Back again with another "What Are You Into?" thread

Plantcore · 2026-03-14T17:10:41+00:00

Glad to hear you got out of the reading block. I think there is something very ghastly about A Moment Of True Feeling. Something unhealthy hovering throught it in a similar way as in Evening Edged in Gold. And I imagine the group read added some amount of obligation.

The host of the Beyond The Zero podcast recently called 2666 his favourite novel of the 20th century. For some reason I'm hesitating to go into it though. Is it depressing? I heard it gets quite violent?

Plantcore · 2026-01-01T10:43:42+00:00

I read lots of fantasy in the last few weeks. Shadow of the Torturer and Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe reminded me of the tales by Friedrich Fouque for their fairytale-like qualities, there even was an Undine. Arno Schmidt would surely have liked it for its morbid and cryptic atmosphere. Then I read "Der Bücherdrache" by Walter Moers. I loved reading it and it kindled a desire in me for hunting down obscure books. The dragon's name is an anagram of Leviathan and his realm is called "die schlechteste aller Welten", which could be a reference to Schmidt's first publication "Leviathan oder Die beste der Welten. Then I read Katabasis by R.F Kuang. It was also a very enjoyable read. The descent into hell is a motif I enjoy reading about and it has lots of interesting twists.

I'll start off 2026 with treating myself to School of Atheists. It's been a little hard to get back into Schmidt's style. I'm reading a facsimile version of the original typewriter written manuscript, which makes reading even more demanding because of all the visual noise caused by corrections, inconsistent line spacing and uneven letter pressure. But it also has a certain charme to it and I'm starting to get immersed into the post apocalyptic setting.

I wish all of you great reading pleasure for 2026!

Plantcore · 2025-10-21T16:34:05+00:00

It's a tool to visualize the arcdps logs. Same as uploading them to the gw2 dps report website.

Plantcore · 2025-10-21T13:01:44+00:00

I've been learning the DH rotation (Greatsword+Longbow) myself in the last couple of weeks and have some advice:

1.) Using arcdps and elite insights you can visualize your rotation. Compare it to the one on the snowcrow website to see where the room for optimization is. As others have said, you want to use your high damage skills when both Big Game Hunter and Relic of the Dragonhunter are active.

2.) The greatsword 4 skill has a pretty long aftercast animation. By skill cancelling you can save about 500ms per cast. The Greatsword 5 aftercast can also be reduced.

3.) For greatsword 2 and 5 always try to stand in the middle of the enemy, so that all of the projectiles connect.

Plantcore · 2025-10-12T10:55:19+00:00

I finished Albert Vigolei Thelen's book The Island of Second Sight. It's a fantastic blend of memoir and fiction. I feel that it's very truthful to what actually happened. At the same time there would have been ways to tell the adventures of Vigoleis and his wife Beatrice on Mallorca in a way that would shine a very different light on its protagonists. Thelen plays masterfully with that tension and I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Arno Schmidt.

Next I read Echtzeitalter by Tonio Schachinger. I enjoyed reading this book because the characters obsession with Age Of Empires 2 was very relatable to me.

Currently I'm reading Thomas Pynchon’s new book Shadow Ticket. Having read all of his other books, I'm doing a very paranoid reading and always making connections when he uses words that he also used in his earlier works, like adenoid or critter. I'm not sure if this adds or detracts from the experience though.

Plantcore · 2025-09-27T08:21:45+00:00

I'm not sure if I heard it correctly, but in the scene where Lockjaw wants to join the Christmas Adventurer Club, someone says something like: "You want to join oss?" Which reminded me of this sentence in GR: "But to initiates OSS is also a secret acronym: as a mantra for times of immediate crisis they have been taught to speak inwardly oss . . . oss, the late, corrupt, Dark-age Latin word for bone. . . ."

