Dune, again, though it's been 30 years. Are the next two books in the series worth it?

enframed wrote: Sat Jan 20, 2024 9:58 am Dune, again, though it's been 30 years. Are the next two books in the series worth it?

Messiah and Children of Dune are both poorly-written, but set the table for the great God Emperor of Dune. I'd read a synopsis of those two and go straight to that one.

I started Saturnin on a recommendation from here. It's great! The humor reminds me of Nabokov.

Infinite Jest

It was $1 at the library. I've never read it, it's not too late to make a New Years' Resolution is it?

zircona1 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 10:52 am Infinite Jest

It was $1 at the library. I've never read it, it's not too late to make a New Years' Resolution is it?

I tried. He shoulda stuck to essays.

The White Goddess, by Robert Graves. A slight diversion from my recent I, Claudius, Claudius The God, King Jesus, and Count Belasarius reads.

Also: Cockfighter by Charles Willeford from a recommendation Matt Sweeney posted somewhere.

I finished Hard To Be a God. Loved it. I would like to read more from the Strugatsky brothers for sure (I've read and loved Roadside Picnic). Any recommendations? I would also like to be a seasoned Strugatsky brahs' anti-hero in real life. But without all the snot and mud and slaughter. I've seen Alexei German's Hard To Be a God adaptation before and now want to go back to it knowing the source material, though it was a bit of a slog. I once saw it advertised here in the scope of some sort of dinner-movie event series. Wonder how that went.

I'm now reading Bold Bob Bolaño's By Night in Chile. I like the fairly subtle, un-self-aware kind of maudlin humor in the narrator's fever dream monologue.

I found this and have it cued up next for my commutes, when I finish the Bolaño:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/591 ... f-the-wild

"In the Eye of the Wild begins with a terrifying account of the anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s nearly fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear while conducting research in Siberia. As an anthropologist, Martin has made a name for the fullness of her engagement with the peoples she studies. In her dangerous encounter with the bear, however, she faced something else altogether: the animal. Left severely mutilated, she undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, whose ghastly chief surgeon sports a mouthful of gold teeth and presides over a harem of young nurses. Back in France, she is put through new operations, meant to fix the work done in Russia, from which she emerges even more damaged. She comes to the conclusion that she must return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Evens people call it, a miedka, a person who is not only human but beast. That is the only way for her to continue her work as an anthropologist and to reconstitute herself as person."

I also pre-ordered the paperback version of Gary Gulman's Misfit. Looking forward to that after going on another Gulman podcast binge in a fit of depression this past weekend.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/65211790-misfit

I am reading Lou Reed: King of New York for our book club and I am re-reading Lord of the Rings for the first time since 2000.

I just got Wayne Kramer's biography - The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities from the library.

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Tue Feb 06, 2024 5:06 am The White Goddess, by Robert Graves. A slight diversion from my recent I, Claudius, Claudius The God, King Jesus, and Count Belasarius reads.

Also: Cockfighter by Charles Willeford from a recommendation Matt Sweeney posted somewhere.

Finished Cockfighter, adding Tacitus The Annals

zircona1 wrote: Mon Jan 22, 2024 10:52 am Infinite Jest

It was $1 at the library. I've never read it, it's not too late to make a New Years' Resolution is it?

Don't be intimidated. Keep pushing through, read all the footnotes and let it wash over you. This book demands frequent reading, I couldn't put it down and pick it up a week later like an ordinary novel when I'm busy.

What none of the pretentious champions nor the dejected quitters of this book mention enough is that it's hilarious. The episode where they play Eschaton at the Einfield Tennis Academy (a highly complex version of Risk/model UN on a tennis court with inscrutable rules and impassioned arguments) had me in stitches.

The other thing that helped me read it was I had a little slip of paper where I worked out the family tree and jotted down some of the important years since they're all renamed by sponsors and not numbers. This helped me navigate the very nonlinear timeline.

If some awful person made a modified version of this book in chronological order with half the digressions it would be a big seller and immensely popular. This would be sacrilegious and reduce Wallace's interest in how modern life is largely navigating an absurd slew of information with our main challenge being attention: what to pay attention to and how to maintain attention should we be able to determine that. I'd still read this dumbed down book.