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Woah. That's some serious flashback there, SD
The celery stalks at midnight!
I remember the after school special. :-)
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Taking a break from Ellroy's White Jazz to quick re-read Bellairs' The Face in the Frost.
I am currently rereading Wild Cards Edited by George R.R. Martin. I am on Book 2. I am getting rid of a lot of old books and I think I only got wildcards up to book 3. I plan on getting the rest on my iPad.
Currently I'm rereading the Carrion Crown AP.
I miss playing/GMming :/
Sugar Candy Mountain has been a big disappointment thus far. Don't get me wrong, it's been tons of fun, not being supervised, smoking cigarettes and dancing, but not much reading has been going on, I'm afraid. I did get to read a whole commie newspaper, though, and finally finished off "The Death of Ivan Ilych" which made me very sad. And then I realized that there are only three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, and, thus, even less time to read at Sugar Candy Mountain and I got even sadder.
Everything by Kurt Vonnegut. Now reading Bluebeard. Reading Vonnegut is always a pleasure.
Anything by Elizabeth Moon, most recently The Serrano Connection. I highly recommend the Paksenarrion books by Moon if you haven't read them.
habibi by Craig Thompson. Great illustrations and story.
Book of Vile Darkness by Monte Cook; Manual of the Planes (Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition) by Jeff Grub, Bruce R. Cordell, and David Noonan. Unmatched source material for my campaign. It's easy and fun to convert it for Pathfinder.
Sugar Candy Mountain has been a big disappointment thus far. Don't get me wrong, it's been tons of fun, not being supervised, smoking cigarettes and dancing, but not much reading has been going on, I'm afraid. I did get to read a whole commie newspaper, though, and finally finished off "The Death of Ivan Ilych" which made me very sad. And then I realized that there are only three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, and, thus, even less time to read at Sugar Candy Mountain and I got even sadder.
So you're not even trying to read any Samuel R. Delany, or the Riddle Master of Hed while shirking your duties? Badly done, Doodles. Badly done!
Well, there hasn't been much opportunity to shirk my duties is what I'm getting at. But there's only one more story in the Tolstoy and it's wicked short; after that I need to finish off I, Robot and then I was going to read Delany so I could be like, "Hey, Dicey, I finally read some Delany..." but I like being bad so now I think I'll move on to The Drowned World.
Literary re-post from the Gender Politics Thread: Doris Lessing: R.I.P.
Now, I've never read anything by Lessing, but I am a bit distraught that it took a week to learn about her death while it took all of 15 minutes to find out about Paul Walker's.
You live in the wrong country, Doodles. In these parts we take our Nobel laureates seriously.
(On that note, if the current [conservative] prime minister decides to go to Nelson Mandela's funeral as representative of Sweden rather than appoint his Socialdemocratic predecessor Ingvar Carlsson, who was a personal friend of the man, as "special envoy" or something, I'll be slightly upset.)
Ingvar Karlsson did his share for the future of Africa, though. He used a lot of foreign aid money to get Robert Mugabe up and running.
Well, there hasn't been much opportunity to shirk my duties is what I'm getting at.
Which, I agree, is f*#%ing bullshiznit.
In fact, I complained about this to a supervisor this morning. He was working in the truck next to me (contractual violation) and I was like, "You know, Dan, this is f*$!ing bullshiznit." And he was like, "What's bullshiznit, Doodlebug?" And I was, like, "I should be on day shift already. I only volunteered to stay on this shift for peak so that I could read books on the clock!" And he was, like, "Yeah, that's bullshiznit, you should file a grievance." And I was, like, "F$%!in' a right I should file a grievance..."
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Beasts! Inhuman fiends! Leeches! Vampires, gorged on the bleeding corpses of a ravaged, exhausted proletariat! File, file and file again, brave worker, until the chains fall from your struggle-tempered limbs in a glorious cascade of broken steel and the oppressor is hurled screaming from his golden throne! Your cause is ours, comrade!
My Saturday read this week was 'Prisoner of the Horned Helmet' by James Silke. Oboy. Sample paragraph below:
Caps and exclamation marks were my own. Also features a warlord called Klang.
