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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9742400" data-attributes="member: 6671663">I hit a DNF (did not finish), and don’t think it was primarily the books’s fault: Black Brane, by Michael Cisco. Cisco is an American writer of weird fiction at level of genius comparable to China Mieville and the like, though far less generally famous. I really like his work. This is his brand new novel, narrated by a guy hired for clerical services at the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, whose members are up to high weirdness in engineering, string theory, archeology, and sundry other disciplines. I tore through the first quarter in no time flat, and then hit a wall, barely able to manage 1d2 pages a day. After about ten days of that, I shelved the book for the time being. But at least half the slowdown goes with some fresh family problems. When you’re helping care for a 95-year-old mother deep in dementia, things come up. I just don’t have the right kind of focus for it now; I can hope that next year, I will, and then I’ll gladly return to it. Ramsey Campbell has a line about discovering Clive Barker, reading some of his more striking images, cocking his head, and thinking, “But…yes.” Cisco does that to me a lot, with lines like this:“The throbbing in my leg and foot won’t let me read. I want to read a slow, neutral, long book where nothing happens in a straightforward succession of impressionistic scenes, so I can dump out my attention on a nice even surface and let it spread, thicken in all directions, with nothing abrupt, no jolts, no highs or lows, nothing but intensely numb interest.”Just like Mr. Campbell said, “But…yes.” I may schedule some reading of more of his short stories while waiting for things to settle down some.</blockquote>

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