It's nice to see some Borges appreciation around here. Yesterday I finished his Universal History of Infamy and altought it isn't his best work, it certainly has some stellar moments.

Are you familiar with Adolfo Bioy Casares? He was Borges friend and mentor. They even wrote jointly some short stories books together. If you like Borges work, you absolutely need to read Bioy, specially his novel The Invention of Morel. You'll thank me later. Seriously.

So I'm going to finish LOTR pretty soon, and it turns out that I really like fantasy novels. Scrolling through this thread and looking at a bit of stuff on Wikipedia, Jack Vance's novels and Weaveworld seem like they would interest me. Would they be good ideas for beginners? And what are some other fantasy novels, both famous and not famous, that I should check out?

It's nothing at all like Tolkien, but I recently started the first volum of Tales of Neveryon by Samuel R. Delaney. The only other things I've read from him have been more sci-fi (The mighty and truly unique DHALGREN and the relatively mellow and interesting Triton), but he also does non-traditional fantasy quite well in Neveryon. His swarthy and convincing style and his flexible imagination involves all manner of sexual contrast, textural emotions, and inventive situations in a technologically ambiguous open world a fair bit down the road toward "civilization". He paints a satisfying and believable picture whenever he writes. I like his work a lot, not only because of how palpable I find everything, but also because no one's safe. The characters have to fend for themselves.

Gene Wolfe (author of the outstanding The Book of the New Sun) wrote a series called The Wizard Knight. I have yet to read them, but considering how mind-blowing New Sun was, I'm really looking forward to these. Maybe someone can offer an opinion?

I've only read the first books of each series (if you consider The Wizard Knight a series), but I definitely found The Knight to be a better read than The Shadow Of The Torturer; mainly because it wasn't as preachy as ...Torturer, and was better-written. Failsafeman has some interesting opinions about it, in fact, it was because of his recommendation that I even read The Knight, which reminds me I really should get the second book.

After more than a decade I'm trying to read Lord Foul's Bane again, I gave up the first time, and if it doesn't get more interesting I'm giving up again (I'm just past the rape scene in the beginning). Honestly this series tends to pop in quite a few 'best of' fantasy lists, hopefully I'll find out why soon because as of now I have yet to encounter an interesting or likeable character in the book, and the premise itself is cringeworthy - 'Man with leprosy gets transported to fantasy world where he is to be a hero and save the world' - luckily I'm reading this along with good comics like The Killing Joke and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, just as an emergency 'My god this book sucks' plan.

Started reading Luis De Camoens' "The Lusiad" (translated by Mickle) and I must say that while the imagery is beautiful and whatnot, it doesn't seem all that majestic with the ABAB rhyme scheme that Mickle uses. I'm sure there are other, better translations, but this was the easiest to find on PDF format.

I've also started to read more of Shirley Jackson's Hell House and whatnot, and I must say the book is pretty good. I'm liking how Eleanor's character is beginning to shape and I especially like the initial description of the house. I can't wait to read more into it and see how it all unfolds, but for now, it'll have to wait for school to finish.

Also, after reading Handling The Undead, I've noticed a major issue with John Ajvide Lindqvist's writing; he always leaves cliffhangers. I'm sick of these, stop doing them please. I don't care if you could better explain it in another book that I'd have to dish out more money for in order to read something that should have come with my original purchase to begin with. It was excusable with Let The Right One In since that book was phenomenal in every other category besides ending, but HtD was horrible; the only truly interesting character ever was Mahler and the dilemma involving his grandson, and he's tossed out the window by the end of the book. Really disappointed with how the whole thing turned out, especially since I was trying really hard to like it. That's the last I read of his.

so ugh, I started to read "Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul"

I agree with certain things. I do think that "I" don't end where my body ends, but I don't think that extends to my consciousness, unless we're speaking metaphorically. I don't believe in disembodied multi-dimensional consciousness entities that possess people. The author states that the "devil" is clearly a projection of the human psyche, but can't see that "Seth" is as well? I don't believe in "consciousness that pervades everything," unless by consciousness we actually mean information, and even then I feel like it's more complicated than that. Consciousness arrives from intricately and amazingly complex physical processes. Why is materialism a dirty word? I don't believe in reductive materialism, so I allow for speculation and the unknown, but I also don't believe in paranormal, supernatural, obviously human-created ideas like ESP and other crap (the author apparently teaches a weekly ESP class).

