Books

Have a blast. Keep it friendly.
Residual / RT
Thrashmaster
Posts: 136
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:00 am

Re: Books

Post by Residual / RT »

I tried goodreads but could only remember to put like 2-3 books in, then did a big dump 6 months later and never returned. It's a good concept but I'm just too bad at social media to do it.
RESIDUAL / VU / MONGREL TACTICS / THROAT
User avatar
Capers
Thrashmaster
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:35 am

Re: Books

Post by Capers »

Been struggling with Thomas Ligotti's debut (1985), Songs of a Dead Dreamer for years now, reading a story now and then (or trying to). At best it is decent, but at worst it is beyond cringy - like some Neil Gaiman fan fiction with a bit of kink thrown in to sex things up. The Nyctalops trilogy, ffs, please put me to death already. Amazing how he went from that drivel to Teattro Grotesco in just a couple of decades (decades might seem long to you, but if you've read these works I'm mentioning, you know twenty years is a short time to have crawled out of that stink).

Just finished New Juche's Wasteland. It's the first thing of his I've read, and I'm quite charmed! A travelogue of sorts, but from a single place - a set of derelict buildings in... is it Thailand? - rather than a literal journey. He has this highly intimate, even sexual relation to the site, and to me it is as if he takes it upon himself to be its mouthpiece or voice. He debates with himself, reverring the ruins while also violating them with his presence, his decorations (framed photos, writing on the walls etc) in the countless moist half empty concrete squares. Photos and text combined, it's a fascinating place and stream of thought to step into. Like WG Sebald with severe concrete libido.
User avatar
Scream & Writhe
Site Admin
Posts: 567
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:25 pm
Location: Montreal, QC
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by Scream & Writhe »

Capers wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:42 pm Been struggling with Thomas Ligotti's debut (1985), Songs of a Dead Dreamer for years now, reading a story now and then (or trying to). At best it is decent, but at worst it is beyond cringy - like some Neil Gaiman fan fiction with a bit of kink thrown in to sex things up. The Nyctalops trilogy, ffs, please put me to death already.
Glad I'm not alone with this one. It has never grabbed me whatsoever each time I've tried to get somewhere with it.
Capers wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:42 pm Just finished New Juche's Wasteland. It's the first thing of his I've read, and I'm quite charmed! A travelogue of sorts, but from a single place - a set of derelict buildings in... is it Thailand? - rather than a literal journey. He has this highly intimate, even sexual relation to the site, and to me it is as if he takes it upon himself to be its mouthpiece or voice. He debates with himself, reverring the ruins while also violating them with his presence, his decorations (framed photos, writing on the walls etc) in the countless moist half empty concrete squares. Photos and text combined, it's a fascinating place and stream of thought to step into. Like WG Sebald with severe concrete libido.
I've yet to read this one, or The Devils, but have enjoyed his other works. Mountainhead, especially. (And yes, it is Thailand).


Just finished David Demchuk's Red X. It's about a series of killings of men in Toronto's gay village. The author interweaves some autobiographical stuff in there but it wasn't until I was about halfway through that I found out everything else is fiction. (Folk) Horror elements abound and in the end it wasn't entirely my cup of tea. Cliche to say, but maybe it would have been better if he turned up the true (" ") crime angle and turned down the faerie stuff.
Scream & Writhe distro and Absurd Exposition label - https://screamandwrithe.com
Initial Shock Noise Festival - https://initialshock.screamandwrithe.com
Primitive Isolation Tactics
User avatar
holy ghost
I Heart Noise
Posts: 432
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:42 am
Location: Hamilton, ON

Re: Books

Post by holy ghost »

Scream & Writhe wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:54 pm
Capers wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:42 pm Been struggling with Thomas Ligotti's debut (1985), Songs of a Dead Dreamer for years now, reading a story now and then (or trying to). At best it is decent, but at worst it is beyond cringy - like some Neil Gaiman fan fiction with a bit of kink thrown in to sex things up. The Nyctalops trilogy, ffs, please put me to death already.
Glad I'm not alone with this one. It has never grabbed me whatsoever each time I've tried to get somewhere with it.
I read the whole thing and I enjoyed it, but there were definitely a few moments in this one and Grimscribe where I really questioned why his weird fiction is so revered. I didn’t think it was bad per say but I’ve been reading a lot of DMR Press books lately and these guys are just as interesting and much less revered. I just read The Eye of Sounnu by Schuyler Hernstrom and that was just as fresh a take on the Conan sword & sorcery books as Ligotti did with Lovecraft.

I also read Worlds Beyond Worlds: The Short Fiction of John Fultz and that was great.

