Books that you've read lately

argh thanks a lot, dork, I spent £10 on 14 great books I’m too stupid to understand

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mid-way through Elif Batuman - The Idiot—top drawer campus-based inner turmoil teenage melodrama with added philosophy of language. Really very engaging, even though I think it might be way less meaningful than it seems. You spend the entire novel inside the protagonist’s head, though—besides some little excursions into a Russian textbook’s story subplot—so I guess whether you’ll like it hinges on whether or not you (think) like her.

Tried to read Iron Council by Mievile. It isn’t good. As most people suggest. A couple of hundred pages in. Has to stop for the time being and read A Violent Life by Pasolini which was good. Heavy going. About fascist youth and seems very personal. Want to look into more of his writing as only know him as a director.

May go back to Iron Council just as so far into the trilogy I feel I should complete but may stick to some Clark Ashton Smith and Machen shorts in the meantime.

I’m reading Black Like Me at the moment. It’s by this white sociologist guy in the 1950s who took some weird skin darkening pills to effectively turn him ‘black’. He then goes and lives first in New Orleans and then goes deep into Mississippi, seemingly passing as an authentic black man to everyone he meets, and writes about how his experience differs to that of his life as a white man.

Even though you know all this racism goes on, reading his response to it and seeing how people react when he forgets himself and sits in an area for whites or just assumes he can act the same way is all very interesting

I never made it through Iron Council. I keep meaning to try again at some point to see if it was as boring as I remember it being.

Iron Council was fine until the ending. But definitely not up to his usual standard.

Read Black Like Me at school; would be interesting to see how it stands up (part of me thinks it’s #problematic that we* only believe racism when a white guy says it; OTOH it 's a really clear demonstration of exactly how people really do get treated differently, because there’s no other explanatory factor than the colour of his skin…)

(*edit to add that “we” here obviously refers to white people like me, and apologies to everyone here who isn’t white and has their own knowledge of racism already…)

Have you read any Andrew McGahan novels? I think they are all set in or around Brisbane. I have only read his debut, “Praise” which I enjoyed as a late teen, not sure how it stands up now, and “The White Earth”, which started well enough but was ultimately disappointing. In a rural setting actually that one.

I hadn’t! Might do soon for nostalgia sake but now trying to find books based in The Netherlands for similar reasons.

Just read The Lathe of Heaven after hearing the sad news of Ursula K Le Guin’s death.
She was SO FUCKING GREAT. This was her most PKD sci-fi yet; it’s all about perception breakdown, personal construction of the universe, the latent danger of revolutionary thought. Great.

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Finished The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon last night. It bothered me. MASSIVE SPOILERS: most of the book was a sympathetic first person narrative about an adult with autism, presenting both the challenges he faced due to his autism but also showing that his differences were also strengths. When the protagonist and his autistic friends are threatened with/offered an experimental “cure” for autism, there’s a backlash among them pointing out that they don’t need to be cured; they’re different, not afflicted. This includes the protagonist. Then two chapters from the end SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS he decides that actually yeah he wants the treatment, thanks, because he’s always wanted to go into space. A fact that we just learned about. So he takes it, becomes “normal”, and goes into space in the epilogue.

The author has an autistic son. In that light, the ending read like an upsetting “why can’t my son be cured” fantasy, which is kind of horrible.

This why we still need libraries (are there any near you?)!

finished Annihilation - was pretty good! will be interesting to see how some of it transfers to film - at least it’s been called ‘too difficult’ already which is probably a good thing in this case. on to the next Southern Reach novel I guess…

Portnoy’s Complaint :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

I loved Annihilation, just finished Authority last night too. Second book is quite a surprising shift in approach but I still enjoyed it, waiting for Acceptance in the post now.

The author has said he wasn’t familiar with Roadside Picnic/Stalker when he wrote the first book, which I can believe, but he’s gone on to say he sees no similarity which is just ridiculous.

oh i haven’t read/seen either of those - massive similarities then?

i’ve just remembered i have lincoln in the bardo ready to read so will probably pick that up first then give Authority a go

Both about expeditions in to a wilderness, secretive government organisations, unexplained phenomena, catastrophic events. Would really recommend Roadside Picnic, I think it’s my favourite sci-fi novel.

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he’s probably annoyed that everybody brings it up as the main point of comparison (with good reason I think)

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I’ve started Wind-Up Bird Chronicle after @xylo and another DiSer were discussing it on Instagram (maybe @Twinkletoes but I don’t know if I follow them) - sidenote, you guys are mostly terrible for using your DiS username as your Instagram one, FFS but obviously @plasticniki is great.

Anyway, 20% into the book and while I liked the opening it’s getting less good as it goes on.

So far seems to be a lot of one guy interacting with a series of facets of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and while I realise it’s over 20 years old now the casual use of rape is really a bit :grimacing: to read. Still, we shall see.

I’ve only read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and Kafka on the Shore previously and I loved the first one and I seem to recall generally really enjoying the second.

I’ve discussed it on here but not on Insta. I read it at 21 while revising for finals and it really resonated at that time.

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Just finished reading Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman. It’s floored me. I don’t think any other book has had such a profound emotional effect on me tbh. It’s amazing. If any one reads it or has read it please come and talk to me about it, cause right now I just feel like it’s the most beautiful thing in existence. I don’t know if it’s because I lived in Rome for a year when I was 18 and fell in love for the first time and so much of the Italy it describes is really familiar to me because I also spent long summer holidays there growing up, but I really felt the tragedy of the ‘passing of time’ element in the novel.

I’ve read this in articles and I agree - watch the film before you read the book if you haven’t seen either.