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Franchescanado posted:I dunno, a melancholic couple finding shallow fulfillment in devouring the flesh of a beautiful glowing extraterrestrial being is fun and interesting to me at least. Maybe not existentially devastating, but fun and interesting. that's probably the story i hated least, but it's still an incredibly boring point
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Apr 1, 2020 15:11
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Just a heads up, Archipelago Books extended their free ebooks library and you can get Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu for free now
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Apr 1, 2020 15:15
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CestMoi posted:that's probably the story i hated least, but it's still an incredibly boring point I also like the man who's emasculated and has his life and reputation ruined because no one believes his encounter with a werewolf. I'm not gonna say Ballingrud's prose is anything mind-blowing; some themes are stronger in some of the stories. Still, I really enjoy the idea that even if you survive a supernatural encounter, your perception of a normal life is irreparably shattered and your position in society is ruined. Your life is taken from you either way.
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Apr 1, 2020 15:18
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Franchescanado posted:Still, I really enjoy the idea that even if you survive a supernatural encounter, your perception of a normal life is irreparably shattered and your position in society is ruined. Your life is taken from you either way. I mean, that seems to be a staple of horror fiction or any sort of survival fiction in general though
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Apr 1, 2020 15:22
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Franchescanado posted:I also like the man who's emasculated and has his life and reputation ruined because no one believes his encounter with a werewolf. that's very much not the point of that story, his life is already fairly ruined before the attack and he never says anything about the werewolf thing because of wanting to maintain the perception of being a strong american man and that masculine ideal ends up causing him to attack someone who his wife says is interested in her. most of the stories revolve around this idea that the truly horrific things are not the monsters but the milieu of lower class american life and i don't care that's a boring point that a baby could write
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Apr 1, 2020 15:31
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I mean, that seems to be a staple of horror fiction or any sort of survival fiction in general though Okay, well, Thomas Ligotti hasn't written anything thematically that I couldn't get from reading Sartre or Camus, but the execution and authorial voices are what make them unique reading experiences. CestMoi posted:that's very much not the point of that story, his life is already fairly ruined before the attack and he never says anything about the werewolf thing because of wanting to maintain the perception of being a strong american man and that masculine ideal ends up causing him to attack someone who his wife says is interested in her. most of the stories revolve around this idea that the truly horrific things are not the monsters but the milieu of lower class american life and i don't care that's a boring point that a baby could write Fair enough. The story's fresh in your mind and I haven't read it in a few years, so my memory's flawed. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story, and like that it's a monster story that has barely anything to do with monsters. Most stories involving werewolves suck, and most horror fiction is more interested in shock value or the grotesque, so Ballingrud's middlebrow themes are refreshing for the genre. Franchescanado fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Apr 1, 2020 |
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Apr 1, 2020 15:42
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I've been reading Mason & Dixon by Pynchon again and Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis, and both are good!
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Apr 1, 2020 16:07
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also the nazi story in nalm has an implied message that racial purity is stupid because white people can be genetically predisposed to mental illness which isn't the critique of nazism i would choose
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Apr 1, 2020 16:16
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books are dumb. i've gone back to baby loving and am reading some agatha christie. see ya later dorks
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Apr 1, 2020 16:43
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derp posted:books are dumb. i've gone back to baby loving and am reading some agatha christie. see ya later dorks don't gently caress the baby out with the book water
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Apr 1, 2020 17:00
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CestMoi posted:also the nazi story in nalm has an implied message that racial purity is stupid because white people can be genetically predisposed to mental illness which isn't the critique of nazism i would choose that story and a couple others felt like he had put on a mountain goats album and just sort of free associated and then post hoc added a paragraph or two of body mutilation to make things "horror"-y. like very unfocused sketchy character work that doesn't really pay off. "the good husband" was my favorite of the collection. it managed to actually build some atmosphere and appear to have something to say. "unbleached" which i guess is often people's other choice of favorite i did not really care for at all (ligotti's vampire story from grimscribe whose title i forget is strictly superior and i don't even much care for that story of his)
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Apr 1, 2020 17:29
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Tree Goat posted:that story and a couple others felt like he had put on a mountain goats album and just sort of free associated and then post hoc added a paragraph or two of body mutilation to make things "horror"-y. like very unfocused sketchy character work that doesn't really pay off. Unbleached was pretty lame, yeah.
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Apr 1, 2020 17:37
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i read north american lake monsters a couple years ago and remember absolutely none of it
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Apr 1, 2020 17:45
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Franchescanado posted:I dunno, a melancholic couple finding shallow fulfillment in devouring the flesh of a beautiful glowing extraterrestrial being is fun and interesting to me at least. Maybe not existentially devastating, but fun and interesting. Which story is this?
