What're you readin'

Yeah! I mean, a lot of these writers seem to forget that the important part of movies like Society or old Splatterpunk stuff was the skill behind the visual effects and how they were used.

When you’re trying to be the literary equivalent of Screaming Mad George, there’s a lot that gets lost in translation. Also some of these guys just…can’t write a story.

I am going back to reading books about lazy dudes that smoke weed all day.

I’ve always felt very stupid and incomplete by knowing virtually nothing of Greek Mythology. So I recently read The Library of Greek Mythology by a certain Pseudo-Apollodorus. Finished that and still feel pretty hollow so I’m going back M. R. James. Maybe Sheridan Le Fanu, I’ve never read The House by the Churchyard. People really praise that book so I’ll give it a shot.
I also got a 100 pages into Romance of Three Kingdoms before someone showed me this 2010 series they did about the novel. Dropped the novel even though it would be faster to read it than watching the 95 nearly a hour long episodes of the series. But damn it, it’s so cool.

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yeah but like

john dies at the end is good though

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What I’ll be readin’ in a few months time, I guess

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refuse to acknowledge this garbage kickstarter that does not have a “just change McReady’s name to Doc Savage YES it was fanfic all along FINE it’s OFFICIAL NOW” stretch goal

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turns out he stabbed them cause they kept telling him the endings to books he was reading

i guess im on a bit of an anne carson kick again. enjoyed this LRB piece and now enjoying the autobiography of red a lot more than i ever thought i wld

John Dies at the End is good. The joke in it is that the most honorable, moral character is mischaracterized by the protagonist as a selfish dipshit sidekick the whole way through. Any outside observer quickly realizes the protagonist is the selfish dipshit sidekick. Lots of dorks reading the book didn’t even notice because they identify so strongly with his white-guy anger issues and inability to deal with stress and other people. You’re going through essentially a typical action movie but seeing in first person just how craven and sad the snarky wise-cracking asocialite has to be to act like that

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i just started “tell them of battles, kings, and elephants” by matthias enard. it’s about michelangelo taking a trip to constantinople to design a bridge there. really interesting so far, and it’s like less than 150 pages so i should be done pretty soon. recommended? probably? i always meant to read “zone” by the same guy, which is a much longer novel where the gimmick is it’s mostly written as a single sentence, but this new one seemed like a better place to start.

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i wish i had the vision and the rigour to read anne boyer’s a handbook of disappointed fates with the attention it deserves, alongside wendy trevino’s cruel fictions. m archive by alexis pauline gumbs and lo terciaro by raquel salas rivera are the two other big interesting projects i wish i had the space to fully engage with, and they cld be on the same curriculum. poetry and the world. what gives?

i would recommend these two poems tho: NO & QUESTIONS FOR POETS. Have to quit my job & ride coaches & read lots of poetry

I’ve started reading Lazarillo de Tormes

Seems good so far.

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I started up Claudius the God a few days back. I’m not traditionally a particularly big fan of ancient Rome but for whatever reason I find these Robert Graves books rather gripping.

Anyone have any suggestions for audio books? Apparently I’m subscribed to Audible and have credits for 6 books which I want to blow before unsubscribing. But I don’t know anything about audio books. I’ve been browsing through the thread but anytime something piques my interest I feel like I’d just want to read the book instead.

Yesterday I was telling my gf about the Three Body Problem trilogy and when I described the character of Luo Ji I realized that these books sounded like cliche misogynist sci-fi trash.

I mean… The protagonist of book 2 spends many, many hours imagining up his dream woman and then becomes so obsessed with her that he spends his life imagining she’s with him. Then the governments of the world make him one of the most powerful men in the world and he uses his newfound resources to have the girl who looks most like his imagined dream girl delivered to him, and they fall in love.

Damn, that shit is embarassing! And I kind of liked those books!

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lhfs

That’s always a bad sign.

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Yeah I mean that was immediately embarrassing and bad. As I said somewhere earlier upthread, Liu has what borders on contempt for characterization and human drama. He only cares about the ideas.

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I finished Lazarillo de Tormes, and have started reading Don Quixote.

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are you reading them in translation?