<div dir="ltr"><div>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 <i>as</i> 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<i>. </i>The account of the filming of the thirteen "crucifixions" is a masterpiece on its own.<br>
<br></div>On Wolfe, I imagine he quite liked <i>East of Laughter</i>, didn't he write a forward or something specifically for it? <br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 8:20 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com" target="_blank">danielottojackpetersen@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class=""><div>"I just finished <i>Apocalypses</i>, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved it from start to finish."</div>
<div> </div></div><div>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.</div>
<div> </div><div>To keep things Wolfean (heh), has anybody ever heard what stories or novels Wolfe may have liked in particular from Lafferty?</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div> </div><div>-DOJP</div></font></span></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><div><div class="h5"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Antonin Scriabin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kierkegaurdian@gmail.com" target="_blank">kierkegaurdian@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div>I just finished <i>Apocalypses</i>, I think it is my favorite Lafferty. Loved it from start to finish.<br><br></div>Small world, I picked up the third Culture novel, <i>Use of Weapons</i>, 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.<br>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 7:50 AM, Mark Lewin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mark@marklewin.com" target="_blank">mark@marklewin.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid" class="gmail_quote"><u></u>
<div><div>I'm currently enjoying the first of Iain M Banks' Culture books, <i>Consider Phlebas</i>. No great mental effort required on the part of the reader, just good, imaginative space opera. I'm having a blast.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I've also just completed a selection of short stories entitled <i>The New Uncanny</i>. 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.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Next up: "Home Fires".<span><font color="#888888"><br></font></span></div><span><font color="#888888">
<div> </div>
<div>Mark<br></div></font></span><div><div>
<div> </div>
<div>On Wed, Apr 2, 2014, at 05:05 AM, Dan Harris wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">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. <br>
</div>
<div><div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><div>On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Antonin Scriabin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kierkegaurdian@gmail.com" target="_blank">kierkegaurdian@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid"><p dir="ltr">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! <br>
</p><div><div><div><div>On Mar 12, 2014 2:38 PM, "Piotr Szczęsny" <<a href="mailto:neternalz@gmail.com" target="_blank">neternalz@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid"><div dir="ltr">I bump Craigs recommendation!, great start for "Southern Reach" trilogy.<div>
</div>
<div>"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.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>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). <br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>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.<br></div>
<div> </div>
<div>Anybody read "No Return" by Zachary Jeningan? Many people compare this to the book of the new sun, Elizabeth Hand wrote : "<span style="font-family:proxima-nova"><span style="font-size:14px">It has the sweep of Frank Herbert's </span></span><i>Dune</i><span style="font-family:proxima-nova"><span style="font-size:14px"> and the intoxicatingly strange grandeur of Gene Wolfe's </span></span><i>Book of the New Sun</i><span style="font-family:proxima-nova"><span style="font-size:14px">, with a decadent, beautifully rendered vision all its own." </span></span><br>
</div>
<div><div> </div>
<div><div> </div>
<div><div>2014-03-12 15:35 GMT+01:00 Craig Brewer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cnbrewer@yahoo.com" target="_blank">cnbrewer@yahoo.com</a>></span>:<br></div>
<div> </div>
<blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid"><div><div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:12pt">
<div> </div>
<div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-style:normal;background-color:transparent"> </div>
<div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-style:normal;background-color:transparent">
<span>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.</span><br></div>
<div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-style:normal;background-color:transparent"> </div>
<div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-style:normal;background-color:transparent"> </div>
<div> </div>
<div><div style="font-family:HelveticaNeue,"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,"Lucida Grande",sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div dir="ltr"> <hr size="1"> <span style="font-family:Arial"> <b><b>From:</b></b> Antonin Scriabin <<a href="mailto:kierkegaurdian@gmail.com" target="_blank">kierkegaurdian@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
</div>
<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:Arial">
<b><b>To:</b></b> The Urth Mailing List <<a href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net" target="_blank">urth@lists.urth.net</a>> </span><br></div>
<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:Arial"> <b><b>Sent:</b></b> Wednesday, March 12, 2014 7:26 AM</span><br></div>
<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family:Arial">
<b><b>Subject:</b></b> (urth) What are you reading? </span> <br></div>
<div><div><div><div> </div>
<div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>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.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I am working my way through the Harvard Classics. I just finished the fourth volume, the complete poems in English by John Milton. <i>Paradise Lost </i>was a treat, as was Franklin's autobiography in the first volume and the <i>New Atlantis </i>by Bacon in the third, which is an old favorite of mine from my philosophy major days.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div>I've also recently read <i>The Sea, the Sea </i>by Iris Murdoch, which was excellent, and <i>The City of Dreaming Books </i>by Moers, which was great, silly fun<i>.</i> I also read the first 50 pages of <i>Lookout Cartridge</i> by McElroy and decided to put it back on the shelf for the time being. It wasn't particularly <i>bad, </i>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.<br>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div>Anyway, I am getting back on a Wolfe kick today by finishing the latter half of <i>The Island of Doctor Death, and Other Stories, and Other Stories</i>. Looking forward to it!<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
_______________________________________________<br></div>
<div>Urth Mailing List<br></div>
<div>To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br></div>
<div>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net/" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>_______________________________________________<br></div>
<div>
Urth Mailing List<br></div>
<div>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br></div>
<div>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div>
</blockquote></div>
<div> </div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>_______________________________________________<br></div>
<div>
Urth Mailing List<br></div>
<div>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br></div>
<div>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div>
</blockquote></div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div>_______________________________________________<br></div>
<div>
Urth Mailing List<br></div>
<div>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br></div>
<div>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div>
</blockquote></div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div><u>_______________________________________________</u><br></div>
<div>Urth Mailing List<br></div>
<div>To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br></div>
<div>Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></div>
</blockquote></div></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Urth Mailing List<br>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Urth Mailing List<br>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net" target="_blank">urth@urth.net</a><br>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br></div></div><div class="">-- <br>Daniel Otto Jack Petersen
</div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Urth Mailing List<br>
To post, write <a href="mailto:urth@urth.net">urth@urth.net</a><br>
Subscription/information: <a href="http://www.urth.net" target="_blank">http://www.urth.net</a><br></blockquote></div><br></div>