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[pronetoaccidents]

and they turned out to be really awesome. i found some amazing fucking shit.

Worms of Ouroboros - regarded as the first fantasy book. C.S. Lewis and Tolkien praised its release in 1922. Tolkein said it was the finest depiction of imagined worlds. The prose is epic, elegant, eccentric.. Takes place on Mercury, two kingdoms, Demonland and Witchland are at war. Demondland, despite the name, is of human looking norse vikings with horns and ornate robes and opulent abodes and witchland is, well filled with witches and monsters. So it's aliens battling witches with swords on misty mountains and under sea. The other names aren't as creative and thoughtful as Tolkiens borderline maniacally detailed appendixes, (i.e.  Pixyland, Goblinland, and The Ghouls, whom were unfourtantely "wiped out in a genocidal war a few years before the story opens.) but nonetheless gorgeously written, imaginative, inventive, reminiscent of the Iliad in it's scope and scale. find it and check it out. I'm excited to read the trilogy written afterwards. with sentences like this "ase thee and serve me, worm of the pit. Else will I by and by summon out of ancient night intelligences and dominations mightier far than thou, and they shall serve my ends, and thee shall they chain with chains of quenchless fire and drag thee from torment to torment through the deep.", treachery Ala Game of Thrones and Shakespearean, it's quintessential to any fan of sci-fi, fantasy.   


Europeana- A brief History of the Twentieth Century. in a similar realm as the peoples history of the united states, but more dark and cynical.. a more academic vonnegut almost? but not really, it's not actually "academic".. It starts off describing soldiers who died during world war 1 and how it was decided to be more economical to use there's, as well as the executed bodies of traitors for fertilizer instead of having to purchase more, tests of mustard gas on gypsy children just for the fuck of it to see if it works, etc. that sort of thing.   here's a quote from the beginning..

"Some historians subsequently said that the twentieth century actually started in 1914, when war broke out, because it was first war in history in which so many countries took part, in which so many people died and in which airships and airplanes flew and bombarded the rear and towns and civilians, and submarines sunk ships and artillery could lob shells ten or twelve kilometers. And the Germans invented gas and the English invented tanks and scientists discovered isotopes and general theory of relativity, according to which nothing was metaphysical, but relative.And when Senegalese fusiliers first saw an airplane they thought it was a tame bird and one of the Senegalese soldiers cut a lump of flesh from a dead horse and threw it as far as he could in order to lure it away. And airships and airplanes flew through the sky and the horses were terribly frightened. And writers and poets endeavored to find new ways of expressing it best and in 1916 they invented Dadaism because everything seemed crazy to them. And in Russia they invented a revolution. And the soldiers wore around their neck or wrist a tag with their name and the number of their regiment to indicate who was who, and where to send a telegram of condolences, but if the explosion tore off their head or arm and the tag was lost, the military command would announce that they were unknown soldiers, and in most capital cities they instituted an eternal flame lest they be forgotten, because fire preserves the memory of something long past. And the fallen French measured 2,681 kilometers, the fallen English 1,547 kilometers, and the fallen Germans, 3,010 kilometers, taking the average legth of a corpse as 172 centimeters. And a total of 15, 508 kilometers of soldiers fell worldwide. And in 1918 an influenza known as Spanish Flu spread throughout the world killing over twenty million people. Pacifists and anti-militarists subsequently said that these had also been victims of the war because the soldiers and civilian populations lived in poor conditions of hygiene, but epidemiologists said that the disease killed more people in countries where there was no war, such as Oceania, India or the United States, and the Anarchists said that it was a good thing because the world was corrupt and heading for destruction."

Sabran, AKA John William Wall was a British writer and diplomat and on his spare time using a pen name wrote horrific tales of physiological torture, Stockholm syndrome, imprisonment.. they weren't intended for publication but were. Here are some of the more fascinating ones..







Doll Maker in partciular is rather morbid. "A story of a young girl, caught in the dreadful fascination of willing slavery, the agony of a conscious victim who cannot escape the mordant mastery of an egomaniac practicing unknown horrors." and a sporadic quote,

""You must be a stern master, and if I try to break the spell you must double it and treble it, chain me down in the deepest dungeon in your castle, imprison me in the hollow of an oak in your enchanted wood. You must not let me go!"

"Ah, no," he said with wondering tenderness. "Dungeons I have and hollow oaks, but not for you. One ancient ceremony of bondage is enough. If you want to be my slave I'll perform it"

he had the collected poems of Yeats.

Haven't read through this. It's about as thick as Ulysses, experimental in word layout like Mark Z. Danielewski house of leaves, The Tunnel. This is called Ergodic Fiction, apparently (just learned that a second ago when reading a bit more about it. )

"The Tunnel is a novel about a man named William Frederick Kohler and his attempt to write an introduction to his historical magnum opus, "Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany." But when Kohler tries to flesh out this minor introduction, mostly for the purposes of gloating over his colleagues, he instead finds himself writing a deeply personal book about the history of his own life. As the novel progresses we see the lies, half-truths, violent emotions, and relative chaos of Kohler's life laid bare, and while he continues to dig away at the memories of his past he also begins digging a tunnel out from the basement where he works, a reflection of his tunneling through himself. The novel addresses ideas about history, evil, and the living and the dead."

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so hope someone finds something enjoyable or useful in this thread. Pick up anything by the authors. Everything I've read and skimmed through so far has been spot on and mind blowing.

[lindsey]

whoa this rules!

[pronetoaccidents]

yeah it does! every single book he recommended has been awesome so far and i'm trying to remember what the others were on the table. He had a pretty hefty stack. everything by Sarbaan and Worm of Ouroboros in particular stood out though in opinion.