What did you just read?

Aaron said:

I suppose this is the best place to ask...

My Mother loved to read, but these past few years she's had to listen to audiobooks due to an illness. She's getting a bit fed up with modern novels, and she's read most of the classics. Her main complaint is that so many modern novels are full of "bleeding heart liberal" stuff. A couple of examples:

1. The British spy master, John Le Carré. She loves his old spy novels, but after the fall of the USSR he went full bleeding heart.
2. The US lawyer novelist John Grisham. She liked his older books but she's listening to Guardians now and finds it too bleeding heart too.

So, I was wondering if you folks could recommend some good authors for her. First off, no Sci-Fi or Fantasy. She loves thrillers and legal dramas, preferably 20th century. She's also a big fan of big, think, meaty books that make you think. Two examples of these are John Clavell's "Asia" book series, and Morris West's novels (he wrote a lot of philosophical novels about religion, the most famous of which is In the Shoes of the Fisherman).

Thanks in advance!

Edit: She also likes: John Baldacci, even though he's a bit of a "hack".

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Ken Follet writes historical novels that are considered somewhat intellectually heavy.

Good for a wrestling book, alright in general.

I learned the Insane Clown Posse's wrestling federation actually pays pretty decently and treats its talent right. Yeah, let that sink in.

Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. I had been working myself to death and finally had a vacation a few weeks back. I was wanting to read some horror (which I enjoy, but it's hard to find things truly original or scary) and came across this book. It's set in France during the Black Plague and follows a knight who has lost his faith and an adolescent girl on a mission from God. I felt a bit of The Hound and Arya (although neither character exactly match them) in their pairing and enjoyed the alternative history. The horror comes not only from the destruction wrought by the plague but also demons who walk the land and have caught Heaven asleep. Buehlman's take on them was truly biblical in scale and I found the read quick and enjoyable.

I also read a second book of his, that I suppose came earlier, Those Across the River which was also fun. It's more Southern Gothic and tells the story of a cursed plantation home in 1930s Georgia.

If anyone has any horror recommendations (prefer things actually scary versus simply falling in a horror genre but something new is always welcome), I'm always open for suggestions. Regarding the books noted above, I wouldn't classify them as incredibly scary although Between Two Fires did go a bit Hellraiser at one point.

Horror recommendations always feel impossible.

The Troop by Nick Cutter is decent? It's got a bit of gore and a bit of body horror. A bio weapon escapes a lab and the escapee ends up infecting some boy scouts on their annual retreat. Things get pretty gruesome.

Just read the John W. Campbell collection of science fiction novels, picked it up mostly for Who Goes There? that inspired The Thing, but the rest of the stories is also pretty good, and sometimes eerily on the nose about future events (such as Japan sending plane pilots into kamikaze bombing runs, or Japan getting nuked (by aliens though) years before WW2). Most of the stories don't really have a tied bow ending but it's still a cool read.

Red rising trilogy, really enjoyed it.

Bastion, by Phil Tucker.

It’s a progression fantasy series, closest similar book that I’ve read would be Iron Prince. Well written, pacing can be a bit slow at times but all around pretty solid and sets up the series pretty well going forward.

Mysterium Coniunctionis by Carl Jung

This is not a book. It is a tome. And it is also a slow burn. Almost 600 pages of actual text, the 'point' of this tome (as with most of Jung's writings) only coalesces as you reach the end. But what an interesting end!

The body of the work busies itself with numerous alchemical metaphors, all of which were the personal constructs of ancient wise men striving to understand the spiritual nature of mankind. These metaphors can be boiled down to a sort of meta; everyone suffers a death of the ego, through which they are purged of their corruption, and can emerge as a better person.

Now we can translate that to one of the most powerful metaphors in the book; the Sun descends into the waters of the ocean and its fire is extinguished. This is night, when the Moon has dominion. Yet the moonlight waters also purify the Sun and allow it to rise, the next day, glorious and rejuvenated.

This happens to human beings many times in their lives, allowing them to grow through many different things. Much of this book is walking you through different metaphors with this message. The alchemists, living in a society without science or psychology, had to use metaphorical language to explain things they didn't understand. What does it mean when you say that the Moon is a representation of the Unconscious? That she is the mistress of love and madness?

It is through our ego death that we come closer to the Coniunctionis, the Union of Opposites. One of the pieces of this book concerns itself with Paradox. How can something be two things at once? How can the Moon be a brilliant white but also a symbol of darkness? It is in that intersection, that conjunction, that we find a great mystery. Yet there is also a great power there.

The moon is often used to describe the feminine, while the sun is used to describe the masculine. The union of these two things, often represented by the descent of the sun into the sea and its subsequent rising, stands for a greater metaphor; the union of the physical and spiritual worlds. It is through an ego death and the resulting humiliation that you are cleansed of your impurities and can live your life as a better human being. That is the Union of opposites, your ego married to the anima and the shadow, which results in the birth of the self.

For Jung, writing as a Christian, the self was exemplified in Jesus Christ. He is the Union of the physical and spiritual worlds, the mysterious conjunction that is a paradox we strive to understand. This mode of thinking, elevating Christ beyond a simple role model for behavior, is what Jung identifies as a truly religious way of thinking. It is through Christ, the Union of Opposites, that we are able to make a connection with the spiritual world and receive rejuvenating energy that allows us to keep going. This is the Inner Fire.

