Wow, it’s been a while.
His books are undoubtedly great, but it will be interesting to see how a person that based most of his literature on the Vietnam war writes about 2023.
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Everything O’Brien writes is great. Cannot wait.
Final stretch run of the Dark Tower series. Slogged through Song of Susannah and am 75% through Dark Tower and it’s probably the first book in the series I’ve really loved. I’m having a hard time putting it down and it’s hitting me pretty hard emotionally. I loved the part where Roland travels back to NYC and mets the Tet corp. I always get sad when I’m finishing a big series and this is one of the longer ones I’ve read pagewise.
I’m going to watch the movie after, I don’t know how they thought they could turn a series like this into a 2 hour movie so I’m sure it sucks.
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Please don’t watch the movie
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Fight Club
Decided to read it since it’s been on my shelf since forever. The movie follows it along very closely, except for the ending which the author admits is better than the book. It was easy to get through and easy to breeze through. I think it took me two days. It’s funny though how subtly moving disparate comments and stringing them together and casting Brad Pitt gave the movie a morality and philosophy to the movie that’s not as coherent in the book. The movie has a strong masculinity vibe in it and Brad Pitt gives long speeches forming an almost coherent philosophy. Whereas in the book it’s much more hallucinogenic with a much less coherent philosophy other than the dissatisfaction with modern life. Tyler Durden is almost never physically described in the book. He almost never gives more than 2 sentence answers to anything. While almost all the phrases in the movie are in the book they’re scatted throughout the book making Tyler much more incoherent in his philosophy than the red pilled alter ego in the movie.
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Time to also check out the sequel??
Bryan Bishop: It’s been nearly 20 years since the original Fight Club novel came out. What made now the right time to revisit these characters?
Chuck Palahniuk: One of my best friends, the thriller writer Chelsea Cain — who writes the Heartsick series and the Kick Lannigan series — she knows a lot of comic people here in Portland. And she threw a dinner party where she kinda set me up on a blind date with [comic writers] Matt Fraction and Brian Bendis and got them to really hammer on me about writing a comic. And right from the beginning, that comic was always going to be a sequel to Fight Club.
At the time, my current book contract with Doubleday was for a collection of short stories that were for the most part already written, so I did have this big window of time that I could work on the learning curve for comics. And then [Dark Horse comics editor-in-chief] Scott Allie was also a friend of Chelsea’s, and Scott asked for an introduction, and that’s how I got hooked up with Dark Horse. And since they were local, they really told me a whole new storytelling skill.
Probably for the best considering it’s Kripke.
What exactly are the rock operas for each generation since Tommy?
While not a rock opera, does Hamilton fulfill a similar function?
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I’d have to think about the first one.
No to the second. It is an opera, but not a rock opera. A rock opera is based on rock songs, just as a rap opera is based on rap songs, etc.
I know Hamilton is not a rock opera, as I stated, but is there is some sort of cultural function fulfilled by having a rock opera for every generation? If so, has that role shifted towards some sort of musical theatrical production that is not a rock opera?
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I was posting while walking my dog and did not read very well. Apologies and good luck.
“Every Man for Himself” is an extension of the lifelong quest for understanding — both the natural world and human nature — that have defined his career (a word he rejects, insisting, “I had no plans of career at any time in my life”).
“In all my films, there’s a sense of curiosity and always a sense of profound awe,” he says, “to go to the outer limits of what we are, and looking deep into the very recesses of our soul.”
“For more than 40 years, I keep preaching to deaf ears that my poetry and my prose will probably outlive my films,” says Herzog, who has always approached screenwriting as a genre of literature. “For example, ‘Cobra Verde’ has some wild opening sentence about heat. The dogs are motionless in the heat, and then, ‘Demented from anger, metallic insects sting glowing stones.’ It’s for you, the reader. I don’t need it. I write the screenplay, and then I put it aside and forget about it. But the financiers need it; the organizers and the actors need it.”
This and his other written works just shot to the top of my TBR list.
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I turned it into a full documentary. This is the author whose works kept me breathing and dreaming when I was stuck in hospitals as a kid and teenager. It was an honor to speak to her for the final interview.
I’m very fond of Fredrik Backman’s books. And now apparently his social media posts.
My wife and I had a rather big argument about how she felt I was putting everything into the freezer wrong. And I expressed how I felt maybe she was feeling this because she was raised in a cave. She got angry, of course, which is typical for cave people. Voices were raised, words were said, freezer drawers were opened and closed, opened and closed. And I want to be absolutely clear about the fact that it was NEVER my intention at any point of this to accidentally drop a whole bag of frozen pancakes on my wife’s foot. But yes, it happened. But if you really think about it, the fault is really her own, for criticizing my placement of the frozen pancakes. (My philosophy for freezer logistics is very easy: Good things in the front, not good things in the back. Like we do here in the human village.) No criticism=No frozen pancakes on your foot. It’s sugar karma. But anyway, voices were raised, words were said. I might have asked, very lovingly, how much it could have really hurt since the pancakes are flat. And my wife screamed, not very lovingly at all, that it was “the pointy end!!!”. So I pointed out that they’re round. And she pointed out that I’m an idiot. And then she yelled that she thought her toe was broken. So I said “do you want to put something cold on it?” and offered her a pancake. Long story short: I’m looking for a new home.
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Love that early part of anxious people where he’s describing adults trying to get by in life
Finished reading Christine by Stephen King - the story of the haunted 58 Plymouth Fury. I thought the first 1/3rd of the book was excellent with the character development and the friendships and also relatable as someone who drove an old muscle car in my last two years of high school. I almost put the book down during the middle when it felt like it went a little too fictional with what the car was capable to do to itself and the environment around it - but it was a horror story so I guess I had to expect that. The last 100 pages or so really did a good job of bridging the well developed charactors with the impossible circumstances of the car to make the reader want to figure out how the hell this book was going to end. Makes for a good Halloween book. It’s Either Pet Semetary or Salem’s Lot next.
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I made a list of almost every book I edited when I was active in publishing.
“Bill Watterson calls collaboration with The Mysteries’ artist John Kascht “appallingly inefficient and wasteful””
That’s a clickbait headline lol. The story has a happy ending and the book looks at least intriguing.
I like my monthly audible subscription. It “forces” me to experience a new book every month (can’t say read, and I do suspect reading is better). Currently experiencing The Pursuit of Power by Richard Evans, a 2016 sprawling history of Europe from 1815-1914. Goes into detail on many topics, such as technology, guilds, family and of course all the wars and politics and such.
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