@“soapbox”#p98323 wow i'm surprised that Count Zero is from 2006 because it looks so much like the epitome of the 1997 music video/album cover visual aesthetic.
@“whatsarobot”#p98374
Graphic Designer in 2006 who thinks iPods are too mainstream and still using his Rio Diamond MP3 player that only has enough space for Nine Inch Nails’ _The Downward Spiral_ and disc 1 of _The Fragile_
@“soapbox”#p98388 nailed it
This is the Neuromancer copy I have, from 1984. It’s a very crusty copy I got for free at a former job lol
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/OGi6cu5.jpeg]
But for Christmas I got something very beautiful :)
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/cXZBxpD.jpeg]
@“sabertoothalex”#p98405 that is a gorgeous volume. i‘m not even a big Tolkien guy, but i’d gladly have that on my shelf. great gift.
uh-oh, i‘ve fallen into a pit of having too many novels on the go at once, as well as way too much manga. i don’t know how i‘ve let this happen. maybe it’s because most of these books are not what you'd call “light” or “fun” and so i need to take mental health breaks.
currently in the middle of:
Dawn by Octavia Butler - incredible, but a bit anxiety inducing.
The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe - i wish i hadn't had years of brain-training telling me these books are "challenging" and "difficult," because it's actually quite pleasurable to read. not always sure what exactly is going on, but each chapter is kind of its own enjoyable short story. Severian is a weird dude - i like how much of his own unique dude he is. not the badass sword-wielding torturer i expected.
Under the Dome by Stephen King - well this is King at his maximum Kinginess, almost to the point of self-parody. i love it.
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice - a Canadian First Nations apocalypse story set in deep winter. seemed appropriate for these current days. quiet and unassuming.
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu - everyone says this is Asian Game of Thrones. not exactly. Liu's prose is spare, exact and poetic. his characters are identifiable archetypes, intentionally. immediately captivating.
...
does this ever happen to anyone else? i feel overwhelmed, but don't want to drop any of these books, because i'm really enjoying all of them! :O
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@“sabertoothalex”#p98405 Neuromancer
Wild cover, it looks like the artist painted on an already-edited image on a computer screen? So appropriately muddy and strange!
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@“whatsarobot”#p98408 does this ever happen to anyone else?
Not sure if this has been a topic of discussion already, but in short: can't say that it happens to me! I'm fairly monogamous with my reading (and and fairly so with video games too). I'll only occasionally have multiple books going if I have like a music biography or something simple on my phone and/or a graphic novel/comics; for example: I'm currently reading Wilco frontman **Jeff Tweedy's _Let's Go (So We Can Get Back)_** on my phone and just finished **Simon Hanselmann's newest collection _Below Ambition_** which still had me chuckling even if it was very clearly (as the end notes point out) an attempt to thin his audience by making something "kind of intended to be a horrible test of the audience's patience". Highly recommend any of Hanselmann's other collections though!
On the other hand, my buddy who reads way more than me will keep many books going at the same time, but I would be too liable to drop one for too long and need the momentum to help me move through books.
I am usually reading at least 4 books (2 fiction, 2 non fiction) but occasionally it turns into six or seven. I kinda like the way they all spill into each other and the weird connections that form in my head. Basically a book for whatever mood that I'm in at the moment I sit down. If I try to stick to just one I end up getting kinda antsy and rush too much.
Currently reading:
Dream of Red Mansions (reread)
Joseph and His Brothers (this is an amazing book for bible lovers)
Book of Enoch (adjacent "research" prompted by above)
Technics and Civilization (Lewis Mumford is my GUY)
Childhood's End (i like a short sci-fi that just keeps itself moving and isn't particularly serious)
Einstein (some biography i found)
There's a lot spinning around in my head right now but I have a feeling it'll turn into something interesting.
@“wickedcestus”#p98412
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the way they all spill into each other and the weird connections that form in my head
i like this way of thinking about it! let's see where this wild jumble of ideas takes me.
@“sabertoothalex”#p98405
I got gifted this exact copy of Lord of the Rings! I also had just gifted this handsome edition to my nephew for his birthday a month ago.
I top out, usually, at three books at a time. One audiobook, one on kindle, and one paperback. If I ever end up reading more than this, usually one or two win out and I sort of drift away from the others.
I've been very slowly working through in the age of the smart machine by Shoshana Zuboff (the prequel of sorts to her seminal Surveillance capitalism, which everyone should read). Smart machine is a contemporary history of the workers on the frontline of computers entering the workplace, detailing the anxieties/challenges/opportunities of the huge transition. It really helps put our current moment into historical perspective.
