Stephen King, Joyland

Marketed as a hardboiled crime novel but wouldn't feel out of place beside his more recent horror books like Revival. Great stuff.

First time through the Potter books?

I read the first two when they came out, but good God they’re simple. Simply written, I mean. They’re expertly crafted children's/YA books — classy and colorful and they paint a lovely picture — but goddammit I just don’t have it in me.
I started going with movies only after the second book. The movies get the point across and are quite fun.

I’ve thought about reading Rowling’s adult book, “A Casual Vacancy,” but ... not too hard.

Casual Vacancy was a good TV program

Really? They TV’d that shit already?

Goddamn. Technology amirite?

second read through, 3rd if you count audiobooks.


Definitely agree with you regarding the first couple, and probably even the third one can be included, but as you move along, it does get better. I can think of at least one subtle masturbation joke in the 4th book, and as you've seen with the movies, the subject matter gets more complex.

I just started a new Ian Rankin book. It's not a Detective Rebus, but I'll give it a go.

I couldn't stop the Potter-thon, and dove right into book 5. Sorry, not sorry :D

Finished David Skrbina's Panpsychism In The West. https://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/...existence.html

Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte I'm fascinated by authors who wrote a novel that has over time become a classic but it was the writer's only novel. Even more so when the novel is surrounded by controversy such as this one or Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Ooo. Got me researching on "only novel"s. (I skipped the "controversy" part to make it easier, although I agree that's a fascinating element)

The bulk seem to be 18th and 19th century works by people no one's heard of. (Trust me) Nothing else to do back then, I guess.

But among the might've heard of and obvious:

Oliver Goldsmith - Stoops to Conquer
Muriel Rukeyser - Savage Coast (Mostly known as a poet)
Plath- Bell Jar (I feel there are a probably host of single novels by poets)
Lee- Mockingbird
Katherine Anne Porter - Ship of Fools
Chekhov- The Shooting Party
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard (yes, the one turned into Visconti's film)
Margaret Mitchell - Gone w Wind
Does Catcher in the Rye count?
Need more.

And here's a whole article about celebrities who have written a novel:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalind...jdv#.pwXE5oWaq

i don’t know about others, but i don’t know who would survive writing wuthering heights.

after you’re done lemme highly recommend georges bataille’s “literature and evil”. his reading on wuthering height is... wow.

Finished J.B.S. Haldane's DAEDALUS: or Science & The Future http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/2018/0...at-future.html

i tried to read a couple of ursula leguin books from the 60s/70s... failed to stay awake

i tried reading a book of (previously) unpublished elmore leonard short stories... now i know why they were unpublished. i did like how one of them was written (“one, horizontal”) but while entertainingly told, it was a bit inconsequential.

then finally got started on moby dick...

you know how everybody talks about moby dick like this ponderous brick of old testament struggle?

it’s probably because they’re just repeating what evrybody else said haaa haaa haaa

why nobody talks about melville’s witty and hilarious prose?

i know i know im only one chapter in, but every sentence was packed with meaning, every sentence carried an actual thought, and many of those thoughts were funny as fuck, so i was laughing every paragraph.

i’m hooked (for now anyway) and will report when i get a chance.

Started reading "Song of Kali" by Dan Simmons

e.g., this little bit of practical metaphysics (yes, ive advanced further but im also closely rereading chapter 1 with delight)


What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about—however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way—either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other’s shoulder-blades, and be content.

that short, sweet, funny, wise bit about resignation to universal suffering and the need for compassion/solidarity is immediately followed by this bit of smartass hilarity:

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,—what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

this guy... no, he is too much.

First 150 pages or so are fantastic. Then it gets a bit dull and difficult. Let me know if/when you get there.

Tried and failed to read it since high school, but it finally hit me a few years ago. Still a few dead spots, but it really is a masterpiece. Just not for everyone.

After one gets through it, it becomes a GREAT book to pick up and read any random chapter when you have a few minutes to kill. I think you've already discovered that. Most quotable American novel?

Ursella K. Leguin called Gene Wolf the Melville of fringe speculative literary fiction. :D

my favorite novel. what you say is true.