The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (Steven Sherrill)Five thousand years out of the Labyrinth, the Minotaur finds himself in the American South, living in a trailer park and working as a line cook at a steakhouse. No longer a devourer of human flesh, the Minotaur is a socially inept, lonely creature with very human needs. But over a two-week period, as his life dissolves into chaos, this broken and alienated immortal awakens to the possibility for happiness and to the capacity for love.
I stumbled across this book a while ago and remember Jordan telling me it is one of his favorites. I think since reading can be so time consuming and I don't have a lot of free time for consumption, I have a tendency to pick books that will teach me something new, as opposed to just for the sake of pleasure. Half way through this book I was still asking myself what the point of what it was, until it occurred to me that, much like watching Transporter 2 for the fifth time, some books are merely for pleasure and that alone. After realizing this I really began enjoying the book.
Bad stuff:
- A lot of the awkward social situations and homosexual undertones seemed to me just reminiscent of the authors own youth as a dude going to school for Poetry, is afraid to talk to girls and kind of enjoys cuddling with dudes. Could have done without this because it is a fucking five thousand year old Minotaur, not a teenage turd.
- Throughout the book is "M's" inner monologue - a very old and wise monologue that only stays inside his head due to his "thick tongue" and its inability to properly speak the english language. Yet the last part of the book, what he does is the complete opposite of a five thousand year old wise person/bull, and makes him seem rather ogreish and completely in the dark when it comes to mankind, (a species his been round for thousands of years.)
Great stuff:
- The fact that the author obviously went to school for Poetry. His writing does a splendid job of eliminating the unnecessary, and each chapter flows perfectly.
So overall I think I need to reread this, and this time not ask so many irrelevant questions like, "if he has been around five thousand years, shouldn't he know you don't do that?" or, "if he has been around five thousand years, wouldn't he have gotten used to his horns and eventually stopped hitting them on everything?" I need to reread it and this time take it for what it is: a novel length poem about the exile of a half man/half animal who went from mythical proportions to a mere shadow when his story was lost amongst the ignorance of modern man.
7.5/10
Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons (John Carter)
Jack Parsons was a bizarre genius whose life reads like an implausible yet irresistible science fiction novel. Sex and Rockets looks at his short life and dual career as cofounder of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and leader of the Agape Lodge of Aleister Crowley's Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO). Author John Carter scours primary documents and interviews surviving friends and contemporaries to deliver an intriguing portrait of a dreamy, driven man equally interested in rocketry and magick. From his early childhood and deep attachment to his mother (who killed herself hours after he died) through his nonacademic research and brilliant innovations in solid fuels to his mysterious 1952 demise in a garage-laboratory explosion at the age of 37. Yet this same man found spiritual fulfillment through Crowley's Law of Thelema.
So Jack or John or Marvel or whatever the fuck he wanted to be called that day made leaps in rocket science that helped NASA land spacecraft on the moon. They named a moon's crater after him. Obviously, a smart f'ing guy. Now, outside of work, he was heavily involved in mysticism, especially influenced by old A.C. My impression, from the very choppy and rough biography author John Carter has put together, is that Parsons was easily taken in by charlatans. I am by no means knocking Crowley - it is the fact that Parsons signed an oath swearing himself as the Antichrist here to rid the world of Christianity, which is just the thing Crowley did sarcastically, in hopes of drawing in the intelligent and inquisitive and making it easy to write off the cheese dicks, goth kids, and attention seekers. He did this so the most trained and healthy minds could read between the lines of much B.S. and find a path toward genuine enlightenment that was sought using his rituals and/or formulas.
But I don't blame Parsons, I blame the the author. This biography reads like a high school paper, the student filling it with useless and irrelevant facts just to reach a proper length - I'm surprised the type wasn't double spaced. Carter also stumbled over a lot "facts" concerning Crowley which are truly myths, once again showing his ignorance. I would like to find a bio on Parsons from a more reputable source and see what that has to say.
Only two good things about this book: 1. The introduction by Robert Anton Wilson. His short introductory blows the rest of the book out of the water. 2. The fact that Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard performed the rite of Babylon together, and that he had, apparently, quite an influence on Hubbard.
5/10
The Fuck-Up (Arthur Nersesian)
After a series of set-backs, an unnamed slacker pretends to be gay to get a job which launches him on a darkly hilarious odyssey through New York City grit.
All in a few hours this dude loses his job, his girl and his residence. The rest of the novel is him running around and taking advantage of people, resulting in a luxurious loft with a babe who jerks him off in his sleep, to being homeless and stuffing stolen egg whites down his sock. I read this book in high school, a few years before becoming a fuck-up. I saw it at work the other day and decided to read it a couple years after being a fuck-up. The narration is great and it is a quick, enjoyable read. I finished it in a few days, reading it sporadically on my lunch breaks. Definitely some "light, spring reading"
The only shitty part of this book is the author writes as if everyone is familiar with New York City. The main character is constantly walking, and I had to put with not giving a shit where 42nd and East 3rd, or 24th and South 16th and blah blah are, but still forced to swallow it all. Other than that, good stuff.
7.5/10
Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft (H.P. Lovecraft)
This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H.P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH, THE NAMELESS CITY, THE CATS OF ULTHAR, THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKOWN KADATH
I much prefer the Dream Cycles over the Cthulhu Mythos and his other work. Lovecraft's vivid descriptions of cyclopean, forgotten cities; trips across endless black oceans; and in and out of body, time and space are some of my all time favorite stories. The best part is that most of these are based off of dreams and nightmares he had, which he would jot down as soon as he woke up.
10/10
book count 13/104
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