of all the predictions the book made, I wonder how no one seemed to catch on to the idea that you can apparently impose suspended animation to someone through hypnosis
i thought that was just a thing poe made up, not an actual phenomenon. cooooooool
i have enough time to read for pleasure now so i am reading Iain Sinclair 'London orbital'
it would be a very easy book to criticise or take the piss out of but i am loving it, psychogeography ftw
also one of those books which you just won't quite get if you have never lived in London, and in fact i suspect you won't quite get it if you weren't born there too
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Recently read:
All of Plutarch's Lives
Edgar Rice Burroughs's first three Mars novels, first two Pellucidar novels, and reread the first two Tarzan novels.
Gerhard Weinberg'sA World at Arms: A Global History of World War II.
Every Euripides tragedy I couldn't remember having read before.
Currently trying to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, recommended by Beholderess. I don't get, though, why novels have to be 800+ pages unless they're trying to cover a story of the scope of War and Peace.
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
Now I'm rereading Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great. Oh my goodness, it's a shame that no publisher hired the late Frank Frazetta to illustrate an edition of this. Tamburlaine's sons assure him that they'd build bridges of carcasses suspended by Turk bones or swim in chin-deep blood to follow in his footsteps, right after Callipene, son of the defeated emperor Tamburlaine used as a footstool, is lured to escape by visions of white slave girls serenading him with lyres while black ones draw his coach. WTF, Marlowe?
"It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
... yeah. It is like an exploitation film plot in the form of first-rate iambic pentameter rather than a screenplay.
Note though that Elizabethan stereotypes were different. Religion and geography are treated as much bigger deals than race or ethnicity. Tamburlaine and Bajazeth are both of Turkic descent, but Tam is a barbarian off the steppe while the ruler of Turkey differs from the Hungarian king only in religion.
Just bought The Canterbury Tales. Read the prologue, and the Prioress's tale. Then realized that wasn't the best tale to start out with, as the prioress is quite a racist bitch.
Galen Strawson's Selves: An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics is a wonderful book so far.
It's enjoyable written, clear with a few rhetorical flourishes here and there, fairly rigorous despite being very accessible, and Strawson's conclusions on many topics are both strange and well-argued.
Depending on how deep it goes, I might have to recommend it to people as an accessible philosophy book.
You guys! New Ligotti! It's called The Spectral Link and it's two novelettes and I want it so badly now...
Seriously, the man stopped writing for ten years and now almost a hundred pages of new stuff. I am just so, so, so happy! Maybe nobody else here cares, but it's like Christmas for me now.
Deus Irae strikes me as half of a pair, with another Philip K Dick novel, Dr Bloodmoney, or, How We Got Along After the Bomb, being the other half. Both novels share a bunch of elements, but run in very different directions with them. Both involve society slowly, slowly rebuilding in the aftermath of an apocalyptic war. Both feature an armless, limbless man as a major character: in Bloodmoney, he grows more powerful and villainous with time, but in Irae he's a protagonist and a decent fellow. Both feature a war scientist with literally godlike powers who plays a major role in the apocalypse: in Bloodmoney, he's ashamed and terrified of what he's done, and doesn't seem to have any control over his reality-warping, but in Irae, he hates humanity and is (rightly) regarded as a God of evil.
Dick frequently reuses ideas in his novels that he tested out in his short stories, and that's no exception here. In this case, killer supercomputer The Great C (from the short story of the same name) reappears to terrorize the post-apocalypse. I really did not expect that crossover to happen. While the original short story had a depressing end, her appearance (she's a female supercomputer now, even though she was male or neuter in the short story) in this novel puts something of a hopeful spin. She's clearly feeling the effects of age and lack of maintenance; her days are numbered.
Also, it's rather funny that, at two different points, the plot gets weird, even by the setting's already-weird standards. The protagonists suddenly find help from fairy-tale style plot twists, impossibly contrived coincidences, and a ludicrously competent ally who shows up from nowhere. Except all of these turn out to be the effects of divine (well, demi-urge at least) intervention, and they just serve to screw with the protagonists in the long run.
