Looking for one or two especially good Lovecraft stories. Need to impress a chick who likes him.



How's it going?

RUN


been swamped most evenings lately, so slow. here’s to catching up while america grills hotdogs this weekend.

I like Color Out of Space the best. Not really well written, but it has one of the most interesting stories among them, IMO

for a really impressive associated novel try Mind Parasites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind_Parasites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Wilson

BTW, Lovecraft and Woodrow Wilson are real doppelgangers

PDF of all Lovecraft stories https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...98717601,d.cGU

Great choice.

Just restarted Tom Wolfe's (rip) Back to Blood. I started it when it originally came out but got sidetracked. I know some people are down on his novels but I'm a fan of everything he did, fiction and non-fiction.

Woo hoo! Thanks everyone.



If his books weren't so friggin' long, I'd read more. Back to Blood is 720 pages? Can't do it, man. Lemme know how it goes though.

His fiction is far too long. I love his social observations, his attention to detail, his tone, but (with the possible exception of Bonfire) he didn't have the storytelling skills to make their length anything other than prohibitive. Beyond that he always seemed to pick interesting topics at interesting times. That's obviously the journalist in him and I don't think there's any argument that, while I do like all his fiction, he was a far better journalist than he was a novelist.

re: moby’s dick, im loving the kindle this afternoon since there are so many nautical terms and usages of common words plus some archaic stuff as well, it makes for looking up the definitions in a very efficient way. especially good since every paragraph holds a little surprise and chuckle. im not skipping a single thing

I need something to read. Got goddamn nothing right now. Nothing interesting to me anyway. I feel like whenever I’m in a reading rut my impulse is to grab Lovecraft or Dickens or something and burn through it for the twentieth time. Something safe. Which just perpetuates the rut.

Need something new.

you could try a couple of these histories, I recco them pretty highly

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/06...api_taft_p1_i2

https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Mirro...arbara+tuchman

demonyo was just panning this. i think she was great. i also think she’s commonly misread, and especially was, in her day, by censors.



you want different? this one is.

1) not a dude
2) not following the rules
3) not ever repeated
4) smarter and better read that most
5) crazy, probably, but in a great way

now if you wanna gtfo of america for a bit, try this:



why is it different to what you’re accustomed to?

1) written by a chinese-cuban gay
2) who was in france, in the 60s (it is a very 60s book in its cultural references and some theories that inform it, but 60s europe not hippy-america)
3) in the cuban neobaroque style, which owes so much to the spanish golden age, but actually survives decently in english translation
4) and was highly praised by his buddy roland barthes, who did not dish out compliments gratuitously
5) and it’s a wild, rollicking, ecstatic prose

last one (promise)



at the very root of the western canon, and yet, like in academia, where people skip the readings and discuss the criticism instead, nobody reads this anymore, they just pretend.

bloodier and more violent than any pussy-ass tarantino movie, likely an inspiration for the wild bunch, which started it all, this book brings you back to the bronze age where we all come from, when we were guided by the gods but also had the same petty cares we have today. only difference was instead of sending the poors to do their killing for them, the rich manned the front lines and whacked each other to pieces, striving to be excellent in battle.

something out of this world really. not a flash in the pan, reads great after 3000 years.

I was gonna say you don’t have to sell me on Homer, but you’re right. I’ve never actually read The Iliad from start to finish... just talked about it a fuckload in various classes eons ago.
The last one you posted looks interesting.

Not reading yet, but purchased Jurassic Park by Crichton and "Let's Pretend This Never Happened" by Jenny Lawson.

yeah. most people are, as holden caulfield would put it, phonies

did you know that kathy acker studied classics?

she was a very promising scholar by all accounts— all the while working as a stripper and porno actress ha ha ha

anyway there are some hilarious greek hymn parodies in blood & guts in high school

or maybe it’s sappho, or a mishmash of many things

Currently reading The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh.

Obviously many of us are readers, and I've been actively increasing my reading output in 2018.


How many of y'all are writers? Whether creative fiction, essays, journalism, or whatever you fancy?


I have brief stints as creative fiction, meaning i have less than 10 stories I'll be able to discuss since 2005, but am looking into expanding and becoming more active in writing as well.


So I'm curious about others here.

i used to write but i killed myself :(

So you're a literal embodiment of the walking dead? Cool :D