"How much land does a man need?"
So, I put War and Peace on hold for a bit, and, still, his characters drop off like flies. I mean, srly, Pahom and his forced march, Ivan Ilych taking a tumble off a stool, people die easy in Tolstoy.
You live in the wrong country, Doodles. In these parts we take our Nobel laureates seriously.
(On that note, if the current [conservative] prime minister decides to go to Nelson Mandela's funeral as representative of Sweden rather than appoint his Socialdemocratic predecessor Ingvar Carlsson, who was a personal friend of the man, as "special envoy" or something, I'll be slightly upset.)
Only slightly?!
Woah. That's some serious flashback there, SD
The celery stalks at midnight!
Heh. Try Beowabbit. You will be forever....affected [/fangy grin].
Has anyone ever read The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence? I've been meaning to take a look at it for years, but I tried Lady Chatterly's Lover and thought it was dead boring.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately/
I've got a hobby--re-reading Lady Chatterly
Never did Lawrence I'm afraid, but I am heartbroken to hear that LCL is boring.
I'm busy reading a different Lawrence.
Just finished Mark Lawrence's King of Thorns and immediately started Emperor of Thorns.
Like the book jacket says, it's like GRRM on speed!!!
LCL....what can I say. Young aristocrat is neglected by her elderly husband and starts a passionate affair with the gamekeeper (or maybe the gardener, which tells you how much attention I was paying). Not exactly news there. I think that what made it so sensational at the time was the fact that it used the word "f&&#ing" in print. If I want erotica, I'll pick up something by Anais Nin, or, better yet, go make my own.
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I finally finished Norwich's Shakespeare's Kings. Now I can treat myself to watching the plays on TV and laughing at the anachronisms and chronological liberties! I'm thinking of expanding the series with Chris Marlowe's "Edward II" and Shakespeare's other plays; "King John" and "Henry VII", which Norwich doesn't really discuss at all. But first I need to find movies of them, and I doubt Netflix has them.
There's BBC stagings of both King John and Henry VIII on Netflix. I couldn't vouch for them, but I can vouch for Edward II if you'd like to wallow in Elizabethan homophobia.
[Reads SJ's post about making her own erotica and passes out]
I'm busy reading a different Lawrence.
Just finished Mark Lawrence's King of Thorns and immediately started Emperor of Thorns.
Like the book jacket says, it's like GRRM on speed!!!
Seriously? Because, don't get me wrong, I love GRRM's work, but it does go on sometimes. Thanks, SD.
There's BBC stagings of both King John and Henry VIII on Netflix. I couldn't vouch for them, but I can vouch for Edward II if you'd like to wallow in Elizabethan homophobia.
[Reads SJ's post about making her own erotica and passes out]
Again?! That does it; I'm going to have to take to carrying smelling salts with me wherever I go.
Just in case nobody's ever tried it, I'd advise against reading Anna Kavan's Ice unless you actually want to wallow in a slough of near-futuristic post-nuclear-holocaust despond.
Seriously. Very fast paced and very very brutal.
Imagine if Joffrey was competent.
Or Arya ruled the Red Mummers.
And turned it up to 11.
It begins with The Prince of Thorns.
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Seriously. Very fast paced and very very brutal.
Imagine if Joffrey was competent.
Or Arya ruled the Red Mummers.
And turned it up to 11.
It begins with The Prince of Thorns.
Cool! *Adds yet more to the list of books to be read*
Been on a reading (and rereading) kick lately after a while of not, partly due to some travel recently that took me offline :p .
Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery, by Nabil Matar
Virgil's Aeneid (Allen Mandelbaum translation, latest of many rereads)
Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (to accompany the former)
Suetonius's Life of Sulla (reread)
Laxdaela saga (reread)
On the docket:
The Aeneid (Robert Fagles translation, for comparison)
Paradise Lost, aloud, which will probably be a slow, fits and starts project.
