May's Magical Meditations on Masterfully Manafactured Manuscripts

[Connavar]

I'm sure that it will be most librerating once you can just read the books you want to read again and don't have to read anything else.

Yeah i almost look more forward to fall than the summer. When i get back to my normal free choice reading.

Still im surprised how much i love reading. Its is mentally tiring reading so much other books and i like to analyze, think what i read for my own mind.

The plus side is i have bought so many books,collections by alltime fav authors like Vance,Howard,Lord Dunsany,PKD,Hammett, swedish modern authors that i havent had time to read. So much free choice will be wonderful thing

 

[No One]

Up next will be Heinlein's Job, which at a glance sounds like the premise for Quantum Leap

Finished M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device a few days back. Another highly enjoyable entry in the SF Masterworks series (although enjoyable is maybe the wrong word for a book that casts humanity in an incredibly dark and depressing light - which I like because, let's face it, that's much closer to the truth of things).

A relatively simple plot is couched in language that portrays its environs in staggeringly convincing detail. I can, and have, read books purely for the use of language and this is perhaps unique in the series in that regard (with exception to Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which is a beast all its own).

What it does share with other works is an ending that offers as many answers as it does questions, but I was satisfied with the resolution after the epic abuse Captain Truck suffers through.

In retrospect, I wonder if the 'dark and depressing' depiction of humanity was actually a way of showing how Earth and its children are suffering under a collective burden in the knowledge of what they'd done, namely the Centauri genocide. I'd be inclined to say that's the case given the elements of the story, except that everything Harrison so brilliantly portrays as base and sordid in mankind is perfectly explained away by, well, just common human behaviour.

 

[J-Sun]

Just finished "Dreadnought" by Jack Campbell.

You finished a few hours ahead of me.

 

[D_Davis]

The Last Picture Show is masterful.

 

[dask]

Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON is so huge I take mini 100 page breaks and am using this to come up for air. Only read 12 of the multitude and so far haven't been too boweled over but I realize it's too early for any definitive conclusion. Clifton Fadiman, who wrote THE LIFE TIME READING PLAN by himself, was more consistently enthralling and infectious with instant desire to read whatever book he was writing about and I'm a bit surprised the first nine here didn't have a similar effect. But by the time I got to number 10 it's fair to say Jane Yolen yanked me awake with her marvelous assessment of FRANKENSTEIN and Peter Tremayne's even more marvelous MELMOTH THE WANDERER got me gyrating like a teenage girl at a Beatle's concert. More fuel for the fire, please.

 

[j d worthington]

Question: Do you mean the essays here didn't do that much for you, or the works themselves?

 

[dask]

Question: Do you mean the essays here didn't do that much for you, or the works themselves?

The essays. Lackluster, at least for me, but I've read a few more and things are picking up. The way the book is laid out I usually don't know who's writing until I turn the page. Makes it interesting to form an opinion without knowing who's holding the pen. Right now I'm part way through THE WANDERING JEW and without knowing who the author is it is by far the best of the bunch. Can't wait to see who it is.

 

[Diggler]

A friend gave me a copy of this to read also, some post apocalyptic zombie survival thing? Originally a free book he gave away online and then (when it became more popular) published it himself i think.

Yep, that's the one. It's actually not too bad and so far is an interesting change from the traditional hungry zombie story. Though this may change?

 

[j d worthington]

The essays. Lackluster, at least for me, but I've read a few more and things are picking up. The way the book is laid out I usually don't know who's writing until I turn the page. Makes it interesting to form an opinion without knowing who's holding the pen. Right now I'm part way through THE WANDERING JEW and without knowing who the author is it is by far the best of the bunch. Can't wait to see who it is.

*chuckle* I'm very interested in hearing your response when you find that out.... I especially like the comment "I am sworn not to reveal how it all ends, but take my word, the final tableau is a lulu, and anything but vivante". Having read the unabridged version (even the review here is based on a somewhat abridged version, albeit over 1000 pp.), I can safely say that this is in fact an understatement.....

 

[dask]

*chuckle* I'm very interested in hearing your response when you find that out.... I especially like the comment "I am sworn not to reveal how it all ends, but take my word, the final tableau is a lulu, and anything but vivante". Having read the unabridged version (even the review here is based on a somewhat abridged version, albeit over 1000 pp.), I can safely say that this is in fact an understatement.....

Ah, yes. Mr. Disch. Not surprised, he writes great nonfiction. Big annual book sale coming up at the end of the month which usually has a good selection of classics and for sure I'll be scouting for a copy of this, any copy, abridged or not. Just sounds too good to pass up. By the way, I now keep a piece of notebook paper folded in half slipped inside the book solely to prevent me from discovering before hand who the essayist is. Book is really gettin' good. CRYPTONOMICON may have to wait for awhile. Annoyingly, my 1941 Webster's I take with me to the coffee shop did not contain the word "vivante". Can't be that recent of a word.

 

[j d worthington]

No, not a recent word at all... think of bon vivante, for example.... It means (as an adjective, and depending on context) "alive, living, lively, still fresh"*; also "in one's lifetime", or (in les vivants) "the living", etc.

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Here's what I called up at Abebooks:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...lison+Co&sts=t&tn=The+Wandering+Jew&x=84&y=21

*Each of these applies quite well to this context....

 

[Extollager]

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Perhaps you could state which English edition(s) appear to you to be complete for the benefit of readers who want to know they are reading the whole thing. (I'm not very interested in this one myself, but...)

