What Book Are You Reading at the Moment?

[heydaralon]

Has anyone on here read Bonfire of the Vanities? I loved Radical Chik and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers, but I have never read anything Wolfe wrote besides that. He's kind of a weird dude, who jumped on the NeoCon train towards the end, but his critique of counterculture is pretty spot on.

[Fife]

I read Lucifer's Hammer a few years ago based on the commendation of our very own STA. I thought it could have been about 2/3 the length, but for a 1977 novel about SHTF, it holds up pretty good. Along that same line, I think what I liked best was the mixture of nostalgia and melancholy I felt thinking about how cool California *used* to be.

[heydaralon]

I read Lucifer's Hammer a few years ago based on the commendation of our very own STA. I thought it could have been about 2/3 the length, but for a 1977 novel about SHTF, it holds up pretty good. Along that same line, I think what I liked best was the mixture of nostalgia and melancholy I felt thinking about how cool California *used* to be.

Are you a fan of PKD? I think that dude does a good job of showing the weirdness of Cali during the era he wrote in.

[Fife]

Not a big King fan. The man doesn't know how to end a book imo. His best work in his collection of short stories called Different Seasons. Out of those, the best was "The Body" which was what the Stand by Me film was based on. A very interesting book on an EMP attack (that may or may not be realistic) is One Second After. Interesting premise, but be forewarned the characters are pretty one dimensional. Still overall, it pulls very few punches, and some of the shit in there is nightmare fuel.

King has turned into a real bag of shit in the last 5 or 6 years. I was a huge King fan from high school up through undergrad. My favorite King novel is the Shining. I liked a couple of his later novels OK, especially the Kennedy one, 11/22/63. Under the Dome was not bad; I actually anticipated and liked the TZ/Star Trek TOS ending. Everything after the Shining sequel, Dr. Sleep (which kind of sucks), is like a fucking Young Turks episode. Bad beyond redemption.

I think my favorite collection of his is Skeleton Crew. Any of you read those stories?

[Fife]

I read Lucifer's Hammer a few years ago based on the commendation of our very own STA. I thought it could have been about 2/3 the length, but for a 1977 novel about SHTF, it holds up pretty good. Along that same line, I think what I liked best was the mixture of nostalgia and melancholy I felt thinking about how cool California *used* to be.

Are you a fan of PKD? I think that dude does a good job of showing the weirdness of Cali during the era he wrote in.

I like him -- like a lot of kids my age in the early 80s, I picked him up first because of Blade Runner. I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle when I was that age and at least a couple of others I don't remember the names of now. I just have to make time to read more of his stuff, which I would like to do.

Since I've been older, I've liked reading some *about* PKD. Interesting dude.

[heydaralon]

I read Lucifer's Hammer a few years ago based on the commendation of our very own STA. I thought it could have been about 2/3 the length, but for a 1977 novel about SHTF, it holds up pretty good. Along that same line, I think what I liked best was the mixture of nostalgia and melancholy I felt thinking about how cool California *used* to be.

Are you a fan of PKD? I think that dude does a good job of showing the weirdness of Cali during the era he wrote in.

I like him -- like a lot of kids my age in the early 80s, I picked him up first because of Blade Runner. I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle when I was that age and at least a couple of others I don't remember the names of now. I just have to make time to read more of his stuff, which I would like to do.

Since I've been older, I've liked reading some *about* PKD. Interesting dude.

I haven't read skeleton crew, but I personally liked Misery and the Shining a lot. However, I actually enjoy Kubrick's film more than the Stephen King book, which is rare because 99 times out of 100 the book is always better. I read 11/22/63 and felt like it was pretty gripping until the ending, when it turned into boilerplate "time travel alter the past stuff". The dude's politics were pretty bad, particularly his gun grabber bullshit.

I haven't read Dick's Exegesis, but he was a haunted broken man, who used his pain to write crazy shit. High Castle is a great book, and he was actually planning a sequel which never came about. What is always weird to me about Dick is his religiosity, and how unique it was. He was a straight up gnostic, and his worldview was pretty Manichean imo. He saw conspiracies everywhere, and thought that the American spooks and the KGB were hunting him, yet he feared the IRS the most. I think the FBI actually did approach him at one point and ask him to spy on some Marin County college students.

I feel like there is a deeper message in some of his later stuff like the Transmigration of Timothy Archer and VALIS that we are not meant to understand. He wrote shit that the masses read, but a lot of it is indecipherable. Out of the scifi writers, his shit has adapted best. Bladerunner was great, and the Linklater film A Scanner Darkly actually was pretty faithful to his text. I think the latter was Dick's most personal work and probably the closest to being autobiographical...

[DBTrek]

Read Skeleton Crew, good stuff. PKD is a national treasure, along with Cormac McCarthy.
You gentlemen have good taste.

[Speaker to Animals]

Best SHTF novel is still based in the F-L-A




If you want to take this journey, start with:

Alas Babylon
Lucifer's Hammer
One Second After


In that order.

[Speaker to Animals]

Honorable mention:

[heydaralon]

Honorable mention:

Will check this one out for sure. Have you ever heard of Christopher Priest? You might like his book, the Inverted World. I am a sucker for old books with great covers tbh.