Books

[Don Gately]

Santa brought Bookerv winner Shuggie Bain, powerful stuff so far.

[Scáthach]

Finished the Testaments (Atwood) a while ago and found it very enjoyable.

Currently reading Dune and loving it. First time reading it, despite it being on my radar and never getting round to it. Talk of it in this thread was what finally gave me the shove to pick it up, so, cheers gents.

Also reading through issues 1 - 4 of Hellebore magazine, that arrived about a week ago. It's really good. The main focus is folk horror, in local history and art and literature. It takes in archaeology, history, occultism, myth and place too. Also has interviews with Professor Ronald Hutton and Alan Moore. Artwork and layout are excellent too.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Cool, glad you're enjoying it! I hope to finish Dune Messiah in the next couple of days and then on to Children of Dune, neither of which I'd read before. Initially, Dune Messiah demands perhaps slightly too much of one's suspension of disbelief relative to the universe created in the first, but it stabilizes quickly and I'm now well immersed in its Dune universe augmentations.

[astfgyl]

I have the first 3 read and they are brilliant. Some turn of events in Dune Messiah I honestly didn't expect it to go the way it did. Must get myself the next 3 books actually.

Started Thus Spake Zarathustra lately me first go at Nietzsche I reckon it's going to take some getting into

[Eoin McLove]

One of my Christmas presents was The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. Starting into it now as my lunchbreak read on work and it's immediately engaging.

[Eoin McLove]

I have the first 3 read and they are brilliant. Some turn of events in Dune Messiah I honestly didn't expect it to go the way it did. Must get myself the next 3 books actually.

Started Thus Spake Zarathustra lately me first go at Nietzsche I reckon it's going to take some getting into

Thus Spoke... Is the only Neitzsche I've yet read. Interesting little book.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Forgot I'd meant to reply to astfgyl. Zarathustra can certainly be read and enjoyed on its own terms, as a kind of odd scripture of sorts, so not exactly a page-turner. But I'd recommend The Gay/Joyful Science as a better starting point for getting into his actual philosophy.

[blessed1]

Read a book called The End Of Alice by A. M Holmes.
Fairly fucked up and I can't say I enjoyed it at all.

[StoutAndAle]

Just started "Running The Light" by Sam Tallent. The tales of luckless road comedian - Billy Ray Schafer - a character based on an amalgam of nearly made it stand-up comics. Very good so far.

If you enjoy Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, Charles Bukowski or Kurt Vonnegut then this might be for you.

[Eoin McLove]

I'm struggling with Jerusalem at this stage. Page 592 and it's becoming painful. Did nobody think of editing the cunting thing!! It goes on and on and on around in circles when it would be much more effective to get to the fucking point! I'm really not enjoying book 2, and I've over 200 long and potentially tedious pages left to wade through. And I am optimistically expecting book 3 not to be a bag of shite! I think I'll have to put it away for a couple of weeks and read something else to clear the brain but it'll be a struggle at this rate to get to page 1262... TWELVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FUCKING TWO! Melted...

[Pedrito]

Had a feeling that would happen. I can imagine that he's brilliant when he's almost constricted by the comic book format. It needs to be tight and controlled to a degree. Even when he was talking about Jerusalem I got the sense that he was more concerned with the length of the book than anything else. Who knows maybe it will take a turn for the better!

As for Dune above(@blackshep/asfygl) I'm just looking at my copies of the books here and that whole first book through to book 4 is so interesting, odd and frustrating at times, but ultimately rewarding. The 5th one I completed and maybe I was Dune'd out but the 6th has been sitting on the shelf for a long time now and I have no great desire to finish it. Get them first 4 read though, if only to hear the thoughts on them.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Just wrapped up Dune Messiah a moment ago. Were there not others to come, I feel like I'd already go back to the beginning of the first again and read through the lens of all that the second has already added. Instead, tomorrow I'll start into Children of Dune. Intrigued to see where it goes. Funnily enough, Dune Messiah was very close in atmosphere to Jodorowsky's comic book universes.

[Pedrito]

Just wrapped up Dune Messiah a moment ago. Were there not others to come, I feel like I'd already go back to the beginning of the first again and read through the lens of all that the second has already added. Instead, tomorrow I'll start into Children of Dune. Intrigued to see where it goes. Funnily enough, Dune Messiah was very close in atmosphere to Jodorowsky's comic book universes.

How odd you should say that. I had the exact same reaction for some reason i.e. to go back in exactly that  manner and read the first book again through the lens of Msssiah. Trippy wee book for some reason.

[Eoin McLove]

 

Had a feeling that would happen. I can imagine that he's brilliant when he's almost constricted by the comic book format. It needs to be tight and controlled to a degree. Even when he was talking about Jerusalem I got the sense that he was more concerned with the length of the book than anything else. Who knows maybe it will take a turn for the better!

As for Dune above(@blackshep/asfygl) I'm just looking at my copies of the books here and that whole first book through to book 4 is so interesting, odd and frustrating at times, but ultimately rewarding. The 5th one I completed and maybe I was Dune'd out but the 6th has been sitting on the shelf for a long time now and I have no great desire to finish it. Get them first 4 read though, if only to hear the thoughts on them.

Big time. It's feeling like epic word count rather than epic at the minute.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Just wrapped up Dune Messiah a moment ago. Were there not others to come, I feel like I'd already go back to the beginning of the first again and read through the lens of all that the second has already added. Instead, tomorrow I'll start into Children of Dune. Intrigued to see where it goes. Funnily enough, Dune Messiah was very close in atmosphere to Jodorowsky's comic book universes.

How odd you should say that. I had the exact same reaction for some reason i.e. to go back in exactly that  manner and read the first book again through the lens of Msssiah. Trippy wee book for some reason.

It's such a throw off at the beginning because, for 50 pages or so, it feels like he's just completely changed the nature of his whole universe between the last page of Dune and the first of Dune Messiah. But gradually and very subtly, it all comes together, and where Dune portrayed a more or less Manichaean universe, it's like Messiah is then dedicated to filling in all the shading between "good and evil", exploding the richness of the universe you now know the first book was also unfolding in, even though with the relatively naïve eyes Herbert let us look at it through, this richness couldn't yet be discerned. And given how rich that initial Dune universe already feels when first discovered, this augmentation is fairly impressive. I closed the book on the Epilogue with a genuine "Wow!"