What book(s) are you reading?

[Great Rumbler]

Still reading through The Dirty Pair Strike Again. It's a really short book, but it's going to take me over a year to finish.  :'(

Is that the Adam Warren one? I like his take on the pair better than the original series, most days.

No, what I'm reading is the original light novel by Haruka Takachiho. The writing's straightforward and simple, but it's 80's scifi so you know it's good.

[Eric P]

sweet.  my copy of All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By came in the mail today.

ALL HEADS TURN WHEN THE HUNT GOES BY

(1977)

            In 1942, Clipper Bradwin, a promising young army officer from a wealthy family, plans to marry a socially prominent heiress. The lavish ceremony, which takes place at an exclusive Southern military academy, is disrupted by the mysterious ringing of a silent bell, an apparent earthquake, and the bridegroom's sudden attack of sabre-wielding homicidal mania. Although Clipper, his bride, and his demagogue father are killed, his brother Champ and young mother-in-law Nhora survive. Two years later, Champ returns shattered from the War in the Pacific to Dasharoons, the huge family plantation, accompanied by Jackson Holley, a mysterious English doctor. The tragic events that follow are traced back to unpleasant experiences Jackson and Nhora had while younger at the hands of an obscure African tribe, and a race riot-cum-massacre in which Champ's father was dishonourably involved. Farris weaves a powerful and complicated story, and delivers the best modern treatment of the lamia and voodoo themes in horror literature. The novel reflects the author's interest in Africa, the military, social history and America's power elite, as also examined in his Catacombs (1982), Son of the Endless Night (1985), and Wildwood (1987).

 

No frills: All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By is a unique horror novel; the strongest single work yet produced by the field's most powerful individual voice.

The title countermands the phony melodramatics of drippy gerunds or the exhausted syllabary of horror's titular cliches: dark or blood or night this or that.

"This house was built on the bodies and blood of Africans," notes the half-breed prophet of the resurgent goddess Ai-da Wedo -- a "ravishing serpent woman who waxed and grew powerful as a consequence of É sexual desire." This house is Dasharoons, wellspring of three generations of Bradwins, a sprawling Southern estate still going strong at the close of America's age of slavery. Farris' strongest theme is cultural collision, represented in the collaboration of pedigree that is Little Judge -- half Bradwin, half high priest of ancient African sorcery. Farris' juxtaposition of a partially-sunken Mississippi riverboat with a voodoo temple (secreted in the swamplands that are slowly swallowing the vessel) is the fulcrum image of this complex saga of deadly erotic obsession and racial karma debt repaid.

Far from "feel good" horror that restores order to the world by the final chapter, Farris prefers to concentrate on the evils people wreak upon themselves. The restoration of balance is not always a good or pretty thing, and the ultimately poisonous mingling of disparate cultures in All Heads Turn offers not even temporary respite -- regardless of allegiance, all of the characters are doomed. Apart from being a rare racial horror novel, the fatal magnetism of the Ai-da Wedo and of Nhora Bradwin for Jackson Holley and the cursed Bradwin clan make All Heads Turn the finest modern sexual horror novel yet written.

Most fiction employing Haitian or African magic boils down to elementary vengeance-via-voodoo, or a procedural "how-to" story about little more than its own occult research. The novel's plot is a finely tangled viper's nest of incidents into which Farris has not only deftly braided the voodoo, but dovetailed two fascinating bloodlines united by a common past. The horror elements and the character narrative are inextricably interdependent.

The succinct prose artfully forms instantaneous brain pictures for the reader. Clipper's aborted wedding turns hallucinogenic as the stuffy formalities skew into a surgically dispassionate slaughter. Farris never wallows in artificially inflated detail or masturbatory excess, yet his writing is always unflinching, specific, precise. He is not terrified of good sex between adults, or confused by it, as most of his contemporaries seem to be. The veracity of his erotic passages serves well this book's unusual story, which redefines "love" and presents to us a compelling aberrancy as pure as a genetic mutation. The closing scenes, symmetrically recapitulating the wedding which opens the book, are surreal and hypnotic. The web pulls taut and knots tight. The end is unforgettable, the blackest of fade-outs, a conclusion whose potency does not pale with repeated readings.

