{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6517", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6517, "subject": "What are you reading?", "messages": 40, "voices": 15, "first": "2014-03-12T13:26:04+00:00", "last": "2014-04-07T00:45:34+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T13:26:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading\nmuch Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in\nsome of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and\nthe *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine\nfrom my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing my\nattention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being written\nin a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it in the\nnear future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories*.\nLooking forward to it!" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T13:49:47+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sent from my iPhone" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mar 12, 2014, at 6:26 AM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the fourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise Lost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and the New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was excellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great, silly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by McElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It wasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing my attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being written in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it in the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter half of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories. Looking forward to it!\n_______________________________________________" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Haven't read much lately but in the middle of Musil's Man of No Qualities, in about the fifth volume of Sturgeon's collected stories, Mishima's Forbidden Colors (Mishima's philosophy always interested me), Bolano's 2666 which seems to me at its heart kind of a Twin Peaks urban fantasy. Surprised it got any literary attention. McElroy has always been one of those authors I feel I should like but in execution he seems rather boring. At least you have to pay attention when you read him. \n\nMy Peace write up is \"done\" but it is missing a connection I know that is lurking, between the devils of hell with misplaced limbs who are one with their victims and the carnival people and the dog boy whom Weer's father will take hunting in a dream and languishes across Weer's leg as he thinks of his picnic with Margeret Lorn, so I am waiting on that final edit to post it. After that I will be on Forleson. I have not abandoned my project but I have to be in the right frame of mind to do quality work on it. \n\nClearly island of doctor death and other stories is Wolfe's best collection. " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T13:58:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel *Serpent's Egg* (1987) last week\n- mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's *Butcher's Crossing* just\nbefore that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat that.) Reading\nthe stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of Lafferty's complete\nshort stories - whenever I have the chance to sit down and carefully handle\nthe book (as I usually have books thrust in a backpack getting bent up as I\nread them all over the place in between everything). Have already read all\nthose stories, but hugely enjoying revisiting them, especially in a quality\nphysical format worthy of them.\n\nRealised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's *Salem's Lot*,\nso gonna round that out.\n\nRecently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called *Piers\nPlowman*(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in. *Paradise\nLost* is one of my all time fave long poems and *Piers *has probably shot\nright up there with it. The latter actually makes a very interesting\ncontrast to the former in just about every respect. (And to be reductively\ncategorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more *Piers* -\nthe former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both\nall-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its\nrespective way).\n\nReally torn about what novel to get into next. Thinking of another King\njust for simple fun. Maybe Wolfe's *The Sorcerer's House* - that's the\nnext one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read. Maybe McCarthy,\nmaybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading\nmuch Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in\nsome of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories*.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:03:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Bolano's 2666 which seems to me at its heart kind of a Twin Peaks urban\nfantasy.\"\n\nWell, now I kind of want to read it!\n\n\"McElroy has always been one of those authors I feel I should like but in\nexecution he seems rather boring. At least you have to pay attention when\nyou read him.\"\n\nHave you read *Lookout Cartridge*? I also lucked out and found a copy of *Women\nand Men* for $3 a few months ago, I would be willing to try that one if it\nis better. I adore Pynchon, Gaddis, and Barth (with whom McElroy is so\noften mentioned) so I was surprised to be so turned off right away.\n\n\"Clearly island of doctor death and other stories is Wolfe's best\ncollection.\"\n\n\"The Hero as Werewolf\" and \"Alien Stones\" are really outstanding stories.\nSo far I am enjoying the collection at least as much as *Endangered\nSpecies.*" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\n\nSent from my iPhone\n\nOn Mar 12, 2014, at 6:26 AM, Antonin Scriabin \nwrote:\n\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading\nmuch Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in\nsome of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories*.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________\n\n\nHaven't read much lately but in the middle of Musil's Man of No Qualities,\nin about the fifth volume of Sturgeon's collected stories, Mishima's\nForbidden Colors (Mishima's philosophy always interested me), Bolano's 2666\nwhich seems to me at its heart kind of a Twin Peaks urban fantasy.\n Surprised it got any literary attention. McElroy has always been one of\nthose authors I feel I should like but in execution he seems rather boring.\n At least you have to pay attention when you read him.\n\nMy Peace write up is \"done\" but it is missing a connection I know that is\nlurking, between the devils of hell with misplaced limbs who are one with\ntheir victims and the carnival people and the dog boy whom Weer's father\nwill take hunting in a dream and languishes across Weer's leg as he thinks\nof his picnic with Margeret Lorn, so I am waiting on that final edit to\npost it. After that I will be on Forleson. I have not abandoned my\nproject but I have to be in the right frame of mind to do quality work on\nit.\n\nClearly island of doctor death and other stories is Wolfe's best\ncollection.\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Stephen Case", "address": "scase1 at nd.edu" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:07:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) what are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Have THE LAND ACROSS on hold at the local library, so hope to start that\nsoon. In the meantime, I've been posting reviews of what I'm reading to my\nblog at http://stephenrcase.wordpress.com. Search \"Wolfe\" to view recent\nreviews of PEACE, FIFTH HEAD, and SHADOWS OF THE NEW SUN. (Also, I tend to\nview a lot of what I read through a Wolfean lens, so he gets mentioned\nquite a bit.)