There is no such thing as a moral or immoral [book] thread

Straightzi · September 2018

Books are well written, or badly written.

That is all.

tynic · September 2018

There's an excerpt of Michael Lewis' next book in the guardian today, on the Trump transition. I find myself wanting to buy it not to read about the central subject (which is exactly as stupid, ill-considered and corrupt as you might expect), but to learn more about this guy

By the autumn of 2016, Stier might have been the American with the greatest understanding of how the US government worked. [...] Every year the Sammies – as Stier called them, in honour of his original patron – attracted a few more celebrities and a bit more media attention. And every year, the list of achievements was mind-blowing. A guy in the energy department (Frazer Lockhart) organised the first successful cleanup of a nuclear weapons factory, in Rocky Flats, Colorado, and had brought it in 60 years early and $30bn under budget. A woman at the Federal Trade Commission (Eileen Harrington) had built the Do Not Call Registry, which spared the entire country from trillions of irritating sales pitches. A National Institutes of Health researcher (Steven Rosenberg) had pioneered immunotherapy, which had successfully treated previously incurable cancers. There were hundreds of fantastically important success stories in the US government. They just never got told.

Stier knew an astonishing number of them. He had detected a pattern: a surprising number of the people responsible for them were first-generation Americans who had come from places without well-functioning governments. People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.

That was maybe Stier’s biggest challenge: explaining the value of this enterprise at the centre of a democratic society to people who either took it for granted or imagined it as a pernicious force in their lives over which they had no control.

He managed to initiate processes to get the US government handover to finally be less of a complete clusterfuck - right before the 2016 election. Which had to be a facepalm moment
Write a book about him, please.

Grey Ghost · September 2018

Books? Dangerous things, you ask me

3cl1ps3 · September 2018

My grandpa read a book once. Never was quite the same afterwards.

Straightzi · September 2018

3clipse wrote: »

My grandpa read a book once. Never was quite the same afterwards.

Maybe he shouldn't have started with The King in Yellow

Straightzi · September 2018

By the way I've been rereading Chambers' King in Yellow stories for Halloween prep and they're still very good

It's a shame that they so frequently get lumped in to the Lovecraft Literary Universe because I honestly think they might be stronger than a lot of Lovecraft's stuff

Forever Zefiro · September 2018

Peen wrote:

Good day for new books, I just requested the new Richard K Morgan book and The Monster Beru Cormorant from the pre-pub people, hopefully I get both.

Also I'm a little ways into Kings of the Wyld and it is indeed pretty good, thanks for the recommendation thread

Huh, didn't know Richard Morgan had a new book coming out. I'm interested, but Altered Carbon was the only Kovacs book I really enjoyed. The other two were ok, and the sex scenes were super cringey to me

Still, reading the premise for this Thin Air has more of an Altered Carbon feel. I wonder if it's in the same universe ?

Grey Ghost · September 2018

I forgot that a good chunk of Dracula towards the end kind of becomes a detective story. Like they're all over town bribing and investigating and tracking down Dracula's lairs in the city

I like the methodical approach and it's a refreshing change from the last few couple decades where the best way to kill vampires is to run in and... swordfight them or something

Munkus Beaver · September 2018

That reminds me, when did it go from “just stab the asshole in the heart” to “stake in the heart” to kill Dracula?

Because IIRC they just use blades and guns to finally kill Dracula in the original book

3cl1ps3 · September 2018

I want to say the stakes are an Anne Rice thing?

Straightzi · September 2018

What's that you say?

It's time for me to link my favorite Wikipedia page of all time again?

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

Grey Ghost · September 2018

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

That reminds me, when did it go from “just stab the asshole in the heart” to “stake in the heart” to kill Dracula?

Because IIRC they just use blades and guns to finally kill Dracula in the original book

I think the wooden stake is from European folklore, and it is preferred to be a certain kind of wood?

In the book they stake Lucy along with cutting her head off, but Dracula gets a slashed throat and a Bowie knife in the heart and that does for him pretty well

So to answer your question I don't know for sure!

Bloods End · September 2018

Reading the sound and the fury.
The first chapter is a heck of a thing to get though. This is the first time I've succeeded

Straightzi · September 2018

Wooden stakes are a very old vampire thing - they're common to European and American folklore, and they were used in the Abhartach story (technically it's a sword made of yew there, but that's semantics), which is a significant basis for Bram Stoker. And in Dracula, stakes are used - just not for Count Dracula himself. Lucy is staked after she turns into a vampire (and then beheaded and has her mouth filled with garlic to prevent her from rising again). But then Dracula himself is stabbed in the heart with Quincey's Bowie knife, which might have had a wood handle at best, but certainly wasn't all wood.

Munkus Beaver · September 2018

Straightzi wrote: »

What's that you say?

It's time for me to link my favorite Wikipedia page of all time again?

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

Neat.

Thanks, Straightzi.

