What are you reading in 2025?

[Parmandur]

Been working my way through the Appendix N anthology edited by Peter Bebergal. I don't know what it is, but something about Michael Moorcock's prose is absolutely soporifuc fir me: trying to get through any Elric story puts me right out. Has been that way anytime I try to read him.

Unlike the electric shock of reading Howard or Lieber.

 

[prabe]

Bradbury's writing has this strangely beautiful heartbreak. It at once captures what it's like to be a kid, aching to be an adult but also fearful of leaving childhood behind, and being an adult desperately recalling your lost childhood. All of it done with a simple description of an autumn wind blowing leaves across a small town.

I recently reread Something Wicked This Way Comes and I was surprised how important Charles Halloway (Will's dad) was in/to the novel. Also, it hit a lot harder than when I read it in high school or college or thereabouts, possibly because I was still young enough then to look down on Jim and Will.

King has a misanthropic streak in his writing. It's this synergy between the everyday and supernatural terrors.

There's that, and there's also the attitude the sociologist (I'm pretty sure it's the old guy, and I'm pretty sure he's a sociologist) expresses in The Stand (paraphrasing, probably): Man might have been created in God's image, but human societies seem to have been made in the image of His opposite number.

 

[prabe]

Been working my way through the Appendix N anthology edited by Peter Bebergal. I don't know what it is, but something about Michael Moorcock's prose is absolutely soporifuc fir me: trying to get through any Elric story puts me right out. Has been that way anytime I try to read him.

Unlike the electric shock of reading Howard or Lieber.

Can't comment on Lieber (much, I've read some Spiders and Snakes stuff, and Conjure Wife ages ago, but I have a handful of Lankhmar books on my shelf) or Moorcock (at all--it's a thing I keep meaning to correct but there's a lot, and finding a starting point is hard, and there's a lot of new stuff I want to read, too) but the little bit of Howard I've read hasn't made me want to read more. Some of that's probably when he was writing, where he was from, and the market/s he was writing for, but I wasn't particularly impressed with the prose or the characters or the story. Also, of course, the problem could be me.

 

[Autumnal]

The best starting point for Moorcock is Elric in publication order.

 

[trappedslider]

There's that, and there's also the attitude the sociologist (I'm pretty sure it's the old guy, and I'm pretty sure he's a sociologist) expresses in The Stand (paraphrasing, probably): Man might have been created in God's image, but human societies seem to have been made in the image of His opposite number.

Glenn Bateman taught Sociology

 

[jian]

This has been a pretty heavy week for finishing books, for some reason.

Just finished The Haves and the Have-Yachts by Evan Osnos, which is basically a collection of his articles from the New Yorker about, well, rich people. They're quite eclectic, varying from how much superyachts cost ($250m+, more than any house), how much it costs to get a famous musician to play at your party ($1-5m, most such musicians play 20+ private gigs a year, just about the only ones who don't for money are Springsteen and Swift), how easily the Republican core of wealthy WASP voters converted to Trumpism (very), and what life is like after you get out of prison for white-collar crime (considerably easier than for blue-collar crime, though it's noted that the traits that make you successful in white-collar crime - aggressiveness, assertiveness, entitlement - are exactly the traits that get you killed in prison).

 

[Parmandur]

The best starting point for Moorcock is Elric in publication order.

Indeed, this anthology included The Dreaming City. Also has the publication order first Fahfred & Grey Mouser and Conan stories.

 

[Parmandur]

Can't comment on Lieber (much, I've read some Spiders and Snakes stuff, and Conjure Wife ages ago, but I have a handful of Lankhmar books on my shelf) or Moorcock (at all--it's a thing I keep meaning to correct but there's a lot, and finding a starting point is hard, and there's a lot of new stuff I want to read, too) but the little bit of Howard I've read hasn't made me want to read more. Some of that's probably when he was writing, where he was from, and the market/s he was writing for, but I wasn't particularly impressed with the prose or the characters or the story. Also, of course, the problem could be me.

Howard is so painfully misogyny racist, that it is ludicrous...but the prose is fire.

 

[prabe]

Howard is so painfully misogyny racist, that it is ludicrous...but the prose is fire.

Yes about his attitudes, no about his prose. The story I read kinda gallumphed unsubtly along on the prose level, and on the story level, and was soaked in bigotry. I can't say I'm interested in reading more.

 

[Autumnal]

Yes about his attitudes, no about his prose. The story I read kinda gallumphed unsubtly along on the prose level, and on the story level, and was soaked in bigotry. I can't say I'm interested in reading more.

It helps with a lot of these to get hooked on it in one’s midteens, when one is stupid and gullible less experienced in the world and prose. Particularly if those midteens were several decades ago. There are modern authors who carry forward the core concepts but with more clues about various prejudices and assumptions.