Ectier: Books 2 The sequel

Ectier 01.30.24	Im reading Watership Down atm. Its good so far but a bit tough due to the older writing style so have to read a bit slower to soak up every little bit
VlacDrac 01.30.24	Currently rereading 2666.
Ectier 01.30.24	Ooo i havent heard of that
Ectier 01.30.24	Sounds good but its a big book woah
Manatea 01.30.24	I’m reading the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich currently
bludngorevidal 01.30.24	2666 is excellent. I just finished The Power Broker
CugnoBrasso 01.30.24	Lmaooo only 6 comments and somebody's already mentioning Bolano. Currently reading The Savage Detectives.
heck 01.30.24	been reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti
someone 01.30.24	been mulling over Blood Meridian for months now. McCarthy sure does not make it easy to read him. not for any content reason, more just cause he writes like a crackhead on painkillers
Hawks 01.30.24	Currently reading The Hellfire Club by Peter Straub, sick shit.
JohnnyoftheWell 01.30.24	about 150 pages into the Satanic Verses and have picked up a chronic habit of cracking on with an additional 4-8 pages, musing "hurr brilliant chuckle can't wait for the plot to kick off" and putting the boi back down
Ryus 01.30.24	walt whitman as always, as well as an anthony braxton bio which is excellent
porcupinetheater 01.30.24	Really wish I spoke Spanish to read the full 2666, Bolaño's one of the best ever Think I like By Night in Chile even more
VlacDrac 01.30.24	@Ectier it's Roberto Bolaño's magnum opus, definitely not for the faint of heart. The plot centers around femicides in Northern Mexico. However, the book is amazing. Give it a chance of you can.
bellovddd 01.30.24	Currently reading Insomnia by King.... no idea what its about but keen to get back into reading
VlacDrac 01.30.24	"Bolaño's one of the best ever" He is one of the GOAT's for sure.
VlacDrac 01.30.24	I still have to check By Night in Chile, though.
Ectier 01.30.24	As a book nerd i think I will have to at some point
porcupinetheater 01.30.24	"I still have to check By Night in Chile, though." Word, and I'm definitely predisposed to anything in the stream-of-consciousness style, but genuinely think it's incredibly how knife blade precise it is as an exploration of a personal guilt reflecting a national guilt. Read it alongside The Jakarta Method as well, which helped sketch out the global context and the social dynamic at play leading to the Pinochet regime
Trebor. 01.30.24	About to finish Tortilla Flat and Pet Semetary. Am like halfway through the second to last Witcher book
CugnoBrasso 01.30.24	Savage Detectives is my first Bolano, I was wondering whether to start with that or 2666 but I'll read them both eventually so...
Egarran 01.30.24	The Fuller Memorandum by Charles Stross. Had to get this because it said Lovecraftian on the cover, but it also said spy novel. So yeah umm it's like if James Bond was a middle class IT specialist who also knew magic and the universe was infested by cosmic horrors. Pretty weird and very pulpy stuff. But it's prophetic in that it explains why Russia has to do all this crazy shit we see today.
Ectier 01.30.24	Ive also fallen in love with a very specific genre/style story atm
Egarran 01.30.24	I'm not entirely comfortable with you reading Watership Down. You're a fragile soul.
Ectier 01.30.24	I will be safe Eggy, its taking me a bit. Thank you for the concern though
VlacDrac 01.30.24	@CugnoBrasso The Savage Detectives is better in order to start with Bolaño's bibliography. 2666 is almost double in length and the subject matter of the novel can also shock some readers.
InfernalDeity 01.30.24	Fuck I got a couple hundred pages into 2666 and jumped ship. I need to finish it.
VlacDrac 01.31.24	You are in a hell of a ride.
Butkuiss 01.31.24	I’m currently reading Bob Carr’s memoirs (Australian centre-right politician and former foreign minister) and they’re fucking hilarious. He spends more time talking about the gym and his protein goals for the day (as a man in his mid 60s at time of writing) than he does foreign policy.
VlacDrac 01.31.24	Such is the life of every politician.
bellovddd 01.31.24	BOB CARR lol
Butkuiss 01.31.24	Bob Hawke didn’t mention the gym OR protein once!
