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What Are You Reading Right Now?

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CarltonStJames
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Quote by CarltonStJames
Finished Last Words by George Carlin last night and started Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling by Bret Hart.

Still haven't finished Stephen King's Bag of Bones(I'm struggling with it) or Delvin Howell's Offset: Mask of Bimshire.


Since this time, I finished Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling and Bag of Bones. Still reading Offset and I started and finished Pronto by Elmore Leonard.
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I watched the movie twice before I read the book.

I was astounded how bad the reviews were for the recent movie. I was a bit confused at how the movie seemed to switch genres. The first act was a dreamy teenage romance. The second was a pretty reasonable account of a 20 year old at war. And the third was an addiction/crime story.

I totally get that when it comes to film, we now have to put movies into certain boxes. And this one just didn't fit into any box.

I liked the movie and and I liked it better the second time.

I'm reading the book now, and the movie is very loyal. I find the lead character very sympathetic and relatable.

As an avid Goodreads member I noticed all the negative reviews....

"Mysoginistic."

Can we please get something clear here. If you want a realistic telling of a confused 20 year old you joined the army and went to Iraq under false pretenses... but are "offended" by the language used by said 20 year old soldiers?

Let me get this straight.... You have no problem with over half your tax dollars going to the systematic pillage of other countries... but when you find out they used the word "cunt"... well that's too far? Have you read any military memoir from the 20th century?

Generation Kill. Jarhead. The Things They Carried. Great books and accurate representations of how young men act when in combat.

This story is essentially a love story. Sure, there is no bodice ripping. No moonlight strolls.

If you honestly think that you are going to pick up a first person account of a soldier's experience in any of the nonsense wars that you continue to pay for, yet you whine about the fact that their "language" isn't up to your PC standards.... Please go back to reading Twilight or the Maze Runner or whatever other garbage you feel is "appropriate."
CarltonStJames
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Quote by Osman


I watched the movie twice before I read the book.

I was astounded how bad the reviews were for the recent movie. I was a bit confused at how the movie seemed to switch genres. The first act was a dreamy teenage romance. The second was a pretty reasonable account of a 20 year old at war. And the third was an addiction/crime story.

I totally get that when it comes to film, we now have to put movies into certain boxes. And this one just didn't fit into any box.

I liked the movie and and I liked it better the second time.

I'm reading the book now, and the movie is very loyal. I find the lead character very sympathetic and relatable.

As an avid Goodreads member I noticed all the negative reviews....

"Mysoginistic."

Can we please get something clear here. If you want a realistic telling of a confused 20 year old you joined the army and went to Iraq under false pretenses... but are "offended" by the language used by said 20 year old soldiers?

Let me get this straight.... You have no problem with over half your tax dollars going to the systematic pillage of other countries... but when you find out they used the word "cunt"... well that's too far? Have you read any military memoir from the 20th century?

Generation Kill. Jarhead. The Things They Carried. Great books and accurate representations of how young men act when in combat.

This story is essentially a love story. Sure, there is no bodice ripping. No moonlight strolls.

If you honestly think that you are going to pick up a first person account of a soldier's experience in any of the nonsense wars that you continue to pay for, yet you whine about the fact that their "language" isn't up to your PC standards.... Please go back to reading Twilight or the Maze Runner or whatever other garbage you feel is "appropriate."





This reminds me of those one star reviews on Amazon for profanity.

"This book has swearing and I am appalled."

I always laugh when reading those.
Dasiydoes
Dutchess Of Dancing
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Crooked River - by Preston & Child

A secret isn't a secret if 2 know it🤐

Unknown User
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Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith
Ensorceled
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Quote by justthegirlnextdoor
Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith


Great book. The Ripley novels are really good too. Totally turns any sense of conventional reality upside down.

Currently reading The Cunning Man by A M Richey.

Tintinnabulation - first place (Free Spirit)
Comet Q - second place (Quick and Risqué Sex)
Amnesia - third place (Le Noir Erotique)

Unknown User
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The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, just started volume II.
dominica_86
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Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, by Fumio Sasaki
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I mentioned this study in another thread.


Reading Aison Winter's social study of mesmerism in the 19thC reminded me of that famous quote by L.P. Hartley: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."



"Thousands of men and women all across Britain in the Victorian age were being mesmerized, twisted into bizarre postures and speaking out in unknown languages, and the Victorians were literally entranced with this phenomenon. The text focuses on mesmerism: who was entranced, who did the entrancing, why mesmerism was such a compelling experience to so many and how it became equally powerful evidence of fraud and "unscientific" behaviour to many others. It illuminates dark areas of the relationship between science and society, allowing the assessment of the role of authority in particular social contexts: who draws the line between the bogus and the authentic and how is the boundary maintained? More fundamentally, what is the nature of the powers that wield, and the influences that bind humans together in a social body?