@"whatsarobot"#p98408
The whole Xenogensis series is so good. A glimpse of what science fiction can be when it's not just trying to recreate the work of the same 5 musty white nerds.
it's been nice to see Le Guin, Butler, PKD, and Delaney superseding all that other old junk people used to think was good yeah. Personally would give Budrys, Cordwainer Smith, and Alfred Bester a pass too wrt said nerds
@“yeso”#p98434
Tried Bester a few years ago and was pretty unimpressed. Though I do think it can be difficult to look back and see why certain things were so massively influential.
This is also how I feel about Neuromancer.
@“yeso”#p98434 dick's cool (quote me out of context) and full of lots of fascinating ideas, but I find his prose weak and his characters not especially interesting. On top of everything else, Butler really knew how to write.
@“Zach”#p98432
Was very interested in Surveillance Capitalism and excited to pick it up, but I bounced right off it. Don‘t really have a good reason why, though I imagine it’s why I find Jeremy Scahill‘s books sometimes difficult to get through: if you’ve been following a story for a long time, the book eventually published about it feels like a reread.
That's not to say there's nothing novel in there, but I didn't get far enough in Surveillance Capitalism to get to the other stuff.
On the topic of Butler, looks like Jemsyn Ward wrote about her influence.
Jesmyn Ward is also real good. Even her memoir, and I hate memoirs!
@“Zach”#p98437 yeah PKD is hit and miss paragraph by paragraph but there are some sustained high points. The back half if Ubik for example
do people like Tiptree/Sheldon or was that "of its time"?
I think PKD‘s later books are definitely his best, primarily the VALIS trilogy. He becomes a lot more comfortable mixing his own personal experience into his characters and settings which makes the stories a lot more interesting to me. It’s no longer just a crazy sci-fi concept happening to “some guy.” His final novel, Transmigration of Timothy Archer, is my favourite.
I finished reading A Brief Life. I‘ve not read a book like this before. It’s odd. “What's it about?” I‘m asked, and I don’t know what to say. I think it‘s about imagination, and how it is formed and forms our realities and identities. There’s a plot but it doesn‘t matter. The plot is not in the driver seat. The narrative is at times uncomfortable, sex-obsessed, and misogynistic. That’s not to say that the book itself is - I think Onetti explores the positive and negative powers of imagination, to put in in a corny way.
For the first half I was concerned the book would end up being about itself, or writing novels in general. I'm happy to report that the novel does not devolve into a "woah dude" meta-narrative. >!There's a paragraph in there in which the author himself makes an appearance, but it's brief and to be frank I don't think I understand why it happened at all.!< Imagination, the landscape of the mind and how it manifests personality, is what's of interest here, and the act of writing is only one way in which the theme is explored.
Much of the prose is like a dream in which you remember every detail and how it made you feel at the exact moment you experienced it. I wonder if the translation I read was somewhat clunky - there were parts I found difficult to follow due to tenses and word order, things like that. The edition I have is translated by Hortense Carpentier. Luckily these sections felt few and far between. The excerpt @"yeso"#385 translated for us read beautifully, and I liked it better than what appears in my edition.
I have bathed in the light of Onetti and I'm ready for more. I'm going to try and dive right into _Body Snatcher_ next. I hope it's just as weird and gross and moving as _A Brief Life_.
Oh, I'm writing this as midnight rolls around and the New Year begins. Somehow it feels right to be spending these minutes reflecting on this novel.
that‘s well said, and I agree that it’s very rare to see an I guess metafictional book be so effective without being arch or ostentatious about it. Idk if I‘d even call it metafictional really, because as you say it’s about imagination and rather than being about literature or fiction. A Brief Life has the most complicated premise of those of his novels I‘ve read because it has to establish the nature of the setting. The rest of the novels don’t really call back to their own nature as being embedded in or arising from a work of fiction. I appreciate the ‘now with that out of the way’ approach because it's just lets the atmosphere and imagination flow. Bodysnatcher is great, and the close sequel The Shipyard is even better
Re the translation: there are a lot of sort of clunky translations out there that appeared in the wake of the _100 Years of Solitude_ bonanza, both to try and cash in on the vogue but also (as in this case) because partisans of particular writers wanted to get something out in English to establish an audience and critical reputation for an author they cared about. So maybe that's what you're encountering. I will say that Barraclough translated the José María Arguedas novels which was probably a real challenge so credit to her