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Post by DeepArcher on Dec 24, 2022 3:33:38 GMT
The Passenger & Stella Maris - Cormac McCarthySurprised I haven't seen any other posts about this on here yet - especially from stephen . A fascinating two-volume work from a master in his twilight years and reckoning with mortality more profoundly than he ever has before. The Passenger is an oddball, and if I had to compare it to any of his prior work, it's probably closest to Suttree in setting, tone, and freewheeling structure. The Passenger presents itself as a mystery but unravels as an episodic existential journey. It also feels a bit like McCarthy returning to his Southern Gothic beginnings (themes of incest, lust and obsession, generational torment, etc) while the dialogue-intensive writing of both volumes feels aligned with the more recent phase of his bibliography. It's a few cowboys short of feeling like a deliberate summation of his body of work - even referencing back to the protagonist of his most famous work, "The Kid" reimagined as an hallucinatory Death-like figure. I don't want to automatically assign this the role of McCarthy's swan song - the man's still 89 years of age and breathing, after all - but I'll be damned if it isn't hard to ignore that prospect while reading it. Mileage will vary with the novel's ambling structure. Some of its chapters certainly worked better for me than others. I also found that much of the dialogue has an occasionally annoying, repetitive cadence to it. But the novel works best as this brooding existential rumination that occasionally flirts with intriguing surreality. There's some gorgeously imagistic passages that remind us that no one does it like McCarthy. Stella Maris, I can't say I really cared for. It's clearly the product of a man who's spent the better part of the last couple of decades hanging out at the Santa Fe Institute talking to physicists and the like. A lot of intellectual gobbledygook that doesn't necessarily deepen or enrich our understanding of the characters from The Passenger. It also doesn't help that Alicia as a character feels so implausible. I will say ... the gambit of an entire novel that plays out as a series of conversations between an analyst and his patient sounds ripe for hacky writing ... which is to say this could've been a whole lot worse. McCarthy trusts his audience and doesn't use this device as a tool to supply analysis for his readers. I'm largely frustrated by the choice to outright deny us a glimpse into Alicia's internal monologue, but in focusing purely on the dialogue, there remains a great deal left to the imagination. From the perspective of this possibly being McCarthy's swan song, the last page of Stella Maris is devastating. Maybe enough to crystallize the intent behind the entire thing. Curious to hear where others landed on this.
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Post by stephen on Dec 24, 2022 3:54:10 GMT
I haven't read them yet, though I have both of them in the hardcover boxset as well as the audiobook. I am visiting my parents in a few weeks and will be bringing The Passenger along to read -- I've had a lot on lately with work and haven't felt like I can devote my focus to Cormac's prose like I know he deserves. The man is my favourite author and I want to savor these two.
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Post by DeepArcher on Dec 24, 2022 4:11:28 GMT
I haven't read them yet, though I have both of them in the hardcover boxset as well as the audiobook. I am visiting my parents in a few weeks and will be bringing The Passenger along to read -- I've had a lot on lately with work and haven't felt like I can devote my focus to Cormac's prose like I know he deserves. The man is my favourite author and I want to savor these two. Fair enough. I tried to take my time as well. His first literary work in 16 years, it's hard not to treat as a big event. I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you get around to them.
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Post by Brother Fease on Dec 28, 2022 0:17:05 GMT
The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
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VERITAS
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Post by VERITAS on Dec 28, 2022 16:37:32 GMT
Speaking of McCarthy, just started the "unadaptable" Blood Meridian; honestly from what I've read I could definitely see it being adapted into a limited series. Also on second read-throughs of Jack Kerouac's Big Sur and Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being...
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Post by Mattsby on Dec 29, 2022 1:39:28 GMT
Rummaging thru my bookstore buys today.....
Think, Write, Speak — Vladimir Nabokov What Do You Care What Other People Think? — Richard Feynman Gimpel the Fool: stories — Isaac Bashevis Singer McBroom Tells A Lie — Sid Fleischman The Days of Dylan Thomas: a pictorial bio
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Dec 30, 2022 19:35:24 GMT
finished up 2022 with a couple short ones. - Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry, about the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese tsunami with specific focus on the tragedy at the Okawa Elementary School. I was expecting more of a general overview of the disaster but it really sticks with this one mini-tragedy and reads like an article blown up to 275 pages. Which makes sense given Parry was a journalist who covered the tsunami at the time. - I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. All the rage over the last couple months and I get the hype. Sprinkled with deadpan dark humor, McCurdy's memoir is frank reckoning with the experience of loving toxic people and an intimate self-inventory of neuroses. Not sure if it ends on a sour note or a liberated one but she really does seem to be glad her mom died. - Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix. My third Hendrix and I still really like his blend of gross-out horror and sardonic humor. This 2014 entry is all about the horrors of working in retail (especially if you're working over the gates of hell in an off-brand IKEA). Takes its ideas about wage slavery and culty corporate cultures to their literal extremes. I enjoyed Southern Book Club and Best Friend's Exorcism more but this one's quite amusing and has an accessibly short length. Got my 30 books for the year
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Post by Brother Fease on Dec 31, 2022 1:03:58 GMT
finished up 2022 with a couple short ones. - Ghosts of the Tsunami by Richard Lloyd Parry, about the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese tsunami with specific focus on the tragedy at the Okawa Elementary School. I was expecting more of a general overview of the disaster but it really sticks with this one mini-tragedy and reads like an article blown up to 275 pages. Which makes sense given Parry was a journalist who covered the tsunami at the time. - I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. All the rage over the last couple months and I get the hype. Sprinkled with deadpan dark humor, McCurdy's memoir is frank reckoning with the experience of loving toxic people and an intimate self-inventory of neuroses. Not sure if it ends on a sour note or a liberated one but she really does seem to be glad her mom died. - Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix. My third Hendrix and I still really like his blend of gross-out horror and sardonic humor. This 2014 entry is all about the horrors of working in retail (especially if you're working over the gates of hell in an off-brand IKEA). Takes its ideas about wage slavery and culty corporate cultures to their literal extremes. I enjoyed Southern Book Club and Best Friend's Exorcism more but this one's quite amusing and has an accessibly short length. Got my 30 books for the year Nice. Audiobooks are amazing. You read twice as many books that way. I'll probably do a Best of 2022 thread. I got a couple of books I need to finish up.
