- Joined
- Aug 5, 2022
I haven’t but looking into it, seems interesting. I’ll definitely make note of it, thank you for the recommendation.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
Trust is excellent. Fun fact: Hernan Diaz wrote the manuscript, in longhand, with a fountain pen
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2022
You'll have to DM me to talk about fountain pens
I'm reading On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius and I'm surprised at how underwhelming it is. I find many of his arguments for Christ being both fully God and fully man to be not very compelling, and some of his arguments for the world being created by God just don't make sense at all.
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2020
finished Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke) and John the Balladeer (Manly Wade Wellman). Swapped them outta my TBR shelf for Canticle for Leibowitz and Vol 1 of the Collected Clark Ashton Smith.
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2021
The 101 Shop. Its a Short Story on an app designed to help you learn Japanese about a guy who got to be 32 and regretted his life and managed to go back and redo the previous ten years. Its interesting enough to make me continue it. I don't know that I would have picked it up were it in English.
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2024
Ah, I thought I recognized you from that server. I think I have Rendezvous With Rama on one of my shelves, don't believe I've read it yet though.
A Canticle for Leibowitz was definitely an interesting book, curious to see what you have to say about it once you've read it.
Still reading The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate" by John Marks for my non-fiction reading. It's very interesting stuff, but I find myself taking it in small doses because there's just so much information in it.
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
Busy year for reading new books.
I started off with a series of French military histories by Erwan Bergot. "Bataillon Bigeard" about French paratroop officer Marcel Bigeard's career in the Indochina and Algerian wars, and the campaigns of his 6e BPC and 3e RPC. "Deuxieme classe a Dien Bien Phu" a semi-fictionalized autobiographical account of Bergot's experiences at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Lastly "Bigeard", biography about Marcel Bigeard and his career from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Then I read "Katanga 1960 - 1963", a very good and engaging modern history of Congolese independence and the Katanga Crisis and also covering some of the following conflicts in the Congo during the rest of the 1960s.
Then I read good English translations of 2 novels by Jean Larteguy. One called "Le mal jaune", a 2-part story about the final days of French rule in Hanoi and Saigon. The other called "Le chimeres noires", a semi-fictionalized story about the Katanga Crisis in the Congo.
Then I read a very bad German-to French-to English translation of a memoir by Siegfried "Kongo" Muller, the infamous German mercenary who fought in the Congo during the Simba Rebellion.
Then I read "Their Paths Crossed Mine", a memoir by Hans van Rensburg about his career as a South African citizen-soldier during and after the First World War and subsequent political intrigues as a key organizer of the anti-British and pro-Afrikaner Ossewabrandwag nationalist movement during the Second World War.
Then I read "Grant Moves South" by Bruce Catton, the classic study of General Grant's early career and campaigns from the start of the American Civil War until the capitulation of Vicksburg in 1863.
Then I read "God's Chinese Son", a decent modern history that combines chronological account of the Taiping Rebellion and a biography of Hong Xiuquan and a study of the Taiping religion and philosophy.
Then I read Richard Burton's rather archaic but poetic English translation of "The Arabian Nights".
Then I read a modern English translation of Marco Polo's travel narrative. It was a 1920s or 1930s printing, slightly edited from a more poetically translated 19th century translation with corrections for name places and distances.
Then I read 2 different general histories about the Mongol conquest of Eurasia and the dynasties of the Mongol successor states, to figure out the context for Marco Polo's narrative. These were a little dated, from the 1980s by British authors.
Then I read a good English translation of a Chinese general history and archaeology study from the 1990s about the Qin Emperor's mausoleum and terracotta army.
Then I read a history of the Boxer Rebellion, written in the 1980s. Pretty dated since the British author couldn't read Chinese and didn't consult any Chinese language sources, but he did draw a ton of detailed tactical maps that really helped to lay out the scene of each action.
Then I read "Two Ocean War", a general history of US Navy operations in the Atlantic and Pacific from 1939 - 1945 by an American naval officer who was commissioned to produce the authoritative history, but the book is just a pretty good effort to condense and summarize a much larger multi-volume work.
Then I read all of the prose and stories of Edgar Allan Poe in chronological publishing order, plus his one novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" and his unfinished play "Politian". I didn't know he was such a prolific satirist and humorist. He has such an outsized reputation as a writer of gothic fiction, but it seemed like a slight majority of his prose and stories are satire or humor. I got partway through his collected letters and literary criticism articles, but it is too dense for me. I skipped his poetry almost entirely.
After that I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels in publishing order, to compare with Poe's "C. Auguste Dupin" detective stories.
Then I read "Startide Rising", a sci-fi novel by David Brin, from the Uplift trilogy.
Now working my way through a selection of books written by Old West pioneers and prospectors and published in the 19th century. The versions I got are exact photocopies of first editions, so they include a lot of interesting printing errors and archaic formatting and period type and color plates and woodcuts.
