Just finished Use of Weapons, by Iain M Banks.
I like Banks, & I suspect he lavished more time & effort on his SF than his non-SF work, but he still wrote too much, too quickly. The structure was an effective complement to the narrative, but there were too many longeurs, too much padding. 250 pages would have been more effective than 400.
Anyway, it's holiday time, so I have a pile of books at my side - first off, The Night of the Panthers, by Piergiorgio Pulixi.
The Healing Of America by T.R. Reid. Compares our crazy American health care system to other developed countries.
A few different books I'm deeply into at the moment:
The Fall and Rise of China (Great Courses, Prof. Richard Baum)
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Yuval Noah Harari)
Recently finished and recommended:
Everybody Lies(Seth Stephens-Davidowitz)
Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll (Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson)
The World Without Us (Alan Weisman)
Last edited by Koreabruce; 08-03-2017 at 01:32 AM.
Human Cruelty by Wade Garrett
This was billed as an extreme horror novel, and was not at all lying. The most over the top and sadistic book I have read. The protagonist,Seth ,
is a vigilante. An "Angel of Vengeance". Apparently this is part of a series featuring him in this role. In this episode, he is setting his sights on about
a dozen people who are all guilty of torturing an animal in some fashion. His aim is to exact vengeance against the perpetrator in a manner similar to
what they inflicted on their animals, and then some! This is beyond graphic. Hostel and Saw on steroids. Not for the weak of stomach, that's for sure!
Quite liberal suspension of reality in what his victims can endure before dying. There are also dark humor attempts throughout. Though I'm a horror fan, this
was not a good read for me. Way too over the top in punishment and description . Serious hardcore horror fans might like, by I would tread carefully.
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
Just finished His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnett, a fine historic novel about the murdering of three people and all that happened before and after that.
Now reading All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai, a kind of SF-novel.
Sean Carroll - The Big Picture. A physicist's take on reality, meaning, purpose, the origin and fate of the universe. But more important than all that he's a prog fan and there's a reference to prog and ELP!!
The Peripheral by William Gibson
A near future American dystopia somewhere in the country. designer drug dealers run the local economy.
A veteran of some future special ops group is hired to beta test a VR game for lots of money, he hands it off to his sister for an couple of evenings.
In the course of 'gameplay' she witnesses a killing.
Killers start stalking the brother.
It turns out that the game is in a post apocalyptic future after 'the jackpot' where far fewer people use fantastic tech use 'a server' to access continua ( a past version of their present )
Yada, Yada, Yada.
Much interesting conceptual stuff, with lots of action and plot twists ensue as the people of the future try to use the people of the past to subtly alter the onrushing 'jackpot'
I found it a page turner ( 485 pages in 24hr ), some gaping plot holes used to speed the story along, many unanswered, perhaps to use in a follow up.
Gibson has been one of my favorite authors for a long time. Does not disappoint this time.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
Got it on my Amazon wishlist. Gibson always delivers. I reread Necromancer a few months ago and damn, talk about a writer starting out shit hot right with the debut.Originally Posted by markwoll
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
I read it years ago and was surprised I didn't like it much. It seemed disjointed. Maybe I should try another of his.
On the "Horror Fiction Help" thread, the book Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix was recommended. I'm about a third of the way through it now. Haunted IKEA-like store. I like it. Unlike most one-color book, this one uses blue ink instead of black. The type is in dark blue (almost black) while the illustrations are in shades of lighter blue giving the book some color and looking like pages out of a furniture store's catalogue.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Is Birdsong Music? by Australian violinist, composer,ornithologist and author Hollis Taylor.She traversed Australia recording and transcribing the unique birdsong of the pied butcherbird.
Even a short way into the book, i'm pretty sure Taylor's answer to her query is...yes.
"please do not understand me too quickly"-andre gide
I just finished The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I had seen numerous references to this in the past by critics saying that it was
a must read horror classic. Seems like the hype was greater than the novel. Severely disappointed.
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
Same here. I wasn't that impressed either. I thought Richard Matheson's take on the spend-a-night-in-the-haunted-house theme, Hell House, was better.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Like any genre fiction, it now seems rather tame by the standards of today or even when authors like Stephen King changed the intensity setting. There's a some subtext floating underneath that would be implicit now, the stakes would be higher, and the chills far more shocking. But Jackson was without peer in regards to her mechanics. The opening paragraph has long been regarded as the perfect opening with not a word wasted and the tension building with every note.
https://medium.com/@penguinrandomus/...d-14834632fc61
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" (a Dutch publisher is releasing a couple of new translations of this kind of SF-novels).
Maybe because The Haunting was first. Try "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" for Jackson brilliance.
A classic!
I am currently reading “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”. Even though it came out years ago, I never read it. Although I love my country, we have certainly done a lot of bad things to people over the years.
Indeed! Now that one is a good one. Had a bit of To Kill a Mockingbird feel to it.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
Interesting that you should mention that. I just started that yesterday. So far, liking this one MUCH better.
A Comfort Zone is not a Life Sentence
Also on my desk: Andrew Michael Hurley's "The Loney", a very British suspense story with lots of Christian cruelty.
Going to be the odd one out here, as I'm 99% sure no one else reads these types of books (if you do tho, well wow).
Currently re-reading Bully by Penelope Douglas
Does anyone know who the author is who some say Stephen King copied ideas from? That author wrote Twilight Zone type stories but can't remember his name. I'd like to read some of his stories. Thanks if you can help!
Read in a 2 to 3 hour sitting at library. Michael Finkel - The Stranger in the Woods. True story about a hermit who spent 27 years in woods in Maine alone. He stole from cabins to survive and was eventually caught. The book is a mix of interviews with the subject, descriptions of where and how the hermit lived and survived, and ruminations on hermits throughout history.
This article mentions M.P. Shiel, whose The Purple Cloud might have inspired King: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5182390/scien...t-stolen-ideas
More recently King was sued for "lending" a character for his Dark Tower-series from The Rook comics
But I guess you mean someone else.
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