I feel like I've read enough of the hip hop book now. Got my answer. Dr Dre stated that he wrote controversial, explicit, often sexually-themed lyrics to "go against the grain" of the "Black Empowerment"-themed lyrics of other acts. That suggests, to me, that the lyrics of hip hop don't necessarily, in NWA's case, and perhaps in the case of many others, reflect the artist's true lifestyle. It's more of a shock value thing. Or, as others have said on places like reddit "the rapper persona is sort of like a fictionalised alter-ego" .This all makes sense to me now.
Anyway, I read about 300 pages of the 500 page book, up to the point where they start discussing Gangsta Rap and it's origins, and now I am moving on to A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant.
Definitely a "magician behind the curtain" moment for me.
Edit: I went back and finished the Jeff Chang (Hip Hop) book, now, after reading about 100 pages of Guy de Maupassant, I thought it was a very good book in the end, and now I'm returning to de Maupassant's Short Story Collection.
Edit II: I've finished the Guy de Maupassant book now, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, it was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Reminds me of Chekhov's short stories, similar style, also employing the literary device known as 'Chekhov's gun'. Very droll, very wry.
Next up: Either Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov or Alien Hearts ,also by Guy de Maupassant...
Edit III: Decided to read Following the Equator by Mark Twain instead, a totally different book from the other two, I presume. Started it, and it seems good so far.
Paging Mr. Of Rivia. Can Mr. Geralt Of Rivia please report to the front desk?
Yup, that's right, after having been shafted, shunted and pushed aside for what seems like ages, the time has finally come for the latest Witcher novel from Andrzej Sapkowski, Crossroads of Ravens.
I finished Following the Equator, by Mark Twain. I thought that, whilst still being a very good book, it wasn't quite up to the quality of the other travel books I have read by the same author, i.e. The Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad, I have heard that Twain's other travel book, Roughing It, is good too, so I will probably read that one at some point. As I say, it was still a good book, but far more serious and a lot less light-hearted than the previous two books mentioned. Still, a first-rate author, nevertheless.
"Even in the face of death, the samurai stands unwavering, for honour is a blade sharper than steel".
Star Wars Legacy of the Force books 8 and 9
Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House in the new paperback with the spiral staircase on the front cover
You were mentioning a book somewhere in the Control chat, I couldn't find the title mentioned though, but I just happened to be going down a rabbit hole and reading about House of Leaves today, as well.
is this the book you were referencing? It certainly sounds like a book that would inspire Control/Remedy, and I was actually going to recommend it/ask if anyone had read it as it sounded interesting. It seemed very much like the kind of thing people would be into here, before I realised it was probably the book you were already talking about 😅
@Ravix Oh boy, I could write a whole essay on that book. Volumes even. It's called House of Leaves and it's by Mark Z. Danielewski. Many moons ago when I set down in England for the first time I heard his sister's music, that song Haunted by Poe, is about the book and the developers used the book as inspiration for the game. I have four versions of it, one Russian, one French, one regular manuscript in English and an updated simplified (in format) English copy. The whole book is one big puzzle of insanity, discovery and it's kind of terrifying too. It's my favorite novel and took two months to get through.
I think I was fifteen years old, I've seen some people say it took them years to finish. It's got poetry, collages, Polaroids, puzzles, all kinds of off the wall formatting. I've read it four maybe five times, the last time being February of last year. It's so ingrained that I kept getting waves of deja vu into the first hour of the game, all of it from the style of the narration, the terms (houses etc) the colours of the red/blue just like in the book with it's coloured inks, and so much more. It's easy to track down now because he's become an established author but my original copy wasn't for distribution. I'll have a look through the more recent copies and see which one might be more manageable.
It's subtle but that blue ink each time for 'house', it's all part of the big picture and that blue is the same blue you see in the game, the same for red and violence etc.
One of the best versions at the moment would be the 2nd Edition by Pantheon Books. It's full colour and does a great job of separating the poems/photos etc from the main text. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a copy for a more than reasonable price.
I checked the Kindle version and it has similar formatting. It looks like they included the original puzzle pages too.
@Ravix@GirlVersusGame I was gifted Waterstones vouchers from my now former colleagues and have bought a nice hardcover edition of "House of Leaves", I'm looking forward to reading that. The author has a newer release out called "Tom's Crossing" it also sounds intriguing.
