April’s Audacious Attempts at Assailing Avenues of Literary Adventure.

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Connavar said:
Let me know if you think Heart of A Dog is weaker or stronger than Invitation To A Beheading.

I like to start with one of those books instead of his most classic books.
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Err...just to clarify something those 2 books are by Bulgakov and Nabokov respectively. I'm not J.P. but from my experience I would say Palefire is Nabokov's greatest masterpiece and for Bulgakov you can't really go past Master and Margarita but Heart Of A Dog is also very good. For Bulgakov, please note there is a reissue of his original collection of his shorter fiction entitled Diabloid by Vintage books. I have this and will hopefully review it within the next month, so stay tuned....:)

To finish, they're both Great writers, so if you haven't read either of them Conn then you're in for a real treat.
 
I'm reading:
- The Best Australian Stories 2009 edited by Delia Falconer (which I was reading last month)
- Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay
- Angels of Death: Exploring the Euthanasia Underground by Roger S Magnusson
- The Hand of Chaos by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
- Captain's Diary 2009 by Ricky Ponting (which I was also reading last month)
 
Decided to break from "Worm Ouroboros" again and have moved onto "The Affirmation" by Christopher Priest.
 
AE35Unit said:
Fried Egg said:
Decided to break from "Worm Ouroboros" again
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How anyone can read that book is beyond me!
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Probably because it is one of the greatest tales of epic fantasy ever written. Getting to grips with the way it is written can be hard work I admit but the effort is richly rewarded. :cool:
 
GOLLUM said:
Err...just to clarify something those 2 books are by Bulgakov and Nabokov respectively. I'm not J.P. but from my experience I would say Palefire is Nabokov's greatest masterpiece and for Bulgakov you can't really go past Master and Margarita but Heart Of A Dog is also very good. For Bulgakov, please note there is a reissue of his original collection of his shorter fiction entitled Diabloid by Vintage books. I have this and will hopefully review it within the next month, so stay tuned....:)

To finish, they're both Great writers, so if you haven't read either of them Conn then you're in for a real treat.
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Yeah i know those books arent by the same author i must have been braindead the time i posted that post :p

Bulgakov i have read and i think highly of what i have read so far.

Nabokov i havent read and was wondering about him. I have Lolita but its an awkard book to read content,topic wise. Im thinking about starting with a less talked about book of his. To get a fair picture of his writing.
 
Fried Egg said:
Probably because it is one of the greatest tales of epic fantasy ever written. Getting to grips with the way it is written can be hard work I admit but the effort is richly rewarded. :cool:
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I've got The Worm Ouroboros out from the library after seeing it discussed here. Tried to start it on Saturday but was really tired and bounced off it, will try again shortly.

Instead I read "Across the Nightingale Floor" by Lian Hearne - which was a beautiful read. I think it is fantasy - after all the sort of kung-fu powers are probably a form of magic.
Then on Sunday galloped through "The Unnatural Enquirer" by Simon R Green - no 8 in the Nightside series. Good, entertaining light read with an edge to it. (Now that is definitely fantasy. :))
 
Montero said:
Instead I read "Across the Nightingale Floor" by Lian Hearne - which was a beautiful read. I think it is fantasy - after all the sort of kung-fu powers are probably a form of magic.
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I completely agree - it is a beautiful read. There are four other books in the series, too, which are all worth looking out for.:)
 
Anent The Worm Ouroboros: I've never had a problem with this one. Then again, I had been used to reading works from the seventeenth century for a very long time, so the idiom didn't phase me, save for my appreciation of its beautiful poetic language. And, as F.E. said, the book richly rewards a reading... several readings, in fact.....

Making progress (though, due to the pressure of other things, less rapidly than I'd like) with the Haeckel, which is proving quite interesting. Some of his archaic phrasing seems jarring to a modern reader ("soul-cell", for instance, by which he means a complex of a great variety of things which we today would differentiate into many categories), but a fascinating and generally well-reasoned book; certainly one that still has a great deal to offer today.

And I've made a bit more progress with Black Wings as well. The Caitlin Kiernan tale ("Pickman's Other Model (1929)"), while very, very good, and certainly impressive in its way, captured me less than some of her other works that I've read, but that may be because I was dead tired when I read it. Still, even in such a condition, it not only held my interest, but kept me reading even when my eyes kept threatening to close like a pair of massive stone shutters.

The piece by Don Burleson ("Desert Dreams") is in the category of such works as "The Bad Lands" by John Metcalfe, or "The Dead Valley", by Ralph Adams Cram: topographical horror, where the landscape itself is a living, menacing presence, very much a character in the tale. Again, quite well done, and conveying a feeling for the region (where Burleson now lives with his wife Mollie, also represented in the anthology) speaking well for his abilities to receive imaginative stimulation from the atmospheric possibilities of his surroundings and their history.

"Engravings", by Joseph R. Pulver, Sr., again caught me less than some of the other pieces by him I've read, but nonetheless has a powerful feeling of weird menace and a truly Lovecraftian inevitability to it. Plus the depiction of the particular Lovecraftian entity involved is a nice, modern addition to the various depictions seen before. And I must admit that the sheer nastiness of the humor involved in the title here is itself quite choice....

"Copping Squid", by Michael Shea I believe I mentioned a while back, when I was reading his collection where that forms the title piece. Again, a very effective updating of some Lovecraftian concepts into the modern urban milieu of San Francisco, and brings a new layer to the menace and attraction of such figures as Cthulhu and company....

