I have to recommend "Broodhollow" by Kris Straub again. (Technically a webcomic) It's really one of the best examples of psychological horror I have seen. The most unsettling moments aren't the graphic or supernatural things, although they can startle you at times, it's the creeping sense of anticipation, the sense of widespread danger and the character's ignorance of it, and the unreliable narration. All Kraus Straub needs to do to scare you is have someone say something weird and suddenly an otherwise cosy scene is desperately insecure, you're never sure about things.
I like Kris Straub, and it's downright silly that I've never checked out any of his work. Broodhollow it is, thank you kindly.
This week is a bit dense in literary criticism, which is saying something since last week was difficult with Plato and Aristotle. Start off the week with Horace's The Art of Poetry, parts of Longinus' On the Sublime, and a letter from Dante Aligheri to Can Grande della Scala. Finish off the week with Sir Phillip Sydney's An Apology for Poetry, and Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism. I have my work cut out for me this week. Notes from last week, Plato's view of literature is a good way to piss off any author, and Aristotle does a great job educating the reader on the construction of epic and tragic poetry. Difficult, and not particularly entertaining, but an interesting look into the past.
I recently finished The Secret Place by Tana French -- I'm a huge huge fan of her work. I hope she returns to more of the mystery and less of the otherworldly because I think her strength is in her storytelling and mystery. I also read The Fate of the Fallen by Kel Kade, and while I didn't like the beginning of it so much, the last half was absolutely stunning. She turns the hero's journey trope upside down and it's incredible. It's a series, so there are more books to come. Now I'm working on The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan, the second book in his Wheel of Time series. My brother recommended it to me and I decided to give the series a try. So far, I'm enjoying it. It's like LOTR but on steroids.
Robert Jordan's whole series is great. I liked The Great Hunt better than The Eye of the World, and honestly the series goes up even more for a few more novels, slumps, and then comes back. Whole thing is worthwhile, even when his son takes over the writing. Quite long though.
Just read Stephen King's The Institute. Very good story, disturbing in places, that deals with the scientific end of the paranormal, and explores what I think is a really important question. Recommended.
The Science of Radio, by Paul Nahin. I'm about to be deluged by math. I like Nahin, though: he writes well about cool science-nerd topics.
Book Of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi edited by Kenji Tokitsu. I read it once before, but it was poorly edited and that saw me drop it. After reading The Scroll Of Earth I'm confident Tokitsu wrote the version for me.
I'm reading Doctor Who - Dreams of Empire, by Justin Richards. It's a BBC Books publication from the Past Doctor Adventure line that features the 2nd Doctor and his companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Victoria Waterfield. These novels were published between the 1996 television movie and the 2005 re-launch of the TV series. I haven't gotten that far into the book and so far it feels like it's going to be a slow burn. Although, the Doctor and his companions have just arrived and they're already in trouble. We'll see how it goes...
I have just finished reading The Devil Aspect. I normally don't go for this type of fiction, But I really enjoyed the story. It was paced really well, brilliant character development. The story is set between world war 1 and world war 2, the main character is a psychiatrist, working on proving a theory about how everyone has a bad place in them that results in evil doings. While he is investigating this there is a killer on the loose. I read some reviews when I was half way through the book, and people were saying how they had figured it out easily. I felt that whilst you have a feeling who the killer is, I also suspected multiple characters as being the killer. In conclusion, it is a good quick read. I am now going to attempt to read Erebus, a Michal Palin book about a ship. The only other time I read a book about a ship was Moby dick and I didn't finish that. The old man and the sea doesn't count as that was a boat.
"The library" by Apollodorus. Or at least the parts I feel that might be relevant to a possible project of mine.
I don't know if anyone's read anything by Patrick O'Brian, but I'm currently on the third book in his Napoleonic naval series. It's pretty much an addiction at this point. Only 14 more books to go until I get my life back.
Just finished reading Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq. Its lyricism and magical realism was beautiful! Its a tough subject and sometimes hard to read... but as she says "Trauma does not choose you, you choose if it is trauma or not." I think an added bonus was that she included a poem written in Inuktitut and provided a key for readers to translate it. I would love to listen to the audio (she reads it!) and hear her read the poem in her language.
Just finished Tess Gerritsen's I Know A Secret. Very well written, and I recognized it as her take on the notorious Fells Acres case, but I found the ending deeply unsatisfying.
So, i've yet to finish "The Bookseller of Kabul". I REALLY want to finish it and i am interested in it... but i cant seem to find the time to read. I've also picked up "Welcome To America" a quick -200 page book. Ironically, both are English translations of Swedish books. And i've picked up the graphic novel, Saga, again. I started reading it on Hoopla, but then my downloads expired (you have to download each volume and its annoying). So I stopped reading it for a while. This past weekend, I ended up just buying the whole first series (cost me like $40 ) and i'm in the middle of reading that. I usually have a "lunch" book, and "evening" book, and "on my way home" audio book, and a "im bored" book. havent found a good audio book yet to be my "on my way home" book.....
Tried to read Patricia Cornwell's Quantum. The first five chapters (and maybe beyond) are one long information dump, and unreadable. I gave up.
Just got home from an afternoon of shopping with the wife... and I survived. (I’m beat, but I survived.)
Moving on further with my second month of literature theory. Reading to preface to Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth, part of Coleridge's Biographia Lieraria, all of Coleridge's Shakespeare's Jugement Equal to his Genius, Percy Shelley's Defence of Poetry, Matthew Arnold's The Function of Criticism in the Present Time and The Study of Poetry. I suspect this week will be difficult like last week.
I thought I was going to take a break for the rest of the month and for the remainder of 2019, but I've decided to give master Chekhov a go. I've never read any of his works, so I decided to start off simply with A Nervous Breakdown (Penguin Little Black Classics). Will be interesting to see how he figures in with Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol for me.
Finished the book and I have to say I'm quite impressed with Chekhov. It might also be due to the narrator's more modern approach, but the style is deceptively simple and modern. I generally read my Russians in Garnett and Maude, so Wilks was a good change. I liked A Nervous Breakdown, but The Black Monk stole the show for me. Very psychological, almost Gothic. My cup of tea. Anne Round the Neck didn't really stand out. I'll definitely be reading more of him though. He feels fresher and more focused than the other Russian greats, as a writer and as a person.
Well, finally finished the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F Hamilton. Two books and around 2400 pages. Holy crap it was an amazing story, the world building alone was huge and far-reaching and occasionally ponderous. Well written but never a page turner. You read it for the epic nature of the story not because you want to lose yourself for a few hours, barely able to wait to see around the next sentence. It's not that kind of story. Only in the last hundred pages or so did the pace pick up and take you for a ride. But that's alright, you got to delve inside a new world and relax there for a bit, take in the sumptuous vista and enjoy it at leisure. Peter F Hamilton is not for the adrenaline junky. Now re-reading Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus before reading her new novel The Starless Sea.