Recent Reading

[MadsPLP]

Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim and, spoiler, but come on, the book was published what, half a decade ago?) Old stories are still new if you haven't experienced them in any way. I still have no idea what happens in Treasure Island or A Tale Of Two Cities. That's an advantage books have over films. Trying to think if there's ever been a plot point in common knowledge without a film adaptation. Oh absolutely. In fact, even new stories are, very often, old stories. I don't really mind spoilers, though; ages of reading comics have trained me to ignore everything that happens in plain view on the facing page, i guess. Plus i think a good story should be more than a set of plot twists. Moby Dick spoiler alert: the whale is stronger. There, did it. Still a fabulous book. Also a nice parlour game with movies: The Usual Suspects, i suspect, is boring to re-watch once you know Kevin Spacey doesn't really exist, but Mulholland Drive is still a fascinating watch once you realize how the two halves fit together. Of course, yr mileage may vary. Shakespeare was talking about plots when he wrote that 'dream of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'-line, right?

I've always thought that if a book (or movie) is dependent on a plot twist, it deserves to have the plot spoiled.

[Ibrahim]

Quote Originally Posted by tartarusrussell

Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim Another book i recently finished reading is Michael Reynier's Hortholáry, which i recommend unreservedly; it's superb. A charming hybrid between Ashton-Smith's best Averoigne tales, M.R. James & H.G. Wells. I imagine it would be a real treat to read this as an actual printed book in front of a big fireplace while savouring a glass of fine wine. Luckily i never drink...wine, & alas i had to make do with the e-book. I was rather surprised, after reading all the praise heaped unto the press, to encounter a bunch of inconsistencies & typos in what was my first Tartarus book. I hope they come with the digital format & not the expensive hardback. Still, excellent stuff. Hi Ibrahim--I'm sorry you found typos in the ebook of Hortholáry. We've had no complaints about the hardback ltd edition, and I know the text there received two proof-reads. I can only think that I created the ebook from an earlier file, and I will certainly go back and rectify this!

Please bear in mind that i am no native speaker ( any single post of mine here probably contains more actual mistakes than the entire Tartarus catalogue contains typos) so feel free to rebuke me here in public should you find only proof of my negligence rather than yours. There were some places where words ran together unspaced, and some minor stuff, repetition of verbs, if i remember well. Ah, and- i did not understand why ( in the Nephilim tale) the Prior corrects Hortholàry when he mentions Egregores (plural), saying "there's only ever one," when just prior to that, the Prior himself has mentioned them in the plural.
Again, perhaps i misunderstood; this is not an uncommon occurence.
And still- a splendid book: just now, browsing through the book to find that passage i could hardly resist reading the entire chapter once agsin...

[Acutely decayed]

stumbled across this in a second-hand bookshop, early chapters were in particularly enthralling like a french Powys, not to over-hype it was enjoyable - I haven't seen any of the films





Le Grand Meaulnes - Wikipedia

as an aside - they specifically stated at the start of the introduction that it contained information that may spoil the plot - civilization is not entirely dead


for completeness also just finished Gurans best of 2016 - liked Muirs - Deepwater Bride, Langans -Snow, Kiernan - anything s/he writes and Valentes Lily and Horn - also liked Fabulous Beasts

also just finished Experimental Film -Files - in no way bad, but didn't completely work for me, kept reflecting back to Generation Loss (Elizabeth Hand recommended) maybe the sliver nitrate film, and aesthetically I hate the Sun, which didn't help - Gustave Knauff though - don't throw him away

[paul b.]

Quote Originally Posted by Ibrahim

Another book i recently finished reading is Michael Reynier's Hortholáry, which i recommend unreservedly; it's superb. A charming hybrid between Ashton-Smith's best Averoigne tales, M.R. James & H.G. Wells. I imagine it would be a real treat to read this as an actual printed book in front of a big fireplace while savouring a glass of fine wine. Luckily i never drink...wine, & alas i had to make do with the e-book. I was rather surprised, after reading all the praise heaped unto the press, to encounter a bunch of inconsistencies & typos in what was my first Tartarus book. I hope they come with the digital format & not the expensive hardback. Still, excellent stuff.

