It recently struck me that I haven't read through a decent-sized book in an embarrassingly long time. So, I headed down to my used book shop and picked up some new reads...




Friend by Diana Henstell - This is the book that Wes Craven's extremely underrated film, Deadly Friend, was based off of. I loved the movie, although most seem to hate it, and figured that I just might adore the source material even more. What a gem of a find.




The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule - She's a big name in the true crime genre, which I'm still pretty new to, so I thought I'd check out some of her work. Chose this over another book I was looking at based on Ted Bundy, due to the author's status and her insider perspective on this particular case.




The Embrace by Aphrodite Jones - A true vampire story... need I say more?

I'll probably read them in this order, actually.

Classic!





Well, I just bought a Kindle and it's amazing. I never thought I'd buy one, but being able to customize the text size and line spacing of what you are reading is great! You can really fly through what you are reading.

I downloaded one of those torrents that has 25 gigs/over 10,000 books e-books....pure insanity. A lot of it is garbage like James Patterson and Nora Roberts, so I'm SLOWLY going through all the folders and deleting shit.

Anyway, the main reason I bought it is to go back and read Infinite Jest. Having an instant dictionary and being able to click on the hundreds of endnotes makes reading it again that much better! Really great!

I'm a true crime buff and I freaked when I finally found a used paperback of
"The Stranger Beside Me" at a bookstore in Seattle a year and a half ago.
It's a book you read and just can't forget.

Just read Patrick Süskind Parfyme and the Pigeon and Marko Tapio Enkeli lensi ohi (in english Angel flew over). Now I started Dostoyevsky the Brothers Karamazov. It´s almost twenty years since I read it last time.

Actually I found "the stranger beside me" a bit boringer in terms of true crime. What was it (I'm racking my tattered memory), the crimes + story are compelling but theres still something so unattached about the whole thing, so unintimate, and this is about a book where the woman had actually worked with Bundy. Hm.

What True Crime do I like? Well, "The Perfect Victim" is probably one of my favorite books of all time, of all kinds. It gets into the heads of everyone involved so well, and the topic is fascinating itself. The descriptions of sensory deprivation where the girl had to live without light and barely any sound either with her head trapped in a box or living in one are suck in my mind. And the mind control he was able to put on her...she went out and got a job, eventually!!! And would then return home and go back to her box!!! Oh god, mind control.

Umm what else...all the books about karla homolka and paul bernardo are pretty awesome.

OH. "the night stalker" is fucking amazing. I love that one. It wants to access the dark carnal themes of humanity itself, and in this person. I think that's partly what's missing from "stranger". It's spoken from this complete outsider voice, kinda cold.

Have you (those reading and interested in true crime) ever read "Exquisite Corpse" by poppy z brite? Its entirely fiction but the character is picked up obviously from the corpse of jeffrey dahmer. Poppy's writing in it is her usual lush, colourful and impeccably dark and descriptive prose but set using him and cannibalism as a setup. It's really, truly great. If you're not hooked by the time you get to the boy in the bathtub, you wont get there !

Ha, I just finished up "Drood", a fictional account of the friendship/rivalry between Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens. "The Moonstone" is mentioned throughout the novel.

SteveOK! Never read that one!! Love asimov's non fiction stuff

Been reading The Discovery of Time, a book about the human history of timekeeping

 

Although not covering his complete output this is a well researched read.

Damn, sounds like I need to hurry and finish Friend so I can dig into Stranger Beside Me. A lot of you quoted that part of the post haha.

But so far Diana Henstell's Friend is really good. Not sure if noisereductions reads this thread at all, but I know he's a big Deadly Friend fan. I'm surprised by just how different the novel is from the film. Definitely a cool read so far.

Roland Topor - The Tenant (not this edition tho'.)

''The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed'' by Amir D. Aczel.

Also started to re-read ''The Sheltering Sky'' by Paul Bowles

I just finished this. I have never read a Perez-Reverte novel that I couldn't put down from start to finish! Always the perfect blend of pious and religious imagery/allusions and yet also gritty gangster shit (I guess its my LA upbringing being surrounded by murals of Our Lady and pummeling gang violence which has given me these tastes)..

This last one was quite potent for my recent situations as it was more obviously a love story than the others. Sure, it was also a political and social critique, but it was still based on a love story, and one I could quite relate too..

It seems that Perez-Reverte wanted to comment on the state of modern "dating" and its shallowness in comparison to another time. He uses fencing as the analogy, as fencing is a fight of sophistication, ettiquete, honor.. The Fencing Master is fighting an uphill battle as the world changes, as guns and firearms turn sword fighting into a quant sport..

I can relate to this, dating seems like an "ambush and stab in the back" like the brutishness of modern warfare is to the honorable combat of sword fighting. People today really seem to be just out there to conquer the next heart, and the thrill of the chase is lost. I suppose the real question is was there ever any regality to romance and love, or have we always just been like David and Bathsheba?

up next




I'm already enjoying this one, even though I wish I had the fortitude to sit back a day or two and revel in the last one I just finished but alas, I'm bored and immobile for the next few days.

William Blake - Selected poems

there is a really great forward by Patti Smith in this

everything is cinema by richard brody &
journey to the end of the night by celine

fucking shit this is really really good. It just keeps reading like a random stream of free-associative musings, like a rather sophisticated mushroom binge. I'm rather smitten..

so its really a true story so to speak?