Books and reading and such (Time has proved alistarr* right.)

[Wally]

the thought of you even trying to read the Bell Jar amuses the heck out of me.

[Greg Nog]

I'm round about the beginning of Claw of The Conciliator now.  It's still holding my interest, and being pretty entertaining, although I'm frustrated again and again by the passing mentions of cacogens without specific details about them.  Dammit, Wolfe, I wanna hear about spacemen.

I'm almost at the end of the third book, and Book of the New Sun just keeps delivering. I love, love the way that Wolfe fights off the urge to describe every detail of every item in his stories, but instead makes a determined attempt to describe the world as Severian might have seen it. I have no doubt that Wolfe has spent a lot of time with the books of Herodotus and Xenophon and others like them, whose histories are very much a series of personal recollections, and in the same way Herodotus gives us only five words out of Scythian, we know that those steppe people 'taught their sons three things: to ride hard, shoot straight and speak the truth' and his theories on how Egyptian and Greek mythology interrelate, in the same way that Severian never tells you what an autochthon is, but you know quite a bit about the types of knives used in the city of Thrax. I love the fact that we know almost nothing whatsoever about how people look in Severian's time, except that they have broadly the same type of body shape and eye colours, because they are typical examples of somebody's distinctive personal features, and that exultants and other members of the higher classes tend to be taller, as we are frequently told. But, for all I know Severian is 10 feet tall and has blue skin. I don't know what his sensory powers are like, except that sight is still the most important: at a stage he says that he hopes to avoid being ambushed by a beast by being able to smell it, which is an extraordinarily strange thing for a city-dweller to trust in, or at least would be if Severian was like us in the relevant way. Isn't trying to figure out what these commonplace things Severian refers to actually are like fascinating?!

Not really, but I'm digging the book anyway.  I'd be a lot more willing to lend credence to the idea that Wolfe's specifically avoiding providing information if I thought he was a better writer.  But I'm not sure he is; he's definitely better at world-building than characterization, so I pretty much just want him to go all-out on describing the world he built.

coldie, I'd be curious to hear what you think of the Wolfe as you get more into it.

[elpollodiablo]

the thought of you even trying to read the Bell Jar amuses the heck out of me.

The ennui of the bourgeoisie doesn't tend to interest me unless there's graphic violence involved

[coldforge]

I'm round about the beginning of Claw of The Conciliator now.  It's still holding my interest, and being pretty entertaining, although I'm frustrated again and again by the passing mentions of cacogens without specific details about them.  Dammit, Wolfe, I wanna hear about spacemen.

I'm almost at the end of the third book, and Book of the New Sun just keeps delivering. I love, love the way that Wolfe fights off the urge to describe every detail of every item in his stories, but instead makes a determined attempt to describe the world as Severian might have seen it. I have no doubt that Wolfe has spent a lot of time with the books of Herodotus and Xenophon and others like them, whose histories are very much a series of personal recollections, and in the same way Herodotus gives us only five words out of Scythian, we know that those steppe people 'taught their sons three things: to ride hard, shoot straight and speak the truth' and his theories on how Egyptian and Greek mythology interrelate, in the same way that Severian never tells you what an autochthon is, but you know quite a bit about the types of knives used in the city of Thrax. I love the fact that we know almost nothing whatsoever about how people look in Severian's time, except that they have broadly the same type of body shape and eye colours, because they are typical examples of somebody's distinctive personal features, and that exultants and other members of the higher classes tend to be taller, as we are frequently told. But, for all I know Severian is 10 feet tall and has blue skin. I don't know what his sensory powers are like, except that sight is still the most important: at a stage he says that he hopes to avoid being ambushed by a beast by being able to smell it, which is an extraordinarily strange thing for a city-dweller to trust in, or at least would be if Severian was like us in the relevant way. Isn't trying to figure out what these commonplace things Severian refers to actually are like fascinating?!

Not really, but I'm digging the book anyway.  I'd be a lot more willing to lend credence to the idea that Wolfe's specifically avoiding providing information if I thought he was a better writer.  But I'm not sure he is; he's definitely better at world-building than characterization, so I pretty much just want him to go all-out on describing the world he built.

coldie, I'd be curious to hear what you think of the Wolfe as you get more into it.

I'm enjoying it so far. I like the setting he's establishing. I'm not so good with passages describing removing people's leg bones, though.

[Greg Nog]

Given that the dude's a torturer, there's actually surprisingly little torture throughout.  I do like some of the parts later on where some captor is threatening him with all kinds of ostentatious maulings, and Severian kinda quietly thinks to himself about how ineffective those techniques are.

[mountmccabe]

i submit the name of the world by denis johnson. a novella, like. i've been meaning to reread it.

I have a copy of that.  I haven't read it yet but I loved Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

[davy]

jesus' son is also amazing. for my money, though, the name of the world is the strongest, quickest punch he's delivered.

[Greg Nog]

So I just got The Sword of The Lictor in the mail today, which is fortuitous, as I'm about to finish The Waves.  From Woolf to Wolfe!

However, it seems that John Hodgman's new book is out tomorrow.  Wolfe may need to wait a bit.

[davy]

Damn you, Greg! I just signed on for the sole purpose of creating a new reading thread, and you haul this old fossil back out! 

I'm doin' it anyway.