The Gamer's Quarter

[seryogin]

Mike, I'm looking to read a good book on Irish history. Specifically, I want to know if there are any good books about "The Troubles."
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[Dracko]

Ian Edginton and D'Israeli's comic adaptation of War of the Worlds is available here.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

[seryogin]

[simplicio]

It doesn't go into "the troubles," but Frank McCourt's Teacher Man does get into some really interesting elements of national identity.

Now onto Peter Carey's Theft, after the somewhat dissapointing Jack Maggs (which was better covered, on the whole, by the later True History of the Kelly Gang). Now Theft is ostensibly the story of a backwater Aussie painter, who briefly became famous and successful before a bad divorce left him jailed and, after that, dependent on his biggest patron's generosity, until the arrival of a "foreign" woman and a subsequent art theft brings suspicion . The trick here is his mentally disabled brother, who tells half the story in his own voice, which is largely jealous of his brother's women, painting and the chance to throw away the family butchering business. So far this looks to be one of my favorites.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Dracko]

Back before Luke was born, I was shopping around this board book featuring photographs of perplexed babies juxtaposed with quotes from the works of Samuel Beckett. There were no takers.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

this past weekend i finally picked up jokes and the unconscious at a queer bookstore with too many rainbows in indianapolis. i say finally because i saw diane dimassa and daphne gottlieb at bluestockings to promote the book when it first came out months and months ago.

so my favorite comic artist and one of my favorite poets got together and made a graphic novel. yeah, it's good. it's about a woman who works at the hospital where her father, formerly a doctor, is dying of cancer. it's about how we use humor to cope with sickness and mortality.

gottlieb's dense poetic narrative leaves dimassa free to draw the surreal mythopoetic iconic imagery that only occasionally bubbles to the surface in hothead paisan. i want diane dimassa to make more books. i want her to make more books so hard.
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[dessgeega]

[simplicio]

[dhex]

oh shit sorry sergei i missed your post:

http://www.amazon.com/Bloody-Sunday-Collinss-Assassinated-Britains/dp/1592282822/ref=pd_bbs_9/103-1644412-0379855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190299683&sr=8-9

start here. it's quite good.

but no one writes objective histories about this stuff. at least not that i've seen. i would like to read one some day.

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Sense-Troubles-David-McKittrick/dp/0141003057/ref=sr_1_5/103-1644412-0379855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190299746&sr=1-5

this one comes close at times. it's just kinda pasty and dry, like a bad scone.

hopefully someone who's irish might be able to tell you more.
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[seryogin]

Shit, "Bloody Sunday" looks pretty hot. That's actually what I wanted to read more about, Collins' squads.

I've also heard that O'Mailey's "On Another Man's Wound" is quite good.
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[Dracko]

David Cronenberg has created a list of books and films he used as references in the creation of Eastern Promises.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

Demons is wonderful. This has made me much more interested in Eastern Promises.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[Dracko]

Do you hold any interest in Cronenberg?

I've heard good things about Imperium and Black Earth. Stalker is a fantastic film and the only one that's managed to move me to tears since I hit adolescence. But this isn't a film thread, so never mind that. Demons would be a good place to start with Dostoevsky, then?

For my birthday, I got a Pléiade edition of the complete works of Charles Baudelaire, one of my favourite poets, and Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden. I'll have some time to spare, so I intend to read the latter along with Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. Maybe squeeze a re-read of The Man in the High Castle and Lolita in there, I'd like to see if there's simply something I'm missing out of Nabokov's novel that leaves me less impressed than some of his slightly lesser known works.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

Demons is where I started with Dostoevsky. He's a deliciously vicious writer when he wants to be satirical, and when he starts talking philosopy he writes like he's possessed, as if he saw a vision and banged whole chapters out in a matter of hours. Crime and Punishment is my favorite, though. I find it incredible the way he managed to write the most claustrophobic novel I've ever read while in the largest nation-state the world has ever seen (accurate?). The whole novel takes place in just a few city blocks in Petersburg. Regardless of where or when you start, the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations are imperative.

