A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

I just got Christmas and Other Horrors anthology edited by Ellen Datlow for $3.00 through Kobo:cheer:

I have read many horror anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow (usually Year's Best Horror ones). Her anthologies never disappoint.
 
SimonBurchell said:
Me neither. I started reading Perdido Street Station but just couldn't connect with it and abandoned it fairly early on. Maybe I'll give it another try.
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Perdido Street Station seem a little too... clever? for me. If that makes sense. I did enjoy The Scar though, for the most part. Un Lun Dun seemed like it had potential, but was trying too hard.
 
Frideswide said:
Any thoughts on this? I tend to like NMS books but I don't know these authors. Which isn't surprising really.


Anyone read it? thoughts and comments?

I'm hoping to visit at least a few of the sites.

https://shop.nms.ac.uk/collections/shop-by-exhibition-cold-war/products/cold-war-scotland

@Yithian , sorry to bother you Sir but you were very helkpful last time :rollingw:
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No help, I'm afraid.

My only input is that it looks quite interesting.

But then, I seem to think 90% of the books I see look 'quite interesting'.

:D
 
It's not really Fortean but I've almost finished "Under the Volcano" by Malcolm Lowry. It's probably not meant that way, but I keep feeling an eerie Mexican spooky magical realism between the lines.

A quite interesting book (but not a re-reader): RAW was the best chapter.
High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experiences in the Seventies - Erik Davis
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=zDqbA1p4Ka&rank=1

A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality--but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?

In High Weirdness, Erik Davis--America's leading scholar of high strangeness--examines the published and unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America's West Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for a renewed engagement with reality.
 
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Currently I am reading Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. I read it many years ago and don't really remember the story, but I do remember the effect of his writing.

It is a story that is read breathlessly, at full speed. I do remember having the same experience when I first read it. It is the wonder and anticipation of...something.
 
catseye said:
I've just read, as a Book Club read, Margaret Attwood's 'The Heart Goes Last' - dystopian, near future etc etc.

I found it quite dreadful. But if you're a Margaret Attwood fan you might like it.
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I have never been a fan, but I did enjoy (?) A Handmaid's Tale. It is eerily prescient, similar to how Orwell's 1984 turned out to be.

Looking at her booklist, she does have several that feature dystopian societies.
 
chanubi said:
I found Handmaid's Tale extremely depressing. I don't think I could read it a second time :(
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My main problem with The Heart Goes Last is the utter lack of any kind of independence or narrative drive on the part of the main characters. I know that the book is meant to show control and detachment and all that, but the main characters never do anything that isn't orchestrated by a third party. I like my characters to drive the plot forward and this book is the opposite of that. It's not a bad book, just a mismatch between writing style and reader.
 
catseye said:
My main problem with The Heart Goes Last is the utter lack of any kind of independence or narrative drive on the part of the main characters. I know that the book is meant to show control and detachment and all that, but the main characters never do anything that isn't orchestrated by a third party. I like my characters to drive the plot forward and this book is the opposite of that. It's not a bad book, just a mismatch between writing style and reader.
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I don't like stories in which the main character does nothing to improve their situation and, as you say, allow things to be done to them. I like characters that, perhaps they are the underdog and are in negative situations, but they do something to improve their lot in life or someone else's. They have to have some redeeming qualities.
 
chanubi said:
It's odd then that such an accomplished writer would create a passive cast.
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It's part of the whole theme of the book - that ordinary people are being controlled by an elite. So it's important narratively that they have little power to change their circumstances - and that power that they do exercise ends up being a bad thing for them. So I understand why she wrote the book this way, it's just not for me.
 
I just finished Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook by Stan Gordon. I had it sitting around in my Abebooks basket for ages, and can't remember where I heard about it, although I should think it was either from Where the Footprints End or Truth-Proof volume whatever. It is essentially a chronological listing of an astonishing array of UFO and bigfoot encounters in Pennsylvania from 1972 to 1974. There are some short chapters on the author's thoughts on what was going on (he investigated many of the incidents himself) and leans towards a paranormal interpretation, with so much high strangeness surrounding the bigfoot encounters, such as instantly disappearing bigfoot, partially invisible bigfoot, bigfoot holding a glowing light etc. A great read, if somewhat repetitive at times. It made me wonder where such weird outbreaks might have gone on more recently (not necessarily bigfoot-UFO, but sudden condensed flurries of much-witnessed strangeness in a given area).
 

Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction​

Steven Martin​

A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu . But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13119511-opium-fiend?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=wYhuRjr7lA&rank=1
 

Logic of Steel: A Fighter's View of Blade and Shank Encounters​

James Lafond​


This book presents and analyzes real knife fights from the Baltimore area. The author has no bias from any formalized knife fighting system. The book distills the data into how to read an attacker (how are they likely to attack you from how they stand), how effective knives are, and even tips on how to get away from an assailant (don't run down stairs).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2308093.Logic_of_Steel?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_14
 
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