I also like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and 1Q84 — javi2541997
Brilliant! :up:Currently reading and reading soon:
• The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. I've read it every ten years or so since I was a teenager and it seems to get better each time.
• Dancers at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock, another re-read.
• Dune by Frank Herbert. Abandoned it after a few pages a few times for whatever reason, but I've just seen the movie and fancy reading it now.
• The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I read this supposed classic (UKLG called Wolfe "our Melville" because of it) a long time ago and took its uneven narrative and confusing world-building to be clumsy incompetent writing, but I'm going to give it another go.
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Now that I'm the same age as the character, it's time for a re-read.
• Black Spartacus by Sudhir Hazareesingh. So far the only book on Toussaint Louverture I've read is the brilliant classic The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James. — jamalrob
I've never ventured past Titus Groan, so maybe I'll give Peake's trilogy another chance. — 180 Proof
What do you think of Moorcock's Gloriana with its deliberately Gormenghast-like 'mood'? — 180 Proof
Btw, reading Gene Wolfe rewards patience. — 180 Proof
I first read Moorcock back in the late '70s – The Eternal Champion-Silver Warriors duology and Elric stories mostly, later Behold the Man, von Bek stories and "sampled" quite a few other of his novels. I really fell for Moorcock's pulpish weird fantasy (i.e. sword & sorcery), especially Elric and the Multiverse back in the day (which, along with Conan stories and Lord of the Rings-The Silmarillion, lead me to running & designing tabletop roleplaying games through the mid-80s). Foundational stuff for me. Also, Ursula LeGuin, Poul Anderson, "Cthulhu Mythos" stories, Gene Wolfe, Charles Saunders (Imaro) ... Frank Herbert, et al.(I've probably only read his Eternal Champion/Multiverse stories, and less than half of those). What did you think of it? — jamalrob
:up:I definitely recommend the second one, Gormenghast ...
I first read Moorcock back in the late '70s – The Eternal Champion-Silver Warriors duology and Elric stories mostly, later Behold the Man, von Bek stories and "sampled" quite a few other of his novels. I really fell for Moorcock's pulpish weird fantasy (i.e. sword & sorcery), especially Elric and the Multiverse back in the day (which, along with Conan stories and Lord of the Rings-The Silmarillion, lead me to running & designing tabletop roleplaying games through the mid-80s). Foundational stuff for me. — 180 Proof
Ursula LeGuin — 180 Proof
I also want to try those big difficult American classics, Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow. Until now, just as the thought of being stuck in an upper class manners-infested house for a whole book has put me off Jane Austen, so getting bogged down in anything to do with tennis has put me off Infinite Jest. Maybe it's because I myself was a promising tennis athlete for a short time in my adolescence, before throwing it all away. — jamalrob
I definitely recommend the second one, Gormenghast, but the third is non-essential and really not of a piece with the first two. — jamalrob
This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow. — Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
This is the only Pynchon novel I've "withstood" long enough to finish. Enjoyed it though. At the time, I was also reading William Gass' The Tunnel which I very much preferred. Ever read David Markson's "novels"? If not, I highly recommend Wittgenstein's Mistress (and Springer's Progress too). :up:Mason & Dixon, on the other hand, took him something like 25 years to write, to get the language right and the like, it reads beautifully - a total mastery of the English language. But it's also very hard. — Manuel
This is the only Pynchon novel I've "withstood" long enough to finish. Enjoyed it though. At the time, I was also reading William Gass' The Tunnel which I very much preferred. Ever read David Markson's "novels"? If not, I highly recommend Wittgenstein's Mistress (and Springer's Progress too). :up: — 180 Proof
I couldn't finish The Tunnel when I first tried. — Manuel
Neither could I, it went a bit over my head and felt like a chore to get through. I'll try again some other time. — darthbarracuda
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