CugnoBrasso 01.31.24	@Vlac I'm not easly shockable usually, but yahhp its length definitely played a role. Really liking it so far!
VlacDrac 01.31.24	@CugnoBrasso Glad to know. Enjoy. One of my favorite books.
Ectier 01.31.24	Bob Hawke would be too busy at the pub
Ectier 02.02.24	JESUS FUCKING CHRIST MY HEARTS BREAKING this fucking book.
dedex 02.02.24	slowly reading Capital and Ideology, quite digestible honestly (if you accept that it's gonna take you at least one year to read it)
MiloRuggles 02.02.24	RIP the old books thread, I'll miss brainstorming my comment during the lengthy scroll required to access ye olde boxe Recently finished Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (great!), The Outsider by Albert Camus (very good!), and I'm about 120 pages into The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (very quickly shaping up to be a top 10 for me!). Go books! Bought a copy of The Overstory by Richard Powers today because I heard somewhere that it goes hard on science - has anyone here read it and what's your no-spoiler take?
MiloRuggles 02.02.24	Oh, and apologies to whoever outed me on being ignorant of Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy in the last thread — you're probably right, I haven't read it. I have the first two books in the trilogy and I'm waiting to get my hands on the third before I start it. Although my accursed (and lovely) compatriot Jas sprinkled the last thread with equinian spoilers on the trio and I'm more than a lil devastated
Ectier 02.02.24	Its not often i have to stop reading due to content of a book
Egarran 02.02.24	I fucking warned you.
Ectier 02.02.24	You did, the books amazing but holy fuck that section was dark as all hell
Ectier 02.02.24	Im keen to finish it still
Egarran 02.02.24	Today you have become a man.
Lichtbringer 02.02.24	i'm like 3/4 of the way through in don quixote. but i've put the book down for a while and started reading the first dune in the meantime. no idea what i'm doing tbh
Ectier 02.05.24	Dune is a tough read or it was for me. Every little detail is important and combine that with the older writing style if not familiar or used or to it, can be a tough read
Winesburgohio 02.05.24	about to crack into Ratner's Star, which is apparently DeLillo at his most Pynchon-influenced so i'm bloody frothing
Lichtbringer 02.05.24	"Dune is a tough read or it was for me. Every little detail is important and combine that with the older writing style if not familiar or used or to it, can be a tough read" i'm enjoying it a fair bit and not finding it tough. i've had problems with a bunch of books in the past that i had to put down because the style was too dense or whatever, but this isn't one of them. but i guess i'll see down the line all the things i've failed to pick up on, lol
porcupinetheater 02.05.24	Just started reading Kate Briggs' The Long Form, one of the cleverest ways I've seen yet of weaving essay into fiction alongside a really compelling stream of consciousness approach to a woman trying to get her newborn baby to sleep Brilliant so far and v excited to see where it burrows
Ryus 02.05.24	that sounds cool porc ill add it to my list nyrb stays winning
theBoneyKing 02.05.24	Yeah tbh I don't think the first Dune is that hard by the standards of most modern sci fi/fantasy.
Ectier 02.05.24	It may just be me and my inexperience in scifi stuff as well
Lichtbringer 02.05.24	when i read "a fire upon the deep" i remember finding it frustrating to the point of thinking the author took the whole "reader has to figure things out for himself"-approach way too far... boney, do you have some sci fi recs?
Winesburgohio 02.05.24	@porc that sounds phenomenal omg
Ectier 02.06.24	I finished Water ship down and it was fantastic. Im going to read something a bit lighter and junk foody next
porcupinetheater 02.06.24	“nyrb stays winning” Hell yeah it do This one’s technically a Dorothea publication but nyrb is distributing their stuff now, Dorothea didn’t have the space available to handle their own distribution anymore iirc Fucking incredible boutique label, though, they’ve got some really cool, weird short story collections, the 4 Ravicka books exploring a quasi-quantumly delocating city and the people who live there from different angles for each book and they’re all these odd experimental gems, Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead which does sn incredible job balancing whimsical almost fairy tale like impulses and a detached tone with some really harrowing descriptions of a suicide plague and familial abuse God such an amazing label They also put out The Wallcreeper which sucks but can’t win ‘em all
kalkwiese 02.07.24	Didn't know there was a new one Subscribed Doing Midnight's Children right now, by Salman Rushdie. That man can craft some tasty sentences
Mort. 02.08.24	so far this year ive read On the beach by Nevil Shute Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman Iron Council by China Mieville Concrete Island by JG Ballard Mad Girl by Bryony Gordon
Mort. 02.08.24	currently reading In the name of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch Robert Graves collected greek myths Notes from the underground by dostoyevsky
Ectier 02.21.24	Ive been reading Rouge by Mona Awad and its been boring as shit and a bit of a let down honestly
CugnoBrasso 02.21.24	I probably liked Notes from the Underground more than Crime and Punishment.
