Tag: Chuck Klosterman

WWW Wednesday – September 27, 2023

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WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment, I am between books.

Recently Finished

I Wear the Black HatI’ve had a rather productive couple of weeks. Though I didn’t feel I had read enough to warrant a post last week, I have finished reading I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman, which I ended up liking a little more than I was feeling when I last posted about it, as some of the essays started to cover subjects I was a little more familiar with. I especially liked the essay “This Zeitgeist is Making Me Thirsty”, which is an examination of the worldview of the sitcom Seinfeld, something that Klosterman lays out as a lot more bleak than I ever realized. I knew the characters and tone could be rather mean-spirited, but I hadn’t considered the depths of it before.

Man, Fuck This HouseOn Monday, I managed to read the entirety of the horror novella Man, Fuck This House by Brian Asman, a story about a family that moves into a house that is already inhabited by an inhuman presence. I’m really happy I was successfully able to read this in a sitting to kick of the spooky season, and I’m hoping it bodes well for getting some other books done during the Halloween season too. Though this book captured my attention thanks in large part to its title, I didn’t think it was very good. Even as something deliberately pulpy and without pretensions, I couldn’t help finding a lot of it pretty stupid. It was still fun, but the horror, such as it was, didn’t really work for me, so it mostly amounted to something audacious and silly with one character getting on my nerves on top of it all.

Reading Next

Alien 3 First-DraftWith horror books being my primary concern now, I think I’m going to start Alien³: The Unproduced First-Draft Screenplay by William Gibson by Pat Cadigan, as I’ve been really curious about this book since I first learned about it and have been sitting on a copy for a little while now. Though I have no experience with Gibson or Cadigan, I’m really intrigued with the story behind this novel. Though I do have some love for Alien³ despite it faltering compared to its predecessor films, I love the idea that a celebrated author in the cyberpunk genre had an idea for what that film should be. I really want to know his vision, especially as it is being realized by another celebrated cyberpunk author.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – September 13, 2023

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I Wear the Black HatThis past week I managed to read a lot of I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman; I was hoping I’d be able to finish it, but I didn’t quite make that much progress. At the moment, I’m only a little over halfway. I’m sure I’ve felt this way before, but reading through a lot of an essay book in one sitting was a bit of a slog for me. This wasn’t helped by the fact that this isn’t quite hitting my interests in the ways that I was hoping. Don’t get me wrong, Klosterman has some great writing in this book, such as exploring why some people are remembered heroically despite a lot of bad behaviour and the ways that certain people cultivate villainous personas, but this has been a lot more about musicians and athletes than I was expecting, which are spheres that don’t appeal to me very much.

Recently Finished

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 8Over the weekend I read through the eighth volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa. After some training from the Hero of Time, the story picked up a lot of momentum here, rocketing Link through two of the game’s dungeons after spending a couple of volumes going off script. Through I feel like these moments have been few and far between, for the most part, I can’t help but notice weakness in the dialogue from time to time. Most notably in this volume was when Midna realizes that the Hero’s Shade is the Hero of Time, which is something she ought to have learned alongside Link in the previous volume. Most often I’m really wondering if the translation job is weak here, but I’ll likely never know for sure. Regardless, with three volumes left I’m excited to see this series through.

Reading Next

Still no new plans are on the table for what I’m reading next. I’m still working on my Carpe Jugulum review, which I lament falling behind on posting, but hopefully I will have it done soon.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – September 6, 2023

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I Wear the Black HatI managed to start reading I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman since last week, though I’ve only managed the preface and the first essay. Still, it has made for interesting reading so far, with the preface asking a lot of questions about the nature of goodness and how good or bad everyday people may or may not be, turned on the self as well. By the end of the preface, he makes a point about young male fans of Star Wars, as they get older, gravitating away from Luke Skywalker toward Han Solo and then eventually Darth Vader as characters that capture their interest the most. Though the thought is left at the surface level for the most part, it’s an interesting thing to note, as there’s a truth to the observation that’s easy to recognize in my experience that raises questions about why we feel the ways that we do about villains.

Recently Finished

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 7Over the weekend, I managed to read through the seventh volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa, which saw Link recovering from his near-fatal encounter with Dark Link and Zant. This volume was quite an interesting departure from the narrative of the game, as none of this happens there at all. Most captivating about it were the further connections made with the game Ocarina of Time, which I wish the Twilight Princess game had put more effort into. The Hero of Time takes up the mantle as a mentor much more firmly in this book, explaining who he is and his past more explicitly, and we see dialogue between Zelda and Ganondorf that explains the connections between the two eras more clearly.

