I Just Finished Reading...

[paeng]

Eco's Foucault's Pendulum for the second time in two decades, especially in light of feeds about various anomalies linked in my RSS reader.

[starrysothoth]

Discovering H.P. Lovecraft, a collection of essays about the author, edited by Darrel Schweitzer. It's published by Wildside and holds a very similar format to their Thomas Ligotti Reader. I found most of the essays contained between the covers to be very eye opening. The research directions for Lovecraft studies are truly boundless, as this book demonstrates. While some of the entries weren't exactly cutting edge scholarship (it reprints many from the 1970s), one could do a lot worse than this little book when embarking on a more serious look at HPL's writings.

[Ilsa]

I just finished a book that I think is really worth reading!

Lucio Anneo Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

( I don't know how it's been translated in english, I guess "Letters to Lucilio")

[Ilsa]

L.F. Céline, Bagattelle pour un massacre ...
first italian edition, ed. Corbaccio 1938

some delirium going on there...

[bendk]

I've read three books recently.

The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare. This is Kadare's first novel. It is decent. It is about an Italian General that travels to Albania to locate and repatriate soldiers who were killed in WWII.

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. A good novel. McCarthy continues to populate his rogues gallery with interesting characters. There is more room in the book for Chigur's evil philosophy than in the movie. The movie ends differently too. I'm still not sure which ending I like better.

My Work is Not Yet Done by Thomas Ligotti. Only my first reread of this book. I absolutely love it. I did my 20 year sentence in corporate America and I detest it with a passion almost equal to Ligotti's. Some great nightmarish imagery in these stories. Reading Ligotti is such a rewarding experience for me.

[Toadvine]

Critical Care by Richard Dooling. A funny novel about death and dying in our health care system. The ICUs sound like torture chambers. This was made into a splendid film starring James Spader, Kyra Sedgwick, Helen Mirren, Wallace Shawn, Anne Bancroft, and with an unforgettable comedic performance by Albert Brooks.

The Croquet Player by H.G. Wells. An interesting novella that prefigures much of what John Gray had to say in his philosophy book Straw Dogs. Wells, as usual, was way ahead of everyone.

When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals by Paul K. Conkin. More on the battle of Evolution vs Creationism. A good book, but it devoted a couple chapters to Christian "intellectuals" that I could have done without. I did learn of two interesting, albeit nonsensical, religious concepts: Annihilationism (we sinners get our souls destroyed and we don't have to be tortured in the Lake of Fire for eternity. That's nice) and Soul Sleep (after our bodily death, we are unconscious until Judgement Day. Ho Hum).

[Ilsa]

-Albert Caraco, Supplément à la psychopathie sexualis
mocking the original "Psychopathia Sexualis", this book is a compendium, in a cold medical language and from an "enlightened" point of view, of many sexual pervertions.

- Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

for an interesting review of the book:
Camille Paglia's : A Synopsis

Amazon.com: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson: Camille Paglia: Books

 

Amazon.com: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson: Camille Paglia: Books

[Odalisque]

D K Broster -- Couching at the Door. This is a short story I last read in 1961 or 1962. I think that, in 2008, I was more aware of the points at which it is over-written than I was as a teenager:

'I am going mad, mad, mad!' thought Augustine,

Do we really need more than one mad? That said, the story is effective. It is, I suppose, a black magic story. A little while back, I commented, on another forum, on a volume of black magic stories. I observed that there is something ludicrous about the idea of black magic -- and that the best stories in the book weren't concerned with black magic. Couching at the Door manges to steer clear of seeming ludicrous by remaining very spare with details of the black magic ceremonies. In fact, all we learn of the central character's immersion into the black arts is that it took place in Prague and involved a prostitute with a fur boa (her part in the procedings is never clear, but I formed the impression that she had not survived the business). The story reaps a notable dividend from its reticence.

D K Broster was Dorothy Kathleen Broster (1877-1950). Nine of her stories are available as a cheap paperback in Wordsworth Editions' Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural series. At less than three quid from Amazon, worth a look.

Amazon.co.uk: Couching at the Door (Wordsworth Mystery Supernatural): D.K. Broster: Books

 

Amazon.co.uk: Couching at the Door (Wordsworth Mystery Supernatural): D.K. Broster: Books

[Cyril Tourneur]

description
Erotic cartoons and stories.

Synopsis
Hot on the heels of the critically acclaimed Voluptuous Panic, HOT GIRLS OF WEIMAR BERLIN reveals that the feminist archetype was not an invention of 1960s America. In World War I many German men lost their lives, and afterwards women's roles expanded, creating aggressive, powerful, sexual beings. Like Marlene Dietrich, Weimar women could wear suits and also retain their attractiveness and femininity. Weimar Berlin was the primary city of European sex culture, and its permissive sensibility allowed women to transgress the usual ideal. These women were allowed to exercise their sexual prerogatives right up until the Third Reich insisted that they return to the role of child-bearer.

[Waterdweller]

Books Of Blood Volumes 4-6 by Clive Barker. I like his short stories almost as much as Ligotti's, maybe because he is quite his perfect opposite in horror fiction.