A Forum for Fantastical and Irreal Literature – (part 3)

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My idea is to have a forum up and running by the end of the year, so that over the Christmas holidays there should be something to read. Reading is a slow process, and commenting on a book can appear more daunting than commenting on a movie, therefore I think it is worthwhile to keep a proportion in your head that 30 pages of a novel is equivalent to two hours of a movie. If you read even 30 pages of a novel you have just a right to comment on that work as any movie critic hack, and should do so. That's my view. And if you write an engaging review of a two hundred page novel that is seven times more significant than any movie review ever writen. That is my view.

Here is a list of what I want to read before the end of the year, this is not the same as what I expect to read:

Homer – The Iliad; Lattimore

Keith Thomas – Religion and the Decline of Magic

Anthony Burgess – A Clockwork Orange

Harold Lamb – Swords From the West

Wordsworth – The Prelude

Dante – Sinclair; The Inferno

Montaigne – some more of his Essays

Jack Vance – Cugel's Saga

William Morris et al. – Gettir the Strong

A. Geike – Geology

ER Eddison – Mistress of Mistresses

Dieter Arnold – The Monuments of Egypt

Stone & am Ende – Beyond the Deep
Beckett – The Trilogy

... and for real pleasure close to the birth date of the baby Jesus:

Peake – Gormenghast – Folio Society Ediion
Doughty – Travels in Arabia Deserta – Limited Editions Club Edition

Cervantes – Don Quixote – Limited Editions Club Edition

So, I recommend that anyone who stumbles on this blog read again your favourite author or authors so you can make a case for them towards the end of the year. The emphasis of this forum will be suggestion, recommendation, persuasion, insight. Potency and intensity are the watchwords. Can extreme fiction match drug induction?

If you think you have something to say then brush up on any fantasy author you admire so you can contribute a paragraph in December and get the ball rolling on a topic that interests you. That is the point of a forum as far as I can see. Unless you are a D&D gamer, if you are a D&D gamer I don't care much what you think about the fantasy literature.

Feel free to declare what you expect to read by the end of the year.

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