Hogwash I say! I'm sure it's still got some good points and ideas, but I can't get past the lack of critical thought.

Reading Maldoror & the complete works of the Comte de Lautreamont instead.

oop .. yeah, I guess it is a diptych, huh.

Lautremont seems to be a pretty cool but juvenile reading from the criticisms and secondary readings. Shark sex is cool stuff

So far it reminds me of Thus Spake Zarathustra, except the metaphor is taken to a ridiculous extreme. I have to read it very slowly and I still don't grasp everything that's being said.

I'm currently working through a Lovecraft anthology, I very much like his style but some stories are better than others. "The Call of Cthulu" and "The Rats in the Walls" were particularly interesting so far. I'm also reading GRRM's "A Game of Thrones", it has some intriguing characters thus far but it has yet to completely hook me, hopefully that will change as I progress. It's been awhile since I've gotten into a new high fantasy series.

Been reading more Lovecraft again myself for the first time in about fifteen years, which feels great! Jophelerx, if you haven't yet, make a point of checking out "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and "The Shadow Out of Time." So many awesome stories.

I really have to motivate myself to get back into Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. I read the first novel a year and a half ago, and though it was great, I somehow fell off the wagon and never had the headspace to leap back on.

Martin's writing is unlikely to ever hook you, but as things develop, the plot hopefully will. Sadly some characters aren't completely believable as they seem like caricatures more than real people.

A few things on the go at present:

"gravity's rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. Damn, this is difficult going. Seems to go off in every direction at once.

"The naked civil servant" by Quentin Crisp. Very funny, marvelous dry sense of humour.

"Ghost Stories" by M.R. James. A collection of all James' Edwardian ghost stories. They are really fantastic - very understated and subtle. I'd been meaning to read this for a while (especially since the Tony Wakeford/Andrew King album based on some of his work came out) and stumbled across a copy for $2.

I'm waiting on a few things to come in the mail - "Twilight Man" by Boyd Rice and "The conspiracy against the human race" by Thomas Ligotti.

Finally got around to finishing Blood Meridian. Excellent read.

Also recently read Heinlein's 'Job: A comedy of justice' which is everything I expected from Heinlein, great religious satire.

Shadow of the Torturer is preachy? What planet are you from? The Wizard Knight is definitely a great (mini)series, one of Wolfe's best and one of my favorite fantasy series. The setup seems a bit corny, what with the oldschool fantasy staple of a boy from our world getting transported to a fantasy land, but Wolfe intentionally incorporates tons of cliches into his world with the express purpose of reinventing them. Dragons, giants, elves, wizards, ogres, and others all get remade into something recognizable, yet original.


Well really that's exactly the point of the Thomas Covenant series; he's just so utterly unsuited to 'saving the day' so to speak, and unlike nearly all of the 'person from our world gets transported to fantasy world' books (including the above) he refuses to admit it's real, and for good reasons. He knows leprosy is uncurable (back then, anyway), and yet his seems to be cured, and admitting the world is real would mean admitting he raped a real girl, instead of just a dream, which is what he thought initially. The first book is solid but not really exceptional I think, and it does take a bit of work to get yourself into the head of Thomas Covenant, a rather unsympathetic person at first. Subsequent books are better, and I think the third of the initial trilogy, The Power That Preserves, is very good and the overall best. I wouldn't bother with the second or third trilogies though, both have good ideas but have more problems than strengths.

Speaking of the "man from our world transported to fantasy land" trope, anyone a fan of Zelazny's Amber books? I thought the first one handled that idea really well.

I've been eyeing it everytime I've been in a bookstore that had it, but usually it has been too expensive...

Dagon's always been one of my favorites, for some reason. Maybe it's because it was my first story of his that I read, or I dunno. Either way, it rules.

Also, I just finished A Game of Thrones. I honestly don't think it lives up to the hype that people give it, and I've yet to watch the show (I've been meaning to do that), but it's still a pretty good and entertaining story. The characters are really well developed, (for the most part), and the plot itself was interesting. Will start on the next novel sometime later.

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is one of my favorites. Suffocating atmosphere!

The first-person shooter loosely based on it is also really cool. THAT HOTEL.

I also like "The Nameless City" a lot, and whatever the one is called where this guy goes to a family reunion in some rural town and ends up underground. Can't remember.

