What are you reading?

Antonin Scriabin · 02 Apr 2014, 12:54 · from 2014-April.txt.gz
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From: kierkegaurdian at gmail.com (Antonin Scriabin)
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2014 08:54:11 -0400
Subject: (urth) What are you reading?
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I thought the first novella was fantastic.  I was actually a bit worried as
I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it was.  It was
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 cinematic
brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture the more grotesque and real
it seemed, etc*.  *The account of the filming of the thirteen
"crucifixions" is a masterpiece on its own.

On Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write a
forward or something specifically for it?


On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved
> it from start to finish."
>
> So glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin!  I think I've heard
> a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the
> omnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the
> first novel.  I loved the book right off too.  It definitely contains some
> of his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in
> his body of work.
>
> To keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or
> novels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?
>
> -DOJP
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.
>> Loved it from start to finish.
>>
>> Small world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,
>> right after.  It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either.  There
>> are some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very
>> simple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure
>> story.  I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the
>> Culture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual
>> novel, however.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin <mark at marklewin.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider
>>> Phlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,
>>> just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.
>>>
>>> I've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The New
>>> Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in
>>> recent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's
>>> a great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a
>>> mixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and
>>> "literary" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.
>>>
>>> Next up: "Home Fires".
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:
>>>
>>> I can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with
>>> audiobooks whenever possible.  Currently meandering through All Creatures
>>> Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
>>> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation
>>> yesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative
>>> horror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of
>>> Leaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking
>>> forward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both
>>> be released in 2014 is a great bonus!
>>> On Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, "Piotr Szcz?sny" <neternalz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for "Southern Reach" trilogy.
>>>
>>> "Jagannath" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary
>>> it's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,
>>> disturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in
>>> swedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.
>>>
>>> After that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden
>>> Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and
>>> it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story
>>> wise, style wise, all-around improvement).
>>>
>>> As for Wolfe, I read his story "Forleseen", and it was hauting me for a
>>> week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.
>>>
>>> Anybody read "No Return" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this
>>> to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : "It has the sweep of
>>> Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene
>>> Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully rendered
>>> vision all its own."
>>>
>>>
>>> 2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  I 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.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------
>>>  *From:* Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
>>>  *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
>>>  *Sent:* Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:26 AM
>>>  *Subject:* (urth) What are you reading?
>>>
>>> Hello, 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.
>>>
>>> I 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.
>>>
>>>  I'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.
>>>
>>>  Anyway, 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!
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>
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