So far I finished:
"Life on the Plains and the Diggings" by Alonzo Delano. A New Yorker's 1849 overland journey walking from Missouri all the way to the northern California goldfields
"Mountains and Molehills, or Recollections of a Burnt Journal" by Frank Marryat. An Englishman's 1850 - 1852 career in the southern and central California goldfields, with illustrations by the author.
"The Vigilantes of Montana" by Thomas Dimsdale. An Englishman's firsthand account of the 1863 - 1865 fighting between vigilantes and highwaymen gang in the mining settlements of Montana Territory.
"Life Among the Apaches" by John Cremony. Observations and recollections of Comanche and Apache culture, tactics, and interactions by a US Army officer and Indian specialist/interpreter from Boston, from about 1845 - 1867, before the Apache were subjugated and put on the reservation.
Currently reading "A Texas Cow Boy" by Charles Siringo. A Texan's firsthand account of his early life and many careers from about 1856 - 1882, ranging all over the West from the far reaches of the inland and coastal Texas frontier to more urban locales like New Orleans and St Louis.
I have yet to get through:
"Uncle Dick Wootton", an autobiographical account of an American pioneer and speculator in Colorado in the mid 19th century
"On the Border with Brooks", a contemporary biography and account of General Brooks's campaigns in the Indian Wars in the 1870s - 1880s, especially the subjugation of the Apache.
"Romance of the Colorado River", a memoir about the first American expedition to the Grand Canyon, in the late 1860s or early 1870s.
After I finish those last few Old West books, I'm thinking to read Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" or a book about the negotiations and meetings between Nixon and Mao.
And not new books for me, but earlier this year, I also finished re-reading:
-All the novels and short stories of author-illustrator John W Thomason from the 1920s - 1930s. They are all semi-autobiographical, based on his experiences in the USMC during the First World War, the Banana Wars, Warlord-era China, and his family history from the American Civil War and the Texas frontier.
-English translation of the memoirs of General Marbot, a very active French cavalry officer in the Napoleonic Wars
-the war memoirs of Commandant Ludwig "Lodi" Krause, a Boer officer and legal advisor during the Second Boer War
-Engish translation of the war memoirs of Sarah Raal, a Boer guerilla and concentration camp internee during the Second Boer War
-a biography of Paul Kruger, Boer pioneer and statesman, by South African painter Johannes Meintjes
-"The Voortrekkers", a general history of the Great Trek by Johannes Meintjes
-English translation of "Life on Commando during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 - 1902". The authoritative text and sociological study on the wartime experience of the Boer burghers.
I started off with a series of French military histories by Erwan Bergot. "Bataillon Bigeard" about French paratroop officer Marcel Bigeard's career in the Indochina and Algerian wars, and the campaigns of his 6e BPC and 3e RPC. "Deuxieme classe a Dien Bien Phu" a semi-fictionalized autobiographical account of Bergot's experiences at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Lastly "Bigeard", biography about Marcel Bigeard and his career from the 1930s to the 1980s.
Then I read "Katanga 1960 - 1963", a very good and engaging modern history of Congolese independence and the Katanga Crisis and also covering some of the following conflicts in the Congo during the rest of the 1960s.
Then I read good English translations of 2 novels by Jean Larteguy. One called "Le mal jaune", a 2-part story about the final days of French rule in Hanoi and Saigon. The other called "Le chimeres noires", a semi-fictionalized story about the Katanga Crisis in the Congo.
Then I read a very bad German-to French-to English translation of a memoir by Siegfried "Kongo" Muller, the infamous German mercenary who fought in the Congo during the Simba Rebellion.
Then I read "Their Paths Crossed Mine", a memoir by Hans van Rensburg about his career as a South African citizen-soldier during and after the First World War and subsequent political intrigues as a key organizer of the anti-British and pro-Afrikaner Ossewabrandwag nationalist movement during the Second World War.
Then I read "Grant Moves South" by Bruce Catton, the classic study of General Grant's early career and campaigns from the start of the American Civil War until the capitulation of Vicksburg in 1863.
Then I read "God's Chinese Son", a decent modern history that combines chronological account of the Taiping Rebellion and a biography of Hong Xiuquan and a study of the Taiping religion and philosophy.
Then I read Richard Burton's rather archaic but poetic English translation of "The Arabian Nights".
Then I read a modern English translation of Marco Polo's travel narrative. It was a 1920s or 1930s printing, slightly edited from a more poetically translated 19th century translation with corrections for name places and distances.
Then I read 2 different general histories about the Mongol conquest of Eurasia and the dynasties of the Mongol successor states, to figure out the context for Marco Polo's narrative. These were a little dated, from the 1980s by British authors.
