The Third Policeman is forever on my to-read list, me being a fan of Irish and weird and Joyce. Although smaller and smaller chests doesn't really appeal to me
also reading The Third Policeman by flann o brien. its a lot about bicycles and a guy who keeps making smaller and smaller and smaller chests, and also bicycles. you should get it if youlike Joyce for being really Irish and weird, and also if you like bicycles
i have finished High Rise by j.g. ballard which was, insular community of upper-middle-class professionals slowly retreat from the rest of society to form their own sex-and-violence fuelled psychogeographical state of barbarism... like every other Ballard book then (no for real it is good)
i also read 2 poetry anthologies, well read one and finished another
now i am reading Half Blood Blues by esi edugyan which is supposedly really good because itwas shortlisted for the booker and im not far into it so i cant tell you if the vernacular writing has annoyed me to distraction yet, but if it does not do that then they should have givenher the booker because thats a fucking miracle
planning on getting into umberto eco the name of the rose and rereading some chekhov!
i have not read beowulf yet but seamus heaney is p much cool. he likes bogs. read some of his poetry if you like bogs, and you and seamus heaney can bond thru text over your mutual appreciation of bogs
a Medieval Translation thng i did read was simon armitages translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which i found really cool
poetry completely off topic: everyone should read everything from Daljit Nagra bcause seriously just read this
Look We Have Coming to Dover!
‘So various, so beautiful, so new…’ - Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’
Stowed in the sea to invade the alfresco lash of a diesel-breeze ratcheting speed into the tide, burnt with gobfuls of surf phlegmed by cushy come-and-go tourists prow’d on the cruisers, lording the ministered waves.
Seagull and shoal life vexing their blarnies upon our huddled camouflage past the vast crumble of scummed cliffs, scramming on mulch as thunder unbladders yobbish rain and wind on our escape, hutched in a Bedford van.
Seasons or years we reap inland, unclocked by the national eye or stabs in the back, teemed for breathing sweeps of grass through the whistling asthma of parks, burdened, ennobled – poling sparks across pylon and pylon.
Swarms of us, grafting in the black within shot of the moon’s spotlight, banking on the miracle of sun - span its rainbow, passport us to life. Only then can it be human to hoick ourselves, bare-faced for the clear.
Imagine my love and I, our sundry others, Blair’d in the cash of our beeswax’d cars, our crash clothes, free, we raise our charged glasses over unparasol’d tables East, babbling our lingoes, flecked by the chalk of Britannia!
today i finished reading The Master and Margarita by mikhail bulgakov and i just wanted to let yall know that you should read it and bulgakov is the dude. i especially enjoyed the part when a group of stalinist secret police have a giant shootout with a talking cat.
next i am going to read some italo calvino either invisible cities or if on a winters night a traveller because i have both of those books from the library
"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
today i finished reading The Master and Margarita by mikhail bulgakov and i just wanted to let yall know that you should read it and bulgakov is the dude. i especially enjoyed the part when a group of stalinist secret police have a giant shootout with a talking cat.
YES YES! Begemot is the best. It's like freaking Rocket Raccoon showing up in serious literature.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
The Master and Margarita
Book by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written between 1928 and 1940 but not published until 1967, which is woven around a visit by the Devil to the fervently atheistic Soviet Union.
"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
it was a lovely day i so i went out to the park, and then sat down and read invisible cities all the way through since it is only a little over 100 pages, and its pretty much amazing. and i would especially recommend it if you are a fan of umberto eco because calvino is also italian and likes using historical figures to discuss semiotics.
Read The Fountainhead. My thoughts - the style is often clearly lacking, especially in the beginning (where it looks as if it was written by a high-schooler) and the end (where the characters suddenly start talking in long monologues), the male lead is a sociopath (which for the author is a good thing), the female lead needs therapy and/or getting punched (then again, she'll probably enjoy it), and the book goes to great lengths to describe just why the author's "ideal person" cannot exist in capitalist society (which is amusing considering that the author is an ardent supporter of capitalism).
That being said, I'm glad to have read it, and it does have some points I agree with. Especially about self-respect, and about how doing what other people expect of you to be "successful" does not bring happiness. If I understood that in high school, I probably wouldn't be where I am, professionally (a bad place). Extremely sarcastic descriptions of high society and intelligentsia are also amusing - and, I suspect, still true.
"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
I finished the leatherbound Ficciones I snagged cheap from a used bookstore. It's the only Borges I've read besides Book of Imaginary Beasts. Any suggestions for where to go next with him?
i read recently Dart by alice oswald which... i dont know, it is... a poem? a play for voices? a thing? im not sure. its about a river in Devon. either way it owns so on the small chance you can pick it up in america (lol) do so
If on a winter's night a traveler was good, yeah, I think I enjoyed Invisible Cities more, though. That was a badly-written sentence.