Anthracks 02.25.24	hi new thread. i agree notes from underground is top 3 dostoevsky along with brothers karamazov and the double. my reading in february so far was: the mad ship by robin hobb house of light by mary oliver tar baby by toni morrison go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin currently reading planet of the apes by pierre boulle
porcupinetheater 02.25.24	Just finished The Long Form (great), that book spent enough time doing literary analysis on Tom Jones figured it's past due to read that one now Excellent, prob my fave 18th Century novel I've read so far, the humor of it all holds up incredibly
Anthracks 02.29.24	blasted through planet of the apes by pierre boulle the years by annie ernaux glory by vladimir nabokov me talk pretty one day by david sedaris king richard the second by william shakespeare the cloven viscount by italo calvino ernaux was the highlight. glory is probably the worst nabokov novel. now taking my time with ship of destiny by robin hobb (liveship book 3)
CugnoBrasso 02.29.24	Cloven Viscount is such a fun read
Anthracks 03.01.24	yes it was a good time. excited for the rest of the "trilogy"
Egarran 03.02.24	Paul Anderson - Tau Zero aka The Spaceship That Couldn't Slow Down. Classic hard sci-fi from 1970 that still holds up. Good ideas, meh characters.
Anthracks 03.03.24	randomly found the most delicious illustrated hardcover edition of house of the dead by fyodor dostoevsky from the 80s at the book shop from The Holdovers. also finally found a decent edition of the confidence man by herman melville there (which came in a set with 4 other melville works). will be going back
Ectier 03.19.24	Im reading My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Its been great
Jash 03.19.24	Just did My Year of Rest and Relaxation in one day, great stuff. Started Cutting for Stone now
kalkwiese 03.19.24	It's nice you're all enthusiastic about reading
Ectier 03.19.24	Books are wonderful
kalkwiese 03.19.24	Lol, 3/4 of my comment are missing Yes, books are great! I just finished A Dance With Dragons and I loved it, which means I am in the waiting camp now noooooo I regret nothing though, this series was great and I guess I get what High Fantasy is all about much better now Edit: Also doing The Metamorphosis by Kafka atm and it's surprisingly funny, while also depressing
Anthracks 03.20.24	read dune messiah by frank herbert and now reading the magic mountain by thomas mann
Ryus 03.20.24	just started middlemarch. loving it already
artificialbox 03.20.24	Reading Hyperion right now. I preemptively bought the whole series (including Endymion) and thankfully I’m really loving it. Hope the rest of the books are as good as this first one.
Egarran 03.20.24	Oh ho ho don't want to hype the sequel too much but it's yeah it's mm hmm really good.
artificialbox 03.20.24	fock yeah
Lichtbringer 03.20.24	i'm reading e's (eels frontman) autobiography "things the grandchildren should know about". dude's lived a pretty crazy life it appears
Sharenge 03.20.24	(re)watching True Detective season 3 atm and thinking about heading over to the emporium in the near future see if I can snag myself a copy of Hearts in Atlantis
Anthracks 03.31.24	finished the magic mountain by thomas mann (also interjected with the immortal thor volume 1, murakami manga stories volume 1, and mr. rabbit's symphony of nature and other tails by charles van sandwyck) next up is the waves by virginia woolf
Anthracks 05.02.24	why nobody reading out here? the waves will probably end up being my favorite book i read this year. holy shit. other april reads: murakami manga stories, volume 2 until august by gabriel garcia marquez supercommunicators by some business schmuck the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt (essential) the left hand of darkness by ursula k le guin an enemy of the people by henrik ibsen (saw the broadway show with jeremy strong, michael imperioli, and victoria pedretti after) do what they say or else by annie ernaux the secret garden by frances hodgson burnett requiem for a nun by william faulkner (his only published play which somehow has a ten-page stream of consciousness rant about the birth of existence in the middle)
Ryus 05.02.24	just finished middlemarch and it lived up to the expectations. beautiful book now back to caro's LBJ bio--just started the second one
Butkuiss 05.02.24	Okay now I’m reading 2312. I have a very big soft spot for hard sci fi without aliens and Kim Stanley Robinson really scratches that itch. Love the man!!