Farris claims that he "hated every page" of All Heads Turn while it was in-work, and that "up until the last night [of writing], I had no idea how it was going to end." That night, ironically, preceded his marriage to his second wife, and today he notes the book as his personal favorite among his own novels. "There's nothing that I've seen or heard about that's remotely like it," he says.

Likewise, when Farris is on high-burn, no one can match the skill with which he puts words together. All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By is conclusive proof. Period.

-- David J. Schow

[Eric P]

All writers are grave robbers, but genre fiction writers are the most brazen of all. Of necessity, to write a romance or mystery or horror story means sticking to the narrow confines of a formulaic plot; exhuming stock character types; and, generally, digging up literary turf that's been worked and reworked to the point of exhaustion.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101032788&ft=1&f=1032

my reaction:

 
 
 

[Mandark]

She starts an article by slamming genre fiction and then praising that as a rare exception to the rule?

Really?

[Dickie Dee]

i'm about a quarter of the way through Dan Simmons's The Terror

This was actually gonna be the book I was planning to pick up next.

How is it? I just finished Olympos and was thinking of picking it up. I've only read those + the Hyperions (which blew mah mind), but I really like the idea that he writes in different genres.

[Eric P]

Drood is a giddy scare fest, but to tell you the truth, around page 600 or so, it became a bit wearying, like listening to someone shriek for hours and hours. Maybe that's why I was receptive to turning to tales about calm, controlled vampires in the rainy Northwest; in other words, I finally decided to investigate what all the fuss is about Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Everyone is reading these novels: from all the girls in my daughter's fifth-grade class to most of my college students and their parents. The Twilight series — which is composed of four novels about a 17-year-old human high school student named Bella Swan and her boyfriend, Edward Cullen, who is a vampire — even has been credited, along with the Harry Potter books, by the National Endowment for the Arts for boosting American reading statistics this past year. I've read two of the novels in the series so far and, I confess, I have joined the legions of the bitten and smitten.

Perhaps, madam, you are unqualified to review Genre works because you love that Twilight broke out of the horror genre, but had absolutely no problem with the books inability to do anything new with romance.

[Dickie Dee]

Oh god, why did I click that link and see her present Dan Simmons and mutha-uckin Stephenie Meyer as equal examples of genre defiers. I want to be sick.

[Eric P]

i'm about a quarter of the way through Dan Simmons's The Terror

This was actually gonna be the book I was planning to pick up next.

How is it? I just finished Olympos and was thinking of picking it up. I've only read those + the Hyperions (which blew mah mind), but I really like the idea that he writes in different genres.

i'm only about 700 pages in out of 950, and aside from a few minor quibbles with specific character interactions that don't ring true along with a few expository dialogue moments, like

"...as i was told by babbage"

"charles babbage? the man who made a kind of machine for computing?"

"yes"

it's really well done and very worth reading

[Dickie Dee]

i'm about a quarter of the way through Dan Simmons's The Terror

This was actually gonna be the book I was planning to pick up next.

How is it? I just finished Olympos and was thinking of picking it up. I've only read those + the Hyperions (which blew mah mind), but I really like the idea that he writes in different genres.

i'm only about 700 pages in out of 950, and aside from a few minor quibbles with specific character interactions that don't ring true along with a few expository dialogue moments, like

"...as i was told by babbage"

"charles babbage? the man who made a kind of machine for computing?"

"yes"

it's really well done and very worth reading

I can kinda see that. His shoe-horning of literary discussion/criticism into his hyperion/illium books were mostly successful and enjoyable, but shoe-horned nonetheless. Probably even more enjoyable to an English major rather than an Engineer like myself.

[Eric P]

yeah, considering the origins of those works (the illiad and canterbury tales), I can see that.

