ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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I've been reading Consider Phlebas, which is a decent enough adventure yarn, but isn't really blowing my mind. I should've tackled these culture books in order, but before I even knew they were a series I'd read The Player of Games, and it's pretty clear that Consider is the work of a writer not entirely settled into his own style. Some of the prose is a bit clunky, and info on umbrella topics like what is the culture, how did it come to be, how did the war start etc. is often delivered in long, rambling narrative passages that I find difficult to digest, particularly when I compare it to how it was relayed in Player, where it was woven right into the story, a niggling thread inevitably to be picked at.

 

Still good, like. 

 

Not that everyone has the time, but if you're going to read any of the Culture books, you should try to read the first three. Consider Phlebas is big and rambling and honestly in need of another editorial pass, but at the same time is crazy and grand and big-hearted in a way that only Banks could be. Player of Games is so much more smart and collected, but also a little unambitious and tight in its focus. And then Use of Weapons is beautiful, one of the best books I've read and the height of the Culture series. I can't imagine experiencing them any other way, especially how someone might read Surface Detail or The Hydrogen Sonata and work backwards.

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I ended up finishing Hard-Boiled Wonderland the other day, and my opinion didn't change much/got worse. There was a bit in the end I found somewhat interesting but overall bounced off the book pretty hard. I have very little desire to read anything else by Murakami.

Haha, i had the exact same experience with Kafka by the shore.

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Haha, i had the exact same experience with Kafka by the shore.

I read it for a book club I'm in with a few friends and they all really liked it, and I really just feel like I'm in an Emperor's New Clothes situation. The representation of women was so bad/overtly sexist/gross, protagonist obsessed with his manhood and constantly talks about his problems getting an erection....And I really didn't understand what the novel was trying to say in the end.

 

I've gone on too much about a book I don't really like, I just find the general positive way in which other people talk about the novel baffling.

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I ended up finishing Hard-Boiled Wonderland the other day, and my opinion didn't change much/got worse.  There was a bit in the end I found somewhat interesting but overall bounced off the book pretty hard. I have very little desire to read anything else by Murakami.

 

 

Haha, i had the exact same experience with Kafka by the shore.

 

And I with A Wild Sheep Chase. Weird.

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I also had the same experience with A Wild Sheep Chase. It was a book that destroyed the book club I was in at the time.

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I've been reading M.R. James' ghost stories lately on the bus. They're all pretty cliche and predictable by today's standards (educated man finds ancient object, is punished by the ghost or demon or whatever that's connected to the object) but they're still fun and pretty effective. I was not digging his first story, "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book", but then towards the end there was a moment that legitimately freaked me out in a way old horror fiction rarely does. I like the way he makes all of England seem like a giant graveyard, like any walk in the country could end with you stumbling upon cursed artifacts from the twelfth century.

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M.R. James is dead good. Have you ever seen the 1957 film Night of the Demon, based on Casting the Runes? It's got some really cheesy effects in parts which haven't aged well, but it's a fast-paced and well-written spooky story. Also, Kate Bush sampled a bit of it for Hounds of Love, so that's a massive thumbs up from me.

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I've been reading M.R. James' ghost stories lately on the bus. They're all pretty cliche and predictable by today's standards (educated man finds ancient object, is punished by the ghost or demon or whatever that's connected to the object) but they're still fun and pretty effective. I was not digging his first story, "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book", but then towards the end there was a moment that legitimately freaked me out in a way old horror fiction rarely does. I like the way he makes all of England seem like a giant graveyard, like any walk in the country could end with you stumbling upon cursed artifacts from the twelfth century.

you should check out Blackwood and Ligotti.

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I'm currently reading Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. I think it was mentioned as a source of inspiration in one of the Tone Control episodes a while back (was it Jonathon Blow?), so when I came across it I recognised the title and decided to give it a flick through. It is the first time I've read Lightman, and half way through I'm really enjoying it. Really thought provoking, and definitely inspiring for games design! I would love to expand upon the use of time as a game mechanic.