Grey Ghost · September 2018

God that fucking table

Grey Ghost · September 2018

Also Dracula himself helps the movers haul his giant boxes of grave dirt into his London hideouts and I just love that image
Man's not afraid to roll his sleeves up and get his hands dirty

Munkus Beaver · September 2018

Straightzi wrote: »

Wooden stakes are a very old vampire thing - they're common to European and American folklore, and they were used in the Abhartach story (technically it's a sword made of yew there, but that's semantics), which is a significant basis for Bram Stoker. And in Dracula, stakes are used - just not for Count Dracula himself. Lucy is staked after she turns into a vampire (and then beheaded and has her mouth filled with garlic to prevent her from rising again). But then Dracula himself is stabbed in the heart with Quincey's Bowie knife, which might have had a wood handle at best, but certainly wasn't all wood.

Abhartach story?

Forever Zefiro · September 2018

Grey Ghost wrote: »

God that fucking table

Count Chocula (1971)
Attractiveness/Other: Cartoon person
When dead: Chocolate cereal dust

Grey Ghost · September 2018

Abhartach is a figure in Irish folklore, a dwarf chieftain and magician who was killed by a neighboring chieftain but kept rising from his grave to terrorize and drink the blood of his former subjects

Some scholars think there's more of him in Dracula than there is of Vlad Tepes

Straightzi · September 2018

Munkus Beaver wrote: »

Straightzi wrote: »

Wooden stakes are a very old vampire thing - they're common to European and American folklore, and they were used in the Abhartach story (technically it's a sword made of yew there, but that's semantics), which is a significant basis for Bram Stoker. And in Dracula, stakes are used - just not for Count Dracula himself. Lucy is staked after she turns into a vampire (and then beheaded and has her mouth filled with garlic to prevent her from rising again). But then Dracula himself is stabbed in the heart with Quincey's Bowie knife, which might have had a wood handle at best, but certainly wasn't all wood.

Abhartach story?

Irish folklore.

Abhartach was a tyrannical Irish warlord who was feared for his magical powers. His people despised him, so they called upon the chieftain of a neighboring kingdom to depose him, which he promptly did. Abhartach was buried standing up, as was the custom for a man of his station, but he rose from the grave and demanded that his people supply them with their blood to restore his energy. The heroic chieftain came back and slew him again, but again he came out of his grave, hungrier for blood than the last time. Finally the chieftain consulted with a local druid (or christian saint, depending on your version), who told him that the only way to kill Abhartach was to stab him with a sword carved of yew and bury him upside down, with a large boulder set atop the grave to prevent him from rising ever again.

The grave stands to this day:

That's a version from memory, so I might have missed some small details. It's considered by some to be one of the inspirations for Dracula, as it's a story that Stoker would have been familiar with - the Eastern European stuff have been added on for exotic flavor.

Brovid Hasselsmof · September 2018

This bumblebee book is amazing. It has so much joy and sadness. It's putting a strain on my heart.

Grey Ghost · September 2018

I should just let Straightzi handle these explanations, because I'm getting them in faster but he's doing it better

Edit: wait no

Grey Ghost · September 2018

I was not familiar with Karl Ove Knausgaard before seeing some press about his latest book and the furor it's caused, and just looking him up I'm a little confused as to why anyone cared about or paid attention to this random dude writing about his boring life, much less half a dozen times

Iolo · September 2018

tynic wrote: »

There's an excerpt of Michael Lewis' next book in the guardian today, on the Trump transition. I find myself wanting to buy it not to read about the central subject (which is exactly as stupid, ill-considered and corrupt as you might expect), but to learn more about this guy

By the autumn of 2016, Stier might have been the American with the greatest understanding of how the US government worked. [...] Every year the Sammies – as Stier called them, in honour of his original patron – attracted a few more celebrities and a bit more media attention. And every year, the list of achievements was mind-blowing. A guy in the energy department (Frazer Lockhart) organised the first successful cleanup of a nuclear weapons factory, in Rocky Flats, Colorado, and had brought it in 60 years early and $30bn under budget. A woman at the Federal Trade Commission (Eileen Harrington) had built the Do Not Call Registry, which spared the entire country from trillions of irritating sales pitches. A National Institutes of Health researcher (Steven Rosenberg) had pioneered immunotherapy, which had successfully treated previously incurable cancers. There were hundreds of fantastically important success stories in the US government. They just never got told.

Stier knew an astonishing number of them. He had detected a pattern: a surprising number of the people responsible for them were first-generation Americans who had come from places without well-functioning governments. People who had lived without government were more likely to find meaning in it. On the other hand, people who had never experienced a collapsed state were slow to appreciate a state that had not yet collapsed.

That was maybe Stier’s biggest challenge: explaining the value of this enterprise at the centre of a democratic society to people who either took it for granted or imagined it as a pernicious force in their lives over which they had no control.

He managed to initiate processes to get the US government handover to finally be less of a complete clusterfuck - right before the 2016 election. Which had to be a facepalm moment
Write a book about him, please.

Oh is this book almost out! Excellent. I've been increasingly impressed with each subsequent Michael Lewis book and the innards of US government is a topic near and dear to my heart. Definitely picking this up.

Is this Max Stier we're talking about? He's pretty great. He runs the Partnership for Public Service which is a nonpartisan organization that aims to help the US government run better.