\n-S" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Stephen Case\nPhD Candidate, Program for the History and Philosophy of Science\nUniversity of Notre Dame\nwww.stephenrcase.com\n815.295.4720" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:09:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I found it hard to enjoy poetry for a long time, but a few things recently\nhave swayed me. *Paradise Lost*, and the poems scattered throughout the\nGormenghast books, of all things.\n\n\"Maybe Wolfe's\n\n*The Sorcerer's House\"*\nYes! This is my absolute favorite of Wolfe's post-*Long Sun* novels. It\nis great." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\nJust finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel *Serpent's Egg* (1987) last\nweek - mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's *Butcher's\nCrossing* just before that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat\nthat.) Reading the stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of\nLafferty's complete short stories - whenever I have the chance to sit down\nand carefully handle the book (as I usually have books thrust in a backpack\ngetting bent up as I read them all over the place in between everything).\n Have already read all those stories, but hugely enjoying revisiting them,\nespecially in a quality physical format worthy of them.\n\nRealised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's *Salem's Lot*,\nso gonna round that out.\n\nRecently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called *Piers Plowman*(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in. *Paradise\nLost* is one of my all time fave long poems and *Piers *has probably shot\nright up there with it. The latter actually makes a very interesting\ncontrast to the former in just about every respect. (And to be reductively\ncategorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more *Piers*- the former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both\nall-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its\nrespective way).\n\nReally torn about what novel to get into next. Thinking of another King\njust for simple fun. Maybe Wolfe's *The Sorcerer's House* - that's the\nnext one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read. Maybe McCarthy,\nmaybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite\nof mine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other\nStories*. Looking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:22:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) what are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I like this in your review of *The Fifth Head of Cerberus*: \"I can't keep\nbeginning reviews of Gene Wolfe's work with \"one of the best books I've\never read\" or \"one of my favorite books of all time,\"\n\nI started off by reading *The Book of the New Sun*, *Peace*, and *The Fifth\nHead of Cerberus* and was shocked at what masterpieces they were, then\nproceeded to buy up 40-odd volumes of his work right away. I definitely\nunderstand your sentiment!" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1394634951.87034.YahooMailNeo@web142603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Craig Brewer", "address": "cnbrewer at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:35:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just finished the new Lafferty collection as well. Good to revisit old masters. :)\n\nI can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce, Blackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it into something fresh.\n\nPoetry: Edith Sodergran, a Finnish poet (translated, don't worry), and I think Wolfe fans would appreciate her sensibilities.\n\nI also read Chambers' _The King in Yellow_ based on all the _True Detective_ buzz. Fun, but not mind blowing.\n\nAnd my new discovery is Michael Cisco. I don't know how to describe what he writes, so I'll just leave it at that.\n\n\n \n\n\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the fourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise Lost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and the New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was excellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great, silly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by McElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It wasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing my attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being written in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it in the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter half of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories. Looking forward to it!" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1394635076.32283.93608961.5BF339FD@webmail.messagingengine.com>", "from": { "name": "Mark Lewin", "address": "mark at marklewin.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:37:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "De-lurking to say that I, too, am on a bit of a Lafferty drive at the\nmoment, having just acquired Fourth Mansions and the collection Does\nAnyone Else Have Something to Add? I really enjoyed Past Master a\ncouple of years back and I'm looking forward to reading more Lafferty.\nHard to get hold of in the UK though.\n\nDOJP has written a few great reviews of his Lafferty explorations on\nhis blog recently, which I note that he's too modest to mention here :)\n\n[1]http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/\n\nCheers,\nMark\n\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014, at 01:58 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen wrote:\n\nJust finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel Serpent's Egg (1987) last\nweek - mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's Butcher's\nCrossing just before that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat\nthat.) Reading the stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of\nLafferty's complete short stories - whenever I have the chance to sit\ndown and carefully handle the book (as I usually have books thrust in a\nbackpack getting bent up as I read them all over the place in between\neverything). Have already read all those stories, but hugely enjoying\nrevisiting them, especially in a quality physical format worthy of\nthem.\n\nRealised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's Salem's\nLot, so gonna round that out.\n\nRecently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called Piers Plowman\n(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in. Paradise Lost is one of my all\ntime fave long poems and Piers has probably shot right up there with\nit. The latter actually makes a very interesting contrast to the\nformer in just about every respect. (And to be reductively\ncategorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more Piers\n- the former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both\nall-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its\nrespective way).\n\nReally torn about what novel to get into next. Thinking of another\nKing just for simple fun. Maybe Wolfe's The Sorcerer's House - that's\nthe next one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read. Maybe\nMcCarthy, maybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin\n<[2]kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise\nLost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back\nto it in the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other\nStories. Looking forward to it!