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holy ghost
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Re: Books

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Lactating Tardigrade wrote: Sat May 13, 2023 2:29 pm On a John Langan kick recently. Very much enjoyed The Fisherman.
I read this earlier this year - wonderful book!!!!!!! Best thing I read this year. Very much enjoyed the story within a story reminiscent of Arthur Machen.

I also recently read:

Blood Meridian - Cormac M - didn't love it. Didn't hate it.

Devil In The White City - Erik Larson - really enjoyed it.

Engors Sword Arm - David C Smith - loved it. A+ sword & sorcery. This guy needs more books in print.

Rising Sun - I just want something easy to read. It was really fun.

Currently reading Congo - see above.
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Re: Books

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I think one of the best things I’ve read this year, which I believe came out last year, was B.R. Yeager’s “Negative Space”
Weird, psychedelic horror, multiple perspective narrative, creepy and intriguing. It’s hard for me to put into words why it’s so good but I’m sure there’s much better written reviews on goodreads. Highest recommendation if you’re into this kind of thing.

Just got his newly published collection of short stories which I really need to just start. Don’t know why I’ve put it off.
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Re: Books

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PetiteSoles wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 9:21 am I think one of the best things I’ve read this year, which I believe came out last year, was B.R. Yeager’s “Negative Space”
Weird, psychedelic horror, multiple perspective narrative, creepy and intriguing. It’s hard for me to put into words why it’s so good but I’m sure there’s much better written reviews on goodreads. Highest recommendation if you’re into this kind of thing.

Just got his newly published collection of short stories which I really need to just start. Don’t know why I’ve put it off.
This was already on my wishlist but just bumped it up. Very curious to check it out and his writing style sounds interesting. Some authors shine better with novels and others with short stories. Let me know if you think one format suits the author better.
Last edited by Lactating Tardigrade on Sat Jul 01, 2023 11:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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holy ghost
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Re: Books

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PetiteSoles wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 9:21 am I think one of the best things I’ve read this year, which I believe came out last year, was B.R. Yeager’s “Negative Space”
Weird, psychedelic horror, multiple perspective narrative, creepy and intriguing. It’s hard for me to put into words why it’s so good but I’m sure there’s much better written reviews on goodreads. Highest recommendation if you’re into this kind of thing.

Just got his newly published collection of short stories which I really need to just start. Don’t know why I’ve put it off.
I'm going to check this out - I've seen it pop up on my IG feed a few times. I always struggle with "modern" horror - Joe Hill, no thanks. Paul Tremblay, wasn't sold on it. "Lovecrafty" type stuff I didn't click with until The Fisherman recently. David Sodergren has great covers but the book I tried was not good! Here's a whole lot of complaining.....
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Lactating Tardigrade
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Re: Books

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Has anyone read The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron? The author comes recommended based on what I'm reading currently.
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Re: Books

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Almost 100 pages into Liarmouth by John Waters and this shit is ridiculous. I’m loving it. It’s hilarious and goes places I was not expecting. If you’re a fan of his films, so far at least, I think you’ll enjoy this book.
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Re: Books

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Andrew Dickos - Honor Among Thieves: The Cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville

Best approached as something of an introduction to Melville, making it rather unnecessary by the same measure. The sources it endlessly quotes from are likely better matches for those with prior knowledge and/or serious interest.

While acknowledging the significant roles of women in Melville’s non-noir films and their limited existence in the later noirs themselves, the author downplays the homoerotic undertones in Le Cercle Rouge, and doesn’t read enough into the significance of a trans character even appearing at all in Un Flic. These are important elements to consider in a run of films that deal exclusively in the codes, honour, and morality of capital M “men” (even if the films are otherwise decidedly stripped of any true sexual tension). These two final films, Un Flic especially (which the book’s author deems a lesser film in the director’s canon), see Melville quietly subverting, or at least playing with, elements of the traditional noir (read: his noir), and leave one wondering what, if anything, he might have played with next.