Currently reading:
Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (amazing 2 part biography worth reading even if you aren’t a fan)
Renegade Swords Vol 1 (DMR Press, weird tales/sword & sorcery anthology, great)

Just also started Bill Brufords biography but I’ll have to finish the Elvis one before I really dive in
Ineffable Slime
Hard Panning
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:25 pm

Re: Books

Post by Ineffable Slime »

I finished up Eugene Marten's Pure Life last week. I give it a heavy recommendation with the caveat that it gets into something shockingly bummer stuff towards the end that did slightly spoil things due to a cliche I find more than a bit dated. It follows a football player slowly developing dementia, his career nosediving, and the ensuing trip to south america to get stem cell treatment for himself. Once he head's out of the USA things get bleak. Real bleak. REAL REAL BLEAK. Somewhere between Delillo's Endzone, Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky, and Lowry's Under the Volcano with maybe a sprinkling of Sotos for some added prurient seasoning.
User avatar
xIncorruptibleCorpse777x
I Heart Noise
Posts: 469
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 12:47 am
Location: Cincinnati, Ohio
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by xIncorruptibleCorpse777x »

A Bar Mitzvah at Arafat's (End the Insanity) by Tomas Rowan

A dear friend of mine wrote this novel based on his experiences working in Palestine (both the West Bank and Gaza) for the UN with refugees during the first Intifada. He's... seen some shit, to say the least... I'm still working on it. Got an early copy. Proceeds go to the Palestinian Children's Fund. It won't be available on Amazon until August, I think?


Friday Nite at the Bucket of Blood Bar by Bobby "Z" Zielinski

Another novel from someone I know, based on real events. This time it's by one of my uncles. He was a regular at bars in Jersey City in the 50's - 60's and, as he puts it, "an original Jersey City 50's bad boy". Reading it helped me understand him better. He's been through some absolutely insane shit. It's a wonder he still has his sanity. You can get it on Amazon. Slightly under 100 pages and inexpensive.


The Attic Bedroom by Rebecca Griswold

Continuing the trend of books that people I know have written, this book is a mix of poetry and prose. It "explores survival and healing as a woman looks back on an earlier experience with a community that turns out to be a cult. This formally inventive collection moves between the past and the present, with letters, erasures, narrative, and description providing distinct layers" (-Goodreads). I know many of the people involved in this story and interacted with them a lot over the space of a few years. I found it illuminating and shocked me as to what a number of them were really like behind closed doors. Read it in just two sittings. Strongly recommend it, especially for anyone who've been traumatized by religious people. Particularly ones in leadership roles.
Last edited by xIncorruptibleCorpse777x on Sat Jul 30, 2022 12:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Helvitis
Hard Panning
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:14 am

Re: Books

Post by Helvitis »

If anyone has any of the pdfs New Juche used to have up on his website of his older books and feel like sharing them with me that would make me very happy.
Ineffable Slime
Hard Panning
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:25 pm

Re: Books

Post by Ineffable Slime »

My friend emailed those to me just last week, I'll put a link here soon.
User avatar
SS1535
I Heart Noise
Posts: 464
Joined: Mon Feb 21, 2022 11:38 pm
Location: SoCal USA!

Re: Books

Post by SS1535 »

Ineffable Slime wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:50 pm My friend emailed those to me just last week, I'll put a link here soon.
Thanks!
User avatar
Helvitis
Hard Panning
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:14 am

Re: Books

Post by Helvitis »

Ineffable Slime wrote: Thu Jul 28, 2022 1:50 pm My friend emailed those to me just last week, I'll put a link here soon.
That would be amazing. Thank you!
User avatar
33033
Noise Fanatic
Posts: 368
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:16 am
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by 33033 »

Can I talk about comics/graphic novels here?
Just started reading X: Omnibus Vol. 1 (Dark Horse Comics). Really enjoying the angle of "serial killer Batman" to it.
Ineffable Slime
Hard Panning
Posts: 93
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:25 pm

Re: Books

Post by Ineffable Slime »

My apologies for the delay, it was just a huge pain in the ass to get these downloaded. This includes The Mollusc, Gymnasium, and The Wasteland

https://www118.zippyshare.com/v/7W3qPEyC/file.html
User avatar
Helvitis
Hard Panning
Posts: 50
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 6:14 am

Re: Books

Post by Helvitis »

Ineffable Slime wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 11:13 am My apologies for the delay, it was just a huge pain in the ass to get these downloaded. This includes The Mollusc, Gymnasium, and The Wasteland

https://www118.zippyshare.com/v/7W3qPEyC/file.html
Incredible, thanks so much!
User avatar
Scream & Writhe
Site Admin
Posts: 567
Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2022 1:25 pm
Location: Montreal, QC
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by Scream & Writhe »

I finished Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky a couple weeks ago. Without a doubt this is the best book I have ever read, and perhaps will ever read. As Roger Ebert said when reviewing the lacklustre film adaptation: "The book is so complete, so deep and so self-contained [that it shuts the movie out]."
Scream & Writhe distro and Absurd Exposition label - https://screamandwrithe.com
Initial Shock Noise Festival - https://initialshock.screamandwrithe.com
Primitive Isolation Tactics
User avatar
SS1535
I Heart Noise
Posts: 464
Joined: Mon Feb 21, 2022 11:38 pm
Location: SoCal USA!

