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I finally tracked down the first half of Book of the New Sun and I'm about a 150 pages into the first part, and holy poo poo; this book is unreal. I don't think I've been in awe of a book like this since Blood Meridian, it's just such a subtle and beautiful work. I fell in love right at the beginning with the chapter where Severain finds a dog and rescues it, it;s such a subtle and nuanced take on adolescence and the affecting power of things mostly out of your hands, it did more in six pages than some books have done in 150. So yeah, thank you thread for having good taste and recommending this book to me
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# ¿ May 14, 2016 17:35 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 20:58 |
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Man, I just finished Book of the New Sun for the first time, and whoa nelly I'm sure there is so much I missed, but the last fifty pages are pure mindfuck. I think this might be the literal first time anything has done a time travel plot twist and had it work, I didn't think that was even possible.
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# ¿ Jul 17, 2016 16:18 |
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Atlas Hugged posted:It's also important to remember that it's entirely plausible that Severian never had sexual relations with any of these women. I always sort of read it as He did have relations with Thecla, but they were super awkward and sort of traumatizing for him which is why he doesn't mention it until his memories start to gel with Thecla's. Also the entire point of Severian is that he starts as a moral black hole and gradually awakens to something more. Wolfe is a very, very Catholic authour.
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# ¿ Sep 29, 2016 16:50 |
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Oh God now I have to read Urth and Short&Long Sun why do book stores never carry these books
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# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 17:59 |
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I got a friend of mine to the audiobooks to Book of the New Sun, and we were talking about the series (he's just started Sword of the Lictor and thinks Thrax is really neat) and I got to talking about one of my favourite parts from Citadel of the Autarch and I thought I would post it here because it is probably my absolute favourite part in that entire magnificent novel, at least from my initial first reading of it.quote:You know newspeak from 1984, where the language of those under a repressive regime have their vocabularies limited so that they cannot manage to have thoughts that are too insubordinate or even complex? It's valid you know, Umberto Ego made special note of it in his writings of spotting naiscant fascism.
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# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 07:15 |
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Your Gay Uncle posted:I don't know if this is common knowledge but I was doing some research into Pringles potato chips and ended up reading their wiki article. Apparently while he was a mechanical engineer Gene Wolfe invented the machine that cooks Pringles. I knew that and I never stop getting tired of letting people know at the end my introductions. I also like to point them to the interview were he really looks like Dr Robotnik. Also I just got Book of the Long Sun, and I cannot wait!
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# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 06:46 |
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I just finished Nightside of the Long Sun myself and I'm kind of loving it. It's different as hell from New Sun but in a way that doesn't detract from either series. It's also fun to be along for the ride with Wolfe before full on "There is no Pepe Silvia, the whole company is a ghost town!" mode sets in. e: "I've been doing some digging Mac, he's slept with every single one of his female relatives!" "What, even his grandma?" "ESPECIALLY HIS GRANDMA MAC, THAT'S JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!" ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Jan 23, 2017 |
# ¿ Jan 23, 2017 18:18 |
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I really liked Long Sun a lot, but that has to do with my own personal eccentricities: at University I was (and still am) deeply atheist in a way where I just plain didn't get religion, so I was curious to figure out the draws and reasons behind it and talked a lot with the University's different religious groups as a result. Long Sun deals with faith in all of it's forms and intricacies a lot, so as a sort of amateur theologian I was completely blown away by a lot of the subtleties and ideas behind it: I tend to recommend it to my more religious friends as a result. If that's not your thing I could really see the book just doing nothing for you. Frankly I consider Gene Wolfe to be one of the most dangerously persuasive religious writers who has ever lived. The ideas of faith in government as an infallible higher power(both with the apathetic acceptence of the Ayumiento and the near messianic trust in Mint and Silk),faith the goodness of your fellow man and the times it may be rewarded or fall short or happen in a way that does harm like with Blood, of your own inadequacies of a human inevitably making you fall short, the despair of seeing evil in those you love and how to deal with a clear-cut undermining of faith, how faith can be exploited by those in power from way on high: I could go on. It's a very Catholic book: in a way that tries to understand and explore all angles like many of Wolfe's works (I'm seen it pointed out that Thecla's arguments for atheism are never explicitly rebuked), but it is super forefront in this work. There's a reason there are a lot of priests with a lot of different voices, especially in a political sense (like the one who seems to fulfill a divine purpose by explicitly using forbidden arts to brainwash a mechanical being). It's as complex as any of his other works but you need a decent sense of theology to grasp a lot of it, which isn't really as needed in his other works. I think I could write a decent essay about Silk's role as a messianic figure if I reread them, it's great how he shows some real aptitude for it sometimes (seeing the good in even thieves and whores and helping them out,) and just completely fucks it up at other times. Then again it is completely told through Thorn's impression of him so (I love the surprise unreliable narrator bit right at the end, that completely made my jaw drop).