@MightyDemon82 Congrats, it's going to be quite the read. You might emerge sane from it, and you might not but either way the presentation and collectability alone makes it truly unique. I didn't know it was horror when I first picked it up, I soon saw otherwise. The funny thing is I'd been struggling with English but then another language like French would pop up on the next page and and I could read that so I kept pushing myself to continue. I haven't read much of his other work but I'm sure I have it set aside for a rainy day.
Another place I heard of him was through a director, I liked his documentary work and eventually when Hollywood came calling for a feature he answered the call. He didn't know that the studio would take what he shot and edit in flashes of violence which effectively ruined his original vision. That movie was Blair Witch 2 and the reason it was received so badly was because they changed so much of it in editing. Another connection to it and to the book is once again Poe's Haunted, the director stipulated that it had to be used in the movie and so at the end of Blair Witch 2 Book of Shadows once the credits roll the song plays. If you watch a documentary on Netflix today the chances are he was involved in some way. My introduction to him was his Paradise Lost documentaries and his absolutely brilliant documentary Brother's Keeper.
From the description:
Filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky directed this documentary about a death in upstate New York in 1990. The eldest of a family of four brothers, William Ward, was found dead in his home, and his brother Delbert was accused of suffocating him. The ensuing trial leads to tensions within the small rural community in which the brothers live, due to media coverage that presents the quiet, hardworking family as illiterate bumpkins, and to growing real estate speculation in the area.
It's on youtube too, under the wrong name. The first time I watched was like observing another dimension, I couldn't believe people lived like that and even now years later it's still so powerful.
Grey Gardens is also brilliant. Another documentary film, this time from 1975
From the description:
This film explores the daily lives of two aging, eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, are the sole inhabitants of a Long Island estate. During the course of the documentary, they discuss their habits, desires and former loves with filmmakers Albert and David Maysles. The women reveal themselves to be misfits with outsized, engaging personalities. Much of the conversation is centered on their pasts, as mother and daughter now rarely leave home.
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
I finished Musui's Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai by Katsu Koichi, and found it very entertaining and a very good read. A true story. I then read and finished Alien Hearts, a novella by Guy de Maupassant, it's a love story, I won't spoil the ending for you but suffice it to say that it was moving, a story that was definitely heartfelt and perhaps told from the perspective of someone who may have experienced, first-hand, some or all of the events that occur within the text.
Interesting. And more coincidence afoot! A wise use of your vouchers, I reckon, from what i've picked up so far it should be... an experience!
So part of my random journey down the rabbit hole was about how the book made people have these vivid dreams and all kinds of things like that. A lot of weird psychological stuff, and it is one that really seems to genuinely stick with people. Hence why I was going to ask on here about it. I was surprised i'd never heard of it, but I think it is having something of a resurgence lately? And i'm not at all surprised it has inspired Sam Lake / Remedy. I feel like it is slightly weird that you were already referencing this book, as I literally stumbled on it just by chance and ended up going through a comment chain about people's experience with it before eventually recognising the formatting from GvG's image post. My thoughts went from "I bet you'd love this" to "oh yeah, you literally do as it is literally the one you were already talking about"
Do you ever re-read it in different ways? I've heard people will go on to read it one font at a time, or follow different parts from different perspectives in different ways to try and "solve" things.
When it seems you're out of luck.
There's just one man who gives a f*************ck
⚔️🛡🐎
@Ravix I have to add some short background, the book figured into it. My Person at the time didn't want me to read that book. I'd had no experience with fiction, just years of language workbooks, and a lot of study. He got me after all of that internet stuff/littlebigplanet etc. There wasn't a lot there, I'd stopped speaking and was wary of everyone and everything. I did listen to a lot of music and I'd been using those lyrics to learn English too. I don't know why I latched onto her lyrics, it became 'I need that book' not 'I'd like that book' I thought it might contain something to help me understand a bigger picture. I don't know if a song should define a considerable large portion of a persons life that one did.
