Unfortunately the rest of us have all arrived at Hediedbeforefinishingtheseriesopolis. An amazing ride with a depressing destination.

I read the first book of the Gormenghast series last year; really enjoyed the gloomy and bizarre setting, which coupled with the relatively slow-moving narrative makes it feel like the doom-metal of literature - I found the initial lack of likeable characters to spice things up somewhat, even if they become more identifiable as the book progressed. I'm definitely going to have a look at the next instalment when I've got more time on my hands.

More recently I ploughed through the three books of Gibson's Sprawl-trilogy within a couple of weeks; picked up the first book on a whim after looking up cyberpunk as a genre, and decided to get through the other two as well. The final installment left a lot of unanswered questions, but on the whole I found the whole trilogy to be thoroughly enjoyable; gritty, inventive and at times profoundly surreal.

Oh man, by the second book the characters in Gormenghast end up being some of the best characters in...well, all of literature. They're like tragic cartoon characters, exaggerated to a ridiculous degree, full of human foibles and unlikable qualities but also a few good ones that somehow make all the rest worth it. It's the only book I ever read where I genuinely came to love the characters - and I don't mean that in the sense of liking them a whooooole lot, I mean legitimate love.

I think it comes from the fact that while they're ugly and stupid and crazy and petty almost all of the time, once we really delve into them as people, we see that nearly all of them are capable of immense kindness, great passions, and other enviable qualities. It's one of those old adages - to truly know someone is to love them. Most of the people we meet in life seem ugly and stupid and crazy and petty, and as we only see them briefly, that's often all they seem to be; but they're likely also, in their best moments, to be great in some way, and genuinely worthy of love. The same is true of us.

Based on this, I am 100% guaranteed to adore this story. Too bad this train is .. wait, am I even at the right station? *goes back to coffee machine*

Just read the damn books! I think the passage of time has made me like even the "disappointing" third book a whole hell of a lot; the uncomfortableness of it is naturally off-putting but the more I think about it the more it feels like that was exactly the point. Really bums me out that the full vision was never achieved, but they still easily rank among the greatest books I've ever read.

Heather Pringle - The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust

I've been reading this quite slowly along Dante's Divine Comedy. Nice to read on the balcony, when the weather is good. I've been interested in this stuff - the Ahnenerbe and especially how they worked in Finland. Yrjö von Grönhagen's book on the subject was fucking great.

This book is very interesting and well written, but maybe in SOME parts it shows, that the writer is a modern westerner. Himmler and his gang are always shown as ridiculous men engulfed in mythic lies, and the people opposing them are always righteous heroes. But I won't complain, it's a good read. There are even many funny parts too. They were quite a group of people.

Loved Confederacy, such a fun book. Great how perfectly it predicts the alt-right/neoreactionary edgelords of today. It's also pretty heartbreaking though. Ignatius' life is seriously analogous to Toole's and the whole end of the book really feels like his own personal daydream about a divine way out.

I haven't read much over the past few weeks. I picked up A Canticle for Leibowitz and I'm stuck about half way through it. Such a boring book. I feel dodgy not finishing it but it's just so dull. Never really been bogged down like this before.

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Sword was all right. It had the same singular atmosphere and tone as the first one but plot-wise it pretty much did nothing. I really like the writing of the series, though, and how it falls somewhere between human and robot, exactly how a story told from Breq's POV should be.

Also been reading a lot of Lovecraft with the occasional Ligotti the past couple days.

Yeah I think part of the problem was the second book was starting a new direction for the series, a new arc, which never got to see full fruition. The first two form a complete unit, but the third starts a series which then just ends, leaving it dangling out there. It's like if the heroic cowboy rode off into the sunset at the end of a long epic adventure, only to have a really fucking weird, much shorter adventure somewhere else with a completely different supporting cast. A fourth book would probably have made it feel much less out of place. Either way I do still like it a hell of a lot, and while the second book is probably the best, I couldn't imagine the series without the third book.

So in contrast to Book of the New Sun---wherein every paragraph contains some cryptic clue to unravel and I often felt like I missed half the meaning even when rereading whole passages multiple times before proceeding---I'm pretty much plowing through the sequel Urth of the New Sun. I'm about halfway through it already. Much less dense but still pretty cool so far, especially once Severian leaves the "boat" so to speak...