Re: Books

Post by SS1535 »

I recently finished John Nathan's biography on Yukio Mishima, and have now moved on to working my way through Dennis Cooper's George Miles Cycle.
User avatar
33033
Noise Fanatic
Posts: 368
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:16 am
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by 33033 »

Just read Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and while I dug the beautiful exposition I've been so distracted I felt I didn't do it enough justice.
User avatar
holy ghost
I Heart Noise
Posts: 432
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:42 am
Location: Hamilton, ON

Re: Books

Post by holy ghost »

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackley Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe - 10/10 great read. Not a typical book on the opioid crisis but a real deep dive into this family and their history developing big pharma into what it is today and their complicit avoidance of taking any responsibility for the opioid epidemic. I can't recommend this enough.

Also of note, the writer did the incredible podcast Winds of Change where he investigated if the Scorpions song was produced by the CIA to sow dissent in communist russia. That's a fucking 10/10 listen as well.
User avatar
holy ghost
I Heart Noise
Posts: 432
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:42 am
Location: Hamilton, ON

Re: Books

Post by holy ghost »

So far this year:

Ubik & The Martian Time Slip - both 10/10

Dopesick by Beth Macy - in depth coverage of the opioid crisis in Virginia. I thought it painted a great picture of how it happened but also got a little too sappy in the "this could happen to your son!" character studies. That being said the only way anyone is going to pay attention is if it's in your home/family.

Currently reading Homicide by David Simon. Very dense but great. Been on my list for a hundred years.
Joie de la Blumpy
Noise Fanatic
Posts: 324
Joined: Sat Jan 22, 2022 5:14 am

Re: Books

Post by Joie de la Blumpy »

holy ghost wrote: Wed Jul 20, 2022 10:00 am
Scream & Writhe wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:54 pm
Capers wrote: Tue Jul 19, 2022 4:42 pm Been struggling with Thomas Ligotti's debut (1985), Songs of a Dead Dreamer for years now, reading a story now and then (or trying to). At best it is decent, but at worst it is beyond cringy - like some Neil Gaiman fan fiction with a bit of kink thrown in to sex things up. The Nyctalops trilogy, ffs, please put me to death already.
Glad I'm not alone with this one. It has never grabbed me whatsoever each time I've tried to get somewhere with it.
I read the whole thing and I enjoyed it, but there were definitely a few moments in this one and Grimscribe where I really questioned why his weird fiction is so revered.
For Ligotti I'd say, read the interviews. Better still, read the collection of interviews Born To Fear. I love the way he goes off. The humor, the humanity, the one-liners, the profound negativism. But more importantly, his insights and passionate commentary re- other great writers, several of whom he professes to have "aped" in specific stories- and if you know the writer and the story you can totally see it; and will duly laugh, sometimes out loud.

An interesting takeaway is how in an early (80s-ish?) interview he appears to take umbrage at the suggestion that a strong element of (albeit dark) humor runs through his work...only in a much more recent interview to suggest that humor has in fact always been critical. Well, who knows? Artists will say all kinds of shit in interviews in an attempt to (re)frame their oeuvre. But with Ligotti I've frankly always felt this- the humorous undercurrent- to be true. Just as I've often felt that the "horror" could derive from certain unnerving episodes he's claimed to have had whilst under the influence...and oh man I can relate. The Mystics Of Muelenberg reads exactly like a retelling of an experience of everyone's favorite magical ingestible, with a remove of some years to wryly frame the experience in an "existential" light. Or little lines, like at the end the narrator can barely stand to look out the taxi window and duly cops another pill. Aside from unnerving, these episodes are, say it, humorous. Unnerving, yes. Disturbing, probably. Perhaps all existential crises can be both unnerving, because they are funny, and funny because they are unnerving. Or not!

