Books Part V, featuring Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew

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I've only just noticed that the thread title is a Pynchon tribute.

Has anybody read V. here?
 
I'm still reading The Book Thief. The writing style and the identity of the narrator keep it interesting, but it really needs to get going already. At the same time, I have a feeling that if things get too exciting, it's going to be because some really bad things are happening. :uhoh:
 
This Charming Man by Marian Keys

I've read about four of her books and I think this one is my favourite so far. Very entertaining through and through, while the darker themes like domestic abuse and alcoholism felt very well done and real.

The Mind's Eye by Oliver Sacks

An fascinating book about the workings of a human mind, focusing largely on the cases of people with neurological disorders - a pianist who loses the ability to recognise objects and read music, a writer who cannot recognise words, among others - and how they cope with them. The author himself is a neurologist and has a condition that leaves him unable to recognise faces. What I liked about the book is his obvious empathy and a friendly, accessible writing style.
 
This Charming Man by Marian Keys

I've read about four of her books and I think this one is my favourite so far. Very entertaining through and through, while the darker themes like domestic abuse and alcoholism felt very well done and real.

I love Marian Keys. :heart:
 
I'm reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I had previously only read a total of two Sherlock Holmes stories in my whole life, so I figured I should go for it. I confess, I am mostly reading them because I really like the BBC series, but they are actually really exciting, especially considering that they were written in the 1880s. I didn't realize that A Study in Scarlet is about Mormons and that there really is a dwarf in The Sign of Four.
 
I read them all while avoiding some reading for school back when I was in college. Turned out the umass library not only had all the short stories and the 4 long ones, but a floor to ceiling shelf full of books written about the Sherlock Holmes books. I'm a big holmes nerd (or just a big nerd, in general). I probably read half of it as a distraction from writing papers on the history of the Nantucket whaling industry and the Charleston MA navy yard.

There are a lot of extra lines throughout the Sherlock series you'll be able to geek out over now!
 
I've finished Gravity's Rainbow a couple of weeks ago. It's a diabolical novel. A fascinating, downright frustrating, uneven mess full of ridiculously childish humour, but utterly brilliant in other parts (especially the ending) and ultimately very rewarding, offering some of the most unforgettable scenes I've encountered in literature. Definitely worth it. And it was my first Pynchon, so it took a while to get used to, but once it got rolling I was immersed in that crazy, paranoid and perverse world that Pynchon had created. Since it was my first Pynchon novel, it was quite a challenge, but now I'm looking forward to discovering more.
 
What other books of hers are good? So far I've read Rachel's Holiday (very good), The Other Side of the Story (good), Angels (barely ok).

Her earlier ones all kind of blur together, but I remember liking them a lot.

I think her more recent books have been much better. I haven't read her latest yet (Mystery of Mercy Close, I think it's called). The Brightest Star In the Sky was good despite an annoying framing (not sure what else to call it).
 
I keep thinking that I'm going to take a break from Sherlock Holmes stories and read something else for a while, but I'm still reading them. I really hope the BBC does an episode based on "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"; there's a lot to work with in that one. It has Australians!

Sherlock Holmes seems to enjoy scaring the crap out of Watson by standing next to his bed while he sleeps, which he's done a couple of times so far. I demand to see that at least once in the TV series. :lol:
 
I just finished The Third Policeman. Not traditionally enjoyable, it's a very challenging book driven by non sequitur and bizarre situations. The ending was fantastic and I loved it for its mind-bending creativity, but patches of it were quite tedious.

Meanwhile, I just started Ubik. It's fantastic.
 
I bought The Third Policeman a while ago but haven't cracked it open yet.

Currently reading John Crowley's Engine Summer which reads like fantasy but is actually post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Then I'm going to move onto his Little, Big. Which is apparently a major masterpiece.

Ubik is a great one. Before directing A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater was trying to get an animated version of that off the ground. He pitched to a friend of mine who was working in the story department at Dreamworks. My friend thought it would have been really cool but there was no way the studio was going to fund that shit.

Anyway, what other PKD have you read? I'm a major fan who's been through almost all of his work, and can give you some recs.
 
Ubik is my first. I'm really interested in using alternate realities and dream logic in my writing and Ubik's concept really intrigued me on that level (as well as The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which has a fucking cool plot). Obviously I'm familiar with Blade Runner and had intended to start with Androids but I slotted it down because it's not quite the fare I'm reading at the moment.
 
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So much Dick, so little time.

Ubik and Three Stigmata are definitely essential so you're on the right track, as is his Hugo-winning Man In The High Castle. If you've already seen the film of A Scanner Darkly I wouldn't make the book a priority, but it's one of my personal favorites and what Dick himself thought was his best.

Others I'd put near the top of the list, that all deal with the elements you're looking for at the moment:

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Now Wait For Last Year
Time Out Of Joint
We Can Build You
Martian Time-Slip

And of course, the VALIS trilogy is pretty essential to fully understanding the mind and worldview of the author. Valis itself is mind-blowing, The Divine Invasion less-so, but the conclusion (and his last completed novel), The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, is one of his least sci-fi efforts yet one of the most thought-provoking and moving.
 
It's posts like that where I almost think my brother is posting on here. Nope, it's just laz.
 
So much Dick, so little time.

Ubik and Three Stigmata are definitely essential so you're on the right track, as is his Hugo-winning Man In The High Castle. If you've already seen the film of A Scanner Darkly I wouldn't make the book a priority, but it's one of my personal favorites and what Dick himself thought was his best.

Others I'd put near the top of the list, that all deal with the elements you're looking for at the moment:

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
Now Wait For Last Year
Time Out Of Joint
We Can Build You
Martian Time-Slip

And of course, the VALIS trilogy is pretty essential to fully understanding the mind and worldview of the author. Valis itself is mind-blowing, The Divine Invasion less-so, but the conclusion (and his last completed novel), The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer, is one of his least sci-fi efforts yet one of the most thought-provoking and moving.

Very helpful, thank you. His writing style is right up my alley; vivid and descriptive, yet it never approaches inaccessibility. I also really admire his creativity.

What are some of your favorite short stories of his?
 
Haven't read those in quite a while, but I will say The Minority Report is well-worth reading, and it's a shame the film couldn't follow-through all the way on Dick's ideas.
 
I'm like, 60 pages away from finishing Infinite Jest. I can already feel the sad void forming in anticipation of finishing it and not still being in the experience of reading it for the first time. Probably going to loop right back into the beginning of it again though, since I didn't really have a damn clue what I was reading the first couple hundreds pages or so.

I also bought Brief Interviews with Hideous Man, The Pale King, and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again today.
 
Better brace yourself; you are not prepared for what's about to happen.

And believe me, you are definitely going to go right back to the beginning. It's recommended to go through at least the first 50 pages again.

Don't forget to pick up The Girl With Curious Hair. Great stories in there.
 
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