Wooz' Book Thread

[MASTER PAI MEI]

I'm currently reading The Descent - Jeff Long

Amazon.com
In a high Himalayan cave, among the death pits of Bosnia, in a newly excavated Java temple, Long's characters find out to their terror that humanity is not alone--that, as we have always really known, horned and vicious humanoids lurk in vast caverns beneath our feet. This audacious remaking of the old hollow-earth plot takes us, in no short order, to the new world regime that follows the genocidal harrowing of Hell by heavily armed, high-tech American forces. An ambitious tycoon sends an expedition of scientists, including a beautiful nun linguist and a hideously tattooed commando former prisoner of Hell, ever deeper into the unknown, among surviving, savage, horned tribes and the vast citadels of the civilizations that fell beneath the earth before ours arose. A conspiracy of scholars pursues the identity of the being known as Satan, coming up with unpalatable truths about the origins of human culture and the identity of the Turin Shroud, and are picked off one by bloody one. Long rehabilitates, madly, the novel of adventures among lost peoples--occasional clumsiness and promises of paranoid revelations on which he cannot entirely deliver fail to diminish the real achievement here; this feels like a story we have always known and dreaded. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
The premise of this millennial thriller is as audacious as it is problematic: "if there can be a historical Christ," one character hypothesizes, "why not a historic Satan?" Demystification of the ultimate Bad Guy is no easy feat, but Long (Angels of Light) brings it off, if just barely, in a dizzying synthesis of supernatural horror, lost-race fantasy and military SF. From the experiences of a varied cast of charactersAincluding Sister Ali, a Catholic nun serving in South Africa, and Elias Branch, a major with NATO forces in BosniaAa 21st-century think tank calling itself the Beowulf Circle distills a startling theory: The biblical Satan and his devils in Hell are mythic renderings of Homo hadalis, grotesquely malformed offshoots of Homo sapiens who for centuries have surfaced from underground hideouts to prey on human beings. With the help of Ike Crockett, an escapee from 10 years of "hadal" captivity, Beowulf infiltrates the Helios Corporation's mission to explore caverns honeycombing Earth's interior. Once beneath the Mariana Trench, Beowulf discovers that Helios intends to forcefully annex the world inside the earth's crust to further its business ambitions. Meanwhile, topside, Beowulf's theologians and metaphysicians surmise that the elusive "Satan" has evolved a human form to pass secretly among mankind. Like the subterranean trail blazed by its adventurers, the narrative twists, turns, dead-ends and backtracks. Inventive scenes of underground wonders alternate with talky stretches of scientific discourse and mawkish moments of romance between Ike and Ali. Though its devils prove disappointingly to be made in the image of humans, Long's novel brims with energy, ideas and excitement. 150,000 first printing; major ad/promo; film rights sold to Warner Bros. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

http://www.amazon.com/Descent-Jeff-Long/dp/051513175X

[CEITEDMOFO]

This Thread Should Be In The Dan Cooley Forum

[maestro wooz]

i havent updated this shit in a minute, i had to put down visions of cody. Its not that i didnt enjoy it, but it was so dense and long that i was going nowhere in the book. Ill get back to it sometime, but i wanted some thing else right now. Since then, ive read bukowski's pulp and post office. Both really good books. Bukowski's style is so different than most writing and especially something like kerouacs. Muchos gracias to lhx and frother for their recommendations. Not sure what im gonna read next, i have kerouac' dr. sax or robert anton wilsons illuminatus triology but im probaly gonna go look for some more bukowski, really feeling his shit right now. Out.

[maestro wooz]

i read most of sense and sensibility for a class. Cool book.

[maestro wooz]

okay, well since september ive read several books and since i cant go to sleep ill update

for school i read,

george eliot's "Felix Holt the Radical". I really liked this book, except for the ending. I really liked eliot's style. She was as longwinded as most victorian writers, except she was often packing worthwhile things in to her way too long thoughts. The characters were great, some of the most complex ive come across. The ending killed it for me though. It ended in such a story book classic victorian bullshit way, with everything proceeding being forgotten in the name of making the main characters live happily ever after.

I also read Thomas Hardy's Tess of D'urbervilles. This was okay, but almost the exact opposite of Felix Holt. Hardy was often excessively longwinded(i know, thats like saying a large elephant, but this was often a huge elephant) for no particular reason. His characters were very simple and you could predict their next actions. But, the characters and plot were good and it ended in a dramatic fashion that was hardly storybook. All in all, not bad, im glad i had to read it for school, else i probably never would have read it.

In my last post i mentioned that i was really getting into bukowski, and my slide into that shithead has continued. For those who are familiar, ive finished women, notes of a dirty old man, running with the hunted, about done septugenarian stew, and ive got "you get so alone at times something something..." up next in the queue. Hes good, what can i say.

I was also reading the tao te ching a lot for awhile. Kinda got away from that, but i need to start again.

Over the summer i was getting in to kerouac more and more but unfortunately that hit a wall and i havent been able to ride that enthusiasm. One problem is that bukowski has piqued my interest and i havent been trying to get into many things besides his when i had the chance to. Also, there styles are very different which makes a juggling them hard. My last excuse is, for school i often have to slosh through books that are, as i mentioned several times, slightly long winded and not particularly appealing to me, and so the motivation to force myself to read kerouac until i like it hasnt been there. Also, i think my last two purchases of his, dr. sax and visions of cody, are exactly what i shouldnt have bought in my situation. I picked up big sur for christmas and im gonna try to finish that over the winter break while i have some time before spring semester.


I think thats it, but i have the feeling that i forgot something.






Fuck, that was a longwinded post.

[maestro wooz]

finished big sur, great book, ive got english classes out the anus this semester so ill be doing a lot of reading but hardly any of it by choice, but regardless ill have many updates

[MASTER PAI MEI]

HAHHAA none by choice. That sucks

[maestro wooz]

yer well, its okay on one hand cause i wouldnt have (ever?) read these books if i wasnt required to, so it does expose me to works outside of my comfort zone. But, on the other hand it sucks cause i have to have read at least 2 novels i have slight interest in by the end of next week.

[MASTER PAI MEI]

reading a novel you have no interest in is like slow torture.