191 replies to this topic

[Christian U]

A giant squid goes missing. Turns out to be a god.

That is an... unusual synopsis. It's about time I read something by Mieville, anyway.

[Simon Jones]

I'm having another attempt at the Big Sleep. I bought it two or three years ago, but struggled through about a third of it before giving up. Saw it the other day while rearranged a bookshelf and thought I'd give it another go, starting last night. Loving it this time. Don't know why, but it's clicking for me in a way that it really didn't the first time.

Let me know what you think. I just started reading it yesterday, despite it sitting in my bookshelf for years. I have read a couple of other Raymond Chandler novels, so I'm not sure why I never got to it. I am seriously enjoying it though.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

That is an... unusual synopsis. It's about time I read something by Mieville, anyway.

I’m a huge China Miéville fan and there’s not a single work of his I wouldn’t recommend with all my heart. His debut novel, King Rat is still a bit rough around the edges, granted, but even so it reads like one of those creepy and punky superhero stories cum horror that came out of Vertigo in the early 90s. And that’s his ‘weakest’ book. But, Christian, as a fellow lover of language and linguistics I urge you to read Embassytown – his Magnum Opus and one of the most fascinating literary mediations on language, communication and the power of stories in any age and genre. It’s brilliant!

[Christian U]

Cheers, Ulf, Embassytown is now officially on the list! I'll have to try and find a chance to move it up a few spots, though, or it'll be years before I get to it...

Just finished Falling Man, which I had to read for work. Good novel dealing with 9/11 as a personal trauma, but a disastrous choice for pupils in ESL classes. Tsk.

I've also started reading Altered Carbon, on somebody's recommendation (Jonny, maybe?).

[Paul F]

I’m a huge China Miéville fan and there’s not a single work of his I wouldn’t recommend with all my heart. His debut novel, King Rat is still a bit rough around the edges, granted, but even so it reads like one of those creepy and punky superhero stories cum horror that came out of Vertigo in the early 90s. And that’s his ‘weakest’ book. But, Christian, as a fellow lover of language and linguistics I urge you to read Embassytown – his Magnum Opus and one of the most fascinating literary mediations on language, communication and the power of stories in any age and genre. It’s brilliant!

I wasn't a fan of Iron Council, but I love most of the rest of his books. I need to re-read Perdido Street Station. I'm looking forward to his run on Dial H too.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

I'm looking forward to his run on Dial H too.

Me too! Still a bit bummed that his run on Swamp Thing didn’t happen, though.

[Adam Wednesdays]

I’m a huge China Miéville fan and there’s not a single work of his I wouldn’t recommend with all my heart. His debut novel, King Rat is still a bit rough around the edges, granted, but even so it reads like one of those creepy and punky superhero stories cum horror that came out of Vertigo in the early 90s. And that’s his ‘weakest’ book. But, Christian, as a fellow lover of language and linguistics I urge you to read Embassytown – his Magnum Opus and one of the most fascinating literary mediations on language, communication and the power of stories in any age and genre. It’s brilliant!

Hmmm... I think I know what I'll be reading next.

[Johnny Henning]

Rereading THE DEAD ZONE which may be my favorite Stephen King novel. It's really just amazing how good a writer he is. Reading it now after all these years, I realize that King is not really that focused on the supernatural or paranormal in the sense it is understood today. He's writing horror, but really what he's writing about is the evil at its core. The horror emerges from the evil and his sense of evil, its very real effects and how it deforms the world, is at the heart of the supernatural in his novels. Not that the supernatural is solely evil in his stories obviously. Johnny Smith's and Danny Torrance's ESP obviously doesn't do them any favors, but it doesn't make them evil, No, in King's world, there is a human and inhuman evil that stains everything and the supernatural can be both a manifestation of that evil or some alien force confronting it.

In the meantime, King manages to capture all the little details of history and life that brings characters alive and sets them in a fully formed world. Honestly, I don't know how he does it, but it's hard to overestimate how well he can tell a story - at least at that period of his writing.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

Rereading THE DEAD ZONE which may be my favorite Stephen King novel. It's really just amazing how good a writer he is. Reading it now after all these years, I realize that King is not really that focused on the supernatural or paranormal in the sense it is understood today. He's writing horror, but really what he's writing about is the evil at its core. The horror emerges from the evil and his sense of evil, its very real effects and how it deforms the world, is at the heart of the supernatural in his novels. Not that the supernatural is solely evil in his stories obviously. Johnny Smith's and Danny Torrance's ESP obviously doesn't do them any favors, but it doesn't make them evil, No, in King's world, there is a human and inhuman evil that stains everything and the supernatural can be both a manifestation of that evil or some alien force confronting it.

In the meantime, King manages to capture all the little details of history and life that brings characters alive and sets them in a fully formed world. Honestly, I don't know how he does it, but it's hard to overestimate how well he can tell a story - at least at that period of his writing.

I reread The Dead Zone around Christmas time and, like you, I think it holds up surprisingly well. Evil, in King’s work, is always consumptive and transformative, as opposed to, say, Clive Barker whose polymorphically perverse monsters often are the real heroes of his stories and true evil is manifested in the fascistic adherence to the status quo. Malleability and mutation are terrible things in King’s world, whereas Barker embraces the outlandish and freaky as something to sing hymns unto.

That said, while I think Barker is the more masterful thinker and philosopher King is the better storyteller.

[Johnny Henning]

Yeah, oddly, King's heroes are outsiders as well, and in the case of Johnny "freaks", but not because they embrace the macabre or grotesque but because their talents set them against the banality of the evil that eventually manifests.

It's odd to think about it, but it seems like most of King's protagonists are psychic, right? CARRIE, THE SHINING, IT, FIRESTARTER, DREAMCATCHER -- even THE STAND in part. I wonder what he thinks of ESP in real life.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

Maybe King is a mind over matter kind of guy, a quasi-spiritualist escapist so to speak, whereas Barker embraces the liberating elements of, as he put it in an interview published in the highly recommended Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden , being caught between angel and beast. Flesh = mind = good...?

[brucegray666]

Trying to rectify the shocking lack of written word I've read recently. Easing myself back into it with some non fiction and Mark Kermode's The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex: What's Wrong With Modern Movies? Entertaining read and Kermode writes both passionately and knowledgeably about the subject matter. I also get the sense he doesn't rate Michael Bay all that highly...