Chris > Recent Status Updates

Yowza - this really picks up quickly. The violence is already startling, and the economy of language is somehow elegant. I picked this up last night before going to bed - it had my heart racing a bit, and I'm still thinking about it.

Thus far? Impressive.

Fuck, this is so fucking bleak and dehumanizing.

"...we is all in the grip of crazy old men thinkin' they can still make history happen. History isn't going to happen anymore, Chuck."

Updike's prose is just so fucking poignant and always relevant.

Updike is toying with a lot of themes here. I'm not super comfortable with where this is going... it feels awfully meandering at the moment. And, erm. Transparently racist? Yeah, that.

Slow reading.

Haven't read any Faulkner for a few years - Sanctuary and Light in August have a lot of my love and admiration, so I'm always happy to return.

Absalom, Absalom has been on my to-read list for a spell. The insight in to Cormac McCarthy's Suttree is very curious - it may demand a re-read soon.

I'm enjoying this so much - it's exactly the heavy distraction I've needed while prepping my house for sale.

Reading tragically slowly lately - prepping to sell my house - but this is such a bizarre, shocking, entertaining little treat.

Fucking Harry Crews - a mad genius with a pen.

I'm really liking this one - PKD was such a gem. Brilliantly critical of government, capitalism, and war - Penultimate Truth is a bit scatterbrained, but poignant and direct.

Okay, so I don't think I was entirely aware of what a literal death slog I was signing up for.

I thought it might get tedious eventually - the endless prattle and rollcall of dead and dying men - but Simmons still has me hooked.

Everything and everyone seems to have hit this Point of Inevitable Doom and Futility, which feels a bit predictable. But that fucking Beast is still out there.

200+ pages to go? Whaaaat???

I might finish this someday now. Fuck's sakes, Mr. Simmons. Brevity!

In a terribly clean, civilized tongue - The Terror is savagely violent. The pacing isn't all that consistent, but - it's Dan Simmons. It's extremely well-crafted, and quite hard to put down.

"People rarely do things for singular reasons. Our motives are clumsily multiple."

I'm really enjoying this, though the permissive "foibles" of the entitled are just fucking distasteful and unpleasant.

I find myself relating to this regularly. But also not at all. It's very well-written, and often very confessional in nature, but it has this certain northern distance and iciness to it.

Quite good thus far.

Thus far - a mostly uncomplicated coming of age story about a privileged boy learning about the depths of his family's dark history.

Harrison is pretty leisurely about getting to the historical elements. David's father is clearly a monster, already, but not much more than that is terribly clear.

The religious elements don't appeal to me in the slightest.

But, it's well written and reads easily - B+ thus far.

Holy shit - that intro makes an impression.

Admittedly, first contact is a looming and persistent theme in sci-fi - but, I feel like Fiasco deeply informed Three Body.

I could be wrong. Even so - conceptually, it feels like Fiasco spiritually inspired Three Body.

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Fiasco has some very dry, slow sections, but then these wild things occur and twenty-thirty pages are suddenly gone. I wish Lem wrote more dialogue. The pacing is just so inconsistent.

I initially started Fiasco earlier this year. But, then my dog died, and seasonal depression and feeling trapped at my job had me in a bit of a spiral.

I think I'm ready to continue. It's already a delight. Lem used such a complex vocabulary, and so effectively - his translators deserve some credit as well - obviously, he's massively inventive...

I've just never read anything like Lem. So stupefyingly unique.

This whole story is just fucking nuts.

I swear, the first 150 pages are a slog of horrifying violence and corruption - and then the pacing catches fire, and the political, judicial, and media hoopla are AT LEAST as nuts as the abbatoir in the first half.

Fuuuuuck.

A rather dry historical accounting thus far - much more focused on the financial boom and the glut of investors than on the sparse details involving the Osage victims and the history of the tribe.

It feels thorough, but in a way that is fairly dry and academic - well-written, objective... but as such, it's also not particularly sympathetic.

Whooooooa.

Swift, stunning, awful turn in the narrative.

I don't think I've ever been so shocked by a twist before. Jeeeezus fucking Christ - Margaret Atwood, ladies and gentlemen - a fucking feminist powerhouse if ever there was one.

This one really suffers from lazy editing, but there are these moments that absolutely floor you...

Such a short, quick novel. So impactful. Really magnificent.

I'm vividly recalling this first chapter, but I don't remember having finished the novel, or when I'd previously picked it up. Um?

So, initial thoughts:

This reads very quickly - pacing is excellent and the plot is quite immersive. Big thumbs up.

It doesn't read - how to say - okay, for whatever intangible reason, the author's voice feels feminine to me. Which is curious, given the author's name being Scott and all.

Then again, the narrator is a woman. I'm fairly impressed at how comfortable the fit is. Kudos, Scott.

Having a tough time committing to books this year. My dog died two weeks ago, and good ol' seasonal depression in balmy Minnesota hasn't been great.

Hoping for better things in the rest of the year.

Bets I would lose 10/10 times: that a guy who wrote about Texas all of his life might lead me to Marcel Proust.

Like, what.

By and large, the absurdity of Texasville has been turned down... though Duane's family still reads like a fucking dramatic garbage fire.

I'm only in my early forties, without an exhaustingly needy wife or a house full of children/grandchildren... and I'm still exhausted much of the time. What I mean is - I find Duane a whole lot more relatable in this novel.

I sort of regret reading Texasville. No regrets here.

McMurtry's writing tends more towards quips and cleverness in Texasville. There's still a lot going on beneath the superficial, but I don't know - it feels pretty static and inconsequential thus far. Affairs aplenty, but just about everyone seems to be nursing some grievance and a little depression of their own.

I miss Sonny. It pains me that Duane is the protagonist of so many of McMurtry's novels.

"You're too old to know what I want... You always were. Not only too old, but blind an' stingy an' contrary... You never thought I wanted more than you was a mind to give, did you?"

I have to say, I feel very differently about the novel's Hud versus the movie's Hud.

Incredible writing. McMurtry was a master.

I am still kind of reeling from how dark everything went for a bit there...

All of this fourth dimension stuff, and the confirmation of dark forest deterrence following that wild star/planet destruction... I have like 300-some pages to go and I have no idea what to expect. Crazy.

Aside from some very slow, dry sections - this series is just bonkers. It really makes me wish I could read faster!

A fairly graceful handling of the inevitable thus far. I've liked the new characters, though one was predictably cringey and awful.

Humankind continues to blunder in these naive, tedious ways - always underestimating Trisolaris.

Liu has some weird/macho takes on wokeness. His writing of women reminds me of PKD/male sci-fi authorship in general - mildly less gross, but still not awesome.

Going to try finishing the series this year.

I'm really puzzled by how Death's End opens, but... patience, I guess? Here we go...