(urth) What are you reading?

Wed Apr 2 06:30:31 PDT 2014

"Yes!  I've often thought it should be excerpted and anthologised."

Yeah that would be neat.  I guess the problem is that there there is so
much pay off when Quiche meets the Five-O'Clock Man again.

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 9:02 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <
danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
>
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