To say Melville challenged tropes may be a bit of a stretch, as his noirs all but rely on them, and he was always purposely unpolitical outside of his war films (even then they are films of survival more than anything, to paraphrase the book at hand). However, the aforementioned subtleties show a certain progression: A director, for years so utterly entrenched in a world where characters’ entire existences rely on a certain set of codes, was beginning to come through the other side of that immersion and start tweaking the fabric surrounding those very same codes.

Also, find me another book that says “chiaroscuro” more times than this one.
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Re: Books

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Just read The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevans about the CIA interventions in 3rd world countries to suppress communism. I (a very left wing individual) 100% believe that US imperialism is bad, capitalism is bad, but this book was also very bad. Not only was it painfully dry and poorly written but it was also biased and one sided with a lot of assumptions mixced in with footnoted sources. Would not recommend in any way and it was a slog to get through.
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Re: Books

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Slowly getting through Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It's a bit LIVE LAUGH LOVE in parts but overall it's interesting to read his thoughts on process.

Also cracked into Dan Simmons Song Of Kali on a random pick up at the bookstore.
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Re: Books

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33033 wrote: Wed May 31, 2023 1:13 pm Also cracked into Dan Simmons Song Of Kali on a random pick up at the bookstore.
First full book I ever read as a PDF, close to 15 years ago while "working" at the tech support job I had at the time. I remember quite liking it and have been meaning to track down a hard copy to revisit.
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Re: Books

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I really enjoyed Song of Kali and Hyperion, but it was The Terror that really did me in... it was a real slow burn, and just wonderful.

Since then I've had a hard time picking up another Simmons book because it probably just won't live up to The Terror. I'd really like to read The Abominable at some point.

Currently reading The Complete Eightball which I am absolutely loving, and about to start Five Little Indians by Michelle Good.
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Re: Books

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holy ghost wrote: Wed May 31, 2023 6:29 pm Currently reading The Complete Eightball which I am absolutely loving
I love Daniel Clowes and I’ve always wanted to pick that up. I had most of the single issues at one point but never all of them.
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Re: Books

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Lactating Tardigrade wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 8:53 pm Has anyone read The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron? The author comes recommended based on what I'm reading currently.
I've read almost all his stuff up to the collection Swift to Chase (which was garbage imo). He's ok. Definitely just simple entertainment without much in the way deep message (besides the obvious: while the universe itself may not care, the same may not be true of predator inter-dimensional trickster beings, so: *trust no one*). But when he is at his best, Barron's stories are an effortless blend of hardboiled noir sensibility at odds with antagonistic forces that couldn't care less about macho posturing and are, as such, rather entertaining. There are quite a number of good stories in The Imago Sequence. He seems much better in the short form than long and manages to freshen and add to the whole Lovecraft/invasion of the body snatchers type thing--though, thankfully his "mythos" is not formally linked to Lovecraft, which would be tacky. However, I've become somewhat annoyed by the cliches i perceive in the dialogue of his characters in subsequent years however.
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Re: Books

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Capers wrote: Wed Feb 22, 2023 3:50 pm 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.
The Woodcutters (aka Cutting Timber) is amazing and have read both of those translations. Is Woodcutting the name of the one you read? May i also recommend The Lime Works and The Cheap Eaters? I think of Bernhards books as a "total project" and all of his books as essentially pieces of one long work, which is hinted at at the technical level. I think I have read every proper novel by Bernhard and find them to be sublime--the curmudgeonly repetition should be boring or cloying but in Bernhards masterful hands it works so well. I cannot say the same for his novella length short pieces, however and find them a slog...well it's been many years maybe I'll give "Walking" "Amras" and "Playing Watten" another go!?
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Re: Books

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I've actually only read him in swedish, so I just picked the english title for Skogshuggning (Woodcutting) that I knew.

Some of those novellas are very different, yeah. But while I didn't really enjoy Amras, it is worth noting it is an early work - 1964, right after Frost I believe - where I hadn't fully found his form just yet. The Cheap Eaters is another short one, but absolutely brilliant, as you say. Playing Watten I really like, but it's definitely something of an outlier as well.

