Dharmakirti’s Comments (group member since Sep 19, 2012)

Dharmakirti’s comments from the Completists' Club group.

Earlier this year, I read my first Dostoyevsky novel and was talking with a coworker who told me that if I liked Dostoyevsky, I should read Gogol. So, now I have Dead Souls on my To Read list.

Wow, I can't believe I forgot that I read The Prague Cemetery. I did like it, a lot. I thought Eco did himself a lot of favors by slimming things down (I seem to recall the novel being shorter than others) and tightening up the narrative a bit. I did find the novel darkly humorous, but I didn't find it as powerful as The Name of the Rose or Foucault's Pendulum.

Since Eco's academic background is in semiotics, I assume that is what informs much of his work. But that is just my guess based on the couple novels I'v read and the authors bio.

Kathy wrote: "I just started re-reading The Name of the Rose. It is a bit like Dan Brown on steroids! I love the history and intrigue of this story."

Have you read Foucault's Pendulum? Best novel dealing with secret societies I've read.

I own each of the above novels, however, I've only managed to read The Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum (which is one of my all time favorites).

The Familiar Volume One came out this past week. I'm a few chapters in, and so far, I really like it. Once again, he uses various fonts to identify different characters and plays around with page layouts; I haven't had to turn the book upside down, yet, but I've had to turn it sideways. I love the way he uses the page, it really engages me.

Based on a couple articles I've read, the author has already written the first 10 volumes in the series and we can expect two to three volumes a year. Volume two is supposed to be published later this year.

Here is a little musical ode to Ms. Highsmith (and her snails).

Song: Snails and Lasers For Patricia Highsmith
Artist: Matmos
Album: The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn_aS...

In 2015, I plan on making progress on being a Thomas Mann completist by reading Doctor Faustus and make progress on being a Pynchon completist by reading Bleeding Edge.

Earlier this year I read The Journey to the West Volume 1 (revised edition) translated by Anthony C. Wu. I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading the remaining three volumes.

After I complete The Journey to the West, the next classic Chinese novel I want to read is Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to start White Noise tonight.

I finished Gravity's Rainbow the other day. What an experience that was!

I did get about 300 pages in to Against the Day and I thought it was pretty interesting. I really liked the Chums of Chance. But, as so often happens with me, some other book distracted me and I set Against the Day aside and just never got back to it.

I have White Noise and Underworld sitting on my shelf at home. Any suggestions as to which one I should read first?

The only David Mitchell book I've read so far is Cloud Atlas. I greatly enjoyed it and do plan on checking out some of his other stuff. The next Mitchell book I plan on reading is Ghostwritten.

Geoff wrote: "then there's the weirdo jazz and noise stuff, which I won't bother going into"


Please do, I'm interested in what you consider to be weirdo jazz and noise...are you talking about artists like Fred Frith? Merzbow?

And now that I'm thinking about jazz, I will mention that I'm working on collecting all of Matthew Shipp's output. So far, my favorite is his double disc "Art of the Improviser." I also love his work with David S. Ware, especially the albums Surrendered and Wisdom of Uncertainty.

Wow...I didn't realize how prolific Ursula Le Guin is.

As a big fan of genre fiction, I must say I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I've never read any of her work.

Mike wrote: "You'll find TSD much less 'demanding' than 2666--nowhere else in RB's works is there anything quite like The Part about the Crimes."

The Part About the Crimes is the reason I was attracted to 2666 and as heavy as it was, it was my favorite part of 2666.

I discovered 2666 while I was listening to the track Juarez by Tori Amos (from her album To Venus and Back) and I decided to do a google search to see if there were any novels that dealt with the homicides in Ciudad Juárez. I was glad I discovered the novel and the writer.

I've only read 2666 and I very much enjoyed it. I have The Savage Detectives sitting on my shelf. I will get to it some day.

R. Scott Bakker is a Canadian writer with literary ambitions and believes genre is the place where those ambitions can most likely be achieved. His idea is that literature is about challenging and provoking an audience...that literature DOES something. His critique against literary culture is that it no longer does anything excpet ape what has come before. Literary writers are not producing literary effects but only producing entertainment for the educated. See for example his review of DFW's Infinite Jest: Alas Poor Wallace: A Review of Infinite Jest

Most of his output is in the form of epic fantasy, but he's also written a sci-fi suspense/thriller and a detective novel. All of his work deals with the nature of consciousness and belief. He ranks up near the top of my list of favorite writers (acutally, right now, he might be at the top of that list).

He has published 5 (of a planned 8 or 9) novels in his ongoing Second Apocalypse series wich is broken out into 3 separate collection, The Prince of Nothing, The Aspect Emperor and an unamed third collection.

The Prince of Nothing series consists of:
The Darkness That Comes Before
The Warrior Prophet
The Thousandfold Thought

The Aspect Emperor series consists of:
The Judging Eye
White Luck Warrior

Other works:
Neuropath
Disciple of the Dog


His blog:
R. Scott Bakker's blog, Three Pound Brain (http://rsbakker.wordpress.com/) has a number of essays, a couple of short stories and even the serially posted novel Light Time and Gravity. His blog mainly contains his musings on philosophy and literary culture, the most important is probably his paper explaining his theory of consiciousness called: The Last Magic Show: A Blind Brain Theory of the Appearance of Consciousness.

A couple of artists I would really love to have the complete works of:

Tori Amos - I have all the major albums and box sets (official bootlegs and the Piano collection), but I don't have Y Kant Tori Read and am missing a number of singles from the early days.

Diamanda Galás - She's one of my all time favorites. As far as I know, I have most of her solo catalog, I am missing her out of print self-titled release from 1984 that contains the tracks Panopticon and Songs From the Blood of Those Murdered.
She's made guest appearances on a number of albums. The ones I own are: Recoil's Liquid where she provides vocals for the track Strange Hours (which was my first exposure to her), Khan's album No Comprendo where she provides vocals for the track Aman, Erasure's self-titled album where she provides some vocals on the tracks Rock Me Gently and Angel.

I am workin on collecting the recordings of the pianist Martha Argerich. This is something I've only recently started so I have quite a bit of work (and research) to do. I have the first 2 Argerich collections (one is solo piano the other is concertos) put out on Deutsche Grammophon as well her AMAZING recording of Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3 on the DECCA label.

I also have the collection of all nine Beethoven symphonies recorded by the Minnesota Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä and they are FANTASTIC, a must for any Beethoven fan.

The only Pynchon I've managed to get through is The Crying of Lot 49 and it might just be on my top 10 list of favorite novels.