If nothing read the interviews as a fount for so many greats- Bruno Schulz, Jean Ferry, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, etc etc. And Thomas Bernhard. Talk about going off. Bernhard has been my go-to for the past, dunno, decade? I just re-read Correction for the nth and is as ever so compelling, brutal, and so perfectly...correct.
We’re often led to exaggerate, I said later, to such an extent that we take our exaggerations to be the only logical fact, with the result that we don’t perceive the real facts at all, only the monstrous exaggeration. I’ve always found gratification in my fanatical faith in exaggeration, I told Gambetti. On occasion I transform this fanatical faith in exaggeration into an art, when it offers the only way out of my mental misery, my spiritual malaise. I’ve cultivated the art of exaggeration to such a pitch that I can call myself the greatest exponent of the art that I know of. I know of none greater. No one has carried the art of exaggeration to such extremes, I told Gambetti, and if I were suddenly asked to say what I really was, secretly, I’d have to say that I was the greatest artist I knew in the field of exaggeration.
- T. Bernhard, from a novel not titled Correction
User avatar
Capers
Thrashmaster
Posts: 139
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:35 am

Re: Books

Post by Capers »

Oh yes. Thomas Bernard is my favorite author. He was a tough nut to crack when I first read him many years ago, but by now reading him feels like hugging a pillow, being so at home with his language. I'm usually a very slow reader who shy away from books that are just chapterless masses of text, but Bernhard has grown to be something else, somehow, for me.

A master at going off, as you say. But curiously enough more so in his novels and plays rather than in interviews. Well, he did go off in those situations as well, but depending on his mood of the day he could just as well be jovial and forgiving.
The most classic going off-scene of his, at least off the top of my head, must be in Woodcutting, where the narrator basically yells his heart at some cultural soaré.

Speaking of Correction, I'm actually in the middle of it right now. I find it to be one of his more heartfelt novels, relatively speaking, next to but not on par with (heartfelt wise) Wittgensteins nephew and a couple of the autobiographical novels. It's funny to note how he describes people in rural areas in Correction (austere, no bullshit real people) compared to Frost (drunk, unreliable, selfish, fish-smelling halfwits). I don't think he had any problem contradicting himself though, but rather did so openly, because, well, who cares, hah.
ChicagoAnimal
Hard Panning
Posts: 60
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2023 3:34 pm

Re: Books

Post by ChicagoAnimal »

I read fairly aggressively, as in I try to get in an *average* of a book a week. I also have an Excel spreadsheet that I track every book I read plus a 1-5 rating, when I started/finished, genre, and comments. My favorite writers are Vladimir Nabokov and Clarice Lispector, but I am pretty "well read" and have read a lot of the major writers. In fact, the whole Excel spreadsheet being a digital variation of the a note card system that Nabokov used to rate books he read was to hold myself accountable for reading new books, new writers, new genres, new perspectives. Additionally, I write myself and find that I have a pretty systematic approach to knowledge acquisition.
Residual / RT
Thrashmaster
Posts: 136
Joined: Tue Jan 25, 2022 3:00 am

Re: Books

Post by Residual / RT »

Been having some issues reading fiction lately. I feel like I've found the ultimate writers for me, and new people just are either lacking in subject matter or quality of prose. Thankfully there's so much non-fiction to read that it hasn't really affected my reading habits much, apart from style or content. Delving deeper into japanese fiction is a project I'm planning to do at some point.
RESIDUAL / VU / MONGREL TACTICS / THROAT
User avatar
33033
Noise Fanatic
Posts: 368
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2022 11:16 am
Contact:

Re: Books

Post by 33033 »

Just read The Deep by Nick Cutter, and while yes, the homages are pretty obvious, I just plain enjoyed the hell out of it.
User avatar
murmur
Hard Panning
Posts: 82
Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:02 am

Re: Books

Post by murmur »

I read Bill Perrine's Alien Territory: Radical, Experimental & Irrelevant Music in 1970s San Diego. It was pretty interesting. The book's main focus is the world of academic (or adjacent) and improvised weirdo music, which is mostly unfamiliar to me. Perrine did a good job of describing the work and the characters behind it, including some familiar names like Pauline Oliveros. It also includes discussions of particular records, which is a great inclusion. I didn't realize that some heavyweight musicians familiar to me were also from San Diego, namely Robert Turman and Diamanda Galas. Worth a read.
User avatar
Lactating Tardigrade
Hard Panning
Posts: 90
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:30 pm

Re: Books

Post by Lactating Tardigrade »

On a John Langan kick recently. Very much enjoyed The Fisherman. A unique read that starts off about a man struggling with loss of his wife, which then takes a turn with influences from Stephen King's Pet Sematary and Lovecraft's cosmic horror. Langan's writing style is so well done that even some of the slower fishing chapters were enjoyable to read. The structure itself is also quite interesting as it's kind of a book inside a book. The main story is interrupted to develop a macabre folklore that shapes the rest of the story and it goes in directions not apparent from the vague back cover description. One of my favorite reads in the last couple of years.

Diving into his short story collections next, starting with Mr. Gaunt and then I'll get to Carnivorous Sky and Corpsemouth.
Post Reply