What kinds of books do you read?

[The Brain]

I'm trying to get a book about warfare in northern Italy during the renaissance. Very interesting period.

If you find a good one let me know. I have been trying and failing.

[DontSayBanana]

I used to be pretty heavily into sci fi and historical nonfiction, but lately it seems like Pratchett and Douglas Adams are. about the only authors I can force myself to read.

[Martinus]

Hey Marti, I love the Stanislaw Lem quote.  Where did you see it?

I came upon it fairly recently. Apparently he said it in one of his interviews.

I understand he was an avid surfer in his final years.

[Martinus]

I used to be pretty heavily into sci fi and historical nonfiction, but lately it seems like Pratchett and Douglas Adams are. about the only authors I can force myself to read.

I must say it was quite a leap for me to go from scifi (with Gaiman, Pratchett and Adams being my favourite authors in that genre) to the "realistic" fiction - until about two or three years ago, the only books of the latter kind I read were for my literature classes at school and college.

Then I discovered the likes of William C. Burroughs, Oscar Wilde and Alan Hollinghurst and changed my mind. I admit, I still read fiction for its escapist aspects as much as for its aesthetic value - I would find "serious" fiction addressing themes of no relevance to me to be extremely tedious and unbearable.

[Martinus]

Also - to continue the discussion from the book recommendations thread - I freely admit I greatly enjoy good, gay-themed books written from the late 19th century until today.

I do not see this as an expression of some prurient interest (well, not solely at least) or a political obsession, though. For me, there is this intriguing "underground", or "dark" (or if you buy into the Nietzschean dichotomy, Dionysian) quality to these stories that I find extremely satisfying.

I find it both empowering, and fascinating in a sociological sense, to see how we were and how far we have gone - but also how (surprisingly, and amusingly enough) little has changed in our natures over these decades and centuries. Maybe we are no longer put away into prisons or reviled by the society at large, but it didn't stop us, upper and upper-middle class fags, from craving virile young dockworkers, stablehands and valets (or as they are today, skater boys and construction workers) while bemoaning the unbearable lightness of our existence. 

[fhdz]

I admit, I still read fiction for its escapist aspects as much as for its aesthetic value - I would find "serious" fiction addressing themes of no relevance to me to be extremely tedious and unbearable.

I'm curious what you consider "themes of no relevance to you".

[Malthus]

Hey Marti, I love the Stanislaw Lem quote.  Where did you see it?

I came upon it fairly recently. Apparently he said it in one of his interviews.

I understand he was an avid surfer in his final years.

I was looking on the Wiki site and came across this gem:

Lem singled out only one American SF writer for praise, Philip K. Dick - see the 1986 English-language anthology of his critical essays, Microworlds. Dick, however, considered Lem to be a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.

The letter is on the Lem website. It's a hoot.

http://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick

Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974

I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem's official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.

What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA.

The Commies are infiltrating our vital natural science fiction resource!  :-X

[Grallon]

I admit, I still read fiction for its escapist aspects as much as for its aesthetic value - I would find "serious" fiction addressing themes of no relevance to me to be extremely tedious and unbearable.

I'm curious what you consider "themes of no relevance to you".

-----

I'm reading a biography of Caesar and a Star Wars novel.  *gods I *hate* these icons !*






G.

[Martinus]

I admit, I still read fiction for its escapist aspects as much as for its aesthetic value - I would find "serious" fiction addressing themes of no relevance to me to be extremely tedious and unbearable.

I'm curious what you consider "themes of no relevance to you".

Well, what I meant are themes that I simply find uninteresting - this is purely subjective, I'm afraid, and has nothing to do with their overall social poignancy or importance. I may be moved to tears by a report about children starving in Africa or the dehumanizing poverty in South America, and indeed will freely donate to causes fighting such tragedies, when asked for it, but that will not change the fact that I won't find fiction highlighting such issues to be horribly entertaining, and thus will shun it for something else.

