What are you currently reading?

[washing machine]

Somehow, each post is the most burt post ever.

[blueviper]

Antkind - Charlie Kaufman

[epilogue]

Station Eleven was my introduction to Mandel's work. It remains one of my all-time favorites. Since then, I've been on the Mandel train. I read The Singer's Gun last month in two sittings (which I never do). I've been looking forward to her new book since finishing her last.

So far, it's really interesting. I don't like it quite as much as The Glass Hotel yet but I'm only like 60 pages in. We'll see where it lands.

But Mandel is quietly maybe my favorite fiction writer. I just love her stuff so much.

[Mickey]

The Singer's Gun is 301 pages long, so you're implying that you only need to get up to pee every 150 pages.

Impressive

[epilogue]

The Singer's Gun is 301 pages long, so you're implying that you only need to get up to pee every 150 pages.

Impressive

The book flies. But, like, in the best way.

[epilogue]

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Finishing up Brooklyn and will pick back up on the last half of 2666.

[The Argonaut]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

[BurtReynolds]

Very dry hard sci-fi, but the first chapter about coming into consciousness and developing a sense of self was worth the read alone.

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

It’s good. Having seen the movie first and loving it affected me some.

[dad]

absolutely nothing.

[The Argonaut]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

It’s good. Having seen the movie first and loving it affected me some.

I much preferred the book. I went to a screening of the movie a few years ago where the author, Colm Toibin, did a Q&A afterwards. He's a big fan of the movie

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

It’s good. Having seen the movie first and loving it affected me some.

I much preferred the book. I went to a screening of the movie a few years ago where the author, Colm Toibin, did a Q&A afterwards. He's a big fan of the movie

Did it really change all that much?

[The Argonaut]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

It’s good. Having seen the movie first and loving it affected me some.

I much preferred the book. I went to a screening of the movie a few years ago where the author, Colm Toibin, did a Q&A afterwards. He's a big fan of the movie

Did it really change all that much?

I remember thinking that a lot changed, but I can't even remember what at this point. You can remind me what changed when you finish the book

[lennytheweedwhacker]

Did you like Brooklyn? I really liked Brooklyn

It’s good. Having seen the movie first and loving it affected me some.

I much preferred the book. I went to a screening of the movie a few years ago where the author, Colm Toibin, did a Q&A afterwards. He's a big fan of the movie

Did it really change all that much?

I remember thinking that a lot changed, but I can't even remember what at this point. You can remind me what changed when you finish the book

It seems like the main plot points are mostly similar. I dunno my memory sucks though.

[washing machine]

Continued from the podcast thread

Currently listening to a 2019 episode of a pod called Weird Studies about William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition. Really interesting how prescient that novel was.

https://www.weirdstudies.com/53

never read it. Is that the one about the psychic marketing wizard? Such a cool premise. But I've struggled to connect with Gibson's writing.

What is it exactly about his writing? I find that it's a strange, almost robotic mix of computer jargon, philosophy and poetry and can get why it's sometimes the worst of all three, but somehow that voice works so well with his subject matter for me that I end up not caring too much. The reward of living in his world is worth it when I read his novels.

Here's a classic example, from Pattern Recognition:

She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.

Or this, from Virtual Light:

Physically transporting bits of information about a grid that consisted of little else, she provided a degree of absolute security in the fluid universe of data. With your memo in the girl’s bag, you knew precisely where it was; otherwise, your memo was nowhere, perhaps everywhere, in that instant of transit.

[BurtReynolds]

Antkind - Charlie Kaufman

I like the first third or so, but it turned into a mess.

[blueviper]

Antkind - Charlie Kaufman

I like the first third or so, but it turned into a mess.

Agreed. Now I’m just trying to finish it. It’s probably 400 pages too long.

[Mickey]

One wild and precious life

[tragabigzanda]

Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.