What are you reading?

[D.o.S.]

Most novels (and indeed most whales) that predated the widespread use of encyclopedias tend to suffer from bloat.

It's not as bad as the paid-by-the-word serialisers, but it's close.

Ulysses is phenomenal though. I've read it... twice? three times? It's not as good as Finnegan's Wake (nor is it easier to pick up and drop off as needed), but it's worth all the praise.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Booo to the moby dick take. I like a bit of whale-ipedia in a book I guess. yay to serialised stories being a bit tedious after the fact (though some are still great).

I am very tempted to read Too Like The Lightning based on the amusingly bad review (and the fact that in contrast I have also seen GOOD reviews).


And yes, one day I'll get round to giving Ulysses a fair shake.

[backwardsvoyager]

Recent reading. Just been plucking things randomly from a recommendation list in a translation studies book. All worthy of recommendation in some way or another

[Seance]

I recently finished reading Tristram Shandy. It was pretty good.
The approach is somewhat one-note (or two-note at the most).
I love a circular story, and on paper Tristram Shandy seems like
exactly the kind of book I'd love. But it didn't really draw me in.
I found Rabelais to be a lot funnier and a lot more of pleasurable to read.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Those are two I really intend to read sometime soonish

[Eivind August]

I've bought Ulysses twice, and both of my copies were left in foreign countries after I'd failed to get started. Third time might be the charm?

Currently finishing up The City & The City, which has been a fun ride this far.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I enjoyed that quite a bit, and I have liked Mieville's other work too

[Achtane]

I bought this after reading a sample and it rules. Her youtube series, too.

[goroth]

Why I haven’t yet read The city and the city is a mystery to me.

[Dandolin]

I'm about to read it again...something about it is calling me back...so comfortingly bleak

[MrNovember]

I'm tempted to read the City and the City again too; such a great book!

I'm still in the middle of the third Dune book. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, but I don't read as much through the winter. I don't know why, but my most productive reading is definitely through the summer months. And I got a ton of books for Christmas too - How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy, Greenlights by Matthew McConaughy, My Struggle Book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - my reading list is never ending.

[Seance]

I am currently reading The George Kuchar Reader.
It is full of snippets of his writing, a few short essays he
wrote. It includes the start of the screenplay he wrote for
Thundercrack!

George Kuchar was an exuberant polymath of perversion and pathos.
He was an incredible wordsmith, underground cartoonist, and, of course,
an incredible filmmaker with a fantastic eye who smudged the sparkle
of cinematic pixie dust, smut, and belly laughs into everything, all the
while apologizing for his predilections, erections, and sometime flatulence.

Here is a film about George Kuchar:

Here is a film about George and his twin brother Mike Kuchar (also a filmmaker).
Their regular 8mm movies from the 1950s and 1960s influenced Andy Warhol,
John Waters, and David Lynch (the fake bird in Hold Me While I'm Naked is
surely a precursor to the fake bird in Blue Velvet).


I also wrote a small blurb about George Kuchar shortly after he died in 2011.
http://trenchantmedia.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-portrait-of-george-kuchar.html

[Dandolin]

Great stuff, Seance!

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

Finished:


Starting:


Ordered:

[coldbrightsunlight]

Why I haven’t yet read The city and the city is a mystery to me.

Yeah you would like.

Currently reading White Noise by Don Delillo. Good so far.