Colbert did a great bit with him talking about federal vacancies, which Colbert then went on to try to fill by recruiting people off the street.

tynic · September 2018

Yep! It's worth tracking down the article if you want to read more about Stier, but tbh unless there's a LOT more about him in the book I don't think I'll get it, even though I like Lewis. Watching a train wreck in real time is bad enough without wading hip-deep into what's going on in the engine room.

Grislo · September 2018

Grey Ghost wrote: »

I forgot that a good chunk of Dracula towards the end kind of becomes a detective story. Like they're all over town bribing and investigating and tracking down Dracula's lairs in the city

I like the methodical approach and it's a refreshing change from the last few couple decades where the best way to kill vampires is to run in and... swordfight them or something

Interestingly (possibly?), Stoker very much borrowed from established genres and books to write Dracula. It is rife with fairy tale references, for example, to the point that it almost seems that he didn't quite know how to actually write within a late-to-the-party gothic genre. Which isn't a bad thing, but he definitely went to a lot of interesting places for inspiration, so the idea that you can spot a lot of genre/mood changes in the novel is not strange at all.

And yeah, while Stoker is responsible for a lot of modern vampire lore, Dracula is stabbed with a knife, and can walk around in sunlight (with a minimal amount of sparkling).

Straightzi · October 2018

So this is a neat thing:

Original, Handwritten Manuscripts of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'

Short version is that SP Books is publishing a reproduction of Wilde's original manuscripts, which includes all of the bits that he crossed out or amended, at least some of which relates to the specific nature of some of the relationships that Dorian pursued. Things like Basil saying that he loved Dorian, as opposed to worshiped him (as he says in the published version). It's expensive, so it's definitely fitting into more of a collector's item than something for the casual reader, but it's very interesting and if anyone wants to buy me a copy I most certainly won't say no.

Edit: Unfortunately, because this is the very first edition, the preface is not included, so I can't replace the OP of this thread with a picture of it in Oscar Wilde's gorgeous handwriting.

Forever Zefiro · October 2018

That is really awesome and also I can barely decipher that manuscript so that would be awful to actually try reading

tynic · October 2018

Oh, I read Daisy Johnson's Fen just recently.
If you're into very bleak bog-centric magic realism that's mostly about mud, the loss of virginity, teen pregnancy, casual violence, and falling in love with houses or fish, can highly recommend.

If you're not in the mood for any of that then it's probably not gonna be much fun, but the language is great and she plays quite a lot with story structure, which is interesting.

hatedinamerica · October 2018

In lieu of finishing other books or reading new ones I have started listening to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet for the second time this year.

The new one comes to Audible soon, but I already read the paperback when it came out, so I wanted to just run through the whole thing again on Audible because why not.

Anyway i love this damn book. The audio version especially is really great. The narrator does a really good job with all the characters.

Started this morning and just met Pepper.

I had completely forgotten how much of her backstory is actually in this book. She pretty much lays it all out. The broad strokes at least. I wonder how much of ACaCO was planned when she wrote this? It definitely seems to allude to her fondness for ships and A.I.

ph blake · October 2018

I'm reading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.

This book is a fucking trip, holy shit.

Bloods End · October 2018

Finishes sound and the fury.
Geezer this family is fucked

tynic · October 2018

Reading Tove Jansson's The Summer Book, to continue a theme of sorts (ie, bleak, watery, and european)

though to be fair her books aren't fundamentally bleak, they're more ... baldly and unabashedly unsentimental about childhood and change and death, even though they're technically kids books. Which can come off as bleak in the wrong light.

I do love Tove Jansson.

Eddy · October 2018

I was trying to comment on this NYT article about Deborah Eisenberg, a remarkable short story writer who I studied and met (along with her boytoy Wallace Shawn!!!) in college and the comments section was closed because people were just making fun of her scoliosis or some shit

god I hate human beings

Brovid Hasselsmof · October 2018

Finished The Bumblebee Flies Anyway by Kate Bradbury, thought it was fantastic. It is totally full of joy and pain. I wish I could make everyone read it. I wish it would make everyone care.

Iolo · October 2018

Brovid Hasselsmof wrote: »

Finished The Bumblebee Flies Anyway by Kate Bradbury. I thought it was a fantastic book. It is totally full of joy and pain. I wish I could make everyone read it. I wish it would make everyone care.

I gave a copy to my Mom for her birthday based on your recommendation. It sounds like her cup of tea.

Brovid Hasselsmof · October 2018

Have now started on Nemesis Games. Only a few chapters in so far but it seems to be exactly what I wanted after Cibola Burn.

Very glad to finally get POV chapters from the rest of the Roci crew.

Iolo · October 2018

Annie Dillard is the best. It can be tiring reading her, though. She keeps flipping tables in the locker room of my mind.

3cl1ps3 · October 2018

I dunno if anyone else in here has been reading the Murderbot Diaries, but the final one (well, of the planned ones for now), Exit Strategy, came out yesterday and is very good.

Forever Zefiro · October 2018

I'm sold based on the series name alone

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