[Martinus]

I admit, I still read fiction for its escapist aspects as much as for its aesthetic value - I would find "serious" fiction addressing themes of no relevance to me to be extremely tedious and unbearable.

I'm curious what you consider "themes of no relevance to you".

-----

I'm reading a biography of Caesar and a Star Wars novel.  *gods I *hate* these icons !*






G.

Well, I do not hide the fact that among the "themes of relevance to me", any instance of an upper class Briton describing in a flowery, rich language the process of sucking cock ranks rather high. 

[Martinus]

Hey Marti, I love the Stanislaw Lem quote.  Where did you see it?

I came upon it fairly recently. Apparently he said it in one of his interviews.

I understand he was an avid surfer in his final years.

I was looking on the Wiki site and came across this gem:

Lem singled out only one American SF writer for praise, Philip K. Dick - see the 1986 English-language anthology of his critical essays, Microworlds. Dick, however, considered Lem to be a composite committee operating on orders of the Communist party to gain control over public opinion, and wrote a letter to the FBI to that effect.

The letter is on the Lem website. It's a hoot.

http://english.lem.pl/index.php/faq#P.K.Dick

Philip K. Dick to the FBI, September 2, 1974

I am enclosing the letterhead of Professor Darko Suvin, to go with information and enclosures which I have sent you previously. This is the first contact I have had with Professor Suvin. Listed with him are three Marxists whom I sent you information about before, based on personal dealings with them: Peter Fitting, Fredric Jameson, and Franz Rottensteiner who is Stanislaw Lem's official Western agent. The text of the letter indicates the extensive influence of this publication, SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES.

What is involved here is not that these persons are Marxists per se or even that Fitting, Rottensteiner and Suvin are foreign-based but that all of them without exception represent dedicated outlets in a chain of command from Stanislaw Lem in Krakow, Poland, himself a total Party functionary (I know this from his published writing and personal letters to me and to other people). For an Iron Curtain Party group - Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not - to gain monopoly positions of power from which they can control opinion through criticism and pedagogic essays is a threat to our whole field of science fiction and its free exchange of views and ideas. Peter Fitting has in addition begun to review books for the magazines Locus and Galaxy. The Party operates (a U..S.] publishing house which does a great deal of Party-controlled science fiction. And in earlier material which I sent to you I indicated their evident penetration of the crucial publications of our professional organization SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS OF AMERICA.

The Commies are infiltrating our vital natural science fiction resource!  :-X

Yeah, it's funny as balls - Dick thought Lem was a commie plot.

[DontSayBanana]

Well, you're dead on about the escapist thing, Marti. It's definitely for pleasure only, but my schedule only really allows for reading before bed, and I'm not going to feel up to any scratching the surface that late at night (often 1 or 2 in the morning).

[Malthus]

Yeah, it's funny as balls - Dick thought Lem was a commie plot.

Oddly (or maybe not) sounds like it could be the plot to a Dick novel. 

I love the stated reason:

Lem is probably a composite committee rather than an individual, since he writes in several styles and sometimes reads foreign, to him, languages and sometimes does not -

Please, don't give this man If On A Winter's Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino. His head might explode.  ???

[Grallon]

Well, I do not hide the fact that among the "themes of relevance to me", any instance of an upper class Briton describing in a flowery, rich language the process of sucking cock ranks rather high. 

Tell me, do you feel at a disadvantage for not being one of those british upper class type ? 




G.

[Martinus]

Well, you're dead on about the escapist thing, Marti. It's definitely for pleasure only, but my schedule only really allows for reading before bed, and I'm not going to feel up to any scratching the surface that late at night (often 1 or 2 in the morning).

Oh that's true. I usually only have time to read when I'm on vacation and I'm sunbathing by the swimming pool, sipping my margaritas and green spiders (or my recent favourite, Freddy Fudgepackers :p).