There are very few authors who i think can successfully toss that stuff in and keep me enraptured the entire time.

Neal Stephenson is the first one which springs to mind.

[Brehvolution]

I've been reading The Eye Book by Dr. Seuss to my son before bed. I think it's time to switch books since I just point at the pictures and he basically says what the book says.

[aenoble]

Still reading Blood Meridian, which is awesome. Awesome and confusing; I'm constantly looking things up and re-reading passages.

Awesome to hear this is good. I'm starting to read it for my modern lit class on Friday.

god it's good.  you're teacher has good taste.

I would tend to fully agree besides fucking Empire of the Senseless, which has an interesting point but is still nearly incomprehensible and not at all worth reading, IMO.

I have to do a presentation on Kathy Acker and Empire of the Senseless sometime next month. Just started it and it doesn't seem too bad. I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian once I find the time though.

[ch1nchilla]

Still reading Blood Meridian, which is awesome. Awesome and confusing; I'm constantly looking things up and re-reading passages.

Awesome to hear this is good. I'm starting to read it for my modern lit class on Friday.

god it's good.  you're teacher has good taste.

I would tend to fully agree besides fucking Empire of the Senseless, which has an interesting point but is still nearly incomprehensible and not at all worth reading, IMO.

I have to do a presentation on Kathy Acker and Empire of the Senseless sometime next month. Just started it and it doesn't seem too bad. I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian once I find the time though.

How far in are you? Once you get further in it gets pretty fucking awful. I'm about halfway into Blood Meridian, absolutely loving the writing, even through the "boring" parts.

[BlueTsunami]

Someone post some good Post-Apocalyptic Adventure books. I'm looking into The Road.

[Eric P]

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
The Crystal World
The Sheep Look Up
The Drive In, The Drive In 2 - Joe R Lansdale
Alas, Babylon
A Canticle for Leibowitz

[BlueTsunami]

Oh god, I love you both

[Cormacaroni]

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
The Crystal World
The Sheep Look Up
The Drive In, The Drive In 2 - Joe R Lansdale
Alas, Babylon
A Canticle for Leibowitz

No Day of the Triffids?! (by Wyndham)

That scared the bejesus out of my 12 yr old self.

edit: oh, and awesome taste, as ever. Didn't mean to come off as critical in any way 

[ch1nchilla]

Blood Meridian is awesome, but I'm going to have to read something else to distract myself before I go to bed.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Getting into some heavy gunfighting sections. They were scalping indians before, and NOW Mexicans, just for the fuck of it. And they rode on. And the judge scalped 28 Mexicans. And they rode on. Also, the Chihuahua section was pretty funny, IMO.

[close]

I'm going to read more McCarthy after this, the writing is simply beautiful, at least aside from the unbelievable spurts of violence throughout. The lack of much punctuation is also interesting, considering the pervasive use of the phrase "and they rode on" after nearly every situation, but I've been told it's the same with McCarthy's other books, which may or may not deal with similar themes.

[Eric P]

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
The Crystal World
The Sheep Look Up
The Drive In, The Drive In 2 - Joe R Lansdale
Alas, Babylon
A Canticle for Leibowitz

No Day of the Triffids?! (by Wyndham)

That scared the bejesus out of my 12 yr old self.

edit: oh, and awesome taste, as ever. Didn't mean to come off as critical in any way 

to me, triffids was lead character flees to somewhere, listens to either political or philosophical speech flees to hear another speech, flees to hear another speech.  it was the post-apocalyptic political primer version of bad DnD novelizations. 

The Kraken Wakes is a far, far, FAR better book, I think, because it takes the same tack, but blends it in a bit more so that you're not inundated by wall of monologue.

[Eric P]

edit: Lucifer's Hammer is also quite good.  I bought it as a kid because I was impressed with the title (i was metal) but the actual book it self is zomgawesome for the most part.  There are some quibbles, and it does seem like (The Stand - Captain Trips - Evil) + Comet = Lucifer's Hammer at times, but it's well worth reading.