Now, I guess the real pacing issue will come if Urth starts making a bunch of references to earlier parts of the story that seemed minor at the time. That was what really slowed down parts of the original quadrilogy for me, sorta-kinda recognizing something/one the author mentioned and then needing to flip backwards to the chapter I thought I remembered it from.

I have this one - as you say, it's ok for what it is, and it's position (that the whole thing was insane) is obvious from the start. But I think it's a good adjunct to Goodrich-Clarke's "Occult roots of Nazism", Moynihan's "The secret king" etc etc.

Are there any fans of Algernon Blackwood in here? I greatly enjoy his work; it's top-shelf weird fiction. Lovecraft considered 'The Willows' to be the finest piece of weird fiction in the English language, and I understand why. But particularly affecting to me was 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved'. The name alone sparks your imagination, and it's such a dreamlike, surreal, creepy, and sad story that it's hard to put down. I'm working on reading all his other stuff, but as slowly as I read nowadays, it'll take a long time. But anyway, if you haven't read him, do so soon.

"The Wendigo" was always my favorite - the combination of breathtaking scenery, a vast yet isolated locale, and a bizarre, deadly, and ultimately unexplained mythology makes it the best combination. Blackwood has an incredible command of nature writing, and I wish he'd turned his hand more toward stuff like "The Wendigo." "The Willows" is fine but gets to explanation-heavy toward the end, drags a little in the middle, and generally doesn't handle the suspense and pacing as well as "The Wendigo" does.

Yeah, his ability to write about nature is unparalleled. You really need to read 'The Man Whom the Trees Loved' if you want more of that. 'The Wendigo' was a story I encountered as a child via Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark; the portrayal of the wendigo as a wind monster is seemingly unique to Blackwood, and I've never seen him depicted that way in anything else. I prefer Blackwood's take on the creature. Anyway, Blackwood's writing is almost organic; it seems to grow and wrap around you, pulling you in.

Well said, and what's particularly great about them is that they're so incredibly alive and real, just like the setting. I've read a dozen books with characters based on a similar archetype as Dr. Prunesquallor, and to me, he was far more alive and real than the rest of them combined. The school professors are simply wonderful too.

For you Gormenghast fans who may also like The Cure, did you know the song 'The Drowning Man' was inspired by and contains references to Gormenghast?

Y'all talking Gormenghast again? I'm almost done my first reading! Well, about to finish Gormenghast and then I've got Titus Alone. I'm reading this really tattered copy of the trilogy from the '80s that my dad found on the side of the road. Most of the pages fall out as I read them, so it's been quite the challenge to physically keep the book together while trudging through. Wow, what an experience. I don't want to say too much before I finish it, but what an original piece of work. Peake's prose reads like insane poetry and I just love to sit down and devour it for hours. Such an enjoyable read, even if the story is never in any hurry to go anywhere. Actually, the end of the second book, which is where I am currently, is pretty damn exciting.

Of all the incredibly memorable characters, I find myself rooting for Doctor Prunesquallor the most. Also a shout out to Opus Fluke for best minor character. His few appearances have always made me laugh my ass off.

I know I've plugged The Vorrh by Brian Catling here a few times, but I really have to do it again since Mervyn Peake's writing style has reminded me of that book. The tone and atmosphere of The Vorrh is more pitch black and grotesque, but similarities in style are undeniable. If anyone else has read that yet, I'd love to chat about it since I don't personally know anyone else who has, and it's one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read.

Phew, I just finished Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. I've read War and Peace before, so the length and prose wasn't anything surprising, but wow what a great read. For some reason, I have a soft spot for anything that revolves around European aristocrats hundreds of years ago. Excellent character interactions and development and some beautiful imagery throughout the book. I love the foil between Anna and Levin in particular; very well done.

Will do! It's up next after I finish Gateway to Freedom. Got the rug replica bookmark in there and everything!

Got to get my hands on those books then. Their "theories" sure were crazy, but kind of cool and entertaining for a man of today. Of course a lot of evil things were connected to their acts, can't deny that.

Pentti Linkola - Unelmat paremmasta maailmasta ("Dreams of a Better World")

Some 50 pages behind with this. I've been familiar with this man and his famous opinions for as long as I can remember, but never red his books. This is a compilation of his essays. Maybe I'm finally beginning to understand this (now) ruthless thinker. There are still some light in his thinking in these early writings. First ones are already from the 60's. One of them even defends pacifism. I guess at that time he still saw some hope for mankind.