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# ¿ Jul 13, 2017 04:08 |
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I figure I might as well post a counter-argument then http://ultan.org.uk/review-botns/ Also BotNS is a postmodern masterwork <>
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# ¿ Aug 8, 2017 14:58 |
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Got the Best of short story anthology for Christmas, and drat Wolfe's short stories are on point. Also got The Borrowed Man, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Also finished a second readthrough of BotNS, and wow does that book benefit a lot on a reread. I loved it the first time but a reread really brings it to a whole nother level
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# ¿ Jan 1, 2018 04:09 |
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Forlesen was entirely too real for someone who's worked thankless jobs that demand you do more work than is actually available, but I loved it: it had the pitch-black Kafkaesque humour to it. I also love at the end where they go through the different explanations. "It could be demons, or aliens, or you're in a simulation or maybe it's just a tumor, I dunno."
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# ¿ Jan 4, 2018 04:26 |
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Just read Hour of Trust Holy gently caress
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# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 06:20 |
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You're going to be more specific about which time.
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# ¿ Jan 10, 2018 16:49 |
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So I'm giving Peace another whirl (I tried years ago but it was before I really learned how to read Wolfe or learn to appreciate the pastoral) I'm about a hundred pages in and um, is the narrator a serial killer? Because he brushed off a kid dying of his "spinal injuries" a couple dozen pages after mentioning that they fought on the steps and he keeps making references to things like being willing to kill his aunt's dogs or burning toy soldiers.
ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Mar 20, 2018 |
# ¿ Mar 20, 2018 01:48 |
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Being 18 and a torturer tends not to make someone father of the year material, turns out. Oh, and I finished Peace a while back. Which, given it's a Wolfe novel, means I have a basic kind of idea of what the hell actually happened. My main takeaway is that the conversation he has with Gold about manufactured works reshaping reality is one of the outright spookiest bits of writing I've ever read.
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# ¿ Apr 8, 2018 06:19 |
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Well I was going to talk about the Wizard Knight and Urth of the New Sun now that I've read them and saw this thread come up but I'll just wait for BotL to get probated because he got mad at a children's cartoon or some poo poo
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# ¿ Sep 7, 2018 20:30 |
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I look forward to you deliberately acting in bad faith towards the subject of character voice. on a more positive note, I'm about halfway through Urth (Severian's starting to get his healing hands on) and based on a lot of things I had heard about it I was kind of expecting it to be dry and not quite fit but aside from a really rocky start I think it's been pretty great so far? It really ties the whole thing together and it's wild to see Severian turn into the promised messiah figure while still being a doofus that peaked in high school. ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Sep 9, 2018 |
# ¿ Sep 9, 2018 19:17 |
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Don't you have a Ducktales thread to poo poo up or something?
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# ¿ Nov 12, 2018 10:21 |
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Peace is also really good, it's probably Wolfe's most quote "literary" unquote work, it's like Alice Munro meets Edgar Allen Poe meets Guy Gabriel Marquez if I had to choose three authours (with a smidgen of Citizen Kane): focus on a sort of small town coming of age and a man making himself with some incredibly unsettling borderline magical realism and some really dark subtext. There is a scene where he's talking with a bookseller towards the end which is straight up one of the most memorable bits I have ever read in a novel, period. Very different from his usual work but it reminds me a lot of the good poo poo I read while in uni, which as an English undergrad happens maybe once per semester. Say what you will about Wolfe, the man had loving breadth. I need to repropriate it, I lent it to my Mom a year ago and she still hasn't read it ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ¿ Apr 23, 2019 11:48 |
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andrew smash posted:Guy Gabriel Marquez, noted author of The Lions of al-Macondo I only read 100 years of Solitude and a few of his short stories, that one's going over my head, sorry. Mostly I'm kind of amused with how much Peace has in common with the small-town coming of age story that seems to be two-thirds of all Canadian fiction ever written. It's probably more consciously aping Faulkner but hey, my education leaves me certain biases. ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Apr 23, 2019 |
# ¿ Apr 23, 2019 22:50 |
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I re-read "Hour of Trust" and woof that is a harrowing short story, kind of prophetic in a way too given that it was published in '73 and they talk about how the American armed forces are real bad at fighting drawn-out guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers nearly 30 years before Afghanistan, as well as predicting the giant ballooning of wealth disparity. It's probably my anti-capitalist politics talking but I think it's my favourite short story of his. e: come to think of it, it was written in the malaise wasn't it? Probably had something to do with it.