Kipling and Rider Haggard discussed the writing of a romance on the theme:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nw...age&q="rider haggard" "wandering jew"&f=false

By this time, from what I have read, Haggard's best writing was well in the past. (He regarded his best work as belonging to the ten years, late in the 19th C, that included King Solomon's Mines, She, Nada the Lily, Eric Brighteyes, Montezuma's Daughter, etc.) I've read about 25 books by him. Here's a handlist:

http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/16/mullen16bib.htm

 

[Vertigo]

Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith. This didn't start very well; the writing lacked confidence and some of the humour fell flat for me. However it is his first book and as it progressed both the writing and the humour gained confidence. In the end I thoroughly enjoyed it and the humour did take me to laugh out loud territory. I thoroughly enjoyed the nods to various other books and authors, particularly Wells' War of the Worlds.

My only complaint is that the Kindle edition suffered some formatting issues suggesting it wasn't adequately proofed after being created.

 

[dask]

No, not a recent word at all... think of bon vivante, for example.... It means (as an adjective, and depending on context) "alive, living, lively, still fresh"*; also "in one's lifetime", or (in les vivants) "the living", etc.

As for going for a copy of it... I haven't seen a new edition of The Wandering Jew for ages, though they may exist. The most recent I found was severely abridged: about 300 pp. or so, more a summary retelling than the book (my own edition is roughly 1400 pp.), so I'd avoid such things if I were you.

Here's what I called up at Abebooks:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...lison+Co&sts=t&tn=The+Wandering+Jew&x=84&y=21

*Each of these applies quite well to this context....

Thanks for the info. I checked a much newer dictionary when I got home and it didn't list it either, not even in the foreign words and phrases section. Crazy. Thanks too for the link. Boy, that one copy sure looks hammered. Still, books are pretty cheap at this annual sale. If I see one for fifty cents to a buck I may pick it up anyway, if only to take up valuable space on my makeshift bookshelf in the gargage.

 

[j d worthington]

Perhaps you could state which English edition(s) appear to you to be complete for the benefit of readers who want to know they are reading the whole thing. (I'm not very interested in this one myself, but...)

I am by no means all that knowledgeable about this, but from what I do know, I'd suggest either the two-volume Wm. L. Allison edition (which is what I have), which went through at least a few printings (if memory serves), or the one Disch suggested, which was the Modern Library edition, which was somewhat abridged (yet is still the size of that wonderful weird anthology, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural). This, too, was in print for quite a while, so can probably be found for a decent price....

 

[J-Sun]

Just finished re-reading The Best of Cordwainer Smith and reading The Instrumentality of Mankind. Good stuff overall. (Longer notes in the short story thread.)

 

[HareBrain]

Now halfway through The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and it must be the best thing I've read in a year or more. Why can't genre authors write this well?

 

[GOLLUM]

Now halfway through The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and it must be the best thing I've read in a year or more. Why can't genre authors write this well?

Maybe they can and you've just been traversing the wrong burrows... If you like that you should check out Knigslover's Poisonwood Bible. It's something of a flawed masterpiece compared to The Lacuna which is her most accomplished work to date but overall still excellent.....

 

[HareBrain]

Maybe they can and you've just been traversing the wrong burrows...

That's rabbits! Get it wrong again and I shall declare warren you.

I know some get close, but I can't remember any SFF author who combines such lightness of touch, subtlety, depth and intensity (maybe not all in the same sentence, admittedly). If you can suggest any without derailing this thread, I shall certainly take a look.

 

[GOLLUM]

HMM...that will require me to apply my thinking cap. I might PM you instead later but as far as great prose stylists go a few of my favourites would include Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Patricia Mckillip's fiction esp RiddleMaster of Hed, Miller's Canticle for Liebowitz, John Crowley's Little Big, Dunsany's King of Elfland's Daughter, Hope Mirlees' Lud in the Mist, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Ted Chaing's Story of my Life collection, Avram Davidson's short fiction, Le Guin's Left hand of Darkness or for a more archaic but marvellous style Edison's Worm Oubourous. I'm also an admirer of China Mieville, Neil Gaiman and Neal Stephenson but they don't quite fall into the same class as those already mentioned.

Then moving outside the more obvious Genre fiction but still focusing on writers of the fantastic as this is more my particular field these days I would suggest as a sampling Italo Calvino's Invisible cities and If on a Winter's Night A Traveller, Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber & The Infernal Device Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Bruno Schulz's Street of Crocodiles, Jorge Lois Borges' collection Labyrinths and Adolfo Bio Casare's Invention of Morel.

Moving more into General literature which I guess is where Knigslover falls into, again as a sampling the fiction of Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Wolfe, Vladimir Nabokov, Somerset Maugham esp. his short fiction, Stefan Zweig, Yeshar Kemahl, Yusinara Kawabata, Joseph Roth esp. Radetzky March and W.G. Sebald, Robert Walser...OH and the Poetry of Pablo Neruda...more 20th Century than earlier but if I go down that path I'll be here for several more hours building on this post and well and truly derailing this thread.

I realise this is a very broad response (I got a little carried away) but I wanted to encapsulate some of the authors I consider very highly, some of whom you may wish to check out/interest you that you're yet to try?

This is not to say Knigslover is in a class of her own but I'm not sure who I would compare her to directly to in or out of Genre? Following is a link that provides some suggestions...not sure how like they are but certainly Mathieson, Erdrich and Atwood are worth a look in any case and I'm a fan of McCarthy's Blood Meridian in particular but there are several about here who are not.

http://www.multcolib.org/books/lists/barbarak.html

Hope this helps a little Hare.....

Cheers.