Frank de Kock > Recent Status Updates

Picked this up after a random Booktube livestream and oh man… I started reading last night and it kept me up way, way past my bedtime. How is he not more well known?! Every story so far has been incredible, and apparently all his books are out of print and insanely expensive secondhand. His short story “Sticks” might just be the scariest thing I’ve ever read.

For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it..

For a moment Jack felt the strongest inclination to snatch up his little gilt chair and beat the white-faced man down with it..

Stanley must have made that mark in blood on the bathroom wall --his final impression on the world -- as he lost conciousness. It seemed to cry out to her: IT
Another drop fell into the tub.
Plink.

"He made holes in my eyes and said after he did it, he saw my soul rush out. Then he put these over my eyes to keep my life trapped inside." As he speaks, Jim touches the smiley-face buttons. "He wants to see how long I can live without a soul inside me."

This is my 4th Murakami book. He is my fever dream comfort read. Let's see if it can topple "Kafka on the Shore", that still remains my favorite.

“Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17

"When you learn another tongue, you learn the way another people see the world, the universe". - Samuel R. Delany

Concentration City
Ballard at his bleak, claustrophobic best. A city that stretches forever, no sky, no escape, just endless expansion and compression at once. Like Kafka in a brutalist maze. Time loops, space lies, and freedom is a rumor. Mind still spinning!