So yeah, I, uh, just finished Blood Meridian and wow.

Why didn't you quote me from the previous page (second to last post!) and try to have a a jerk session over it? I feel betrayed.

Sorry, man. Just a lil distraught and all that from that ending. Man, that was a book.

The Judge is one of the greatest antagonists I've ever read. I could say so many things about that book and I might later but it would take a long time to type my thoughts.

All this jizzing over Blood Meridian. Guess I'll have to give it a go.

I breezed through and finished The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs by David Hone a few days ago. At the risk of blowing your minds, it's about tyrannosaurs, that group of carnivorous slabs of theropod awesomeness T. rex belonged to; their ecology, morphology, scientific history, theorised phylogeny, etc. Pretty much everything about them we know, theorise and conjecture in one concise package. It's written in fairly easy language, being an attempt to "write a book for everyone [..] with an interest in science", although not without some more scientific nomenclature (usually explained, though). Extremely interesting and illuminating read that did away with some misconceptions of mine (and I'd like to think that I'm somewhat of a dinosaur/prehistory geek). Being from 2016, it also has the added benefit of being rather current where scientific knowledge in the field is concerned (palaeontology is -ironically- an extremely fast developing/changing discipline and books from only a couple years ago can already be pretty outdated in some areas; Hone mentions in the book that he often had to rewrite and update stuff during the writing process to reflect the latest discoveries and developments). So yeah, great book, an easy yet densely informative read.

I really enjoyed Blood Meridian, and I look forward to reading it again. I love any of that real dark, modern Western stuff though. But it's funny that this thread constantly goes back to it, like a chorus in a song.

It seems like somebody reads it, then everyone else that's already read it will come in and talk about how great it is. It dies down until a few months later when someone else reads it and the cycle begins again.

aw yes! I couldn't sleep the night I finished it. It's just totally on another level.

I've read Blood Meridian (loved it) and The Road (it was alright but can't even compare) of McCarthy's ouvre, anyone got any experience with his other stuff? Should I read Sutree?

I just started reading horror fiction a few months ago.i purchased some classics such as the call of cthulu(metallica brought me here) and Steven King's The Mist. I also just started reading Duma Key.

The problem I had with blood meridian is (like most of Cormac's books) that none of the characters are terribly likeable.

I also find
His tendency to write-
Like a mix of the old testament and bad poetry
quite annoying.

The Road was pretty rad though.

Both of those things are why I liked Blood Meridian, caspian. I didn't want likable characters in that story - just memorable ones, which I got.

The only other one by him I've read is Child of God which is a nice quick story (~200 pages) about a depraved loner who you simultaneously revile and pity.

I think all his stuff is great. Very different. Suttree is amazing, and the Border Trilogy is awesome. So yeah, read either one.

A thousand times yes. I found Suttree just as spellbinding as Blood Meridian, but I probably still prefer Blood Meridian slightly more because it seems to encompass all of humanity whereas Suttree is a much more personal story. Also Blood Meridian has the Judge who is one of the best, most enduring characters I've ever read. Suttree's still thematically pretty heavy stuff, but it's lighter compared to Meridian, and also has some quite funny parts/characters. The writing is indescribably memorable and gorgeous and a bit more sprawling than Blood Meridian which has very terse, bleak prose.

The Border Trilogy is good but it reads like a pretty conventional Western yarn so for me it really pales in comparison to the likes of Blood Meridian.

I get where you're coming from but it's hard to read through a book where every character is an asshole, no matter how interesting/well fleshed out they are. Eco's Prague Cemetry is a recent one I read in that same vein; I still liked the book, clearly fantastically written, but it wasn't a pleasurable/enjoyable read, which by and large is how I enjoy my books.

Currently reading: some b grade trash by a dude called Jim Butcher, your usual hackneyed fantasy kinda stuff. Wife borrowed it from the library. Took a look at the cover, laughed.... aaaand then proceeded to read the whole thing in one setting I like fast food once in a while, I like a nice old hack n slash fantasy once in a while too.

Codex Alera, I'm guessing?

I dunno, obviously none of the characters were good people, but I generally liked/sympathized with the boy and the ex-priest. They were clearly much less bad than the rest, the boy was just sort of swept up in a bad lifestyle and influenced by bad people, while the ex-priest had at least some principles and did his best to look out for the boy. When things got dangerous for them I wanted them to come out OK.

I mean, compare it to something like the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - none of the three main characters are good people, they're all thieves and murderers, but "the Good" and "the Ugly" are clearly much more sympathetic/likeable.

