Lovecraft has some much better instances of prose though than Dick. "Rats in the Walls" is a prime example of how he really knows how to play with sensory imagery and the grotesque when he feels like it.
Just finished Kerouac's On The Road and wish I'd read it years and years ago. Now I've picked up The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which I probably read many lifetimes ago.
I've been told to read On the Road so many times it's almost created a reverse effect. I just haven't liked anything of Kerouac's work yet that I've looked at. And from all I've heard of this novel, I have a feeling I'm not at all the target audience. The Beat Generation just never resonated with me because I was never on board with most of the things they pushed for. I do enjoy their utility in influence from the Harlem Renaissance though. There is a strange sort of pacing to them that is endearing, but I just can't bring myself to On the Road for some reason. Just positive I won't like it. Strange relationships we can have with books sometimes...
It's a good book. Definitely dated, though. And very much a generational thing. You have to kind of retroject that 50s mentality when most Americans didn't know anything beyond the realm of their local newspaper and adventure was much easier to come by. Getting in a car, smoking grass, and slumming across country then would be like surfing on Saturn now. Shit kind of got boring in that regard.
I agree it's dated and maybe that's why I sometimes wish I'd read it much sooner. Because I'm "dated" too, and I feel I would have appreciated it intensely had I read it 50 years ago, on the tail-end of the beat generation -- I think it would have helped to put a lot of the tumult of the 60s (and tumult of my adolescence) into context. I might not have felt so alone.
When I was growing up, "beatnik" was a favorite costume, involving black tights, a thigh length sweatshirt, and my long straight hair hanging over my face. Beyond that, I had no idea what the term meant. Since I could never wade through On the Road, I'm still not sure. I do know that for most of elementary school, half the girls in my class were beatniks, the other half were gypsies. The boys were cowboys or hobos. Parental influence was key.
I did notice that the female characters in On the Road were essentially background characters or objectified; I don't recall hearing any feminine perspectives or viewpoints except as described or translated or recalled by the male characters. Most significant female characters were either saints with regard to patience, or easily manipulated. Perhaps that was a reflection of society, or perhaps the distaff folks were too subtle for the MC and friends to pick up on.
Of course—the beat writers were a bunch of drug-addicted, hard drinking dudes who used women. They wrote the life they knew. Living on the road was doubtless part of the perennial masculine flight from the control and domesticating tendencies of women and society.
The seventeen-year-old poet hidden deep inside me loves the freeform poetry-as-prose formula, but I've read the first half of On the Road three times at least. Every time I think I'm going to finish that novella-length run-on sentence, but I never do. I plan to try one more time on audiobook. Maybe that will do it.
Since I was busy writing the first draft of my novel when Uncompromising Honor was published and never got around to reading it, I’m in the middle of re-reading the Honor Harrington series as a refresher. Just wrapped up Ashes of Victory.
Cannot make it through the Josephine Tey novel. The woman will not get to the point of anything without pondering every possible motive and outcome, no matter how remote.
On a huge sci-fi kick just now. Having finished nearly all of Jack Vance's novels, I'm now beasting through the James S A Corey Expanse novels. Holy moly. As written space opera, these are fantastic stories. This author really knows how to create a sense of jeopardy, for characters who are all unique and bursting with personality. The dilemmas these characters face are truly difficult ones, and the conclusions are never really 'perfect' from the characters' point of view. And some of the POV characters do die. I'm starting the 6th book in the 8-book series. The main characters and situations, I'm delighted to say, feature in all the books—at least thus far—so it's a long-arc 'series.' Some issues are resolved within one novel, while others carry forth into the following books. Amazon Prime has created a filmed series based on these books, but I doubt that I'll watch it. The books are really good, on their own.
He's been my favorite for quite a while now regarding science fiction. I'm glad he's getting recognized for those works and has the long running series to go along with it.
I'm really caught up in them. Not only does he seem to have the science and mechanics right (as much as we can be right about it at the moment) but he—unlike many other 'science' fiction authors—knows how to construct realistic and compelling characters. AND he knows how to unfurl a story, to keep me glued. 100% - 10 stars, whatever.
Maybe everyone knows this already, but using "he" to refer to James S.A. Corey threw me a bit. It's actually a pen name for two guys co-writing, Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank. I second the love for The Expanse at any rate. Anyway I'm reading Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. It's one of those books where, line by line, you're left wondering what in the world is going on, but by the end of a chapter you go "Ohhhh." Very dreamlike and hallucinatory without being completely inaccessible. It's a really neat trick I wish I could do.
