- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I loved this book and partly because of the Latin parts, because I actually had a Latin teacher to help me with those and even introduced it to the class so we could all interpret it.
What are you reading right now?
- Thread starter AtroposHeart
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
I have a friend who was actually a novice for a year and I’ve been trying to convince him to read it since I started. It’s the worst thing ever, I’m not sure if he considers it blasphemous or not. I’d love to get his angle on it.
Also, started reading All The Kings Men and can’t imagine anyone but John Goodman as Willie Stark
Commander X
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2018
The Crimes of the Scarlet Ace: The Complete Stories of Major Lacy & Amusement, Inc. by Theodore Tinsley, a prolific pulpster. This is a collection of stories that ran in Fiction House's Black Aces pulp magazine in 1932 and then moved over to Dell's All-Detective Story magazine in 1933 after Fiction House shut down Black Aces.
The first Amusement, Inc. story was published a few months after the existence of the Secret Six in Chicago was revealed, and it wouldn't be the first time stories in the news inspired pulp fiction.
In a grand pulp fashion, these tales relate the story of Major John Tattersall Lacy, former Marine has been appointed the field commander of the secret "Emergency Council for Crime Control", lead by six prominent and influential men in the city, to meet the forces of organized crime, to fight terror with terror and firepower with firepower. Lacy recruits a group of former Marines from his old squad and through the ex-soldier network (""I'm offering you danger and death to play with by day and night.") to engage in vigilante battles against racketeers, including the mastermind known only as the Scarlet Ace. They conceal this secret society that has grown from a meeting with the Council behind the front organization "Amusement, Inc."
"I'm not cop, you fool--I'm a death warrant! You'll talk fast to me or you'll burn in your own grease!"
Tinsley wrote for many of the big crime pulp mags, his own creations included one of the early female PI's in the pulps, the hardboiled Carrie Cashin, and two-fisted Broadway gossip columnist Jerry Tracy, he also wrote 27 installments of The Shadow, beginning with 1936’s “Partners of Peril,” the first one not penned by series creator Walter B. Gibson.
The first Amusement, Inc. story was published a few months after the existence of the Secret Six in Chicago was revealed, and it wouldn't be the first time stories in the news inspired pulp fiction.
In a grand pulp fashion, these tales relate the story of Major John Tattersall Lacy, former Marine has been appointed the field commander of the secret "Emergency Council for Crime Control", lead by six prominent and influential men in the city, to meet the forces of organized crime, to fight terror with terror and firepower with firepower. Lacy recruits a group of former Marines from his old squad and through the ex-soldier network (""I'm offering you danger and death to play with by day and night.") to engage in vigilante battles against racketeers, including the mastermind known only as the Scarlet Ace. They conceal this secret society that has grown from a meeting with the Council behind the front organization "Amusement, Inc."
"I'm not cop, you fool--I'm a death warrant! You'll talk fast to me or you'll burn in your own grease!"
Tinsley wrote for many of the big crime pulp mags, his own creations included one of the early female PI's in the pulps, the hardboiled Carrie Cashin, and two-fisted Broadway gossip columnist Jerry Tracy, he also wrote 27 installments of The Shadow, beginning with 1936’s “Partners of Peril,” the first one not penned by series creator Walter B. Gibson.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
Stranger in a Strange Land, going in blind as someone who read Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I’m stunned. Heinlein was on a very similar wave to me. There is a lot of it that resonates with me.
Womble of Wimbledon
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
Has anyone here read anything by Steve Aylett? Just read an article on him (part of it, anyway) and he sounds weird but intriguing.
Man, I have looked for Ligotti in every used bookshop I have visited on multiple continents, and have never found shit. The only stories I have of his on my bookshelf are in an anthology.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
There's plenty of his e-books on Z-Library if you don't care about physical editions.
Attachments
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2015
You're right to a certain extent, but I struggled with concentrating on the one book even in my tween days, long before I got slapped with the ADHD label. I usually had seven or eight on the go at once, because I just couldn't focus. It is really nice to be able to read again, even if I'm just listening while I fuck around with something else.
I can tell you for a fact that there isn't enough amphetamine in the world that would have enabled to me to finish The White People by Arthur Machen in book form. Paragraphs motherfucker, ever heard of them?! Interesting to read/listen to something that Lovecraft raved over, though.
