What are you reading this week? [6/18/23]
What are you reading this week? [6/18/23]
What book is currently on your nightstand? How do you like it? Would you recommend it to others?
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Just started Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer after seeing some good reviews about his Book of the New Sun series, going in blind though and it's pretty slow so far. Let me know if you liked it and think I should keep going
I definitely recommend reading the whole series. Agreed that some passages are slow or just obscure due to the style, but I found it quite enriching. I think this is one of these where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, though.
I loved it, but it is definitely very weird and kinda slow sometimes. I'd say you should keep going!
I like to fancy myself an appreciator of good writing, but man, Gene Wolfe just didn't quite do it for me. Felt pretty ponderous and self-important, like a Ralph Bakshi animated film meets Frank Herbert meets J.D. Salinger meets the Old Testament, and it was all just too much. I think Wolfe had ambition and intention and was a stylist in a genre that doesn't often reward stylists, but it was all just just... off somehow, and left me feeling yucky. I finished The Shadow of the Torturer and had no desire to deal with Severian or his world ever again.
It's definitely weird, but I did enjoy reading it. I feel like it would make more sense if I read it again, but at the same time, I'm not sure I really enjoyed it enough to read it all again.