That’s a damn fine war novel. I’m also intensely keen on the prequel and sequel which Michael Shaara’s son, Jeff, wrote for it. In fact, Gods and Generals is undoubtedly one of my top twenty all-time favorite full-length works of fiction. Possibly top ten. The pov character introductory chapters in G&G are exquisite, especially Stone Wall Jackson’s and Lawrence Chamberlain’s. An aspiring writer could gain a good deal of insight from analyzing just those early chapters. As far as The Killer Angels goes, the part in the story which stood out the most to me was with Longstreet in the Confederate camp the night before Pickett’s Charge, despairing over Lee’s decision to attack the dug-in, well-positioned Union. I remember reading that scene twice to better absorb it. Remarkable exploration of the character and historical moment.
Yeah, I found it all really illuminating. I guess I didn't know much about Gettysburg before. I probably still don't, relatively speaking. I know more than I did though. Here's Lee, who the army would follow anywhere, and who trounces the North in every battle, but he's losing it. Longstreet knows what's going to happen, yet he's doomed to participate in the fiasco of a suicide charge. That really reached me too. Just the frustration of knowing what's coming. Longstreet knows he's watching the South's demise and he knows he'll be blamed for it. You know, metaphorically, it's very similar to Oedipus Rex. The doom has been decreed by the gods. In this case the god is General Lee. His orders can't be avoided and there's no escape.
Lee was a complex man. His biography is an eye opener. "Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee" By: Michael Korda. Is an insightful view of this man. Many do not know he was offered command of the union army. Like many of his time his loyalties were divided between state and nation. In his case the state loyalties won out, even though he disagreed with the succession, and slavery personally.
Pumping Nylon by Scott Tennant. It's allegedly the seminal instruction book on classical guitar techniques, particularly the right hand (the one you pick with if you're a righty). It's very intense. Everything from how you trim your nails and position your wrists in the first sections to how you properly approach 32nd note arpeggios toward the end. Economy of motion is the name of the game because the shit is way too hard to play with any wasted movement. I feel like I'm trying to qualify for the Olympics... or at least not be the first person eliminated.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, so I can write an essay on it and [maybe] win a scholarship. It’s fine so far, but the plot kind of drags and then abruptly stops to delve into railroad-centric tangents, and it’s 1237 pages so there’s that also
My other met someone who read it strictly as a romance novel. That was a good example of death of the author.
I decided to go with Words of Radiance, and I'm almost halfway through that. Between chapters, I went to the bookstore to get some things for a friend and found a few things for myself, one being a book my dad recommended, The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. I'm about halfway through it and I think I can finish it tonight still and get back to Radiance on my lunch break tomorrow.
I finished the Howl's Moving Castle trilogy by Diana Wynne Jones. 3.75, 3.5, 3.75. I've heard for years that the anime was great but never got around to watching it. The books were decent. I was looking for an easy listen, and I found it. If you enjoy fairy tales, you might like these. She knows her Brothers Grimm and Arabian Nights for sure, but the style reminded me more of Hans Christian Andersen but kind of funny.
Hm, I know that I'm coming late but "The Killer Angels" & bonus novels sounds like something that I should get to hold of. Can't say that I'm going to read them right away as I've got a few other stuff on the "to read" list first but after that we'll see.
Finished Words of Radiance last night and today I'm going to start The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline.
Just started "Iron, ice, and fire" by Ed West. It is a facinating look at the historical influences used in George RR Martin's sing of ice and fire series, aka Game of Thrones. The war of the roses in England is a strong influence, as are Egypt, and Rome. It is very instructive in using multiple historic events as a basis for crafting a story.
Finished The Marrow Thieves and next up is Axiom's End by Lindsay Ellis. When I first got it, I didn't realize it was the first in a series. The reviews I caught a glimpse of were not favorable for this book, but I'll keep my mind open. Hopefully it's a fun ride.