"Passing Spirits", by Sam Gafford, is a strangely touching and haunting piece which manages to be both frightening, sad, and liberating in its evocation of the blurring of reality and dream, and how each can be represented by the cancer which has become the center of the protagonist's life.

"The Broadsword" is my first encounter with Laird Barron, and certainly makes me intent on reading more by the man. While I must admit that, in some ways, I felt the handling (not the concept) of the ending to be a tiny bit of a letdown (again, this could be weariness, as I was reading it at 2 a.m. following a meat-grinder of a day), the power of the piece as a whole would make up for a dozen such minor faults. A decidedly uncomfortable piece... so much so that it actually had me a bit creeped out going through my own darkened domicile with which I am so familiar.....

I am hoping to make it through several more tales before bed tonight, at least as far as Wilum's "Inhabitants of Wraithwood", to which I am definitely looking forward....
 
"The Dead Valley", by Ralph Adams Cram: topographical horror...

Read this in another anthology. Really liked it. "Topographical Horror", apt phrase. Think you just created a new genre.
 
Connavar said:
Yeah i know those books arent by the same author i must have been braindead the time i posted that post :p

Bulgakov i have read and i think highly of what i have read so far.

Nabokov i havent read and was wondering about him. I have Lolita but its an awkard book to read content,topic wise. Im thinking about starting with a less talked about book of his. To get a fair picture of his writing.
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Yeh Sorry, that's what I figured had happened. Just wanted to clarify...:)

Like for you and plenty of other folk here, Bulgakov is certainly well regarded.

I haven't read a huge amount of Nabokov, so I think J.P will be the person to answer what the best starting point would be with him.

@JD: I think Worm Ouroboros isn't really a book that can be read in a single sitting. Like you I enjoy that book immensely but can see how it can be a bit of a slog, especially first time around and if one is not used to that older style of writing. Needless to say as you are well known to frequently inhabit the dusty corners of bygone Centuries, this is not an issue for you....;) Black Wings sounds really good too! I hope to one day get a copy of Laird Barron's work to see for myself what all the fuss is about.
 
Just brought something called "The Forgotten Garden: Kate Morton, cannot comment yet though as I have only read half a dozen pages, will let you know if its worth the effort.
 
Connavar: The Heart Of A Dog is good, but The Master And Margarita and Black Snow are definitely superior. I look forward to acquiring and reading the rest of his works over the next few months, as Vintage has suddenly distributed recent editions of them all over the place, as GOLLUM and I have both noted in our local stores!

As for Invitation To A Beheading - it is astounding. 'A violin in the void', the author described it as, and I can add little to that description. Is is the best place to begin with Nabokov? Perhaps not; but I think you'll like it. I haven't read the Jack London work you refer to, so I can't offer a comparison. Kafka is a good reference point, although Nabokov was quick to point out that he had never read Kafka at the time he wrote this novel.
 
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy said:
As for Invitation To A Beheading - it is astounding. 'A violin in the void', the author described it as, and I can add little to that description. Is is the best place to begin with Nabokov? Perhaps not; but I think you'll like it. I haven't read the Jack London work you refer to, so I can't offer a comparison. Kafka is a good reference point, although Nabokov was quick to point out that he had never read Kafka at the time he wrote this novel.
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UM....OK. Trots off down the road to nearest bookstore featuring Nabokov range....
 
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy said:
Connavar: The Heart Of A Dog is good, but The Master And Margarita and Black Snow are definitely superior. I look forward to acquiring and reading the rest of his works over the next few months, as Vintage has suddenly distributed recent editions of them all over the place, as GOLLUM and I have both noted in our local stores!

As for Invitation To A Beheading - it is astounding. 'A violin in the void', the author described it as, and I can add little to that description. Is is the best place to begin with Nabokov? Perhaps not; but I think you'll like it. I haven't read the Jack London work you refer to, so I can't offer a comparison. Kafka is a good reference point, although Nabokov was quick to point out that he had never read Kafka at the time he wrote this novel.
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I want Heart of the Dog because its a library book and wont cost me a thing unlike his best book The Master And Margarita that i will get when i have less books i have just bought in my TBR pile.

I will go after his best books next time i buy classic authors like London,Poe etc

Invitation To A Beheading i would have loved to read but some really stupid synopsis to the book in Goodreads/Amazon just gave away the ending,the hole twist of the book.....

My first Nabokov will be Russian Beauty and Other Stories i found in the library.
 
Well, the thing with the ending in Beheading is that it isn't really a twist in the sense this synopsis seems to have suggested...there are many signs along the way that foreshadow what happens in the end. Even knowing the end, there is enough and more to reward reading the book (much like knowing what Rosebud refers to doesn't preclude watching Citizen kane!).

I'm a few pages away from completing The Emigrants by WG Sebald.
 
dask said:
"The Dead Valley", by Ralph Adams Cram: topographical horror...

Read this in another anthology. Really liked it. "Topographical Horror", apt phrase. Think you just created a new genre.
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LOL.... Oh, I wish....:D I don't know, though, this element, at least, has been strong at least since the early Gothics....

At any rate, glad you liked the story. Have you read Metcalfe's tale, "The Bad Lands"? It, too, is well worth a look (as is the rest of that volume, The Smoking Leg)....

Mr. G: What gave me away???? *absently plucks festoons of dust-coated spiderwebs from his clothing, then looks at them with dawning comprehension*

Oh. Yeah.....:eek:;)
 
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