LordCephius
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"Slave Trade: A Space Opera Adventure Legal Thriller (Judge, Jury, Executioner Book 5)" by Craig Martelle, Michael Anderle.
Action conquers fear!
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I've just finished this:


Gef! The Strange Tale of an Extra-Special Talking Mongoose (Strange Attractor Press) Paperback – 1 April 2017
by Christopher Josiffe (Author)





Winner of the Folklore Society’s 2017 Katherine Briggs Award

As a long served devotee of high strangeness and Forteana, this study is one of the most enjoyable reads I have had on the subject — which is why I am taking such pains to recommend it here.

FROM THE PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

During the mid-1930s, British and overseas newspapers were full of incredible stories about Gef, a ‘talking mongoose’ or ‘man-weasel’ who had allegedly appeared in the home of the Irvings, a farming family in a remote district of the Isle of Man.

The creature was said to have the ability to talk in several languages, to sing, to steal objects from nearby farms and to eavesdrop on local people, such that they became uneasy at the farmer’s seeming ability to be able to tell them their most private goings-on.

Despite written reports, magazine articles and books, several photographs, fur samples and paw prints, voluminous correspondence and signed witness statements, there is still no consensus as to what was really happening to the Irving family.

Hoax? Mental illness? A poltergeist? The possession of an animal by an evil spirit? Now you can read all the evidence and decide for yourself.

Seven years’ research and interviews, photographs (many previously unseen), interviews with surviving witnesses, visits to the site – all are presented here in this new book, the first examination of the case for 70 years.

“If you knew what I know, you’d know a hell of a lot!”


Hard to put my finger on why Gef has endeared himself to me so much — but Christopher Josifee goes a little way to explaining Gef's appeal in his closing remarks:

Attempts to define or fix Gef — as poltergeist, hoax or projection of the Irving's minds — are doomed to failure. One cannot pin Gef down. He doesn’t want to be trapped, or put in a bottle . . .

No one single explanation — hoax; talking animal; psychiatric case (collective delusion, foile a plussieurs); element (thought-form, nature spirit, tupula); folkloric being being (brownie, phynnodderee): parapsychological (ghost, poltergeist, telepathy or remote viewing) — suffices to account for all the known facts. Perhaps this is why the Gef story is such a favourite among devotees of the paranormal. There’s a great deal of affection for Gef. Unlike say, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster,, or the Jersey Devil, Gef has a palpable, definitive personality: impudent, irreverent, yet at the same time affectionate, helpful. It is this sense of being an actual individual that endears him to so many, and engenders the strange feeling one knows him.

Gef’s ongoing appeal lies partly in his transgressive outspokenness, which allowed him to say that which most people are afraid to say, for fear of causing offence.

And this, from Jacques Vallee (He of UFO fame).

The domain of the in-between, the unproven, and the unprovable, the county of paradoxes, strangely furnished with material proofs, sometimes seemingly unimpeachable, but always ultimately insufficient . . . this absolutely confusing (and manifestly misleading) aspect . . . may well be the phenomena’s most basic characteristic,
Night_Writer
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And, more strange tales, thanks to Luca's recommendation: Robert Aickman, The Collected Strange Stories, vols. I & II. Ghost stories and tales of the inexplicable. Ultimate exercise for the imagination.
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I read Michel Houellebecq's essay on Lovecraft this week — even though I have read no Lovecraft since my late twenties.



It succinctly summed up the man and his work. I already knew about Lovecraft's racism, but some of the quotes taken from his letters, where such rants occur would be unprintable on a site such as this. Even I, not particularly enamoured by political correctness, felt embarrassed merely reading his words.

Anyhow, that's by and by. Reading Houellebecq has sort of rekindled my interest in him as a writer. Previously, I'd only read Atomised and remember thinking he was pushing at allowed boundaries.


Anyhow, I found my way to this article, from which I take the quote below that resonated with me.

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/michel-houellebecq-serotonin-english-translation-a4217186.html


"He urged would-be poets to go for the sore places. “Put your finger on the wound and press hard. Dig into the subjects nobody wants to hear about. The other side of the décor. Insist on illness, agony, ugliness. Talk about death and oblivion. About jealousy, indifference, frustration, the absence of love. Become abject and you will be true.” The truth is scandalous but nothing has value without it, he said. Do not be afraid. “Remember: basically, you’re already dead.” Some 20 years later, an interviewer asked him how he had the nerve to write some of the things he did. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend I’m already dead,” he replied."



