What have you just FINISHED?, Sure you can start em....

I hope that that wow is a good wow. It is a facsinating story - though only a small part of the book itself. That being said, the rest of the book is no less interesting, as the following famous Confederation story would confirm.

Ken Brown, a politician, who was greatly opposed to joining Canada, to the point that in the lead up to the referendum he stood in the house of assembly, brandishing a file in his raised hand, stating that were a man to read the document he was holding, he would never consent to joining Canada. At this precise moment, he fell to the floor, and to his death, by a fatal bleeding in the brain. In the ensuing scuffle, this file was lost, and its contents never revealed.

Adding more interest to the story, the members were seated according to alphabetical order, not by their own names, but by the districts that they represented. Ken Brown represented the district Bonavista Central, and thus was seated just two seats away from Joey Smallwood - the father of Newfoundland Confederation, and probably the most polarising figure in Newfoundland history - who represented Bonavista South. Smallwood, according to the anit-confederates, was thus in the perfect position to swipe away the document and bury it forever.

No one knew, nor will they ever know, what Brown was holding in his hand that day.

Apex Hides The Hurt, Colson Whitehead

finsihed that last week actually. one of the best writers of his generation. not his best book but still very good.

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison...a slow burning book, it culminates in the last sentence, which is genius and inevitable and according to that reasoning so is the book (it must be)...logically that must be the case, but i don't feel it in my spine of which my brain is the lit wick of that shivering candle

Riverside, Patrick Roth

jesusfuckingchrist.

Light, M. John Harrison.

Impressive. I'll be reading more by him. Kim Stanley Robinson has been on the money so far with his recommendations of Geoff Ryman and M. John Harrison.

just completed my second reading
of Javier Marias' Your Face, Tomorrow, Volume 2
in prp for reasding the newly out (here) Volume 3

these books are fantastic
if you haven't read them
hop to it!

I've been championing MJH for ages, years Funhouse! <grin> oh well.. "Light" shows him up as a beautiful stylist, writing about bits of north east London that i recognize very easily.

Also recommended "things that never happen" and "Anima: signs of life/course of the heart" "Signs of life" is the Isobel Avens story by another title, i'm sure. And i love it. But MJH's "Climbers"" is unremarkable by comparision

I've also championed M. John Harrison

willie master's lonesome wife by william gass. a book that i really liked (feel like i fell through the rabbit hole) and a year or two ago I wouldn't have, wouldv'e said and been right "pretentious, overblown, etc." there's tits, a strange play with infinite asterisks, more tits, for a second I thought it was being narrated by a vagina of the wife or the book itself...as if books have vaginas...this one might. again plenty o' tits and ass.

from your comment
it doesn't sound like a rabbit hole
to me . . .

I am seriously laughing out loud (not lol)

I've been championing MJH for ages, years Funhouse! <grin> oh well.. "Light" shows him up as a beautiful stylist, writing about bits of north east London that i recognize very easily.

Also recommended "things that never happen" and "Anima: signs of life/course of the heart" "Signs of life" is the Isobel Avens story by another title, i'm sure. And i love it. But MJH's "Climbers"" is unremarkable by comparision

Yeah, I know you and suz have spoken highly of him, but I just got a thing in my head to read some of Kim Stanley Robinson's recommendations in that New Scientist article, which I used in my class at school. So Robinson was the specific prompt here, backed up by both of of you guys... No disrespect intended!

Actually, Signs of Life was the one Robinson specifically cited as a novel that should've won the Booker, but my local libraries didn't have it, so I went with Light instead. I see there's a sequel to Light called Nova Swing. Have either of you read that one?

Yes, Harrison stood out for me as more of a stylist than Ryman (not that Ryman is bad). And I think that's what I'm looking for. I want the rich ferment of ideas that science fiction can offer, but I want it to be beautifully written at the same time. Harrison delivers on both counts: so rich and strange. I loved the anarchy of the future he describes and how it's grim and funny at the same time.

my report from a couple years ago:
Nova Swing: A follow-up to Light, more quantum noir, won the award Light should have, doubling up on its lateness, this time generational. Nova Swing, while good, feels like the middle weak link to a trilogy (I can hope), not quite realizing its ambition. Vico Serotonin is tourguide for this pubcrawl among no-hopers nonetheless hopeful (opener). PS: I must mention the Rarebit-Fiend in conjunction.

and before that:
Light: Best thing along these lines since Gibson's Neuromancer. Pushing performative quantum-mechanical gnosticism to the limits (if there are any), in which mathematics has its own agenda. Not without flaws, but these overcome by its ambitious scope, the farther/deeper out you go, the older you get.

I've been championing MJH for ages, years Funhouse! <grin> oh well.. "Light" shows him up as a beautiful stylist, writing about bits of north east London that i recognize very easily.

Also recommended "things that never happen" and "Anima: signs of life/course of the heart" "Signs of life" is the Isobel Avens story by another title, i'm sure. And i love it. But MJH's "Climbers"" is unremarkable by comparision

Yeah, I know you and suz have spoken highly of him, but I just got a thing in my head to read some of Kim Stanley Robinson's recommendations in that New Scientist article, which I used in my class at school. So Robinson was the specific prompt here, backed up by both of of you guys... No disrespect intended!

Actually, Signs of Life was the one Robinson specifically cited as a novel that should've won the Booker, but my local libraries didn't have it, so I went with Light instead. I see there's a sequel to Light called Nova Swing. Have either of you read that one?

Yes, Harrison stood out for me as more of a stylist than Ryman (not that Ryman is bad). And I think that's what I'm looking for. I want the rich ferment of ideas that science fiction can offer, but I want it to be beautifully written at the same time. Harrison delivers on both counts: so rich and strange. I loved the anarchy of the future he describes and how it's grim and funny at the same time.

I've yet to read either follow up, Funhouse. People do employ the most extraordinary language when thinking about what Harrison's able to realize, but i think it's warranted. The realities, moralities he sets to work in a literally sore and frail physics. They do make for and require a new paradigm, i don't know, but he's sometimes magnificent, for me

Tenants by Bernard Malamud. My first Malamud and I thought it was great...much more dense and stylish and well-written than i thought it would be (having only seen the natural i didn't expect much but robert redford hitting a homerun into the lights and having them rain down like fireworks...god what hollywood does to boks and our perceptions of their authors). It's an urban gothic novel of race and sex, disintegrating text; perhaps, the issues of race are handled strangely...two writers: one white, one referred to as the black...the datedness, at times, made me cringe. Definitely need to read more of him; he seems like one of america's disappearing writers. I don't know, but for this being one of his 'minor' novels it rung some bells.

The Fixer is breathtaking. Will read the Assistant next.

Homer and Langley, EL Doctorow.

Good.

Das Gespräch der drei Gehenden, Peter Weiss