Nahsil, you're thinking of "The Festival." Also one of my all-time Lovecraft favorites!

Yeah, when I was reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" I was thinking it'd make for an insanely good video game adaptation, what with the ultra-tangible atmosphere, the detailed town map layouts he fleshes out, the memorable characters, tense scenario, and just the incredible possibilities for level design alone... but I guess they've already made one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_of_Ct ... _the_Earth

It's extremely difficult and pretty claustrophobic/scary in parts, and rewarding/does a good job of conveying the Lovecraftian atmosphere.

Yes and no. I thought the premise as outlined in the first book was really good, but I think they lost the plot about halfway through the second, when the 'chaos' crap became a more important plot than the family feud over who was to succeed their father as king. Then there are something like eight books total, which were entertaining enough but seriously lacking substance. I thought that was the most interesting part; this big immortal family with centuries-old grudges and alliances and petty infighting all vying for dominance and stabbing each other in the back, with entire universes at their beck and call. The family's relationships had the potential to be rich and complex, with essentially unlimited fodder for backstory and potential for flashbacks to all sorts of different times and places to establish these relationships, and answer the question of who has the most cause to murder Corwin.

Then it just gets bogged down in the conflict generated by the setting, i.e. chaos vs. law, and the one brother with magic powers who's just evil for some reason. It quite seriously botches the promise established in the first book, and the second one up until Eric dies. The first book is still worth reading I'd say, it's brief and exciting, as long as you accept that it's not going to resolve its issues satisfactorily, haha. Lord of Light is a much better Zelazny.

No argument there! Its been years since I read the Amber books, and I only read the first 4. Probably a better idea than a novel all in all.

Lord of Light looks awesome. Definitely gonna elevate it to the top 5 novels I should read next, along with Foucault's Pendulum, The Anubis Gates, Beckett's Molloy/Malone Dies/The Unnameable trilogy, maybe Ringworld...

non-fiction has been taking over, currently reading about sexual reproduction (The Red Queen), evolutionary psychology (The Moral Animal), a book on mindfulness etc. Oh and Maldoror, but I dunno if I'm gonna make it through that at a quick enough pace to justify reading it before other stuff.

Just finished reading Nietzsche's The Antichrist. Good read, really got me thinking. I'll have to read some more from him.
Started reading Stephen King's The Dark Half yesterday, didn't get far enough to have a real opinion on it but I love his works.

I should read more often.

Just read Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro for my British Lit course. There were a few sections that were a bit slow, but overall a pretty good read, especially near the end. Its about an alternate timeline of the world where clones live up to about 30 and then harvested for their organs, completing about 2-4 donations until they are "completed." Pretty interesting stuff, especially seeing as we have had the technology to clone for quite some time so it isn't completely implausible something like this could happen if we had governments who had different views on morality. Not one of the best books I've read in my life or anything like that, but certainly no waste of time. This is the first book I've read in almost a year, and I totally forgot how entertaining reading books can be. Ever since I've been to university I've chosen drinking and watching TV over doing stuff like reading, but I think I'll read a lot more over the summer.

Both great books. The Dark Half is actually really fucking dark, one of my favourite King books.

Just finished reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Wasn't too impressed with his earlier novels, but he certainly puts on a clinic here. Definitely an engaging read, and can be unexpectedly poignant at times.

Don't know whether to start The Recognitions (William Gaddis), You Bright and Risen Angels (William Vollmann) or The Sot-Weed Factor (John Barth) next... DECISIONS DECISIONS

Anyone know of any fiction books set in ancient Rome that is more action/adventure/militaristic and not so much on the political side of things?

Finally got back to reading a couple months ago, I think I went about 2 years without having read one novel, very shitty.

I've read 3 books since the beginning of march, those being The Great Gatsby, A Catcher In the Rye, and The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell.

I'm not even sure how to review The Catcher, except by stating I'm not sure if its the greatest book I've ever read, or just a piece of shit....which is what makes think its probably one of the best I've ever read.... hard to explain. There were random points in the book that would cause me to tear up, and other portions that made me hate Holden, I feel I'll have to reread it before I can really give it a proper rating.

As for the Great Gatsby, absolutely beautifully written, but the story itself had no grip on me whatsoever, I thought the characters were a bit empty, and the overall premise a bit dull. I can not stress how awesome I thought the writing itself was though, I can understand why its so highly praised.

