Finished "A Canticle for Liebowitz" and on to "Riddley Walker" now.

"Riddley Walker" has a bit of a reputation as being difficult to read due to the phonetic spelling but I cant really say I'm finding it so. I wonder if that's due to being able to clearly "hear" the intended accent in a way people less accustomed to hearing regional UK accents might not find so easy.

Having read a bit of Riddley Walker, I'd say that's pretty likely. How'd you like Canticle? That's one of the best post-apoc books ever imo, total epic.

I liked Canticle a lot, but the tone goes a bit all over the place from being quite droll/ironic to being genuinely angry. It wasn't quite what I expected, which was essentially based on what I had read/heard of the first section. The second 2 parts of the book were a bit of a surprise. The Euthanasia bit at the end was startling for sure.

Just what you'd expect from a bitter, disillusioned war veteran Catholic, eh?

Yeah I read A Canticle for Liebowitz a while back and the last section caught me off guard. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but not that. I probably need to read it again, I think I got pulled into the first part too much and then didn't fully follow the rest.

About halfway through Neuromancer. I love the world Gibson conjured. As Gritty and dark as a cybernetic underworld can get (from my experience anyways). Case and Molly are fantastic characters. The desperate lengths Case go to are painful to read. The man is caught in a tightly woven web from what it seems so far. Ameritage is a formidable antagonist, so mysterious and foreboding.



Was wondering if I should go with the other big one in cyberpunk. Anyone recommend Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is another classic, though it preceded the cyberpunk movement by some years, so it's more of a proto-cyberpunk novel. It's very story- and character-driven, like a lot of PKD's work. Definitely recommend you read it.

Neuromancer is so fucking boring. I don't know how people can stomach that writer, to be honest.

Haha whaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Even if you don't like Neuromancer "boring" is just about the last word ever for it. It's like a nonstop drug-fueled cyberpunk action scene.

Neuromancer has characters that are boring at best and actively annoying at worst. The writing style also rubbed me the wrong way. I get that it's trying to convey this wild cyberpunk world through vividly psychedelic and impressionistic language, but the language really didn't paint a picture in my head often times, because the description was just too random. It's kind of like how album covers for weird psychedelic bands have all this random shit, like a tiger floating through space riding a glowing blue merry-go-round or whatever the fuck. It doesn't mean anything, and it doesn't really create a memorable visual in your head. It's just too random and trippy, and that's how a lot of the description in Neuromancer felt to me. However, I think the book made up for these flaws with some really fucking awesome action set pieces, especially towards the end of the novel, and it was cool trying to unravel the complicated schemes of Wintermute.

I thought the descriptions were fine and it created tons of memorable visuals. In fact, it's one of the best things about the book - "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" is one of the best-known opening lines in science fiction. If you think the descriptions in Neuromancer are too random and abstract, you probably should stay away from authors like M John Harrison and Samuel R Delany who get REALLY weird. Also the characters certainly weren't the greatest, more style than substance for sure, but boring? Annoying? I don't understand these reactions at all.

There is nothing exciting about that when you don't care about what happens.

I'm making my way through 'My Bondage and My Freedom' by Douglass. The spare, deliberate descriptions are disarmingly poetic for how comparatively flatly they're organized. What a dreadful scenario. I can't read much at a time. It really gets to me on a level I'm only just getting used to. In general, more contemporary writing about slavery seems to knead the bruises of sadism and sorrow pretty much exclusively, usually the art of a writer trying to conjure up feelings, or to force a point. In the writing of people who were there, the subject's treatment, while acurate and unblinking about the abuses and unjust tyrrany, tends to be more gentle with that factor. I noticed a similar treatment in 'The Narrative of Sojourner Truth.' Both of these pieces are really important works of history. They aren't art, which makes them very compelling.

"There is healing in the angel-wing of sleep." Absolutely beautiful, given the dismal context.

Raises a couple of interesting questions:

* Is plot, in the sense of "what happens" the primary interest in a book?
* Can a book be "exciting" in terms of having a compelling style even if nothing of note happens?

I mean, there are lots of very well regarded books which are revered because of the prose style even though the plot and pacing are clunky. Unless I'm sitting in an airport or something I don't think I feel the need to have that "page turner" excitement about plot. It's just as valid to admire a book because of its psychological insight or beautiful style even if it's quite mundane in terms of plot.