Remember you picked up on me using music to express particular situations? It was the same thing and I think (in hindsight) that book was an effort to try to express myself through another medium. I was convinced there was something there that would allow that. We had a kind of evening ritual (schedule? I don't know this word) where he'd sit and read/or just have a drink and I'd sit on the floor by his chair also reading. No different than today/this evening. I like quiet time. If he glanced down he could see the pages. There was no watching TV, I think I saw Youtube once, he believed media was unhealthy and overwhelming so there was none. Music was fine, as were books then maybe a year later movies from the 20's up to the 50's, other than music there was nothing that you'd call current. I knew what movies were new when he'd take me to whichever production was being shot at the time/closed sets. That was all normal standard operating procedure.
The book seemed normal enough too, but only at first. Then the formatting started to shift and fluctuate, backwards text, upside down, sideways, that's when he really took notice. I'd been turning the book sideways to try to read it, even using a compact mirror to read the rest (it looked weird) That's when the first of the 'you know if you are struggling with something you don't have to finish' That didn't work because my Person before him pushed me for constant perfection and completion (which still remains) and so I kept reading. It was definitely frustrating but I had no ability to stop, I needed to reach that final page, I wanted that 'well done' or in my mind it was all for nothing. Someone mentioned smelling the virtual roses in a game recently, that I'd out-paced them. I appreciate actual roses as part of the scenery/daily life but both life and my scenery are ever changing so there is no real available time to do that and I wouldn't know how to 'stop'.
It's funny you mention dreams too, I didn't know it affected others that way. I had my own bed back then, he was trying to offer me that whole independence thing but I'd still sneak into other peoples beds or he'd wake up and find me asleep on the end of his bed. There was a kind of unique choice offered, a simple enough A or B but with massive life changing consequences for either. I didn't understand A/independence etc so I naturally chose B, hence life now. I don't know how anyone could sleep alone, I'd rather just not sleep at all. The book didn't help there either, I'd get out of bed and start to read again. Then after a while when I knew people were asleep I'd sneak ninja style into their bedrooms to sleep. It didn't matter who it was, if we had guests and they stayed over I'd appear in their beds. I don't anymore, I just bring a blanket wherever we go and the floor is my best-friend.
I'd read for perhaps two hours and wait until I knew it was time to infiltrate a bed. Sure enough I'd start to dream about the book. Which also is funny because it did happen last night and it was the first time in so long. I'd probably been thinking about it before bed, I remember the house clearly only there was something about trying to wrap Christmas gifts and I kept getting it wrong, each time I got it wrong the walls would shift and I couldn't leave. I explored different rooms and always returned to that one table and all of those unwrapped gifts. Either I'd get the paper wrong or the bows, it felt endless. I woke up trying to figure out why I'd been so bad at wrapping gifts, I'm not usually but in that dream I simply couldn't. I'd see pipes each time it shifted too and there was a voice in those pipes, that should sound spooky but I think I was too focused on trying to wrap those gifts to be freaked out.
It ended when I somehow made it to the roof and then I saw something really interesting. Imagine seeing your own face about half one foot away from your own but it's transparent, there was really subtle pink light coming from where my eyes should have been and when I focused I could see anything I wanted through (where my forehead would be) I saw all kinds of things, a forest with lots of trees, a man on a red bicycle, birds, lots of water, I did that for so long until that pinkish light faded and I woke up. I might have been able to do it longer had he not dragged me out of bed (not forcefully)
I've definitely used different methods to read the main book/the most complete volume. I've taken the poetry and read it separately then researched each one to understand how it fit into the story (if it even did) I've tried to ignore some of the annotation and focus more on the dialogue but that didn't go well because the inner monologue is pure eccentricity and madness. The one thing I struggled to do was shift perspectives, I found that if I tried to put myself in there the projection made me question my own choices in life. I.E. what I said before about life/travel being one endless series of shifting rooms/homes, I see that no different, sky-lines and landscapes become draw distance/it's how I view the world and probably always will. Tjuz saw it as something else, glamorous I think. I don't know many people who fall asleep in one country in one bed and wake up in another, I probably hold some record for flying in your pajamas. I just don't register that ever changing room/house anymore, people yes, but we travel with our own so that too solidifies that constant shift of space of walls/windows/furniture, nothing really changes. The book is no different, the labyrinth shifts, the space itself is internal/self.
