With regard to GC's anthology, I fully expect that even if the pleasures depicted are dubious, there will be nothing dubious about the writing. But for now, I'll attempt to finish the February MR while on Caltrain to San Francisco.
I looked up what that was -- an introduction to the Episcopal Church through the prism of geek culture -- and this heathen is intrigued enough by the concept that he might give that a look. (To the extent that I had a theology pre-deconstruction, it was thoroughly heretical.)
A few years ago they officially made May The 4th Star Wars Day, as a play on may the Force be with you. There's always big sales on Star Wars merch, the Disney owned cable channels will usually do a marathon of the movies, and we usually get some kind of a big media release, this year's was the last two episodes of the current animated series Maul: Shadow Lord.
I've only read the first three. Does it get better? I enjoyed the first one. I didn't much care for the second or third, so I stopped reading the series.
I also didn't really love the first two or three books, but it does get good in my opinion
I'll read a couple more.
Reading The Pirate’s Ghost, the 62nd Doc Savage novel, from 1938. Not loving this one.
Listening to the audiobook of Colonel Sun, by “Robert Markham” (Kingsley Amis) the first post-Fleming James Bond novel, from 1968 (it would be another dozen years before the Gardner 007s started coming out.
Listening to the audiobook of Colonel Sun, by “Robert Markham” (Kingsley Amis) the first post-Fleming James Bond novel, from 1968 (it would be another dozen years before the Gardner 007s started coming out.
Or not. I came across this while googling one of the other stories in the collection. Lethem talks about the small town the story was set in and where Jackson spent some time, and what led to the story.
Jonathan Lethem on Shirley Jackson
An interesting article on Jackson. Thanks for sharing!
Finished Stars My Destination. Not really sure yet what I think about this book. I'm not sure I would recommend it. There isn't a lot of depth to the main character, and the twist isn't all that exciting. It's pretty middling. Trying to get my head around why JMS liked Bester enough to name character in B5 after him. There has to be something else that Bester wrote that pushed him to do that.
I have added to my TBR two books: Angel Down and Audition. The first one won the Pulitzer for fiction. I have had good luck finding books on this list that I enjoy. The second is a runner up that I have been recommended already, but this pushes it onto my list.
Given how bad the books selected for my book clubs reads have been this year, I need something good.
Started All Sinners Bleed for book club, and it already isn't doing much for me.
I have a couple of chapters left in Parable of the Sower. It's too depressing, and the later part of the book reminds me of the Road. I'll probably hold of on reading Parable of the Talent until I have read some more less depressing books.
I have added to my TBR two books: Angel Down and Audition. The first one won the Pulitzer for fiction. I have had good luck finding books on this list that I enjoy. The second is a runner up that I have been recommended already, but this pushes it onto my list.
Given how bad the books selected for my book clubs reads have been this year, I need something good.
Started All Sinners Bleed for book club, and it already isn't doing much for me.
I have a couple of chapters left in Parable of the Sower. It's too depressing, and the later part of the book reminds me of the Road. I'll probably hold of on reading Parable of the Talent until I have read some more less depressing books.
Very interesting. Thank you. But that hardly negates the possibility that she was stoned (on a recreational pharmaceutical, or even in the sense of people throwing rocks at her) at the time.
And I will freely admit that my stock line about Jackson was strongly influenced by an old Wizard of Id strip, in which the King (as I recall) ducked into a bar to avoid a mob that was throwing rocks at him, and Bung offered him a drink. The punchline was something to the effect of "What the heck: either way, I get stoned."
If you want to read books, where there is a high possibility that the author was on something, check out PKD.
Actually, I never really set out to read fiction that was written under the influence. What's a PKD?
I have no idea why you think that, unless it's just for the sake of the bad pun. If anything, "The Lottery" is a very sober look at some of the ugly realities of human mass behavior.
Philip K. Dick.
Mainly amphetamines, because it controlled his asthma and he wrote late into the night. He only dabbled a little with LSD, and there was probably some pot smoking, but it was mainly, overwhelmingly amphetamines behind his fiction. His characters are into harder, weirder stuff (like Can-D) than he was.
Philip K. Dick's Divine, Amphetamine-Fueled Madness
Philip K. Dick not only wrote stories about androids, but sometimes was afraid he literally was one.
www.alternet.org
Of course it's for the sake of a bad pun. Like that isn't obvious?
What, Can-D? There's also Chew-Z. These are drugs that let people melt their consciousnesses into, effectively, Barbie Dolls as a way to escape reality.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.
The Demolished Man by Bester is all about telepathy and psychic cops. I always assumed that B5 name was a homage to that book, which Hollywood has been talking about making into a movie since the 1970s at least.
I'll check it out.
Thanks.
I read the other book because Stephen King did a horror take on jaunting that was pretty clever.
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