December's Diabolical Deviations (what are you currently reading?)

j. d. worthington said:
...Joshi's I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft... and yes, this is substantially different than H. P. Lovecraft: A Life. Not in general gist, but in the wealth of information which was not in the previous version, both from material he originally had to cut, and from things (both documents and criticism) which have surfaced since. A lot of new insights here, and if anything HPL emerges as an even more complex, fascinating, individual....
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AARGH!
Anyway, I am finished with The Cinema of Satyajit Ray, an analysis of one of India's most brilliant film-makers by an erudite film critic Chidananda Das Gupta. It's quite a good book on the whole, especially in its tracings of patterns across films and proposed evolution of the maker's thinking process. A good supplement to (IMO) the definitive Satyajit Ray book The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson.
 
soulsinging said:
A wise decision, because the book is excellent. That said, don't hold that change against the movie. The movie is incredible as well, and inspired my avatar. He may not be blond, but Bogey has style and nails Spade better than one could hope. It's one of the rare occasions where I felt the movie did the novel total justice, despite a number of changes. You're in for a treat on both counts!
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I have watched 6 Bogey films this year only! The guy turned me into dvd collector,film fantast. He is coolest actor i have seen. Only Cagney,Marlon Brando can be compared as my alltime fav actor.

So i have alot of hope for the film version i was just saving it for a rainy day.
 
I finished The Black Prism - Brent Weeks. It was was very good and had kind of a light Sanderson's Warbreaker feel to it. I liked it and should be an interesting series.

I have started The Red Wolf Conspiracy - Robert VS Redick. It is a intriguing premise and i like the mix of characters so far.
 
ratsy said:
I finished The Black Prism - Brent Weeks. It was was very good and had kind of a light Sanderson's Warbreaker feel to it. I liked it and should be an interesting series.

I have started The Red Wolf Conspiracy - Robert VS Redick. It is a intriguing premise and i like the mix of characters so far.
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ooh, sequel to Red Wolf Conspiracy is out - I put it on my xmas list.

ps: Reading the Painted Man again at the mo...
 
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Medea by Euripides

I didnt even know about this play because i never use to read plays on my own.

Just read this in one sitting and it was such a wonderful,twisted story. Medea is such a difficult character to know what you feel about. Damn for 2500 years old work it got my heart pumping hard for the characters and not only enjoy with the brain because it was extremly well written masterwork.

Didnt feel like it was Ancient Greek work i had to read for lit class, i forgot it was for class after few minutes reading this. Since its so old,slow poetic tempo felt like it was much longer than it is.
I read a Swedish translation from 1932 by Hjalmar Gullberg.
 
ravenus said:
AARGH!
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Um, not to rub salt in the wound, but... an example is, say, the opening pages of Chapter Four... even within the short space of what had been the first two pages, there is an entire new page worth of information included. From two to three pages in this instance by itself; and this is hardly the only such, even in the small amount I've read so far....

Some fascinating stuff here, especially for the student of Lovecraft; from a lot more information about the earliest astronomy books in his library (some of which, at least, he read by age 12, and which had substantial impact on his philosophy and writings) to some learned speculations on just what was the "violin solo" he played before an audience as a lad before giving up the instrument due to nervous debility. A lot more information about his early writings, his development of various interests, etc.

I hear there may be a later paper edition of this; if so, you may want to invest in it then....:eek:
 
Finished Hunt at the Well of Eternity... for all the comparisons to Indiana Jones in terms of story, it really felt more like reading a Hardy Boys book than anything, what with the cliffhanging chapter endings and the like. As a character, he's more movie Bond than Indiana. It was nice, light-hearted fun, but I don't see myself seeking out the subsequent books unless I find myself in the market for an easy read amid heavy work or the like.

Now on to Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. I've got high hopes!
 
Finished Martian Time Slip by Philip K Dick. Sometimes I get the feeling that Dick just wrote one big book and we are reading chapters of it. I'm surprised Hollywood haven't optioned this one yet, it has the elements they love: guns, gangsters, sex. I wouldn't put it high on my Dick list, but it's still a good read.

Now onto The Lathe of Heaven, I haven't read this one for about 25 years, but I remember it was pretty good, and a little bit like a Dick book (chapter).
 
I've begun my reading of Hawthorne with his A Wonder Book, a book he wrote for young readers, and something I've not read since I was a child myself. So far, I'm finding it utterly delightful, although naming the children Primrose, Dandelion, etc., is a bit coy for my taste... Aside from that minor complaint, however, it really is a charming retelling of the old myths from a rather different perspective.....
 
soulsinging said:
Finished Hunt at the Well of Eternity... for all the comparisons to Indiana Jones in terms of story, it really felt more like reading a Hardy Boys book than anything, what with the cliffhanging chapter endings and the like. As a character, he's more movie Bond than Indiana. It was nice, light-hearted fun, but I don't see myself seeking out the subsequent books unless I find myself in the market for an easy read amid heavy work or the like.

Now on to Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. I've got high hopes!
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I really enjoyed Altered Carbon from Morgan and was consequently very disappointed when I tried to read the first of his fantasy series The Steel Remains. I gave up half way through, something I almost never do.

I've had a nice interlude finishing off Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series. Good fun hockum, though I found the ending of the last book somewhat predictable.

Also finished Abercrombie's The Last Argument of Kings which was good but I thought the ending was very manfactured. It just seemed to be a case of "right that's the plot finished now lets just run through a list of loose ends and get them all tied up".
 
Side Jobs - Jim Butcher. All the Harry Dresden shorts and novellas (and one narrated by Thomas Raith, as well), that fit between the main novels in the series. Excellent.
 
Plodding forward with the Ryman. Even though I like it a great deal, thus far, the prose is a bit rich for me at times. Also I've been a bit distracted by The Ulysses Theme by WB Stanford, a fascinating look at the evolution of one of my favourite characters from the classical legends.
 
I finished reading yesterday Hamlet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Of course you have read bits of his plays in school but it was my first time reading his works cover to cover.

Even though Hamlet is more rated i enjoyed Macbeth more. It was more focused,controlled story. You feel like a fool saying you think Shakespeare's way with words is brilliant,his metaphors not so bad ;)

I would have read him 10+ years ago if school didnt feed you with silly movies that looked like only too much melodrama by Kenneth Brannagh and co. If i had seen the powerful acting by Laurence Olivier and Ian McKellan in their Shakespeare movies,stage performances like i have seen lately. Somethings was much better in the past.
 
In between my reading of Fifth Business, I've been dipping into a few short stories, namely Dreams in the Witch House by Lovecraft and A Portrait of Shunkin by Junichiro Tanizaki. Dreams... is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories. I first read it (purely by coincidence) whilst I was suffering from a bout of fever, and the impressions Lovecraft instilled in me of raging nightmares of unbearable sound and chaos were so potent and representative of my own experience that they remain with me to this day. It's also one of the most successful examples of Lovecraft's merging of American colonial folklore with the type of science fictional comsic horror that Lovecraft would later become famous for pioneering.

A Portrait... is my first reading of anything by Tanizaki and so far I'm enjoying it immensely. Japanese writers, I've found, are extremely adept at conjuring subtle and poignant emotional states in the reader as well as painting extraordinarily clear word paintings in one's head. Whether this is a peculiarity of the language or whether I've just been lucky in my translations of particular Japanese writers I've yet to find out, but I've certainly relished my reading of such writers as Tanizaki, Kawabata, Soseki, Mishima and Akutagawa. Soseki and Mishima especially are, without exaggeration, some of the best writers I've ever read.
 
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