Well, if 2 guys are going to write under one pen name, then people are going to say he. Seems like that's what they were going for. It's like the various authors who wrote the Doc Savage series, all working under the pen name Kenneth Robeson. Today, because of the scholarship around it, we often talk about the most prolific and best among them, Lester Dent, but most people just think there was one guy writing all the stories. And that's exactly what the publishing house wanted them to think, hence using one name for all of them.
I didn't know that. Now I do! Funny, I just encountered another duo writing under a single name ...Ambrose Parry. It's actually a well-known Scottish contemporary crime writer Christopher Brookmyre and his wife Marisa Haetzman, who have been collaborating on Scottish historical crime writing. Their third book as a duo will be coming out this month. I suppose, 'they'their' is an appropriate pronoun to use when referring to Ambrose Parry ...although that might get misinterpreted in the current confusion surrounding gender pronouns. In this case "they" IS actually two people!
If you do want to read Kerouac, I recommend Desolation Angels. It's the standard Kerouac style without the hype (I think, anyway). It's longer than On the Road, but to me it's a bit more digestible. I finished reading Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave yesterday, and while I didn't hate it, it left me wanting more. WWII fiction is one of my favorite types of stories, but sometimes it can be a bit bubblegum fluffy. This wasn't entirely that, because there were truly some powerful passages and the violence and destruction were prevalent. I liked it for the most part.
The only one I've done so far was Big Sur, which was quite the ramble. I've heard that one's better than On the Road, but it'll still stay a bit low on the list. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm currently reading another textbook. A lot more pointless than the last. English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline by Bruce McComisky is not particularly that interesting, but I have to knock this course out of the way. At least the style isn't terribly dry or rough to digest. And the author sets up his genuine interest in unifying the discipline in a massive introduction that is actually somewhat engaging. I have to read the whole thing, so I'll just go in with an open mind. It's fairly short anyways, so maybe I'll get some other literary gem in as well in the mean time.
I just finished Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. It's got a lot of interesting stuff but kind of bogs down at the end when he goes into the whys of textbook writing and selection. 7/10 recommended? Going back into Wen Spencer's Elfhome books, which were purchased for me... Spoiler ...by a close friend whom I have known literally my entire life, if you catch my drift. And like many of the books this close friend enjoys, this one has got some problematic shit in it. The MC is this tough little tomboy, 17 years old, who has a male friend several years older than she who's like a big brother to her. She's also met an elven Lord (fantasy book, sorry if that wasn't clear) several years ago when she (offscreen, previous to Book 1) saved his life. He didn't realize she was a girl at the time she saved him. So on her 18th birthday her big brother figure takes her out to dinner and tries to rape her because she's legal now, but she's saved by the Elflord who spirits her away and fucks her in a magic ceremony that not only makes them legally married but turns her from a human into an elf and I need a FUCKING SHOWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And my friend always seems to find this shit. This isn't a fetish book as such, it's a reasonably successful mainstream fantasy series. Another one from a related source was a femdom fantasy series written by someone with far too many cats in which disobedient males were shaved in a way that left them completely smooth "down there." (The Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop, if that's your thing.) However, they were purchased as gifts and my friend has inquired more than once about my progress in them, so I'm going to put on a cleansuit and dive in again.
D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of WW II by Stephen E. Ambrose. It's pretty good, but not as engaging as Citizen Soldier, also by Ambrose.
I've finally hit a snag in the otherwise-Excellent Expanse series, written by a duo under the pseudonym James SA Corey. It's the 7th book in the series—Persepolis Rising—and, quite frankly, it's a bit of a dud. I'm skimming frantically, wanting to get to the end. Duarte has turned into a Hitleresque-rule-the-universe villain who is in the process of making himself literally immortal (oh, aye...), and the situation vis-a-vis our ageing (but not really aged much in 30 years) Rocinante crew is weird as hell. Amos is acting weird (-er than usual.) Clarissa is slowly dying of her implants, apparently, but still functioning well. Bobbie has arthritis, but not to the extent that she's disabled with it. Naomi and Holden are more or less unchanged, except they want to retire. Alex is Alex, but he's a father now—no, the kid is not on board. The techno babble is boring the arse off me in this story, as well as being difficult to follow. The overall scenario is a dog's breakfast, and the bit players who take POV turns feeding it to us are dull and unengaging. I don't care about any of them. I'm not enjoying this much at all. I'll persevere, in hopes this is a blip, and not an indication that the series has jumped the shark.
Reading two books off and on at the moment, one fiction and the other non fiction. Fiction is the fourth book of the Wheel of Time series (this one is moving slower to me, so I'm not reading it quickly), and the non fiction is World War I by SLA Marshall. I think... Yes, it is. I leaned over and grabbed it from my nightstand to confirm the author.
I started The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and it's fantastic so far. Slow burn (1,000-page book) but building very well.
