^^^ One of Dick's best, and the last book completed before his mystical experience.
^^^ One of Dick's best, and the last book completed before his mystical experience.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Lord of all the Dead, by the great contemporary Spanish writer, Javier Cercas.
Big Sur by Jack Kerouac
Currently reading "Made Men - The Story Of Goodfellas". This book is all about the making of the movie. It is very interesting so far if you are a fan of the film.
A Wealth Of Pigeons A cartoon collection by Harry Bliss and Steve Martin
Saw a feature about it on CBS Sunday Morning a couple of weeks ago.
My wife picked it out for me as a birthday present.
Funny stuff.
I have loved cartoon humor for decades. I have a bunch of collections of various strips, editorial cartoons and the like.
Never really got into graphic novels or manga. Not very high brow, but I love to laugh.
On a slight tangent of humor/satire/political books, any love for Tom Sharpe? Blott on the Landscape, the Wilt series and the anti apartheid South Africa books Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure.
Loved that stuff very much at one time.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
I am re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for about the fourth time. I always get something from it. Sure, it's of its time (early 1970s and that era's preoccupation with technology), a bit self-righteous in parts and the middle bit (when Pirsig gets deeply into the philosophical narrative) is beyond me, but on either side of that the book is great. Pirsig builds up suspense in the early sections really well, too, for what is essentially a book on ‘a meditation on how to live better’ (taken from its back-cover blurb).
We walked arm in arm with madness, and every little breeze whispered of the secret love we had for our disease (P. Blegvad)
Yes I loved them all back in the day, I probably read the whole rip series in the 80’s, they cheered up many a commute. I wonder how they would stand up now, but I recall laugh out loud moments when reading Wilt on a packed train. I remember the BBC did a version of Porterhouse Blue that was pretty good.
Sandalwood Death by Mo Yan
About half-way through the VanderMeers' Big Book of Classic Fantasy. Like its predecessors (The Weird and BB of Science Fiction) it is truly humongous, 808 large, two-columns-in-not-very-big-type, pages of goodness. They draw the line between "Classic" and "Modern" fantasy (the BB of Modern Fantasy is on my Christmas list) at JRR Tolkien. This has stories by the usual subjects (Tolkien, Leiber, Machen, Nesbit, Eddison...), but also by world figures like Mary Shelley, Wilde, Kafka, Nabokov, and Tolstoi, plus lots of stuff I've never heard of, including lots of non-Anglophone stuff, some of it translated here for the first time. Awesome.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
^^ "Hoard of the Gibbelins"
Oh, and these book are arranged (approximately) chronologically, so you get some sense of genre development.
Impera littera designata delenda est.
Quote Originally Posted by interbellum View Post
Started reading Utopia Avenue. Love it already. Rick Wakeman on page 1? Yes! (Maybe because of this the fans of that group are interested too. )
I've almost reached the final chapters. Love it.
The only novel by Mitchell I have read (many years ago) is his first one (Ghostwritten), but can't remember if there are characters returning.
Should watch Cloud Atlas again maybe?
Anyway the Dutch publisher a couple of reprints of older titles including The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet; that's the one I bought, so I'm looking forward to read some more....
Currently reading Kerry Livgren's (Kansas) most recent book "Miracles Out Of Somewhere". It is a pretty good collection of stories from throughout his life.
American minimal music by Wim Mertens
Interesting book, though a bit on the thin side.
Confusing, cause it should be minimal
The only Amazon-review though is minimal too: "Great Book".
Nice though to see that Mertens has written it, a man from the inside.
I have another book on the scene: Minimalsists by K. Robert Schwartz.
He is just about one of my favourite authors. Every story can be read independently, but if you are up for the ride, they all have characters that intertwine with other books, it makes for a fun exploration. Some books are better than other though, and my favourites are Cloud Atlas and 1000 Autumns. I recently reread Ghostwritten and was amazed how much of the future series had been laid down in those pages.
With Corbie on my mind, having been mentioned in the MIA thread - I'm reading Chris Priest's new novel, The Evidence, which is a welcome return to the Dream Archipelago.
John Fogerty- Fortunate Son. Fun reading about his El Cerrito experiences, a few blocks from my house.
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