Reading Next

At the moment, I have no new plans on what to read next, other than a tenuous commitment to reading The Lost World by Michael Crichton, if I can do so before October starts.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – August 30, 2023

Ryan2 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Nothing at the moment! As of this evening, I am between books.

Recently Finished

This is How You Lose the Time WarI had an anticipated amount of time to get a lot of reading done this week and got nearly to the end of This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone; I took some time this evening to finish up the last 20 pages or so before writing this post so that I could have it all finished up. I’m finding that finishing up books this much faster requires some adjustment for me, as my slower pace would give me more time to ruminate over a longer period. This novel felt like something of a whirlwind with how much I got through this week, but I really enjoyed it. I didn’t become quite as enamoured with it as I was hoping, it seems, but it did get me to tear up at some moments, which is an excellent mark in its favour. I’m still working on my Carpe Jugulum review, but I’ll try to have a review of this up soon.

Reading Next

I Wear the Black HatI’m feeling pretty committed to starting I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman next; an essay collection will be a nice change of pace. Afterwards, I think I will read The Lost World by Michael Crichton, assuming Klosterman’s book doesn’t take me too long. I wanted to read the two Jurassic Park books this year, and there’s been enough of a buffer since the first book now, but I don’t want it to cut into Halloween reading, so it depends on how efficiently I get things done.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – August 23, 2023

RyanLeave a comment
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I’ve been feeling a bit off this past week and have had to get back into the groove a bit with work, so I haven’t made any new progress on This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal Eh-Mohtar & Max Gladstone.

Recently Finished

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess 6I did however find some time to read through the sixth manga volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa. The story has taken a somewhat interesting departure from the game’s story here, shortly after Link deals with finding the mirror shard at Snowpeak Ruins. Unlike the game, Link has quite a lot more personality in this series, and since he’s retrieved the Master Sword he has gotten a bit of a big head about his role as the Hero. In this volume this culminated into an encounter with Dark Link, a recurring adversary type in the games but one that was absent from Twilight Princess. In the end, the spirit of the Hero of Time as a wolf seems to intercede, but I can’t tell if that wolf is supposed to be him in this adaptation, so I’m curious to see where this all goes; I hope we get even more insight into the older hero and the nature of his more spectral existence.

Reading Next

I Wear the Black HatI’m still not really sure what I want to be reading next, but I feel like I need to make up my mind soon because once I get some momentum going with This is How You Lose the Time War I feel like I’m going to finish it fairly quickly. There are many books I’ve mentioned already over the past few weeks that are likely candidates, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about a new book I just bought called I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman. It’s a collection of essays about our cultural fixations on villains and anti-hero-type characters/figures, from what I can gather, and I’m thinking an essay collection might be a nice change of pace. I really enjoyed Eating the Dinosaur, and this book feels like the topic range will be even more focused in a way that I’ll like.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Book Review – Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman

Ryan2 Comments

Eating the Dinosaur

I’ve found trying to succinctly describe Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman a little challenging. In some ways it’s easy because it is (a) a book of essays, (b) a work of nonfiction, and (c) concerned with popular culture. This isn’t especially helpful though, since that describes a lot of books. A number of the essays revolve around sports and music, that’s for sure. One is so deeply entrenched in football history, in fact, that he advises some readers to skip it (though this is an outlier).

In a broad way, I suppose, I’d say this book questions facets of the reality in our society and how we come to interpret this reality through very specific examples of celebrity and popular culture. Maybe that’s still too vague, but this book has essays about the concept of time travel, Road movies, why we answer interview questions, and ABBA. Connective threads are bound to look a little tenuous from the outside.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – June 19, 2019

Ryan11 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog! Feel free to leave a link to your own down below as well.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Eating the DinosaurI’m still in the middle of reading Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, and the experience continues to be an interesting one at the very least. His essays are excellently written, but what I’m having diminishing returns with is how much he writes about music and sports. I dislike neither topics, but don’t have an especially big interest in them either. The football essay was especially in-depth, though fortunately I used to play so I was able to appreciate much of it, even if I’m not an active fan of any  league. Often his discussions of these subjects do tie into greater ideas about culture as well, which is all the better. I just can’t help being a little disappointed in what he chooses to focus on.

The Midwich CuckoosOver the weekend I started reading The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. It’s a classic science fiction novel about a village that has a visitation from a UFO that makes everything in the village fall unconscious. A day later it is gone and soon after it’s discovered that all the women in the village are pregnant. What I’m pleasantly surprised by with this book is how much it has been exploring the social impact of sudden, inexplicable pregnancies throughout a village. I would have expected it to gloss over this part of the story, but the troubling implications of the event and the ways women are handling it is being explored more than I thought a novel written in the 1950s would.

