Last Book You Read....

[NotThePars]

31 minutes ago, tongue_tied_danny said:

I'm going to get my mitts on a copy of this. I'm quite interested in old school eastern European brutality so this should be up my street.

I'd never heard of this chap before but he seems like an interesting character. According to The Wikipedia he later appeared as an antagonist in the PS2 game World War Zero.

Now that's what I call being immortalised.

Palmer references that in the novel which must be how it ended up on the wiki lol. It's a good read. A significant chunk of the book is devoted to describing Mongolian society, its culture, religious practices, how its history influenced its sense of self and its relationship to all of its neighbours which I didn't expect but I think Palmer makes it very evocative. It had me jonesing for an RPG set in that space or based on it like The Witcher or some shit. I'm not sure how they'd move past how racist everything is but still, would be a laugh.

[Saigon Raider]

Finished Stalingrad by Antony Beever - brutal stuff and proved I would have been shot for cowardice had I been born at another time. A part of history I knew very little about so found it relatively easy to read and completely enlightening. Only slight criticism was how many times I had to check the maps to find out which regiment was in each army - didn't seem all that obvious.

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie - why had I never read any of his stuff before? Absolutely loved it, quite similar to Locke Lamora but even darker - totally my genre and can't wait to read all of his others. That feeling when you find somebody new and there are loads of books waiting to go is glorious.

Just started Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham - a factual account of the background to Chernobyl and what happened. Supposed to be superb so looking forward to getting stuck into it. Another part of history I don't know a great lot about although I distinctly remember some kids from the area visiting Perthshire when I was very young - I think two even stayed at our house for a week...

Also reading The Watchman graphic novel but not really got into yet.

[Craig fae the Vale]

7 hours ago, Saigon Raider said:

Just started Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham - a factual account of the background to Chernobyl and what happened. Supposed to be superb so looking forward to getting stuck into it. Another part of history I don't know a great lot about although I distinctly remember some kids from the area visiting Perthshire when I was very young - I think two even stayed at our house for a week...

Its a fantastic read. The level of sheer incompetence and arrogance surrounding it is outrageous

[Shandon Par]

New Rebus book. Alright. A bit Midsummer Murdery. Prefer the sections on the Edinburgh villains. 

Less Than Zero, by James Easton Ellis. I had to google this to check it really did come from 1985 and wasn't some marketing ploy. "Timeless" can be a naff phrase but it felt like it could have been written today. It's a fairly short book and follows our main character, Clay, as he returns from uni to LA for the Christmas hols. It's a world of rich kids who are desperately lacking guidance. Cool, bleak, too much too young stuff. Or a dark comedy horror. Really impressive book. 

 

[Detournement]

Less Than Zero is a great novel. The flat writing style really evokes the detachment of being depressed and full of drugs. The sequel Imperial Bedrooms is utter gash and I have a theory that BEE only wrote it to get cash to fund his Lindsay Lohan movie The Canyons. 

Everything else is worth reading. Glamorama is my favourite, it's a massively underrated novel.

[MSU]

I re-read Less Than Zero during lockdown. It's aged very well and remains my second favorite Bret Easton Ellis, pipped by Lunar Park, which I know people hated but I just loved. The ending breaks me, the massive sentence that talks about where the ashes travel and the final line are perfect. In order after that, I'd go American Psycho, Rules of Attraction, Glamorama, and then the utterly dreadful Imperial Bedrooms which barely passes as a novel.

[Brummie Clyde]

Dune - Quite enjoyed it and hadn't realised it was written back in 1965. Wonder if it influenced Star Wars with its blend of Religion and Sci-Fi and using the mind to control others.

I wouldn't put it up there with Philip K. Dick's best novels though, in particular my favourite 'Ubik', which is a real mind-bender.

[Shandon Par]

On 23/10/2020 at 16:46, Detournement said:

Less Than Zero is a great novel. The flat writing style really evokes the detachment of being depressed and full of drugs. The sequel Imperial Bedrooms is utter gash and I have a theory that BEE only wrote it to get cash to fund his Lindsay Lohan movie The Canyons. 

