Jason Wardell > Recent Status Updates

“The aim is to use this dialogue to aid in the development of a new genre fandom composed of reader-militants who will think of speculative fiction as part of a larger counter-hegemony.” I am SO on board.

Bolaño, because of course.

If Chandler, or maybe Fitzgerald, wrote The Dunwich Horror. Not in a flattering way. In it for the Steven King blurb at this point, but may bail after the first book.

Needed some nerdery. Just started the second part with some momentum. Hoping to power past the confusion barrier I've heard so much about.

200something. Basically as soon as I got into the flow of part one, part one ended and led to the vastly easier to follow part two. I'm in. Finally, I'm in.

Gasp. Shock. Awe. Coming back around to try to tackle this guy. I read fifteen pages in a row earlier!

I still have a handful of unread Bolaño books, but I've had 2666 on the brain. I've heard this one described as barely-sorted, semi-related miscellanea, and that's really what I would like right now. Diving in!

Ok, I feel like I have an OK chance of finishing this by the new year if I get my ass in gear. I regret the time I spend not reading IJ, if that means anything.

Infinite winter!

Alternately devastating and infuriating, I need to take a break from reading this every 30 pages or so.

So. Much. Summary. Reads like CliffsNotes.

More difficult to follow than Illuminatus!, though some semblance of plot is starting to come together. Just getting to the second "Book One," which is probably an even stranger sentence to read for a person who hasn't read the book than to write as a person who is in the process of reading the book. Shit's complicated.

Ups and downs. The "Call-Me Sandy" essay was excruciating. So was the Story of Stories, but for different reasons. Chuggin' along.

So it continues. I stalled out of Illuminatus! during the denouement, but the rest of it was thoroughly enjoyable. RAW is a funny dude.

100-somethin'. When am I getting back to this awesome book? I'm bad at this reading thing.

100-something. I read this mindfuck of a book maybe a half-dozen times in my teens. Was redirected to Oryx and Crake and then to the dozen free samples and books on the Kindle. Going to finish this properly--and as an adult--before too long.

The problem here is that this book is really damn good. Also that I received a Kindle like two days after starting to read this. I'll get back to it, I swear.

I can see how if you came to this book after a five-year wait, you might be upset about all the side-plots. Having binged for the past two months, I love that this book fills in the edges and spirals the story outward to massively interesting locales like Dorne. I also love anything to do with the Ironborn. This is on track to be my favorite of the series so far.

Delicious. I want to savor each word. I find I've been rereading each page as I go; I am going to be reading this book forever. First impressions: Miéville is like Harlan Ellison--horrific, grueling, unrelenting--but with restraint and patience. Ellison would have crammed this into ten or twenty pages; Miéville makes it last.

Less like Idiocracy, more like Visioneers.

This is like Idiocracy, but not played for laughs. The first part was deeply disturbing, the second completely enthralling.

Rough going but rewarding. I pretty much held my breath through the last 30 pages of the first part.