\n\n _______________________________________________\n Urth Mailing List\n To post, write [3]urth at urth.net\n Subscription/information: [4]http://www.urth.net" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen" } ] }, { "message_id": "<2E359818-4045-4591-B757-0E6C55529FC9@yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T14:38:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) what are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just read your review and end notes on fifth head. I have a long long write up which has been submitted to Ultan's Library for about eight months on Fifth Head- It does a pretty decent job delineating at exactly which point the cat bite infects Marsch with the parasitic Shadow Children and allows the death of the boy to be \"true\"- he falls. I don't think the shadow children are the remains of humanity , but I do think the inutile hand we should look for is port mimizon itself with its fingers and all the girls with stick like legs are abos (in a story the walk of the Abos is bird or stork like) Making number five human, the society a bad imitation of degenerating utility and no new buildings, and Marsch something different altogether. I hope the write up is put up sometimes soon. \n\nI guess I really don't enjoy reading reviews of Shadows of the New Sun though heh heh heh. \n\nSent from my iPhone" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mar 12, 2014, at 7:07 AM, Stephen Case wrote:\nHave THE LAND ACROSS on hold at the local library, so hope to start that soon. In the meantime, I've been posting reviews of what I'm reading to my blog at http://stephenrcase.wordpress.com. Search \"Wolfe\" to view recent reviews of PEACE, FIFTH HEAD, and SHADOWS OF THE NEW SUN. (Also, I tend to view a lot of what I read through a Wolfean lens, so he gets mentioned quite a bit.)\n-S\n\n-- \nStephen Case\nPhD Candidate, Program for the History and Philosophy of Science\nUniversity of Notre Dame\nwww.stephenrcase.com\n815.295.4720\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20140312152623.4964.qmail@server281.com>", "from": { "name": "Brian", "address": "brian at studiobl.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T15:26:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<2E359818-4045-4591-B757-0E6C55529FC9@yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Currently reading the Oxford Anthology of Victorian Ghost Stories.\n\nCouple of comments on what some others have reported:\n\nPiers Plowman starts off promisingly enough, but so quickly devolves into\n\"and then I saw Mister Blabbermouth and Miss Gossip, then I met Mister\nMiser and Master Crap-head\" Ho-Hum\n\nFinished Mishima's Sea of Fertility recently. Liked everything but the\nend. Totally a letdown. Certainly not cosmically earthshattering or\nwhatever the publisher's blurb said." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T16:00:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<1394635076.32283.93608961.5BF339FD@webmail.messagingengine.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What am I reading? Right now, the last \"Wicked Years\" book, OUT OF OZ,\nwhich is the best since the original WICKED. Before that, an okay urban\nfantasy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 7:37 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:\nDe-lurking to say that I, too, am on a bit of a Lafferty drive at the\nmoment, having just acquired *Fourth Mansions *and the collection *Does\nAnyone Else Have Something to Add? *I really enjoyed *Past Master *a\ncouple of years back and I'm looking forward to reading more Lafferty. Hard\nto get hold of in the UK though.\n\nDOJP has written a few great reviews of his Lafferty explorations on his\nblog recently, which I note that he's too modest to mention here :)\n\nhttp://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/\n\nCheers,\nMark\n\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014, at 01:58 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen wrote:\n\nJust finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel Serpent's Egg (1987) last week\n- mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's Butcher's Crossing just\nbefore that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat that.) Reading\nthe stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of Lafferty's complete\nshort stories - whenever I have the chance to sit down and carefully handle\nthe book (as I usually have books thrust in a backpack getting bent up as I\nread them all over the place in between everything). Have already read all\nthose stories, but hugely enjoying revisiting them, especially in a quality\nphysical format worthy of them.\n\nRealised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's Salem's Lot,\nso gonna round that out.\n\nRecently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called Piers Plowman(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in. Paradise\nLost is one of my all time fave long poems and Piers has probably shot\nright up there with it. The latter actually makes a very interesting\ncontrast to the former in just about every respect. (And to be reductively\ncategorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more Piers -\nthe former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both\nall-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its\nrespective way).\n\nReally torn about what novel to get into next. Thinking of another King\njust for simple fun. Maybe Wolfe's The Sorcerer's House - that's the\nnext one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read. Maybe McCarthy,\nmaybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\n Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise\nLost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and\nthe New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine\nfrom my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing my\nattention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being written\nin a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it in the\nnear future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T16:01:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) what are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Like Stephen, I review (sometimes very briefly) everything I read at my\nblog, sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 7:07 AM, Stephen Case wrote:\nHave THE LAND ACROSS on hold at the local library, so hope to start that\nsoon. In the meantime, I've been posting reviews of what I'm reading to my\nblog at http://stephenrcase.wordpress.com. Search \"Wolfe\" to view recent\nreviews of PEACE, FIFTH HEAD, and SHADOWS OF THE NEW SUN. (Also, I tend to\nview a lot of what I read through a Wolfean lens, so he gets mentioned\nquite a bit.)\n-S\n\n--\nStephen Case\nPhD Candidate, Program for the History and Philosophy of Science\nUniversity of Notre Dame\nwww.stephenrcase.com\n815.295.4720\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T17:59:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<1394635076.32283.93608961.5BF339FD@webmail.messagingengine.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*DOJP has written a few great reviews of his Lafferty explorations on his\nblog recently, which I note that he's too modest to mention here :)*\n\n*http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/*\n\n*Cheers,*\n*Mark*\n\nHa, thanks, Mark - for once in my life I'm too modest! It's great to hear\nof all these other book review bloggers lurking about on this Wolfe forum.\n I'll be checking out your stuffs!\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Mark Lewin wrote:\nDe-lurking to say that I, too, am on a bit of a Lafferty drive at the\nmoment, having just acquired *Fourth Mansions *and the collection *Does\nAnyone Else Have Something to Add? *I really enjoyed *Past Master *a\ncouple of years back and I'm looking forward to reading more Lafferty. Hard\nto get hold of in the UK though.