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Reading Minds: The CoastGab Book Club

Started by PhantasticSanShiSan, October 23, 2008, 12:06:30 AM

Jackstar

Quote from: Camazotz on July 13, 2020, 04:06:07 PM
Wow. I wanted an answer but Jackrabbi gave me a lengthy dissertation.

I can dig it.

Color me impressed. Very.

Besides, I ASKED for it.

Even this guy bought the hype--typically, a classic rookie blunder, but in this case it's all been part of a cunningly designed plan to manage perceptions and rope them nto a working pattern of my choosing.

I do not care what it looked like to any of you. I only care that it worked.

Albert Camus wrote The Plague while in France. And if I had known what "in France" actually meant I would have read that book over and over and over again when they kept forcing me to in high school.

However, some meanings are layers deeper than are wise to allow.

Quote from: Camazotz on July 13, 2020, 04:06:07 PM
Color me impressed. Very.

I've been deliberately on strike from writing for over 32 years, and if there's one thing I know, it's who John Galt is.

Now do me a favor, and tell these mewling, stinking, drooling cowards that I accept their capitulation. If you would, do it with a lot of zazz, and put a little mustard on it. I'm saving the spunk for myself. That's not company policy, just none of you here deserve it.



03) Widow's Point by Richard Chizmar & Billy Chizmar

Jackstar

Quote from: Jackrabbit on July 14, 2020, 04:11:48 AM
none of you here deserve it.

I woke up this morning, and all of the robots I play chess with suddenly display substantially more cognitive capacity to lead.

This place seems much nicer too! I can feel the warmth! But not too warm.

Today I'm going to recommend The Master of Space And Time, by Rudy Rucker. It is mandatory reading at this point.

I am using the word "reading" here.


pate

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 19, 2020, 01:54:54 PM


04) IF IT BLEEDS by Stephen King

"IF IT BLEEDS" must have within its pages "...we can kill it..." before I can commit to reading it.  The title clearly implies that the "we can kill it" letter/spacing combination as I have quoted it is clearly contained within.  NO ANAGRAMS!  Clear language only.

Someone please tell me that the words "we," "can," "kill," and "it" appear in exactly that order with nothing else in between but spaces in this "IF IT BLEEDS" tome.

I will reluctantly accept page breaks and/or carriage returns and double spaces between any of the listed words.  They must appear in exactly THAT order.  Any attempted read of a Stephen King work at this point in my life is formulaic and dull.  Much respekt, but anymore it seems more like work than moar inJOYmint.

I miss good creepy fiction.  I think I am going to re-read either the Dune series or O'brian's masterful and commanding Aubrey/Maturin unfinished saga... again.

Both sail off towards the horizon...  Something must have happened next.  Either the ship-of-sail reached the edge of the Earth and fell off amusing the turtle beneath, or the stolen Heighliner finally reached the edge of the universe and something cool happened?  I firmly believe that both sagas ended as intended:  both the adventures can continue and The Sleeper finally awakes.

pate/K_Dubb all your base are belong to us

pate/K_Dubb 2020
"We are going to fix this shit"

Quote from: pate on July 19, 2020, 10:08:48 PM
Any attempted read of a Stephen King work at this point in my life is formulaic and dull.  Much respekt, but anymore it seems more like work than moar inJOYmint.

I feel your pain, disdain, and brain.

I'm about halfway thru this four-story collection. The third story - which I'm about to start on - is the title track. Will post again if/when it specifically states WE CAN KILL IT.

pate

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 20, 2020, 12:46:28 AM
I feel your pain, disdain, and brain.

I'm about halfway thru this four-story collection. The third story - which I'm about to start on - is the title track. Will post again if/when it specifically states WE CAN KILL IT.

Thanks, I would really appreciate the intel.  I know he has it in him to write something I might enjoy.  His early shorts, The Stand, IT, a few of his Bachmann essays...  the rest seemed so, forgettable.

Airport Convenience Store Author is great work if you can get it, enjoy it and can meet the dead-lines I guess.  Maybe the filthy lucre is worth it?  Were I an actual writer, would I rather stand on 1.5bn copies of one singular work or 1.5mil copies of a thousand clones?