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# ¿ May 17, 2019 05:23 |
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I'm about halfway through On Blue's Waters and I must say: this is the first time that [sic] has made me go "oh holy gently caress!!". The way I see it there might be two narrators but I'm unsure if it's Horn impersonating Silk (which he apparently is really good at) or Silk actually took up Echidna's offer and he's divinely possessing Horn. Given that in that passage he straight up misremembers the name of one of his children as "Horn" I'm guessing the latter. I like the irony of Horn writing Silk's book, only for Silk to write Horn's. Y'all were right: Long Sun is worth reading just for context in Short Sun.
ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Oct 23, 2019 |
# ¿ Oct 23, 2019 21:46 |
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Oh yeah, it's a DENSE book with a lot of vital clues hidden in blink-and-you-miss-it lines (I only figured out who Severian's sister was on my third readthrough). It definitely is a mind-blowing book on a second read though.
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# ¿ Nov 3, 2019 08:03 |
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I mean Severian does note that the witches are the sister-guild to the torturers, if she wound up anywhere it would be there.
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# ¿ Nov 4, 2019 18:51 |
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I'm finishing up On Blue's Waters now and I gotta say: Horn(?), could you ease the hell up on your son just a little bit here? e: Okay just finished it and I am sticking to my "at least two narrators somehow spliced together" theory ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Nov 14, 2019 |
# ¿ Nov 13, 2019 23:40 |
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Incanto just met Duke Rigolio in In Green's Jungles and uuuhhhhh This book's been a loving ride ever since Incanto's second story
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# ¿ Nov 24, 2019 04:56 |
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I just finished Return to the Whorl and with it the entirety of the Solar Cycle. Holy Christ, what a ride. Just...goddamn. I'll have a better post once I've digested the last 100 pages or so of Whorl but wow. Between this and a reread of Peace (seriously, how many people has Alden murdered?) I think Wolfe is a strong contender for my favourite authour of all time, not just science fiction but in general. Easily in the top five, at least. Linking Quadrafons to the weird bear/wolf/lion/cattle structure in the Atrium of time (as talked about in this one article I remember reading) https://ultan.org.uk/lions-and-tigers-and-bears/ alone, or the insight of the identity of Abaia and the Undynes and their relationship with Seawrack are going to keep me puzzling for a long while. For that matter, what is Seawrack's real name, since Horn remarks that Seawrack is just an apropriate name that is close to it because he can't quite pronounce it right? ManlyGrunting fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Dec 18, 2019 |
# ¿ Dec 18, 2019 02:00 |
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Yeah, Krait does have a certain Caliban vibe to him
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# ¿ Dec 19, 2019 19:23 |
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Hammer Bro. posted:What're the others? I'm not really sure what your preferences are (and I read a lot less than I should all told) but I guess Junot Diaz, Cormac McCarthy, Umberto Eco and Alice Munroe? I would say David Foster Wallace but I'm finding myself less entranced with him as I get older and also more of a girl. If you're looking more for the genre stuff I would say Zelazny and LeGuin, Lord of Light is great and I'm reading Left Hand of Darkness for the first time right now (holds up remarkably well for a science fiction book written 50 years ago). My brother recommended Nine Princes of Amber to me but I only managed to get through the first 100 pages of the first book before life ended up happening so I can't weigh in too hard; he also won't stop recommending Neuromancer to me like the Gen-Xer he is and I don't have the heart to tell him I don't really care for Gibson much (I bounced off Idoru hard). A lot of people also like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel but I found I kind of lost interest once the Thistledown-haired man started being more proactive for some reason, I should finish that one up one of these days. Also if you can read Long Sun and Short Sun because individually those series are pretty good but together they're just masterful
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# ¿ Dec 21, 2019 20:25 |
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# ¿ Apr 17, 2024 20:58 |
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I think I get what you mean but specifics would be nice: I only ever got into tabletog rpgs with friends in my mid-twenties
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# ¿ Dec 28, 2019 19:39 |