Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

 This is direct continuation from the first book "The Colour Of Magic" which ended pretty ridiculously by everyone falling off the rim of DiscWorld. Well, apparently the spell that got lodged in the head of Rincewind does not want him to die and every time he is close to death, the spell saves him. So, even now, as he is falling into the void, outside DiscWorld, passing by the elephants and The Great A'tuin, the spell teleports him back on the surface.  Somehow, Cohen the Barbarian (82 years old) and Twoflower also find their way back to the service from the "space" vessel that was used by the Krull Empire, so all of them start walking back to Ankh-Morpork. 

On the way the meet Trolls, who apparently are living rocks and cannot be differentiated from regular rocks unless they decide to move or speak. Also, since rocks include precious stones as well, there are all kinds of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, etc. to be gathered from a body of a dead troll, which is what happens (through a mediation from a local robber gang) and Cohen finally gets his lost teeth replaced by a denture made of pure diamonds, so he doesn't make the "shhh" sound anymore.

Anyways, the gang discover that magic is disappearing from DiscWorld because A'Tuin is flying (swimming?) towards a great star, and the air is getting hot and rarified. The local mobs create a movement of "Star People" who murder all the wizards and everything magic-related, because they think they are at fault for their world flying into a burning star. 

One of the wizards from the Unseen University steals the Octavo book, which is now pretty harmless, with the magic gone from the world and tries to force Rincewind to surrender the last, eighth spell, so he can rule the world. This leads to an arena duel in the "Dungeon Dimension" which is populated by all kinds of vicious monsters, more terrible than anything seen and all sounding very Lovercraftian. 

Rincewind wins, says the eight spells from the Octavo and magic comes back to the world. Twoflower decides to go back home to the Agathean Empire, having decided that he had enough of touristing, and gifts The Luggage to Rincewind, who first refuses, but eventually accepts it as a companion. 

Overall a good book, though too much emphasis is placed (again) on parodying different Epic Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery tropes, and not that much on development of an interesting plot. In any case, Rincewind is a very likeable character who continues in several other books (together with The Luggage), but it is a shame that Twoflower doesn't appear again (except through his descendants one more time). Many tropes used have been later reused by J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter series (the Room of Requirement), but Pratchett remains the original.

Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft

 This one looks like a short story, but it is actually billed like a 'novelette' so hence a separate review.  It is a typical Lovecraft story, with an unnamed protagonist, very, very long explanation of the history of the given house/place and more than half the length is actually an introduction, without any of the actual action or plot happening. I guess that was acceptable in 1920 with no television, internet, facebook, instagram, tiktok, streaming on demand and similar instant gratification goodies we take as our lawful right today. Still, if you can bear with the immensely boring and dull style of writing that is Lovecraft's signature, the ideas buried within are actually gems (most of the time; not always). 

Lovecraft found most of his story ideas in his dreams, which must have been a horrible experience. I would personally be mortally afraid of falling asleep every night if these would be my dreams.  It is also well known that Lovecraft was a vicious racists, considering people of other races than white as inferior beings. This also carried on to white people who weren't Anglo-Saxon protestants like him (WASP).  He hated Catholics with a special zeal. Thus it can be conjectured that many of the "monsters" he describes in his works are actually metaphors for his hatred of "inferior creatures" of other races and religious denominations. Sneaky Lovecraft.

This novelette is one of the only ones describing a type of vampire monster, though one which did not feed on people's blood, but their "life essence" (whatever that might be).  Lovecraft sometimes mixes science in his works, so they may almost be called "Science Fiction" though not of the kind we understand today. In this story he mentions Einstein's Theory of Relativity and latest research in composition of atoms, which was very advanced for 1920s when it was written.

Anyway, the unnamed nephew finds the monster, after it "dissolves" his uncle (Lovecraft seemed to have had hydrophobia), and kills it by pouring acid in the hole where it was buried. Apparently this dissolves the whole thing although he sees only an elbow, which was "2 feet in diameter" which practically makes the "monster-spiritual-vampire" about 30 feet tall.  Not a very classical vampire, but in line with his Old Ones Cthulhu Mythos which all were supposed to be giant monsters. Old One Vampire, then? Very cool, though described as being with pale-blue flesh of squishy, almost-liquidy quality, doesn't really gel with other vampire stories. Anyways.

One does wonder how did the 30-feet vampire-monster get to be buried under the Providence house? The French settlers of 200 years ago are mentioned (and their "demoniac" ancestor), but the couple were driven out of Providence and their son murdered by a mob of angry citizens later on. So who is the monster? How did it get there? It is not Ettiene. It is not his son. Is it Ettiene's "demoniac" father/grandfather? But how did his body get transferred to the New World? And how did a human-sized body (assuming he was still "demoniacally" alive, somehow), became a 30-foot pale-blue squishy monster? All that while buried 6 feet under the house and emanating "yellow mist with eyes" through which he "fed" on the inhabitants. Very interesting.

Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett

 Yes, I finally read the first novel of DiscWorld, after I read the Moist Von Lipwig trilogy.  People were right to recommend not to start with this one, since there is barely any Ankh-Morporc in it and the action spreads around the whole Disc all the way to the Rim. This book is not a good introduction to Ankh-Morporc, but it is definitely a good introduction to Rincewind, the coward wizard who only knows one spell and even that one comes out only when he is in the most dire straits. 

Twoflower is also one of the best characters ever created, like the typical Japanese tourist, happily taking a snapshot of a volcano erupting, oblivious to the danger, and tipping the locals in the equivalent of annual salary. The Luggage is also an amazing creation, a box with teeth, tongue and many legs, which is virtually indestructible (made of "sapient pearwood" the rarest material on DiscWorld) and fiercely loyal to its owner which it protects with all possible means.

The other characters are also pretty interesting, like Thetis the Sea Troll, made completely of water, or Hrun the Barbarian, which is the funniest version of Conan, that is, until you read about Cohen. The Patrician of Ankh-Morporc is mentioned only in a couple of paragraphs, which is a pity, since I became fond of him in the Moist Von Lipwig trilogy. 

Anyway, although I am still peeved by the constant Britishisms and Archaisms that Pratchett employs (why can't he write in plain, simple American language?), I will definitely read the next book in the series, direct sequel to Color of Magic - The Light Fantastic.

Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz

 If you haven't played "Disco Elysium", stop reading this, go buy it and play it.  You will thank me later.  For those of you who, naturally, think DE is the best game ever made, this is the book where the Elysium world was first created by its author Robert Kurvitz.  Kurvitz was recently unceremoniously kicked out of ZA/UM that he founded, by a bunch of Estonian crooks and criminals (called "businessmen" in Eastern Europe), so now he is busy suing instead of creating more of this wonderful world, to the chagrin of all of us. 

Let me get this clear: Kurvitz was probably a horrible boss at ZA/UM.  Hell, he spent most of his life in a drunken stupor and doing every single drug he could get his hands on, but that's nothing to do with his creative genius and his creation of the world of Elysium.  It should not have been stolen from him, no matter anyone's opinion on his moral qualities.  

This is one of of the two English translations done by 'fans', i.e. it is not official or copyrighted or making any money for Kurvitz, so it is freely available on Reddit.  This is the IBEX Group translation, which people say it is more readable, although the "other" one has some original artwork from Elysium. Estonian is not an easy language to translate, and Kurvitz included generous doses of Russian, Polish, Swedish, Finnish, and other, so it makes the translator's job even more complicated. 

The book is very difficult to read, despite the efforts of the translators.  Legend says that Kurvitz worked on it for 5 years and was expecting it to make him world famous.  When it sold less than 1,000 copies, he went on a drinking binge that lasted for a while.  Although the topics and characters are amazing, one can plainly see why the book didn't sell. About half of it is a torture to read.  It is more like a poetic philosophical nihilistic treatise written in Iambic pentameter, rather than a novel.  He expected too much from the reader.  The modern reader wants the New York Times bestsellers with short sentences, cartoonish characters and a plot that a 4-year-old can understand. 

The main plot is about the disappearance of the Lund sisters (4 of them), all in early teenage years or less, who might or might not have been abducted, raped, surgically operated on, surgically attached to each other (why does this remind me of the "Human Centipede"?) and might or might not existed at all. Yes, it is that kind of a novel.  The three friends who 'dated' the girls in their early teens, are now in their mid 30s and trying to solve the greatest mystery from their childhoods.  Except that they are not.

The world of the isolas and the Pale, with its all-consuming qualities is so well described you almost feel you are there.  Even if there is no "there". The magnetic hanging trains, the ZA/UM ampules for reading minds, the post-communism of Kras Mazov, the Innocences, the nations, Katla, Graad, Mesque, Samara, Seoul, Revachol, kojkos and kipts and all other elements of Elysium live and breathe as a complete, believable world.  There is no connection to the characters and events of Disco Elysium, but most of the background characters are there.  It happens two decades after the time of DE (Elysium 1950s), and just before the nuclear holocaust on Revachol by Mesque. 

A must read for every fan of Disco Elysium, even if it is painful at times (plenty of times). After all, Harrier du Bois would want you to read it, and you can't let Harry down, can you?