While this was discussed a while ago, it might also be of interest to read books on Hitler's reading, or his private library, which contained some religious texts. These included occult texts with names like 'The Dead Are Alive!' and some alchemical texts. It might be of interest, as there are occasional annotations, which seem to suggest an inexorable divine law in the universe that is to be discerned, but loose ties to any particular deity. In that sense, it could be said that while he had some relation to occult tendencies and gave them a forceful direction, he wasn't always strictly representative of them. In that sense, the occult forces that could unite under such, due to such religious vagueness, might be slightly diluted as well. Still, they were seemingly pressing in a fairly pronounced, different direction, religiously, and hence your interest might make some sense.

Yeah, I have a copy of "Hitler's private library" on the shelf here which catalogues and comments on the contents of his collection. Funnily enough, despite owning a massive collection, he apparently read very little of it and remained fixated on the cowboy novels of Karl May throughout his life. Essentially, people gave him heaps of books but the comments from those who knew him well point out that he was never one for "serious literature".

If you wanted to seriously look into the impact of fringe science and occultism on the 3rd Reich, you're much better off looking at what Himmler, Rosenberg and Hess were reading.

It's probably notable what their chosen speaker thought and how that related to any occult tendencies in his Party. In addition, the others are likely less or less accessibly documented, although 'HPL' tends to also frame his annotations and reactions in a misleading way, perhaps lacking a strict concern about what Hitler and the Nazis think - on the other hand, it is merely an attempt spurred by the existence of the source material, or emanating from this, which can make it occasionally worthwhile. Those associated primarily with the military might have a less clear relevance to the overall political role of such religious views, compared with political figures. It wasn't necessarily meant as a sustained reference here, rather as a brief reference which can help elucidate the relation of this to the German leader, as well as that alchemical and mystical elements did reach a certain level.

Hitler was one for serious subjects, if not serious literature. Much of the interest of the others in the occult would have to relate back to his religious concerns and their allowing him to embody these occult views. No doubt, in Europe at the time, a radical movement featuring a member who read Karl May may have come across as notable. Nonetheless, Britain's political groups are currently headed by Corbyn and May, at least for the moment.

Hitler did attempt and advocate some notable engagement with the artistic form on a state level, so it's unlikely he was unconcerned about it or viewed it as innocuous. His incursions on religion were often less pronounced in direction - the treatment of Judaism treated it as a race as well -, which may have suggested incorporating such occult trends while not going in a particular direction, and hence the general place of these in the Nazi structure and image. It's likely that the occult may have not been too politically demanding yet, and the occult regularly keeps to itself slightly, which may have been an element of disunity. He did read some of these books, clearly, and occasionally cited them in speeches, so there was some engagement. Nonetheless, he was sent quite a few books, and in a fairly isolated political position many of them dealing with political positions might have been neglected. Nonetheless, his occasional religious concerns need not be jettisoned from the subject altogether.

Edit: In general, my point was that in discussing occult trends compatible with Nazi ideology and especially the higher ranks of the Party, this was conditioned by its compatibility with the centrality of Hitler and National Socialism. This isn't a matter of people who happen to be both Nazi and occult, but occult forces which were specifically adapted to the strictures of the Nazi Party. In this context, Hitler's often inconsistent and contradictory comments about religion were an important manner of letting them in, and in a sense despite himself (and in religious matters he was often operating despite himself) he might have had to give way to such marginal views in order to accommodate this dubious relation with religion. This manner of dealing with religion is one which would generally assume some such tendencies in a Party, and hence the specific manner in which this was manifested and allowed is an important and highly visible manifestation of how such things influenced the Nazi Party, and seemed appropriate in its general structure and higher ranks.

I'm certainly not going to argue that he did not have a serious engagement with the fine arts, not by a long shot. It's just that the popular trope springing from Trevor Ravenscroft et al tends to overplay his interest in those matters significantly.

Which is not to say that there was not a significant strand of interest in such matters. But they largely existed under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe and to a lesser extent in the RSHA. Figures such as Karl Haushoffer, Otto Rahn, Karl-Maria Willigut, Erik Jan Hanussen and even Felix Kersten indicate that there was a strain of thought which took this stuff seriously.