Recently Finished

Nothing for this week. Shame on me. June has been a slower month for some reason. Certainly feels like it, anyway.

Reading Next

The Buying of Lot 37I’m definitely going to start The Buying of Lot 37 by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor next, though I would like to at least finish up with Eating the Dinosaur first. Lot 37 will be a supplemental read too, so I do still have to figure out what novel to read next, but there is plenty of time for that. In terms of comic books I will likely read A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman, Rafael Albuquerque, and Rafael Scavone. It is a graphic novel adaptation of a story that appeared in Giaiman’s collection Fragile Things. I’m excited to see it adapted into a visual medium.

Until next week, thank you for reading!

WWW Wednesday – June 12, 2019

Ryan7 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog! Feel free to leave a link to your own down below as well.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

Eating the DinosaurI’m still reading Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, though I’ve only read one essay since last week. The essay in question was all about time travel, however, and that made it really fascinating. In fact, when I was considering picking the book up it was one of the pages I flipped to in this chapter that sealed the deal; it was all about the “Bootstrap Paradox.” It read like a well-crafted rant, though that’s hardly a bad thing for me. He dives into time travel in films, the problems he has with the concept of time travel and explanations of its hypothetical consequences, and most importantly I now understand where the title of the book comes from; it’s the only worthwhile reason he sees for traveling to the past.

Recently Finished

The Hidden Life of TreesOver the weekend I finished reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben and should have a review up before the end of the week. I maintain the criticisms I brought up last week, but all in all this book gave me valuable insight in a fairly accessible way that made some hiccups in the readability more than forgivable. I think I was hoping this book would recapture the passion The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs filled me with, but I can’t expect every science book I’m intrigued by to pull that off. I’m just not into learning about trees in the same way. I rate this book pretty high nonetheless, and I’m really excited to check out the next book in the Mysteries of Nature series by the author.

Reading Next

The Midwich CuckoosI’ve finally just settled on the next book from my scrappy list I’m going to read, and that is The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham. It’s a science fiction classic that looks to be a relatively quick read, so I thought I’d quickly scratch if off my list. I really enjoyed the last two Wyndham books I read—The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids—so I’m looking forward to this one too. I also want to start The Buying of Lot 37 by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor, the third volume collecting scripts of Welcome to Night Vale podcast episodes. I really enjoyed the insight the first two volumes provided for the making of the series.

Until next week, thank you for reading!

WWW Wednesday – June 5, 2019

Ryan16 Comments
www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog! Feel free to leave a link to your own down below as well.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

The Hidden Life of TreesI’m now far along into reading The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. I’m still enjoying the book, though my enthusiasm with it has diminished somewhat. Something about the way the chapters are structured feels a little too random to me. Some contain information that calls back to previous chapters, but I feel as if I could crack the book open to any old chapter and read it. While that’s a good thing for reference, I have found it to negatively impact my experience reading it cover to cover, however slightly. It is still inspiring a greater reverence for trees, but I’d be lying if I said my layman brain wasn’t failing to register different tree names and species sometimes too, which has made reading a bit more of a chore.

Eating the DinosaurI’ve also started reading Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, a book that came completely out of left field for me. I bought the book for a dollar at little fundraiser at work, intrigued by some of its contents. I’ve read couple of the essays so far and they’ve been really insightful. A lot of the focus has been on popular culture and culture in a broader sense. The first essay discussed interviewing and why people ever feel compelled to answer interview questions, eventually leading to a bang-on interpretation of the way society was heading with then budding social media (this book came out in 2009). I’m excited to see more of what this book has to offer.

Recently Finished

The Healing ThirstOver the weekend I read The Healing Thirst by Aleš Kot et al. I posted a review yesterday, if you want to check out my full thoughts. I loved the way this book took a very different approach to its story than the first volume, shining a light on some more ordinary citizens of Yharnam. It allowed some expansion on the lore and background of the city, but strongly maintained the sense of obscurity and dread. The characters are uncovering some of the mystery they’re pursuing, but so much of the motivations certain parties’ actions remain hidden from view. I find it creates an appreciably puzzling effect on me when I read it, quite effectively making me uneasy. I have found out a third volume is on the way and can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Reading Next

Having suddenly chosen to start reading Eating the Dinosaur, I’m afraid I am once again undecided on what to read next. Typical. The year is almost half over though, and I have much to finish on my scrappy list, so it must be something from there. I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction lately, so it should definitely be something more exciting in terms of narrative. I gaze at the list now, but cannot decide. Once I know you’ll be the first to hear about it.

Until next week, thank you for reading!