Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Eno biography ("On a faraway beach") - this is one I'm enjoying but I've been reading it for nearly a fortnight now so I'm kind of wanting it to be over. I've discovered some amazing music through it already though.

Making a playlist of practically anything even mentioned in it, already gigantic:
Also reading "Weatherland" by Alexandra Harris in dribs and drabs (bit academic but also regularly fascinating) and of course the Book of Genesis, although I'm falling behind rapidly with that one.

Trying to be a bit more eclectic about reading ATM.
 

droid

Well-known member
Adam Roberts' 'The black prince', a crowdfunded novel based on an unpublished Anthony Burgess screenplay. Based on 13th century military adventures in France and Spain featuring a series of vignettes, concocted newsreels and accounts of battle. Breathtakingly good.
 

droid

Well-known member
Reminds me a little of Pavane, or even Blood Meridian in places.

Brought out by crowdfunded publisher Unbound, this is a weird and wonderful book on which no commercial publisher would have taken a punt. Burgess said of his planned novel: “The effect might be of the fourteenth century going on in another galaxy where language and literature had somehow got themselves into the twentieth century.” Adam Roberts recreates that effect with panoramic camera swoops over Europe, inset newsreel headlines, and stream-of-consciousness accounts of the major battles of the century (Crécy, Poitiers, Nájera). These are voiced by a whole range of characters: if you want to see medieval Europe from the perspective of a blind king of Bohemia, a dog, a chicken seller, a Cornish miner, a mercenary, the mother of Richard III, or the Black Prince himself, this is the book for you.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/17/the-black-prince-by-adam-roberts-review
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
That sounds very interesting. I've finished Fingerpost and Pfitz and I randomly pulled something from my bookshelf that I must have picked up in a charity shop I guess (where I get most of my books). It's called Samarkand by Amin Maalouf and so far it's a lot of fun. Basically historical fiction about Omar Khayyam and (so far) his adventures in Samarkand with its leaders.

Anyone read Wittgenstein's Mistress? Was recommended to me yesterday by two people.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Adam Roberts' 'The black prince', a crowdfunded novel based on an unpublished Anthony Burgess screenplay. Based on 13th century military adventures in France and Spain featuring a series of vignettes, concocted newsreels and accounts of battle. Breathtakingly good.
Dude that sounds fucking amazing

The 100 Years War is one of my several historical fascinations (I especially recommend Jonathan Sumption's enormous, authoritative 3 volume history)

Truly a crazy, largely awful time that I can easily see transposing into Blood Meridian territory - post-apocalyptic French countryside completely devastated by decades of chevauchees, brigandage (often indistinguishable from the actual "war" war), the Black Plague, and resulting economic collapse, into which a Judge Glanton type could readily fit.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I'm at 350 pages of Quixote. The first 200 pages were a bit arduous but its plain sailing now. Working well around beach life, although the largeness of it is a pain. I've made sure everyone can see the cover but no-one seems arsed. The Anselmo and lothario story was good. I'm now on the prisoners story, also quite good. It's like the panchtantra or 1001 nights I think, stories in stories. I like the landlord of the inn best.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I like the landlord of the inn best.

The inn episode is brilliant - if I recall rightly, he decides it's actually a great noble castle (as opposed to a grotty drinking hole/dosshouse), and these two girls he and Sancho meet there are beautiful and chaste noblewomen (as opposed to a couple of poxy whores with bad breath, who find the pair of them thoroughly hilarious).

Is that also the bit where they get food poisoning and end up writhing around in agony clutching their guts, showering themselves and each other with puke and shit? I love how utterly scatological the humour can be.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Yeah that's the first bit, forgot about that tbh. When they go back to the inn, Quixote thinks the wine skins are a giant and goes at them with his sword, then Pancho sees he wine flow and thinks it's blood... And the inn keeper loses his shit cos they never paid in the first place and now they've fucked all his wine. I like how everyone is trying to manage Quixote all the time.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah that's the first bit, forgot about that tbh. When they go back to the inn, Quixote thinks the wine skins are a giant and goes at them with his sword, then Pancho sees he wine flow and thinks it's blood... And the inn keeper loses his shit cos they never paid in the first place and now they've fucked all his wine. I like how everyone is trying to manage Quixote all the time.
This is what I mean, the people you mentioned above that seemed oblivious to your reading material are indeed philistines that can't appreciate the subtlety, highbrow humour and deep meaning which is revealed in these books us dissensians enjoy - even if they themselves wouldn't like the book (or wouldn't understand it more like!) they should as an absolute minimum requirement of modern day etiquette be forced to at least bow to the book and clearly acknowledge to you and all others present that they are your intellectual inferior.
 

forclosure

Well-known member
finished Kindred by Octavia Butler today and was not dissapointed by it

Its got so much going on within the story theres patriarchy both gender and race, its about trauma in relation to social constructs,emancipation and facing the past to rectify the future.

and its a very unique take on the slave narrative legacy of literarture that goes all the way back to like Equiano and Josiah Henson (arguably the real influence for Uncle Toms cabin)
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Finished Iliad about a week ago. SPOILERS: It didn't end how I expected it to, although I'm not sure I really had a firm idea how it was going to end. I guess I was expecting either an outright Greek victory - Troy sacked, Priam and his remaining sons (especially Paris) killed, Helen brought back to Menelaos - or Trojan victory; which I guess would have been unlikely, given Homer was Greek. But actually it ends with a temporary lull in the hostilities while the two sides mourn their most important individual losses (Patroklos for the Greeks, Hektor for the Trojans), before presumably carrying till the bitter end once the ceremonies are over. Another surprising thing is how little Helen and either of her husbands (Menelaos and Paris) feature in the story, given how central they are to the outbreak of the war. The extreme degree to which Achilleus mourns Patroklos is also notable. It's almost more like he has lost his wife than his friend, although there's nothing apart from that to hint that their relationship may have been more than Platonic.

Edit: apparently they were sometimes depicted as lovers in other works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus
/SPOILERS

Now reading Catch-22 again before watching the series on Channel 4. Now there's a great book. Mrs. Tea asked me why I was 'talking to myself' in the bath yesterday - I just found it impossible not to read out loud some of the chapter about Major (Major Major) Major.
 
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catalog

Well-known member
Would you recommend the Iliad? I'd like a good retelling of the Hercules stories if anyone has a tip on that too. Saw the Rubens paintings today and they've got me thinking
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Oh yeah, it's great. Just don't expect it to conform to any kind of writing style or plot progression familiar from the novel format (obviously). In particular, something that really jars is that very often a character will say several sentences to another, and then almost immediately the second character will repeat the entire speech - a whole paragraph! - to a third. Just not something you'd ever see in a novel, unless the author were aiming for a very specific effect.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've been reading The Odyssey and finding it incredibly repetitive.

It's even more formulaic than the Iliad, as I recall. "As soon as Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered..."

As soon as YAWN appeared, more like, amirite?!
 

version

Well-known member
There's a lot of sitting down at a feast, exchanging pleasantries, someone recounting a story then everyone retiring to bed.
 
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