i read her first novel, The Rehearsal, and loved it, but moving on to The Luminaries found it very dull. so ive not gotten onto Birnam Wood yet.
but The Rehearsal is great! didn’t like the film version so much though eh
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Just finished “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing” by Eimear McBride. One of those awarded-or-nominated-for-everything litfic novels.
I’m not quite sure where i sit with this one. Overall positive? Most of the premise and plot are conventional litfic Trauma Plot: Irish girl coming-of-age with religious trauma, abusive family, disabled brother, sexual assault and the self-destructive response to that.
But the characters feel real to me. The protagonist flipping between defiant and acquiescent, the brother being both proud and despondant, the abusive mom feeling like an actual abuser and not a cartoon. And the Joyce/Beckett stream-of-consciousness works for me. (And the scene where the protagonist steals from her grandpa’s body at his funeral is really funny).
It’s a hard read, both for the style choices and for multiple explicit description of assault our poor narrator suffers. Like i said, i think overall positive, but i probably won’t go back to it again
Not so much reading, more looking at the pictures. @CCMP judging by your avatar it might be of interest to you?
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The avatar is more of a nod to the 80s council estate architecture I grew up around, but I do have a penchant for all things Soviet and that book would be right up my street.
Speaking of which, and while I’m in this thread;
Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin is a favourite of mine that I’d recommend. Real CCCP vibe to it.
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Not unlike my neck of the woods. Those estates are long gone now. Where’s your Avatar pic of? It’s got a look of some the Eastern European/soviet architecture I’ve come across although the walkways and tower look distinctly British
Hulme V? (AKA The Crescents)
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I’m not sure where it is, tbh, I grabbed it for a mood board for a project I’ve been working on. It had a familiarity to it, the contrast with the older buildings in the background, etc. This is the full pic;
And then this is a photo of the actual estate in Liverpool where I lived as a kid (living in a council house on the same estate that these flats dominated).
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There is a book called Soviet Bus Stops sort of a coffee table book. And i believe there is the documentary version too:
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Don’t forget the hot sequel, Soviet Metro Stations!
I’m a big Soviet nerd (used to live in Armenia, Kyiv and Tbilisi are two of my favorite cities on Earth), so I’ve got fond memories of all the goofy, wondrous public architecture in that corner of the world.
On a related note, since most synth nerds are also space nerds, I recently read The Wrong Stuff, which is hilarious, sad, and terrifying in equal measure.
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I needed some light escapism from everything going on, so I decided to grab the Beastie Boys Book from Audible.
It’s been in my list of books for a while, and I had actually been avoiding it because, being a big Beastie Boy fan, I figured I’d heard all the stories before in some form or another, but, wow am I surprised. It’s so good so far and doesn’t feel at all like rehashed interviews.
Nostalgia is probably my favorite drug and this book, which feel like a collection of stories or essays, are absolute gold. I lived in NYC back in the day, and all of these are transporting me back in time. Really great escapism if you are a fan of the Beasties. Unlike some of the biographies I’ve read in the last few years, I’m looking at the counter and thinking that 10-hours of this just isn’t going to be enough. I could listen to them tell stories all day and never get bored I think. All the humor, and kitsch, and coolness that you get from the albums really shines through.
Also, in contrast to a lot of the bios I’ve read where it’s a chore to get through the person’s childhood years, that era of their lives is incredibly entertaining.
Anyway, two thumbs up from me so far.
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Also listening to the audiobook of Harari’s NEXUS.
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Awesome rec, I’ll be checking this one out soon!
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Reading this in patches at the minute (mostly the PKD parts), it’s good but a little overly academic for my tastes:
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All across Britain, a generation of grown-up children are graduating from university, moving back in to their old bedrooms and showing their gratitude by berating their parents for their out-of-date politics. But for proud and high-profile left-wingers Emma and Eddie Hughes, the return of their only child is a far greater challenge than they ever could have anticipated. Young Dylan had warned them there was something personal he needed to tell them, but nothing could have prepared his right-on parents for the shocking revelation he delivers. Their son is a Conservative.
From John O’Farrell, author of the bestselling political satire, Things Can Only Get Better, comes Family Politics, an insightful, sharply funny and and warm-hearted antidote to our divided times.
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Had a long drive to a gig last week and “re-read” Count Zero by William Gibson (via audiobook). Started up Mona Lisa Overdrive yesterday - haven’t read these in about 15 years, the creme de la creme of cyberpunk. Last month I did Snowcrash too. Might be time for a cyberpunk break after these though haha
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I’m about a quarter of the way through a reread of Pynchon’s Against The Day, and it’s definitely still one of my favourites of his.
Can’t wait for the new one.
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”We are legion, we are bob.” First book from the Bobiverse. As audiobook on Audible.
Love it! Comical, political & philosophical sci-fi.
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Hell yeah. My favourite PKD. Let’s go
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Birnam Wood is amazing! Highly recommended. I read it and then read The Luminaries, which was a huge letdown. Go get that Birnam!
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