The Last Kingdom..... fucking fantastic, yo put it simply. Great adventure of a story, in depth and real characters. I found myself deeply caring for certain characters, and actually quite upset with the way one of them died, how quickly it was written then dismissed and on to the next chapter. I feel like Cornwell probably intended on it being that way, to reiterate the brutal ways of the time, lots of sickness, death, stillborns, rape, slaughter... all the stuff you find in a war torn land. It's bothersome to me that it is a series though, I have so many books that need reading, I should have paid attention to the fact that it was quite a lengthy series.



Next up.... Moby Dick.

I wrote a paper over the "central idea" of Moby Dick. BAD IDEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It's fairly post-modern in how all over the fucking place and cryptic and denying-of-easy-interpretation it is.

Good luck. It's still a fun book at times, and even when it's dry there's probably a point to what he's saying. Melville wasn't a slouch.

That's the first one I read too - I'd say my favourite is "At the Mountains of Madness", although it's been a while since I read most of them. I've got a few stories of his still to read - I was halfway through (and have been for about a month, because I put the book on hold) "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath." I was really enjoying it, but it was at the same time so odd - and very, almost annoyingly, reliant on cats as a plot-device. I got up to the bit where it mentioned "the slightly larger cats from Saturn" or something like that and my mind exploded. Hence I'm taking a while off from it.

yeah, it's a strange one all right; Lovecraft doesn't often lend himself so unabashedly to whimsy. I really enjoy it but I think it's a poor place to start with Lovecraft's ouevre...one has to sort of become accustomed to his traditions and obsessions in order to be really affected by the subversion of the Dreamquest.

Anyway, while At the Mountains of Madness certainly provides the most clear explication of Lovecraft's pantheon of strange, interstellar beings, I've got to go for stories like "The Shadow over Innsmouth", "The Color out of Space" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" as my favourites, as well as some of the old shorts like the intensely dreamy "Nyarlathotep".

Recently finished Martin Amis's novel Success. I've a strange relationship with Amis, finding his work alternately hilarious, tragic and repellent. Reading him feels a bit like churning around in a human cesspool and feeling awful for gleaning considerable enjoyment from the process. Success uses its chapters to tell a story alternately from the points of view of two flatmates, who are foster brothers, one adopting a "bohemmian artist"'s lifestyle and the other stuck in a shitty office job but thinking he's "on his way up" in the world. The story tells of their year in the flat together and how they work subtly to undermine each other's existences, focused largely on their attempts to "score" with members of the opposite sex (or their own, in the case of the bohemian brother, Gregory, who adopts a sort of "affected queerness" which he wears like a mask). The most interesting thing about the story is the way Amis uses his alternating perspective to show the same events from starkly differing angles, so that what clearly means one thing to a single protagonist turns out to mean quite the opposite to the other. He doesn't give many clear answers and the reader is left to draw his own conclusions. I ended up really hating Terry, the drunken office bum, and feeling considerable sympathy for the "gay aesthete", who starts the book cocky and intensely self-satisfied but leaves the pages as a bit of a wreck. There's the usual sly Amis hints of intense family perversions among the well-to-do classes of England, some manipulation that makes your skin crawl and enough appeals to our humanity just to make one realise how utterly wrong all this is. A pretty depressing story, all told, and not one of Amis's masterpieces like Money: A Suicide Note or perhaps even London Fields. I would recommend those books first for people wanting to learn what Martin Amis is all about, but this one was engrossing, if not outright enjoyable.

I've also been dipping into a huge anthology of William Faulkner's short stories and finding them to be very gripping reading. His conversational style in these pieces is effortlessly engaging, and stories like "Barn Burning", "A Divorce in Naples" and, especially, "Black Music" work a captivating spell of lonely pilgrims and destitute wanderings. The stories sometimes make you laugh out loud with glee and sometimes pause and marvel at the tragic turn of circumstances. "Black Music" I found to be a particularly powerful piece of writing; maybe even one of the best short stories I've found recently, and with a hint of the supernatural/weird at play, too, that almost reminded me of an Algernon Blackwood transported to the American south.