My Mother, being a Librarian (but in the public library sector rather than academic libraries where I primarily work) runs the book groups, and I often discuss with her the criticisms people make about the books the group reads. One of the major ones is "I didn't like the characters", followed by issues of plot/pacing. You can sum it up by "I didnt like it because I had to work at it". Which has some validity I guess if you are time-poor, reading for escapism and want the pay-off - something like "Tempocalypse" from Black Books:""There's this temp, right, she's 29, she can't get a boyfriend, oh my god! And she's got 12 hours to stop nuclear war with China."

Man, just read this when I went camping and I can third that this is an awesomely fun book that succeeds on a huge amounts of levels. Fairly hilarious in a lot of places (crooked d!!), super oddball in others, poignant in others, action packed... he crams a lot of stuff in and totally gets away with it. Definitely worth reading, going to track down his other shit too.



Oh yeah, the wife is frothing on the stars my destination so kudos to the bros recommending it a few pages back. Have that and Malazan's Reaper's Gate as my reading material for my next swing up north.. excited

Finished it. I thought it was good. Sooooo much shittier literature out there. Not the best book i read but it got me interested in the whole science fiction scene and it was a page turner. Descriptions were fine and imaginable, they were far from nonsensical jumbled words, lol. Maybe i'm biased because of the amount chemicals ive put in my body had me understand the shit pretty easily. Far less hazey than something like Inherent Vice (or pynchon in general), i could get the criticism of that making little sense but neuromancer was pretty easy to interpret for me.

Outright hating it to me makes sense because if the food taste bad to you, you spit it the fuck out but those nitpicks seem silly to me.

Edit.

Skullcrack City sounds cool as shit I'll order it just based on those descriptions.

I did the same, just received my copy yesterday, really looking forward to it

yeah I did the blind order myself and I'm really glad I did.

yep. pretty brutal. ever read a people's history of the united states by howard zinn?

About halfway through Roadside Picnic right now, will probably finish it tonight. The sci-fi elements are quite restrained here so far, and the Strugastkys seem to be much more focused on the social effects of the Zone on the town surrounding it instead. I like that. Kind of reminds me of all the privatisation that had gone berserk in eastern Europe following the collapse of communism. Will update with some more thoughts about it afterwards.

EDIT: Also, haha, read a few posts on Riddley Walker here, my dad is reading it in bed as I'm typing this.

How do people feel about Handmaid's Tale?

Own it, but haven't read it yet. I do like the other Atwood I've read though - namely Oryx & Crake and The Year of the Flood.

The Handmaid’s Tale is great, I re-read it again a couple months ago. Definitely one Atwood’s best. It’s got a lot going on and hits on some interesting themes around men, women, power, control. Also the speculative setting and world is really well done, there is just enough given to the reader to make it compelling and plausibly real, but not so much that exposition would detract from very personal feeling of the narrative.


Compared to those two, I have to say that MaddAddamn was a bit of a left down for me. It all felt a bit too neat and tidy, and going back into the past of Zeb and Adam One was less interesting than I had expected. Not bad by any means, but definitely not as strong as the first two.

Yeah back when I read the first two she hadn't yet written the third, so I've yet to tackle it. I haven't been in a hurry, because I felt that even the second book was a bit of a step down from the first - still very good, but it felt kind of unnecessary. Oryx & Crake worked perfectly on its own, and didn't need any sequels at all.

Finally got the time to write about it; Roadside Picnic was amazing. I think Red's interior monologues at the end were some of the most powerful and cathartic commentaries of oligarchal society ever put to paper.
Very good, I'd love to see the movie next.

Not yet. Anyone have thoughts on it?

I've read a quarter of it and then stopped for whatever reason. It was pretty interesting, should pick it up again.

Surprisingly, I didn't like this too much. Well, it wasn't bad, but definitely not a hit with me. Not terrifying enough to really get a sense of dread going, and thus the sense of urgency only really worked when Doyle was doped out of his skull and not as much when he had to save the world / escape from goons/monsters. Speaking of monsters, I didn't really feel the titular skullcrackers either..

Voltaire - Candide
An absolutely fantastic philosophical novella. This particularly harsh refutation of Leibniz's philosophy of optimism (basically that we are living in the best of all possible worlds, and everything bad that happens is part of God's plan to prevent something worse from happening later) was inspired by the devastating 1755 Lisbon earthquake, something Voltaire viewed as incompatible with Liebniz's philosophy. The protagonist is ripped from a life of comfort and subject to a brutal series of misfortunes across the globe, but for most of the book still cling's to Leibniz's philosophy. The book also provides brutal criticism of European society.