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

 This is the third volume in the Moist Von Lipwig trilogy and it is the weakest of all three.  This is the only volume that didn't receive or get nominated for any awards. It is obvious why. The writing is tedious, long winded and absent the usual wit and satire that made the early Terry Pratchett books so entertaining.  This volume is the penultimate written before his death, so that might have overshadowed the qualitative dimension of the writing.

It is the longest volume of the three Moist books, and also the most disorganized in terms of plot, story development and general flow.  Moist is a subject of about 50% of the book, the other half being filled with new characters, like the inventor of the locomotive, with old characters but further developed like Mr. King and with lots of dwarfs, most of which are very uninteresting. 

The steam machine and locomotive get invented. The inventor asks for a loan from Mr. King who generously gives it, but keeps the largest chunk of the company for himself. Railway gets built and Lord Vetinari sends Moist to "help", but also to keep Ank-Morpork ahead of the curve with scientific inventions. Adora Belle, Moist's wife, is barely mentioned or developed, which is a pity as she is a very interesting character which should have had much more screen time. 

The parallel plot is that the "traditionalist" faction of Dwarfs starts killing people, burning clack towers and attacking the railway.  We find out that the final goal of the "traditionalists" is to overthrow the Dwarf King, whom they deem a "modernizer" which is a cardinal sin in the Dwarf Society.  Oh, yes, also goblins play a big part in the book, operating clacks and also maintaining the railway, which raised their social status to "people".

Eventually Moist succeeds to establish railway all the way to the city of the Dwarf King (who is actually a Queen) and brings the king on time to overthrow the "traditionalist" leader and retake power.  All is well that ends well, but we are left wanting for some real conflict (like in "Going Postal"), which would cause some real excitement.  Overall, one of the weakest Pratchett books, and only worth reading if you want o have a closure on Moist Von Lipwig (who doesn't do all that much).

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

The second book in the Industrial Revolution Trilogy, with my favorite character Moist Von Lipwig, and no less favorite Lord Vetinari.  This book is longer than the first volume, but not as interesting, unfortunately. The plot with the bank and the mint is interesting, and also Moist's invention of paper money (just like he invented stamps in the previous volume), however the whole thing with Umnian golems and the ending when they become the backing for the paper money is a bit contrived and feels forced.

The role of Adora Belle Dearheart is also pretty trivial in this book, marking no character development from the previous volume.  Yes, we get it that she's sexy and smokes like a chimney, but is there anything else interesting about her? Lord Vetinari is the best developed character here, besides Moist, and has much more screen time than in the first volume, which is a good thing.

Moist is bored with his job at the post office (where he does practically nothing) and is entertaining himself with breaking and entering, lock picking and climbing tall buildings at night.  Lord Vetinari is not satisfied with this turn of events and wants to make use of Moist's people swindling i.e. management talents so he gives him a dysfunctional bank and the Royal Mint to run.  However, this is the domain of the old, rich and thoroughly corrupt and decayed Lavish family, Cosmo Lavish being the current scion.

Since the little doggie Fusspot becomes the new chairman of the bank and Moist is his caretaker, he takes on the Lavishes and reforming the bank. Mr. Bent, the chief cashier of the bank, initially is an obstacle, but by the end becomes an asset. He also re-discovers his origin as a clown from the Fool Guild and his considerable clown talents.  This also feels forced, unless there is something about the Fool Guild in the previous 40 volumes. 

Anyways, now I am on the third volume, Raising Steam, which is the longest and most slow burn of these three volumes.  Hopefully it gets better towards the end. 

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Long time ago a person I knew told me about Terry Pratchett and his satirical/comical take on the Sword and Sorcery and Epic Fantasy genres. I didn't bite. I was too much into Tolkien and Moorcock (later I discovered Sapkowski and Martin). I couldn't care less about some satirical take on my favorite heroes that I identified with.  Well, I was wrong.

Even though I didn't start with the chronological order with the Rincewind series, neither with the Witches or The Watch, the industrial revolution trilogy is amazing, and Moist Von Lipwig is becoming one my favorite characters in literature. Yes, there is a lot of satire about vampires and trolls and wizards (from the Unseen University and boy do they like to eat!), however the character of Moist and his transformation from a scoundrel to a hero is amazing, and so it the plot development and the resolutions, with Lord Vetinari serving as a Deus Ex Machina of sorts.

After being saved from hanging, Moist von Lipwig is appointed Postmaster General and given the task to make the dilapidated, almost completely destroyed Post Office into a successful institution. Of course, Lipwig's first reflex is to run as fast as possible, but that doesn't pan out thanks to the Golems, which are one of the main characters throughout the Industrial Revolution trilogy.  Here we learn about "The Clacks" - a form of visual telegraph (no electricity yet in Ankh-Morpork) and the corrupt fraudster who stole them from the original inventor.

