04-14-2014 | #1 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Reading Lists
I don't know why, but I was just thinking about reading lists I've used in my life. I don't mean reading lists of my own making, but particular things that have served as major reading lists for periods of my life, not necessarily to be strictly followed, but which constituted a kind of centre of signposts to which I often returned, getting lost on the paths those signposts pointed out.
I'll give examples here and would be interested in similar examples from other people. When I was very young, one of these was a large, illustrated paperback book called something like Fantasy Worlds - I can't find it with a brief internet search. From this I discovered Lovecraft, Peake, Gene Wolfe and others. In fact, I think there were actually two similar books that served this purpose. Slightly later, the reading list was provided by Lovecraft's essay 'Supernatural Horror in Literature'. A new vista was opened up with A Japanese Mirror, by Ian Buruma, which served as my reading list for a while: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true Later again, Momus (Nick Currie) became a kind of musical reading list: I reproduce here the lyrics from the first of those two songs: I love you, you're so well read Blue stockings well spread Your carnal knowledge knocks me dead I love you, you're so well read Bluestocking give head I love you, you've read: Ovid, Anaïs Nin The Song of Solomon The Perfumed Garden and Georges Bataille's The Story of the Eye The Petronius Satyricon The Arabian Nights, the Decameron The Marquis de Sade's 120 Days And Serge Gainsbourg singing songs to Sweet Jane B I love you, you're so well read Blue stockings well spread Your carnal knowledge knocks me dead I love you, you're so well read Bluestocking give head I love you, you've read: Sacher Masoch and DHL Portnoy's Complaint and mine as well Frank Harris, The Life and Loves Lusts of a Moron, Wings of a Dove The Latins of the Silver Age The triolets of Paul Verlaine Lautreamont and G. Cabrera Infante Mishima Yukio and Sweet Jane B I love you, you're so well read Bluestocking give head Whisper what they said: "Le silence de la chambre est profond Aucun bruit n'arrive plus Ni des routes, ni de la ville, ni de la mere La nuit est a son terme, partout limpide et noir La lune a disparu Ils ont peur Il ecoute, les yeux au sol Son silence effrayante Il parle de sa beaute Les yeux fermees Il peut revoir encore l'image dans sa perfection" | |||||||||||
“Absolutely candid, carefree, but straightforward speech becomes possible for the first time when one speaks of the highest." - Friedrich Schlegel
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04-14-2014 | #2 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
The 2,000 Page Suicide Note by Mitchell Heisman
I've been reading Michael Heismann's 2000 page "suicide note" (appropriately titled) "Suicide Note" for the past few days, and I have to say, this guy is on par with any nihilistic author I've ever encountered. He shot himself, dressed in white, in front of a group of Harvard students after completing the book and submitting it for publication. | |||||||||||
“The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island |
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04-14-2014 | #3 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: Reading Lists
I tried to download that a few years ago, but the file was so huge it crashed my Adobe Reader. | |||||||||||
04-14-2014 | #4 | |||||||||||
Mannikin
Join Date: Apr 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
I only started reasding weird fiction a couple of years ago when I discovered Ligotti's stories. My first reading list was his Conspiracy Against the Human Race. I hunted down and read all the stories and authors he mentioned. And one of the main reasons I joined the forum here was to see what other weird-minded people are reading and find some new authors to check out.
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The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it. -- Albert Camus
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04-14-2014 | #5 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
Check out Flannery O Connor. she's weird
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“The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island |
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04-14-2014 | #6 | |||||||||||
Mannikin
Join Date: Apr 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
I've always been a bit reluctant to read her since all I've ever heard about her stories is that they're very expressive of a Roman Catholic worldview. Are there any stories that you'd single out as being the cream of her crop, teguififthzeal? | |||||||||||
The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it. -- Albert Camus
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04-15-2014 | #7 | |||||||||||
Acolyte
Join Date: Mar 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
The most significant reading lists for me have always been compiled in the interviews of Thomas Ligotti. Through him I discovered Thomas Bernhard (and I've since read everything of his available in English translations, which he probably would have hated), Bruno Schulz, Philip Larkin, Hagiwara Sakutarō, Emil Cioran, and others. I had already read Poe and Burroughs and Borges but Ligotti's admiration made me revisit their work and contemplate it in new ways I found very rewarding.