I think Plato and Socrates still rhetorically question each other about this very issue to this very day...

Mr. King I truly hope this is the one!

Thanks Cam!

pate/K_Dubb 2020
"We are going to fix this shit"

Jackstar

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 20, 2020, 12:46:28 AM
Will post again if/when it specifically states WE CAN KILL IT.

Well, The Automat did post again, so I'm going to unlock the Autocannons. If this turns out to be a mistake, don't worry; We can fix it in post.

albrecht

Quote from: pate on July 20, 2020, 01:24:53 AM
Thanks, I would really appreciate the intel.  I know he has it in him to write something I might enjoy.  His early shorts, The Stand, IT, a few of his Bachmann essays...  the rest seemed so, forgettable.

Airport Convenience Store Author is great work if you can get it, enjoy it and can meet the dead-lines I guess.  Maybe the filthy lucre is worth it?  Were I an actual writer, would I rather stand on 1.5bn copies of one singular work or 1.5mil copies of a thousand clones?

I think Plato and Socrates still rhetorically question each other about this very issue to this very day...

Mr. King I truly hope this is the one!

Thanks Cam!

pate/K_Dubb 2020
"We are going to fix this shit"

While someone like Jung or Joseph Campbell might say there are only a few archetypes and so plots and just vary in some details. I recall other theories as to number of plots/themes I think that the Airport Convenience Store Author and Summer Beach Read authors now have an fully automated system. Doesn't even require an person as author- though might still for editing. AI still has some problems with that.  What is amazing is that the people who might have figured out the "formula" are still shown on covers- despite being dead for years! A sort of AI apotheosis. Clancy, Ludlum, Francis, etc still shown on covers of new books.



ksm32

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 17, 2020, 08:07:42 PM


03) Widow's Point by Richard Chizmar & Billy Chizmar
The cover of that book makes me want to read it. I like it when that happens and it almost never disappoints.

Dr. MD MD

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 17, 2020, 08:07:42 PM


03) Widow's Point by Richard Chizmar & Billy Chizmar

Wait! It took two guys to write this book?! ???

pate

Quote from: albrecht on July 22, 2020, 05:45:13 PM
While someone like Jung or Joseph Campbell might say there are only a few archetypes and so plots and just vary in some details. I recall other theories as to number of plots/themes I think that the Airport Convenience Store Author and Summer Beach Read authors now have an fully automated system. Doesn't even require an person as author- though might still for editing. AI still has some problems with that.  What is amazing is that the people who might have figured out the "formula" are still shown on covers- despite being dead for years! A sort of AI apotheosis. Clancy, Ludlum, Francis, etc still shown on covers of new books.

Did not know that Clancy passed, wait, maybe I did.  Mandelbrot Affect?

Either they had huge "trunks" stuffed with un-submitted &or rejected material, or they were also amateur programmers that made gigantic "Mad Lib" book boiler-plates that they could just cram nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs &etc in near the beginning.  Then proof-read and correct their way through a novel of suitable length and girth to be bound paperback and displayed in places where such worthy tomes are for let or sale.

Writing in this manner would be such joy!  I want one.  ouh-haaaa{bassy}

I am sure I am not alone in my little pet theories.  There is still the standing theory that they somehow just sit in front of a keyboard and "do the work."  Each passing day with wonders and advances in all other areas, leads me to a growing doubt in the standing theory.

I have said too much!

pate/K_Dubb 2020
"We are going to fix this shit"

Jackstar

Quote from: pate on July 24, 2020, 06:42:32 PM
Did not know that Clancy passed, wait, maybe I did.  Mandelbrot Affect?

In my timeline, he died unexpectedly from a long illness a couple years ago. It was such a sad story.

Quote from: Dr. MD MD on July 24, 2020, 06:17:48 PM
Wait! It took two guys to write this book?! ???

And it's "just" a novella!  Heh.

Father and son team.