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Apr 1, 2020 17:54
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Idaholy Roller posted:Which story is this? The Monsters of Heaven, I believe.
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Apr 1, 2020 17:57
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just a heads up, Archipelago Books extended their free ebooks library and you can get Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu for free now I jumped on it as soon as I got the email. A bunch of poetry is in there as well.
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Apr 1, 2020 18:04
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I got Blinding and A General Theory of Oblivion, any other must haves there?
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Apr 1, 2020 18:49
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Bilirubin posted:I got Blinding and A General Theory of Oblivion, any other must haves there? Moscow in the Plague Year is good, I don't know if that was on their free list or not.
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Apr 1, 2020 18:59
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Just a heads up, Archipelago Books extended their free ebooks library and you can get Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu for free now That book is probably the best thing I've read in the last year or so, it rules. also curious about wolf hunt cause it's by a bulgarian and sounds super depressing
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Apr 1, 2020 23:46
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derp posted:Do you also 'watch' movies while browsing facebook on your phone and ask constant questions like 'wait, who is that guy? didn't he die?' No. But I also don't have that problem when I'm reading books. I just think trying to squeeze every ounce of meaning out of a book at the expense of my time and enjoyment is not the way I like to read.
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Apr 2, 2020 05:08
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derp posted:books are dumb. i've gone back to baby loving and am reading some agatha christie. see ya later dorks Books own, idiot. See you later, come back soon.
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Apr 2, 2020 05:10
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cda posted:No. But I also don't have that problem when I'm reading books. I just think trying to squeeze every ounce of meaning out of a book at the expense of my time and enjoyment is not the way I like to read. To say a little bit more about this, when I go to a concert or whatever I don't sit/stand there desperately concentrating on every aspect of the music, I just daydream or dance or whatever and the music structures my experience and sometimes I'm more focused and sometimes less, but I have a good time, and that's what reading is like for me too, especially someone like Virginia Woolf. I do a lot of reading out loud because it feels good.
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Apr 2, 2020 05:12
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reading should be a miserable and terrifying experience
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Apr 2, 2020 05:25
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the mabinogion is the first book in ages to make me actually laugh out loud, in the romance of peredur where they briefly cut away to a story about gwalchmai turning up at a castle, being attacked while in the castle and defending himself with a chessboard, then being accused of killing the old earl and saying 'actually i'm just carrying a message for arthur but give me a year and i'll return to admit to or deny killing the earl' then leaving and then that paragraph ends with 'and the story relates nothing further of gwalchmai regarding this adventure'.
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Apr 2, 2020 10:14
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CestMoi posted:the mabinogion is the first book in ages to make me actually laugh out loud, in the romance of peredur where they briefly cut away to a story about gwalchmai turning up at a castle, being attacked while in the castle and defending himself with a chessboard, then being accused of killing the old earl and saying 'actually i'm just carrying a message for arthur but give me a year and i'll return to admit to or deny killing the earl' then leaving and then that paragraph ends with 'and the story relates nothing further of gwalchmai regarding this adventure'. this isn't the fantasy thread
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Apr 2, 2020 10:20
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CestMoi posted:the mabinogion is the first book in ages to make me actually laugh out loud, in the romance of peredur where they briefly cut away to a story about gwalchmai turning up at a castle, being attacked while in the castle and defending himself with a chessboard, then being accused of killing the old earl and saying 'actually i'm just carrying a message for arthur but give me a year and i'll return to admit to or deny killing the earl' then leaving and then that paragraph ends with 'and the story relates nothing further of gwalchmai regarding this adventure'. i read parzifal recently and there's all these bits where wolfram von eschenbach is like 'this next part is really hard to imagine but the story says that's how it went so don't blame me'
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Apr 2, 2020 10:29
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I happen to be reading an anthology of minnesangers right now. Walther von der Vogelweide is kickass. He had great political invectives that were influenced by the "sirventes" of the troubadours but were oftentimes better, I think because he had better things to complain about (the goddam pope). (Papists stop reading now) Ah, how like a Christian laughs the Pope at last, as he tells his Italians, “I’ve finally got them finessed.” He never should have thought what he says there to their graces. He says, “I’ve got two tedeschi under one crown, let them wreck their nation and burn it up and bring it down— in the meantime we fill up the cases. I’ve driven them like cows to my collection box—all their stuff is mine, their German silver rides in my Italian chest. Eat chicken, priests, drink wine, and let the lay Germans get skinny and fast.” So tell me, Herr Collection Box, were you sent by the Pope, as he held his crook, to make him rich and rob us Germans of all we possess? When in the Lateran the full measure reaches him of what he took, he plays an evil trick on us, the same he’s always played: he tells us how the Holy Land must stand in great distress till every little parish replenishes His Holiness. Little of the silver, I imagine, ever gets to the new crusade: a big take is rarely given out by priestly hands. Herr Collection Box, you were ordered here and made to seek out fools among men and women in German lands.