Sorted in order of awesomeness. "The Wasp Factory" by Iain Banks (★★★★★) "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver (★★★★ 1/2) "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie (★★★★) "I, Robot" by by Isaac Asimov (★★★★) "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë (★★) "False Bingo: Stories" by Jac Jemc (★ 1/2) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Pretty solid recent reads. About my disliked books, I'll say this . . . I didn't hate Wuthering Heights, but I wasn't that excited by it. It reminded me of a Faulkner family in a Jane Austen setting. That was bold for the time, but it all got a bit monotonous with everyone constantly freaking out at each other. (Compare this to "The Wasp Factory" below, an even more freakish family, but they have quiet moments, light-hearted imaginings, and pauses in the turmoil.) I will say that that housemaid has the best memory of all time. Imagine being able to quote every nuance from a day 20 years past. I found that part funny, just the fact that she could recall everything so perfectly. Concerning the other book, Jac Jemc had written another book that I liked quite a bit. That's why I tried her collection. These stories were a bit too up in the air for my tastes. Maybe others would like them more though. (See, I stayed pretty positive! No cruel comments.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Agatha Christie was great. I won't give anything away. My favorite character was the killer, of course. Naturally, I gravitated to the villain, and that was before I knew if that person was evil. Isaac Asimov is so charming. "I, Robot" is a series of short stories linked by a common character. Will Smith does not appear to slap the positronic shit out of any robots. "Welcome to Earth!" Slap! In the movie there is a point where a robot hides amongst the other identical robots, and that was kind of like a short story here. That's the only thing I can find in common. I feel like there's an actual movie of the Asimov short story, with the hiding robot. I'm going to have to research this. It feels like it was lower budget, indie perhaps, and was successful. I kind of want to see it. ("Aw, hell no!" Jumps away from fireball, unscathed.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Demon Copperhead is a reimagining of David Copperfield. The MC is transplanted to Appalachia, which makes sense when you're looking for a poor, down and out character. I found a lot of the modernisms and parallels to be clever. It does help to have read David Copperfield. I suppose it gives plot points away too. You know who's going to die and who's a villain. One aspect I thought the author improved on was the fact that David Copperfield was born with a caul. It's mentioned in the Dickens book, but he just kind of dismisses it. I thought that Kingsolver did a better job returning to that aspect. It was just a detail, but it was so strange that it seemed weird to me that Dickens never leaned into it any. Anyway, a caul is supposed to superstitiously mean that you can't drown. Also, you have some sort of precognitive insights. It's not a major plot point or anything, but I thought it was so weird in the original that it felt missing as the story went on. Kingsolver opens and closes with that detail and it's quite beautiful. Anyway, the MC isn't smart like Copperfield is. He's something of a burnout. He follows a corruption arc similar to the MC in "The Goldfinch." He does have his standout assets, but smarts are not among them. There was a point in David Copperfield where the MC turns into a drunk. Here, he becomes an opioid addict. It's much, much more intense and critical to the continuing plot. Opioids are a real crisis in Appalachia. The characters always blame "them" for the addiction, which I find rather suspect and weak. Eh, it's okay. A lot of people feel that way in the book, and it was expressed well though I don't ever really remember "them" as being defined. The coal mine owners? The business owners who steal land from the people? Maybe. I did like that the book defended small town folk. They're the most common villains in media today. For an age of empathy, they sure get a lot of stereotypical labels. My problem with the book was the excessive language. Nothing can shock me, but it can bore me. It got to the point where it was all rather silly. Reminded me of "the Mambo King" bragging about sexual conquests on every page. Here, it was every paragraph. I think Kingsolver should have cut the language back 90% so that what was there had more impact. But heck, the book was super successful, so I guess that doesn't matter. She's an excellent writer, for sure. This was Pulitzer #44 for me in my quest to read them all. I'm ranking them too. I put this one at 16 out of 44. So it's better than average. (Almost done with #45. It's merely okay.) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The Wasp Factory. (★★★★★) I'm tempted to just type this one line and be done . . . Imagine a cross between Roald Dahl's "The Twits" and Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho." Gleeful mischief and psychopathy. You're reading this book, and the narrator seems to be smiling. You can hear it on the page. It's syrupy. Something about the voice and its properness is just deranged. Many, many animals meet their demise. That's hardly the end of it though. This falls under dark fiction. If you feel you need trigger warnings, stick to more politically correct fare. You won't like where this one goes. I found this book to be vicious, funny, and demented. The whole family's nuts. It is very well written with that easy British elegance. (Scottish elegance, really. It has a similar feel to Brit writers is what I mean.) Oh, the basic premise! A young boy, Frank, lives with his father on an island. His insane brother, Eric, has just escaped from a mental hospital and calls Frank on the phone, letting him know that he's coming home. Each call, he's closer. Eric is out of his mind. Young Frank may be worse. He prepares his defenses. He gathers skulls. He prays to the Wasp Factory for insight. All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is part of life and - even more so - part of death. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end, and the Factory is about the End - death, no less. Keep your entrails and sticks and dice and books and birds and voices and pendants and all the rest of that crap; I have the Factory, and it’s about now and the future; not the past. I need a signed edition of this for my shelf. They cost so much though . . . I might settle for a first print.