I did enjoy it. Traditional ghost story but with some modern rigging. "Atmospheric and creepy" sounds like a cliché description, but is a fair assessment. Which is the minimum you would expect from the founder of Cemetery Dance Magazine.

Quote from: pate on July 20, 2020, 01:24:53 AM
Thanks, I would really appreciate the intel.  I know he has it in him to write something I might enjoy.  His early shorts, The Stand, IT, a few of his Bachmann essays...  the rest seemed so, forgettable.

Airport Convenience Store Author is great work if you can get it, enjoy it and can meet the dead-lines I guess.  Maybe the filthy lucre is worth it?  Were I an actual writer, would I rather stand on 1.5bn copies of one singular work or 1.5mil copies of a thousand clones?

I think Plato and Socrates still rhetorically question each other about this very issue to this very day...

Mr. King I truly hope this is the one!

Thanks Cam!

pate/K_Dubb 2020
"We are going to fix this shit"

UPDATE for pate:

It is my unfortunate duty to relate that the phrase "we can kill it" does NOT appear in the title track story of  IF IT BLEEDS (the book.)

King's target was "If it bleeds, it leads."

However, the story did pass the dill pickle test.

At the story's end, I experienced an electric current down the spine, as if I had bitten into a stolen large dill pickle from the big pickle jar at Cabell's Dairy Way in Oak Cliff, TX in 1969.

It was the humanity, not the horror, that got me in the end. Not an easy thing to pull off.

Well played, Mr. King. Bitch-slapped my black heart after some  misdirection.

The biggest possible drawback to the third story is that it is related to the Bill Hodges trilogy and to The Outsider. 

Since I had read those four books, the connecting points in IF IT BLEEDS (the story) were not a problem and provided back story texture.

But it might be slightly  confusing or frustrating at times if you haven't read those other books.

Why a publisher would put this particular story in a collection is puzzling. It could have been released as a novella on its own and clearly marketed as being part of the Bill Hodges cycle.

Maybe the publisher thinks it wil induce the reader to seek out those other books. Or the publisher is certain the readers of IF IT BLEEDS (the story) will have read the relative books.

Seems like a gamble.

The other three stand alone novellas in this collection were solid IMO. I can recommend these without caveat:

MR. HARRIGAN'S PHONE

THE LIFE OF CHUCK

RAT

Peace & long-toothed crocodiles, buddy.

Cam



pate

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on July 31, 2020, 10:11:24 PM
UPDATE for pate:

It is my unfortunate duty to relate that the phrase "we can kill it" does NOT appear in the title track story of  IF IT BLEEDS (the book.)

...

Peace & long-toothed crocodiles, buddy.

Cam



Cam,

I may still read it.  If/when I do, I hope to find an appropriate place in the margin next to the canonical text, where I will place a personal editorial note, with caret reading "...we can kill it..."

It just occurred to me that perhaps Mr. King intended just that sort of audience interaction, but left the placement of such personal editorial notes up to the individual reader?

I expect we will never find out if that is true or not;  but it would maybe make reading any of Mr. King's works less of a chore and more of a treasure hunt.  Think of it:  every titled work he has produced under any pseudonym has an implied parenthetical statement attached to the title of the work that is humorous, creepy or self-referential.  It is the implied duty for the astute reader to decode this implied parenthetical statement and find an appropriate place within the body of that work for a personal editorial insertion!

I look upon the vast body of work of Mr. King's with new eyes!

Eureka
!

Thanks for the intel, Cam!  Although, on the surface it appeared to be disappointing news;  I seem to have made some lemonade from it.

-p

 06) THE LETTERS OF AMBROSE BIERCE (1922) edited by Bertha Clark Pope



Jackstar

Quote from: pate on August 01, 2020, 10:15:55 AM
I look upon the vast body of work of Mr. King's with new eyes!

Eureka
!

PLOT TWIST: He's plagiarizing me.

albrecht

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on August 07, 2020, 01:28:34 PM
06) THE LETTERS OF AMBROSE BIERCE (1922) edited by Bertha Clark Pope


His disappearance could be a good C2C type show if they still had a decent host. Syrette could do a decent job, Knapp also since Knapp likes deserts. It would depend on the author/guest- hopefully a somewhat legit one but with an open mind for conspiracy and such.

