to finish 600 and 1200 page novels...


Mont Saint Michel and Chartres FREE DOWNLOAD PDF

This is one of the most deep, existential, and poetic books on religion I have ever read (and y'all know I have a lot of experience with theology texts and literature) which is insane considering ostensibly its an art critique!

Henry Adams so perfectly explains what piety and faith in the Virgin Mary meant not only to the 13th century, but really which still rings true among Mariologists today. Beautiful. A MUST READ even for the atheist, even if just to develop an empathy with the religious mind.

I originally found this book totally at random at a used book store for one dollar.. in hindsight it was a miracle, as this book has truly deepened my own experience and explanation of my faith.



stop hating on TV yo! PBS can be just as fulfilling as reading when it is on point

maybe at 18 you weren't ready to realize her freedom and playfulness and punk rock ways right along her literary and theorethical depth. i certainly wasn't.

but this time around i'm having a blast with her. on the one hand she skewers the absurdity of gender roles and the cruelty of economic social relations, on the other hand she concocts an absurd and rambling melodrama, and then she proceeds to have her way with language and literary history, from the rudiments of writing to allusion to quotation to analysis to overt plagiarism. genius.

it's a book about desire, and oppression, and the misfortune of being born a human and a woman to boot, and be cursed with intelligence, and a struggle for freedom, and as bataille would put it--about evil, which is a return to childhood.

it's a brilliant book, but because it's such outsider art it's also very easy to misunderstand. i have no patience with moronic academics that interpret it like she's literally 10 years old fucking her literal father. it's poetry, motherfucker (fatherfucker?), not journalism, and so it's loaded with metaphor and symbolism and allegory and since it's actual art and not a fucking pamphlet it is wonderfully ambiguous. but anyway-- don't read those academic papers. she's got some great interviews out there instead.

in any case-- it's the only fiction book that i've been able to stomach in a very long time. it's so refreshing to find something so completely different. i'm surprised i'm liking it so much.

Yeah, but wouldn't an academic (a fluffy academic... y'know, like a lit prof) be more apt to read it as symbolically than literally?

I probably did read it as a literal account when I was 18, but that's certainly one of the ways it can be interpreted. It's not so satirical in content that it's, like, impossible to imagine it being intended as anything but satire. It's not Animal Farm, you know. If you read that book and think it's about pigs you're a goddamn moron. But Blood and Guts doesn't (from what I can remember) read like a blatant allegory.

I feel like I should probably revisit it, but I made that promise to myself for a very good reason... at least at the time it seems like a very good reason. That book fucked me up a bit, and I don't feel any desire to experience those feelings again.

i dont know if there are good papers about her out there--- i looked at the ones that link from wikipedia and the ones that link from those and all of them were such programmatic useless crap i realized those people didn't get her at all. it's all black and white and binary and reductionist. like a pretension to science. coarse attempts at dissection in service of variosu ideologies.

as for allegory, well, it's not "an" allegory-- this is structured sort of as a picaresque. there are episodes and there are stories, and stories within stories, so you get a few straight-up allegories jammed in there, but the fun of the book is that it's such a wild romp there's layer upon layer upon layer of meaning and it comes in all forms. all types of discourse and narrative modes next to each other. massive orgy. total freedom with the page.

among the most recent shit i read--her "greek" poems cracked me up-- she was a classics student btw and read greek, and her versions (written by the main character) are hilariously demented--broken syntax, broken thread of the subject, but somehow keeping the voice consistent. wonderful. she takes every liberty and makes no apologies. she jumps from that to mallarmé. she's a fucking pirate!

anyway it's great that she made you feel something rather than just bore you (it bored me the first time, missed her point by a million miles--or maybe it irked me and i discounted it as boredom. who knows! i'm glad to have had a second chance.) but yes-- to feel something. isn't that the point of literature? not just dry ideas bouncing inside a head, but what did nabokov say? a tingle in the spine.

nobody in their right mind should entirely trust the judgment of their 18 year old self. read it again

Hey Slambang, did you ever get around to finishing The Sparrow?

I don't "entirely trust" the judgement of any mind, at any age, at any time, least of all my own. This is as it should be.

But yeah, maybe I'll just read it again.

lemme suggest, before you do, check out georges bataille.

particularly his "literature and evil"

it's such a great fucking book. true literary criticism. the way it was meant to be before the eggheads and the MLA ruined the profession with their empty caca.

bataille will give you the right perspective. plus he was a big influence on her. plus plus plus. many pluses too long to outline.

i swear by that book. it's the kind of book that makes you want to read other books. know what i mean?

BATAILLE.

bataille bataille bataille bataille bataille.

check him.