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I started Day of the Triffids yesterday around 1 p.m. and read it on and off through my bus journey and into the evening. When i was going asleep last night, i was around 150 pages in with only around a quarter left to go. i am enjoying it extraordinarily, and consuming it at a rate that i haven't maintained since i used to stay up late as a teenager and read under my covers till 3 a.m.

Also, before that, I finished my re-reading of The Left Hand of Darkness. I do love Le Guin's writing style so, and it is such a good book.

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She has a beautiful economy with words which so, so many authors could take a lesson from. Having said that, I couldn't get through the third Earthsea book because I felt it dragged a little. Still, The Left Hand is an astonishing novel

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I'm loving Flanner O' Connor's book Wise Blood. Her short stories are pretty fun and trippy - but I really wish she wrote more full novels. I love her grotesque depraved surreal view of 'the south.' It wrestles with a Christianity/Christ that it claims to follow but secretly detests. It's very Twin Peaksy/Lynchian to me in its symbolism too.

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Did anyone read Watership Down as a child? I read it recently at the behest of my wife and I don't think I was able to appreciate it the way she did growing up. There were some moments that felt surreal in a good way but overall the plot seemed to meander. 

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I'm loving Flanner O' Connor's book Wise Blood. Her short stories are pretty fun and trippy - but I really wish she wrote more full novels. I love her grotesque depraved surreal view of 'the south.' It wrestles with a Christianity/Christ that it claims to follow but secretly detests. It's very Twin Peaksy/Lynchian to me in its symbolism too.

If you like O'Connor you need to read some of Walker Percey's work, such as "The Moviegoer"

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The Pale King -David Foster Wallace. Interesting! When I heard it was unfinished my mind took it too literally, as if it was written in a straight line, and he killed himself at the 80% mark. These 550 or so pages can only represent what I imagine was 30-50% of what would have been the final thing. It's sort of amazing. There are some really powerful scenes and characters, but a single narrative never emerges, and obviously nothing is quite resolved. That nebulous quality adds its own interest, and a theme of boredom and despair runs throughout. Tragic, but in that way strangely fitting.

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I really liked The Pale King even though (and partly because) it never really got anywhere in terms of plot.

 

What Ozymandias chapter? I can't remember it anymore.

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Yes! I loved that, and basically any Leonard Steyck or David Cusk sweat sections, they made me uneasy.

 

Though looking back, I misattributed the Ozymandias section (if i'm remembering correctly here) (the story of the kid with the divorced parents who's mother leaves for another woman) to being a David Wallace story, because it's told first person as the DW sections, but it isn't, it's Chris Fogle. Man, what's wrong with me? 

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Just started reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again where David Foster Wallace explains that one of his strengths as a junior tennis player was that he sweated a lot. 

 

Also, what was the Ozymandias chapter about?

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"In Chapter 22 of The Pale King, the father of a character, ‘Irrelevant Chris Fogel,’ quotes from “Ozymandias” when he catches Chris smoking pot. "

I believe that the rest of that chapter is about Chris Fogel changing his to become a more responsible person (by studying to become a tax adjuster). I call it the Ozymandius chapter because of that scene.

A Supposedly Fun Thing is the one with the David Lynch essay, right? God that's another good bit of writing.

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"In Chapter 22 of The Pale King, the father of a character, ‘Irrelevant Chris Fogel,’ quotes from “Ozymandias” when he catches Chris smoking pot. "

I believe that the rest of that chapter is about Chris Fogel changing his to become a more responsible person (by studying to become a tax adjuster). I call it the Ozymandius chapter because of that scene.

A Supposedly Fun Thing is the one with the David Lynch essay, right? God that's another good bit of writing.

Hmm.. I may have to revisit that chapter at some point. (Edit: Ahh, that chapter. Yeah, it was great.)

Yes, the Lynch essay is there.

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The Lynch one is amazing, but I think my favorite one is on TV, which is amazingly predictive but also one of his first forays into a kind of anti-irony, which I really love. 

 

The Fogle chapter is also about his wasting time at college, and the various substances they took, when he stumbles into the last day of an accounting class and is forever moved to join the IRS. 

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