Eventually Moist invents stamps and restores the Post Office to the old glory and more.  In the meantime he also makes the daughter of the Clacks inventory (who smokes like a chimney non-stop, but apparently is very fit and sexy otherwise) his fiance. Her name is Adora Belle Dearhart and she runs the Golems in the city and fights for their rights.

Excellent book and absolutely great read for the times when you don't want to get too deep into some difficult and deep reading.  I am looking forward to the other two books in the trilogy.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

I re-read this book and I enjoyed the re-reading more than reading a new book.  Maybe I am getting old.  Today I saw the Japanese Ringu movie from 1998, and thought more about how Japanese are different from westerners.  The western "The Ring" movie is scarier than the Japanese original, but only because it uses cheap jumpscare tactics and soundtrack that gets on your nerves.  The Japanese original makes much more sense, the story is consequential and relevant and the sequence of events is logical, unlike the American copy, however it is not as scary.

Mr. Nakata is everyone's grandfather we all wished we had.  Complete goodness and non-nastiness, which is an achievement supreme in today's world of vicious personal interest and disregard for anyone else. The treatment that Mr.Nakata received from his brothers and especially from his first cousin who stole all his life savings after getting in trouble with the Yakuza is the testament to the garbage that modern people have become, refusing to take personal responsibility for their actions and always looking to screw over someone more vulnerable in order to save their own shitty skin. 

We live in a world of garbage humans.  These garbage humans are always on the lookout to swindle and defraud someone naive enough to trust them.  They are like the slimy snake-like monster that comes out of Mr. Nakata's dead mouth, trying to escape.  Mr. Hoshino showed us how to deal with these slimy, disgusting monsters.

There's no one in the entire Japanese history that could bring the Japanese spirit and soul so available and consumable by western readers.  While other Japanese authors pretty much require you to do an extensive study of Japan in order to even start understanding their works - Murakami does western metaphors and connections with the ease of someone who lives in both worlds and understand both intimately. Not only the references to Jazz and other western music, but even books, classical music and other parallels help the well-read and well-rounded western reader understand the Japanese folklore, mythology, demonology and connection with life and death.  Nobody else has ever come even close. 

Love is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski

There was an idiot on the internet (where else?) that claimed Bukowski only knows how to give good titles to his poetry books while the actual poetry sucked.  Well, that idiot should learn that the books are named by editors and publishers, not by the author, and the titles are actually taken from the verses that Bukowski wrote.  So, there you go, internet idiot, you just got schooled. 

The poems in this book are a mixed bag, as usual, because Bukowski lived by his motto (and grave epitaph) - "DO NOT TRY".  Just do. Just let it flow. It doesn't matter if it is garbage, just let it flow. Eventually some diamonds will flow out as well.  Yes, some of the poems here are pure garbage that a fourth grader could write better - so what? There are others that could be rated up there with the best poetry every written by a human being.   

Bukowski does not edit his poetry.  He publishes it all, as it came out from his drunken brain.  It is up to the reader to separate the garbage from the diamonds.  Don't like that approach? Your time is most valuable? Well, be on your merry way, then, nothing for you here! 

Poetry books are difficult to review, since you have to do it poem by poem.  This collection is similar to others by Bukowski, which I reviewed previously, dealing with love in the gutter and life in the gutter, describing, in very strong words (dick, shit, cunt, ass, fucking etc. being regularly used), the lowest social classes in the US, their morals (or lack thereof), their values, life priorities and views of the world at large.

Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

This is the second book in the Culture series, if you go chronologically by published date.  It is also the most boring one of the 4 I've read so far in the Culture series.  I see people online gushing over how interesting the story telling is when one thread starts from the beginning and the other from the end, but this seems to me to be just a silly gimmick, that does not help to lift off the average and boring story off the ground.  Here is the ending: Zakalwe is actually his brother who killed the original Zakalwe and his sister Darkscense (a stupid name as stupid names come, though Banks is a champion in making up the most dumb names for aliens - I can feel Heinlein raging against moronic names in SciFi).

Yes, he is the Chair Maker because he made a chair from the bones of his sister, including her broken pelvis!  We had to wade through 400 pages of shitty prose to get to that "exciting twist"!  The twists in this book are definitely sub par. 

Other than that, Sma is again here - she seems to be the most reccuring character.  This time she also organizaes her habitual group sex orgies and other fun stuff that Banks seems to think people living in space would enjoy en masse (why? people are not enjoying group sex en masse on this planet - why would that change in space?).

I keep saying that I will stop reading the Culture novels, but I still reach out for them because all of us humans want something familiar.  Maybe after this disappointment I will truly stop.

Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaimann

 It is a short book and without the complicated mythology of other Gaimann books, but it is very flowing and nostalgic and even a tearjerker at times. It starts when the protagonist returns to the lane where the house he grew up in used to be (torn down now to make space for a set of townhouses).  At the end of the lane there is a mystrerious, all-female, three-generational family, The  Hempstocks, living, on a farm with a large pond that the youngest Hempstock, Lettie, calls an Ocean. The middle-aged Hempstock is Ginnie and the eldest is called just The Old Mrs. Hempstock.

The narrator spends time with Lettie, who shows him another place, where other things live, after the tenant, an Opal Miner, kills himself in the family Mini Morris. One of the things from the other place comes to this world in the foot of the narrator when he is 7 years old and starts giving people money, while taking a human form, a pretty young woman called Ursula Monkton, who starts working for the narrator's family as a nanny and also has an affair with the father of the family. 

The narrator fights the monster, and Lettie helps by letting 'varmints' from another world in, who eat things like what Ursula Monkton is.  The varmints devour her, but they also want to eat the narrator who was a vessel/house for the thing to come from the other place.  Lettie and Ginnie try to protect the 7 year old, but the varmints are stronger.  Lettie throws herself on the top of his body while the varmints attack her and nearly kill her until the Old Mrs. Hempstock wakes from her sleep in her silvery form (she has seen the Big Bang, and will also see the next one) and orders the varmints to get out of this world, which they obey.

Lettie is interred in the pond on the Hempstock's farm, which turns into a veritable ocean, and Ginnie says that when her healing is finished, she will come back.  The narrator leaves the home town and has a full life far away in London, but still comes back every 10 years to check if Lettie has come back from the Ocean at the End of the Lane. 

Look to Winward by Iain M. Banks

I read this book from The Culture series second (after Consider Phlebas) since it deals with the aftermath of the Idiran War (700 years later) and I wanted to see what happened, since I like Hamza in the first book and it was written as an adventure novel.  Well, this volume is definitely not an adventure novel.  It is very slow and much happens inside the heads of characters, with extensive thinkings, flashbacks and memories. At it's core it could be called a spy novel in the future as it is about a saboteur from the planet Chel, who wants to destroy an Orbital (Halo Ring) and kill 5 billion Culture citizens to get a revenge because of the deaths in the Chelgrian Civil War, which was (somewhat) initiated by The Culture meddling. 

Chelgrians are three-legged feline predators who have a very conservative, caste-based and religion-based society, which is not yet at the level of The Culture technologically.  Quil is a former soldier who lost his wife in the Civil War and doesn't want to live anymore, so he is recruited by a faction of Chegrians who want to kill Culture citizens as a revenge.  Quil is supposed to create wormhole in the hub of the Orbital Massaq and kill the Mind (very advanced, sentient AI with full citizenship rights) which will cause a part of the Orbital to desintegrate and kill billions.  Quil will also die, but that's what he wants, anyway.

Chelgrians have devices called "Soulkeepers" which save the full contents of their minds at any given point, so they can be reconstructed in an artificial environment, and thus can live forever, in a way. However, Quil's wife's Soulkeeper was damaged so she suffered a permadeath, and that's what Quil wants as well. The Chelgrian extreme faction meet with 'allies' who are actually renegade Minds of the culture, at an "Airsphere" - ancient worlds created by a long gone civilization and populated by titanic fauna like the behemethosaurs, which are hundreds of kilometers long and live for tens of millions of years.  Chelgrians receive the wormhole weapon from the 'allies' and go to the Massaq Orbital under a guise of wanting to persuade a fugitive Chelgrian composer to return to Chel. 

Everything seems to go undiscovered until the last 10 pages, happening during the long-awaited concert of the first brand new symphony by the Chelgrian composer since he left Chel.  The Mind of the Orbital tells Quil that he knew since the very beginning that he was there to kill him and destroy the orbital, but he didn't do anything to stop Quil because the Mind wanted to die permanently.  The Mind says that he cannot live with the memories of the massacres and mass-murders that he committed during the Idiran war and everything he tried to forget didn't work, so permanent death is the only solution.  He and Quil die together a no-backup death, while the rest of the Orbital lives, and the Chelgrian faction that planned the massacre is murdered violently. 

The book is a meditation on permanent death and the meaning of a finite life, as opposed to infinite oblivion. 

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

This is probably the most disturbing book by Palahniuk. It consists of a series of short stories connected by a common thread, and there is a range of quality. Some stories are pretty mediocre while others are very powerful and deeply disturbing.  Some stories could be called "horror" or "science fiction" but it is mostly about commentary on society and the psychopaths among us, which is a common theme in Palahniuk's writing. 