Everything else is worth reading. Glamorama is my favourite, it's a massively underrated novel.

I’d just finished Glamorama and watched American Psycho again so was on a BEE binge. 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Shandön Par

[coprolite]

1 hour ago, Brummie Clyde said:

Dune - Quite enjoyed it and hadn't realised it was written back in 1965. Wonder if it influenced Star Wars with its blend of Religion and Sci-Fi and using the mind to control others.

I wouldn't put it up there with Philip K. Dick's best novels though, in particular my favourite 'Ubik', which is a real mind-bender.

I think Dune probably did have a big influence on Star Wars, with the desert planet and the mysticism. I think Asimov's Foundation trilogy also had a big hand in it. Han Pritcher basically is Han Solo, at least at the start. 

Ubik is the one with the half lives/cryogenic stuff right? Good ideas in that. Haven't read a huge amount of Dick but i loved A Scanner Darkly (quite a typical i think, a bit Naked Lunchy) and one about grown ups taking psychedelics and playing with doll. Any you'd recommend? 

[NotThePars]

51 minutes ago, coprolite said:

I think Dune probably did have a big influence on Star Wars, with the desert planet and the mysticism. I think Asimov's Foundation trilogy also had a big hand in it. Han Pritcher basically is Han Solo, at least at the start. 

Ubik is the one with the half lives/cryogenic stuff right? Good ideas in that. Haven't read a huge amount of Dick but i loved A Scanner Darkly (quite a typical i think, a bit Naked Lunchy) and one about grown ups taking psychedelics and playing with doll. Any you'd recommend? 

I don't tend to find his stuff to be that well-written in isolation but most of his stories have a similar vibe to them that weaves a cool world worth exploring. I think his short story collections are the best for that reason if you're wanting to get the best out of his writing.

Edited October 25, 2020 by NotThePars

[Brummie Clyde]

Besides the obvious ones like The Man on the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I really liked The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.

Haven't read the Total Recall story, called something like 'We Can Remember it for you Wholesale' or something like that.

[mathematics]

Beyond Lies the Wub is my favourite PKD short story.

[topcat(The most tip top)]

Tale of the Tub by Jonathan Swift. Supposedly a fable dealing with three brothers representing Catholicism, Anglicanism and Calvinism this book is mostly composed of digression, digressions from those digressions and digressions on the subject of digression.

Being written 300 years before us and 100 years after Shakespeare the language is tough going but Swift’s wit shines through the centuries occasionally. To a contemporary reader who got all the references it would probably have been hilarious.

[Monkey Tennis]

Just finished The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh.

I thought it was alright.  Quite intricately plotted, but slow to gather momentum.  Think Brookmyre, but without either the Scottishness, or the laughs.

[NotThePars]

Halfway through The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson who’s a sci-fi author I’ve had recommended to me a few times. This one’s an alt-history novel about what happens when the Black Death wipes out Europe and the east rises to world prominence instead. The answer by the midway point is basically still loads of conflict and death. The book starts with a soldier in Timurlane’s army who’s part of the advanced scouts that discover Europe wiped out by the plague and moves through the centuries with focus on specific historical actors in the novel such as an imam that’s part of a Sultanate established in France, scholars that start the equivalent of the scientific revolutions this time in Samarkand and I’m currently on a Japanese samurai who fled Chinese invasions of Japan across to the Americas and is attempting to unite Native tribes to resist the Chinese equivalent of the conquest of the Americas. The narrative concept tying the characters together is that the characters are recurring reincarnations of each other with interlude chapters of them in a sort of purgatory that’s reflective of the dominant state on earth at the time with their access to heaven or whatever becoming increasingly bureaucratised as the Chinese establish hegemony over the world.

It’s a pretty cool concept for a novel and Robinson is an engaging writer. Should hopefully finish this very soon and check out some of his proper science fiction next.

