What are you reading

Started by Tenebracid, January 15, 2012, 08:40:21 PM

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Peterson

#660
While the novel Mountainhead was something of an adventure story meets anthropological study (I think the description said "exotic travelogue"), in that more stylistic flourishes and influences were present, New Juche's Stupid Baby is more like a straightforward romance-and-adventure tale, if even possible from this type of author. Showing less of his influences than ever, and instead opting for a fairly unadulterated and simple life-period portrait. Here it works very well, in the sense that any more experimental tendencies would've rendered the narrative oblique and disjointed. I hope to see a whole lot more of this more simplistic, stand-alone approach from New Juche, but nothing can compare to the longer works, especially Mountainhead - that one basically fulfills many overlapping areas which I found lots of my favorite authors to lack, especially those comparable, even Sotos. There is just enough balance here between transgressive idiosyncrasy, arty experimentalism and allusiveness/indebtedness, and basic literary skill to develop something that is at once, and equally, a personal confession, an actual story, and a thematic work of art. While Stupid Baby certainly upholds the combination, it's not a shining beacon of glory as Mountainhead was - but hopefully just as much an indication of what's in store. I really hadn't ever read something that had quite this much of what I want, all at once, before I found New Juche. Thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Best for publishing, if this is even a remote indication of what's to come for Amphetamine Sulphate, I'm hooked.

Edit: Gabi Losoncy's Second Person was great, too. Seems to use certain philosophy as a touchstone but isn't really referential enough to go down that road into academic pedantry. Description says "a self-help book from hell," but I didn't see much negativity to it. Some brutal honesty and stumbling neuroses, sure, but that's what any good, truthful writing has to it. Overall it seems to be an attempt at partially explaining her outlook on life/way of doing things in life, and second to that, sort of an attempt to dissect what the mental and social environment for us "millenials" is (I'm assuming Ms. Losoncy and I are relatively close in age) and how we're more or less products of that, even if we're not consistently looking down at smartphones and guzzling IPAs like the great majority of said age bracket. In that, it's sort of a respectable and worthwhile text - it's honest without being ridden with insecurity and confident without being narcissistic. What I've said still doesn't quite nail it, though. I felt I could relate even if I saw little "help" in it beyond often agreeing with Losoncy. Not exactly sure how or who to recommend this.

Yrjö-Koskinen

I am reading the collected Mumin comics by Tove Jansson this week. Between a half and an entire album per evening. Accompanied by various drinks (tonight: Highland Park Viking Pride) and various albums (yesterday the Prurient/Wolf Eyes collaboration, today some Merzbow) it is an excellent way to calm down after a late evening shift.

Also, if anyone wonders why "progressives" ever got where they are, Jansson's humor and style are excellent clues. It wasn't always about multi-million dollar think tanks, communism chic and head-up-your-ass identity political bigotry for psychopaths and sycophants. Once upon a time you could belong in that camp and be a pretty clever, and even sympathetic, person. This to such a degree that even the comics you drew showed it. Obviously none of that matters any more except as historical curiosity, but then again those may quite possibly be the only things that matter anymore.
"Alkoholi ei ratkaise ongelmia, mutta eipä kyllä vittu maitokaan"

Ahvenanmaalla Puhutaan Suomea

Deadpriest

Reading this  (A PERSONAL HISTORY OF MORAL DECAY):

Bradley Smith has been described by the Los Angeles Times as an "anarchist libertarian" and by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the most dangerous "extremists" in America. In A Personal History of Moral Decay, he emerges as a simple writer struggling to find "right relationship" in a world where the political and the personal converge, without resolution, through the coruscating prism of human experience. Threaded over decades and spanning continents, Smith's episodic memoir unspools in bright layers of crisp, laconic prose to confide and illuminate the adventures, the moral failures, the fleeting epiphanies, and the interpersonal bonds that haunt and animate a life.  Let this be your introduction to one of the most distinctive, if overlooked, voices in American literature. (that's a blurb I no writed it)

same publisher as New Juche and the Answer Me compendium innit
My book of poetry: http://www.histergrant.com/

cr

I enjoyed reading Journeys in the Kali Yuga - A Pilgrimage from Esoteric India to Pagan Europe
from Aki Cederberg.
Very interesting, I like those kind of "spiritual" journeys, trying to find some living traditions in other regions of the world and then  connect and compare them with your own old traditions and ancestors. And find out, that you can connect with the foreign spiritual world, but that it can never be your own.
Sorry, my English skills are not good enough to describe it any better. Read the book then I think you know what I mean.

