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I haven't progressed much with Southern Reach pt.2. I think they are not meant to be read one right after the other. The first built up a nice momentum, but pretty slowly. This one doesn't pick up where the first one ended, but it starts another slow build-up. Well done, just like the first, but a little repetitive in feel.
I will try to get to the other side of it and then I'll wait for some time before I pick up pt.3. I feel like reading one of those monumental postmodern novels again. So I'll either get another copy of Gravity's Rainbow and revisit that, finally read Infinite Jest which has been sitting here forever, or get Stefano D'Arrigo's Horcynus Orca.

I'm in audiobook mode, so I've been tearing through The Prince of Nothing. I kinda like it, the middle eastern setting has a great vibe to it, but I'm struggling with the characters. They all are "deep", in this case it means they all get so much emphasis on their dark sides that you can't identify with anyone. And that makes me loose interest some times.
I've already got the next lined up: The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.

Dogbrainz wrote:Beautiful You - Chuck Palahniuk
Not his best work but an improvement over his last few.

Just finished rereading Rant. Half convinced the book is meant to be read backwards.

phantasmagorovich wrote:I haven't progressed much with Southern Reach pt.2. I think they are not meant to be read one right after the other. The first built up a nice momentum, but pretty slowly. This one doesn't pick up where the first one ended, but it starts another slow build-up. Well done, just like the first, but a little repetitive in feel.
I will try to get to the other side of it and then I'll wait for some time before I pick up pt.3..

I really enjoyed pt 1. Had to fight my way through pt 2. Haven't been able to get past the first couple of chapters of pt 3.

Has anyone read Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses? I need a book to keep me away from the internet sometimes : )

Recommendations for *great* books please?

Yeah, The Satanic Verses is fantastic, highly recommend it. Salman Rushdie is a brilliant writer, I think Midnight's Children is my favourite of his books though I haven't yet read any of them that I haven't enjoyed.

The most recent book I can remember reading that was really great is A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride.

Yeah, Satanic Verses is great. A really good read. Its style reminds me of Manns Magic Mountain, for some reason. Might just be that I read them around the same time, though.

Thanks guys. I have a TON of books on my shelves that I bought used for cheap but never read, so my goal is to read a bunch of them this summer.

For some reason the first time I read the Satanic Verses I couldn't get through it. The second time I tried to read it I finished it in a couple weeks and it became one of my favourite books. Not really sure what happened the first time I tried to read it.

I just finished reading A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It was a fantastic read, I'm excited to pick up the second two in that series.

Reading The Elephant Vanishes now. Very odd book but I'm enjoying it.

Speaking of trying a book and not getting through it the first time... the first time I
tried reading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn I just couldn't get into it. But for whatever
reason the second time I tried to read it I just fell in and everything clicked and
I loved it and I read the entire book really quickly.

"Recommendations for *great* books"?

Hmm. That's totally subjective. Some of my all-time favorites (besides Geek Love) are:

Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (there is an anecdote about Flitcraft in the book, which is more existentialist than The Existentialists)

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (speaking of existential noir, without this book what or who would Camus have ripped off?)

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson MacCullers
Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locusts by Nathaneal West
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
Locus Solus by Raymond Roussell (more surreal than The Surrealists and Dadaists. The text was created by 'rhyming' each word from a sentence then making 'sense' out of those words in a new sentence. Which might sound like it is too highfalutin and theory-derived, but the writing is sharp and lucid, which just heightens the impact of the cavalcade of hallucinatory stuff that unfolds.)

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth
Moby Dick by Herman Melville (that shit is hilarious, and epic, and has beautiful descriptions, and is a pretty brutal look at the self-sabotage resource squandering of the human race, which is perpetually relevant)

aens_wife wrote:Has anyone read Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses?

I've never read it, but isn't there still an open contract out on him from when it was released back in the 80s? Those Muslims sure know how to hold a grudge.

Seance wrote:Locus Solus by Raymond Roussell (more surreal than The Surrealists and Dadaists. The text was created by 'rhyming' each word from a sentence then making 'sense' out of those words in a new sentence. Which might sound like it is too highfalutin and theory-derived, but the writing is sharp and lucid, which just heightens the impact of the cavalcade of hallucinatory stuff that unfolds.)

This is indeed an excellent book and totally looney too!
Have you ever read Georges Perec?


Louise, Satanic Verses is indeed an excellent book! If you've already got that sitting around, don't bother looking for anything else.

phantasmagorovich wrote:

Seance wrote:Locus Solus by Raymond Roussell (more surreal than The Surrealists and Dadaists. The text was created by 'rhyming' each word from a sentence then making 'sense' out of those words in a new sentence. Which might sound like it is too highfalutin and theory-derived, but the writing is sharp and lucid, which just heightens the impact of the cavalcade of hallucinatory stuff that unfolds.)

This is indeed an excellent book and totally looney too!
Have you ever read Georges Perec?

Yeah. I love Raymond Roussell. Hard to find his books in print. But all are pretty great.

I've got, but haven't finished reading A Void and Life: A User's Manual
by George Perec. I bought both books before moving several years ago, and
somehow both books are at the bottom of separate piles of books.
I do hope to make my way down to them soon.

aens_wife wrote:Has anyone read Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses? I need a book to keep me away from the internet sometimes : )

It is fantastic, highly recommended to anyone who thinks "hey, I should read that!" because that's how I got into it. My favoUrite by Rushie is Fury, which, quite literally, changed my life.

Currently reading some crappy collection of rock n' roll ghost stories, it's not terribly well done, but entertaining during the typical morning routine.

Just finished The Case of Charles Dexter Ward again, I haven't read that one for years, but keep watching The Haunted Palace, so I was overdue to revisit that one. Not the best Lovecraft by a longshot, but damn fine toward the end!

I have a Clark Ashton Smith collection I'm about to start, just recently found out about him.

Also I need to read Desert Solitaire, which has been in my "up next" pile for about the last 10 books.

Finally, I keep this one within reach throughout the year for my annual pilgrimage to Death Valley:



It's definitely true that I Love Fuzz but in second place might just be I Love Maps.

Sometimes I like it dry, as long as it's nice and deep.