I'm not good with crosswords unless they are on easy mode. that looks cool though

Also, I had to grab this from the "special collection" at the downtown Houston library for some reason. It's good, not great. Not regretting spending time with it but nothing to write home about.

They're all good but the first one is some of the best sci fi i've read.


thnx for the rec p-tune

I remember liking Oryx and Crake. Haven't gotten to the other two but, at this point, I'd have to read O&C again if I were to tackle the others.

Oryx and Crake is phenomenal. Perfect story, dark as fuck.

The other two are worth reading if you liked the first one. And you find out a lot more about the story.

Currently on book two of this sci-fi trilogy; suck it,Took



I'm finding them a little dry and the characters a little flat, and I'm not sure if that's the translation or what, but there are a ton of fascinating ideas in here that keep me reading

First one is about a woman making first contact with aliens during China's Cultural Revolution; second book so far is about preparations to meet them

Read it in one sitting as I grappled with the difference between bivalence and the law of the excluded middle. Not sure how much I appreciated the story within a story format

“A Problem”

by Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Andrew Hurley

Let us imagine that a piece of paper with a text in Arabic on it is discovered in Toledo, and that paleographers declare the text to have been written by that same Cede Hamete Benengeli from whom Cervantes derived Don Quixote. In it, we read that the hero (who, as everyone knows, wandered the roads of Spain armed with a lance and sword, challenging anyone for any reason) discovers, after one of his many combats, that he has killed a man. At that point the fragment breaks off; the problem is to guess, or hypothesize, how don Quixote reacts.

So far as I can see, there are three possibilities. The first is a negative one: Nothing
in particular happens, because in the hallucinatory world of don Quixote, death is no
more uncommon than magic, and there is no reason that killing a mere man should disturb one who does battle, or thinks he does battle, with fabled beasts and sorcerers. The second is pathetic: Don Quixote never truly managed to forget that he was a creation, a projection, of Alonso Quijano, reader of fabulous tales. The sight of death, the realization that a delusion has led him to commit the sin of Cain, awakens him from his willful madness, perhaps forever. The third is perhaps the most plausible: Having killed the man, don Quixote cannot allow himself to think that the terrible act is the work of a delirium; the reality of the effect makes him assume a like reality of cause, and don Quixote never emerges from his madness.

But there is yet another hypothesis, which is alien to the Spanish mind (even to the Western mind) and which requires a more ancient, more complex, and more timeworn setting. Don Quixote—who is no longer don Quixote but a king of the cycles of Hindustan—senses, as he stands before the body of his enemy, that killing and engendering are acts of God or of magic, which everyone knows transcend the human condition. He knows that death is illusory, as are the bloody sword that lies heavy in his hand, he himself and his entire past life, and the vast gods and the universe.

what sorts of stories are they? fiction or non?

my fav book about chicanos and mexicans is this one, for sure. i identify with it so much even though i don't always feel like a "real" Mexican because my spanish is not very good and i'm constantly and mostly surrounded by white people in Chicago unless I am volunteering. i'm certainly treated like a real mexican, though.

i am reading this now:

Is there a translation in Orcish?

The lead singer of Austin band Ringo Deathstarr has a very low opinion of Jasper, a town in which he grew up (or maybe just spent a few years). That book looks interesting.

The first story was a sort of "trickster tale" and the rest were fiction except the last story I think it was involved the author in a pretty cool full circle meta way.

stoner, john williams

the ghost stories of edith wharton

Reading the first book in The Magicians trilogy. I love the TV adaptation and wanted to see what the books were like.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_...Grossman_novel)

Also reading Wilder Girls, which is a weird feminist queer-girl body horror story. Liking it a lot.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/11/74003...-your-own-risk

I don't know about the ending of this. Everything up to the last couple of pages (of Offred's narrative) was superb but then...

I kinda wish the last chapter wasn't added. If things were more ambiguous it would have been a stronger end, I think.

hadn't read this before, fantastic, thanks for sharing

One of these days I'll crack open my copy of this. B. loves the show.

I am intrigued by this website but wtf...is it??