I'm kind of surprised we don't have any great apocalytic fiction from continental jews post WW2.

And also, Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

[Tauntaun]

(i was metal)

Once it's in your blood, it's in for good. 

[Eric P]

(i was metal)

Once it's in your blood, it's in for good. 

this past weekend I did a dramatic reading of the lyrics to the entire Death Album "Scream Bloody Gore"

Regurgitated Guts was a crowd favorite

[Tauntaun]

(i was metal)

Once it's in your blood, it's in for good. 

this past weekend I did a dramatic reading of the lyrics to the entire Death Album "Scream Bloody Gore"

Regurgitated Guts was a crowd favorite

  ..... ahem, laughing isn't brootal unless it's laughing at your burnt enemy while you piss on them.     

spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

[close]

[Eric P]

a friend asked "why are these lyrics like this?"

i replied "they were eighteen year olds in floridia in the 80s"

[Tauntaun]

a friend asked "why are these lyrics like this?"

i replied "they were eighteen year olds in floridia in the 80s"

nuff said.  Fortunately everything from then on were lyrics about real life situations. 

Chuck Schuldiner     :'(

[Eric P]

i need to get the other albums.

if only to worry my roommate.

[Tauntaun]

i need to get the other albums.

if only to worry my roommate.

I could wear my Death shirt and come over and we could all just sit there and I'll stare at him and sip some red wine and say "I like red wine because it looks like blood and no one questions whether it's actually red wine in there or blood."  Then I'll sip and show him a knife.   

[Eric P]

she's australian so she'll be all like "that's not a knife" and then she'll stab you in the face.

[Tauntaun]

she's australian so she'll be all like "that's not a knife" and then she'll stab you in the face.

That's brutal.

[BlueTsunami]

I'm totally taking down the suggestions but I'm also going to pick up The Neverending Story (original written work). I heard the movies diverges heavily from the book itself. Is the book any good (as in it would appeal to an adult too)?

[Eric P]

finally finished the terror

the last 60 pages present such a huge shift in the book and it becomes just absolutely amazing

[Eric P]

currently reading Tim Lucas's Throat Sprockets

[Enl]

Only 60 pages in and so far it's pretty close to the film. The characters in the book are obviously more disturbed than how they are portrayed in the film. The biggest difference is how fucked up Hanak (Eli's go-getter) is and his twisted "love" relationship with Eli. So far it's a good read, though at times it can be a bit awkward, probably due to the translation.

[Joe Molotov]

Just finished World War Z, now I'm reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union

[Madrun Badrun]

Just finished. 



Was alright.  Fell apart in the last 20 pages or so though.  Malek would probably like it. 

[aenoble]

Hey BMB, how's WWZ?

Still reading Blood Meridian, which is awesome. Awesome and confusing; I'm constantly looking things up and re-reading passages.

Awesome to hear this is good. I'm starting to read it for my modern lit class on Friday.

god it's good.  you're teacher has good taste.

I would tend to fully agree besides fucking Empire of the Senseless, which has an interesting point but is still nearly incomprehensible and not at all worth reading, IMO.

I have to do a presentation on Kathy Acker and Empire of the Senseless sometime next month. Just started it and it doesn't seem too bad. I'm looking forward to reading Blood Meridian once I find the time though.

How far in are you? Once you get further in it gets pretty fucking awful. I'm about halfway into Blood Meridian, absolutely loving the writing, even through the "boring" parts.

A little over a hundred pages in now and I agree. I can't wait until this and the presentation I have to do are over.

[Eric P]

I'm doing double duty between Teatro Grottesco and Throat Sprockets.

Throat Sprockets is really rough going because of the dense and disjointed nature of much of its content

Teatro Grottesco is also rough going because of the nature of the content.  Ligotti is amazing, even when he's infantile, like in The Clown Puppet.

[Propagandhim]

Just finished. 

(Image removed from quote.)