Baudelaire is so good in French, but so crumby in English translation. I mean, especially so, more than other translations.

Lolita was better for me my second and third times through it. Also, the version annotated by Alfred Appel (one of Nabokov's students who had his annotations approved by VN himself before publication) is enlightening.


Re: Cronenberg, I guess I wasn't especially uninterested before, but I've never seen any of his films.



I'm still in the midst of The Golden Bowl, which has too many words for its own good but too many bright spots to discard. On the side, I've picked up N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain (it's gorgeous) and Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, for the second time (I had forgotten how playful Pushkin can be, and how hilariously digressional).
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dessgeega]

i just read fumiyo kouno's town of evening calm, country of cherry blossoms, which is actually two stories, one shorter, one longer, about life in the shadow of the atomic bomb. it makes things twinge in my belly.
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[ryan]

HELP!

We're working on a game based on Inspector Glebsky's Puzzle / Hotel Of The Dead Alpinist by the Strugatsky brothers and the developer wants us to read the book. The problem is that I can't find it anywhere. Amazon doesn't have it, Gutenberg.org doesn't, none of the local bookstores or libraries, and our contact even said he couldn't track down a torrent of it when he tried a few weeks back. I don't use torrents much, so I don't really know where to start there. STALKER was influenced by their work as well.


Does anyone know where I can track it down at?
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[seryogin]

[ryan]

I've been looking all day now and still nothing. The translation is pretty rough. We have an early build to try, but it keeps crashing and it's still in Russian. The company is really pushing for this to be done right, and now we're getting nervous about screwing up a work that seems to mean a lot to people.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[seryogin]

The best I thing I can think of now is linking you a text file in Russian and you can run it through an automatic translator.
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[ryan]

Please do!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[seryogin]

http://www.lib.ru/STRUGACKIE/hotelalp.txt

I tried giving the first chaper a babelfish treatment and, well, half of the time it's kind of inteligible.

Yeah, good luck with this.

Also, just so you don't feel too much pressure, this work isn't one the Strugatskii's most loved.

Oh, and they actually WROTE the screenplay for Stalker. Still doesn't make the movie very good, though.
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[ryan]

I'm trying everything I can. I have a release build with the extremely literal translation in place, which is just as confusing as not knowing what's being said. You can ask other people if a dog locked you in your room, but we can't tell if the other people are supposed to think that's strange or if they are supposed to act like the question is normal so that the situation itself is strange.

Apparently we worked on another title that was based on another of their works, Prisoners of Power. I will always remember Galactic Assault fondly for its usage of extraterrestrial stone space cows.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Shapermc]

I finished The Fountainhead last week.

Seriously, everything from page 144-600 should have been edited down to about 100 pages. That was painful to wade through. It was pretty funny at points, and completely unintentionally so. I've never been so happy to finish a book, and not in a good way.

It was a good exercise though, I haven't finished a book that was over 400-500 pages in a long time.

Right now I'm reading kira-kira on a recommendation someone gave me a long time ago (last year) and I don't remember why it was recommended to me. It's... well, written way below my enjoyment level so I'm pretty baffled why it was recommended to me.

I also read The Mystery Play last night by Grant Morrison. It was pretty excellent. I can't say I get it exactly because the last three panels threw me for a loop, but up until then I though I had it. It was good.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[boojiboy7]

Yeah, Rand needs an editor hard, but hates anyone that isn't her and thinks her writing is beyond question, so yeah.

Also, the last third of Atlas Shrugged (after john galt brings the book to a grinding halt) is hilarious in much the same way i bet the fountainhead is. I mean, comedic chaos gold.

[Shapermc]

[dhex]

you were warned.
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[Shapermc]

[seryogin]

Every time anyone talks about Rand, I think of that great scene in that RAW parody that Mike linked a while back.

