Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

About halfway through The Clockwork Man by E. V. Odle. It's arguably the first book about time-travelling cyborgs (it was written in the 1920s), and it's aged remarkably well -- it's still amusing, and the style isn't overly wordy (as novels from the first half of the twentieth century often are). It's been out of print for many years (being overshadowed by Capek's RUR, the other big science fiction story that was released that year), and out of copyright, but I got the reprint that HiLoBrow did as part of its Radium Age Science Fiction series, and I'm very impressed -- the layout and arrangement is beautiful in that subtle modern way that you only really see in slick magazines, books about typography from the 60s, and apple stores. Over all, I expect to get more books from that series, if this one is any indication. The plot of the book surrounds a man from a far future world where women and super-advanced alien nudists have conspired to lock all the overly aggressive males in a virtual reality world where time and space are highly mutable, who (due to a glitch in his clockwork brain implant) accidentally lands in the middle of a Cricket game in the British countryside in the 1920s and can't get back.

[Junkenstein]

Well shit. I was really looking forward to reading a new discworld novel. Now i will still read and enjoy it but i will have a continous sad while doing so.

Less than 50 pages left. Cain's on the money with "not bad, just different" to an extent. It's pretty clear by halfway that it's at least co-written. Once you get past the change in voice it gets somewhat better.

[LMNO]

Weird. I looked for it on Amazon, but they say it'll be released in a few months. 

Is this some sort of Belgian fuckery?

[Cain]

Yup.  Now you know how we feel, when we inexplicably have to wait for things that should be readily available in this digital age.

[Eater of Clowns]

[This post by EoC is not currently available in your region.]

[Salty]

 Rereading Women by Bukowski.

I first read it about 8 years ago, and I still love it.

I admit he is probably my favorite writer, which shames me a bit for reasons that are unclear.

He writes ugly shit, yeah. But it never seems to me to be glorification, or penance.

Just watercolors in words that seek to show the world as it is for some.

Now, this book was set in the 70s, but I really dig Ham on Rye and Factotum and all that earlier shit. Especially Han on Rye, it showed me how the world and the people in it have been more or less the same for, oh, forever.

This notion that People Were Proper way back when always stunk to me as bullshit. The only difference now, I think, is businesses have managed to shape people's view with greater efficiency.

Also, his flow is exceptional. He does not delay or cheapen anything with flowery prose, YET I find it hypnotic and rhyhmic all the same. Much like Carson McCullers, who I also love, as did Bukowski.

He loved DH Lawrence as well, but I cannot stand the repressed homosexuality in evey damned line that fucker wrote, beautiful or no.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Rereading Women by Bukowski.

I first read it about 8 years ago, and I still love it.

I admit he is probably my favorite writer, which shames me a bit for reasons that are unclear.

He writes ugly shit, yeah. But it never seems to me to be glorification, or penance.

Just watercolors in words that seek to show the world as it is for some.

Now, this book was set in the 70s, but I really dig Ham on Rye and Factotum and all that earlier shit. Especially Han on Rye, it showed me how the world and the people in it have been more or less the same for, oh, forever.

This notion that People Were Proper way back when always stunk to me as bullshit. The only difference now, I think, is businesses have managed to shape people's view with greater efficiency.

Also, his flow is exceptional. He does not delay or cheapen anything with flowery prose, YET I find it hypnotic and rhyhmic all the same. Much like Carson McCullers, who I also love, as did Bukowski.

He loved DH Lawrence as well, but I cannot stand the repressed homosexuality in evey damned line that fucker wrote, beautiful or no.

I wish that you could know my friend Seanniepants. He loves Bukowski, spent a fair amount of time in Alaska, and just sort of has a similar sensibility to you.

[Bu🤠ns]

So I ended up picking up Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis.  I know, not on the list...but that's sort of how things happen with me....I did pick up copies of the recommendations though so they're on the queue. 

Also...um...dinosaur fetishists and that silicone thing?? WTF WARREN ELLIS....oh right...warren ellis

Now read Gun Machine.

10-4

Completed.  This was great recommendation--Thank you, Roger!  As nasty as the Hunter was, I was left with this strange sort of sympathy for him.  And, along those lines, with Detective Tallow with that theme about how those who remembered history, in a sense, redeemed the present....to a certain extent.