Ok ok. I checked him. I just bought an e-edition of Literature and Evil for $9.99 through my Kindle. The synopsis grabbed me by the nuts... it's true. It may be a bit before I read it as I'm currently immersed in a promising space opera..

DID YOU EVER READ THE MOTHERFUCKING SPARROW?!?!

What was it, like, two years ago that you were digging that? What happened? Did you ever finish it?

Btw: the space opera I'm referring to is Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice.. a far future AI story featuring a protagonist whose consciousness is a fragment of a dismantled, millennia-old intergalactic computer — one of many that inhabited the "consciousness" of entire space stations as well as countless humans whose bodies were used as (relatively) disposable soldiers, or ancillaries, by these semi-omnipotent AI leviathans.

Specifically, the protagonist is a fragment of that consciousness that has been cut off from the computer after some cataclysmic tumult that
I haven't read about yet. It's inhabiting the body of a 19 year-old girl, and trying to survive as a genderless, emotionless, female child (and also killing machine) in an unforgiving post-war galactic frontier.

It's pretty out there. And — get this — it won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award AND Locus Award in the same year. :eek: I'm not sure that's ever happened before, and it's only happened a couple of times with the Hugo and Nebula, which are the two biggies.

I can't ignore that kind of praise, and I was looking for something weird enough to take me to some places I'd never been before.



So have you read the Sparrow or fucking what?

oh hi hi

im superextrafucking intoxicated right now. bear with me.

i started the sparrow but abandoned it quickly because i didn't like the characters. not "as people" but how the characters were written. i didn't trust the writer's judgment. like, "is this what matters to you in a person?" and i stopped reading. it was spontaneous.

oh i finished the kathy acker book today. it was fantastic, hilarious, sad, sickening, pathetic, compassionate, alive, everything

i wanna read jean genet right away. also the scarlet letter-- i tried the other day and my fuck what boring prose. i guess i prefer kathy's synopsis much better-- it's totally readable for one thing! Reverend Dimwit lolololol.

You're drunk, Sparrow needs to be read from start to finish or not at all. How can you just toss that book away?

Like, what happened to his hands?!
Why is this priest the presumed murderer of all of his closest friends?
What did they find? Was it God, or was it the Devil?

You bastard. Read that shit. You said you liked Doria Russell's narrative style and voice at the time.

consumed - cronenberg's debut..
pleasantly surprised it reads like a ballard/coupland hybrid..

i dont read drunk. coffee and tobacco at most.

and i didn't toss it, i just returned it to the library for others to pick up

i'm not big into mysteries, or body damage

i do watch british detective shows sometimes-- the brits seems to have an obsession with the genre

but it's more because i enjoy the wuiet pace of their tv-- foyle's war is like some sort of very mellow valium--only towards the last season it starts to get a little frantic-- street footchases and what not

but anyway yes i did like th way she started. this big straightforward narrative taking big leaps and it's kinda like beowulf.

then she switches mode and starts describing these fucking characters. my fuck, i want to slice their throats. just kidding. i just don't want to read about them.

what can i do about this? how do i become interested in them?

honest question!

Well first of all, obviously I'm not genuinely angry at you for setting the book aside, or for not wanting to read it. But I was really pumped to get those messages from you way back when, saying "Thank you, Severino! Sincerely!" I love being able to connect with people through literature. Rob Instigator reading Gene Wolfe is, like, an IRL big deal for me, because nobody I've known has ever had the patience or follow-through to read that particular book, except for Ms. Noisefield. She also read the Sparrow, but there's only so much blabbing you can do about something with your life partner before it becomes grating and irritating (for them).

I originally recommended the book to you, I think, because of some of our conversations about religion, science, and the merits of "sci-fi." I know you're not a big sci-fi reader, but The Sparrow is written from a more general fiction approach, and doesn't rely on the usual tropes of series SF. It's the rare extraterrestrial story that seems to appeal to all readers, even outright haters of science fiction.

Also, it's just such a mind fuck. You referenced Nabakov recently, in discussing Blood and Guts in High School. Literature is absolutely supposed to make you feel something, to make your spine tingle, and I offered up the Sparrow for your consideration because it does just that. It latches onto your spine, and plants a vibrator to it from the outset. The feeling of dread, of certain ominousness from an uncertain origin, is spread throughout the book, and I thought you'd appreciate that.