Yes, do it! Excellent writing. Shit's on the level of 1984, imho.

Atwood is god-tier sci fi.

i read handmaid's tale in high school. i thought the last chapter wasn't so good, either. the imagery of her driving away or whatever just didn't match the mood of the rest of the writing and made it feel out of place. other than that, i remember really liking it and then i read it again when mitt romney ran for president.

never thought there'd be a show made out of it. the first season was by-the-book, mostly, and it was neat to not just imagine the details atwood provides. plus i recognized a lot of lines pulled straight from the book and who doesn't like that? but i heard they made-up a second season and it's just a show now. no thanks to that.

Just finished an overdue revisit of Koji Suzuki's Ringu. Now Starting Joseph Heller's Catch-22

nick cave responding to fan-submitted questions. his replies are quite eloquent and affecting. i wish there were more.

an excerpt:


Three and a half years ago I lost my wife and I was left to take care of my (then 2 year old) daughter. She’s a happy little girl but I know she’s happiest when her father is happy. I’ve been finding it hard to find happiness. It’s not my loss – I made peace with that a while back. I just haven’t found my life again. You’re a happy man. We all get that vibe when we see you play live. Has it always been this way, have you always been able to cut through the heavy moments in life to enjoy living?


Dear William,

Thank you for your question. Please accept this answer, in the spirit that it is given, as a simple and supportive response to your letter.

It seems to me that you are reacting entirely appropriately to a devastating situation that has ransacked your life. This is not what you signed up for when you got married – to be alone and looking after your little daughter. When you said that you have made peace with the death of your wife, this may on some level be true, but the residual feelings of aloneness, loss of control, and cosmic betrayal must still hold a powerful sway over your life. No wonder you can’t find your life. That life you once had does not exist. You have a new life.

Three and a half years have passed, for both of us. We feel we should be better. We feel equilibrium should be restored. We feel we have in someway failed and that we should have made peace with the world. We feel people must be sick to death of us, and our fucking grief. But grief is beyond our control; it is omnipotent and invincible and we are miniscule in its presence and when it comes for us, all we can do is to kneel before it, heads bowed and await its passing.

But, as you know, grief is also tidal. In time, it can recede and leave us with feelings of peace and advancement, only for it to wash back in with all its crushing hopelessness and sorrow. Back and forth it goes, but with each retreating drift of despair, we are left a little stronger, more resilient, more essential and better at our new life. I can feel these tides of anguish and restoration move through your words. They say so much about grief, but also the sanctity of fatherhood. What a glorious thing fatherhood is! Within your words, William, great hope resides, for you, for your daughter, and for us all.

Nothing, of course, happens fast enough and we just want to be returned to that uncomplicated life we once had – we want stability restored – but it is not to be. Now we have a new life; unchartered, uncertain, beyond our control, and that we are on some level undertaking alone, even within the company of the ones we love. Our worlds are still raw and new. They hum with suffering, but there is immense power there too.

We are alone but we are also connected in a personhood of suffering. We have reached out to each other, with nothing to offer, but an acceptance of our mutual despair. We must understand that the depths of our anguish signal the heights we can, in time, attain. This is an act of extraordinary faith. It makes demands on the vast reserves of inner-strength that you may not even be aware of. But they are there. As your little daughter dances through her father’s tears, she leads the way. The way lies there before us.

With love, Nick.

i dunno think i prefer blinking with fists

Reading "Little Heroes" by Norman Spinrad.

Not a fan of his body of work, so this book shouldn't be as engrossing as it is. It's a lot of non-linear cyberpunk fun.

Recently grabbed a hard copy of Breece DJ Pancake's collection of short stories. Holy shit it floored me. Simply love southern writers who commit suicide. This dude gets it.

Lately been studying Cornell Woolrich, who apparently had a bunch of episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents made from his stories. Guy was a closeted homosexual that lived with his mother his entire life and just CRANKED out stories for a couple decades. When she died he had his leg amputated and died a sad dude. Good times.

Always wanted to read that/those

Sometimes I like to make a madeleine-related joke as though I've already read them and I'm sorry to anyone who feels lied to after this revelation