What are you currently reading?

[North Star]

Albert Camus
The Fall

The last one of his fiction works, and the last one I read. La Peste and L'Étranger are some of my favourites, and this is definitely there, too.

[Zizekian]

Albert Camus
The Fall

The last one of his non-fiction works, and the last one I read. La Peste and L'Étranger are some of my favourites, and this is definitely there, too.

The Fall was a novel, not a nonfiction work. Great book, though!

[Karl Henning]

The Fall was a novel, not a nonfiction work.

Maybe he was there . . . . ; )

[North Star]

The Fall was a novel, not a nonfiction work. Great book, though!

[jwinter]

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally get around to Philip K. Dick!  Very interesting read, I devoured most of it this afternoon.  Quite different from Blade Runner, but excellent.  I'm definitely up for another -- any recs from resident PK Dick fans?

[Bogey]

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally get around to Philip K. Dick!  Very interesting read, I devoured most of it this afternoon.  Quite different from Blade Runner, but excellent.  I'm definitely up for another -- any recs from resident PK Dick fans?

I have enjoyed all that I have read of PKD.  Here is one rec:



PS

You have to hear this one on Shakespeare:

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/10/156370259/a-one-man-madhouse-with-murder-on-his-mind

[Gold Knight]

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally get around to Philip K. Dick!  Very interesting read, I devoured most of it this afternoon.  Quite different from Blade Runner, but excellent.  I'm definitely up for another -- any recs from resident PK Dick fans?


[/quote

I would highly recommend "Through A Scanner Darkly"  {the movie starring Keanu Reeves as well} "The Man In The High Castle" , "The Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" and "Total Recall", to name but a few that come to mind right away.

[jwinter]

Thanks!

[Sergeant Rock]

I don't read many graphic novels but couldn't resist this one   




Being a South Park fan, I love these panels 





Sarge

[CaughtintheGaze]

Been digging into cyberpunk, lately.


This is the quintessential volume, and it still lives up to that. Nearly every story is a hit. The top of the heap was 400 Boys by Marc Laidlaw. If you only read one cyberpunk text, this is it.


This is a much more ambitious project, as it combines fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. This is also why it was a weaker text, as none of the non-fiction pieces were really complete, and the poetry was rather disjointed (and not in the good sort of way). The fiction though was, again, top notch. It had some repeats from Mirrorshades, but it also included something called Cyberpunk 101, which is an amazing basic premier. Top of the heap here was The Toliet Was Full of Nietzsche by Richard Kadrey, from the best cyberpunk text by one author called Metrophage.


Conceptually, this was easily my favorite of the three anthologies, and it contained the strongest story, but overall the text was the ultimate failure because the editor made many poor choices, and included a lot of stories that were, at best, loosely cyberpunk. Top of the heap, and the best story overall from these three collections was The Wedding Album by David Marusek.

[Gold Knight]

David McCullough--The Path Between The Seas: The Creation Of The Panama Canal, 1870-1914

[Zizekian]

Well, I gave up on The Brothers Karamazov for the second time. I'm not sure why, but I haven't been in the mood to read fiction lately. Anyway, I started Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise yesterday and I'm loving it so far. The beginning chapter on Strauss and Mahler is fascinating and has made me interested in listening to Strauss' operas at some point.

[Marc]

Some poems by my favourite Dutch poet, Rutger Kopland, who died this week.

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/4035

Two examples of his poetry (one of them posted before somewhere on this board), translated by James Brockway:

ONDER DE APPELBOOM

Ik kwam thuis, het was
een uur of acht en zeldzaam
zacht voor de tijd van het jaar,
de tuinbank stond klaar
onder de appelboom

ik ging zitten en ik zat
te kijken hoe de buurman
in zijn tuin nog aan het spitten
was, de nacht kwam uit de aarde
een blauwer wordend licht hing
in de appelboom

toen werd het langzaam weer te mooi
om waar te zijn, de dingen
van de dag verdwenen voor de geur
van hooi, er lag weer speelgoed
in het gras en verweg in het huis
lachten de kinderen in het bad
tot waar ik zat, tot
onder de appelboom

en later hoorde ik de vleugels
van ganzen in de hemel
hoorde ik hoe stil en leeg
het aan het worden was

gelukkig kwam er iemand naast mij
zitten, om precies te zijn jij
was het die naast mij kwam
onder de appelboom, zeldzaam
zacht en dichtbij
voor onze leeftijd.

UNDER THE APPLE TREE

I came home, it was about
eight and remarkably
close for the time of the year,
the garden seat stood waiting
under the apple tree

I took my place and sat
watching how my neighbour
was still digging in his garden,
the night came out of the soil
a light growing bluer hung
in the apple tree

then slowly it once again became
too beautiful to be true, the day's
alarms disappeared in the scent
of hay, toys again lay
in the grass and from far away in the house
came the laughter of children in the bath
to where I sat, to
under the apple tree

and later I heard the wings
of wild geese in the sky
heard how still and empty
it was becoming

luckily someone came and sat
beside me, to be precise it was
you who came to my side
under the apple tree,
remarkably close
for our time of life.

----

Zoals de pagina's van een krant
in het gras langzaam om
slaan in de wind, en het is de wind
niet, die dit doet,

zoals wanneer een deken in de avond,
buiten, ligt alsof hij ligt
te slapen, en het is de deken
niet, zo

niets is het, niets dan de verdrietige
beweging van een hand, de weerloze
houding van een lichaam,

en er is geen hand, er is
geen lichaam, terwijl ik toch
zo dichtbij ben.

Like the pages of a newspaper
flapping slowly to and fro in the grass
and it is not the wind
that is doing this,

as when of an evening, a blanket,
left outdoors, lies as though it lay
asleep, and it is not the blanket,
so near it is

to being nothing, nothing but the grieving
gesture of a hand, the vulnerable
attitude of a body,

and there is no hand, there is
no body, while I, after all,
am so close.

Taken from the collection: Rutger Kopland, Memories of the Unknown. London, Harvill Press, 2001.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Memories-Rutger-Kopland/dp/1860468950

[Ataraxia]

****
[asin]1846687217[/asin]

Just finished this. No one here will want to read it but it was good stuff. 

[Corey]

borrowed from a friend, who recommended:

[Karl Henning]

From my fortune cookie to-day (and in curious resonance with remarks Hank Azaria made on the Monty Python Conquers America DVD):

In the midst of a busy life, take some time to be a kid again.

[Gold Knight]

William Philpott--Three Armies On The Somme: The First Battle Of TheTwentieth Century

[lisa needs braces]

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally get around to Philip K. Dick!  Very interesting read, I devoured most of it this afternoon.  Quite different from Blade Runner, but excellent.  I'm definitely up for another -- any recs from resident PK Dick fans?

I've read this one and others, but my favorite of the ones I read are Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. 

[Ataraxia]

DICK is good stuff.

[jwinter]

Since my last post, I've gone through Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Flow My Tears The Policeman Said, The Man in the High Castle, and am halfway through Ubik as I type.  Needless to say, I'm amused.

My library has a copy of his late notebooks and musings, the Exegesis.  About the size of a phonebook.  Don't know if I'm quite brave enough to try that yet.