read any good books lately...

Toaster Mantis wrote: dr wu23 wrote: BTW,,,if you haven't already read too much about 'Billy' Meier,  I recommend Light Years by Gary Kinder. It's an interesting look at a very bizarre tale of alien contact by aliens who look suspiciously like Nordic Europeans. I also recommend anything by Dr Jacques Vallee regarding the ufo phenomenon. John Keel's Our Haunted Planet is also worth a look just for the sheer WTF? factor. Its central thesis is that Earth is home to a highly technologically advanced civilization older than humanity that was almost destroyed by the ice ages but still lives on in remote parts of the planet, and that they have shaped human culture since when our ancestors lived in caves. Gods, angels, devils, elves and aliens are then what these "ultra-terrestrials" as Keel calls them have passed themselves off as when interacting with humanity. I'm probably making it sound much more normal a book than it really is. I've got a lengthy review of Our Haunted Planet on GoodReads if it hasn't fallen prey to the stricter moderation instituted after Amazon bought the site.

Good read....I have all of Keel's books and been a fan of his for a long time. My favorite is the 8th Tower where he really lays out his theories/ideas.

Edited by dr wu23 - October 28 2013 at 09:51

Toaster Mantis wrote: If Our Haunted Planet hasn't inspired at least one Hawkwind song I'd be genuinely surprised.

Currently reading the first book in the Sandman Slim series.

 

Orly Castel-Bloom “Dolly City” loved this one.

""Dolly City--a city without a base, without a past, without an infrastructure. The most demented city in the world." In the midst of a futuristic-primitive metropolis, the accumulation of all our urban nightmares, Doctor Dolly (certified by the University of Katmandu) finds a newborn baby in a black plastic bag, and decides to become a mother. Overcome by unfamiliar maternal urges, Dolly dispenses with her private lab of rare diseases and turns all her surgical passion onto her son. Ceaselessly cutting and sewing, Dolly is the scalpel-wielding version of the all-too-familiar Jewish Mother archetype, forever operating upon her son with destructive, invasive love. In this grotesque satire of war and the defensive measures taken to survive it, Orly Castel-Bloom, one of Israel's most provocative and original writers, turns her own scalpel upon that most holy of institutions, the myth of motherhood--and its implications in the life of a nation"


and now moving onto Haruki Murakami's new novel "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage".

Finished that book about Kraftwerk earlier this week. The band's notorious secrecy has obviously presented some major obstacles to the author, so the book frequently ends up being more about KW's impact upon other music and pop culture in general. It's most illuminating when covering the pre-Autobahn phase of their career, which they're very tightlipped about today. I'm also quite surprised to learn that even after that record, it took quite a while for KW to become more than just a cult band outside Germany. Looks like their international mainstream breakthrough required more mainstream-friendly genres (like synthpop in the UK and disco in the US) to take influence from them first.

This week I've started reading...



Very much in the same hardboiled detective genre tradition as incepted by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but nowhere as sleazy or gritty as either. In fact, Macdonald's writing style and overall sensibility as an author is unusually cerebral and introverted for this kind of stuff. He's also got an exceptional eye for attention to characterization and use of physical location in the story.

Started this one yesterday and got through 120 pages so its a page turner. Ecological disaster set in very near future.

Current reading material:



Only 40 pages or so into it, however I can already tell I'm in the company of a master writer. Every single sentence just seethes with despair, hate and negativity... yet is incredibly well-crafted and strung together with a narrative finesse that comes across as the work of a singular authorial vision that just can't be faked.

dr wu23 wrote: Currently reading the first book in the Sandman Slim series. Weird noir tale of a group of magicians hiding in plain sight in the modern world in LA and their personal battles with one another.

dr wu23 wrote: Sounds like Repairman Jack would be something you would really enjoy.

Just read the Wikipedia article about that series, looks pretty interesting. Is it by the same author as the book that the movie The Keep was based on?