I got through some more of the collection Looking Back on the End of the World. The article "Approaches to Nothingness" had some interesting ideas scattered throughout; it is, on the whole, a competent piece, particularly for its time of publication and the milieu it is a part of. A massive flaw is left overlooked though. I leave you to answer the riddle. The other essays that I read are "The Place of Beginning and End: Caves and Their Systems of Symbols", "The Temporality of World-Views and Self-Images", and I am halfway through "Between Simulation and Negentropy: The Fate of the Individual Looking Back on the End of the World". All serviceable essays; nothing too enlightening outside of a handful of sentences, and absolutely littered with a certain brand of worn out Marxist ideology, but literature in this field is incredibly scant, and so it is a better void than the void left without it.

Much of it needs to be called out for the assumptions made; this can be said overall for both post- theories. Decry metanarratives only to replace them with others; expound on shitty dualisms; essentially seem radical while not being so. In fact, a strong authoritarian current runs through the closed-open perspectives. Conservative critiques are nonsense, shit, weak, lame, fucktarded, unintelligent. But hey, we only have to care about that so much in these days when you've got neocons preaching relativity in order to recoup their corrupt ideologies-those earlier critics are dying off. Enter NRX.

I also blazed through Jun Hayami's manga collection This Is Art. Compared to his peers, he writes from a decidedly base perspective, without the media flourishes or intertextuality. Instead, the stories are simple and quite depraved, and yet through this they are able to achieve a high degree of thought. I look forward to finding more of his work, as its really like nothing else. There's no comedy. No hope. No light. Nothing but domination, cruelty, self-abasement, and, above all, pleasure.

Do you seriously think shit like this makes you seem cool and deep?

I do!
#1 WoP fan <3 <3

No, but you think such. Thanks rexxz, yours are great too :*

Buncha butthurts

Hey now go easy on him, this is an actual blurb from the publishers of that book he's reading:

"Collectively, the authors sketch the unfamiliarity of the new, those moments when our categories dissolve in the face of connections and relations that announce all sorts of 'ends.' And other things besides."

It's a real head scratcher in that I thought most people got this "head so far up your own ass you can see out your own mouth" phase when they were 18. From what I can tell WoP is pretty close to my age (late 20s) yet he's still carrying on like he just discovered ANUS and, I dunno, late Emperor or something. Shit must be exhausting.

Theposega- yeah, codex alera. Just got the second book then. Credit to my wife for being keen on forcing books down my throat; for the first time in a few years I'm enjoying reading again.

I've actually never read Matheson. Any stories in particular I should check out?
As for Borges, I could never get into him. We read Library of Babel for philosophy and it was interesting enough, but it didn't compel me to seek out more of his stuff.

HEY, THAT'S MY WHOLE SCHTICK!!

Ah, nice. I've only read The Aeronaut's Windlass by him, which is something he's called a "steam opera." It was pretty cool, not entirely sure why it was Hugo-nominated though. I know his Dresden Files series is massively popular.

Big, dumb pulpy SFF novels are the best.

Hey now, let's not drag ANUS through the mud by comparing its content to WoP's ramblings. The posts there are grammatical, readable, and sometimes entertaining.

About the smugglers: I never thought of that actually, but now that
you mention it this seems almost painfully obvious to me (considering
that their other works aren't exactly apolitical, either). Although
calling this a central theme of the novel rather than an (intended)
overtone seems a bit forced to me. I think this is just an aspect of the
following point: [EDIT: reconsidering my point, the fact that his mutant
daughter got infected by this alien culture -- an obvious metaphor for
capitalist influence seeping in. Hm.]

The illustration of human pettyness, as you put it, had a more lasting
impression on me. I find this wonderfully expressed by the metaphor one
of the characters uses for it: "Most of the time, we're probably using
a microscope to hammer a nail into a wall." And I just wholeheartedly
agree with your point.

Speaking of powerful images, I precisely recall (I just can't find my
copy of the book...) is how he uses the image of firing a revolver at a
spinning globus to explain the geographical distribution of the "zones".
Although this seems to turn that previous argument onto its head, with
the interviewed academic just repeatedly pointing out how banal this
"discovery" of his and the entire "visit" in general is.

What's everyone reading at the moment?

Started No Country For Old Men yesterday, I'm about halfway through. Can't speak for the rest of McCarthy's ouvre, but compared to Blood Meridian, No Country and the Road feel really... small. They're both really compelling and McCarthy's writing style retains its rhythmic brilliance but I feel like they were written with movie adaptations in mind. Nowhere near the primordial mindfuck of Blood Meridian.

Guess I've got to check out some of McCarthy's other earlier books. Suttree is on the way in the mail, can't wait to read it.