Then I read a good English translation of a Chinese general history and archaeology study from the 1990s about the Qin Emperor's mausoleum and terracotta army.
Then I read a history of the Boxer Rebellion, written in the 1980s. Pretty dated since the British author couldn't read Chinese and didn't consult any Chinese language sources, but he did draw a ton of detailed tactical maps that really helped to lay out the scene of each action.
Then I read "Two Ocean War", a general history of US Navy operations in the Atlantic and Pacific from 1939 - 1945 by an American naval officer who was commissioned to produce the authoritative history, but the book is just a pretty good effort to condense and summarize a much larger multi-volume work.
Then I read all of the prose and stories of Edgar Allan Poe in chronological publishing order, plus his one novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" and his unfinished play "Politian". I didn't know he was such a prolific satirist and humorist. He has such an outsized reputation as a writer of gothic fiction, but it seemed like a slight majority of his prose and stories are satire or humor. I got partway through his collected letters and literary criticism articles, but it is too dense for me. I skipped his poetry almost entirely.
After that I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels in publishing order, to compare with Poe's "C. Auguste Dupin" detective stories.
Then I read "Startide Rising", a sci-fi novel by David Brin, from the Uplift trilogy.
Now working my way through a selection of books written by Old West pioneers and prospectors and published in the 19th century. The versions I got are exact photocopies of first editions, so they include a lot of interesting printing errors and archaic formatting and period type and color plates and woodcuts.
So far I finished:
"Life on the Plains and the Diggings" by Alonzo Delano. A New Yorker's 1849 overland journey walking from Missouri all the way to the northern California goldfields
"Mountains and Molehills, or Recollections of a Burnt Journal" by Frank Marryat. An Englishman's 1850 - 1852 career in the southern and central California goldfields, with illustrations by the author.
"The Vigilantes of Montana" by Thomas Dimsdale. An Englishman's firsthand account of the 1863 - 1865 fighting between vigilantes and highwaymen gang in the mining settlements of Montana Territory.
"Life Among the Apaches" by John Cremony. Observations and recollections of Comanche and Apache culture, tactics, and interactions by a US Army officer and Indian specialist/interpreter from Boston, from about 1845 - 1867, before the Apache were subjugated and put on the reservation.
Currently reading "A Texas Cow Boy" by Charles Siringo. A Texan's firsthand account of his early life and many careers from about 1856 - 1882, ranging all over the West from the far reaches of the inland and coastal Texas frontier to more urban locales like New Orleans and St Louis.
I have yet to get through:
"Uncle Dick Wootton", an autobiographical account of an American pioneer and speculator in Colorado in the mid 19th century
"On the Border with Brooks", a contemporary biography and account of General Brooks's campaigns in the Indian Wars in the 1870s - 1880s, especially the subjugation of the Apache.
"Romance of the Colorado River", a memoir about the first American expedition to the Grand Canyon, in the late 1860s or early 1870s.
After I finish those last few Old West books, I'm thinking to read Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" or a book about the negotiations and meetings between Nixon and Mao.
And not new books for me, but earlier this year, I also finished re-reading:
-All the novels and short stories of author-illustrator John W Thomason from the 1920s - 1930s. They are all semi-autobiographical, based on his experiences in the USMC during the First World War, the Banana Wars, Warlord-era China, and his family history from the American Civil War and the Texas frontier.
-English translation of the memoirs of General Marbot, a very active French cavalry officer in the Napoleonic Wars
-the war memoirs of Commandant Ludwig "Lodi" Krause, a Boer officer and legal advisor during the Second Boer War
-Engish translation of the war memoirs of Sarah Raal, a Boer guerilla and concentration camp internee during the Second Boer War
-a biography of Paul Kruger, Boer pioneer and statesman, by South African painter Johannes Meintjes
-"The Voortrekkers", a general history of the Great Trek by Johannes Meintjes
-English translation of "Life on Commando during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 - 1902". The authoritative text and sociological study on the wartime experience of the Boer burghers.
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2018
Gordon R. Dickson’s The Right to Arm Bears.
About humans and their interactions with bear aliens.
About humans and their interactions with bear aliens.
- Joined
- May 14, 2021
Just finished reading Blood Meridian.
I've owned it for years, but for some reason never got around to it.
Lately my YouTube feed has featured various videos about the book, and some have been about Judge Holden as a character, so it gave me the push I needed.
It was alright. Don't really get all the buzz surrounding it.
And the way Cormac McCarthy writes (at least in BM) is a bit tiresome.
I've owned it for years, but for some reason never got around to it.
Lately my YouTube feed has featured various videos about the book, and some have been about Judge Holden as a character, so it gave me the push I needed.
It was alright. Don't really get all the buzz surrounding it.
And the way Cormac McCarthy writes (at least in BM) is a bit tiresome.
