version

Well-known member
Anthony-Bourdain-Smoking.jpg
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Okay, so far this year:

Blade, King of Graffiti - Chris "Freedom" Pape (graf books are mostly photos so arguable should not be included but fuck it, I want to get the numbers up)
Citizen Clem - John Bew
Rave - Rainheld Goetz
How to change the world - Jean Paul Flintoff
A Very Short Introduction to Politics - Kenneth Minogue
Happy Money - Elizabeth Dunn & Michael Norton
Austerity Britain - David Kynsaton
The Poems of Andre Breton - Jean Pierre Cauvin & Mary Ann Caws
Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi
Weaving Fate - Aidan Wachter
6 Ways - Aidan Wachter
Waking the Tiger - Peter Levine
Brief Lives - Anita Brookner
The White Wand - Anaar
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Reality & Other Stories - John Lanchester

Bold = really bloody good.

Putting this list in to celebrate finishing Tolstoy which is one of the greatest things I've ever read. So ridiculously good. I flagged a bit but the climax of Anna's story and Levin's theological musings at the end had me fully on board again. What an achievement. Numbers are down, not going to hit 52 by end of the year but both the Kynaston & the John Bew are 500 pages + and Tolstoy is 800. These"short introduction" books are great -I have the photography one as well, and it's deep like the mind of Farrakhan.

Freshwater is also totally fucking wild. Please someone else read it so I can talk about it with them.
 

catalog

Well-known member
What did you make of Rave by Rainheld Goetz? I thought it had some good bits, like the writing about Basic Channel, but felt a bit loose altogether.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I enjoyed but felt perhaps there was too much in it extraneous to raving if that makes sense? Which is a reflection of his age, his media involvements and so on. I felt that if it had been about someone 18 years old whose entire life revolved around raving it might've been a bit purer, uncut if that makes sense? I thought the depictions of raving and the broken up nature of cognition on drugs were perfect though.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I should probably add 6 Ways is the best guide book to magical practice you're ever going to find but I didn't so much enjoy it as an experience of literature.
 

catalog

Well-known member
I enjoyed but felt perhaps there was too much in it extraneous to raving if that makes sense? Which is a reflection of his age, his media involvements and so on. I felt that if it had been about someone 18 years old whose entire life revolved around raving it might've been a bit purer, uncut if that makes sense? I thought the depictions of raving and the broken up nature of cognition on drugs were perfect though.
Yeah I thought it was gonna be more like that tbh, but it's a very literate, solvent intellectual guy, like someone who writes for the face or something.

I bought it on a whim when I got the mailer from fitzcaralldo editions, round about the time there was that lockdown rave on the m1 last year and I thought the 4th summer of love was round the corner.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Not dissimilar from Tolstoy maybe, in some of the territory she's depicting even if the setting etc is very very different.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Yeah I thought it was gonna be more like that tbh, but it's a very literate, solvent intellectual guy, like someone who writes for the face or something.

I bought it on a whim when I got the mailer from fitzcaralldo editions, round about the time there was that lockdown rave on the m1 last year and I thought the 4th summer of love was round the corner.
Yeah, I don't know if those bits work as well giving the fragmented structure. It'd repay a reread I think.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
@linebaugh Are you still reading Imperial?
yes, its been a slow going because Ive been drinking a lot as well. But its great. Just finished the section on the history of the chinese people in Mexacli, a town actually founded by chinese immigrants. To escape both persecution and the heat, they built an intricate series of tunnels underneath the city with apartments and clubs and many lived there.
 
Top