A couple of telling quotations on the matter:

"What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now [Himmler] wants to start that all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may, some day, be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave..."

"We will not allow mystically-minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else—in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. "

""The characteristic thing about these people [modern-day followers of the early Germanic religion] is that they rave about the old Germanic heroism, about dim prehistory, stone axes, spear and shield, but in reality are the greatest cowards that can be imagined. For the same people who brandish scholarly imitations of old German tin swords, and wear a dressed bearskin with bull's horns over their heads, preach for the present nothing but struggle with spiritual weapons, and run away as fast as they can from every Communist blackjack"

""It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund."

The Urth of the New Sun is worth it, everything from the moment you first see Yesod onward is spectacular. Already purchased Litany of the Long Sun (holy hell does that look like a long quadrilogy) but I think I'm going to read some nonfiction first to clear my head a bit.

Long Sun isn't as good as New Sun - it has some great parts for sure, the world is fascinating, but Wolfe gets a little bogged down at points with tangential, mostly irrelevant talky bits (like a big long section about war robots and how they're made and such, which sounds way cooler than it is) and also having a priest be a main character gives Wolfe a bit too much room to be preachy. It's not horrible or anything, it's just very clearly a step down.

Also, having read most everything Wolfe has written at this point, you start to see how a lot of his protagonists end up being pretty similar - not in big ways, but just in their voice, how they present themselves, etc. Morally there's a wider range, Severian for example justifies doing things Sir Able would never ever dream of doing, but that core "voice" ends up repeating itself unless Wolfe makes a conscious effort to write someone very different, as in Free Live Free (four very different protagonists), There Are Doors (fairly stupid/mentally ill protagonist), Castleview (variety of normal, small-town protagonists) and a few others.

Not to say deviating from that core voice always works out - An Evil Guest for example features a rare female protagonist, but it's one of his worst books, as she ends up feeling more like a spectator while her two male love interests are much more typically Wolfean protagonists, even though the story isn't told from their perspective. Frankly I think he's just way more interested in worldbuilding and plotting than creating a whole new character every time he writes a new book. Most of his main characters feel like echoes of himself - which I suppose is true of a lot of writers.

How does Peace compare to the rest of his work?

Reading Light in August at the moment. As a lot of others have said here, Faulkner is a top-tier writer. He's got all the lyrical brilliance of Cormac McCarthy but he applies it to human emotion rather than metaphysical craziness.

I really like "Long Sun" a lot. I've yet to read the equivalent of "lexicon Urthus" for the Whorl, but on the whole I think it illustrates some of the themes of the extended universe in a less obscure fashion than New Sun does. Those being, in true Catholic fashion, the nature of free will and the way apparent evil works in accordance with the divine plan.

In New Sun, we have a quite unpleasant protagonist doing his best to be good. In the long sun the opposite is true, a saint descends into the underworld and literally takes on the sins of the world (or should that be whorl?)

Typhon first appears in the role of Satan, tempting on the mountaintop. Yet good comes from his megalomania in the form of the Whorl and the "Plan of Pas".

etc, etc

I missed the ornate writing in Long Sun, was a bit too pedestrian in style to me not that it wasn't still good. I'll try to finish it someday.

right now I'm working my way very slowly through Gormenghast literally like 2-3 pages at a time right before bed. He does some pretty funny/wonky stuff with language and what he chooses to emphasize and articulate indepth.

I really liked Peace, but honestly it's been many years since I read it and it's a very dense/intricate book, moreso maybe than any other by Wolfe, so I can't really remember a whole ton about it. It's basically about a man's reminiscences about his life, but as the book progresses you start to realize something is very wrong - what exactly is wrong and what exactly happens, those aren't so clear. Definitely worth reading, though; by general consensus, it's Wolfe's best standalone.

I'm reading HPL's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" right now. The protagonist was just saved by cats from around the earth that literally fly to the moon to fight these evil toad-people, and the main character shakes the paw of the cat leader after they save him. Now that's a scene I never thought I'd see in a Lovecraft story.

Mike Brooks's Dark Run was a cool quick read about Spacerogues and a mission they were forced to carry out. Reminded me somewhat of The Expanse, though not nearly as good. I'll definitely check out the sequel when that's released. Other than that, not too much to say. I did like how it reined in the sarcasm a bit. Seems like a fair amount of books like this are just filled with annoying wise-cracks and way too many snarky one-liners, and while this one had its share, I didn't get irritated. Which is super rare.

