let's stay away from those sources, we can do just fine w archive and other free stuff. The last thing this forum needs is the estate of Ursula K Le Guin on our ass
Just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Somehow I never read this (until now) or watched the movie, so this one hit me at full force. It‘s rare for me to read a book that has both incredible prose and a story that I can’t put down, but this one nailed both. A perfect melding of form and content.
I'm pretty sure nobody needs me to say in [current year] that The Road is a modern classic for a reason, but I'm an idiot sometimes and sometimes I avoid things just because everybody loves them. For once, I'm glad to join the club.
@“rearnakedwindow”#p79511
I read this in one sitting when it came out. Despite being unable to put it down, I honestly didn‘t love it until near the end when I started crying like a dang baby.
Now that I’m a dad, I imagine the book would hit me that much harder.
I liked the movie too.
@“edward”#p79524 Yeah in a way I‘m glad I waited to read it because I have a little more life under me. I think I still would have liked it if I read it as a teenager but it probably wouldn’t have hit the same.
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@“rearnakedwindow”#p44996 does anybody on this thread like poetry?
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@“treefroggy”#p80326 Good stuff! Relatedly, I think, in a recent-ish issue of Poetry magazine, they featured an essay by an old haiku master, Shiki, about the use of shit and other bodily fluids in haiku. Well worth a look.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/157753/haiku-on-shit
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Anyone ever heard of this Sherlock Holmes fella?
Reading it for the first time. Starting with A Study in Scarlet so that I can read A Study in Emerald so that I can play the boardgame A Study in Emerald.
Also, a few weeks ago I wrote about [Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels](https://radicaledward.substack.com/p/the-neapolitan-novels), which are great.
currently reading we do this 'till we free us by mariame kaba, an abolitionist and really great community organizer out of chicago
also stemming from my anticapitalist beliefs: nothing feels more like the enemy of games than work
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@“IrishNinja”#p81251 mariame kaba
good pick!
swery published a 500 page novel
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/swery-has-written-a-book-and-its-title-is-peak-swery
I started reading this book called Ice by Anna Kavan. Apparently it was part of an attempt to create a new genre called “slipstream fiction” in the 60's.
It's pretty captivating despite the story being vague and jumping around from sentence to sentence.
yeah Ice is a good one
Salman Rushdie got stabbed in the neck today.
Only read Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses, but they're real good.
@“saddleblasters”#p78794
In the last month I did manage to read a few of the Japanese WWII novels on my list/others recommendations, namely: _Prize Stock_, _The Sea and Poison_, and _Grass for my Pillow_. I also ended up reading Shigeru Mizuki's history of Showa manga, which is about 50% memoir and focuses a lot on the war. I need to read _Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths_ at some point.
I was at least somewhat familiar with Oe and Endo already, being two of the most translated 20th century Japanese authors, but I had never heard of Maruya. _Grass for my Pillow_ completely blew my mind. It was similar to _The Sea and Poison_ in that it focused heavily on bureaucracy, though in the case of _Grass for my Pillow_ the bureaucracy parts are all set in the 60s. The basic premise is that the former-draft-dodger protagonist, who has thus far been tolerated and even respected by the administration of the university he's worked at as a clerk since the end of the war, finds that the political climate has changed, and he is no longer as welcome as he once was. Interspersed in this narrative are recollections, all out of order, of the years 1940 - 1945 when he was traveling around the country under a fake identity, avoiding the military police, and hanging out with his girlfriend.