Quote from: albrecht on August 07, 2020, 03:49:43 PM
His disappearance could be a good C2C type show if they still had a decent host. Syrette could do a decent job, Knapp also since Knapp likes deserts. It would depend on the author/guest- hopefully a somewhat legit one but with an open mind for conspiracy and such.

+1

I like to think he survived any embedding within the war and continued traveling south until he found himself at the foot of a Mayan pyramid.

Upon his ascension to its peak, an interstellar craft swings by and plucks him off the planet.

He regularly drinks coffee with Enoch, comparing notes about time dilation and indigestion.

 07) ASSASSIN OF GOR (1970)
by John Norman


albrecht

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on August 07, 2020, 09:14:13 PM
+1

I like to think he survived any embedding within the war and continued traveling south until he found himself at the foot of a Mayan pyramid.

Upon his ascension to its peak, an interstellar craft swings by and plucks him off the planet.

He regularly drinks coffee with Enoch, comparing notes about time dilation and indigestion.
I was sorta hoping he hooked up with that Confederate Group in Brazil, got into some weird cross-cultural ayahuasca/debutante ceremony and ran off with a deb, her curtsying of course, in some stolen NAZI U-boat after they unloaded gold and Hitler to the jungle compound. Used the U-Boat and damsel to replenish the race in Lumeria.

08) THE SILVA MIND CONTROL METHOD (1978)
by José Silva


Silphion

Quote from: Rix Gins on May 12, 2018, 08:00:57 PM


This book is full of short chapters on everything, well, strange.  Lots of territory covered here.  Things like the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, the Abominable Snowman, a guy that was swallowed by a whale and survived, dreams that came true, ice falling from the sky, fish falling from the sky, a comet falling from the sky, (Tunguska) Napoleon's strange death, signals from space, disappearing armies, a disappearing farmer, (yeah, right in the middle of his field, 'poof' and he was gone) manmade structures on the moon and a cursed car, just to mention a couple.  There are 74 topics in all and each subject is given two and a half pages of coverage, thus, nothing is covered in a comprehensive way but still it's fun to read the short accounts of the strange things.  I had heard of most of these subjects, but there were several, like the disappearing farmer and a super smart dolphin that guided ships through a narrow inlet, that I had never read about before.  I was surprised to note that most of these strange subjects took place back in the seventeenth century.



Frank Edwards, the book's author, made a living off books like this.  I think there were a couple more, in fact I've got a signed copy of his book called Strange World.  Frank was born in 1908 and like Art Bell, got into radio at an early age.  He had a full career in radio and had his own show for a number of years.  He did television too.  I remember seeing him on Art Linkletter's House Party a couple of times.  Frank covered the UFO phenomena that cropped up when pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted some flying saucers back in 1947.  His best selling book was titled Flying Saucers - Serious Business, and come to think of it, he was probably hawking the book on Linkletter's show.  Edwards didn't live all that long, I think he was only 59 when he passed.  As a matter of fact, he died in the last couple minutes of June 23, 1967.  If he had lived just a few minutes longer he would have died on June 24, 1967, the twentieth anniversary of Arnold seeing the saucers.           

Deserving of the fine tribute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll0X691rlkg

Juan

Quote from: Camazotz Automat on September 18, 2020, 10:04:20 PM
08) THE SILVA MIND CONTROL METHOD (1978)
by José Silva


Great book.  Read it when new, still try to apply the lessons learned.

Quote from: Juan on September 19, 2020, 06:04:20 PM
Great book.  Read it when new, still try to apply the lessons learned.

You are absolutely correct. A great book indeed. A classic I had failed to read. I heard podcast host Howard Hughes mention how strong and positive of an effect it had on him. I promptly galloped over to abebooks.com. Heh.

(Howard - on his THE UNEXPLAINED podcast - easily cleanses my cerebral palate if I have recently experienced too much Noory contamination.)

https://theunexplained.tv/

09) WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING
(2018)
by Delia Owens



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