I've only read I Am Legend (which I liked a lot) and the short story collection Nightmare At 20, 000 Feet, and am currently reading Hell House which is okay, I mean his prose is certainly decent enough. I can't speak for the short stories though, I'm not really a fan of short stories. I would definitely read more Matheson but like Robert Silverberg his books (for me at least) are difficult to get a hold of.

I just broke my reading dry spell with two great books on Southern madness: A Confederacy of Dunces and A Feast of Snakes. Both where pretty much insane and had awesome characters, but goddamn A Feast of Snakes was intense throughout.

So I finished my reread of Lord of the Rings last week and what I suspected was true: I hated Return simply because I read it during the first three days I quit smoking. I still think it's the worst of the three (with Two Towers being my favorite) but it's still dope and Sam and Frodo's saunter through Mordor is possibly my favorite bit of the series. I enjoyed my reread considerably, but I'd still say I appreciate the series more than enjoy it outright. It's a little too whimsical and lighthearted for my tastes, and there isn't too much of a sense of danger, but I also started reading fantasy with Malazan, so that makes sense. And the dearth of female characters who actively have a role stands out considerably nowadays. But all in all, I'm glad I was wrong.

I finished Delany's Nova, which I liked very much (as usual, since Delany can only actually do fleeting moments of wrong), went to a cool bookstore I'd never been to before, bought Foner's Gateway to Freedom: the hidden history of the Underground Railroad (even though the phrase "hidden history of..." gave me the chafes, the author is legit) and then spent half my computer's battery doing nothing but reading history book reviews. I'm just going to run with this whole 19th Century history as a hobby thing.

Any recommendations for books on anything in that time period would be welcomed.

It's actually turn of the century (spanning about 1880-1920 or so), but You Can't Win is great. It's an autobiography by a well-known burglar and career criminal, which was a big inspiration on William S Burroughs, and has a lot to say about society from that time period, and also just a lot of cool adventures in general hopping trains, robbin' folks, etc. The main message though is about the penal system and how criminal "justice" in America is messed up and doesn't work, which if anything probably applies more today than it did then.

My only criticism is that, as he wrote it after reforming, he glosses over a lot of the details about the height of his criminal career - years-long opium addictions, being the head of prison gangs, a revenge-spree of crime after being let out at one point, all gets very compressed or even omitted altogether (only mentioned by an editorial at the end). He admits to doing plenty of bad stuff so I don't think it's him trying to make himself look better, probably more of a combination of being ashamed of his criminal acts, and not wanting to make them seem too cool/glamorous. The message of the book, after all, is that you can't win as a criminal.

Anyway it's fairly short and an easy read, very much worth it imo.

Really loving two books atm. Joe Abercrombie's 'The Blade Itself'. I found the writing too plain, almost hardboiled at first, but I've come to see the subtlety and nuance, such as it is. I'm finding it difficult to say what the story is about, but I am really enjoying it and will read the rest of the trilogy. I like the fact that it is wearily, ironically humorous and I generally dislike humour in fiction.

Also reading 'The Accidental Universe' by Alan Lightman. I found a great little bookshop in Melbourne that sells all manner of books for $10 only (and they do coffee too!) and picked this collection of short essays reflecting upon the nature of the random universe we exist within. Some sobering thoughts, some ecstatic thoughts too. Guy can write, can express idea's succinctly. I recommend it.

Great! Noted. Thanks for this. I don't mind turn of the century at all, and I'm thinking of looking into true crime (I was curious about the book Contraband, focusing on smuggling in the 19th century) as well as espionage history (one the caught my eye the other day was on American intelligence during the Revolutionary War, which seemed promising), so this is right on.

Just finished The Book of the New Sun. "Wow" is an understatement. There were a few things I anticipated early on and unfortunately by looking up something unrelated I inadvertently spoiled an ending detail, but it was on the whole a profound, awe-inspiring journey chock full of surprises. And its mysteries and internal irregularities remain a baffling source of entertainment.

Now the question: do I soldier on immediately towards The Urth of the New Sun, or do I tarry for a while to (as Severian advises) take up my life? Or do I reread the quadrilogy?

What course did the other BotNS readers here take?

I'd read Urth of the New Sun right away. It has tons of references to events in the first four books, and if the details start to get fuzzy in your memory, you won't get as much out of it.

Shit, my memory of the details from one book to the next started to get fuzzy, though all in all I'd say maybe that added to the experience. Definitely read Urth right away. Glad more people are on board the BotNS hype train!

Now just to get more people on the Gormenghast train...

I'm on the platform. Seems like it's just me and the ticket guy.