(urth) What are you reading?

Wed Apr 2 06:02:09 PDT 2014

Yes, he wrote a brilliant afterword to it.  But I always suspected he was
handed that one to read and write an afterword for - I'm sure he sincerely
liked it, but he'd already been a long time fan of Lafferty by then (1987),
so I'd be interested to know what else he liked.

*The account of the filming of the thirteen "crucifixions" is a masterpiece
on its own.*
Yes!  I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised.

-DOJP

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM, Antonin Scriabin
<kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>wrote:

> I thought the first novella was fantastic.  I was actually a bit worried
> as I came to the end that the second wouldn't be as good, but it was.  It
> was wickedly funny ... a forger so good his works are worth more *as*forgeries than as originals, a film director who is more convinced of the
> cinematic brilliance (and falseness) of Quiche's torture the more grotesque
> and real it seemed, etc*.  *The account of the filming of the thirteen
> "crucifixions" is a masterpiece on its own.
>
> On Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked *East of Laughter*, didn't he write a
> forward or something specifically for it?
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
> danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.
>> Loved it from start to finish."
>>
>> So glad to hear you say that bout that book, Antonin!  I think I've heard
>> a fair number of Lafferty fans say they liked the second novel in the
>> omnibus, but rarely heard anybody say a word negative or positive about the
>> first novel.  I loved the book right off too.  It definitely contains some
>> of his greatest passages and ideas and should be more highly regarded in
>> his body of work.
>>
>> To keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or
>> novels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?
>>
>> -DOJP
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
>> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just finished *Apocalypses*, I think it is my favorite Lafferty.
>>> Loved it from start to finish.
>>>
>>> Small world, I picked up the third Culture novel, *Use of Weapons*,
>>> right after.  It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either.  There
>>> are some interesting ideas dotted throughout, but the prose itself is very
>>> simple and straightforward, while the plot is a fairly generic adventure
>>> story.  I'm sure the cumulative effect of multiple stories set in the
>>> Culture universe is better than the small view you get in an individual
>>> novel, however.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin <mark at marklewin.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, *Consider
>>>> Phlebas*. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader,
>>>> just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.
>>>>
>>>> I've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled *The
>>>> New Uncanny*. Having got rather bored of horror/supernatural tales in
>>>> recent years, this was a rather brave purchase, but one that paid off. It's
>>>> a great collection with some really original, off-the-wall stories, by a
>>>> mixture of genre authors such as Christoper Priest and Ramsay Campbell, and
>>>> "literary" types like AS Byatt and Hanif Kureishi.
>>>>
>>>> Next up: "Home Fires".
>>>>
>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I can't do much reading these days, so I've been supplementing it with
>>>> audiobooks whenever possible.  Currently meandering through All Creatures
>>>> Great and Small as well as Titus Groan.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <
>>>> kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the Vandermeer recommendation. I picked up Annihilation
>>>> yesterday and it was quite good. Sort of a blend of the investigative
>>>> horror of Lovecraft, the detached (but still eerie) narration of House of
>>>> Leaves, and natural wonder of something like The Lost World. Really looking
>>>> forward to the other two novels in the trilogy, and knowing they will both
>>>> be released in 2014 is a great bonus!
>>>> On Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, "Piotr Szczęsny" <neternalz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for "Southern Reach" trilogy.
>>>>
>>>> "Jagannath" by Karin Tidbeck is a short story collection, in summary
>>>> it's new weird in nordic countries setting (mostly, not all), very fresh,
>>>> disturbing, and yet sweet sometimes. Also the stories originally written in
>>>> swedish Karin translated herself, that impressed me very much.
>>>>
>>>> After that I wanted some very light reading, so I picked up the Dresden
>>>> Files, I just started book four, and it's pretty fun, reads very fast, and
>>>> it have a rare tendency - the latter the book in series the better (story
>>>> wise, style wise, all-around improvement).
>>>>
>>>> As for Wolfe, I read his story "Forleseen", and it was hauting me for a
>>>> week or so, made me very sad, but it is a great story.
>>>>
>>>> Anybody read "No Return" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this
>>>> to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : "It has the sweep
>>>> of Frank Herbert's *Dune* and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of
>>>> Gene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*, with a decadent, beautifully
>>>> rendered vision all its own."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  I can't recommend Jeff Vandermeer's _Annihilation_ highly enough.
>>>> It's part of a new "trilogy" (the others will be out by September), but
>>>> each book is going to be quite different. It's the smartest, most
>>>> entertaining, and most effective continuation of the "weird" tradition I've
>>>> read in years. He learned everything you're supposed to learn from Bierce,
>>>> Blackwood, Machen, Lovecraft, C.A. Smith, and the others, and turned it
>>>> into something fresh.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  ------------------------------
>>>>  *From:* Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>
>>>>  *To:* The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
>>>>  *Sent:* Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:26 AM
>>>>  *Subject:* (urth) What are you reading?
>>>>
>>>> Hello, Urthlings. What are you reading these days?  I haven't been
>>>> reading much Wolfe lately, so nothing is fresh enough in my mind to
>>>> participate in some of the other ongoing discussions.
>>>>
>>>> I am working my way through the Harvard Classics.  I just finished the
>>>> fourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton.  *Paradise
>>>> Lost *was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume
>>>> and the *New Atlantis *by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite
>>>> of mine from my philosophy major days.
>>>>
>>>>  I've also recently read *The Sea, the Sea *by Iris Murdoch, which was
>>>> excellent, and *The City of Dreaming Books *by Moers, which was great,
>>>> silly fun*.*  I also read the first 50 pages of *Lookout Cartridge* by
>>>> McElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being.  It
>>>> wasn't particularly *bad, *it was just entirely unsuccessful in
>>>> grabbing my attention within a reasonable amount of time, together with
>>>> being written in a very disjointed, unique style.  I will probably get back
>>>> to it in the near future.
>>>>
>>>>  Anyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the
>>>> latter half of *The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and
>>>> Other Stories*. Looking forward to it!
>>>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>>
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-- 
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
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