About 1/5 through Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. For someone who's already been through Naked Lunch and Gravity's Rainbow and Rule 34 this does not shock. But as a portrait of a struggling would-be writer, well I can identify with that.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
So I'm reading The Book and the Sword, Jin Yong's first published wuxia novel. English translation, of course. It's a real page-turner and I got really sad when a kid got brained by his angry dad by accident.
What I find interesting is that the protagonist isn't revealed until about half-way through.
"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
I let my to-read pile get huge. I'm supposed to be starting on Livy after reading Greek historians dow to Alexander (sorry, Polybius). Yet I have a pile with Orlando Innamorato, the Brontes, Droll Stories, Count of Monte Cristo, Sherlock Holmes, an Oscar Wilde omnibus, One Hudred Years of Solitude.
Just finished Orlando Innamorato. Now that was amusing. Also, why there is still no anime based on it?! Crazy people, cool and extremely exaggerated fights, almost invincible characters (who know it), weird creatures, and motivations worthy of shonen anime - namely "I want to prove I'm the superior fighter" "I'll never give up" "let's team up and defeat that guy who dares to interrupt our duel" "I want a cool sword and cool horse", every one is hot blooded, Determinator, madly in love, butt monkey or all of the above.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I am reading World War Z.
After reading most of it and re-reading some of The Zombie Survival Guide I have concluded that Max Brooks is not a good author.
I'm almost finished with WWZ and would rate it a 3 out of 5, but it was a 2 for a while there. Issues being he has attempted to make Zombies seem scientifically possible, but falls short on several counts and later handwaves it in WWZ buy suggesting Zombies technically don't make scientific sense; WWZ has rife with political and social commentary, often to the point where the books seems less about zombies and more a commentary on a number of subjects; WWZ is conducted as an interview, which would make sense in theory, but Brooks often has his interviewer ask simple one or two sentence (or even word) questions to have his interviewee go one for paragraph after paragraph.
The last example is typical of pretty much every single character, leading me to believe that despite doing lots of research prior to writing the book, Brooks forgot to research what an actual transcribed interview looks like.
There are a few stories that shine, hence why it was raised from 2 to 3. So, Brooks can write the occasional great short story, but falls short when it comes to the novel. Zombie Survival Guide, for instance, was full of great short stories.
I think my brother put it best when I discussed it with him, basically that Brooks picked a subject where the quality of his writing wasn't incredibly important.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Finished WWZ.
I had more great short stories, but I'd still give it a 3 because of the aforementioned political and social commentary delivered with the subtleness of a brick to the face.
Brooks also should have either attempted to make a fairly comprehensive scientific explanation for zombies or avoided the topic altogether. The attempt to explain Zombies while simultaneously admitting they're scientifically impossible multiple-times in his book undermines his own righting.
Basically he needs to figure out if he wants to eat that cake or have it.
"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
Latest reads:
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray, the fairy tales, Salome, The Importance of Being Earnest)
More of Poe's tales
Appian's Civil Wars
Tacitus's Annals
Next up:
Tacitus's Histories
Latest Purchase:
Churchill's The Second World War (Time-Life illustrated edition of the authorized abridged version).
Comments
dont worry its the other kind of chest
its really surreal and you would like it
i have finished High Rise by j.g. ballard which was, insular community of upper-middle-class professionals slowly retreat from the rest of society to form their own sex-and-violence fuelled psychogeographical state of barbarism... like every other Ballard book then (no for real it is good)
i also read 2 poetry anthologies, well read one and finished another
now i am reading Half Blood Blues by esi edugyan which is supposedly really good because itwas shortlisted for the booker and im not far into it so i cant tell you if the vernacular writing has annoyed me to distraction yet, but if it does not do that then they should have givenher the booker because thats a fucking miracle
planning on getting into umberto eco the name of the rose and rereading some chekhov!
i have not read beowulf yet but seamus heaney is p much cool. he likes bogs. read some of his poetry if you like bogs, and you and seamus heaney can bond thru text over your mutual appreciation of bogs
a Medieval Translation thng i did read was simon armitages translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which i found really cool
poetry completely off topic: everyone should read everything from Daljit Nagra bcause seriously just read this
Look We Have Coming to Dover!
