Went from V to Naked Lunch which is one of the most fucked up pieces of writing I've come across. Its purpose just seems to be to put a series of bizarre images into your head.

It certainly isn't an advert for the drug lifestyle either if that's what Burroughs' memories are of it. Fuck that shit.

Not in the mood. 

I want a nice page turner to read - on the back burner for a while. Has been a while since I read a Jack Reacher....

Raiziel wrote:

Film’s out soon, too.  4th September, I think.

There’s a big old trailer up on Netflix which looks sweet and the reviews are dropping everywhere too. Positive response so far.

Finished Chernobyl at long last. Interesting coverage of the post disaster politic and how the public's reaction to it aligned with, and no doubt contributed to other forces that brought the Soviet Union to an end.

Reread Primo Levi this week as I had picked up Folio editions of If This is a Man and The Truce - an Italian Jew's memoirs of capture during WW2 as a partisan group, imprisonment and survival of a year in Auschwitz before liberation by the Russians, and his epic rambling journey home.  Affected my dreams this week.

Started Suez:Britain's End of Empire by Keith Kyle. Early couple of chapters are setting the scene and the mischief of the post WW2 antics of Israel's land grab and the response of Egypt, Britain, the US and France. How many seeds of disruption and death were sown in those few years.   It's written in a very accessible way so far which is pleasing as this is another doorstep sized work - looking forward to this one.

For some reason , Folio have produced an illustrated version of The Godfather. It's an awful book. Real pulp. The film is vastly superior to it. This has dented Folio's reputation in my eyes I'm afraid - this is a money grab. I suppose I can't blame them in these times.

Delving into T.S. Eliot and Seamus Heaney at bedtime. Nice way to end a day having the weird images and feelings prompted by their prose in my head.

This looks good. https://www.bitmapbooks.co.uk/products/the-games-that-werent

Anyone read the new Abercrombie? Got it today and starting to read it tomorrow. Bloody loved A Little Hatred so I cannot wait.

Also read A Head Full of Ghosts this week. It lagged in the middle but the beginning and ending was excellent. It was very cliched but managed to be just the right amount of self aware to get away with it.

I’ve also been slowly working through the Horus Heresy series and recently read The First Heretic. It was an excellent book but the series is a hell of a mission to work through - especially as someone who is new to the Warhammer universe. I do really love the slightly over the top sci fi horror ness of it all.

Aaroncupboard wrote:

Anyone read the new Abercrombie? Got it today and starting to read it tomorrow. Bloody loved A Little Hatred so I cannot wait.

I’m currently on Best Served Cold as suggested by Grem. Thoroughly enjoying it too.

Raiziel wrote:

I read A Head Full of Ghosts last year.  Enjoyed it.  Tremblay writes children very well.

The spaghetti sequence in that is one of the most horrifying things I have ever read

When I put down Before the Coffee gets cold I picked up The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway, and it proved to be everything that Coffee wasn’t.  Really smart prose (I mean sometimes it just feels like he’s showing off, it’s that good) and profoundly imaginative (a new type of bomb that removes its target from existence creates an unexpected byproduct—nicknamed Disney dust—that, when it comes into contact with human consciousness, makes real whatever a person might be thinking of), this was a really great read.  I heartily recommend it.

After that I read Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker, which was basically 750 long-ass pages of garbage.  How the mighty have fallen.  He used to be amazing.  Do not recommend.

Halloween reads so far have been a collection of ghost stories by M. R. James (good, but very archaic) and Others by James Herbert (ehhhhh...nothing special).

Also jonesing for some Tolkien recently, so have started reading my lovely Folio edition of The Silmarillion.

You get through a lot of books

Forgot I also read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by Lovecraft, the largest of his stories I’ve yet read, which comfortably takes me over the halfway point of Lovecraft’s entire oeuvre.  I didn’t really like this one much.  I feel like Lovecraft’s style works better with shorter stories.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

Nina wrote:

Reading From Russia with Blood now, only one actual chapter in (there's a prologue thing first). It's weird as it's written in a way that feels like a popular crime novel or something, but supposedly it's all true! Easy to read so far.

It should have been Pulitzer winning. It takes a complex group of people with complex issues and turns into a narrative that even a dumb dumb like me can understand.

I'm almost at the end of this, it hasn't kept the style of the exciting intro chapter, but it's still all very readable, like you said. Although I should probably look up what oligarch means by now.

Kinda wish I could give this to my dad after reading, I remember how upset he was after the Litvinenko poisoning came on the news. It's something that has always stayed with me just of the way he reacted to it.

Reading 'The Living Dead', which was started by George A Romeo 30 odd years ago, but never finished. Apparently a novel built to contain all of his ideas about the genre he created, but which would never be funded by any sane studio, it was finished by writer and superfan Daniel Kraus with the support and blessing of the Romero estate.

Is it any good? As a superfan myself, I can't be relied upon to be anything but completely biased - but by fuck am I enjoying it. Horrifically gory, laden with social commentary (which to be honest it's as subtle as Romero's films were) and chock full of incredible set pieces that would have been mind blowing on film - it's two severed twitching thumbs up from me.

ShabbyMcCrabby wrote:

I finally read The Long Walk. I thought it was pretty darn great. Like it's just teens walking and he makes it compelling. I don't know if it was just me but it felt like I could feel the steps as I read.
Seems the guy who made Autopsy of Jane Doe/Troll Hunter/Scary Stories is going to make a movie. I don't know if he has the talent to pull something like this off. I actually thought something made like Son of Saul with it up close and intimate would work to make it get under your skin.

Also,

Spoiler:

Only thing is that I thought the end would be more drawn out than it was considering his description of how one of the other walks ended. It almost seemed like he'd gotten bored of it and just finished it up.

The Stephen King novella? That's one of my all time favourites.

Tasty. Dune looks bendy in this pic - it isn't!!!

Nice one, davy.  I’m reading the Folio edition of The Silmarillion at the moment.