It was written to distress, isolate, and provide a kind of mirror to the reader. One aspect would be that a house for most means 'home', what does home become if it's constantly shifting? I experience that each time we do move to another country or region, I think I've lived in maybe twenty or so different homes so far. That's quite a lot and that constant shifting of 'home' in the book creates a sense of confinement. I should feel confinement in my actual situation, I don't, most would. I believe that's why I was able to push through that book. Most readers were perhaps more mature with clearly established needs for freedom and independence. They were psychologically wired for fight or flight, if something got too much they put the book down. I had neither only the need for completion, I didn't know it was due to the release of serotonin, dopamine and endorphins, I do now. It also plays around a lot with agoraphobia, the reader is supposed to feel dread from that increased level of confinement, I didn't, I felt safe because I already had agoraphobia, which become a kind of kryptonite and warm blanket. The box again, it might be weird but people find comfort from far more destructive methods.
He also wanted the reader to drown in the anxiety that some (all?) feel from a lack of control, whereas I feel anxiety by not being under someone else's total control. I'm convinced that's how I've been able to get through the entirety of the book multiple times. It might also be the same reason that it did quickly become my favorite novel, something that would be a weakness to most was a boon to me and I used those eccentricities of my own to navigate and traverse the novel/house. Another example would be (I'll choose my words carefully) if once a month you have the opportunity to lose control and give it to someone else, your mind still rebels with your body. You might think you want to do that activity, a kind of physical confinement of sorts but your brain fights back because of fight or flight. I have neither anymore, my mind is in that once a month headspace twenty four hours a day and without it I can't function, then just shutdown completely. Thus the book loses a lot of it's power over it's projection of confinement and the uncertainty that comes with losing control.
The distress I felt when reading it was probably a lot different than what others might feel when they venture through those pages. Language was a big part of it, I felt like I wasn't good enough and kept pushing myself to progress, when I did see a language like French it offered a kind of brief respite. I never felt that kind of 'alone' the author tried to convey to the reader because I've quite simply never experienced being alone in real life, my mind couldn't go there. I did read that the infinite space of the house made people uneasy too, I don't know if I ever said this before but I've never been in every part of my Family home, I would get lost, I understand infinite space, a kind of literal labyrinth. Even this home, there are plenty of rooms I've not been in. I have my space/rooms etc and that's just clearly understood. From what I've seen over the years people do project the fear of the book's house to their own, that's where a lot of the uneasiness comes from, and perhaps they live alone? Agoraphobia and isolation are most definitely central themes and I'm most definitely immune to both.
Do you think you'll ever give it a read? or does the idea of anxiety/uncertainty/confinement bother you?
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
I finished Roughing It by Mark Twain. I thought it was very good, falling somewhere in between A Tramp Abroad (even better) and Following the Equator (not as good) , by the same author, in terms of overall quality. Some passages in it were exceptional, but I was disappointed by the fact that the book is set in the U.S. ,without Twain straying from the confines of his own native isle, which he does in the other aforementioned titles, and his excellent, greatest travelogue, The Innocents Abroad .All in all, a whole-heartedly written and rip-roaringly good read.
@Ravix and @girlversusgame this is hilarious. I started reading this thread again after a few months, from the most recent to older. How did I know from your descriptions with no title given almost instantly that you were talking about House of Leaves? I think I read that over 25 years ago and it is still very much with me. Just thought that was funny, to see it is still confounding people to this day.
@Steeleye25 Really? That is funny, we'd been talking about the game Control (in another thread) I finished it last night. The moment I started the game I knew something was off, if you liked the book you'd like the game. How long did it take you to read it? if you even remember. Do you remember how you found out about it? If not for that song/Poe I never would have. It's still very much with me too, I haven't read much fiction since but House of Leaves is one I return to as my language improves and as my ability to push through the eccentricity increases. I'm looking forward to hearing what MightyDemon82 thinks of it.
These violent delights have violent ends & in their triumph die, like fire & powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
I started Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant. Seems good so far, really shaping up to be an undisputed classic. Like the setting, like the themes that have been introduced thus far. Rather reminiscent of Lost Illusions by Honore de Balzac.
Forums
Topic: Books You're Currently Reading?
Posts 1,761 to 1,780 of 1,799
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic