Reading a whole bunch of books
I used to read heaps in high school, but stopped during uni cause... well you know, you read a whole lot doing that anyway so no way in hell was i doing that for pleasure as well. But anyway, i've gotten back into writing and subsequently that's gotten me back into reading. been consuming like a fucking crack fiend so here's what i've read since like october last year and also what i'm going to read and you should buy those for me. |
| 1 |  | Shai Hulud
That Within Blood Ill-Tempered
Dune - Frank Herbert
I had seen the Lynch movie and thought "yeah this sucks, but i bet the book's sick af". and to be quite honest with you, I'm not sure about that tbh. Yeah, the enviroment building is detailed in a way that is honestly astonishing, but I had read all this stuff about how Herbert wrote Paul Atreidies as this huge meta-commentary on heroism and tbh I struggled to read any of that into the story. the book doesn't really kick off till like over halfway through, the bulk of the story is spend establishing the incredibly dense geopolitics of the universe and all the important action events only last about a page (paul doesn't even meet fayd-rautha till like the last 10 or so pages of the book and then the fight lasts a couple of paragraphs). also this dude must've hated women idk maybe that's just science fiction blokes from this era in general. |
| 2 |  | Chelsea Wolfe
Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
Not sure why I chose this as my introduction to Woolf, but it was a pretty satisfying read tbh. took a while to get used to her writing style though, and found myself having to read back parts because my adhd ass couldn't focus long enough to follow her gigantic run-on sentences. |
| 3 |  | DJ Spooky
Songs Of A Dead Dreamer
Songs of a Dead Dreamer - Thomas Ligotti
Thanks to Current 93, this is a guy whose stuff i'd been interested in for a while, and also because it sounded like exactly the kind of thing i was trying to write myself. Some of these short stories are definitely better than others, personal standouts were "The Frolic", "Dream of a Manakin", "Masquerade of a Dead Sword", "Dr. Voke and Mr. Veech", "The Sect of the Idiot", The Music of the Moon" and "Vastarien". will be reading more of this guy's stuff |
| 4 |  | Innsmouth
Consumed By Elder Sign
Various - H.P. Lovecraft
I bought myself a big collected edition of all of Lovecraft's stories, cause, like Ligotti, it sounded like exactly the kind of stuff i was trying to write. I have not read everything in this, it's more like a lifetime goal kinda thing. Like "Colour Out of Space" the most so far, didn't like "Call of Cthulhu" or "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" quite so much though. "The Music of Erich Zann" was great, also thought "The Dunwich Horror" was very good. I might make a separate list for the Lovecraft stuff since I've read a shitload of the shorter stories that I really can't be assed mentioning here. Easily the worst one I've read so far was "Polaris", that one fucking sucked. |
| 5 |  | Ryuichi Kawamura
Ningen Shikkaku
No Longer Human - Osamu Dazai
... yeah they uhhh... mm |
| 6 |  | Toto
Dune
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
yeah so my dumbass still went back for more after than, and while this was astronomically more enjoyable a read than the first one, I don't think I've ever read an author treat a character with as much disrespect as Herbert does Alia here. |
| 7 |  | Nirvana
In Utero
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - Patrick Suskind
who knew you could do so much story telling just with smell? |
| 8 |  | Curse of the Golden Vampire
Curse of the Golden Vampire
Skulduggery Pleasant: Resurrection - Derek Landy
any of y'all seen the Jodie Whittaker Doctor Who episodes? cause this is kinda like that |
| 9 |  | The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Who Killed Sgt. Pepper?
The Road to Jonestown - Jeff Guinn
though I wish this took more time to talk specifically about the mindset of the victims, I think this helped me to understand more clearly who this monster preyed on and how exactly he was able not only to do it in the first place, but to then get away with it for more than a decade. and, crucially, helped me get an idea of why the fuck this kind of shit is still happening |
| 10 |  | Prussian Blue
The Path We Chose
When We Cease to Understand the World - Benjamin Labatut
god tier, brilliantly existentially frightening |
| 11 |  | Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
The Firstborn Is Dead
And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave
not sure about that ending there chief but other than that it's as beautiful as I could have ever possibly imagined it would be |
| 12 |  | Iced Earth
Burnt Offerings
The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Dante Alighieri
I would have been very, very lost without reading the notes along with each canto as I went. some parts of this are definitely better than others and the politics of 14th century italy are all but lost on me, but in a way, if you wanna look at it as such, it's probably one of the coolest fantasy stories out there especially in terms of world building |
| 13 |  | Kauan
Sorni Nai
Ice - Anna Kavan
again, Current 93 brought this author to my attention, and again, this sounded like the sort of thing i was trying to write myself. this actually had a whole lot more plot than i was lead to believe and tbh that was its weak point for me, i felt that this was at its strongest when it was jumping seemingly at random between surrealistic dream sequences. |
| 14 |  | Current 93
Sleep Has His House
Sleep Has His House - Anna Kavan
CURRENTLY READING: so yeah obviously this is the C93 connection. Enjoying this far more than Ice so far as this entire thing pretty much is one long series of loosely interconnected surreal dream sequences, or simply vaguely autobiographical images and scenes described as if they were from a dream. |
| 15 |  | BUCK-TICK
Kyokutou I Love You
Shogun - James Clavell
CURRENTLY READING: i've been reading this fucking mammoth of a book on and off for about a year. it's a bucket list goal of mine to read the entire asian saga, but 4 out of the 6 of them are 1200+ pages long. Uhh that being said, this is probably one of the best books I've ever read and it's kinda insane that one person can know so much about a particular topic and then write an old testament sized historical fiction novel about it... and then also write 5 more of them |
| 16 |  | Lift to Experience
The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
on my wishlist or sitting on my bookshelf still atm:
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell(yeah we didn't read this in school)
Ariel - Sylvia Plath (I've read some of the poems from this so far and it's pretty wild)
Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / The sailor who fell from grace from the sea / confessions of a mask - Yukio Mishima
The Hellbound Heart - Clive Barker
William Hope Hodgson (there's some collected editions out that I'm thinking of getting, mostly interested in House on the Borderland, but The Boats of the Glenn Carrig also has my attention)
Annihilation / Authority / Acceptance - Jeff Vandermeer
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Divorcing - Susan Taubes
Nightwood - Djuna Barnes
Asylum Piece - Anna Kavan
Redder Days - Sue Rainsford
Frost in May - Antonia White
The Rings of Saturn - W. G. Sebald
Veronika Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho
The King in Yellow - Robert W. Chambers
Roadside Picnic - Arkady & Boris Strugatsky |
| 17 |  | Sandwell District
Feed-Forward
Edgar Allen Poe (will probs go for a collected works edition)
The Trial - Franz Kafka (again, didn't read this in school)
Nausea - Jean-Paul Satre
The Star Rover - Jack London
Girls Against God - Jenny Hval (the one and only)
The Ice Palace - Tarjei Vesaas
Concrete Island / Vermillion Sands / The Atrocity Exhibition / The Drowned World - J. G. Ballard (sounds like the kind of stuff i'm trying to write)
Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I've read or seen this in various incarnations but never the book itself and I've always wanted to read it)
Sarum - Edward Rutherford |
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