This seems to be pretty common for the time, at least in the gothic novels I'm familiar with. Melmoth the Wanderer has lots of this stuff- characters minutely recounting a hundred pages' worth of events and dialogue, even including a narrative within the narrative. Maybe it is a legacy of older storytelling traditions going back to Ovid and Apuleius.
I've had people tell me things to the effect of, "You can't have AI do that in your story because it would be governed by Asimov's three laws of robotics." I tell them that first of all, that's fiction. Those laws aren't hardwired into shit. Second, I read I, Robot, and half the stories are about problems with the three laws, either haywire bots or bots that found loopholes in the programming, etc. I thought it was a great read for a short collection, but I do believe more people cite Asimov than have actually read Asimov. Nailed it. Incredible book, flawless review. My next Iain Banks read will be The Bridge. I have the audiobook on my phone ready to go. That doesn't mean I'll get to it soon, though. So many audiobooks queued!
Yeah, Asimov was great at finding loopholes. The rules are simple but he could always nuance out tricks that would cause chaos. It's very instructive to how we make plans in the real world and how they fail. I'm going to be sure to pick up more Iain Banks books too. I appreciate his boldness on the page. There were so many times in that book that I was laughing at death, and maybe that's the whole point of the story. Yes, that kid is creepy. You're not meant to be like him. He's awful and needs to be locked up. But there was something very pure about his portrayal and how he would play on the beach, start these little wars, build dams, collect strange things. There's a part with a kite that I'm still laughing about. It reminded me of a scene from "The Twits," strangely enough, where the husband convinces the wife that she's shrinking and then ties her to a bunch of helium balloons to stretch her out. Then he cuts the line so she goes sailing off. This was worse on every level, but whatever part of me was laughing at "The Twits" back in the 3rd grade was laughing at "The Wasp Factory" today. I also liked when he found that old undetonated bomb from WWII. haha! No, I shouldn't be laughing. It's all so twisted but the delivery of the gruesomeness was really just perfect.
One August Night by Victoria Hislop Well, it's a book about Greece. I had to get it! Even better, it's about the Spinaloga island, which is close to Crete. It was used as leper colony. Since I'm Greek, I always thought that it'd be weird and ironic to write a story in a Greek setting using English. Yet, here I was, opening the book and seeing a Cretan name with the usual -kis ending to it. I started it something like three hours ago and I'm already more than halfway through. It's those types of books that absorb you in their pages. You get transported into their settings. I could see Greece clearly all the way here from England. And I really liked how the author sneaks in actual Greek phrases in its dialogue. I love them! But I feel bad for the English readers that don't understand them. The book's writing style isn't the greatest but it's decent. It doesn't like to get too close to a scene but I appreciate its rapid pace. It's like a rollercoaster. I was interested in the Spinaloga island being more involved but its honestly more like a background detail and a plot device. Now I'm inspired to visit Spinaloga next summer! Maybe I just will... I don't typically use this thread but I was so thrilled I had to share this.