The most artfully disturbing story for me was the one about the Nightmare Box, which has enough hints to make it deeply creepy while never revealing what actually happens so each reader can imagine their worst possible nightmare.  Cassandra in this story takes part in a few others, less good ones, and eventually we learn that she was a previous partner of Mr. Whittier, the guy who organizes the 3 month writers retreat, which is the thread that connects all the stories, i.e. each story is told by one of the retreat participants, something like Decameron or Chaucer, or the Mary Shelly retreat where she wrote Frankenstein. 

The participants are addressed by nicknames in the connecting story which is very distracting, though in the actual stories they tell their real names are used.  The 3 month retreat is a total isolation without an opportunity to leave early, which results in multiple murders, mutiliations, psychotic breaks and cannibalism. In a previous retreat, also organized by the psychopath Mr. Whittier, the participants played tic tac toe on the chest of Cassandra by carving the board and pieces with knives into her skin and flesh. The X player won. 

Mr. Whittier is a special type of psychopath, 13 years old with an aging disease that makes him look 80 and death soon approaching he uses his condition to elicit sex from attractive female volunteers in the care home where he is institutionalized.  After having rowdy sex with them, he then blackmails them with constitutional rape to extort money under threat of telling the police and their families. He organizes the retreat to prove to God that all humans are psychopaths deep inside and because of his obsessive fear of dying alone. 

The story of the murder of the aging child actor and framing him with child porn of prepubescent Czech girls being anal-raped by grown monkeys and prepubescent Russian boys performing oral sex on old men is also especially disturbing because of the deeply sick themes, which also could be completely based on reality. Also the story of the post-op trans woman being stripped naked, held down and hand raped by a group of women attending a women's support group is deeply disturbing, especially in today's context, 20 years after it was written.

The most famous story in the collection is "Guts" which is very disturbing when read on its own (as Palahniuk has done in many public readings while asking the audience to hold its breath) but when put in the context of the other, more disturbing stories in the book - it doesn't even break in the Top 3.  It is about a boy who masturbates naked at bottom of a pool while sitting on the pool exit valve. His anus gets sucked into the exit valve and while swimming up as not to drown, the boy's entire rectum is pulled out of his body, his anus still attached to the exit valve. This necessitates a surgery to remove most of his rectum and he cannot digest heavy food like meat for the rest of his life.  His nickname is Mr. Gut-Free. 

Overall, though the quality varies, this book contains some of the most powerfully disturbing scenes in modern mainstream literature.  Not for the faint of heart. 

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville

I tried. I made myself go through the first 50 pages. This book won awards and is classified as 'weird fiction' that I should like, but I couldn't continue. I actually got all three books of the trilogy set in this world, however there are too many random stuff that just takes too much effort to get used to.  The scarab-head-women-with-great-bodies is one of them, not necessarily the most undigestible. 

It seems that I like fantasy and speculative fiction books that at least have some starting point in the current reality, human universe.  I mean even in far-off books like the Dune series by Herbert, there is still Earth somewhere in the long lost past. Same with the Foundation series by Asimov.  I guess I just cannot digest books that don't have Earth and Humans somewhere in the narrative, albeit long gone.

I won't be reading many more weird fiction books that do not contain Earth and Humans. 

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

 After I read "Fight Club" and was even more amazed than the movie, which is one of my favorites, I was expecting a lot.  Great Expectations.  And that's a sure way to get disappointed which is exactly what happened here. "Choke" starts very bombastic, with all these urban legends about sexual exploits of sex addicts, however that doesn't last long, only a couple of chapters. Even the jailbird women that Victor has sex with become repetitive by the middle of the book.  His trademark choking in restaurants also becomes tired and doesn't appear much after the first third of the book, until the end when the heroes come for revenge.

The main story is about Victor and his mother who's losing her mind in a private hospital. It turns out that she is not his mother, not even in the Jesus Christ version with foreskin, but just plain stole the baby from a stroller in a mall. Also Dr. Paige is a patient, not a doctor, and is definitely not from the future, so crazy.  The reveals are definitely not as great as in "Fight Club", but then again M. Night Shamlayan could never repeat the success of "Sixth Sense" no matter how many chances he got (and wasted).

It is an easy read since Palahniuk's style is very conversational and flowing, with short sentences and not much description, but it is definitely not as satisfying as "Fight Club." I have a couple of more Palahniuk's books, and if those two don't work out either, I will give up on him.

The Telling by Ursula LeGuin

This is the sixth and last novel set in the Hainish cycle, although Ursula LeGuin said that she never intended to write a cycle; that it just happened. The novel is written about 30 years after the last Hainish novel was published and few years before Mrs. LeGuin's death. LeGuin is famous for the "soft" science fiction she writes.  The focus is not on technology, science or exploration, but on the inter-person relationships, community dynamics and tradition. Many of her science fiction novels are parables for the treatment of indigineous groups here, on planet Earth, by the colonizing powers, like for example in "The Word for the World is Forest". 

