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.