‘So various, so beautiful, so new…’
- Matthew Arnold, ‘Dover Beach’
Stowed in the sea to invade
the alfresco lash of a diesel-breeze
ratcheting speed into the tide, burnt with
gobfuls of surf phlegmed by cushy come-and-go
tourists prow’d on the cruisers, lording the ministered waves.
Seagull and shoal life
vexing their blarnies upon our huddled
camouflage past the vast crumble of scummed
cliffs, scramming on mulch as thunder unbladders
yobbish rain and wind on our escape, hutched in a Bedford van.
Seasons or years we reap
inland, unclocked by the national eye
or stabs in the back, teemed for breathing
sweeps of grass through the whistling asthma of parks,
burdened, ennobled – poling sparks across pylon and pylon.
Swarms of us, grafting in
the black within shot of the moon’s
spotlight, banking on the miracle of sun -
span its rainbow, passport us to life. Only then
can it be human to hoick ourselves, bare-faced for the clear.
Imagine my love and I,
our sundry others, Blair’d in the cash
of our beeswax’d cars, our crash clothes, free,
we raise our charged glasses over unparasol’d tables
East, babbling our lingoes, flecked by the chalk of Britannia!
This does not seem conductive to book reviewing.
☭
B̤̺͍̰͕̺̠̕u҉̖͙̝̮͕̲ͅm̟̼̦̠̹̙p͡s̹͖ ̻T́h̗̫͈̙̩r̮e̴̩̺̖̠̭̜ͅa̛̪̟͍̣͎͖̺d͉̦͠s͕̞͚̲͍ ̲̬̹̤Y̻̤̱o̭͠u̥͉̥̜͡ ̴̥̪D̳̲̳̤o̴͙̘͓̤̟̗͇n̰̗̞̼̳͙͖͢'҉͖t̳͓̣͍̗̰ ͉W̝̳͓̼͜a̗͉̳͖̘̮n͕ͅt͚̟͚ ̸̺T̜̖̖̺͎̱ͅo̭̪̰̼̥̜ ̼͍̟̝R̝̹̮̭ͅͅe̡̗͇a͍̘̤͉͘d̼̜ 
⚢
today i finished reading The Master and Margarita by mikhail bulgakov and i just wanted to let yall know that you should read it and bulgakov is the dude. i especially enjoyed the part when a group of stalinist secret police have a giant shootout with a talking cat.
next i am going to read some italo calvino either invisible cities or if on a winters night a traveller because i have both of those books from the library
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Never finished it though...
Meanwhile, I've been reading The Third Policeman which sunn wolf (I think) also recommended as being pretty waycool, and it is.
ya that was me. on this page in fact
i am glad that you are reading this book *thumbsup*
(Ok, so that's a general...)
it was a lovely day i so i went out to the park, and then sat down and read invisible cities all the way through since it is only a little over 100 pages, and its pretty much amazing. and i would especially recommend it if you are a fan of umberto eco because calvino is also italian and likes using historical figures to discuss semiotics.
though for real its a fucking great book
That being said, I'm glad to have read it, and it does have some points I agree with. Especially about self-respect, and about how doing what other people expect of you to be "successful" does not bring happiness. If I understood that in high school, I probably wouldn't be where I am, professionally (a bad place). Extremely sarcastic descriptions of high society and intelligentsia are also amusing - and, I suspect, still true.
Next up is probably Tropic of Cancer
Failing that, The Aleph.
borges is good/cool
i read recently Dart by alice oswald which... i dont know, it is... a poem? a play for voices? a thing? im not sure. its about a river in Devon. either way it owns so on the small chance you can pick it up in america (lol) do so
right now i am reading the flame of a candle by Gaston Bachelard but thats not a novel, probably the next novel i will read is Pure by Andrew Miller
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
About 1/5 through Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. For someone who's already been through Naked Lunch and Gravity's Rainbow and Rule 34 this does not shock. But as a portrait of a struggling would-be writer, well I can identify with that.
I let my to-read pile get huge. I'm supposed to be starting on Livy after reading Greek historians dow to Alexander (sorry, Polybius). Yet I have a pile with Orlando Innamorato, the Brontes, Droll Stories, Count of Monte Cristo, Sherlock Holmes, an Oscar Wilde omnibus, One Hudred Years of Solitude.
I need help.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Also, fierce riding giraffes
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I've read two stories by him, and I really like his style of horror, but I haven't seen any collections.
Just sayin'
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Latest reads:
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray, the fairy tales, Salome, The Importance of Being Earnest)
More of Poe's tales
Appian's Civil Wars
Tacitus's Annals
Next up:
Tacitus's Histories
Latest Purchase:
Churchill's The Second World War (Time-Life illustrated edition of the authorized abridged version).