Cipheron on 10/12/2023 at 13:30
Nice thread.
I'll give a big shout-out for the Grailquest books. These have really nice writing if you like the English satire style of comedy. There are only a few of these so they're definitely something I would collect before considering getting any of the Fighting Fantasy books again. If you like authors such as Tom Sharpe or Terry Pratchett, these have that general style of humor to them.
A little while ago I bought a full set of Steve Jackson's Sorcery books, and plan to immerse myself in that when I have time. However I had some housing issues and have most of my stuff in storage now, so that's going to wait a while.
Another little oddity I acquired is "You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat". It's an entire gamebook written by Harry Harrison in the Stainless Steel rat universe. While The Stainless Steel Rat is a really great series of novels, this book is more of a curio than anything.
I also picked up one CYOA book from my childhood - CYOA The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I was never very good as systematically going through those as a kid, and got diverted by the Fighting Fantasy series pretty soon after that, so now I got that and was able to keep track and see all the endings. There are one or two more that I had as a kid and never spent the time to actually solve, so I'll probably pick those up to scratch that itch.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 08:57
Let's just make this a "what you've been reading" thread. :)
I've almost finished
A Tale of Two Cities, which I remembered enjoying in high school. It holds up. I realized I rarely see flights of fancy in modern texts, like when Dickens will break from the narrative in the middle of a scene to describe mob rule for two pages in (deservedly) bombastic terms.
Prior to that it was
Tarzan of the Apes, which was deeply racist. The only Black characters are cannibals, and while these are Tarzan's only human contact for years, the book describes Tarzan instinctively recognizing his innate superiority to them. But you can't read much century-old literature without being able to forgive its mindset, and the overall story is solid. Funnily, the final fifth of the book is
My Fair Lady but with a muscular dude. The series goes on for like two dozen more books, with such entries as
Tarzan and the Ant People and
Tarzan at the Earth's Core, so it looks like the series wandered a bit from its original vision.
Then it was, um,
Shadowrun: Shadowplay. What can I say, I like the setting, a mashup of cyberpunk and urban fantasy.
Quote Posted by Cipheron
Another little oddity I acquired is
"You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat". It's an entire gamebook written by Harry Harrison in the Stainless Steel rat universe. While The Stainless Steel Rat is a really great series of novels, this book is more of a curio than anything.
is a book which I have fond memories of reading, and yet have no memories whatsoever of its actual contents. Maybe it's worth a reread.
Sulphur on 16/12/2023 at 09:38
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Let's just make this a "what you've been reading" thread. :)
(
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126953) We have that, actually.
I haven't read any Chuck Dickens in a while, I should revisit. Wait, I haven't read much of anything in a while, apart from snatches of Anne Carson from time to time because she's the most incredible modern poet I've ever read - her work is deeply funny, sharp, weird, beautiful, and almost every page of verse reaches into a deep emotional core and brings something naked, molten and sizzling into the light that lays bare what being human feels like.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 10:12
I'll leave the thread necromancy to others. Anyway, walking to and from campus has done wonders for my reading, and I'm back up to a book every week or two. So I'll have something to post here (or there) regularly, should I be active on TTLG at that moment.
Do you have a favorite Carson verse to share? Becoming acquainted an unfamiliar poet's work is harder than doing the same for an unfamiliar novelist.
Sulphur on 16/12/2023 at 10:48
Carson's an experimentalist, so her verse is prose and vice-versa. Generally you'll need context - as for example, Autobiography of Red, the thing I hold up as one of her very best, is a refashioning of the tale of Geryon, the red demon that Hercules slew on one of his trials, into a love story between them. But also, it's inspired by the surviving fragments of the poem Geryoneis by Greek poet Stesichoros, and owes some of its stylistic heft to the way he used adjectives. There's an introduction to all of that in the book, of course.
Anyway, keeping that in mind, I think there's always something new and memorable in each page, but a few (out of many) that always stood out to me upon reading:
'Something black and heavy dropped
between them like a smell of velvet.
Herakles switched on the ignition and they jumped forward onto the back of the night.
Not touching
but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.'
--
'Geryon was amazed at himself. He saw Herakles just about every day now.
The instant of nature
forming between them drained every drop from the walls of his life
leaving behind just ghosts
rustling like an old map. He had nothing to say to anyone. He felt loose and shiny.
He burned in the presence of his mother.
I hardly know you anymore, she said leaning at the doorway of his room.
It had rained suddenly at suppertime,
now sunset was startling drops at the window. Stale peace of old bedtimes
filled the room. Love does not
make me gentle or kind, thought Geryon as he and his mother eyed each other
from opposite shores of the light.'
PigLick on 16/12/2023 at 11:11
I'm reading Appendix N, a collection of short stories from the "infamous" appendix n of the 1st edition AD+D Dungeon Masters Guide, where Gary Gygax lists his reading influences that inspired d+d.
It has great production, the inside covers are a dungeon map just like the original modules. Hits me right in my 80s nerd feels.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 17:29
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Carson's an experimentalist, so her verse is prose and vice-versa. Generally you'll need context - as for example, Autobiography of Red, the thing I hold up as one of her very best, is a refashioning of the tale of Geryon, the red demon that Hercules slew on one of his trials, into a love story between them. But also, it's inspired by the surviving fragments of the poem
Geryoneis by Greek poet Stesichoros, and owes some of its stylistic heft to the way he used adjectives. There's an introduction to all of that in the book, of course.
Neat, I'm often up for some
monsterfucking. I'm not sure mixing prose and verse counts as experimental anymore though, as that's been popular for more than century, since somewhere around Eliot.
Quote Posted by PigLick
I'm reading Appendix N, a collection of short stories from the "infamous" appendix n of the 1st edition AD+D Dungeon Masters Guide, where Gary Gygax lists his reading influences that inspired d+d.
It has great production, the inside covers are a dungeon map just like the original modules. Hits me right in my 80s nerd feels.
Oh neat, I have that edition! I looked at said appendix now, and half of its entries unfamiliar. Gygax was an avid fantasy reader, so his list of favorites has some merit. Maybe I'll use it as a guide next time I'm wandering aimlessly through that section of a bookstore.
Sulphur on 16/12/2023 at 18:15
Quote Posted by Anarchic Fox
Neat, I'm often up for some
monsterfucking. I'm not sure mixing prose and verse counts as experimental anymore though, as that's been popular for more than century, since somewhere around Eliot.
Geryon's mostly just a kid who falls in love with the wrong person, same as most of us. He just happens to be red, and have red wings. And has dyslexia. And an interesting sense of self. But anyway, obligatory (
https://www.oglaf.com/comely/) Oglaf.
As to her poetry being experimental, it's certainly not traditional, which is what I was addressing when you mentioned 'verse'; just because she's writing about ancient Greek figures doesn't mean it's all bronzed imagery beaten into dactylic hexameter. It's not just verse-prose as her hallmark, but I think that'll probably be easier to see than describe.
Anarchic Fox on 16/12/2023 at 18:50
Ah, I see. I switched from "verse" in the sense of a section of a poem to "verse" in the sense of scansion and rhyme between my two replies, thus my confusion.
I do think that's one of the best Oglafs. Aaaaand a dozen TTLG lurkers will now find themselves binge reading a whole new realm of comedy, perhaps discovering things about themselves in the process.
PigLick on 17/12/2023 at 02:51
I certainly discovered something.