Commander X
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2018
The Complete Cases of Seekay by Paul Ernst, an Altus Press (now Steeger Books) collection of all five stories by the prolific pulp fiction author published in the pulp magazines Strange Detective Stories, and Detective Tales featuring a mysterious, independently wealthy private investigator who wears a blank celluloid mask over his disfigured face that covers all except his eyes. This faceless man, possessed of incredible powers of observation, only takes on cases that interest him, and after helping out young Marion Ford in the first story, she becomes his assistant. As pulp scholar and writer of neo-pulp Will Murray puts it in the introduction, Seekay was a pioneering character in the pulps, one of the first of various "defective" detectives in the pages of detective story magazines like Dime Detective, heroes who suffered from various ailments and crippling conditions, blind detectives, hemophiliac detectives and so on.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
I read that book more than a decade ago and all I remember about it was being disappointed that the bears didn't smoke cigars.
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2022
I liked BM a lot but the middle dragged a bit for me. If you think his writing in BM is tiresome I do not recommend his other works.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
Poe was probably a better poet than any other thing he did other than short stories.
I definitely recommend reading the letters of any author you actually admire, though. I don't believe in that death of the author bullshit. It's actually generally good to have an accurate perception of who wrote the things you, deliberately or not, made part of your mind.
Lovecraft is actually an example of someone who was a ridiculously nice dude.
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
I'll have to give his poetry another go then. I had to read some of his more famous poems and short stories in school, but when I started skimming through all his published works and articles this year, I was much more drawn to his short stories and couldn't make much headway in the poetry. I've never had much patience for long form poetry, and I saw his first published poem is a long poem called "Tamerlane", so I didn't make it very far.
His letters and articles were really dry to me. A lot of pontificating on the abstract theory of poetry and professional literary criticism and all the logistics and struggles of being an editor for the newly established American literary magazines. He treats much of the same topics with more humor and in a condensed form in some of his satirical short stories and shorter articles/commentaries.
Lovecraft's letters and musings are definitely much more engaging with lots of interesting digressions. I especially liked his amateur travelogue documenting his visit to Montreal, probably the only time traveled outside the US.
And some of the digressions in his letters are very relatable. I still remember one letter where Lovecraft is recounting something about his family history, where an older relative was a big land speculator in the Idaho Territory, and somehow he gets off track and ends up musing about and describing this then-popular type of candy called the "Idaho Spud", which is a soft candy with marshmallow center covered with chocolate coating and coconut flakes -- so it looks like a bite sized potato. Very much like a 1920s Reviewbrah moment. I just checked and they still make this candy in Idaho today.
- Joined
- Jul 7, 2022
He was very passionate about what made a good poem/story a good poem/story, which is useful ruminating for a writer or journalistic editor but can be dry to read. He basically created the detective genre and set the groundwork for Doyle to come along later and create Sherlock Holmes. Even if you had to read them for school, I recommend reading the following:
- The Raven (I used to be able to recite this from memory and probably still could with the occasional prompting)
- The Black Cat
- A Dream Within a Dream (my fanfic theory is that this inspired Nolan to make Inception)
- The Murders in the Rue Morgue (if you like it, read the other two Dupin stories)
- Berenice
- Annabel Lee
- The Cask of Amontillado
- The Pit and the Pendulum
- The Tell-Tale Heart
- The Masque of the Red Death
- The Fall of the House of Usher
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2024
Practical Idealism by Count Richard Von Coudenhove-Kalergi. I'm conflicted on it. On the one hand it doesn't really deserve the reputation it has (the English translations literally subtitle it "the Kalergi plan to destroy the white race"), and a lot of his more supposedly anti-white excerpts read as predictions with more context.
On the other hand, he articulates his points about incest (as in keeping relations within the race, not the immediate family) and interculture (i.e.. race mixing) in such a retarded way (obviously to fit a dualist theme in the book) that someone who lacks additional context (that his more pragmatic pan-Europa did some charity in providing) could not possibly think otherwise.
On the other hand, he articulates his points about incest (as in keeping relations within the race, not the immediate family) and interculture (i.e.. race mixing) in such a retarded way (obviously to fit a dualist theme in the book) that someone who lacks additional context (that his more pragmatic pan-Europa did some charity in providing) could not possibly think otherwise.
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2015
It's not a Dupin story, but "The Gold Bug" also has the structure of a mystery/detective story and involves the solving of a substitution cypher, almost the same as the Sherlock Holmes story "Adventure of the Dancing Men".
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2022
I read it about twenty years ago and loved it. Somewhere along the way it became a /lit/ staple. Wendigoon clearly grew up on /lit/ charts. Now every zoomer is tattooing Blood Meridian quotes on their arms. Same with Deftones and Berserk. Things I enjoy but have lost some of the magic with recent overexposure.