Without metaphor; it is by killing our ego, suffering humiliation, and recognizing the different parts of our psyche that we can find the inner strength to continue in a disappointing, materialistic world.

There is also a great bit in this book, which I didn't know where to place in my review, about the connection between Western Alchemy and Taoism. Both came to the conclusion that everything in our world is connected with everything else. Everything is in Union with everything else. We cannot forget that and believe ourselves to be isolated. That is how we forget that everyone else is also a human being. We let our Ego dominant us and lead us to believe we are something like the Center of the Universe. Yet the most interesting part of this is the fact our modern world likes to specialize everything. We like to separate schools of thought and sciences so that they are isolated from others, thereby doing the exact thing that leads us to believe we have found the Universal Truth.

I would only recommend this if you have read several of Jung's other works. Before this I would recommend "Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, (1934)" "Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951)" and "Psychology and Alchemy (1936)" in that order. These will lay down the fundamentals with which you will be better equipped to understand this book.

Dionysus: Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto

This book is primarily two things. On one hand it is a great resource for detail concerning the rites of the Cult of Dionysus. On the other hand it is a look into the mindset of ancient people. Too often, the author claims, we look at old religions through our modern lense. Modern people always need to find a reason for something to exist. Everything has to have a purpose that gives us some advantage in the world.

Yet the author claims this was not the mindset of ancient people. When we endeavor to understand ancient gods, we start with the concept of the god; god of war, of smithing, of agriculture, of love and romance. What we really need to be doing is, according to Otto, is start with the natural phenomena.

One great example; when a woman gives birth she is bringing new life into the world. Yet the action of giving birth is incredibly dangerous, for the woman and the baby. This was something that ancient people were aware of. They were struck by the thin line between life and death in such an important action. Such an observation led to the idea of a god who embodies such a paradox; Dionysus. He is both life and death. In no other god is life so vibrant than the Master of the Vine, who gave wine to humanity. And because of that, in no other god is death so horrible than in Zagreus, the hunter who rends the flesh of his prey.

It is in paradox that gods are born.

Another interesting point is that Dionysus is unlike any of the other Greek gods, who inhabit the summit of Mount Olympus. They exist above humanity, separate from the world and looking down on it. Like Apollo, who is the sun in heaven, they exist in the spiritual world. But not Dionysus. He is a chthonic deity, who exists in the world with us; life and death can be seen everywhere we look (or could, before modernity made life so easy to ignore death).

Apollo is order and discipline, a far flung look into the future and the planning for it. Dionysus is life, the here and now that must be enjoyed because death is always around the corner. That is why Apollo and Dionysus were sometimes housed in the same temple; they are opposites, but essential halves of the same universal truth. You have to plan for the future, but you must also enjoy your time here on earth.

Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade

This is the third book by Mercia Eliade that I have read, and it was not the most interesting work. This book is an exhaustive cataloguing of shamanic practices amongst Siberian tribes, their methods of achieving religious ecstasy, which Eliade claims have degenerated into the use of narcotics. Modern research seems to indicate otherwise.

So if this book is such a chore to get through, wherein do its strengths lie? There are little snippets here and there that made it worth the effort, though such snippets can be found in greater detail in "The Sacred and the Profane" and "The Forge and the Crucible."

I would recommend you go and read those books, and only afterwards if you truly crave more Eliade pick this one up.

Dune. Watched the movie and figured the book would make more sense. It didn't.

Way too many made up words they never explained, and hundreds of pages that could be summed up as "Water is a big deal". Felt very "young adult" reading.

Then all the resolution is like 10 pages. I was kind of shocked when it ended.

It had the feel of book 8 in a 10 book series. Maybe it is?

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, book one of the First Law trilogy. One of the few 'big' fantasy authors that I haven't read yet, so I decided to hop on it when I had a gap in releases from other authors. Theres not a lot to say about the actual plot of the book, as it looks to mostly be setting up the rest of the series, bringing together the Fellowship and all that, but I really liked it. Abercrombie does a great job of creating characters that are varying shades of asshole, while still being interesting to read about.

I finished up the Phantom Blooper by Gustav Hasford



This is the guy that wrote The Short-Timers which became Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. The Short-Timers was really good and the movie and book are very, very similar. The Phantom Blooper (bloop being the sound a grenade launcher makes) continues the story of Private Joker in 'Nam. He eventually gets captured by the Viet Cong and we see the war from their side.

It's a dark and violent story dripping with cynicism but I liked it a whole lot. I was always a fan of the Kubrick film and this could be an exact continuation of that film without changing even a single bit of punctuation.

Randin said:

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, book one of the First Law trilogy. One of the few 'big' fantasy authors that I haven't read yet, so I decided to hop on it when I had a gap in releases from other authors. Theres not a lot to say about the actual plot of the book, as it looks to mostly be setting up the rest of the series, bringing together the Fellowship and all that, but I really liked it. Abercrombie does a great job of creating characters that are varying shades of asshole, while still being interesting to read about.

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Read the next two in the trilogy and then tell me how you feel.

I've never had the chance to talk about the books with anyone.