\n\nDOJP has written a few great reviews of his Lafferty explorations on his\nblog recently, which I note that he's too modest to mention here :)\n\nhttp://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/\n\nCheers,\nMark\n\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014, at 01:58 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen wrote:\n\nJust finished R. A. Lafferty's late novel Serpent's Egg (1987) last week\n- mad brilliance as always. (Read John Williams's Butcher's Crossing just\nbefore that - existential buffalo hunting, ya can't beat that.) Reading\nthe stories in the new Centipede Press volume 1 of Lafferty's complete\nshort stories - whenever I have the chance to sit down and carefully handle\nthe book (as I usually have books thrust in a backpack getting bent up as I\nread them all over the place in between everything). Have already read all\nthose stories, but hugely enjoying revisiting them, especially in a quality\nphysical format worthy of them.\n\nRealised I hadn't finished the last 30 or so pages of King's Salem's Lot,\nso gonna round that out.\n\nRecently read a 200 page poem from the Middle Ages called Piers Plowman(14th c.) - it was for a course I'm in. Paradise\nLost is one of my all time fave long poems and Piers has probably shot\nright up there with it. The latter actually makes a very interesting\ncontrast to the former in just about every respect. (And to be reductively\ncategorical, I'd say Wolfe is more Milton while Lafferty is more Piers -\nthe former 'high' and the latter 'low', both genius and both\nall-encompassing and stretching imagination to its limits, each in its\nrespective way).\n\nReally torn about what novel to get into next. Thinking of another King\njust for simple fun. Maybe Wolfe's The Sorcerer's House - that's the\nnext one up for me in the post-2000 novels I haven't read. Maybe McCarthy,\nmaybe Michael Bishop, maybe Dan Simmons... I dunno.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 1:26 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\n Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise\nLost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and\nthe New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine\nfrom my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing my\nattention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being written\nin a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it in the\nnear future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Piotr Szczęsny", "address": "neternalz at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T18:38:19+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<1394634951.87034.YahooMailNeo@web142603.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of Frank\nHerbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene Wolfe's *Book\nof the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin \n*To:* The Urth Mailing List \n*Sent:* Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:26 AM\n*Subject:* (urth) What are you reading?\n\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading\nmuch Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in\nsome of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories*.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com" }, "date": "2014-03-12T21:10:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, let's do this.\n\nI'm halfway through The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, which splices a\nmodern murder mystery set in a polygamous Mormon-spinoff community\nwith the story of Ann Eliza Young, infamous 19th wife of Brigham\nYoung. I'm enjoying it, especially the historical sections, but it's\ndisappointingly lightweight.\n\nBefore that it was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. I didn't find\nit better than Wolf Hall, as a lot of people said, just more of the\nsame. But since 'more of the same' in this case means 'an\nelectrifyingly vivid and original reinvention of the historical\nnovel', that's fine by me.\n\nThere's a lovely passage about torture that immediately reminded me of\nthe Guild:\n\nThe faces of your torturers loom up like giants or they become\nimpossibly distant, small, like dots. Words are spoken: bring him\nhere, seat him, now it is time. They were words attached to other and\ncommon meanings, but if you survive this they will only ever have one\nmeaning and the meaning is pain. The iron hisses as it is lifted from\nthe flame. The rope doubles like a serpent, loops itself, and waits.\nIt is too late for you. You will not speak now, because your tongue\nhas swelled and filled your mouth and language has eaten itself. Later\nyou will speak, when you are carried away from the machinery and set\ndown on straw. I have endured it, you will say. I have come through.\nAnd pity and self-love will crack open your heart, so that at the\nfirst gesture of kindness - let us say, a blanket or a sip of wine -\nyour heart will overflow, your tongue unstop. Out flow the words. You\nwere not brought to this room to think, but to feel. And in the end\nyou have felt too much for yourself." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-13T02:10:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I forgot to mention I also just finished A Maggot by John Fowles. This was\na fantastic book, and an easy recommendation for Wolfe fans. It is a\ngenre-bending puzzle of a book, very expertly constructed, with a proper\nbalance of mystery and information. I also quite liked The Magus by the\nsame author, but A Maggot struck me as the more clever work." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-03-15T04:19:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Harris", "address": "yoje110 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T04:05:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "<1396439417.31577.101834109.2991E05F@webmail.messagingengine.com>", "from": { "name": "Mark Lewin", "address": "mark at marklewin.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T11:50:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books,\nConsider Phlebas. No great mental effort required on the part of the\nreader, just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\n\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled The New\nUncanny. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in recent\nyears, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's a\ngreat collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell,\nand \"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\n\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\n\n\nMark\n\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All\nCreatures Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin\n<[1]kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\n Thanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\n yesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the\n investigative horror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie)\n narration of House of Leaves, and natural wonder of something like\n The Lost World. Really looking forward to the other two novels in\n the trilogy, and knowing they will both be released in 2014 is a\n great bonus!\n\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" <[2]neternalz at gmail.com>\nwrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\"\ntrilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very\nfresh, disturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally\nwritten in swedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very\nmuch.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast,\nand it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better\n(story wise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's Dune and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's Book of the New Sun, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer <[3]cnbrewer at yahoo.com>:\n\n\n\nI can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition\nI've read in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from\nBierce, Blackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and\nturned it into something fresh.