I think for those who have no interest in gaming it might be tolerable but it dips into misery porn too often as well. It is unbearable if you have an SB level of familiarity with games
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yeah the misery porn was universally hated lol
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the penises straightjacket
this book is a good companion piece with lucky wander boy which i think also fries an SB-adjacent brain
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The maudlin Mapletown, does it exist?
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Mario’s travel inspires thoughts of Italian American freedom, but the quick transition to spelunking has us wondering if Koji Kondo hated Shigeru Miyamoto?
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author’s a zionist btw
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I finished Shadow Ticket. I really liked this one, especially since I could follow the plot the whole way through without difficulty. So Pynchon-lite or whatever, but we’ll give him the senior’s discount. Probably the most “fun” dialogue he’s ever written? The convos between Hicks and daphny, especially. And no heroines getting debased or humiliated in this one. Anyway, if the main thought I had at the end of Bleeding Edge was “has Pynchon really ever played a video game”, the one at the end of Shadow Ticket was “has Pynchon really ever ridden a motorcycle”.
But enough about that. Rudy Rucker’s new book Skinks is out!! You remember? The guy who told MacArthur Fellow David Foster Wallace to go back to fucking school?
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Yeah I am getting like Howard Hawks slapstick comedy vibes from the dialog and antics sometimes.
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Underrated but constant in Pynchon.
I’m like halfway through shadow ticket and enjoying it. Not much more to say on it than that.
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i read the vegetarian by han kang for a horror book club and kind of wish i hadn’t, it was just a super obvious psychological drama whose premise was “what if a south korean woman was non-neurotypical and everyone around her was self-absorbed and only thought of her in relation to their own needs” - imo calling it horror was a big stretch, it was just everyday maladaptive behavior on everyone’s part if your everyday includes someone with autism (and, later, anorexia)
“whatever could cause someone to identify with trees and think they would prefer being one” hmm i don’t know have you ever tried visiting the woods and later having a depressive episode. consciousness fucking sucks and our version of it is an evolutionary dead end
this post bought to you by jeppson’s malort and my grandma having a stroke (don’t worry she’s a shitty person)
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Start my long journey reading One Nation Under Blackmail. Somewhat like a guide on how to achieve success, but with a lot of documents and names that really waste time, perfect books for passing time.
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well the whole point of that series is not to be exciting but simply to document in depth the genesis and extent of american corruption and sexual blackmail and whatnot. it’s not supposed to be fun, it is supposed to be something heavy you spend a lot of time digesting. if you want to be entertained instead of passing time wendy painting is more insane and i recommend you read aberration in the heartland of the real
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Shadow Ticket was totally alright. I love a long list of rowdy carousers and zany details from Pynchon, but in his smaller novels like this they take up more of the page count than I can forgive. Lots of the book when its plot gets to Europe are kind of just detail and detail, scenery, albeit cool and lively as Pynchon always manages, but for me a little boring and formulaic.
I did enjoy the dialog and the contrast of a Howard Hawke’s like slapstick romcom ala Bringing Up Baby set literally among the rize of Nazism, and the bummer intervention one can imagine that makes into something starring Katherine Hepburn (daphny) and Cary Grant (Hicks). Things get a little frightening when the fun gets interrupted like this.
I did NOT like all the Pynchon Cinematic Universe allusions throughout the novel. Having just read Against the Day, each of these felt super corny.
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I’ve been trying to get through Is a River Alive cos I’m on kind of an ecological kick lately but my word is it bad. Does any one else on here read this type of shit I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth taking the time to explain why I find it so irritating lol
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Finished The City and Its Uncertain Walls. It comes together quite nicely but relies a little heavily on an autistic character who is sort of magical and travels to another dimension because they can never belong in this world (wtf?). The original story was drafted in the 80s so who knows but it was a little distasteful. Still remains the most slight Murakami retelling of Peter Pan/The Yellow Submarine, musing on the purpose of withdrawing into fantasy lands or confronting reality.
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i read like eight chapters of digital devil story: reincarnation of the goddess and naturally it’s complete pulp garbage where the main character has the grace and charm of a school shooter and loki keeps trying to rape women through computer. it makes sense that this story spawned a multimedia franchise somehow with megami tensei but fuck lol i don’t know how much i can blame it on fan translators. not the worst sci-fi story i’ve ever read somehow though i can’t say i will put the effort into finishing it
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fan translations of light novels are notoriously shit and their existence makes my job even harder because people keep expecting the garbage tier results they’re familiar with instead of a good adaptation
but most light novels aren’t very good to begin with. The Alexander O Smith translation of the Guin Saga novels is one of the few highlights of LNs in English (Twelve Kingdoms is also great and translated by him iirc)
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both fan translations I found were similar enough which leads me to believe the book is just bad to begin with, yeah
i will say the most engaging part of what i read was the explanation for the COMP existing, which is that international satanists got really tired of having to set up occult rituals and spells and remember magic shit, thankfully a high school student found out you can just convert all that shit to binary, now computers can summon demons for us and everything is so convenient in modern times. and despite the main character being a dedicated occultist he somehow didnt know you have to like negotiate a contract with said demons so the computer lab is permanently possessed by evil. this is amazing conceptually so i see why they made it into a famicom game where all the overfiend shit is totally excised
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Finished Cerebus, moving on to The Black Company
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have u read charles stross’s laundry files books? they’re kinda cool and probably much better written. i’m wondering if he lifted the idea from megami tensei, or if it’s an older idea, or convergent evolution.
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