[coprolite]

2 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Halfway through The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson who’s a sci-fi author I’ve had recommended to me a few times. This one’s an alt-history novel about what happens when the Black Death wipes out Europe and the east rises to world prominence instead. The answer by the midway point is basically still loads of conflict and death. The book starts with a soldier in Timurlane’s army who’s part of the advanced scouts that discover Europe wiped out by the plague and moves through the centuries with focus on specific historical actors in the novel such as an imam that’s part of a Sultanate established in France, scholars that start the equivalent of the scientific revolutions this time in Samarkand and I’m currently on a Japanese samurai who fled Chinese invasions of Japan across to the Americas and is attempting to unite Native tribes to resist the Chinese equivalent of the conquest of the Americas. The narrative concept tying the characters together is that the characters are recurring reincarnations of each other with interlude chapters of them in a sort of purgatory that’s reflective of the dominant state on earth at the time with their access to heaven or whatever becoming increasingly bureaucratised as the Chinese establish hegemony over the world.

It’s a pretty cool concept for a novel and Robinson is an engaging writer. Should hopefully finish this very soon and check out some of his proper science fiction next.

Have you read any of Charles Stross's Empire books? Combines Alt history directly with SF. Probably not as amusing as his other stuff but good concepts and well written. 

[NotThePars]

Have you read any of Charles Stross's Empire books? Combines Alt history directly with SF. Probably not as amusing as his other stuff but good concepts and well written. 

 

I haven’t, no. I read the first book in the Laundry Files which I found equal parts entertaining and annoying. It was the humour that I found especially grating after a while so toning that down might help me enjoy it more. Will go on Amazon and get one of their free samples for this though, cheers.

[diegomarahenry]

Just finished Traci Lords book Underneath it all.  I heard bits about it on a podcast and decided to read it, Being too young to know her story first hand, I kind of knew she was a former porn star turned actress but none of the real detail. 

She had a difficult upbringing, her father beat her mother and they eventually split up, This led to her unemployed mother flit about between new boyfriends and moving her and her three sisters with her. She suffered serious sexual assaults including getting pregnant at age 11 from her 16 year old boyfriend. 

She dropped out of school at 15 and with a fake ID got jobs in modeling, which led to her being in dozens of porn films illegally. 

The book for the most part is a very good read, The details of how many people in her  life let her down and the exploitation of producers and agents who booked her on the basis of looking 15 (despite considering her to be 18) is pretty grim reading at times and you do feel sorry for her a great deal. Even at her arrest, they took her to a police station wearing only a t-shirt and officers made inappropriate remarks about her, fully aware of her age. 

The last quarter of the book is a bit filler though, highlights and on-set stories of tv shows and films that you probably haven't seen and a successful recording and DJ career in the 90s. It is like 60% harrowing survival story and 40% what you would expect Kelly Brook or Jordans autobiography to be like. 

 

 

[Detournement]

3 minutes ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

Stoner improved as it went on - 7.5/10 

Have now moved on to Beyond a Boundary by CLR James. He was a Trinidadian Marxist intellectual who played a big role in their fight for independence from Britain - the book is a kind of autobiography looking at his life through the lens of cricket. It is apparently considered one of the greatest sports books of all time. Only a chapter or so in to it but very good so far. 

The ending is undoubtedly great bit of writing but the vast majority of it is just misery porn. Also I didn't like the literature changed his life part without getting into what he was reading or why it affected him.

 

[NotThePars]

10 minutes ago, ThatBoyRonaldo said:

Stoner improved as it went on - 7.5/10 

Have now moved on to Beyond a Boundary by CLR James. He was a Trinidadian Marxist intellectual who played a big role in their fight for independence from Britain - the book is a kind of autobiography looking at his life through the lens of cricket. It is apparently considered one of the greatest sports books of all time. Only a chapter or so in to it but very good so far. 

Wouldn't be surprised as The Black Jacobins is one of the greatest history books ever written.