read any good books lately... - Progressive Rock Music Forum

K.J Bishop's surreal fantasy novel The Etched City. Following a gunslinger and a physician on the run after being on the losing side of a war, the story takes us to a strange and horrifying city called Ashamoil where our broken hero and heroine search for meaning. It's an acquired taste, but if you're willing to endure a bit of obscurity and flowery prose, it's an intelligent and well constructed novel about art, identity, rationality and spirituality, all wrapped up in a dark, dreamlike world. Reminiscent of a western with supernatural elements. It's also filled with monologues. Lots and lots of dramatic monologues. Two little moments I was fond of:

“When I came to this city, I would have agreed with anyone who said there was little mystery left in the world. But in you, madam, first in your image, then in your living self, I saw the allure of something far away and as secret as the stars. As I reached towards this unknown, I began to feel like a man who has ridden through a vast desert, never knowing anything but the sand around him and the dry road under him, then comes upon the mirage of a garden and a city, and finds that the mirage is real, and that it is bigger than the desert; that the desert was, after all his walking, only a small part of the mirage.”

“It occurred to Raule that all children were monsters in the world and were instinctively aware of it. They were reminded of their anomalous nature by adults, whom they failed to resemble, and with whose habitations and tools their bodies were at odds. This was surely why the little girl played with the sequins so solemnly and with such intense concentration. She was doing nothing less than conjuring, out of pattern and colour, a world that conformed to her desires and obeyed her will. The boy, on the other hand, showed with the whole attitude of his being that he knew there was only the one world and he would kill it if he could.”

https://www.amazon.com/Etched-City-K-J-Bishop/dp/0553382918/ref=cm_rdp_product

Highly recommended for fans of dark fantasy or 'new weird' authors like China Mievelle. It's not for everyone, but if it clicks, it will click.

[Hyperreflective paradigm breaking profundity goes here]

An abridged translation of J. H. Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques.

I've been a little consumed by the drafting, editing and re-writing of a trilogy of visionary fiction novels that I wrote over the winter. Called The Osiris Plan trilogy, it's set in an all-boys prep school in Switzerland. The books are based on the apocalyptic premise that near-term human extinction is happening (in a combination of forms) and that there are metaphysical/spiritual reasons for the occurrence of this event, and that the youth "in the know" will want to take some action. I hope to see the first of the trilogy, Brig-Wallis Preparatory School for Boys, reach the printable stage by September, with the the second, The Heirs of Osiris to follow some three to six months later.

Wish me luck!

Drew Fisher
https://progisaliveandwell.blogspot.com/

I'm almost finished with American Gods. It was a slow start but as the book continued on it became so much more intriguing. The first chapter with him on the tree is brilliantly written.

^ It's hard to start, but some effort and some rewriting and before you know it you have 50,000 words .

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -- John F. Kennedy

Halfway through SSOTBME.

Just finnished Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and I'm quite underwhelmed. It's a good book, but, for a story with a title of a "classic," it's nothing special. I feel like it's just another well-written 50's dystopian SF. For me, it's exactly what Vonnegut was making fun of mentioning thousands of similar books Kilgore Trout wrote in Breakfast of Champions. Speaking of Vonnegut, Player Piano and Farenheit 451 are surprisingly pretty similar in plot, form, and concept, though I prefer the former.

Edited by ALotOfBottle - June 28 2017 at 03:38

Categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided.

One of the first Ray Bradbury books I read was 'Golden Apples of the sun' when I was about 11.. I have always felt that his style is deliberately simplistic, child-like and in a way that is what is so charming about them. I think it puts people off too because they expect 'big Sci-Fi language'. Its the concepts and the subtle ways in which they are expressed which has made me a life-long Bradbury fan. But it is in the short story that he excels.. less words and more left to your own imagination.