Butkuiss 05.02.24	I spent the last month trying to pound through Lacan’s Ecritis; before that I was on an AusPol kick I presume nobody in this thread will care about. I did read a collection of cultural theory and feminist essays on Madonna in March that I enjoyed though (The Madonna Connection, Schwichtenberg et al) — even if it was a bit dated.
Egarran 05.02.24	I'm working my way through A Brief History Of Living Forever by Jaroslav Kalfar, a Czech near-future novel about family and longevity but halfway he referenced Karel Capek's War On The Newts from 1936 - which I once started reading but never finished. So I returned to that one, it's a kind of Czech cultural treasure and it's very weird and dense but also very amusing.
artificialbox 05.02.24	I’m about half way thru Fall of Hyperion rn and holy shit this is insane. Kinda glad the first book got all the worldbuilding and character introductions out of the way because this one is just pure thriller. It rocks.
Egarran 05.02.24	YES such a classic.
Butkuiss 05.02.24	I might have to give Hyperion a geez — I kind of stay away from softer sci fi as a general rule but I keep hearing good things about it.
artificialbox 05.03.24	Do it! It's pretty far out with a lot of the ideas it brings to the table. Definitely one of the more unique stories I've read. Some of the first book borders a bit too much on being a full blown space opera for me, but the second book is a lot more gritty and intense so far so it was worth it.
Hawks 05.03.24	I'm just about done with Dreamcatcher atm. Idk what I'm going for next tbh I have a few options.
Get Low 05.03.24	I recently finished both Norwegian Wood and 1Q84. I especially enjoy Murakami's in-depth descriptions of women's bodies.
kalkwiese 05.03.24	That's so great to hear, because that's basically Murakami's only strength as a writer :)
Butkuiss 05.03.24	Muracummies
Anthracks 05.03.24	it's so weird how much people enjoy bashing murakami lol. he'll always be one of my favorites
kalkwiese 05.03.24	Hehehe Just kidding. Even though I think 1Q84 starts strong and turns into a giant disappointment, Tazaki is nice but kinda boring and Norwegian Wood is just YA with lots of sex - I kinda enjoyed them all
Get Low 05.03.24	Yeah the novels were great. He is not a talented short story writer though. I had read Men Without Women awhile ago and almost completely wrote him off after that.
CugnoBrasso 05.03.24	There's a lot to love in Murakami but also a lot that gets on my nerves, like his attitude to sex. Currently reading a lot of political theory because I want to become radicalized 😍
Anthracks 05.04.24	Murakami short stories are great, but you gotta start with the older ones. He does a really good job of being very subtle like carver, where typically you feel like the story is just beginning when it’s really ending (a quality that makes a great short story in my opinion). There’s a reason several of them have been adapted into very successful and much longer movies
Anthracks 05.28.24	my may reads: botchan by natsume soseki territory of light by yuko tsushima the memory police by yoko ogawa the ruined map by kobo abe of ghosts and goblins by lafcadio hearn coin locker babies by ryu murakami the collection fictions of jorge luis borges the merchant of venice by william shakespeare i didn't love love any of them but my two favs were prob memory police and borges
Egarran 05.28.24	"Though justice be thy plea, consider this: That in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation."