Just finished G.K. Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross. I went into this one completely unspoiled, and now I wish I could have gone into The Man Who Was Thursday similarly unspoiled. Because this one gets just as weird as Thursday did, and without huge portions of the narrative turning out to be just a dream—the effect is very interesting.
There's some very amusing bait-and-switch at work here. Like how an early event in the plot seems to have nothing to do with anything, but it winds up foreshadowing the last act. And there's this motif of MacIan and Turnbull thinking they've escaped the law's reach, only to rudely discover that they're still in the machine's grasp. Which, I guess, is more subtle foreshadowing that they may be more right than the world around them, but their great duel is still wrong. And Dr. Lucifer initially seemed to be an uncharitable caricature of atheism, but he winds up as something else entirely.
I could have done without that racist aside about "good Jews" and "bad Jews", though.
I finally got around to reading that double copy of Heart of Darkness/"The Secret Sharer" ("Sharer" is first ) one of my high school teachers gave me, and I really like Joseph Conrad's prose style, but there is seriously nothing happening here of any interest at all
it felt murky and oppressive and i was sure there was a significance to events that i was missing, but i couldn't understand what was going on and it bored and frustrated me
Apparently Ligotti is very fond of Conrad, and his prose style and general vibe is very much up my alley, but I still have yet to actually read Heart Of Darkness.
the house on the borderland is a good addition to the legion of Fiction That Inspired Lovecraft Or Whatever That Isn't Racist, Unless Maybe I'm Missing Something About The Irish Villagers
Comments
(The other Jane)
it would be a very easy book to criticise or take the piss out of but i am loving it, psychogeography ftw
also one of those books which you just won't quite get if you have never lived in London, and in fact i suspect you won't quite get it if you weren't born there too
The Miller's Tale is fun.
the cattle raid was pretty intense
It's enjoyable written, clear with a few rhetorical flourishes here and there, fairly rigorous despite being very accessible, and Strawson's conclusions on many topics are both strange and well-argued.
Depending on how deep it goes, I might have to recommend it to people as an accessible philosophy book.
Dick frequently reuses ideas in his novels that he tested out in his short stories, and that's no exception here. In this case, killer supercomputer The Great C (from the short story of the same name) reappears to terrorize the post-apocalypse. I really did not expect that crossover to happen. While the original short story had a depressing end, her appearance (she's a female supercomputer now, even though she was male or neuter in the short story) in this novel puts something of a hopeful spin. She's clearly feeling the effects of age and lack of maintenance; her days are numbered.
Also, it's rather funny that, at two different points, the plot gets weird, even by the setting's already-weird standards. The protagonists suddenly find help from fairy-tale style plot twists, impossibly contrived coincidences, and a ludicrously competent ally who shows up from nowhere. Except all of these turn out to be the effects of divine (well, demi-urge at least) intervention, and they just serve to screw with the protagonists in the long run.
There's some very amusing bait-and-switch at work here. Like how an early event in the plot seems to have nothing to do with anything, but it winds up foreshadowing the last act. And there's this motif of MacIan and Turnbull thinking they've escaped the law's reach, only to rudely discover that they're still in the machine's grasp. Which, I guess, is more subtle foreshadowing that they may be more right than the world around them, but their great duel is still wrong. And Dr. Lucifer initially seemed to be an uncharitable caricature of atheism, but he winds up as something else entirely.
I could have done without that racist aside about "good Jews" and "bad Jews", though.
it felt murky and oppressive and i was sure there was a significance to events that i was missing, but i couldn't understand what was going on and it bored and frustrated me
it took me several attempts, but i just couldn't get it
^ will try that, thanks
maybe I'll add it to the other dozen books I have on my shelf waiting to be read
Imi's chances improved +100
i likd how nobody took "mania" seriously