Was alright.  Fell apart in the last 20 pages or so though.  Malek would probably like it. 

I read this.  It's a good counterpoint to the Bell Curve..but you can tell he's spreading it thin when he discusses the twin studies.

[Eric P]

Throat Sprockets by Tim Lucas is currently one of the most affecting books I've yet read.

many of its details on obsession are deeply unsettling because i can see myself on the fringes of the behavior discussed.

i'm amazed this book is out of print

[ch1nchilla]

Just started up Watchmen while finishing up Blood Meridian, and reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami on the side as a "relaxation" book.

[Eric P]

i finished reading throat sprockets last night/this morning and was then awake for like another hour just thinking about it.

excellent first novel, but there were a few things i would have changed because they were a little too cute.

one, the name of the automobile he was working on, The Necromancer.  It's a horrid name for a car and the cutesy aspect of it ("neck romancer.  GET IT!?  GET IT!?") kind of took me out of the story each time it came up because it was so obvious.  And the moral organization which arises due to the public nature of the fetish was named STOKER.  I can't recall what i stood for, but it's a fairly laborious twisting of words to get the acronym to work.

I also felt the ending, which incredibly good, committed a cardinal sin of "laying everything out succinctly" with regards to the mystery film while keeping nearly everything else vague in the seemingly apocalyptic  coda.

But seriously, if you're a fan of transgressive novels or psychological horror novels, then i suggest you take a look at this.  You can generally find it for under $15 used through Amazon or ebay.

[Eric P]

but seriously, the book kept me re-reading bits of it to make certain i was grasping what was not being said, because at times it was more important than what WAS being said.

This morning on the train i started a quirky Science Fiction book called Outrageous Fortune, which so far reads like a lesser Hitchhiker's Guide.  The book opens in the future when a man has his house stolen, is pursued by a woman attempting to sell him encyclopedias, and lives in a city which is divided and grouped by musical genres.  he lives in chillout.

i'm only about 30 pages in but i don't know if i'm going to stick with it.  the tone just seems a bit off.  there's no weight to anything yet, the author just seems to be making it up as he goes alone.

[Greatness Gone]

Finally read Animal Farm. Decided that I'm not that into allegorical related anything, really.

[Snuflupagulus]

Anyone attempt 2666 or know anyone that has?

Just started up Watchmen while finishing up Blood Meridian, and reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami on the side as a "relaxation" book.

Enjoying the Murakami book? 

[Eric P]

Ghengis and I are fans of Bolano.  He bought it, but don't know if he's yet read it.

I haven't bought it because I'm cheap and waiting for the trade.

[Snuflupagulus]

Ghengis and I are fans of Bolano.  He bought it, but don't know if he's yet read it.

I haven't bought it because I'm cheap and waiting for the trade.

A hardcover that heavy would dent my chest Asperger's-style.  And yeah, I'm cheap, too.  Still tempting, though.

[Rman]

[Eric P]

article on the popularity of swedish crime fiction

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aOU7tAhVjiMs&refer=home

[BlueTsunami]

I just finished A Canticle for Leibowitz and oh... man. What a powerful ending, the imagery, what it all led too, absolutely amazing. I cried a lil'.

Don't click the spoiler if you plan on reading this at some point

spoiler (click to show/hide)

The euthanasia debate, the final abbot trying his hardest to get the woman to not commit "suicide", his inner dialog when inching towards death, man always striving towards Eden... the 3rd portion of the book was just mind blowing good and insightful. I honsetly dont' think I've ever read a book that ended so strongly or that impacted me that much.

[close]

I'm not well read when it comes to religion in general so this is definitely a book I think I'll enjoy reading again if I ever sit down and read about the origins and beliefs of Catholicism in depth. I know the basics you learn as a child in a family thats semi - religious but I could tell there were more layers that I hadn't picked up.

Thanks again for recommending this book Eric P!