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Picked up a two-bit copy of The Plumed Serpent, and promptly attained the nauseated condition while reading the first chapter. Holy freakin' moly. Doodles (and everyone else who's interested/crazy), I'd be interested in your opinion of it, just to see if I'm misjudging D.H. Lawrence. It is one of his last works, written shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1930, and maybe his condition was affecting his thinking (TB does have a noticeable effect on emotions and behavior, especially in the end stages), but, just, ick. If you hear of someone getting picked up in Cali for burying a book in a remote location by the full moon and putting protective symbols all around the grave, it's probably me. Promise me you'll visit while I'm in the loony bin, Paizonians?
Darlington might've put a librarian in charge of it, but Boston banned it!I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun. Mine's an ex-library copy, and has a big sticker in the front saying ** spoiler omitted **
Presumably in case the mere sight of it sent the inhabitants of 1950s Darlington into some sort of slavering erotic frenzy.
hhh, in Croatia it's required reading for all 15-year-olds (1st year of high school).
reading Jim Butcher's "Side Jobs". I'm guessing there are a lot of spoilers for other Dresden Files books, but I care not.
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hhh, in Croatia it's required reading for all 15-year-olds (1st year of high school).Darlington might've put a librarian in charge of it, but Boston banned it!I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun. Mine's an ex-library copy, and has a big sticker in the front saying ** spoiler omitted **
Presumably in case the mere sight of it sent the inhabitants of 1950s Darlington into some sort of slavering erotic frenzy.
. . . So Europe's full of socialist heathens who drink wine for breakfast and require their children to read pornography in the guise of education? Tell me something I don't know! :P
Picked up a two-bit copy of The Plumed Serpent, and promptly attained the nauseated condition while reading the first chapter. Holy freakin' moly. Doodles (and everyone else who's interested/crazy), I'd be interested in your opinion of it, just to see if I'm misjudging D.H. Lawrence. It is one of his last works, written shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1930, and maybe his condition was affecting his thinking (TB does have a noticeable effect on emotions and behavior, especially in the end stages), but, just, ick. If you hear of someone getting picked up in Cali for burying a book in a remote location by the full moon and putting protective symbols all around the grave, it's probably me. Promise me you'll visit while I'm in the loony bin, Paizonians?
[Adds The Plumed Serpent to the list]
. . . So Europe's full of socialist heathens who drink wine for breakfast and require their children to read pornography in the guise of education? Tell me something I don't know! :Phhh, in Croatia it's required reading for all 15-year-olds (1st year of high school).Darlington might've put a librarian in charge of it, but Boston banned it!I'm also having a go at the Decameron, which is quite fun. Mine's an ex-library copy, and has a big sticker in the front saying ** spoiler omitted **
Presumably in case the mere sight of it sent the inhabitants of 1950s Darlington into some sort of slavering erotic frenzy.
Never did me any harm.
I've finished the Decameron and am now reading 'Court of the Red Tsar' by Simon Sebag Montefiore, an Italian prog group who released two limited release LPs in the early 70s and went on to collectively write excellent books about infamous dictators. May start on vol. 3 of The Wheel of Time as well, once I psych myself up to it.
I preferred his book about Potemkin.
To quote (or paraphrase) dear Comrade Longears: "I can use a search engine." Yay me!!
"Preening panjandrums"? [Scurries off to a dictionary, but pauses to plug The Prophet Unarmed by Isaac Deutscher]
The impeccable sources Hattersley mentions are all very well, but you only get 'em if you're a) willing to shell out for the hardback, or b) have the time to schlep around Sebag-Montefiore's website, hunting them out. Which I may well do.
His 'Young Stalin' was good, but I've not read anything else by him except an autobiographical piece in the Guardian. All I remember about that was him getting told off by an ex-Paratroop Regiment sergeant on a kibbutz, which I'm sure was very significant.
One Trotsky-riffic book of biography, fine, but three might be a bit much. Is there a decent single volume book I could search out, Doodlebug?
Off the top of my head, and with not nearly enough sleep, no.
Deutscher was the shiznit and his Prophet trilogy is, to my mind, one of the finest works of Marxist biography evah. (I may be partial, as I first read them when I was a teenager.) I linked the second volume, not so much for the never ending hope of converting you, but rather because it deals with the same years as Lenin's will, Krupskaya's being treated rudely and Stalin's accession to power.