The book is insanely violent, and largely focuses on suffering and misfortune. I wouldn't say it's exactly Blood Meridian or anything, but it's within a stone's throw. However, the book is very humorous and even fantastical at times. Even if you take away the philosophy stuff, this is still a remarkable work of fiction.

George Orwell - Animal Farm
Finally got around to reading an Orwell book! Obviously quite good. Very simple and short, but does a great job as an allegory and condemnation of Stalin and how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Found the characters were quite well imagined and it was fun picking out the parallels with the USSR. Guess I'll have to read 1984, as well.

Had to give Riddley Walker a break as work has been full on and it's a tiring read at bedtime. Will try and finish on the weekend perhaps. But I did finish Wolfe's "an evil guest". Really mixed feelings on this one - at first I just thought it had massive pacing problems as it only really takes off in the last third.....but then I read a few reviews and decided I really need to go through it again,carefully. Which is kinda why he's both rewarding and infuriating as an author.

An Evil Guest is the worst Wolfe I've read, and I've read almost all of them. My main problem is that the protagonist never seems to really have any agency - she just lets herself get pushed around by powerful men the whole time. I'm sure that was intentional and Wolfe was trying to make some sort of point, but it makes for a pretty dull story. Which is too bad, because there are some really cool ideas in it, and it's a sort-of sequel to one of his best short stories.

Has anyone read Raymond Khoury's "Templar" series? I was rather stunned by how intrinsically compelling the storylines are.

I thought so too, but then I jumped into some of the interpretations and it got a lot weirder than I first thought:



I think it would bear a close re-reading. But yes I see what you mean.

I've been reading Dunsany micro-stories aloud to my girl at night to help her fall asleep. I used to think I didn't internalize very well while reading aloud but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Most recently we read "The House of the Sphinx" and "How One Came, as Was Foretold, to the City of Never". Sphinx was dripping with atmosphere and portent. City of Never was draped in beautiful imagery and this sense of wonderment, with a semi-tragic bow on top.

When I finish these stories I'm always left with the feeling that there's a much deeper meaning beneath the surface, but I have to be honest I just fucking love what's on the surface. I don't always completely understand what I've just read but the way he puts words together and the choices he makes are like nothing else I've read. Not hard to understand why he was a huge influence on the weird fiction dudes, but his approach was so much more...gentle? I'm not sure. There's nothing else in my collection like him. Maybe there's just nothing else like him.

Well that's the thing about Wolfe - there's almost always a story-within-a-story (within-a-story-within-a-story), but in most cases the surface story is excellent just on its own. For example in Book of the New Sun, you can take Severian at his word and still enjoy it perfectly well, even though he's not at all a reliable narrator. The thing is, if the surface story is kind of dull and the protagonist is kind of boring, the novel has already failed because I don't really care to try to dig deeper. There needs to be an incentive to stick around and puzzle things out. The worldbuilding in An Evil Guest was really cool, but everything else was pretty meh by Wolfe's own standards.

Man, Animal Farm is classic. 1984 is better imo, it's really good. So bleak and desperate. The society is fudgin horrible, I'd jump off a roof. Dunno if I prefer Brave New World or not, they're both pretty even on the dystopian classics level. Brave New World isn't as one dimensional as 1984 is, full of nuance. But, 1984 has a sense of absolute dread that Brave New World skirts at the tail by a millimeter. Idk, both good, read both. Classique.


Voltaire's Candide sounds like it's my kinda thing, might learn a thing or two while I'm at it. Puttin it in ze cart.

1984 is great. Definitely worth reading. That being said, I found it difficult to get through because the writing is so good. Really makes you (general you) feel the oppression and I didn't enjoy that feeling at all. The first time I read the book, it took me a month to get through because I couldn't stomach more than a few pages a day. It's the only book where this has been the case for me. I breezed through Animal Farm and Brave New World but 1984 was just difficult to get through.

Reading Slaughterhouse-Five right now - one of the best things I've ever read honestly. The way it shows war is punishing and cruel and a long trudge, but then it expands the world and shows you how small a blip war is in the grand scheme, and it has all this weird shit about time and how every moment is always happening. Stunning scope and a message that is sad and poignant, delivered with writing laced with levity and humor. Just so good.

Yeah, Slaughterhouse 5 is pretty damn fantastic. Thought the way he implemented the sci-fi angle was really clever, and I love how it plays with big ideas while still being so simple and accessible.

It's been a while since I read any Vonnegut. I'm going to have to read some of his other books I never got to like Mother Night, Sirens of Titan, etc.