[Lafiel]

Currently reading - Cryptonomicon by neal stephenson - 100 pages in, this might be the hardest stephenson book to read so far. (i've read the diamond age & snow crash), alot of the details about mathematics and crap are totally flying over my head.
Might haft to do some research before i start reading this book again.

[Draft]

Finally finished Infinite Jest.

Fuck David Foster Wallace's dead ass. End your Goddamn novel, scumbag.

[Eric P]

Currently reading - Cryptonomicon by neal stephenson - 100 pages in, this might be the hardest stephenson book to read so far. (i've read the diamond age & snow crash), alot of the details about mathematics and crap are totally flying over my head.
Might haft to do some research before i start reading this book again.

it gets a lot harder in that category.

i used to read that book once a year for like 4 years straight because it was my favorite of the stephenson books.

[Eric P]

I am currently reading a short history called The Ruin of J Robert Oppenheimer, which is about the building of the thermonuclear bomb.  This is a fascinating segment of post-war history and it's a goddamn shame what we did to the men who didn't want to help America build a genocidal weapon.

[Fresh Prince]

Ulysses *smh*

[chronovore]

Just finished Vernor Vinge's "Fast Times at Fairmont High" - lots of typically good Vinge ideas wrapped around YA-accessible text. A quick read. Also reading "A Year in the Linear City" by Paul di Filipo; the shift to the density of text and vocabulary in this has left me floored, but I'm beginning to be hooked.

Also reading "Hard Candy" by Andrew Vacchs. I've enjoyed other Burke books, but the text is coming of dated and posing in this one.

[Don Flamenco]

American Psycho.  The movie follows it amazingly closely, but as usual, the book is better.

Ulysses *smh*

I'd rather stick a hot poker up my ass, than read Ulysses

[Fresh Prince]

American Psycho.  The movie follows it amazingly closely, but as usual, the book is better.

I'd rather stick a hot poker up my ass, than read Ulysses

Apart from length, the other factor is that it's far too clever for it's own good.

[Diunx]

Battle Pope.

[Eric P]

I just finished reading David Peace's FUCK AWESOME Nineteen Seventy-Four, which is about a failed crime reporter's return to the den of corruption which is his home town.  It's not about the mystery, which is almost treated as an afterthought to everything else, but it's rather about personal success and failure and it's taken as a direct parallel to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.  A parallel I didn't get until the book was almost done and then when it clicked it clicked fucking HARD.  This is a great book which was just put out by Vintage / Black Lizard in a new edition.  The second book in the four book "series" (tonal series rather than sequential series) comes out next month.

From the very first page of David Peace's first novel, 1974, it soon becomes clear that something is rotten in the state of Yorkshire: a young girl is missing. The Yorkshire Post's young but disillusioned crime correspondent, Edward Dunford, is assigned to the story, while also coping with the recent death of his father and his return to his native Yorkshire after a brief and unsuccessful stint in Fleet Street. For the jaded Dunford, it's just another story; the only intrigue is whether the girl will be found dead or alive before Christmas--that is, until she is discovered brutally murdered, face down in a ditch with a pair of swan's wings sewn into her back. As Dunford follows the case, he begins to make a series of terrifying connections with a string of child murders, plunging him into a gut-wrenching nightmare of corruption, violence, sadism, blackmail, and sexual obsession--from the upper echelons of local government to the tacky heart of Yorkshire darkness.

As Peace's tale of corruption and conspiracy unravels, it becomes clear that 1974 is as influenced by Orwell's own bleak vision of Britain in 1984 as it is by the wonderfully evoked atmosphere of the mid '70s. The Bay City Rollers, Leeds United, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and Vauxhall Viva's all make an appearance. The novel works at several levels, from the brilliantly unsentimental homecoming of the gifted, alienated northern son to a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of an insular, tribal community. The plot is complex and frenetic, and Peace often neglects loose ends, especially as he builds to an extremely powerful climax. Yet the dialogue is fast, witty, and violent; a must-read for fans of Yorkshire Gothic. --Jerry Brotton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

[Joe Molotov]

I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Pretty awesome book.