[EDIT: Scanning the wiki page, I see that the Trotsky trilogy gets a big thumbs up from Tony Blair. Don't let that deter you!]
Srly, the Deutscher trilogy is not only the biography of Trotsky, but the biography of the Russian Marxist movement (with whole chapters about such exciting things as the 1903 conference, the 1905 dress rehearsal, the debate between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg over the national question, etc., etc., and the early years of the Soviet Union. (After '29, with Trotsky's exile, the scene changes.)
Recently, a comrade was reading Trotsky's My Life (which I can also recommend) and he complained about how scant the info about 1917 was. "Well," I said, "He had just completed his three-volume" (another one!) "History of the Russian Revolution. Maybe he didn't want to repeat himself."
In other news, only one more Asimov story to go.
Also, Sugar Candy Mountain sucks.
I preferred his book about Potemkin.
I thought you typed Pokemon. :-D
The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life by Tom Reiss
I actually read this awhile ago, but it's a well-written biography about one of the 20th century's most fascinating and controversial people. Apropos of Marx, Engels et al, it starts in Baku during the time when people were becoming obscenely rich off of the oil boom, so it takes a good look at what motivated activists like Lenin. Worth the trouble of tracking it down!
Doodlebug: I admit I never got around to Foundation... but I have read a number of his short stories. I must say, though, that The Caves of Steel and The End of Eternity were easy and fun reads. Compare tEoE with Stross' Palimpsest for a shorter and more modern take on a similar concept.
I am interested in finishing the series, Madame Sissyl, and of reading more Stross, but I've got to read me some Samuel Delany before Dicey starts shunning me.
Oh please, The Jewels of Aptor is barely even weird enough to be considered part of Delany's oeuvre; come back when you've read Empire Star.
(Seriously, JoA is his first book. Delany's very dyslexic, so he has to put a lot of care into his writing, but at that point he hadn't developed the cool stuff that makes his writing truly out there. Just, for God's sake, stay away from his porn until you're used to his voice; it's even crazier that the stuff that I scared everyone away from the Advanced Reading in D&D thread by mentioning.)
(As you can tell from the above sentence's structure, I am not dyslexic, and put no care whatsoever into my writing.)
Fine. F$~@ The Jewels of Aptor. I'll start with Hogg.
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[After consulting the catalog database of the Merrimack Public Library and its interlibrary loan partners]
Okay, so maybe I won't.
If you really want to see where it all started*, try to find Atlantis: Three Tales and read "Citre et Trans."
*This is a horrible way to describe anything, but I've been drinking beer. At this point I don't know what "it" is, and don't have the energy to work out a more nuanced explanation. Sorry, dude.
The only books by Delany that my library has access to are Dhalgren, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue and About Writing.
In my never-ending hunt through used bookstores, the only Delany I've ever seen is The Jewels of Aptor.
Now, it is, alas, true that New Hampshire isn't exactly a cultural center, but I go to Boston, too. Delany's one obscure dude, Dicey.
*This is a horrible way to describe anything, but I've been drinking beer. At this point I don't know what "it" is, and don't have the energy to work out a more nuanced explanation. Sorry, dude.
Coherence is for ninnies.
Dude, If you made it through Melmoth the Wanderer, Dhalgren is the book for you!
Actually, Times Square Red looks pretty interesting...
Hey man, if it sounds like you'll enjoy it, go for it. The thing about Delany's dyslexia is, he has to really work to write anything at all, so his writing is really, really clear. You'll probably go through his stuff faster than other writers of the same page length. (Then again, say what you will about goblins, you don't seem like a slow reader.)
Oops, beer. My point at the beginning was that I actually prefer Delany's nonfiction to his fiction, but I can't just recommend it on the interwebz, because I'll be legally culpable for emotional distress to the lily-livered. (Look it up, it's crime a these days.)
[Inebriated pervert fistbump]
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I'm so glad that's the first post on a new page :)
More proof positive that I can use a search engine and more on Delany.