Reynier's fictions are quite excellent and unique, which explains why nobody is reading them. I'll just quote what I spat on Scamazon's review page ages ago:

Spoiler

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this piece is just how painstakingly imagined the region of Pays Montagasque is, and how much thought was put into even the smallest of details: geography; history; layouts and architecture of various settlements like the city of Pessane together with reasons for various architectural oddities; culture of the region's inhabitants together with specifics of appearance, clothing and mannerism depending on what part of region they fare from; region-specific atmospheric anomalies etc... Sometimes, there are even comparisons with the present state of various buildings and such. This is all impressive, but it can make for a somewhat dry and tedious read at times, especially in the opening story (bit accented by the fact that it is the least fantastic, most down-to-the-earth story in this collection). There is a variety of maps, sketches, drawings accompanying each story, all supposedly drawn by Horthólary himself, which accents the feeling of authenticity even further.

Each story is a longer piece, and they are pretty varied in terms of their themes and tone: first one deals with a murder mystery that eventually includes peculiar flying machine (and this again displays author's engineer mindset: even tho said machine is in large part based on fictional mineral with anti-gravitational properties, process of its constriction and its workings are described in painstaking detail); second one deals with a particularly nasty alien lifeform that comes to inhabit small body of water; third one deals with a mysterious race of giants and a noble yet dwindling order of monks; and final story concerns witchcraft and burning of a leader of imaginary religious sect. They are all based around various periods of Hortholary's life, from his childhood to his late years.
They are also slightly interconnected and feature a number of returning characters, even tho they can be read as fully standalone pieces. For example, in the first story we meet the figure of Philippe Rapin, corrupted, scheming and utterly materialistic Bishop of Pessane. And yet, one of the later stories, based on earlier part of their lives, throws a very different light on his character and his antagonism with professor Horthólary.

My favorite story is easily the second one, "Dii Nixi", which is based around Horthólary's childhood in the village of Montagascony. Village and its inhabitants are excellently imagined, together with the rivalry between two of the village's major families. Story itself is a nice take on that classic trope of band of kids that are faced with strange threat and the resulting premature end of their childhoods. There is a bit of "Colour Out of Space" in the descriptions of patch of landscape (in this case small lake at its surroundings) that is morphed and ruined by alien influence. Oh, and aliens themselves bring to mind certain rather nasty scene from the "Dreamcatcher" movie! Third one is my second favorite, with some nice and evocative descriptions, contrast between spiritually-minded Horthólary and his arrogantly materialistic friend/colleague, and with a pretty unexpected revelations about giants and their origins and finally somewhat lovecraftian nature of ultimate threat.
Final story is a bit of a mixed bag. It features some of finest prose passages in the pack, and presents finale for both Rapin and Horthólary (pretty nasty one in the former's case). Descriptions of elaborate magic ritual and later burning at stake (and popular chaos and decadence that accompanied it) are eminently memorable. However, it features somewhat unnecessary and forced dose of ambiguity at the end, which prompted an immediate re-read (which failed to clear out the confusion - ending is such that reader himself must decide what it is that really happened, depending mainly on his own temperament and views).

What I should have added back then, and something that adds to authentic feel of those stories, is how that separation between materialistic and supernatural is very much blurred: entities from that third story may come from supernatural otherworld as much as they may be aliens from another dimension. Entire story was written from a point of view where such distinction doesn't exist.

[Kevin]

"Moby Dick spoiler alert: the whale is stronger. There, did it."

Too funny.

[Gnosticangel]

Have been reading "Pallaksch, Pallaksch," by Liliane Giraudon.
A collection of strange, dark, unreliable tales. Recommended!

https://www.amazon.com/Pallaksch-Sun-Moon-Classics/dp/1557131910/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487089571&sr=1-1&keywords=Pallaksch%2C+Pallaksch

 

https://www.amazon.com/Pallaksch-Sun-Moon-Classics/dp/1557131910/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487089571&sr=1-1&keywords=Pallaksch%2C+Pallaksch

[Mr. Veech]

I read Ligotti's "The Small People" for the first time. Although I loved it, I don't think I could ever bring myself to read it again. It's the only story of his which has made me cry. It just reminded me that there's not much to do after having read Ligotti.