How do you get interested in the characters? You keep reading. Rarely does a story feature so many relatable characters that you know from the get go are absolutely fucking doomed. It's daring, and a bit pretentious, but still very effective. I found as I read that that seed of ominousness that is planted in the first few pages informs every character study throughout the book, messing with the reader's emotional investment in everyone. On top of that, there's this wonderful/terrifying protagonist who is presented as the very personification of human goodness, and through his backstory, you learn to trust and appreciate Father Emilio Sandoz, while simultaneously questioning virtually everything that he says or does, because of the implication of guilt. It makes for some extremely tense and rewarding reading, even in the slowest moments.

Also, I think having a vested interest in religion helps with this one. Particularly Catholicism. Maybe I underestimated your fascination with morality and religious philosophy when I recommends the book. But for me, a "post-Catholic" from a strict Jesuit family, reading about this stuff was intoxicating. Reading about the motives of the church's figureheads, learning more about Jesuit philosophy, while also getting a nice helping of hard science, it was a very close-to-home read for me, and prompted some intersting reflections on my own religious upbringing.

I guess if you don't like the characters, or didn't feel a connection even to Sandoz or John from the get go, then maybe it's not for you, and that's all there is to it. But I thought it was haunting and powerful and disturbing and glorious, even though it sent me down some negative mental rabbit holes.

I think Emilio's story is worth reading. Worth knowing. For anyone with a serious interest in literature. He's just too powerful a character to NOT know, as a reader. I think The Sparrow is one of the best novels of the 1990s. Not so much the sequel, Children of God, which goes a little too far off the deep end and makes some serious reaches with the surviving characters to explain their actions in the first book. Even it is worth reading, but I consider the Sparrow a must.

Also, if you're ever going to read it you certainly want to do so before it emerges from it's Hollywood pre-production purgatory. They've been trying to adapt it for ages, and last I heard it was back in the "coming soon" zone, as Brad Pitt apparently has the film rights and will probably try to pull off a portrayal of the main character if a film is ever made. I love Brad Pitt, but he's awful for the part of a slight of frame 40-something Latino priest from the ghetto. So the adaptation, if it ever happens, will be a big deal and will probably suck, and if you have any interest in finishing it, I'd recommend that you do so before H-wood taints the meat.

i just didnt like how she dropped the writing from the beginning for some sort of word soup

don't worry about it

i'm still grateful for the recommendation we just have different tastes

if everyone was the same life would be ultra-boring

Some fucked up part of me wants to be scared, or disturbed somehow, by the things I read. It's taken me to some weird places, I must say. I like it when the dark corners of my imagination are activated, and Sparrow did just that. Made me think of the "evil" that awaits all good men in this life in one form or another. It's a common theme in many of my favorite novels, and even in my favorite non-fiction books. I love a good hero, but I love a good villain even more, and the more vague the better. So a book about a journey to find God that ends in complete life-shattering disaster and suffering that couldn't have possibly been predicted appeals to me.

I don't really know why this is, but it's a part of who I am. I'm a good person (I guess... for what it's worth and how little it ultimately matters, I'm disgusted by the idea of causing harm to anyone or anything), but if I were Luke Skywalker, the galaxy would have been fucked. I would have chosen the dark side out of simple fascination.

yeah im more of a semibuddhist. i just cant go for a god that requires human sacrifices. i get that it's meant to be symbolic but katoliki is well over for me. and the good vs evil business is more of an american thing than catholic proper. i mean in that 'roids sort of obsession. this is why i can't stand superhero comix after age 11.

eta: jesuits developed and codified casuistry. that is all about the non-black-and-white.

True, but this is part of what makes Jesuit thought intersting, if a bit self serving. The older orders are significantly less open to discussing morality in a truly philosophical and way. And Like the Jews, Jesuits — some Jesuits — are open to calling the value of the story of Abraham into question. Cause, yeah, what kind of rational person wants to worship a God who would put you through the endeavor of choosing to take your child's life? Even if it was just a SIKE! Worst. SIKE. Ever.

I'm still fascinated by the problem of evil, and I don't think that stories that focus on clearly defined representations of "good" and "evil" are necessarily lacking in maturity. Indeed, the closest I come to worshiping anything is reading Superman comics. There's a place and time for moral ambiguity (it's called real life, and it mostly sucks), and there is most definitely a place and time for pretending that evil can be destroyed by simply hucking some bad guy into the sun, or chucking some cursed artifact into the flames of Mount Doom.

In other words... comic books rule, I'm not dumb, YOU'RE dumb ;)

Finished and reviewed Paul Zimmerman's A Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football. http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2016/0...ootball-i.html



About 200 pp into claw of conciliator. gonna have to, as severian said, read it and the next two back to back to back. all swept up in it.

eggheads <3

MLA :D

because of literature and evil I just got Wuthering Heights! Will start reading it once i finished Maggie Nelson's book.

you go,symbols

Do it.
You're making me want to go re-read the whole blessed thing.