\n\n\n __________________________________________________________________\n\nFrom: Antonin Scriabin <[4]kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>\nTo: The Urth Mailing List <[5]urth at lists.urth.net>\nSent: Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:26 AM\nSubject: (urth) What are you reading?\n\nHello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. Paradise\nLost was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the New Atlantis by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and The City of Dreaming Books by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun. I also read the first 50 pages of Lookout Cartridge by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly bad, it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back\nto it in the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other\nStories. Looking forward to it!\n\n\n\n\n\nUrth Mailing List\n\nTo post, write [8]urth at urth.net\n\nSubscription/information: [9]http://www.urth.net\n\n\n\n\n\nUrth Mailing List\n\nTo post, write [10]urth at urth.net\n\nSubscription/information: [11]http://www.urth.net\n\n\n\n\nUrth Mailing List\n\nTo post, write [12]urth at urth.net\n\nSubscription/information: [13]http://www.urth.net" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T12:08:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<1396439417.31577.101834109.2991E05F@webmail.messagingengine.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved\nit from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*, right\nafter. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There are\nsome interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:\n I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader, just\ngood, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New\nUncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in recent\nyears, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's a\ngreat collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T12:20:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved\nit from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've heard a\nfair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or novels\nWolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nI just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved\nit from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*, right\nafter. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There are\nsome interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New\nUncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in recent\nyears, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's a\ngreat collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T12:54:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I thought the first novella was fantastic. I was actually a bit worried as\nI came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it was. It was\nwickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more *as* forgeries\nthan as originals, a film director who is more convinced of the cinematic\nbrilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture the more grotesque and real\nit seemed, etc*. *The account of the filming of the thirteen\n\"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece on its own.\n\nOn Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write a\nforward or something specifically for it?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\n\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved\nit from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've heard\na fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New\nUncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T13:02:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it. But I always suspected he was\nhanded that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he sincerely\nliked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by then (1987),\nso I'd be interested to know what else he liked.\n\n*The account of the filming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece\non its own.*\nYes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nI thought the first novella was fantastic. I was actually a bit worried\nas I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it was. It\nwas wickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more *as*forgeries than as originals, a film director who is more convinced of the\ncinematic brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture the more grotesque\nand real it seemed, etc*. *The account of the filming of the thirteen\n\"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece on its own.\n\nOn Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write a\nforward or something specifically for it?\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've heard\na fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep\nof Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of\nGene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully\nrendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T13:30:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Yes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\"\n\nYeah that would be neat. I guess the problem is that there there is so\nmuch pay off when Quiche meets the Five-O'Clock Man again." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\nYes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it. But I always suspected he was\nhanded that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he sincerely\nliked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by then (1987),\nso I'd be interested to know what else he liked.\n\n*The account of the filming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a\nmasterpiece on its own.*\nYes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've\nheard a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 5, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\"\ntrilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the\nDresden Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very\nfast, and it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the\nbetter (story wise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for\na week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep\nof Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of\nGene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully\nrendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T13:50:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, ha ha, I've often looked at it and thought 'well, can't stop there,\noh and you can't stop there', etc." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\n\"Yes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\"\n\nYeah that would be neat. I guess the problem is that there there is so\nmuch pay off when Quiche meets the Five-O'Clock Man again.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Yes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it. But I always suspected he was\nhanded that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he sincerely\nliked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by then (1987),\nso I'd be interested to know what else he liked.\n\n*The account of the filming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a\nmasterpiece on its own.*\nYes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I thought the first novella was fantastic. I was actually a bit worried\nas I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it was. It\nwas wickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more *as*forgeries than as originals, a film director who is more convinced of the\ncinematic brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture the more grotesque\nand real it seemed, etc*. *The account of the filming of the thirteen\n\"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece on its own.