Another podcast episode I listened to recently is The Outcast by E. F. Benson. I can't think of the last time I felt so disturbed by a story written in the early 1900s, or felt such confused pity and distaste.
Old King Koaleamos
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2025
Witches of Karres has been decently fun so far. James H. Schmitz seems to be one of many mid 20th century SF writers that just wound up being quasi-forgotten.
Gaear Grimsrud
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2020
I've finished Moby Dick. Great book.
Took me a while to get through it. 52 days. I've read longer books, but nothing this dense.
Took me a while to get through it. 52 days. I've read longer books, but nothing this dense.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
Finished The Day Of The Locust.
It was an enjoyable character study of three men simping hard for a woman who didn't care about any of them. I was expecting more descriptions of 1930s Hollywood, but it mostly boiled down to that one chapter with a detailed description of the shooting of a movie about the Battle of Waterloo. The ending comes out of nowhere. Suddenly there's a huge crowd going apeshit outside a theater because they heard a rumor that Gary Cooper was going to show up.
I'll rewatch the 1975 movie today to see how faithful it is to the source material.
Next: Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I just realised it's really short, so I thought "why not?". It's going to be my first book by that author.
It was an enjoyable character study of three men simping hard for a woman who didn't care about any of them. I was expecting more descriptions of 1930s Hollywood, but it mostly boiled down to that one chapter with a detailed description of the shooting of a movie about the Battle of Waterloo. The ending comes out of nowhere. Suddenly there's a huge crowd going apeshit outside a theater because they heard a rumor that Gary Cooper was going to show up.
I'll rewatch the 1975 movie today to see how faithful it is to the source material.
Next: Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I just realised it's really short, so I thought "why not?". It's going to be my first book by that author.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
It's a great read, and Apocalypse Now is a great watch after it.
Maybe I'm prejudiced on that, because it was mostly written by John Milius, who was a character in The Big Lebowski (obviously Walter), who was played by John Goodman, and is a friend of the Coen Bros.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
What the fuck did I read.
So at first I thought I was getting a legal thriller that probably inspired The Unincorporated Man.
Then I got the really cool exploration of pantheistic spirituality and comparative religion.
Then it bogged down in endless boring sex hedonism bullshit (I know it was super subversive and novel in the 1960, maaaaan) that made me zone out.
Then it managed to wrap around and become really cool at the end. But by that point I was flying through it so fast that I didn't get the oomph from Lord Jesus Mike's martyrdom that I felt I should have.
I did not understand what the fuck was going on with the Foster/Digby scenes or the last chapter.
10/10 loved it.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
I was reading it and genuinely enjoying it (I’ve quoted it on here), but I bogged down at some point during his autistic whale facts (I actually got interested reading a comprehensive nonfiction book on whaling, so it wasn’t new or informative), and then I set it aside for later.
What I like:
- How constantly and hilariously homoerotic everything is
- cuddling with cannibals
- occasional profundity with some pretty prose
- the whiteness of the whale
- that intangible malignity which has been there from the beginning
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2022
The dunk and egg stories are my personal faves. They’re less dark/political than asoiaf main series and manage to give a little more history of Westeros too. I highly recommend them. The audiobook is read by the dude who played Viserys in the show and does a great job (if you’re into that)
Old King Koaleamos
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2025
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5 has been a really good read so far.
- Joined
- May 14, 2019
I started Chang and Eng tonight. It's a biographical novel (mix of bullshit and real life) of the original Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker.
I'm reading it as preparation for visiting their home of Mt. Airy. The thing about them is that they have interesting lore. They became one of the biggest entertainment acts of the Victorian Era, promoted by Barnum, basically talking about politics, current events, literature, stuff like that. They were a rather unremarkable conjoined twin pair, basically two separate guys just linked by a band of skin (that had a tube linking their stomachs), but they did not do the freakshow routine, they made great efforts to present themselves as classy, erudite men. Through the Civil War era they were used heavily in political cartoons as a metaphor for the whole A House Divided idea, but the funny thing (is this is what got me interested) is that, of all places, they wind up settling down in the Appalachian nowhere town of Mt. Airy, North Carolina - the hometown of fucking Andy Griffith that has a bunch of corny Mayberry themed tourist trap stuff - married White women, converted to Southern Baptist Christianity, became plantation owners, produced 21 children and supported (their sons fought for as cavalry) the Confederate States.
