The Books/Reading Thread

I know I've raved about this book before, but I'm really excited to be teaching it to my students starting next week. Just going to take this opportunity one more time to recommend Peter Watts's Blindsight to all the science fiction fans here who haven't read it--but I also would recommend to people beyond the SF crowd because it seriously packs a fucking dark and bloody punch. I'd describe it as Alien meets Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. A takedown of all our fantasies about selfhood and personal identity, but in the depths of space. I'm re-reading it this week, and I get goosebumps every time I pick it up.

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Good book. Need to read the sequels. Possibly need to read the sequels to Starfish, too. I remember Starfish pretty clearly and I enjoyed it but I can't remember the others for shit. Gotta start on the latest of The Expanse books because I'm far enough into the series that I don't feel like I can give up now. I hope there's not too many more books.

Finished The Second Machine Age last week. On this now -
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Then on to THE INDUSTRIES OF THE FUTURE.
 
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Most of the short fiction I read is science fiction or weird fiction. A few collections that I've really enjoyed are:

Burning Chrome (William Gibson)
Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang)
Futureland (Walter Mosley)
Looking for Jake (China Mieville)

Also, for a bit more canonical flair, these two are very good:

Henry James: Stories of the Supernatural (edited by Leon Edel)
American Gothic Tales (edited by Joyce Carol Oates)

Clive Barker's Books of Blood (because, you know, you're a nerd)

Good one! But that's actually one of the poop books I'm swapping out lol. Love Clive Barker.

raymond carver - what we talk about when we talk about love

if you want to defecate in a melancholy manner, that is

Thank you for the recs, hoping to get to the book store this weekend
 
From the Up Front/Ramblings section of the April 2016 issue of Decibel, By Kriegs's Neil Jameson ...

I'm sure some of you saw that article recently about some guy in a band people hadn't really head about quitting music because he wasn't able to make a living from it. It was met with a chorus of people exclaiming, "No shit" and "Water is wet", and other catchphrases they wait to use at the right moment like they're trying to prolong an orgasm. And much like when i try to think about baseball, it fucking failed.

Why? Because it doesn't get to the heart of the matter, which is this misguided notion that the only valid reason to create art is financial gain. It also plays into this fucked-up mentality that because we have created something, we're automatically owed something for it, without even considering that we could be trying to sell dog shit to a kennel.

First off, i want to attack that initial point: that our main motivation to create anything-be it music, a painting, this column or a college made with cum and cut-out newspaper obituaries-should be done with the bottom line in the front of your mind. Art should be about what you make of it, what it makes of you. I'm sure someone's going to say, "Well, what if it's the money", but hey, for the sake of argument here, go fuck yourself.

Since its inception, the metal and punk underground has always barely survived solely on hard work and dedication.It's why we work other jobs-to support what we're doing because it drives us and makes our lives somewhat less shitty to wander through. If you somehow think that you;re going to be lucky enough to hit a point where it starts paying for itself, you're going to be disappointed. Sure, we'd all love to be able to do what we're passionate about as our main gig, but that's unrealistic. This should be a lifestyle, not a job, and it it becomes a job and you;re unhappy with minimum wage, its time to fucking reevaluate your life and what you want to do with it.

I've touched on this before, but not everyone is going to love what you do as much as you think they should. But that shouldn't stop you. You should keep going as long as you're satisfied and able to continue. And if you cant keep going, then show some fucking class and bow out gracefully. Don't make a spectacle on the tabloid websites about how we should feel sorry for you that you cant keep the lights on playing music. You're opening the jar your legacy is kept in and shitting right into it. There are a million people going through what you're going through, and no one is going to stop and feel sorry for you.

In any counterculture, you see a lot of people complaining about the mainstream. The mainstream is creating something with the express purpose of marketing. Is it to say Taylor Swift isn't really sorry about all these break-ups she wont shut the fuck up about? No. But it's about a paycheck, a career. We exist within genres of music that are created to dismantle those sorts of ideas, not embrace them. If we're lucky enough that people latch on to what we do enough to put food on the table and keep our drug habits going without having to suck dick in the Olive Garden bathroom, then grab on tight for the few years it'll work out for you.

But you remember that kid at school who thought he was going to go pro? He became Al Bundy and lives a life of regret. Don't let that be you. Create for yourself and create something bigger than yourself, and stop worrying about your fucking wallet. This isn't pop music.
 
Reading Foucault's Madness & Civilization. The first third was solid, the middle third has been a bunch of manufactured gobbledygook. Hoping he recovers in the home stretch.
 
@rms For someone who told me I need to get away from all that Youtube stuff, you definitely seem to need a break from the internet. If you expect a book titled 'White Tears' to create a shitstorm you're obviously spending too much time in terrible chatrooms and comment threads. ;)

In fact with one quick "SJW" word search on UM you'll see how often rms likes to call people SJWs.
 
I finished the C.J. Box thriller Vicious Circle. After being a bit disappointed in the previous entry in the series, this was a real return to top notch form.
 
My review of the William Christie thriller "A Single Spy" was published in Mystery Scene Magazine. You can check out the online edition of the review HERE!.