\n\nOn Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write\na forward or something specifically for it?\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've\nheard a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 5, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 6, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales\nin recent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off.\nIt's a great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by\na mixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell,\nand \"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it\nwith audiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All\nCreatures Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" \nwrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\"\ntrilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the\nDresden Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very\nfast, and it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the\nbetter (story wise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for\na week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare\nthis to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the\nsweep of Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange\ngrandeur of Gene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent,\nbeautifully rendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T14:10:59+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Were these two novellas ever published / printed separately?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\nYeah, ha ha, I've often looked at it and thought 'well, can't stop there,\noh and you can't stop there', etc.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Yes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it. But I always suspected he\nwas handed that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he\nsincerely liked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by\nthen (1987), so I'd be interested to know what else he liked.\n\n*The account of the filming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a\nmasterpiece on its own.*\nYes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "I thought the first novella was fantastic. I was actually a bit\nworried as I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it\nwas. It was wickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more\n*as* forgeries than as originals, a film director who is more\nconvinced of the cinematic brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture\nthe more grotesque and real it seemed, etc*. *The account of the\nfilming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece on its own.\n\nOn Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write\na forward or something specifically for it?\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 5, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've\nheard a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 6, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 7, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the\nreader, just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales\nin recent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off.\nIt's a great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by\na mixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell,\nand \"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it\nwith audiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All\nCreatures Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" \nwrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\"\ntrilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the\nDresden Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very\nfast, and it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the\nbetter (story wise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me\nfor a week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare\nthis to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the\nsweep of Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange\ngrandeur of Gene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent,\nbeautifully rendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T15:35:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nI just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved\nit from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*, right\nafter. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There are\nsome interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New\nUncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in recent\nyears, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's a\ngreat collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary it's\nnew weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to\nthe book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T18:53:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm pretty sure they were published nowhere else but as this omnibus. A\nslightly strange little publishing venture." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 3:10 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nWere these two novellas ever published / printed separately?\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:50 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Yeah, ha ha, I've often looked at it and thought 'well, can't stop there,\noh and you can't stop there', etc.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:30 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "\"Yes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\"\n\nYeah that would be neat. I guess the problem is that there there is so\nmuch pay off when Quiche meets the Five-O'Clock Man again.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "Yes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it. But I always suspected he\nwas handed that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he\nsincerely liked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by\nthen (1987), so I'd be interested to know what else he liked.\n\n*The account of the filming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a\nmasterpiece on its own.*\nYes! I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 5, "text": "I thought the first novella was fantastic. I was actually a bit\nworried as I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it\nwas. It was wickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more\n*as* forgeries than as originals, a film director who is more\nconvinced of the cinematic brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture\nthe more grotesque and real it seemed, etc*. *The account of the\nfilming of the thirteen \"crucifixions\" is a masterpiece on its own.\n\nOn Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he\nwrite a forward or something specifically for it?\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 6, "text": "\"I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\"\n\nSo glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin! I think I've\nheard a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the\nomnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the\nfirst novel. I loved the book right off too. It definitely contains some\nof his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in\nhis body of work.\n\nTo keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or\nnovels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 7, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 8, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the\nreader, just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales\nin recent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off.