Oh crap!! One look at the title and you have to know I'd be all over it in a heartbeat: Transcendent Writers in Stephen King's Fiction: A Post-Jungian Analysis of the Puer Aeternus. Two of my favorite writers, and it's about not only psychology, but transcendence! It's like the quad-fecta (is there such a thing? Well, there is now!). Moreover, it covers pretty much my favorite King stories—Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Body, and The Shining (though I do prefer Kubrick's version by a wide margin). It just struck me tonight out of the blue to look up transcendence in fiction, as a furthering of my writing on the blog about Jeff Vandermeer's dark transcendence (my own name for it) in the Southern Reach trilogy. He strikes me as a neo-transcendentalist, but writing fiction rather than poetry, and his transcendence is not so much rainbows and unicorns but more like terror and transformation in a semi-Cronenbergian manner. I'm not entirely sure transcendence is the right word—what I'm looking for is when a story (or a movie) reaches some kind of ecstatic height that isn't caused by story structure or character arc, or anything that can be quantified or calculated or diagrammed. Something entirely intuitive, arrived at by inspiration or by means unknown to the author, that lifts the story to a new level briefly. Something ineffable (don't eff with me man)—the kind of thing you get from Moby Dick for instance, where you sit back stunned and reeling, and you have no idea what the hell just happened, but something definitely did. I got some of that from Fahrenheit 451 too. And I got it hardcore sitting in the theater watching The Shining for the first time. I'm not sure that's quite what the book I just downloaded for my Kindle is about, I think it's more about King's writer-characters (self-characters) achieving or attempting to achieve or failing to achieve transcendence in their own lives. With transcendence in this case meaning Individuation in the Jungian sense. Ok, so I haven't really found what I'm looking for yet, this is a side-trip, but man, what a trip it is! And with that, the search continues.
Here's the first hit I've got that's actually about what I'm looking for: Elements of Transcendence in Fiction with Miciah Bay Gault— "We’ve all read pieces that seem to transcend mere excellence. What are the elements that take a story from great to sublime? How do published authors move their carefully crafted pieces from tidy and proficient to something more memorable and far-reaching? Together we’ll read a few published pieces in hopes of finding out. Perhaps we’ll see moments of fluidity in point of view and narrative distance, or instances of unexpected speculative wonder. Maybe we’ll notice piercing exposition, or incantation on the sentence level. [...]—the transcendent flashes, the crescendos, the big finishes, the sneaky quiet moments of meaning, the chills, the heartbreak, the astonishment." And it's only—$495~? Wait, wha...? Dollars?!!? Oh, I see, it's not a book, it's a course. Ok, forget that. But if there's a course, maybe there are books as well. Does anybody know of anyplace where I could learn more about this, or another name for it? A book, article, or video?
I'm currently reading a book that makes little sense in terms of plot and theme. I've been patient with, trying to give it a chance to progress but half way in and it's still not going anywhere.
If you like fictional stories located on Greek islands, you should read Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernier, it is based in Cephalonia. It writes about the history of the island and includes Greek words in it, which you'll probably have no problem understanding!
It's all Greek to me. (Hey, ancient Greece is like my favorite historical period and mythology though)
Thank you! I'll keep it in mind. I honestly had no idea people wrote these kinds of books. But I guess Greece is a pretty awesome place historically and visually. Politically? Ehhh, let's not talk about that! I know what you mean! It's like a jolt, right? The story suddenly just sky rockets to a realm you can't concretely understand and you get absorbed in it. I find that it actually happens when the creator momentarily abandons structure and common form and just latches into pure artistic beauty. The story turns abstract and tries things you haven't seen before. And that's exciting. Just a tiny theory. I could be wrong but I've received a proper jolt from some stories!
That's just about as well as I've heard it put. And of course it can't be dissected beyond a certain point. Probably the best way to 'study' it is to read some books that reach that level and try to think about how it was done. But more likely what you're really doing is getting a feel for how to approach it. I do think it could be excellent to read some thoughts on it from highly observant people. Hope I can find such things. Bradbury reached it at times in Fahrenheit, and for me one of the times was with his description of books in burning houses becoming flaming butterflies. I can imagine them, caught in the immense updraft, in a world of pure intense heat and destruction, becoming beautiful emblems of transcendence in a hellish milieu. And it's important that he didn't over-describe it (like I just did), but used just the right words at the right times. He let it be a small detail and never lingered on it, just a momentary flutter in the text. That little detail really stays with me and rises above everything else about the story. Like Phoenixes (sp?) rising from not the ashes, but the intense peak of destruction itself, and when it cools down they're long dead and inert.