On Kindle/google play/e-book you can buy everything in one Book of the New Sun volume. Everything but the coda book (Urth of the New Sun) that is. I think it's currently in print too, though I may be wrong about that.

I've returned to the Goodreads app to chatter about books and get recommendations. It's not a bad service.

well the crucifission wasn't a sike actually and that central metaphor ufff. i get to see what it is supposed to mean, but still, i don't know.

in any case yeah i just can't get into superman comics. i always hated superman anyway. when i was 3 i loved batman and spiderman though-- one was possible to emulate with the right gadgets and the other was human enough you could relate. the man from krypton always striked me as an arrogant fuck though.

but that was way back when i cared about that stuff. the last comics i was reading were astérix--then when i was about 12 i switched to books full-time, fantastic literature like poe or some of the easier borges and also cheap war novels, old-as-fuck science fictions, that sort of shit. i like some comics now but it has to be adult stuff-- sandman being the best ever, ever.

in any case im worn out on reading, and bored by most things, so this isn't your fault. i blame fucking grad school for it--the fucking killjoys.

i wanna reread it too. it's been ages. i remember borrowing it from the DC library in some hardbound volume. now i got an ebook of it from project gutenberg.

it's hard for me to get back into novels with endless descriptions but i'll try because the characters are fucking mad and that is a good thing.

the descriptive novel feels like such an antiquity..
we have been bombarded into submission to the post-literate culture.. the spectacle is more important than plot, the dialogue is more overpowering than characters..

good writing is - and always will be - free from the conjecture..
that's probably why the classics are ageless...

Ancillary Sword is fuckin' awesome.

Like the only Sci-fi that matters, it absolutely requires you to think. It doesn't waste a second on unnecessary description, or exposition. Rather, it plops you in the middle of a jungle, hands you a Swiss Army knife, and trusts you to find your way around.
Reminiscent of the best works of Wolfe, Dan Simmons and Leguin, it plants you in center of an unknowable situation, and lets you piece things together based on what you see through the protagonist's eyes.

I'm really enjoying it. Weird ass hero.. a singing AI? Still, somehow, totally badass and utterly unique. I get why it won so many awards, as it pulls off some pretty extrordinary narrative feats that border on the experimental. I'm not sure I've ever read a story with a perspective like this before. So I think the acclaim is directed at the deftness with which the author handles this... it's a stunning book from technical writing perspective. But the story itself is also completely engrossing.

Recommend.

Lapham's Quarterly on disasters. Really a great read, the last letters of Robert F Scott freezing to death in the Arctic, the realities of global extinction events, invasions of the barbarians into Rome, a survivors tale of the Titanic, plague stories from 1300, a bizarre WW1 story of being in no mans land under shelling. WowZA, we have it good!

http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/about

I got the first 10 Lapham's Quarterly's on a subscription. those shits are awesome

Friday was an awesome day for me and my book reviews.

A few weeks ago I had read that Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell, Watchmen, Swamp Thing) was coming out with a novel that had taken him ten years to finish. It is called Jerusalem and is supposed to be Joycean in its scope and complexity.

I looked up his publisher and their parent company. They do not do emails. So I wrote a nicely typed letter to them telling them about myself and my book review blog with a link and asked them if they would be willing to send me an advance copy to review for RXTT's Intellectual Journey. Purely on a lark.

On Friday I checked my mail and W.W. Norton & Co. sent me a galley edition of Jerusalem! Fuck yeah! (Advanced Uncorrected Proofs)

I've gotten a lot more patient with Vollmann. He can bore the shit out of some people, and I've yet to get through Europe Central, but this is so far pretty awesome, especially for anyone who's a fan of females and/or Japanese culture. I have The Dying Grass on the shelf for sometime soon, too

Wow, very awesome.

And I have to say your blog has become essential reading for me. I read a fair bit on the occult (Jack Parsons, Austin Spare, Kenneth Grant, etc) and you're covering some great stuff, much of which I'd never even heard of, let alone read. Seriously love it.

Thanks. I like to provide downloadable PDF's of the older out of print stuff, and I think people dig that shit.

wow! congrats!!

I felt like what the early music fanzine people must have when record labels started sending them free preview stuff to review!

How's BOTNS coming?

Not telling you what to read/review but I'd love to see what you think of Thomas Ligotti's short stories, something like 'Last Feast of Harlequin' or 'The Frolic'. Couldn't find a PDF for either but they've got a pretty big cult following so I'm sure theyre out there. The guy's amazing. Very much a modern-day Machen/Lovecraft. 'Harlequin' will blow your mind.