"The Telling" is pretty much a straight-forward critique of the Chinese Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution in Communist China and the overall contemporary social order and priorities of Communist China.  It starts on the "planet" Aka, with one main continent and a capital in the city of Dovza, which is a stand-in for Peking/Beijing including a huge square in the middle (Tiananmen) where horrible execustions have happened.

The Dovzan government, which calls itself "The Corporation" and its citizens "consumer-producers" is hell-bent on modernizing their society so they can catch up with the Hainish and the other advanced races of the Ekumen. To this purpose they destroyed all of their traditional culture, burned all the traditional books, murdered or imprisoned the sages of traditional wisdom called 'maz'. The Dovzan Corporation allows only culture that directly supports the Corporation and its project "Road to the Stars" while everything else is suppressed or destroyed.

The protagonist, Sutty, is a lesbian Indian woman from Terra (Earth), which grew up during a period of counter-revolution against the Ekumen and the Hainish where religious extremists and terrorists called "The Unists" took over the entire planet and murdered most scientists and free thinking people in the name of their "God".  Sutty studies in a Vancouver Hainish University within the "Pale" of Vancouver, British Columbia, which is under the direct protection of the Hainish, so she is largely sparred the religious terrorism and horror of the Unists, but her partner is murdered during a terrorist attack on the Vancouver Library district. 

She is sent as a Hainish/Ekumen representative to Aka, but because in LeGuin's Hainish universe there is no faster than light travel (only NAFAL - Nearly As Fast As Light), it takes about 65 years in real time for her to arrive, while in her subjective time only a few months pass.  During this time the Dovzan Corporation has taken over Aka in a violent revolution and proceeded to murder everyone that is even slightly opposed to its principles, while The Unist Government on Earth has been overthrown with the help of an emissary from the Hainish (originally Terran) which the "fathers" of The Unists proclaim to be "God".

Sutty travels to the last part of Aka where traidtional knowledge is kept called Ozkat-Okzat, which is a stand-in for Communist Chinese-occupied Tibet, where she meets the surviving maz and is introduced to their traditional knowledge.  The entire time she is closely followed and surveilled by Dovzan Corporation agents, the top being "The Monitor" who tries to prevent her from hearing any authentic stories from the indigenous people of Ozkat-Okzat. Eventually Sutty learns the horrible truth about brutal murders of the Monitor's grandparents by the Government (orchestrated by his own father) that made him a broken man, with only path to blindly propagate the programming of the Corporation.  This mirrors the happenings in Communist China, especially during the (Un)Cultural Revolution where children were betraying their own parents to the Government and having them imprisoned or even executed. 

The book ends with Sutty collecting all the traditional knowledge and books of Aka from the maz of Ozkat-Okzat and sending them to the Ekumen where they are to be preserved until the inevitable fall and destruction of the Corporation of Dovza and return to the traditional values on Aka. 

This is a much slower book than the previous ones in the Hainish Cycle, without much action or fighting, but the detail and attention with which the Aka societies are described makes them a living, breathing entity, on par with any real society on Earth. 

Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter

 After reading a lot of articles on Reddit about Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, the consensus was that his novels are an "acquired taste" and not for everyone who doesn't feel like waddling through dozens of pages of bad prose while tries and fails to build relatable characters. The Reddit users recommended his "connected" collection of short stories "Vacuum Diagrams".

This collection consists of many short stories written over the span of decades, most of them connected to the Xeelee, at least tangentially, and brought together by the first story where the Silver Ghosts are conducting a new forbidden experiment, and the protagonist's dead wife retells him the entire human story in the current universe, starting from billions of years ago and finishing a billion years in the future when the Photino Birds finally win and extinguish all Baryonic matter in this universe.

Some of the stories are silly, and can be seen that they were written long time ago, when the author was young.  Some are pretty good, but overall it is a very enjoyable book, since each story (almost) has different characters which cannot be developed in the given length, so you don't really miss them as you would in a novel. 

Many of the stories are the beginnings of the large novels Baxter wrote.  For example, the story "Raft" is the first chapter of the novel "Raft".  If you enjoy  the Xeelee concept with its technology on a super-advanced level that is barely comprehensible today, but do not want to wade through thousands of pages of boring characters as in the novels - this book gives you an overview of the entire timeline and just the nuggets you want.