[ToALonelyPeace]

Landscapes of Fear by Yi-Fu Tuan

I saw the title mentioned in a Ligotti's interview and thought it seemed interesting enough. The book is only 209 pages, but it covers broad topics from Fear in the Child, 'Fearless' Societies, Fear of Nature, of Disease, of Human Nature to Fear in Medieval World, in the Countryside, in the City.
The most fascinating commentaries are:

On children:

Quote

"Scholars of the fairy tale believe that the genre helps children in two important ways. It frankly describes the bad experiences that children know to be an intimate part of their lives but that adults seldom acknowledge. It shows the young that pain is necessary to growth, that one must pass through distressing thresholds to a higher state of being." "Part of the ancient harshness toward children may be explained by adults' ambivalence toward the human body--their own and even more their children's. "

On the Mbuti, a 'fearless' society:

Quote

"How the Mbuti respond to death and the other inevitable crises of life provides eloquent testimony to their confidence in their world. When misfortune strikes, the Mbuti do not attribute it to malevolence, but rather to a lack of normal benevolence." "Acute awareness of time is a cause of tension and distress in contemporary Western society [...] In contrast, the Mbuti have a very weakly developed sense of time. They live in the present. Each day takes care of itself."

On animal courts:

Quote

"The medieval mind could not decide where to draw the line between animals and humans [...] Birds clearly had no souls, but souls could appear as birds. Animals might be punished for impiety, like the fly that dropped dead after hovering near a chalice." "Because animals and insect pests posed a real threat to crops and livelihood, people in medieval times saw nothing strange in labeling them criminals and demons. Offending wolves and caterpillars were tried in courts, given sentences, and executed. One of the earliest recorded animal trials took place in 824, when moles were prosecuted in the valley of Aosta; one of the most recent was in 1906 when a dog drew the sentence of death in Switzerland."

On confinement:

Quote

"To our way of thinking, the simplest answer to the threat of unruly people is to confine them in space, that is, in prisons and asylums. This idea was not, however, put into practice on any scale before the sixteenth century [...] Confinement was a means, not an end. Debtors, for example, were thrown into jail until they paid their debts, and important captives were kept in dungeon until their ransom was received [...] the moment society saw the prison as a place of punishment it also saw it as the place of redemption. Thus brutality and idealism, despair and hope intertwined and produced the contradictory images of prisons and asylums that continue to baffle us."

On the city:

Quote

" Every major human achievement appears to be attended by a feeling of unease, as though success might inflame the envy of the gods who alone have the right to create, or as though it had been forged at the expense of nature, which might then take revenge. The city is one such major human achievement."

and the almost TCATHR's ending paragraph:

Quote

"Human beings have always been aware of this element of fortuitousness, and have sought to guard against it with beliefs and devices that are as pathetic as they are ingenious, ranging from rabbit's foot to astrology. The critical person, who finds no haven in such beliefs, must learn to live in statistical uncertainty. As to death itself, it is well known that most people cannot face it except under the wraps of consoling fiction. We know the rewards of seeing clearly and well. The cost is the possibility of despair. Yet, such is the human paradox that even the refusal to be consoled by false images can become a source of comfort and strength."

[luciferfell]

Quote Originally Posted by Gnosticangel

Have been reading "Pallaksch, Pallaksch," by Liliane Giraudon. A collection of strange, dark, unreliable tales. Recommended! https://www.amazon.com/Pallaksch-Sun...h%2C+Pallaksch

I recently read Liliane Giraudon's Fur.. which was mind-blowingly good. Have you read Fur and is Pallaksch as good?

[miguel1984]

I read Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, knowing it was going to be pure crap.