\nIt's a great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by\na mixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell,\nand \"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it\nwith audiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All\nCreatures Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" \nwrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\"\ntrilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in\nsummary it's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very\nfresh, disturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally\nwritten in swedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the\nDresden Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very\nfast, and it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the\nbetter (story wise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me\nfor a week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare\nthis to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has\nthe sweep of Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange\ngrandeur of Gene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent,\nbeautifully rendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T18:57:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.*\n\nThat's cool to hear about liking *Apocalypses*, Dan'l, but unfortunate that\nnothing else has worked for you. Have you tried* Fourth Mansions*, *Arrive\nAt Easterwine*, or any of Lafferty's later novels? (*Not To Mention Camels*,\n*Aurelia*, *Annals of Klepsis*, *Serpent's Egg*,* East of Laughter*.) And\nnone of the short stories do anything for you?\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nMy favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New\nUncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep of\nFrank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene\nWolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered\nvision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough. It's\npart of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but each\nbook is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most entertaining,\nand most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've read in\nyears. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T19:06:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah that is a very strange publication decision. I wonder if it was\nLafferty's intent. The two novellas do go together vary well, but I\nwouldn't be surprised if they were written separately and turned into one\nvolume down the road." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 2:57 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\n*My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.*\n\nThat's cool to hear about liking *Apocalypses*, Dan'l, but unfortunate\nthat nothing else has worked for you. Have you tried* Fourth Mansions*, *Arrive\nAt Easterwine*, or any of Lafferty's later novels? (*Not To Mention\nCamels*, *Aurelia*, *Annals of Klepsis*, *Serpent's Egg*,* East of\nLaughter*.) And none of the short stories do anything for you?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep\nof Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of\nGene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully\nrendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T20:02:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I didn't say they didn't work for me at all, just not as well. Some of the\nshort stories in 900 Grandmothers are delightful indeed. I haven't read any\nof the later novels, though Klepsis is on my seemingly-transfinite to-read\npile." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\n*My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.*\n\nThat's cool to hear about liking *Apocalypses*, Dan'l, but unfortunate\nthat nothing else has worked for you. Have you tried* Fourth Mansions*, *Arrive\nAt Easterwine*, or any of Lafferty's later novels? (*Not To Mention\nCamels*, *Aurelia*, *Annals of Klepsis*, *Serpent's Egg*,* East of\nLaughter*.) And none of the short stories do anything for you?\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "My favorite Lafferty too. Unfortunately, it was the first I read and the\nothers I've read simply haven't worked as well for me.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.\nLoved it from start to finish.\n\nSmall world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,\nright after. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. There\nare some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very\nsimple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure\nstory. I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the\nCulture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual\nnovel, however.\n\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": " I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider\nPhlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,\njust good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.\n\nI've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The\nNew Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in\nrecent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's\na great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a\nmixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and\n\"literary\" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.\n\nNext up: \"Home Fires\".\n\nMark\n\nOn Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:\n\nI can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with\naudiobooks whenever possible. Currently meandering through All Creatures\nGreat and Small as well as Titus Groan.\n\n\nOn Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:\n\nThanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation\nyesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative\nhorror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of\nLeaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking\nforward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both\nbe released in 2014 is a great bonus!\nOn Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, \"Piotr Szcz?sny\" wrote:\n\nI bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for \"Southern Reach\" trilogy.\n\n\"Jagannath\" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary\nit's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,\ndisturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in\nswedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.\n\nAfter that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden\nFiles, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and\nit have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story\nwise, style wise, all-around improvement).\n\nAs for Wolfe, I read his story \"Forleseen\", and it was hauting me for a\nweek or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.\n\nAnybody read \"No Return\" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this\nto the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : \"It has the sweep\nof Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of\nGene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully\nrendered vision all its own.\"\n\n\n2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer :\n\n\n\n\n I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.\nIt's part of a new \"trilogy\" (the others will be out by September), but\neach book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most\nentertaining, and most effective continuation of the \"weird\" tradition I've\nread in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,\nBlackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it\ninto something fresh.