Kayandah

Holocaust - A New History by Laurence Rees
After the exhaustive 800+ page book Final Solution this new book seems positively simple at half the length. It is also a lighter read, comprising of an overall history of the Holocaust with a lot of dialogue from various participants based on Rees 25+ years of writing on this topic.I would dispute the term "new history" as there wasn't anything new but he did manage a seamless interweaving of oral history mixed with chronological storytelling.

Next up is a biography of Himmler

cantle

Just finished the Cosey memoir. Very enjoyable, certainly provides a different perspective on things....

holy ghost

Started The Dispossessed after it's been on my list for a hundred million years. Feeling like a total sci-fi poser atm.

totalblack

Quote from: cantle on March 19, 2018, 11:17:21 PM
Just finished the Cosey memoir. Very enjoyable, certainly provides a different perspective on things....

Just started this, as I recently finished "Englands Hidden Reverse" and got both at the same time.

rocksoff

Just finished John Nathan's Mishima biography yesterday and starting a reread of Confessions of a Mask. Anyone else seen there's a new Mishima translation out next month, "Frolic of the Beasts"?

ONE

Quote from: Kayandah on March 06, 2018, 05:00:10 PM

Next up is a biography of Himmler



Author title details, if you would please.

I would love a good book on Reinhard Heydrich.  I always considered him the ultimate nazi; boy did he excel at his job.
resist the things you can find everywhere

Kayandah

Peter Longerich

He also did a biography of Goebbels.

Not found a good one on Heydrich, one I read seemed intent of telling us how much of a monster he was every page

Quote from: ONE on April 07, 2018, 11:27:36 PM
Quote from: Kayandah on March 06, 2018, 05:00:10 PM

Next up is a biography of Himmler



Author title details, if you would please.

I would love a good book on Reinhard Heydrich.  I always considered him the ultimate nazi; boy did he excel at his job.

ONE

Grazie.  I'll check those out.


RE:  Heydrich.  It always bothered me when documentary narrators would wax lyrical at how he would often weep after playing his violin (as if, somehow, it validated his entire professional career).

Recently I've read Mountainhead by New Juche.  How the hell did he get so good having published so little?

And I'm binging on Michel Houellebecq at this time:  I'd only read Atomised and Platform before this.  The Map & The Territory I found excellent, and quite an unusual tangent considering his regular preoccupations; different, but recommended.  Submission however, is for me, his best work to date, and a return to the hilarious misanthropic cynicism I've come to know and love.  I wonder (in light of Merkel's disastrous and truly thoughtless abandonment of German border control and the world of shit she left Greece and Italy in) whether this book will later be described as prescient ...?  There is genius in Houellebecq: not one of his sentences is overwrought or forced.

resist the things you can find everywhere

Gintrae

At the moment I'm reading "The Theater and Its Double" by Antonin Artaud. I decided to read it because a lot of artist, especially in PE/industrial scene seems to be inspired by him. It's quite interesting book but I must say that somehow I found other people interpretations of his ideas more interesting than actual Artaud's text.

Deadpriest

I'm reading mostly short stories atm discovered this wicedsick horror writer Thomas Ligoti, gothic as shit bro!!
My book of poetry: http://www.histergrant.com/

XXX

Quote from: Deadpriest on April 24, 2018, 11:41:40 AM
I'm reading mostly short stories atm discovered this wicedsick horror writer Thomas Ligoti, gothic as shit bro!!

Nic Pizzolatto has admited the first season of True Detective was heavily based on Ligotti's works.