connect_icut
Well-known member
The Left Hand of Darkness is incredible as are The Dispossessed and Planet of Exile. Some of my favourite SF. There's a great deal more to her than Earthsea, that's for sure!
what are you reading now?
The Left Hand of Darkness is incredible as are The Dispossessed and Planet of Exile. Some of my favourite SF. There's a great deal more to her than Earthsea, that's for sure!
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
I've been doing quite well lately, recently read Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' in quick succession. I've hit a bit of a wall this week but I'm beginning 'Great Expectations' for the umpteenth time. I am enjoying it a lot but I'm sending myself mad by over-annotating every bloody page 
IdleRich
IdleRich
I started reading the Tailor of Panama - it's funny I thought that Tinker, Taylor etc was amazing and then I read another Le Carre and now this one and they're not the same at all. They're fine but they don't have that defeated low-key British defeatedness which made the Smiley one special. This appears to just be a superior spy thriller. I haven't finished it yet though so will reserve judgment.
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Yeah I have read a bunch of the Hainish cycle stuff and one or two others in the SF vein. I do like her in general (and Left Hand… especially was incredible), but I have to say that none of it had the effect on me that the Earthsea setting did. Must be a personal thing but those books, all of them, plus all the short stories, became instant favourites. Really transporting, calming, immersive. So grateful they exist.
woops
is not like other people
Last 6 months or so
I just dug out my old copy of the Dark is Rising, might have another look at it after reading all this.
Just been reading non-Dissensus stuff like Clive James' Unreliable Memoirs, Rousseau's Confessions, Nabokov's Pnin, Anthony Powell's Memoirs and Journals, Conrad's Victory, Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate.
And HP Lovecraft, finally.
I just dug out my old copy of the Dark is Rising, might have another look at it after reading all this.
Just been reading non-Dissensus stuff like Clive James' Unreliable Memoirs, Rousseau's Confessions, Nabokov's Pnin, Anthony Powell's Memoirs and Journals, Conrad's Victory, Nancy Mitford's Love in a Cold Climate.
And HP Lovecraft, finally.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Panama is the only Le Carre I've read. I didn't enjoy it at all, either because or in spite of it being Greene's Our Man in Havana redux, I'm not sure which. Is Tinker Tailor the best?
hucks
Your Message Here
Smiley's People is my favourite, but that, Tinker Tailor and the Spy who Came in are all pretty great. Smiley's People is the best cos it's pure mood music, the slowly shifting plates of the Cold War in Europe. George Smiley is an
amazing character, like Rich said he's the defeat of empire in the form of a civil servant.
crackerjack
Well-known member
Ta. Do I need to read TTSS & SP in order? The second follows the first iirc.
hucks
Your Message Here
Yeah cos there's a spoiler if you read them the wrong way round
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
Hahahaha
I am just finishing the "Book of the New Sun" series by Gene Wolfe - as i'm sure you already know, it's a fantastic/preposterous science-fantasy epic set on a post-apocalyptic Earth ("Urth") a million years in the future, when the sun is dying and the world is back in a kind of dark age after eons of scientific advancement and interstellar travel and stuff, and people have reverted to using arcane words like "carnifex" and "thaumaturge" and measuring things in leagues and spans again for some reason. It's a great setting, because among the ruins of earth there's loads of relics of still-functioning ancient advanced technology, so even though people are going around with swords on horseback, there's also teleportation and time travel and laser-guns. It's dense and severe and has lines such as "two creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of cats entered" written entirely seriously/unironically, which is great. There's also a brilliant inversion of the traditional machines-enslaving-humanity idea at one point.
It's pretty fucking difficult to understand what the hell is going on a lot of the time, though. Anyone? There's very blatant elements of Orwell and Lovecraft in there, so i thought dissensus might be a fan.
It's pretty fucking difficult to understand what the hell is going on a lot of the time, though. Anyone? There's very blatant elements of Orwell and Lovecraft in there, so i thought dissensus might be a fan.
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
That is my favourite book (I do think of it as one book) of all time next to Moby Dick.
blacktulip
Pregnant with mandrakes
I think I have a fairly good grasp of the whole thing so ask away. The best way to get there is re-reading, though. It's kind of the intention.
I'm generally heartbroken when I get to the end of a good book, so you may be pleased to hear there are three sequels, two of which are also multi-volume works.
I'm generally heartbroken when I get to the end of a good book, so you may be pleased to hear there are three sequels, two of which are also multi-volume works.
you
Well-known member
I have started reading Ligotti, about 5years over due but wow, I love it. I read a lot so it's nice to have something light that whisks me along. I've also read a bunch of burroughs, under the volcano by malcolm Lowry - perhaps my favourite book ever, possibly... Read will selfs umbrella, bloody intense text that, oh... And memories of the future.
connect_icut
Well-known member
you
Well-known member
Yeah, he is unfashionable. But I feel he is underrated, he is the type of writer who does his own thing and will do for years. I reckon he'll get a late cult following. How the dead live and walking to Hollywood are great books. Keep meaning to read dave. Umbrella reminded me of a more intense form / use of vertical prose... In contrast to under the volcano.
connect_icut
Well-known member
I wasn't so sure about "Walking to Hollywood". Kinda seemed like a straight-up WG Sebald pastiche (right down to the muddy black-and-white photographs) and I couldn't quite see the point of that. "The Book of Dave" is pretty amazing, though. As ambitious as "Umbrella", in its own way.
I can see why people don't like him - because of his obnoxious pundit persona. Also, most of his novels run out of steam about halfway through. He's a consistently excellent short story right but most people don't seem to like short stories, on principal. (The most recent story collection I read - "Liver" - was definitely up to standard, BTW.)
woops
is not like other people
Well said.
Will Self strikes or fails to strike a balance between being the only UK writer to engage with anything interesting, even one approaching the status of a public intellectual, and a maddening inability to excel outside the short story format.
His journalism makes me want to lend him a fiver