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.