[Salty]

Stardust, which I have owned for a year or two but never read. It is amazingly perfect.

[EK WAFFLR]

Sam Cutler's You Can't Always Get What You Want:: My Life with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Other Wonderful Reprobates.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Finished The Clockwork Man. My only complaint with it is that the ending didn't really feel like an ending; there wasn't much of a pattern in terms of dramatic tension in the book. Of course, I write things that are similarly flat.

Currently about halfway through Exploding the Phone, a history of phone phreaking by Phil Lapsley. It's interesting (and more readable than Mitnick's Ghost in the Wires), although the early chapters spend a great deal of time talking about the early history of Bell Telephone (which may be better covered by The Idea Factory). The one thing that's mentioned in this book that I haven't heard about from other histories of Bell is the Strowger switch -- a primarily mechanical piece of equipment for handling pulse dialing (and thus an entertaining anachronism... what is now done in solid state with a simple multiplexer was at one time done with a device resembling a spring-loaded combination lock). I'm not entirely sure that somebody uninterested in the history of phone phreaking and its culture in the abstract would find this book entertaining, but in many places it's highly introductory (so someone with only a casual interest in the subject would find it accessible), and it's quite readable compared to more formal histories. The style is at least as easy-breezy as Kevin Kelly's, but (unlike Kelly) the author knows what he's talking about, checks his sources, and doesn't spout page after page of bullshit.

[Cain]

Reading Karmeron Hurley's God's War: The Bel Dame Apocrypha, with my usual approach of allowing Charles Stross's guest bloggers to determine what to put on my Kindle.

Or what was on my Kindle, until it suddenly seized up. 

Anyway, not sure how I feel about the book yet.  Probably because my reading of it was so rudely interrupted by said Kindle failure.  Also, despite being a sci-fi setting, there are certain fantasy elements which are, IMO, a bit incongruous. 

That's my light reading, anyway.  On the heavy side, I've been hitting books like:

Michael Mann (2008), The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
James Ron (2003), Frontiers and Ghettoes: State Violence in Serbia and Israel
Jeffrey A. Sluka (2000), Death Squad: An Anthropology of State Terror
Vivek Chadha (2005), Low Intensity Conflict In India, An Analysis
Navnita Chadha Behera (2006), Demystifying Kashmir
Deepa M. Ollapally (2008), The Politics of Extremism in South Asia
Philip Zelikow et al (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report
Daniel Byman (2005), Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism
Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman, Political Terrorism
Lisa Stampnitzsky, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism"
Bruce Hoffman (2006) Inside Terrorism
M.L. Sondhi (2000), Terrorism and Political Violence: A Sourcebook

You know, fun stuff.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Reading Karmeron Hurley's God's War: The Bel Dame Apocrypha, with my usual approach of allowing Charles Stross's guest bloggers to determine what to put on my Kindle.

I usually put anything that's mentioned favorably in Stross's blog entries or comment threads into my cart. It's worked pretty well thus far, but I've run out of reading time.

[Cain]

Yeah, it's normally a good rule of thumb.  It could just be me in this case...being snowed under with everything certainly doesn't help.

[Junkenstein]

That's my light reading, anyway.  On the heavy side, I've been hitting books like:

Michael Mann (2008), The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing
James Ron (2003), Frontiers and Ghettoes: State Violence in Serbia and Israel
Jeffrey A. Sluka (2000), Death Squad: An Anthropology of State Terror
Vivek Chadha (2005), Low Intensity Conflict In India, An Analysis
Navnita Chadha Behera (2006), Demystifying Kashmir
Deepa M. Ollapally (2008), The Politics of Extremism in South Asia
Philip Zelikow et al (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report
Daniel Byman (2005), Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism
Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman, Political Terrorism
Lisa Stampnitzsky, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented "Terrorism"
Bruce Hoffman (2006) Inside Terrorism
M.L. Sondhi (2000), Terrorism and Political Violence: A Sourcebook

You know, fun stuff.

Well that's my reading list topped up for the forseeable. Regarding the bold, those two caught my eye. Promising titles, is the content up to scratch? Comparisons between Serbia and Israel sounds interesting, quite a few parallels now I come to think of it. "State violence" is pretty broad and there's certainly enough done by both to see what conclusions get drawn.