What the fuck.
So far the novel is competently written, but the structure is a little bizarre. It's been themed around Chang being a whiney bitch who always lusted for freedom from his brother, and it switches back and forth between early life (starting with growing up in Thailand as illiterate peasants) and their scandalous courting of these two White women. What's ballsy is dumping what you'd expect to be the climatic last act right up front before I have invested myself in these people or know their life course. But what's there is cute and intrinsically interesting.
It seems as though the girls were - based on my recollection and the novel's depiction - homely, even ugly, things of very modest background, implied "ruined." Basically you have this golden opportunity where these two fantastically rich, educated and famous dudes who are otherwise never going to be able to lead a normal family life happen across these two poor mountain cracker girls without much of any other prospects, so it becomes a perfect trade to pair off.
What's interesting, too, is that it was - and if you know as much about the Old South as me, this is actually expected - far more scandalous in the North than the South. The North was actually much more uptight about miscegenation aside from wanting to make sure Blacks didn't knock up Whites or otherwise undermine the slave system. I recall one story, even, of the richest slaveowner in one county knocking up his slave, falling in absolute love with the slave daughter and raising her as a spoiled princess (regardless of what society's official rules said), and her marrying a Confederate officer. The officer, a died-in-the-wool Confederate, chose to marry this mulatto girl. Southerners likewise often married Indians and Mexicans. When these women married, it caused a little upset in the community, but the townsfolk quickly got over it and the Bunkers became a comfortable part of the community and for generations after people could point out who, around, had Bunker ancestry from their Oriental features. It was the Northern presses that completely flipped their shit.
I'm reading it as preparation for visiting their home of Mt. Airy. The thing about them is that they have interesting lore. They became one of the biggest entertainment acts of the Victorian Era, promoted by Barnum, basically talking about politics, current events, literature, stuff like that. They were a rather unremarkable conjoined twin pair, basically two separate guys just linked by a band of skin (that had a tube linking their stomachs), but they did not do the freakshow routine, they made great efforts to present themselves as classy, erudite men. Through the Civil War era they were used heavily in political cartoons as a metaphor for the whole A House Divided idea, but the funny thing (is this is what got me interested) is that, of all places, they wind up settling down in the Appalachian nowhere town of Mt. Airy, North Carolina - the hometown of fucking Andy Griffith that has a bunch of corny Mayberry themed tourist trap stuff - married White women, converted to Southern Baptist Christianity, became plantation owners, produced 21 children and supported (their sons fought for as cavalry) the Confederate States.
What the fuck.
So far the novel is competently written, but the structure is a little bizarre. It's been themed around Chang being a whiney bitch who always lusted for freedom from his brother, and it switches back and forth between early life (starting with growing up in Thailand as illiterate peasants) and their scandalous courting of these two White women. What's ballsy is dumping what you'd expect to be the climatic last act right up front before I have invested myself in these people or know their life course. But what's there is cute and intrinsically interesting.
It seems as though the girls were - based on my recollection and the novel's depiction - homely, even ugly, things of very modest background, implied "ruined." Basically you have this golden opportunity where these two fantastically rich, educated and famous dudes who are otherwise never going to be able to lead a normal family life happen across these two poor mountain cracker girls without much of any other prospects, so it becomes a perfect trade to pair off.
What's interesting, too, is that it was - and if you know as much about the Old South as me, this is actually expected - far more scandalous in the North than the South. The North was actually much more uptight about miscegenation aside from wanting to make sure Blacks didn't knock up Whites or otherwise undermine the slave system. I recall one story, even, of the richest slaveowner in one county knocking up his slave, falling in absolute love with the slave daughter and raising her as a spoiled princess (regardless of what society's official rules said), and her marrying a Confederate officer. The officer, a died-in-the-wool Confederate, chose to marry this mulatto girl. Southerners likewise often married Indians and Mexicans. When these women married, it caused a little upset in the community, but the townsfolk quickly got over it and the Bunkers became a comfortable part of the community and for generations after people could point out who, around, had Bunker ancestry from their Oriental features. It was the Northern presses that completely flipped their shit.
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2025