In college I bought the occasional 100,000,000 Books You Hafta Read Before You Die! manual, but I stopped thumbing through these because 1) the selections never strayed far from the Western canon and soggy social realism, and 2) I eventually found it much funner to track down interviews with authors about their influences, à la the tried and true Ligotti way. Last year ago when I discovered Eric Basso I read an interview in which he named his three favorite American novelists: Nathanael West, Djuna Barnes, and John Hawkes. I'd heard of none of these guys, and after randomly scanning some works and their descriptions I could only picture an hourglass in a sea of books. "Well, there goes my summer." Jackpot. | |||||||||||
Now I will try to keep awake. The fog.
~ Eric Basso (1947-2019), “The Beak Doctor” |
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04-15-2014 | #8 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Threadstarter
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Re: Reading Lists
On a slightly trivial note, I lived in Hagiwara Sakutaro's hometown for a while. | |||||||||||
“Absolutely candid, carefree, but straightforward speech becomes possible for the first time when one speaks of the highest." - Friedrich Schlegel
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8 Thanks From: | bendk (04-15-2014), ChildofOldLeech (04-15-2014), Druidic (04-15-2014), gveranon (04-15-2014), Mark Cooper (04-15-2014), miguel1984 (07-21-2022), teguififthzeal (04-15-2014), Waffiesnaq (04-15-2014) |
04-15-2014 | #9 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Feb 2014
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Re: Reading Lists
I first discovered Dino Buzzati through Mr. Ligotti's interviews. A great writer of short stories and his novel "The Tartar Steppe" was also great.
To answer the question below from Mark Cooper, I think a lot of people who are atheists and agnostics appreciate O Connor's work. It is dark--at times almost irredeemably so--with a tinge of pathos. You might even say that C.S Lewis and O Connor were from different universes. I would recommend "A Good Man is Hard To Find". | |||||||||||
“The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island |
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5 Thanks From: | bendk (04-15-2014), gveranon (04-15-2014), Mark Cooper (04-15-2014), miguel1984 (07-21-2022), Waffiesnaq (04-16-2014) |
04-15-2014 | #10 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Oct 2012
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Re: Reading Lists
- Ah, it is likely the asperger's in me, but I have always loved not just making, but reading lists of books; a list full of unread, perhaps formerly unheard of titles -especially those of an offbeat, peculiar, or obscure nature, is like the purest music to my ears - the catalogue from Atlas Press was one of my first favorite such discoveries. Amazon is a greedy, grasping corporate behemoth to be sure, but I have always loved it, not so much for what it is, but what it offered, namely the Listmania lists that patrons can create. I cannot overestimate the importance that these lists in general, and particular, those written by one 'Rob O'Tussin' - who compiled dozens and dozens of lists devoted to all manner of surrealist/visionary/avant-garde/experimental/cult/generally deranged literature which proved an invaluable resource throughout high school and helped me locate a number of obscure, marginal geniuses I might previously have gone unaware of. These wonderful lists can be found here: -Andrew Calcutt's Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide was another source of inspiration in high school, and although it's rather slightly written for the general reader, it's a fine collection of information on a number of authors, some all but unknown.
-Regarding weird/supernatural fiction, I have repeatedly perused and enjoyed Stephen Jones' Horror: 100 Greatest Books and Another 100 Greatest Books immensely, in no small part due to the hundreds of entries in the 'Also Recommended' section featured at the end of the book, which have led me to discovering a plethora of forgotten gems. Other favorites included Karl Edward Wagner's list of 39 favorite horror novels (http://www.violetbooks.com/wagnerlist.html), John Pelan's 'horror core' list (http://home.epix.net/~wallison/corelist.html) and the 'century of horror' list featured at DarkEcho: http://darkecho.com/darkecho/horroronline/century.html . I have read dozens of titles off of each of them, and would recommend these lists to any admirer of the weird. | |||||||||||
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