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Magnus said:
John James, Votan and other novels
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Contains Votan (read it earlier this month), Not For All the Gold in Ireland (deep into it), and Men Went to Cattraeth (next week probably).
Heartily recommended, a hidden gem, to quote a fellow Maidenfan and compatriot; why it's not more famous is beyond me, frankly.
Knowing your Norse and Celtic myths, as mentioned by Neil Gaiman in his Introduction, certainly helps appreciating the adventures of Photinus the Greek in the North and the West (no Photinus in the third novel though, apparently), and some (very basic - as in, just a brief read of the relevant Wiki articles) idea of the grammar of Celtic languages would give you an insight of why some characters speak the way they speak, but you don't really need either of these to enjoy those books, written very cleverly, with a twisted, dry and dark humour which sometimes reminds me of Barry Hughart's Master Li and Number Ten Ox books - not in style or language but rather in the way of seeing the world.
Also, if, like me, you have the filthy habit of reading several books in parallel, reading Votan and Gold, and the earlier books in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories / Warrior Chronicles / Last Kingdom or whatever the name of the series is currently, might result in some very interesting echos, reflections and interplays, up to the point when you're not really sure if you read a thing in one or the other, or none, and just dreamed of it.
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Update: near the end of Men Went to Cattraeth now.
Milder - in a way, harder - in a way; less humorous, more sarcastic, and knowing your Y Gododdin or not hardly changes anything.
Once again, heartily recommended.
 
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A good thriller that works really well until it tries to wrap everything up too quickly and tidily toward the end. Should make a good movie, though.
 
Magnus said:
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Read it in Bulgarian decades ago, time to read the original at last.
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Googled it, general consensus seems to be it’s intellectually dubitous and obsolete garbage. I understand it is written from a 19th-century understanding of culture, which, unfortunately, you still find in some central European upper-class circles today, often combined with anti-americanism. Right?
 
jazz from hell said:
Googled it, general consensus seems to be it’s intellectually dubitous and obsolete garbage. I understand it is written from a 19th-century understanding of culture, which, unfortunately, you still find in some central European upper-class circles today, often combined with anti-americanism. Right?
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I don't feel competent enough to evaluate a work of philosophy, but if that's the general consensus then it must be true, right?
Let me finish it first nevertheless.
 
Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides. First book I’ve really dove into in a while. It’s a really really gripping tale of unpacking childhood trauma and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.
 
I recently read Woke Racism by John McWhorter, which was a pretty bold rebuttal of progressive conventional wisdom on so-called acceptable speech and attitudes on race, penned by a black liberal intellectual who’s an Ivy League professor of linguistics and American history, and a contributing editor at the New York Times and The Atlantic, among other things. It’s interesting to see a rationalist dissection of this mode of thinking coming from someone “in the family” rather than from a right-wing blowhard with an agenda, and the parallels McWhorter draws between wokeness and fundamentalist religious belief are spot-on.

I enjoyed the book enough to pick up McWhorter’s earlier tomes on black culture, Losing The Race and Winning The Race. I’m about halfway into the first one and it’s also a really smart read, and prescient about where things were headed, given that it was published 20 years ago.
 
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Pär Lagerkvist, Barabbas.
From wikipedia: "It tells a version of the life of Barabbas, the man whom the Bible relates was released instead of Jesus. The novel is built on antithesis: Jesus dies first among the three crucified – Barabbas dies last. Jesus dies among several of his friends – Barabbas dies alone. Jesus talks to God – Barabbas talks to the darkness. The novel starts with Jesus' crucifixion and ends with Barabbas' crucifixion in Rome."
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This short novel is one of my all time favorites. I see it as a story about a lost soul. I can't say I am atheist myself, nor am I devoted christian. I simply love this story from storytelling perspective. I like very much how this little book is written. It's writing style is pure gold, in my eyes.
 
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HELL: The Necromancer by [Tom Lewis]


HELL: The Necromancer Kindle Edition​

by Tom Lewis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

Evil Has a Child's Face​

A wave of occult-themed killings sweeps across Los Angeles, leaving a grisly trail of corpses in its wake. The only lead is a mysterious young girl caught at one of the crime scenes. A girl who scares the hell out of the police and the guards at the prison where she’s being kept. A girl with a terrifying secret. The power to raise the dead.

From the author of ‘Hell: The Possession and Exorcism of Cassie Stevens,’ comes a terrifying new tale of supernatural horror. Sometimes evil has a child's face.
 
I finally finished Song of Susannah from the Dark Tower series. It took me, what, two years? Now to face the final boss of the series, The Dark Tower itself.
 
About one hour in the morning, then another hour or two at night, every day. I actually read about 150 pages per day, to get ahead of the required pace, so I could take a week off now and then for a break.

Having accomplished this insanity, I'm not going to keep up this pace. But I've still set a challenging goal for next year's reading: all of Shakespeare.
 
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