Brian Staveley's The Providence of Fire was all right. Didn't seem as dark, tonally speaking, as the first book. The Emperor's Blades had such a great atmosphere. It was dark, but not grimdark. For some reason I always imagined a great fog surrounding each scene. The Providence of Fire reminded me a bit of The Fall of Hyperion in that a lot of the mystery had been chiseled away and so it became less engrossing. I liked this one better than I did TFOH though. And while I enjoyed this book, I had decided I wouldn't bother with the final book of trilogy. At least, until I read the last three chapters. Goddamn you, Brian Staveley. Makin me buy your books and shit.

Of course it's a fuckin trilogy. Multi-part series can be nice, but it's just so fucking irritating when it feels like every damn author out there today is trying to sell you a subscription. Especially when it feels like every series starts with a great premise that hasn't been properly thought through to its conclusion.

I just think it's what the readers want, and is almost an integral part of modern fantasy. I personally like knowing there's more to come if I finish a book and enjoy it. On the reverse side, I've read books I loved so much that I put off the next in the series in case it sucked and ruined the first book.

I'll probably just end up buying the third one when the paperback comes out next year and is like 45% off on Amazon.

I've been reading We Need to Talk About Kevin recently. I'm about a fifth of the wyay through the book, and it's been... not so good. For every good each page there seems to two or three which drag with overlong descriptions of the mundane or explanations of ideas which have been explored far more succintly elswhere in the book. I imagine a lot of this is to make you feel like you're reading the narrator's letters instead of a book, but I find it grating slogging though several uninteresting pages to get one worthwhile one. Hopefully the book takes a turn for the better because I've heard the ending is quite good, but right now it's tough to see myself getting there.

Apparently Gormenghast is the thing to read around these parts Maybe will give it a shot after I'm done my current book.

Anyway, reading something much less sophisticated it seems, The Maze Runner series. Finished the main trilogy and on to The Kill Order, which is the first prequel (second one gonna be released in September). Without giving too much away, its really surprising how much the movies have diverged from the trilogy. As in the second movie was barely even the same story line as the book. So it makes me wonder how the hell they're gonna pull it all together in the end given how they basically totally diverged from the book in major ways. Seems like a lot of liberty to take with a movie based on a book. Anyway, its actually a pretty good series I thought. At first I wasn't super into Dashner's writing style in the first book, but its improved definitely since then. There are some points of contention for me, but overall they've been a really fun and captivating series to read on my way to work and stuff. Has anyone else read them?

"Melmoth the Wanderer" by Maturin - Mesmerizing piece of an old-fashioned gothic perfection. May seem too gargantuan and overloaded with religious, historical and philosophical references, but it's not a problem for anyone seeking some serious depth in his/her reading.

"Doctor Therne" by Haggard - an excellent dramatic story of how one sacrifices his own beliefs for money, fame and a social position, which leads to tragic consequences.

"The three impostors" by Machen - a crucial point in evolution of horror. Some Lovecraft passages are directly influenced by this collection of creepy stories. Suspense and tension in them are immense, even though the general plot is a bit underdeveloped, imo.

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Man, what a blueballing experience. Parts of the book were absolutely brilliant, and the bit where he gets into the psychology of a man who is soon to be executed is one of the most riveting passages I've ever read, but on the whole this book was quite frustrating. The idea behind it was not a bad one, but I felt it got too often bogged down in details and the description of social interactions was a bit overblown. Overall it was a worthwhile read, but still I felt like it definitely could have been cut down 200 pages and have been much better. It seems that this is one of his more polarizing works and I can see why. I'm still looking forward to reading Crime and Punishment, which I expect to be much better.

The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
Like every other Cormac McCarthy book I've read, this was quite good. However, I do have to say this is by far the weakest by him I've come across so far. The first installment of this trilogy (All the Pretty Horses) was definitely better. The first half of this book, where the protagonist attempts to take a pregnant wolf back to Mexico is excellent and could have definitely been extended. While still a good read, the second half of the book largely felt like a slightly weaker version of All the Pretty Horses, largely consisting of various misadventures on horseback in Mexico. Gripes aside, definitely a good book and he's still my favourite living author.