Raft by Stephen Baxter

I started this book as it is the first in the "Xeelee" sequence, which is supposed to be one of the most far-fetching SciFi ever written, helped with Baxter's background in Physics, but it is just too much of a torture.  Kindle says I'm 29% in and I am calling it quits. It is just a badly written book.  Rees is probably one of the most boring characters ever created, along with the Pilot and the Scientist.  The two women (only two) in this novel are caricatures. The science of the Nebula, the Belt and the Raft is passably interesting, but it could have been a 5-page short story (yes, I know this novel is based on an earlier short story).

Even though the Xeelee do not appear in this book, just like the Heechee, they are more interesting when read about in a Wikipedia article than a novel.  Just like the Heechee kids are wearing a metal diaper for microwave radiations, the Xeelee seem to have a penchant for black holes and baryonic (?) matter.  Baxter is just a bad writer.  His prose is bad. The few interesting ideas here and there cannot compensate for the ennui of wading through his cumbersome and uninteresting prose.

I think I am going to switch back to detective fiction for a little while. 

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

 This is the first book in the "Culture" series, which consists of about a dozen novels and a bunch of short stories, which Banks worked on until his death a few years ago.  Banks said that he was tired of dystopian version of the future in sci-fi literature where machines and AI rise against man, so he wanted to create a world where the machines and AI are benevolent, help the humans and protect them.  He built "The Culture" with that basic idea in mind, but also set it in a realistic universe where there are other races, civilizations and alliances which are against the ideas of the Culture and there are brutal, bloody wars. This book in particular is about the Culture-Idirian war, which had close to 900 billion casualties. 

My general idea of the style of Banks' writing is that it is somewhere between Star Wars and Hitch-hikers' guide, the second being foundational British Sci-Fi and Banks is Scottish.  Although technology is emphasized - it is definitely not at the level of Asimov, but more emphasis is placed on adventure, swash-buckling heroes (Horza) who get themselves into difficult situations and the bravely, and by the skin of their teeth, get out of them victorious.  Btw, my personal preference is for short, dynamic, explosive descriptions of fight scenes, but Banks has completely opposite idea, where single fight of 10-14 mins is described over 4-5 pages, with every minute detail described profusely. 

This first book is about a Changer, Horza, who work for the Idirians against The Culture, and Balveda, a Culture Agent from "Special Circumstances" (basically military intelligence).  The Culture has no military and uses no money since it is 'coordinated' rather than 'ruled' by "Minds" which are advanced, sentient AIs which exist in multiple dimensions, think faster than light, and have storage capacity the size of an average planet.  Changers are humanoids which can change their outer appearance (over several days) to ideally represent any other humanoid they've observed.  The lore says they are a remnant of some genetically-modified population from some forgotten war, thousands of years in the past.  They are living weapons, having venomous teeth and nails and can also spit venom. 

Idirians are tri-pedal giants with saddle-like heads and redundant organs for every function, a result of evolving on an extremely inhospitable planet, which gives them biological immortality (i.e. no aging or disease death, but definitely death from being murdered or destroyed in an accident).  They are a theocracy and religion/God is the main pillar around which their society and personal lives are organized.  This makes them natural enemies of The Culture, which is Atheist by nature, and also proselytizing their ideas across the Galaxy. 

There are many adventures throughout the book that Horza gets himself in, like with the Eaters, Game of Damage, Kraiklyn's Free Company, Balveda's infiltration and Horza's escape from Culture's transporter.  Horza is not the typical Star Wars hero, as he is at times selfish and murders to achieve his goals, but we still end up sympathizing with him.  The background onto which he exists is much more murderous and self-aggrandizing, so he comes out as a moderate by comparison.

Horza dies at the end.  His entire species of Changers is completely destroyed by the end of the Culture-Idiran war and does not figure in future books, except as a remembrance. 

High WIndow by Raymond Chandler

 This is the first novel Chandler wrote that is not based on some previous short story.  It was made into a movie called "The Brasher Doubloon" but the plot was different somewhat, and Marlowe was not played by Bogart. All move adaptations have simpler plots as Chandler's novels get really complicated at times.  In "The Big Sleep" about 1/3 of the plot was cut out and the ending is completely different from the book. 

The "High Window" is a story of a rare coin from early USA stolen from an old rich lady with an attitude adjustment problem. Her secretary is the one that hires Marlowe and her son's wife is the one who is suspected of stealing the coin.  There are some local goons involved because the son has a gambling habit and the mom is just not dying. 

Eventually, a denture maker and old coin collector are killed in the same building and the secretary comes to Marlowe to confess to a murder she didn't commit.  Marlow finds the real murderers who were making copies of the doubloon with the denture maker's casts and returns it to the old lady, but now there are several of them already. 

Marlowe finds evidence that it was the old lady who pushed her ex husband through a high window and framed her secretary for it.  The secretary is free and Marlowe escorts her to her parents in Idaho. Pretty good book.