And as an afterthought, that ties in with my above post about Gef The Talking Mongoose.

In the book on Gef, the author speculates how the haunting at Doarlish Cashen could have been partly the inspiration for Lovecraft's short story Dreams in the Witch House. That story is the first thing I ever read by Lovecraft when I was in my teens, and it made an enormous impression on me. If anyone knows the story it is about a Witch's familiar called brown Jenkins that is a small rodent-like entity that moves around in the panelling of the house — just like Gef from the ISle of the Man.

Please forgive my literary trivia. Just thought it was interesting, sort of tied in with things for me at the moment.

This is interesting.

https://lovecraftianscience.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-mathematics-of-the-witch-house-part-5-what-exactly-is-brown-jenkin/

Of fuck it! Looks like I'm going to have to read the story again.


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Quote by LucaByDesign
I read Michel Houellebecq's essay on Lovecraft this week — even though I have read no Lovecraft since my late twenties.



It succinctly summed up the man and his work. I already knew about Lovecraft's racism, but some of the quotes taken from his letters, where such rants occur would be unprintable on a site such as this. Even I, not particularly enamoured by political correctness, felt embarrassed merely reading his words.

Anyhow, that's by and by. Reading Houellebecq has sort of rekindled my interest in him as a writer. Previously, I'd only read Atomised and remember thinking he was pushing at allowed boundaries.


Anyhow, I found my way to this article, from which I take the quote below that resonated with me.

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/michel-houellebecq-serotonin-english-translation-a4217186.html


"He urged would-be poets to go for the sore places. “Put your finger on the wound and press hard. Dig into the subjects nobody wants to hear about. The other side of the décor. Insist on illness, agony, ugliness. Talk about death and oblivion. About jealousy, indifference, frustration, the absence of love. Become abject and you will be true.” The truth is scandalous but nothing has value without it, he said. Do not be afraid. “Remember: basically, you’re already dead.” Some 20 years later, an interviewer asked him how he had the nerve to write some of the things he did. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend I’m already dead,” he replied."



And as an afterthought, that ties in with my above post about Gef The Talking Mongoose.

In the book on Gef, the author speculates how the haunting at Doarlish Cashen could have been partly the inspiration for Lovecraft's short story Dreams in the Witch House. That story is the first thing I ever read by Lovecraft when I was in my teens, and it made an enormous impression on me. If anyone knows the story it is about a Witch's familiar called brown Jenkins that is a small rodent-like entity that moves around in the panelling of the house — just like Gef from the ISle of the Man.

Please forgive my literary trivia. Just thought it was interesting, sort of tied in with things for me at the moment.

This is interesting.

https://lovecraftianscience.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-mathematics-of-the-witch-house-part-5-what-exactly-is-brown-jenkin/

Of fuck it! Looks like I'm going to have to read the story again.





Brown Jenkin sure looks like The Hag from the sleep paralysis archetype.

I bought, but have not yet started, Rovers by Richard Lange. Supposed to be an extremely well-written vampire tale.

Tintinnabulation - first place (Free Spirit)
Comet Q - second place (Quick and Risqué Sex)
Amnesia - third place (Le Noir Erotique)

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Quote by CarltonStJames


Since this time, I finished Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling and Bag of Bones. Still reading Offset and I started and finished Pronto by Elmore Leonard.


Elmore Leonard is a frikkin God.

Tintinnabulation - first place (Free Spirit)
Comet Q - second place (Quick and Risqué Sex)
Amnesia - third place (Le Noir Erotique)

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Quote by Ensorceled


Brown Jenkin sure looks like The Hag from the sleep paralysis archetype.

I bought, but have not yet started, Rovers by Richard Lange. Supposed to be an extremely well-written vampire tale.


Yeah. Quite ties in with the sleep paralysis thread. Nice that you spotted it.

Will have to check out Richard Lange.
Denim_Daisy10
Southern Barefoot Angel
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Mockingbird a protrait of Harper Lee
It's interesting to learn about her ..
AngelWorthy
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Watched the movie before I knew it was a book. I do prefer reading books before watching the movie.
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Is this good?

I keep getting this book suggested on Goodreads and amazon. I love southern Gothic realism, but I was worried this one was more of an Oprah's book club kind of pick.

Fuck it... I'll buy it anyway. Let me know what you think though...
Loved that book 


NishasWorld
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I always seem to have ten books on the go at any one time - both reading and writing! I have to review academic books at work, and read them when preparing lectures, but when reading for fun I like classic novels. I’m reading Passage to India by EM Forster at the moment. I’ve been meaning to read it for years! 🙂

‘The pious fable and the dirty story
Share in the total literary glory.’

W.H. Auden