what are you reading now?

[Murphy]

In Parentheses, David Jones

Mesmeric, been over a decade since the last delve. Too much detail to write here but highlights included a swaying silhouetted body climbing a fence in front of the narrative voice who subsequently jumps down where his colleague seemed to land, to Mr Jenkins, to trench names, numerous personal names, billets, skyscapes, properties of lunar phases, to looking into a small open flower crawling across chalk land being lit up by live fire, to so many clips of overheard speech

Beyond words for accumulated heartbreak, best to leave there

 

[catalog]

that was a really good article @william_kent very good journalism, does a good job of summarising it all and surprising/interesting conclusion given the daughter's initial reaction.

i might see if i can get hold of the film that the writer exec produced, here's the article (not read it yet but i will do)

and film trailer

 

[Benny Bunter]

In Parentheses, David Jones

Mesmeric, been over a decade since the last delve. Too much detail to write here but highlights included a swaying silhouetted body climbing a fence in front of the narrative voice who subsequently jumps down where his colleague seemed to land, to Mr Jenkins, to trench names, numerous personal names, billets, skyscapes, properties of lunar phases, to looking into a small open flower crawling across chalk land being lit up by live fire, to so many clips of overheard speech

Beyond words for accumulated heartbreak, best to leave there

This was already on my to-read list but you've just bumped it up a few places with that description.

 

[Murphy]

it flows and switches gears constantly to disorientating staccato and accumulative layering, tightening your internal reading focus, or kicks on re a discussion between 3 mates on life before a scene of something so far beyond horror Jones almost shields you from it by his own magical turns drawing on Gododdin/Catraeth

a cornucopia of creeping mouth-drying dread, shattering experiences, density/claustrophobia, contrasted with a myriad of lost worlds and expression, personal/collective yet always human

get stuck in

 

[william_kent]

that was a really good article @william_kent very good journalism, does a good job of summarising it all and surprising/interesting conclusion given the daughter's initial reaction.

i might see if i can get hold of the film that the writer exec produced, here's the article (not read it yet but i will do)

and film trailer

I didn't want to say too much about it, because of spoilers, etc., but now you've read it you can see that far from invalidating Kobek's case, it actually gives a pretty solid motive, especially given the timing of Doerr losing it when he finds out his daughter is on the skag and, co-incidentally that's on the same evening when the first Zodiac murder occurs at a spot where people scored...

Kobek's going to have to do another book or at least revise "How to Find Zodiac" given this new material

I was also pleased to see that the article described how the Zodiac gatekeepers are having problems with the Kobek book, I've seen the same thing happen in the Son of Sam World, where the "experts" just handle that their pet theories might be wrong or that their favourite suspects may be innocent...

 

[Benny Bunter]

get stuck in

Was planning, perhaps foolishly, to start with Anathemata, dive in at the deep end, but probably a better idea to read in parentheses first, you've made it sound great.

 

[DLaurent]

Got an eBook of Steve Fisher called 'Selected Stories'. Pure pulp. So readable. The short stories suit me the same way noir suits me with short running times. I've seen so many films written by him, it's only fair I give him a shot.

 

[Corpsey]

I'm reading "Things Fall Apart" which is alright

 

[Corpsey]

I have a big pile as usual of things wot I should read but prominent on that like is David Copperfield which I know will amuse @luka

I read a few pages of it the other day and thought well this is clearly the best thing ever written so

 

[version]

I have a big pile

There's cream for that.

 

[Corpsey]

You're better than that

 

[IdleRich]

I just started reading a book called The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. I know that she has written many books, several of which have been made into tv series or films or whatever, but so far my only engagement with her has been seeing the film The Handmaiden which is I think, a fairly loose adaptation of Fingersmith - I assume it's fairly loose in that it changes the setting from Victorian Britain to Japanese occupied Korea.

Anyway, I have started The Paying Guests and so far it's rather good. What I find she does very successfully is take you to a world where the tiniest matters of impropriety have great significance. For instance the protagonist goes into London for the day and buys lunch in a cafe, at the end she wants to mop up the butter and grease with the bread but, despite still being hungry, she fears acting in such a "vulgar" way and so she leaves the plate unmopped. And this is what you need for this kind of novel to work; you have to feel the weight of disapproval from the tiniest actions that we would perform without thinking, and once you understand and believe how much this sort of thing matters to the main character and the people around her, then you are primed for how earth-shattering the other things she does must seem to her.

Nothing of any significance has really happened yet but I feel drawn into the world of a down on their luck genteel family after the first world war, forced to take on "paying guests" - and that terminology is important, they refuse to call them lodgers because then they would have to accept that they are landladies rather than gentle-folk with guests... who happen to be paying.

 

[Corpsey]

Finished Things Fall Apart last night, actually liked it a lot more than I'd realised as I was reading it, if that makes any sort of sense

The last chapter, the way it ends, it reminded me of 'lord of the flies' in an odd way, this sudden distancing effect, this focus shift to the disgustingly detached district commissioner

Was definitely an interesting one to read after 'a bend in the river', many similarities and differences to ponder

The Tragic with a capital T sense of somebody being born in just slightly the wrong time, of somebody being shaped by all sorts of forces out of their control, and foredoomed (does achebe use that word? can't remember)

 

[Corpsey]

now really it should be david copperfield, only i started reading a bit of 'goodbye to all that' this morning and it hooked me in a little bit

but ohhh copperfield, you call to me

 

[woops]

ive been reading and posting on dissensus now for a good twenty years and only now does it come into sharp relief what a crowd of semiliterate dullards you all are. every last one of you is feeble in body and soul. you disgrace your ancestors with your sheer single-minded dedication to blockheadery

 

[woops]

im disgusted by your simple minded self satisfied complacency. you make me embarrassed to be human, let alone a subject of the realm. did it ever occur to you that there might be other minds out there, thinking in other terms than the ones you sniff at, like a dog with its familiar corner?

 

[woops]

when i opened my account on this forum it was under the impression that id be joining a community of enlightened beings, people with their 3rd eye open to the daylight, not a group of cloistered and shambling "intellects", content to blunder from one mistake to next

 

[Murphy]

Let it all out

 

[woops]

dundering morons barely capable of writing their own name in their mother tongue listening to chicago house because theres no worse music to listen to, not even Grime, much less Dubstep, what a total load of sickening garbage and no thats not uk garbage

 

[Murphy]

have you cum yet?