Rate the last Book you read

Tools    





What is this one about? It got my attention because the cover is very close to a shot I have in mind for a script I've yet to write
Susan Burton writes about her eating disorders.
__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.




William Gibson: Burning Chrome - 7/10

Sci-fi short stories from Gibson and the occassional co-conspirator. Some characteristically cyberpunk tales, with others that feel more like classic 50s & 60s inspired sci-fi. Gibson's solo offerings have the abrasive language that I like. Co-authored stories feel a bit tamed. New Rose Hotel and Burning Chrome are my favorites. Overall rating is deceiving because the quality varies. 9/10 at its best, 5 at its worst.




Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon (2014)

The title and subject matter refer to the famous Laurel Canyon, a large residential canyon on the north side of Hollywood. It's main road is Laurel Canyon Blvd. which leads from Hollywood up over the hills, past Mulholland Dr., and down into Studio City in the L.A. Valley.

Author David McGowan puts forth a theory that most (if not all) of the bands and musicians who lived in Laurel Canyon were somehow connected via their parents to the military industrial complex. To be sure, there are lots of coincidences pointed out in the book regarding pop icons like David Crosby, the Mamas and the Papas, the Doors, Frank Zappa, Buffalo Springfield, the Beach Boys, the Monkees, and many others who resided in the Canyon.

His hinted-at conspiracy theories are fairly silly, but his biographical material on many of the early '60s rock and folk rock celebrities are pretty well researched. There are many behind the scenes revelations. I learned a few things that I didn't know.

It is true that the Canyon was home to scores of famous music artists, but to suggest that they all ended up there for any other reason than it was a hip place to live, is more than a stretch.

He's also left out a bunch of rock stars who resided there. John Mayall, the Animals, Captain Beefheart and others all lived there during the '60s. I also rented a home there from '69-'71.

But if you have a fascination for Laurel Canyon, or are interested in how it was in the '60s/'70s, this is a nice companion book to anything else you may have read about the area.




Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium Eater - 7/10
De Quincey's journal of experiences just before and during years-long opium addiction. His early account of going through Russian-novel level poverty is the most moving part of the book, but doesn't last too long, and the lauded 'hallucinatory' section recounting surrealistic opium dreams only takes up about ten pages at the end. The majority of the book is waxing philosophical about the nature of addiction, age, poverty, etc.

De Quincey's story occasionally makes him unlikable, and is full of endless sentences, but it's also at times poetic & heart-wrenching. I'm interested in reading Suspiria de Profundis eventually.




Philip K. Dick - Time Out of Joint: 8/10
A man living in a cozy 50s suburb starts finding clues that indicate his surroundings are a facade. An apparent influence on The Truman Show. A good & succinct SF story atop a classic metaphysical query.

PKD was my favorite writer as a teen. His more challenging later work really helped me develop a taste for the bizarre & ambiguous. This is one of his earlier, more accessible books, but still one of the more entertaining I've read.

Shame on Goodreads and some earlier prints for putting a giant spoiler in the plot description.




Alfred Bester - The Stars My Destination: 7/10
A man sets out for revenge against the spaceship that left him adrift. Dark and morally compromised. Feels very ahead of its time, with a bastard of a main character.

This is heralded as genius by prominent figures on the jacket. I like the writing and the sophisticated pulpy universe it takes place in, but it's harder to get absorbed in a story centered around mostly hateable characters, even with a great climactic transcendental leading arc.



“I was cured, all right!”


Tactics to combat terrorism and how organized crime in Brazil works just like international terrorism and how this groups are targeting police forces, public transport and innocent civilians. The heads of these terrorist organizations are one of the largest drug traffickers in South America.

Some minorities around here want to legalize drugs, but to legalize drugs is to legalize terrorism.



Let the night air cool you off
Anybody here read any Ryu Murakami? I'm thinking about picking up Audition and In the Miso Soup this weekend. The film adaptation of Audition is what has me curious about it, which is probably the thing that leads most people to Murakami nowadays, I'd imagine. I was hoping to find some Japanese literature that was similar to some of the weirder Japanese films that exist. I just don't really know where to start.



1984



A great old book, combines romance and political thriller elements, i wish i could write that well.
Good movie too.



Society ennobler, last seen in Medici's Florence
Is this the MoFo Book thread?
---

Currently, I'm reading Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen.
Finally, we got his autobiography. Very informative source for variety things.

__________________
"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.



Is this the MoFo Book thread?
It’s not a thread where members read the same book together if that’s what you mean.

The thread is literally the title of the thread.



Cannot believe I haven’t read a book since Thanksgiving of 2020. This has been a real sea change for me after literally a lifetime of reading. (First book I read by myself as a child was Alice in Wonderland.)

Gotta get out of the time suck of Twitter. I don’t do social media at weekends, but I spend way too much time on Twitter during the week. That’s gotta change.

Anyway, for the umpteenth time I read this book on Friday, which is my favorite Hemingway book. Just love it.




You're a reading machine now, @Stirchley! Go go go!
I used to be. I might re-read the letters of Sylvia Plath next, which is two volumes.



The book I'm currently reading is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It's entertaining