\n\n\n\n ------------------------------\n *From:* Antonin Scriabin " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T21:03:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've been reading 'The Emperor of all Things' by Paul Witcover, which\nis .... interesting. The Grandmaster of the Clockmakers' Company is\ncalled Thaddeus Wolfe, and is known as 'the Old Wolf' - which might be\na coincidence, did he not have an enforcer called Master Malrubius.\n(There is also a group of people known as the Morecockneyans, one of\nwhom is called Cornelius. There may well be other science/fiction\nfantasy references which I have missed.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<454D1986-705D-4820-BD72-9E9F0A528FB1@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T23:36:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Pardon my ignorance on Lafferty (to me, that name always evokes 'Winding your way down on Baker Street...'). What omnibus are you talking about and what are the 900 Grandmothers?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-02T23:40:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "<454D1986-705D-4820-BD72-9E9F0A528FB1@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The omnibus is Apocalypses, which is made up of two novellas, \"Where Have\nYou Been, Sandaliotis?\" and \"The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny.\"\nNine Hundred Grandmothers is a collection of Lafferty's short stories,\narguably the best such collection." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Apr 2, 2014 7:37 PM, \"Ant?nio Pedro Marques\" wrote:\nPardon my ignorance on Lafferty (to me, that name always evokes 'Winding\nyour way down on Baker Street...'). What omnibus are you talking about and\nwhat are the 900 Grandmothers?\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-03T01:24:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Spasibo.\n\nNo dia 03/04/2014, ?s 00:40, Antonin Scriabin escreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The omnibus is Apocalypses, which is made up of two novellas, \"Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis?\" and \"The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny.\" Nine Hundred Grandmothers is a collection of Lafferty's short stories, arguably the best such collection.\n\nOn Apr 2, 2014 7:37 PM, \"Ant?nio Pedro Marques\" wrote:\nPardon my ignorance on Lafferty (to me, that name always evokes 'Winding your way down on Baker Street...'). What omnibus are you talking about and what are the 900 Grandmothers?\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-03T02:11:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "????? ??????????" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Apr 2, 2014 9:24 PM, \"Ant?nio Pedro Marques\" wrote:\nSpasibo.\n\nNo dia 03/04/2014, ?s 00:40, Antonin Scriabin \nescreveu:\n\nThe omnibus is Apocalypses, which is made up of two novellas, \"Where Have\nYou Been, Sandaliotis?\" and \"The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny.\"\nNine Hundred Grandmothers is a collection of Lafferty's short stories,\narguably the best such collection.\nOn Apr 2, 2014 7:37 PM, \"Ant?nio Pedro Marques\" wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Pardon my ignorance on Lafferty (to me, that name always evokes 'Winding\nyour way down on Baker Street...'). What omnibus are you talking about and\nwhat are the 900 Grandmothers?\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Piotr Szczęsny", "address": "neternalz at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-05T10:13:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I just finished \"Empire Star\" by Samuel R. Delany. It was kinda Wolfean\nstyle story, unreliable narrator, needs re-reading and has a woman\ncharacter that feels like taken out from Wolfe book also her name is San\nSeverina, but that's just a coincidence (or not?) :). Maybe this is a long\nshot, so anyone had similar feeling? This is a short book, but definitely\nfun, I was looking for some classic SF light reading and got a light mind\nbender ;).\n\n\n\n\n2014-03-12 14:26 GMT+01:00 Antonin Scriabin :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been reading\nmuch Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to participate in\nsome of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of\nmine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories*.\nLooking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Fred Kiesche", "address": "godelescherbach at gmail.com" }, "date": "2014-04-05T13:07:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Empire Star is old enough that SRD may have influenced Wolfe as much as\nWolfe influenced SRD. It was pretty early on in both their careers, when\nthey were both showing up as Nebula winners, appearing in Orbit (Damon\nKnight) and the like." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Piotr Szcz?sny wrote:\nI just finished \"Empire Star\" by Samuel R. Delany. It was kinda Wolfean\nstyle story, unreliable narrator, needs re-reading and has a woman\ncharacter that feels like taken out from Wolfe book also her name is San\nSeverina, but that's just a coincidence (or not?) :). Maybe this is a long\nshot, so anyone had similar feeling? This is a short book, but definitely\nfun, I was looking for some classic SF light reading and got a light mind\nbender ;).\n\n\n\n\n2014-03-12 14:26 GMT+01:00 Antonin Scriabin :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days? I haven't been\nreading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to\nparticipate in some of the other ongoing discussions.\n\nI am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the\nfourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. *Paradise\nLost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume\nand the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite\nof mine from my philosophy major days.\n\nI've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was\nexcellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,\nsilly fun*.* I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by\nMcElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It\nwasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in grabbing\nmy attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with being\nwritten in a very disjointed, unique style. I will probably get back to it\nin the near future.\n\nAnyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter\nhalf of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other\nStories*. Looking forward to it!\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Duffy", "address": "david.duffy at qimr.edu.au" }, "date": "2014-04-07T00:45:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) What are you reading?", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sat, 5 Apr 2014, Fred Kiesche wrote:\nEmpire Star is old enough that SRD may have influenced Wolfe as much as\nWolfe influenced SRD. It was pretty early on in both their careers, when\nthey were both showing up as Nebula winners, appearing in Orbit (Damon\nKnight) and the like.\n\nOn Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 6:13 AM, Piotr Szcz?sny wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I just finished \"Empire Star\" by Samuel R. Delany. It was kinda Wolfean\nstyle story, unreliable narrator, needs re-reading and has a woman\ncharacter that feels like taken out from Wolfe book also her name is San\nSeverina, but that's just a coincidence (or not?) :). Maybe this is a long\nshot, so anyone had similar feeling? This is a short book, but definitely\nfun, I was looking for some classic SF light reading and got a light mind\nbender ;)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, I posted on this back in 2005 and mentioned in 2008 -\n\nhttp://lists.urth.net/htdig.cgi/urth-urth.net/2005-April/005034.html\nhttp://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2008-July/009588.html\n\nPart of the mash-up of ideas I think being played with\n\nCheers, David Duffy." } ] } ] }