The way the book depicts the university bureaucracy and its continuity with pre-war Japan, reading it now years after it was published, it almost feels as though it were explicitly describing the build up to the student riots in 68-69 -- but of course those hadn't happened yet when it was written. So interestingly enough Maruya's next book, _Singular Rebellion_, is pretty directly about the riots, albeit in a very satirical way. I just finished it yesterday, and thought it was absolutely hilarious. It was similar to _Mad Men_ in describing a period of social upheaval from the perspective of a very conservative individual, though in _SIngular Rebellion_ everyone is constantly trying to convince him that he's secretly progressive. There's also a Henry James feel to it, where you have so much analysis, and analysis of the analysis, in the protagonist's narration, half the time his analysis turning out to be completely wrong. I won't spoil you as to what he considers his rebellion to be in the final pages of the book, but it was very funny to see that that's what he got out of his experiences over the course of the novel, and also incredibly depressing.
So I heavily recommend Maruya to anyone who hasn't read any of his books! The other full novel by him that's available in English is _A Mature Woman_, which I just checked out from the library. So we'll see how that goes.
@“beets”#p81471 I finished Ice this weekend as I was on a short holiday.
It seemed like a fitting book to read for the trip. I took multiple flights and buses, likely lesser than the protaganist and it was raining almost the whole time leading to me ending up in a region which was put in a state of emergency because of flooding.
It wasn't quite endless snow, advancing ice walls and war but some parts felt eerily similar.
Also, according to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_(Kavan_novel)), Kavan was inspired by her time in the south of NZ when she was near to Antartica. Although, I was quite a bit further north.
Was on vacation last week with my family and sort of burned through a handful of books.
The Ghosts of East Baltimore by David Simmons - just about the wildest book I've ever come across. A crime novel that delves into the history of redlining in Baltimore while making room for Lovecraftian horror and a goddamn mechsuit. I love it.
Black Gypsies by Grant Wamack - quick novel about Chicago that manages to be neither about the rich or caught up in fetishizing the reality of gang presence. Mostly about a few young people doing bad stuff in order to try to do good stuff.
The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada - fascinating and disappointing. Sort of gets caught up in a sidequest but also a bit too timid to really plunge all the way into that sidequest.
The White Book by Han Kang - would've loved this book when I was twenty. Kind of indifferent to this style of book now, I guess.
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha - Sort of a short story collection posing as a novel. The stories are pretty good, though, yet one of the threads of the novel is, in my view, kind of wasted potential.
Cain by Jose Saramago - The Borat of literature. And I mean that in as good a way as that statement can be made.
Making my way through Jin Yong's Legend of the Condor Heroes, which is so so so fun. Wasn't so sure about it at first, but it is genuinely laugh out loud funny at times. Just solid character work page after page that allows these characters who begin sort of archetypally to become people real enough to love and hate and hope for.
Also still working my way through my reread of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's still good! But I have the seemingly insane opinion that [A Feast for Crows is the best one](https://radicaledward.substack.com/p/a-feast-for-crows), so don't listen to me.
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@“edward”#p83620 The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada - fascinating and disappointing. Sort of gets caught up in a sidequest but also a bit too timid to really plunge all the way into that sidequest.
Nooooooooooo.
Now, onto another point, a good Japanese novel I recommend is Yuko Tsushima's _Labyrinth of light_.
As for me, I'm reading between Tokyo, Ueno Station and Strange hotel. Both are good, more the latter than the former, but I love the chill vibe Miri Yu gives to the descriptions.
@“xhekros”#p83637
Ha! Did you enjoy The Hole?
It's a book I think should have just ran headlong into the brother-in-law narrative and the strange beast, possibly at the expense of losing the connection to the house and her family.
Of course, that just makes it a different book, which isn't really a fair way to talk about a book that does exist.
Struggled with Tokyo Ueno Station, possibly because I was reading it while bouncing between the NICU and the house we were in process of selling/moving out of. Should give it a proper chance now that life has settled considerably. Labyrinth of Light is on my list, but so many books are on my list that I never know when I'll get to anything.
Reading Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami and enjoying it so far.
@“edward”#p83640 I haven‘t read The Hole, but I wanted to read it really bad.
I agree with Miri Yu’s novel. There are brilliant passages but I‘m struggling really hard, and that’s why I‘m focusing on McBride’s short novel rn.