What are you reading?

[TheNotoriousT]

I finally read Alice in Wonderland for the first time after having seen the movie... Although I really like Tim Burton and his screenplay I even preferred the book.

Other than that I recently read almost everything by Markus Werner - highly recommended to all of my german fellows. I especially enjoyed "Bis Bald".

By the way - I just picked up Sexus by H.M., thanks for the suggestion!

Hey P,
you are more than welcome, let me know if you liked it.
T

[feralpartykids]

[Acéphale]

« There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be. »

« There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register of Light…History is an immense liturgical text where iotas and dots are worth no less than the entire verse or chapters, but the importance of one and the other is indeterminable, and profoundly hidden. »

"Léon Bloy possesses a fire that brings to mind the ardour of the prophets - an even greater ardour, I should say. Of course that is easily explained: his fire is nurtured by the dung-heap of modern times."
- Kafka

[tc99m]

The Cigarette Century by Allan Brandt

[galia]

I've been looking for an entry point into Pynchon for a long time now - just something about the guy and his work is taunting me to give it a go and try to crack the mystique...the larger tomes seem too impenetrable, this latest one sounded more straightforward but you're right - there's something very strange about the texture of his words. Even the most casual of sentences come off as more slippery than I'd imagine them being in the hands of any other author I can think of.

My first Pynchon was "V"
I quite liked it and remember a fair bit of it, but admittedly I had a lot of time of my hand at the time. If you have a very busy life at the moment, I think it's not even worth trying, because you will lose the thread of it as you go along
great book otherwise

[Acéphale]

« To know, to understand in the fullest sense, is to plunge into an enlightenment of inanity, a wintry landscape of memory whose substance is all shadows and a profound awareness of the infinite spaces surrounding us on all sides. Within this space we remain suspended only with the aid of strings that quiver with our hopes and our horrors, and which keeps us dangling over the gray void. How is it that we can defend such puppetry, condemning any efforts to strip us of these strings? The reason, one must suppose, is that nothing is more enticing, nothing more vitally idiotic, than our desire to have a name - even if it is the name of a stupid puppet - and to hold on to this name throughout the long ordeal of our lives, as if we could hold on to it forever. If only we could keep those precious strings from growing frayed and tangled, if only we could keep from falling into an empty sky, we might continue to pass ourselves off under our assumed names and perpetuate our puppet's dance throughout all eternity. »

[mrbeuys]

Reading Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner.
Real eye-opener. Becomes a bit repetitive after 140 pages, but those were well worth it.

[Faust]

/\ a very timely read for someone unable to get home because of ash flying in the air.

[mrbeuys]

Good point.
But I will give it another week and this will be home...
Could be worse.

[viv1984viv]

Acephale - care to post an amazon link to that Ligotti book?

Im currently reading Nixonland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixonland

Probably mentioned that last time I posted.

[Acéphale]

long out of print

ebay#1 <------- haha

ebay#2

Acephale - care to post an amazon link to that Ligotti book?

[Mail-Moth]

Alfred Kubin's L'Autre côté (Die andere Seite. Ein phantastischer Roman).



It is rather a succession of small sketches (somewhat in a graphic sense - the author being an illustrator too) than a novel.



Those two illustrations don't have a direct relation with the novel itself, by the way, but they give quite an accurate idea of its atmosphere, where an Empire of dreams - an utopic city built somewhere in Asia by a mysterious figure - slowly decays under the effect of processes that obviously belong to the logic of dreams and nightmares.

And Corsair Sanglot, since I'm at it :

SPELEOLOGIE

Certains spéléologues proposent à des petites filles de les suivre. Les mères s'y opposent. Dans les grottes tout est possible. Même si c'est pour leur montrer des excentriques vipériformes, qui font forcément rire les petites filles, parce qu'ils ressemblent à des sucres d'orge, à des araignées ou à des poupées de bois, sortis des murs et des voûtes. Parfois la mère les accompagne, mais c'est pour dire des bêtises. Aussi les savants préfèrent-ils descendre seuls avec les petites filles dans les profondeurs de la terre.
Ils leur font voir ces mains, issues d'une bougie de pierre fondue, qui s'écoulent lentement du plafond, prêtes à serrer si on les touche, mais qui, cassées, ne font plus peur, le ventre en l'air, bêtes comme des mains humaines.
Elles aiment aussi les bruits, les échos, leurs pas qui se cognent dix fois, s'affaiblissant jusqu'au fond des entrailles en un murmure, comme de la soie déchirée. Un glouglou triste venu d'une salle jamais découverte et qui s'écoule. Parfois des froissements d'ailes d'oiseaux invisibles et d'autres petites filles, qui courent en se bouchant les oreilles, que l'on n'avait pas amenées, pourtant.
Revenus à la surface, les spéléologues reparaissent avec d'autres enfants que celles qu'on leur avait confiées à contre-cœur, des bossues. Il faut voir la tête des mères qui réclament les vraies et se repentent toute leur vie de les avoir laissées partir.

André Frédérique, Histoires blanches.

[Acéphale]

« We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine. However wrong we may go in the dark, whatever our efforts in the dark and the useless work of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance left to itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we ought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion. It is this sentiment that lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, in spite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed to holding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used to occupy. The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so to speak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread. »

[Faust]

[merkuri]

blood meridian