Non-Comic Books

[Corman]

As in, the regular ol' printed page. What are you reading? What have you finished reading? In my case, over the past year I've been exploring the oft-neglected genre of "weird fiction," where there's some incredibly talented writers toiling in obscurity. Partially due to the fact "weird fiction" is a tricky thing to classify (and easily advertise) as a genre, partially because the majority of their work appears in books with an extremely limited print run (fewer than 200 copies in some cases).

The writer who sparked my interest in the genre is Thomas Ligotti, whose work is as richly textured and beautiful as it is bleak. Most of Ligotti's bibliography is out-of-print, but I was able to secure a copy of his first work, Songs Of A Dead Dreamer, which was re-released this year in an edition extensively revised by Ligotti himself (and unlike some artists, Ligotti's revisions to his earlier work improve it). Also, Ligotti's first nonfiction book, The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, was released shortly after the revised SOADD, and provides a marvelous tool for navigating some of the more abstract ideas in his work, as well as providing a detailed outline of Ligotti's dour personal philosophy.

In fact, I'm reading a bunch of short story collections right now. Joeseph S. Pulver, Sr.'s Blood Will Have Its Season, combines poetry, noir, and some severe cosmic nastiness, as well as contemporary updates of Robert W. Chamber's The King in Yellow. Mark Samuels spins tales of metaphysical urban terror in The White Hands And Other Gothic Tales and Glyphotech. Laird Barron pits private eyes against ancient extraterrestrial threats lurking in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere in The Imago Sequence and Occultation. Quentin S. Crisp provides a mash-up of Japanese literature and British wit in All God's Angels, Beware!. The list goes on, but those are the books I'm working through at the moment. What's on everyone else's reading pile?

[CarolineEAnd]

The lady I'm sort of seeing is reading House of Leaves right now and I'm anxiously waiting for her to finish it so I can read it. It seems amazing.

Other than that, all the books I'm reading are either text or comic in nature.

[ASR]

House of Leaves is really really great. One of the strangest books I've read, and one of the few things to actually give me nightmares. I'm usually not affected by something I know is fiction, but there's something about that book that just digs into you if you happen to buy into it like I did.

[aenemaTron]

It wasn't the easiest thing to find, but there was a regular books thread already. Been a year and a half since the last post.

The Books Thread

I don't know if it's worth uniting or whatever.

I just finished Guns Germs and Steel and it was great. I couldn't stop telling my wife everything I was learning and it's such a good book it actually didn't drive her crazy.

[Kon Darp]

I've been recommended Gun Germs and Steel so many times that it's ridiculous I haven't read it yet. There have got to be cheap used copies about.

I'm currently reading the Dune series, not far into the third book. Something tells me these books are going to get harder and harder to relate to/care about characters/.

[Corman]

I'm currently reading the Dune series, not far into the third book. Something tells me these books are going to get harder and harder to relate to/care about characters/.

From what people have told me, Book 5 is saturated with Herbert's fetish porn. Which includes ninja sex witches controlling men's minds with their vaginas.

[mercurialblonde]

Pynchon's Against the Day. Zepplin's, Wizards, Anarchists, and explosives...it's really quite fun.

[Fentmore]

I'm half way through Lost City of Z (non-fiction). Amazing. Strange to think that accurately mapping the world is actually recent history (within the past 100-200 years). This guy (Col. Percy Harrison Fawcett) was a soldier, surveyor, explorer, archeologist, adventurer and half mad with pin point determinism and feuled by an ambition rarely seen. The tales of this man's expoits into the unforgiving jungle are borderline "that would make a great movie" sounding fiction, but it's all real and the ordeals and hardships they endured both strange and deadly (how many lethal insects can there possibly be in the Amazon? I mean cyanide spitting millipedes?... C'mon! (Gob))

I can't describe this book well enough, check out blurbs on Amazon (no pun intended). All I can say is that I'm enthralled and sometimes you forget how unbelievably unrelenting and treachorous the south american jungle is. While reading this, I thought of Avatar and it's depiction of a deadly jungle where things thrive and flourish (even a civilization of humanoids) with danger liteally around every corner. There are things in this book that downright astonished me. How anyone (anything) can survive in such a hostile place is inconcievable. It's almost akin to a plant living in the arid desert, it seems so impossible yet nature balances itself out in interesting ways. The bees eat meat (seriously). I also thought of Herzog in the documentary (My Best Fiend) as he was shooting a a movie near the Amazon.

Great book. A thoroughly researched and detailed account of Fawcetts life and his expeditions including his last. I've found that he is actually quite a mythic figure in early turn of the century with many people obsessed with his disappearance and whether he ever found the Lost City of Z, an advanced civilization of indiginous people buried in the heart of the Amazonian Jungle. The book is framed by Fawcett's expeditions and intercut with the author's own search for clues as to his whereabouts when he vanished (a journey many people have tried to do). The book is like a mystery, a thrilling adventure tale, a biography, and a history lesson in early South American exploration all rolled into one. Fascinating stuff, I can't wait to finsh it.

Just found out on Google, the movie rights had been picked up with Brad Pitt to star. Nice. This will make an incredible film. Also, Fawcett was one of the original inspirations for Indy.