Walking is absolutely fantastic though, and fits very well into that wholeness you mention - which I also agree on. Bernhard seems to have had some obsession about pants from haberdasheries, which plays an important part in that novel. The pant this returns in a very short and hilarious play as well. Don't know if it's been translated to english, but the title would be something like Claus Peymann buys himself a pair of pants and takes me to dinner.
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Re: Books

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I just finished reading Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill. Fantastic read, and incredibly well-researched. For those who are conspiratorially-minded.
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Re: Books

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yullowteef wrote: Sat Jun 24, 2023 9:53 pm I just finished reading Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill. Fantastic read, and incredibly well-researched. For those who are conspiratorially-minded.
GREAT book! Really different than most conspiracy books. Really solid read. Kind of feel like Candice Bergen definitely knows more than she says, as she was everywhere in that book.... hmmmm.....
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Lactating Tardigrade
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Re: Books

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Parthenon_23 wrote: Tue Jun 20, 2023 12:25 pm
Lactating Tardigrade wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 8:53 pm Has anyone read The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron? The author comes recommended based on what I'm reading currently.
I've read almost all his stuff up to the collection Swift to Chase (which was garbage imo). He's ok. Definitely just simple entertainment without much in the way deep message (besides the obvious: while the universe itself may not care, the same may not be true of predator inter-dimensional trickster beings, so: *trust no one*). But when he is at his best, Barron's stories are an effortless blend of hardboiled noir sensibility at odds with antagonistic forces that couldn't care less about macho posturing and are, as such, rather entertaining. There are quite a number of good stories in The Imago Sequence. He seems much better in the short form than long and manages to freshen and add to the whole Lovecraft/invasion of the body snatchers type thing--though, thankfully his "mythos" is not formally linked to Lovecraft, which would be tacky. However, I've become somewhat annoyed by the cliches i perceive in the dialogue of his characters in subsequent years however.
Thanks for the insight. I just started Imago and only two stories in so far. The first, Old Virginia, was a weird mix of tough guy military bravado with Lovecraft and didn't really work well for me. However, the very next story Shiva, Open Your Eye completely took me by surprise and is so brilliantly written. Really gripping ancient being description of the human condition from an outsider perspective experienced over the centuries. Loved it. Seems like his writing can be a bit of a mixed bag, but I'm excited to work through the three short story collections.
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Re: Books

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PetiteSoles wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 9:20 am
holy ghost wrote: Wed May 31, 2023 6:29 pm Currently reading The Complete Eightball which I am absolutely loving
I love Daniel Clowes and I’ve always wanted to pick that up. I had most of the single issues at one point but never all of them.
I’d definitely recommend it if you haven’t grabbed it yet. It’s done really well. I’d read plenty of his stuff but I only owned one book of his previously (which you actually sent to me haha)
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Re: Books

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I just finished Audrey Szasz’s newest, Counterillumination, absolutely loved it. If you’re familiar with her work and are a fan I’m sure you’ll like it as well. It wouldn’t be the first one I recommend if you’re not familiar though. It’s a pretty intense and immersive read.
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Re: Books

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Read The Dead House by Billy O'Callaghan this last week, and damn that was great. Something about the atmosphere and setting of Ireland's more isolated areas just clicks right away into the right feel for a good ghost story.
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Re: Books