Also finally decided to crack a Graham Greene novel, and, as it happens, I chose one of his very first, Stamboul Train. it's a short novel and I'll be finished it soon, and I'm really loving the thing and am chiding myself for taking this long to really get to him. The book depicts an express train journey from England to Turkey and the intrigues and foibles of the various passengers as they are thrust together and meet and interact in ways one would never have thought possible: the shrewd yet inexperienced jewish businessman and the poor chorus girl nervously making her way to Istanbul for a job prospect, the exiled Serbian doctor/socialist revolutionary and the scheming, drunken man-hating reporter who will tell his story whether he wants her to or not, the thief and murderer on the run from Austrian law, an Anglican priest, and many others. The writing is exemplary and Greene really gets to the heart of these characters, so you feel for even the most hateful individuals. There's also a great deal of existential brooding and pain, mostly delivered from the mind of the old Serbian doctor, who was going to return home at the head of a revolution but as his colleagues jumped the gun, he'll only be going to Belgrade to face his own trial. Although this may be considered one of Graham Greene's minor works, I am finding it to be an excellent starting point and am sure I'll be reading more. ministry of Fear, certainly, as I recently saw the Fritz Lang movie based on that book...

Next up, probably Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. It'll be a strange ride!

Check out this online novel. This novel deals with the "Recession" in Ireland, or to be more accurate the dealings of one of the most shadiest businessmen from County Donegal and his downward spiral. Take a look at the link below for a better description

http://www.thetigersarse.net/Home.html

Here's a taste of the novel: Chapter 39.
Take a look at the seventh paragraph in the link below

http://thetigersarse.net/archive/39.html

In the last week and a half I've read Game of thrones by George Martin, A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking, and the outsider by Camus.

GOT was a bit overhyped I found, it was pretty good, and I have started the second one, but was expecting more.

ABHOT was interesting, and basically made me remember some things from my Physics A level I did two years ago. Wish it was more in depth than it was, although I guess it was meant to appeal to the layman.

Camus was my favourite out of the three, and not just because I do philosophy at university. The writing style was superb, the descriptive language in particular. The complete emotional detachment of the main character was fairly interesting, and the ideas of the absurd coming through at the end was a good summary of some of his existential ideas. Definitely want to read more of his writings, as we only studied a little of the Myth of Sisiphus in my Existentialism module in first year.

After reading the next in the song of ice and fire series, I want to read some Dostoyevsky, I've been intrigued for a while. I've also started Karl Popper's Logic of Scientific discovery as research for an assignment, and it seems interesting enough to delve into fully, although I want to strike a balance between fictional works, and academic works.

I dont' know if anyone uses http://www.goodreads.com, but I created myself an account on there and started posting up some book reviews. I get far too many books on my desk here at work and I figure I may as well get out some of the bile that most of them engender in me. Of course, I'll focus a lot on my own areas of interest, and most of the positive reviews will probably come from that. I haven't really gotten the hang of the "shelving" system and don't know how much I'll bother with it, but the site, or at least the idea of it, seems pretty neat and like something I've been searching after for some time now. ANyway, if anyone cares: http://www.goodreads.com/DamnableReverend

That's pretty much exactly what I thought. It's definitely overhyped. I do think that it was a good read though, both on the character and plot side of things. I will say, however, that it could have been written in less pages. Don't know when I'm going to start on the second one, but it's sitting on my shelf at the moment, as are the third and fourth books. I did have fun reading the first.

Picked up The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes. I read A Concise History of The Russian Revolution by him already, and thought it was good so I got that other one; it's like 500 pages longer and more in-depth. Still only about 100 pages in, but it's pretty good so far.

Camus rocks. French existentialism rocks.

I've been reading this Collected Fiction of Borges. Only two stories in so I don't at all have a grasp on who he is or what he does, but I'm definitely intrigued.

I finally dug into a book that I got as gift from my previous workplace; Mikael Niemi's "The Man Who Was Killed As A Salmon". It had been lying around, gathering dust for something like four years but the other day, on a whim, I decided to simlpy sit down and read it. Now, two days later, I've almost finished the thing. I never thought I'd be into crime-drama litterature but this book has really drawn me in.

Really though, it isn't actual crime-drama since it wanders so far off from the genre that I barely even know how to decribe the book. Anyone from Sweden or Finland (or generally Scandinavia that knows a bit about our in-struggles) should read this book; it has serious content but handled with a light touch.

I've read a couple of Niemi's books as a younger kid, and I still have Nahkakolo (Svålhålet) sitting on my shelf, to be read. My grandmother's family hails from Tornedalen, and many of his books have been of special interest to my family for that reason, so naturally I've received a bunch of them for presents.