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Post by Brother Fease on Jan 11, 2023 22:45:07 GMT
Starting a new book series this Week: Virgil Flowers series from John Sandford. Currently on book 1, Dark of the Moon.
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VERITAS
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Post by VERITAS on Jan 15, 2023 2:31:56 GMT
Completed Blood Meridian last week (still far too heavy to fully digest, I'm not well) and now slowly attempting "Child of God" because I'm a masochist...
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tep
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formerly known as Ban
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Post by tep on Jan 19, 2023 0:16:51 GMT
Finished Stephen King's It a few days ago after months of slow and steady progress... 9/10
Been reading through the Dark Tower for the first time, about halfway through Wizard & Glass
Also about halfway through Maurice Druon's The Iron King
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Post by Brother Fease on Jan 26, 2023 2:32:48 GMT
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Saw the movie a long, long time ago, back in 2003/early 2004. Decided to read the book.
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Post by stephen on Jan 26, 2023 6:34:54 GMT
Just started Northern Irish author Anna Burns's Booker Prize-winning Milkman. Really digging it so far.
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tep
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Post by tep on Jan 31, 2023 18:59:31 GMT
Been reading like crazy.
Finished The Iron King and its sequel The Strangled Queen. Really enjoyed both, but gonna take a break from that series for a while.
A little more than halfway through Wolves of the Calla. Words cannot describe how much I am obsessed with the Dark Tower right now.
Finally finished Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts, which I started way back in the summer after watching The Black Phone. Some duds, but overall really liked it. Favorite story was definitely Pop Art.
Also about a halfway through NOS4A2.
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Post by Martin Stett on Feb 11, 2023 18:41:55 GMT
Just finished Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Agrarian Justice. If nothing else, you've gotta give props to anybody that titles his political manifesto Common Sense and proposed social security in the eighteenth century.
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Post by Brother Fease on Feb 11, 2023 22:16:14 GMT
Dream Town by David Baldacci
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Mar 4, 2023 18:56:17 GMT
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
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VERITAS
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Post by VERITAS on Mar 6, 2023 2:14:47 GMT
Finished McCarthy's "Child of God" (the antithesis of a one sitting read; my palate is obscene but not that equipped for necrophilia...though many portions of it were brutally hilarious at times...) and now re-reading "Hangsaman" by Shirley Jackson because we love a schizophrenic leading female protagonist...
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tep
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Post by tep on Mar 6, 2023 17:23:42 GMT
Embarking on my first Pynchon with Mason & Dixon, which is pretty incredible so far.
While also continuing with King’s bibliography, currently on Hearts in Atlantis.
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Post by stephen on Mar 6, 2023 19:35:33 GMT
Embarking on my first Pynchon with Mason & Dixon, which is pretty incredible so far. While also continuing with King’s bibliography, currently on Hearts in Atlantis. Mad respect for kicking off your Pynchon journey with Mason & Dixon. If you can get through that, the rest should be pretty breezy. It also happens to be my favourite of his works.
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tep
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Post by tep on Mar 6, 2023 20:09:48 GMT
Embarking on my first Pynchon with Mason & Dixon, which is pretty incredible so far. While also continuing with King’s bibliography, currently on Hearts in Atlantis. Mad respect for kicking off your Pynchon journey with Mason & Dixon. If you can get through that, the rest should be pretty breezy. It also happens to be my favourite of his works. I heard someone suggest to read him in chronological order (as in, when the books are set) which seemed like a cool idea. I hopefully will stick to this. Plus I was very interested in the subject matter and that time period, so it didn’t seem quite as daunting as most of his other stuff. So far, difficult… but very rewarding.
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Post by stephen on Mar 6, 2023 20:43:52 GMT
Mad respect for kicking off your Pynchon journey with Mason & Dixon. If you can get through that, the rest should be pretty breezy. It also happens to be my favourite of his works. I heard someone suggest to read him in chronological order (as in, when the books are set) which seemed like a cool idea. I hopefully will stick to this. Plus I was very interested in the subject matter and that time period, so it didn’t seem quite as daunting as most of his other stuff. So far, difficult… but very rewarding. I always recommend kicking off with V when it comes to Pynchon. It's a top-shelf barnstormer of a debut that really packs a lot of his peculiarities in, and it feels like Pynchon came out of the gate fully formed. It's also the novel that convinced me that PTA was a Pynchon fan even before he made Inherent Vice (another great starting point) because it feels like The Master is his true ode to Pynchon and PTA really captured his languid vibe even while he wasn't technically adapting him. V would make for a great chaser to the feast that is Mason & Dixon.
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Post by Brother Fease on Mar 9, 2023 19:05:29 GMT
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Post by Brother Fease on Mar 11, 2023 16:24:48 GMT
Spare by Prince Henry. Haven't read much non-fiction, but eager read about his life.
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chris3
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I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Mar 12, 2023 2:39:04 GMT
Revival by Stephen King. I'm currently experiencing some major Dark Tower withdrawals after completing the series, so I bought five King books to help wean me off the Beam. Halfway through Revival and it's been a total page-turner so far. He's still got it.
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