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Postby chimp » Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:55 pm

Excession is what I wish boarding was like
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Postby fresco painter » Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:56 pm

i'm on a real phil of biology/marine science run right now

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on jeremy's rec
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Postby chimp » Fri Jul 19, 2019 12:58 pm

other minds is cool
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Postby fresco painter » Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:24 pm

yeah it's pretty well written and interesting
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Postby vivian darko » Sun Jul 21, 2019 10:55 pm

i finally read the castle

these two have been ideal companions for insomniac summer nights:

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alejandra pizarnik - extracting the stone of madness

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ingeborg bachmann - malina

though i'm annoyed that new directions omits poems from pizarnik's 'diana's tree,' which i had to track down elsewhere and which are very clearly a key part of her development
PROBLEM ATTIC wrote:I see dear sweet Vivian, one of the boys of Lmao
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Postby tarantula » Mon Jul 22, 2019 12:34 am

i'm a member of this mystery school called builders of the adytum. i finished a year long course in esoteric astrology and have now begun the next course called 'qabalistic doctrines on sexual polarity'

the premise is that most of us have adverse ideas about the use of sexual energy, the basic foundation of creation, but we can learn how to apply it without snickering hang ups to our own spiritual evolution. to my understanding, the course is saying that gender is a fundamental quality of existence and until we learn to revere the opposite gender to our own as another aspect of divinity, we're going to make wrong-minded blunders
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Postby HotFingersClub » Mon Jul 22, 2019 5:26 am

HotFingersClub wrote:Image
Han Yujoo - Left's Right, Right's Left

This was a bit of a struggle, not really rewarding the effort it took to parse it.

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez - The Autumn of the Patriarch
Quite enjoyed this. It’s a dense and sludgy read but an incredible feast for the senses

Now reading:
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Nicola Barker – Darkmans
My friend warned me that this was not as good as it looks, and I didn’t listen. Now I’m staring down the barrel of an 800pg novel with seductive content but a very annoying style. I really want to like this but I can’t see myself hitting 100 pages
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Postby aububs » Mon Jul 22, 2019 5:58 am

Sobieski wrote:i'm on a real phil of biology/marine science run right now

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if I remember right this book is dedicated to jerry hall, who shortly after it was published, dumped armand marie leroi for rupert murdoch
astonishing vigils
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Postby Slamwich Artist » Mon Jul 22, 2019 9:13 am

just read:
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(the weird, early version)
been slowly making my way through extinction in german:
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and also just started:
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Haaaaa. The got me. I didn't know it was on Satire! Got it. Peeps got jokes. It's cool!
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Postby adam sampler » Mon Jul 22, 2019 4:35 pm

Image
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Postby Kenny » Tue Jul 23, 2019 5:21 pm

Finished The Colorado Kid by Stephen King, which I liked a lot despite it intentionally not having an ending and very Stephen King dialogue. Just a good page turner.

Reread Brideshead Revisited. I really love that book despite its politics. Its a shame Waugh seemingly never wrote such a serious book again (realised I have read 8 of his books hoping another one was as good as BR, the WWII trilogy the only other ones I think are really good)

Now reading another pulp book, Quarry by Max Allen Collins. So far it's exactly what I was hoping it'd be. I bought it because it's on the same publisher as the Stephen King book and had a good reviews, thought I recognised the name of the author and looked him up and realised it's because he is the guy who wrote the Waterworld novelization lol
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Postby hadlex » Tue Jul 23, 2019 7:03 pm

Love Hard Case Crime books. Check out Cain’s The Cocktail Waitress if you get a chance. One of the cruelest endings in any book I’ve ever read.
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Postby mission » Tue Jul 23, 2019 8:20 pm

HotFingersClub wrote:Image
Nicola Barker – Darkmans
My friend warned me that this was not as good as it looks, and I didn’t listen. Now I’m staring down the barrel of an 800pg novel with seductive content but a very annoying style. I really want to like this but I can’t see myself hitting 100 pages


This happened to me.

In theory everything was there for me to enjoy the shit out if this book but I just could not hack it. It leers at me now from my shelves and I promise I will get back to it, that I will hear the idiolect(s) and feel the characters a little more and it will all click, but I suspect I just don't fucking like it.

It doesn't help that came at a time when I was running out of patience for difficult reads and feeling guilty about it; being down on myself for laziness and just wanting to curl up in the lap of some realist fiction, relaxing into a good story, well told.
Good.
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Postby walt whitman » Wed Jul 24, 2019 1:04 am

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“Short film, Long film, It’s ALL film!” - Walt Whitman
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Postby reversemigraine » Wed Jul 24, 2019 8:49 am

Finally taking the plunge on

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and just started

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and

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Postby aububs » Wed Jul 24, 2019 8:58 am

reversemigraine wrote:Finally taking the plunge on

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hey, same

right after I finish this Broken Earth business
astonishing vigils
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Postby mercenaries of slime » Wed Jul 24, 2019 4:34 pm

vivian darko wrote:Image
ingeborg bachmann - malina


bought this today and gonna read it in the park tomorrow!
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Postby Kenny » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:42 pm

Man, finished Quarry in 24 hours. Bought the next three Quarry books in a fit of impulse purchasing (I'll stop there as the first 4 are the ones he wrote in the 70s before a long gap) and the Cocktail Waitress you recommended hadlex on Kindle where it's £1.50 atm.

While I wait, I am going to read this:

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I read La Morte Darthur as a pre-amble to read this because I've never read a book length poem before and wanted to in knowing as much of th backstory as I could...
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)

You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.

Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

WOAH CLICK HERE
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Postby regal mallard » Wed Jul 24, 2019 7:58 pm

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Good stuff. Famous hunter travelling thru Europe tries to see if he can assassinate Hitler "for sport." Is caught and tortured and escapes totally fucked up after they shove him off a cliff. Features my new fave literary cat, a wild black fella who comes to share his tiny hidey hole when he's chased back to England

Asmodeus, as always, is my comfort. It is seldom that one can give to and receive from an animal close, silent and continuous attention. We live in the same space, in the same way, and on the same food, except that Asmodeus has no need for oatmeal, nor I for field-mice. During the hours while he sits cleaning himself, and I motionless in my dirt, there is, I believe, some slight thought transference between us. I cannot 'order' or even 'hope' that he should perform a given act, but back and forth between us go thoughts of fear and disconnected dreams of action. I should call these dreams madness, did I not know they came from him and that his mind is, by our human standards, mad.
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Postby HotFingersClub » Thu Jul 25, 2019 3:30 am

mission wrote:
HotFingersClub wrote:Image
Nicola Barker – Darkmans
My friend warned me that this was not as good as it looks, and I didn’t listen. Now I’m staring down the barrel of an 800pg novel with seductive content but a very annoying style. I really want to like this but I can’t see myself hitting 100 pages


This happened to me.

In theory everything was there for me to enjoy the shit out if this book but I just could not hack it. It leers at me now from my shelves and I promise I will get back to it, that I will hear the idiolect(s) and feel the characters a little more and it will all click, but I suspect I just don't fucking like it.

It doesn't help that came at a time when I was running out of patience for difficult reads and feeling guilty about it; being down on myself for laziness and just wanting to curl up in the lap of some realist fiction, relaxing into a good story, well told.


I don't mind the occasional difficult read - I think the problem with this is that it's not very good. Barker's style is so grating; verbose and convoluted in a way that makes it seem way dumber than it actually is. A good editor could have cut half of every line and turned it into something pretty compelling
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Postby the upland trout » Thu Jul 25, 2019 6:09 pm

Just finished Milkman. I really loved it. Reminded me a bit of Thomas Bernhard.


Now starting:
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Postby Organic Croutons » Fri Jul 26, 2019 8:51 am

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Augustus - John Williams sorry for the weird image, trying to finds something I can hotlink was difficult for me :twisted:

Just finished this and it was amazing. I had read Stoner and Butcher's Crossing years ago and loved Stoner, liked Butcher's Crossing. I'm nearly certain I read this at the recommendation of several of you in this thread. Thank you

What is some other really great historical fiction? Anything of this caliber?
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Postby shacky » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:40 am

anyone know what this painting is? read the first two books and it rocks so far, like the bible for goth kids

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Postby theta » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:45 am

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pretty good back to back with 4 arguments for the elimination of television
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gothical storm
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Postby Kenny » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:46 am

shacky wrote:anyone know what this painting is? read the first two books and it rocks so far, like the bible for goth kids

Image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer_(Stuck)
[PEACE] [LOVE] [UNITY] [RESPECT] (stay posi)

You are a sacred being of light projected into reality for a purpose. Demand the right to your moment in this holographic gift with no rules, no borders, except for those you choose to accept and live by.

Without Labour there is no Rest; nor without Fighting can the Victory be Won ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

WOAH CLICK HERE
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Postby shacky » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:53 am

oh holy shit my book is much darker than that, i was tryna work out what he was holding between his arms

but he has fkn wings that's sick thx kenneth!
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Postby Malcolm Money » Fri Jul 26, 2019 8:17 pm

Organic Croutons wrote:Image
Augustus - John Williams sorry for the weird image, trying to finds something I can hotlink was difficult for me :twisted:

Just finished this and it was amazing. I had read Stoner and Butcher's Crossing years ago and loved Stoner, liked Butcher's Crossing. I'm nearly certain I read this at the recommendation of several of you in this thread. Thank you

What is some other really great historical fiction? Anything of this caliber?

Robert Graves' I, Claudius & Claudius the God, and Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. Graves' King Jesus is also really good.
It's comforting to think that somewhere unfathomably far away incomprehensible beings are possibly having some kind of subjective experience of a world that possibly observes basically the same laws as our own
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Postby Eyeball Kid » Fri Jul 26, 2019 9:50 pm

So, this post from July 3rd

Eyeball Kid wrote:Image

Harold Brodkey - The Runaway Soul

FSG recently reissued this as a part of their Classics line, a perhaps odd choice given this novel's reputation (such as it is) is that Brodkey, a long-time writer for The New Yorker, spent 32 years working on it and when it was finally published in 1991, it wasn't much liked. (Indeed, a good portion of his Wikipedia article is dedicated to going over how poorly received his work was among his colleagues.) Anyway, I don't think there's been much critical revisionism in favor of this novel, so the decision to put this little-admired 800+ page thing back into circulation seems strange. It's readable enough; I'm reminded of William Gass, except Brodkey isn't as good.


While I have not given up on this fat novel, the slow pace of which I have been reading (currently less than 300 pages to go of its 800+ page length, even though I have, essentially, had nothing but free time during that span) and a combo of personal and professional upheaval AND the fact it is not a very inspiring read has, today, led me to take a break from it. Goddammit, given the number of days where I read very little and also the handful of days where I read nothing at all, I needed to do something to reinvigorate my love of reading. I considered revisiting a book I had previously read and loved, but no, I decided instead to pick up one that had been in my to-read pile since before tackling The Runaway Soul. So today I began

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José Saramgo - Blindness

Never read him before. This is good! I tore through the first 56 pages today. Nice to remember there is a reason I love reading fiction.
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Postby regal mallard » Sat Jul 27, 2019 12:35 am

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Last edited by regal mallard on Sun Jul 28, 2019 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby trigross » Sat Jul 27, 2019 12:53 am

I love memoirs of hadrian and the abyss by Marguerite yourcenar
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