Then comes the big surprise, the monstro-rape to end all rapes, committed by a pure Aryan with hollow cheeks, a long lean body, and a face that never changes expression. "Everything is fire," he tells her, as he pulls his prick out afterwards, "and don't you ever forget it." Then he disappears
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[Shapermc]

Please relink this. That's brilliant.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[seryogin]

http://ystig.com/telemachussneezed.html
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[seryogin]

I've never actually read Rand, but the strength of that parody makes it seem like I'm missing out on some comedy gold.
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[Scratchmonkey]

With the elections coming up, it's a good reminder that if you want to learn anything about the American political system, you should read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trial '72. I am completely serious when I say that it is best work*.

* - 'His' here refers to Thompson, it could easily apply to Ralph Steadman as well.

[Shapermc]

[simplicio]

Shaper, you might read Tobias Wolff's Old School, which includes a fantastically comedic encounter between Ayn Rand (and her entourage) and a bunch of prep-school kids.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[helicopterp]

So my I'm about to start a unit on myth with my 10th graders, and I'm looking for some texts for them. I'm already going to pull some things from my Book of Imaginary Beings and a folktale from their book.

Since they take African American History for their social studies requirement this year, I'm trying to coordinate my English class as much as possible with stuff they'll be learning in there, too.

I guess what I'm asking is: Anyone know of any/where to get any good African or African American myths or folktales? I'd be very much obliged to you.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[ryan]

Currently reading Appian's The Civil Wars, as well as a bunch of useless crap on Organizational Behavior. 'Motivated employees are more productive' - thanks for the nugget of wisdom.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Dracko]

Doris Lessing's response to receiving the Nobel Prize: "Oh Christ. I couldn't care less."

I am going to have to read all of her books now simply for that.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[helicopterp]

Edward P. Jones is not a writer so much as he is a nimble storyteller. Nimble because of the many voices he occupies throughout his works--but the focus remains always on the strangeness of his tales within a very real, very socially charged world, and never on the process. He is a fine antithesis to modernism in that he makes fabric and not seams. The stories in All Aunt Hagar's Children are as gracefully, seamlessly weird as can be.


The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman is a stupendous reassurance (along with Ratatouille, The Tale of Despereaux, and the Harry Potter series) that media for young people needn't shy from complexity.



My students will be reading from Zora Neal Hurston and Arthur Miller this week.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[ryan]

Regarding my Dead Mountaineer situation: One Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh has been enlisted to go over the material. Godspeed, sir.

And, seryogin, if you want some translation work, let me know. Also, thanks again for your help!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Dracko]

A preview for Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier is up on Entertainment Weekly.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[seryogin]

[Shapermc]

[Dracko]

Too bad it isn't going to be released in England!
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[Shapermc]

[Harveyjames]

Oh man, the two new Chris Ware releases have been pushed back to Dec 10th! Guess they'll be my Christmas presents...

[dhex]

i like mircea eliade. i know a lot of people who don't, but whatevs. he tells good stories.
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[seryogin]

I finished reading The Forever War today. It wasn't bad, and I guess all those Vietnam allegories felt pretty original around 1979 or so. A lot of the book just ends up feeling like a less shitty, sci-fi version of the Deer Hunter (which was total bullshit, I'm sorry). And, yeah, watching the Earth turn into a fag planet was fun and all.
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[helicopterp]

Watermark by Joseph Brodsky: the poet's reflections on/ode to Venice in the wintertime; the only time he knew it. It's written in very short spurts, and never maintains a consistent weirdness. But the sections when he theorizes that the eye is the most fish-like part of the body--and whenever he talks about water or fish in general--are the strangest and best parts of it all.

It's a short read with a fantastic hook in its first vignette. I also love that all of his romantic and sexual aspirations fail horribly.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[seryogin]

Currently reading "Thirst for Love" by Mishima. It's surprsingly good for one of its earlier efforts.
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