Blaine Ryan wrote:He’s one of those guys I just want to read everything from eventually, though. He’s so fucking good.
Funny you say that because I haven't read Travels with Charley because it has always seemed to me to be a good day to finish Steinbeck. I've read almost all of his fiction but I haven't read him in awhile so maybe I need to rethink that whole idea of saving it for last. And TwC isn't fiction anyway, so who cares right.
Finally finished Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI and talk about soul crushing. It's well done but it will rip a slice of your soul away.
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He's not her child. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.
Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel.
Cory Doctorow is going to be giving a talk next month here.
Revolutionary Reads is a new annual community reading and event series from Fort Vancouver Regional Libraries to engage readers, spark dialogue, and inspire ideas that just might change the world.
This year’s series will feature three books by science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist Cory Doctorow—Little Brother, In Real Life, and Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free—as well as a series of events throughout the library district related to technology, information, and cyberculture.
Cory Doctorow will deliver a keynote speech at 7 pm on March 26 at Clark College’s Gaiser Hall, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver WA 98663. A short Q&A and author signing will follow the talk. Copies of his books will be available for purchase at the event. There is no admission charge to attend this event.
Revolutionary Reads is made possible through the generous support of Fort Vancouver Regional Library Foundation and branches’ Friends of the Library groups.
He's not good at writing characters but he does have some interesting ideas about the future. I've read both Little Brother and Information Doesn't Want to Be Free but not the other one. (Side note: There a sequel to Little Brother called Homeland that I accidentally read first but it's not really an issue.)
Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish.
Just going to read short stories from an old McSweeney's over the weekend, since Tuesday is....NEW BOLANO DAY
::air horn air horn air horn::
Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world–or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño’s The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams.
But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city’s labyrinthine streets, rundown cafés, and murky bathhouses.
This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño’s fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
I pre-ordered this shit in July; according to Amazon, definitely coming Tuesday.
Simple Torture wrote:Just going to read short stories from an old McSweeney's over the weekend, since Tuesday is....NEW BOLANO DAY
::air horn air horn air horn::
Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world–or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño’s The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams.
But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city’s labyrinthine streets, rundown cafés, and murky bathhouses.
This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño’s fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
I pre-ordered this shit in July; according to Amazon, definitely coming Tuesday.
Simple Torture wrote:Just going to read short stories from an old McSweeney's over the weekend, since Tuesday is....NEW BOLANO DAY
::air horn air horn air horn::
Two young poets, Jan and Remo, find themselves adrift in Mexico City. Obsessed with poetry, and, above all, with science fiction, they are eager to forge a life in the literary world–or sacrifice themselves to it. Roberto Bolaño’s The Spirit of Science Fiction is a story of youth hungry for revolution, notoriety, and sexual adventure, as they work to construct a reality out of the fragments of their dreams.
But as close as these friends are, the city tugs them in opposite directions. Jan withdraws from the world, shutting himself in their shared rooftop apartment where he feverishly composes fan letters to the stars of science fiction and dreams of cosmonauts and Nazis. Meanwhile, Remo runs headfirst into the future, spending his days and nights with a circle of wild young writers, seeking pleasure in the city’s labyrinthine streets, rundown cafés, and murky bathhouses.
This kaleidoscopic work of strange and tender beauty is a fitting introduction for readers uninitiated into the thrills of Roberto Bolaño’s fiction, and an indispensable addition to an ecstatic and transgressive body of work.
I pre-ordered this shit in July; according to Amazon, definitely coming Tuesday.
Any good?
It's good, but as you'd expect from an early work, it's all very familiar: young poets stumbling from cafes to suburban parties to rooftop semi-orgies, mysteries surrounding literary magazines that no one knows the origins of, war-games stuff, and a general feeling of dread. Not that those are bad things. It's very choppy, as there are 4-5 threads that the book cycles through (i.e., one chapter on our young poets, followed by a chapter that's an interview between a poet and a reporter, followed by an epistolary chapter, followed by...etc., and then it cycles back around), which I'm not super crazy about. It should've taken me mere days to read, but somehow I've been with it for two weeks now, as I've only been able to read 10 pages at a time. It's surprisingly dense in parts. Worth checking out.