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Apr 2, 2020 15:29
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finished Class by fernando pacifico. thought it sucked but i can’t entirely hate something so devoted to making GBS threads on new york
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Apr 3, 2020 19:00
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I'm reading the English language translation of Yawar Fiesta by José María Arguedas and I feel like I'm missing out on a lot due to reading it in translation. Apparently he plays a lot with both the real intersections of Quechua and Spanish in highland Peru as well as his own idiosyncratic idea of creating an "Indian Spanish" which he is at pains to point out in the preface is more his own invention than the real way that people actually speak in the Quechua speaking regions of the Andes. It's interesting and I kind of like the way that the way he writes about racial and class conflicts, but I just feel like I'm missing out.
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Apr 3, 2020 19:39
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Hello I just read palace of the peacock by Wilson Harris which is a really sick riff on heart of darkness by a post colonial guy and it's filled with dreamlike imagery and has no interest in conventional plotting and characters.
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Apr 4, 2020 02:18
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A human heart posted:Hello I just read palace of the peacock by Wilson Harris which is a really sick riff on heart of darkness by a post colonial guy and it's filled with dreamlike imagery and has no interest in conventional plotting and characters. It sounds very interesting. Did you enjoy it? Sometimes a book like that can be Valuable and Good without being enjoyable
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Apr 6, 2020 13:22
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It sounds extremely enjoyable, actually.
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Apr 6, 2020 17:39
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cda posted:It sounds very interesting. Did you enjoy it? Sometimes a book like that can be Valuable and Good without being enjoyable Uhh yeah of course I did, I wouldn't post about a book that was 'important' but bad to read.
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Apr 7, 2020 01:01
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Sad to report Giovanni's Room is rather mediocre. Another Country, however, is still good
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Apr 7, 2020 02:39
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J_RBG posted:Sad to report Giovanni's Room is rather mediocre. Another Country, however, is still good I haven't read another country but I thought giovanni's room was incredible, op
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Apr 7, 2020 05:09
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Opinions are divided on whether Giovanni needs to spruce up his room or not
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Apr 7, 2020 06:03
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doug fuckey posted:I haven't read another country but I thought giovanni's room was incredible, op Fair enough. It seemed to me at times very self-conscious to create a certain kind of mood, at the expense of its characters which seemed very broad-brush: so for example at one low point David goes out to the river and thinks about how Cityish the Big City is, then he goes home and Giovanni is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, which is portrayed in a way that seemed kind of ... I want to say like a film, but not in a good way. Basically it seemed as if Baldwin had got his understanding of people from films. And people slip into deep meaningful conversations too easily. One thing I did like was how contemptuous a character David was and the Biblical allusions though. And I got through it in one sitting, to be fair
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Apr 7, 2020 14:01
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A human heart posted:Uhh yeah of course I did, I wouldn't post about a book that was 'important' but bad to read. I'm not saying because it's "important." Experimental literature sometimes deliberately pushes back against enjoyment and sometimes undermines the structures and conventions that support a typical engagement with the text. That doesn't mean it's bad to read, but it might be more interesting or valuable as a demonstration of an unusual formal or narrative logic than, strictly speaking, enjoyable. I'm thinking of stuff like Kathy Acker's Great Expectations.
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Apr 7, 2020 15:00
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cda posted:I'm not saying because it's "important." Experimental literature sometimes deliberately pushes back against enjoyment and sometimes undermines the structures and conventions that support a typical engagement with the text. That doesn't mean it's bad to read, but it might be more interesting or valuable as a demonstration of an unusual formal or narrative logic than, strictly speaking, enjoyable. I'm thinking of stuff like Kathy Acker's Great Expectations. You're a teacher, right? This sounds like sort of flaff kids are told to explain why Gatsby still hasn't killed anyone in the first 15 pages
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Apr 7, 2020 15:28
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Yeah it's very strange to assume that there aren't people who derive genuine aesthetic pleasure from formal innovation and instead imagine that readers of avant garde literature just engage in a long exercise of eating their greens
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Apr 7, 2020 15:35
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