Just finished Stephen King's latest, Revival. It's OK, with a very interesting question at its base. Not his best work, but much better than Mr. Mercedes. King dedicated the book to "some of the people who built my house", a list of (mostly well-known) horror writers he admires. The last author mentioned was "and ARTHUR MACHEN, whose short novel The Great God Pan has haunted me all my life." I've seen Machen mentioned here a few times but had never read him, so I downloaded that novel (almost a longish short story in its length) from Project Gutenberg, and read it. Holy crap. I believe it will haunt me the rest of my life, too.
Thanks for posting this, I've been wondering about King's most recent novels, and this has told me that maybe I should check them out. And yeah, Arthur Machen's Pan is ... jesus christ.
If you haven't read 11/22/63, I think it's his best book (though it's true that I am fascinated by the idea of time travel).
I've not read anything he's put out since Lisey's Story, I must admit. Thanks for another recommendation. ^.^ I was really curious when 11/22/63 came out, but at the time was living off of beans, and couldn't afford to buy it. And that short story collection that came out around the same time, I really want to read that too, but I just haven't got around to any of that yet. Mind you, I'm British, so I read the title as the 11th day of the 22nd month in the year 1963.
If you want an interesting Stephen King read I would suggest Cell if you haven't read it yet. It's a bit bland at some parts, but overall I still enjoyed.
Interesting. Completely different to my reaction to it, I can't think of a nice thing to say about it myself. It's, aside from Tommyknockers, the King novel I like the least.
I get all my fiction at the local library. The beauty of time travel is that there may well be a 22nd month that year.
I'm currently reading Louis Armstrong - An Extravagant Life by Laurence Bergreen. Very interesting. I just love biography's. So far I have learned that Armstrong like hoes and weed.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. - physical book, touch the paper, smell the paper. Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure by Janice Hardy - ebook/kindle/ipad
Currently reading - A Disaffection by Scottish author James Kelman - this is pretty close to the bone so far, loving the devil may care style. Feels unique to any author I've read, which is always a plus. The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis - this is a fun read. It's a short one, about a senior demon called Screwtape giving diabolical advice to his nephew Wormwood, about how tempt humans. Wickedly sharp, it has many brilliant astute observations about human behaviour. I've read this before, would recommend.
You Are Not Dead - Wendy Xu. Contemporary American poetry, free-verse, student of James Tate, nice light read
I've just finished A Further Range by Robert Frost, and America and Other Poems by J.M Whitfield. The Whitfield collection was basically alright, actually quite mediocre, the Frost collection was very good, but not his best. Good stuff, other of them though. It is always worth expanding poetic horizons.
Currently reading The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. The Name of the Wind was excellent in my eyes, and I'm loving The Wise Man's Fear so far. Kvothe is such an interesting character.
THIS. In another thread someone asked for recommendations for mystery novels about people who were new to town and I was trying to think of what this book was called and for the life of me could not remember it.
Just finished T.H. White's The Once and Future King. Been wanting to read it for years and glad I finally got around (and got through!) it.
So I read The Fifth Wave, loved it, read the sequel, The Infinite Sea, not so much. I suspect a third in the series needs to be written. Moved on to The Taken. Meh, predictable and not that interesting. I won't be reading the sequels. Now I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Oh it's a good one. I can see why this book made people take notice of this author. It begins with a surreal account of a pizza delivery where lives depend on that 30 minute arrival then veers off into a skateboarder who latches on to the delivery car with a magnetic attachment ending with the car in the bottom of a dry pool and the skateboard rider taking the pizza delivery on with minutes to go. The skateboard's wheels grow and shrink to fit the terrain. The condition of the pizza matters not, only the ticking 30 minute clock and ... It's incredibly visual writing. I can see why the author is acclaimed for this book.
Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing by Richard Poirier. It's a critical study of the poetry of Robert Frost, and it's not bad, but I've been thrown by the fact that there is no 'mission statement' has left me feeling oddly adrift so far. The critical analysis of the poetry, though, has been pretty decent. Also, Howl, Kaddish and other poems by Alan Ginsberg. This is a second reading for me, and I do like 'Howl' but not crazy about most of the others I must admit.
I'm currently reading 'In The Light of What We Know' by Zia Haider Rahman. It's alright but is packed with cliches, and could have been better written with a little more attention to detail, and a little less hunger to appease orientialist western readers hungry for literature that reinforces their orientalism. The two main characters are both of South Asia, and both become what looks and sounds like part of the British intellectual elite. Except they're not of that elite at all, and they know it. There is a bizarre fascination of the wealthy and powerful in South Asia with the British elite; I suppose as a relic of colonialism, a national insecurity left over from being conquered or whatever. Rahman's characters are both like that (sort of), and so, I think, is Rahman, having risen through the ranks of the most elite education institutions (Oxford - Balliol, Cambridge, Yale, etc.) and then working as an investment banker. The characters can assimilate, can say all the right things to all the right people in order to *appear* to be of the elite, but deep down they never quite make it. Held back only by their insecurity. Interesting book, but not very satisfying I'm afraid. Rahman seems to have wanted to write a novel to add to the long list of careers he's had: "an investment banker on Wall street, a corporate lawyer, and an international human rights lawyer." If you've had that many careers, you can't have focused very much on any particular one, and this lack of pure focus is what makes ITLOWWK just short of a brilliant book.
You've read that? What was it like? My taste for Wagner has always made me curious about that story, but I don't even know how to access it. Isn't it one of the core Germanic sagas?
Yes, it tells of Sigfried (Sigurd in the Norse Volsunga Saga). I have the Penguin Classics version by A.T. Hatto of Queen Mary College, University of London. His work presents the story in prose and not as a poem, though the original Middle High German writing was a poem (and the story was passed down orally long before that writing, as I understand it). I'm finding it interesting. Not yet done with it
Ah, that sounds really interesting. I had no idea there was a Penguin Classics edition of it, I'll have to look it up. That sounds like the story of Wagner's Siegfried, just the sort of thing I like. Thanks! I'll be sure to check this out.