Mort. 05.28.24	in the last few months ive read Martin Bunton - a very short introduction to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict Jon Ronson - them:adventures with extremists Philip K Dick - the man in the high castle Stewart Lee - How i escaped my certain fate: the life and deaths of a standup comedian China Mieville - embassytown Orwell - down and out in paris and london Jon Ronson - so youve been publicly shamed currently reading Boethius - consolation of philosophy (first philosophy book ive read in a year since i stopped my plato studies. would like to go back to that once work calms down) David foster wallace - brief interviews with hideous men (having conflicted reactions to this, its my first time reading David foster wallace, and while i love some of the short stories i really despise the others and find them really tedious) Peter ackroyd - london under (book about the history of london, or more accurately the history of whats under london)
Egarran 05.28.24	Embassytown worst China. Another bad book I just read was A Brief History Of Living Forever by Jaroslav Kalfar, stay away from this one. But it did make me finish War with the Newts by Karel Čapek, a true Classic, just overwhelming. It's from 1936 and basically predicts today, but with intelligent newts.
Mort. 05.28.24	yeah i did not enjoy Embassytown as much as i wanted to. I thought it started off with an interesting concept and a setting that rivaled Ursula K Le Guin's best, and then squandered it all with a pretty dull story. Mieville's desire to bridge the gap between high and lowbrow is admirable and well executed in some of his other novels but as Embassytown devolved into a sort of political thriller I found myself dissapointed and bored. I still think King Rat is worse tho. thats an actually bad book. Embassytown was just middling. I know of Capek due to the play he wrote with his brother thats always sounded interesting. I will add war with the newts to my to reads.
FowlKrietzsche 05.28.24	@mort you ever read A Confederacy of Dunces? Been reading Dune over the last month, almost done with Children of Dune and my sanity is slipping
artificialbox 05.28.24	Finished The Fall of Hyperion btw, holy shit that book was incredible. Kind of a sloppy ending but god damn. Started reading Endymion right away and so far it's a fun read despite having a far weaker plot and a main character with zero depth.
Mort. 05.28.24	'@mort you ever read A Confederacy of Dunces?' nope, heard its good, but cant say i know much more about it than that
FowlKrietzsche 05.28.24	The main character has a lunatic hard-on for Boethius and quotes The Consolation of Philosophy incessantly. As a phil undergrad I was greatly entertained throuthout, it does a really good job of capturing the megalomania of an idiot
Egarran 05.29.24	Good to hear you liked Fall Art, definitely the peak of Simmons' career.
artificialbox 06.06.24	Well I’m about 3/4 of the way through Endymion right now and I’m having a blast with it. It doesn’t reach the same scope as Fall of Hyperion, but Simmons did such a good job at evolving his universe over a 274 year gap, and the interplanetary manhunt part of the story is just really fun. Getting to revisit all these planets and see how they’ve changed since “The Fall” is really satisfying.
Anthracks 07.01.24	June was my least productive reading month in over three years only read: the count of monte cristo by alexandre dumas gitanjali by rabindranath tagore a man's place by annie ernaux
Anthracks 08.07.24	july reads: thomas jefferson: the art of power by jon meacham the call of the wild by jack london walden, or, life in the woods by henry david thoreau stalin: the court of the red tsar by simon sebag montefiore the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck the jefferson biography was my favorite i just love reading about early america and how impossible it all was
artificialbox 08.07.24	lat books I read were Burning Chrome by Gibson, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin and now I’m reading Contact by Carl Sagan which is extremely good so far. Deciding on either Ender’s Game or Old Man’s War next.
DocSportello 10.15.24	https://imgur.com/a/YDc8eUA from A Rap on Race, a dialogue between anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer James Baldwin, 1971
gabba 10.15.24	Recent ones: Michel Houellebecq - The Map and the Territory (re-read, still awesome) Joël Dicker - The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (ok for the beach, nothing more) Bret Easton Ellis - The Shards (most of it enjoyable) Paul Auster - Baumgartner (midway through, pretty good so far)
arthropod 10.15.24	Last week: Claudia Salazar Jiménez - Blood of the Dawn Set during the Peruvian Internal Conflict. Never seen such amount of violence in a single book. A read as painful as great.
Egarran 10.15.24	>https://imgur.com/a/YDc8eUA Damn, that was good.
arthropod 10.15.24	Seems so. What's the title?