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Finally finished reading Paul Bowles' Let It Come Down the other day after having misplaced it for a couple weeks (surprise: it was in a box under a bunch of tapes). Not as big of an existential gut-punch as The Sheltering Sky, but still a fine descent with copious amounts of nihilism in the face of alienation (both cultural and interpersonal). Bowles is a great summer read, and finishing this up during what was (hopefully) the last of the brutal summer heatwaves here ties in nicely with the oppressive heat of the Moroccan settings.
Yet he felt very close to himself, perhaps because in order to feel alive a man must first cease to think of himself as being on his way. There must be a full stop, all objective forgotten. A voice says "Wait", but he usually will not listen, because if he waits he may be too late. Then, too, if he really waits, he may find that when he starts to move again it will be in a different direction, and that also is a frightening thought. Because life is not a movement toward or away from anything; not even from the past to the future, or from youth to old age, or from birth to death. The whole of life does not equal the sum of its parts. It equals any one of the parts; there is no sum. The full-grown man is no more deeply involved in life than the new-born child; his only advantage is that it can occasionally be given him to become conscious of the substance of that life, and unless he is a fool he will not look for reasons or explanations. Life needs no clarifying, no justification. From whatever direction the approach is made, the result is the same: life for life's sake, the transcending fact of the living individual. In the meantime you eat. [...] Everything he had ever thought or done had been thought or done not by him but by a member of a great mass of beings who acted as they did only because they thought they were on their way from birth to death. He was no longer a member: having committed himself, he could expect no help from anyone. If a man was not on his way anywhere, if life was something else, entirely different, if life was a question of being, for a long continuous instant that was all one, then the best thing for him to do was to sit back and be, and whatever happened, he still was. Whatever a man thought, said or did, the fact of his being there remained unchanged. And death? He felt that some day, if he thought far enough, he would discover that death changed nothing, either.
If one could only let go, even for a few seconds, if only one could cease caring about everything, but really everything, what a wonderful thing it would be. But that would probably be death. Life means caring, is one long struggle to keep from going to pieces. If you let yourself have a really good time, your health goes to pieces, and if your health goes, your looks go. The awful part is that in the end, no matter what you have done, no matter how careful you may have been, everything falls apart, anyway. The disintegration merely comes sooner, or later, depending on you. Going to pieces is inevitable, and you haven't even any pieces to show when you're finished. "Why should that be a depressing thought?" she wondered.
I stumbled upon this episode of the Moroccan/American podcast from last year that helps to contextualize Paul Bowles' place as an American writer who spent the last five decades of his life living in Morocco, writing all of his books in that setting, and what that ended up looking like on the cultural moral compass. https://open.spotify.com/episode/5eVGEo8dWSiHLeslyKZml0 (the link is to Spotify but it's surely out there on the other platforms).
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Re: Books

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My favorite writer is Clarice Lispector. She is also obviously the best writer the world has ever seen....
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Re: Books

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I’m currently taking a break from small press stuff and reading Moby Dick. Which I’ve been meaning to read for years now but have not. I relistened to LPotL’s two-part series about the tragedy of The Essex while kind of already having the idea that I wanted to read this and it definitely got me more inspired to do so. I’m a fairly slow reader and this one is gonna take a while. I feel like the text begs to not be rushed. And I’m less than 40 pages in. But I am loving it. Notoriously slow paced but written so well that it definitely doesn’t feel so, so far.

I’d recently read a couple books very worth mentioning, a Filthy Loot anthology called “Dirt in the Sky” and “Violent Faculties” by Charlene Elsby.
I’d only been familiar with one of the four authors in the short anthology and was pretty well pleased with all of them. Especially Daniel Sheen. Last story of the book and was excellent. A missing child story told from the perspective of the child’s best friend. Another one that could have been not so great if it wasn’t written so well.
Charlene Elsby is quickly becoming one of my favorite current authors and she already has another book coming out this year. “Violent Faculties” is an odd one. A philosophy professor is let go from her job yet continues to experiment. Asking and answering philosophical questions by kidnapping, torturing and killing specific associates. I’m trying not to give away too much. I highly recommend it, when it’s published. Her most recent short story collection “Bedlam” was published earlier this year and was in my top 6 of the first 6 months of 2023. More horror. But different than most things I’ve read.
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Re: Books

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PetiteSoles wrote: Wed Sep 13, 2023 8:34 am I’m currently taking a break from small press stuff and reading Moby Dick.
I read this in my 20's - I remember really liking the parts with Ahab, the whale, etc but by the end I was barely even skimming the chapters on the history of whaling.

Currently reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh as my wife read it recently and really enjoyed it. It's really enjoyable, and almost as enjoyable are the reviews on goodreads, people fucking haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated this book so much. I would 100% read more from her. It's like a bizarro American Psycho from a female perspective of NYC (no killings, the rest of American Psycho.... anyway I'm halfway through an I am into it.
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