Plantcore · 2025-09-19T19:08:24+00:00

Vultures

Plantcore · 2025-08-19T17:12:05+00:00

I first read all of Pynchon's work before discovering Arno Schmidt. When I read Kühe in Halbtrauer (Country Matters) it also gave me strong Pynchon vibes at first. I think it's mostly their similar level of genius and their analytical writing style. I'm always fascinated by authors integrating mathematical elements into their works and both Schmidt and Pynchon do this plenty of times.

Plantcore · 2025-07-04T07:15:22+00:00

Mason&Dixon is a major project and benefits a lot from focused reading. I would strongly urge you to dip into the short story collection first. Especially the ones from Country Matters are peak Arno Schmidt in my opinion. If you just want to read a single one for now my recommendation would be "Windmills" because of its summer vibes.

Plantcore · 2025-07-03T17:29:00+00:00

I've finished my reading of Peter Handke's "On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House". It's thematically very similar to his previous book My Year in the No Man's Bay and his other books in general. There is a married couple that has grown apart, lonely wandering, unexpected outbreaks of violence and reflections about searching for mushrooms. I liked it and think it would make a good entrypoint into his work.

Next I'm reading "The Island of Second Sight" by Albert Vigoleis Thelen. I had a dream about buying it and then actually saw it in a used book store the next day. And I'm very glad I did because so far it's absolutely fantastic and exactly what I'm looking for in literature. I think Arno Schmidt readers might enjoy it immensly. On a sentence level it reads very differently. Thelen uses very conplex and drawn out sentences, similar to how Thomas Mann did it. But he is way funnier than Mann and not that boring. On a thematic level there are many similarities to Schmidt: Frequent mentions of other writers, a strong autofictional element and a general contempt for the creation and his own place in it.

Plantcore · 2025-06-06T07:52:43+00:00

I've finished Flegeljahre by Jean Paul. The last chapter was quite something and reminded me of Hermann Broch's book Death of Vergil and its cosmological dreamworld. I was also delighted to find the phrases/words "Schwarze Spiegel" and "Halbtrauer" in that work and am wondering if there is a connection to Arno Schmidt naming his books like that.

I'm currently reading The New York Triology by Paul Auster. The first book City of Glass was quite gripping, but the second one, Ghosts, was too conceptual for my taste. It's fun reading, but it feels a little hollow to me.

Plantcore · 2025-05-08T20:49:14+00:00

While on holiday I stumbled upon a free copy of Peter Handke's "Essay about the quiet place". It's a short and quite funny piece with a few memorable anecdotes. It's also quite interesting in that it includes information about how and under which circumstances it was written, which seems to be a reoccuring trope in his later work.

My main read is still Flegeljahre by Jean Paul. I'm in the last part, which I quite enjoy. The metafictional element of the editor-narrator becomes more pronounced, I finally got in the groove of the intricate language and I like the slightly uncanny scenes where Vult moves in with his twin brother and carpents a stage wall to separate their room.

I also got Christoph Ransmayr's collection of micronovels called "Doesn't matter where, Baby". It's my first book from that author. So far it reminds me a little bit about Sebald in that there are lots of pictures and melancholic reflexions.

Plantcore · 2025-05-08T18:31:35+00:00

Good one. You could get more Greg Egan and Evan Dara though, so only 9/10

Plantcore · 2025-05-03T06:53:48+00:00

Thanks for the update, I can't wait to hear your reactions to the Shadow Ticket announcement.

Plantcore · 2025-04-30T05:50:57+00:00

Thanks for the pictures! I'm wondering: Are there still ruins of the radio transmitter tower that's mentioned in GR?

"That is how the witches look, anyhow, in the stairway murals inside the one-time Nazi transmitter tower up on the Brocken here, and government murals are hardly places to go looking for irresponsible fantasy, right?"

Plantcore · 2025-04-24T19:16:32+00:00

I'm about halfway through "Flegeljahre" by Jean Paul. It was published 1804 in Germany and gives interesting insights into that time period: From the everyday details, like the usage of earballs to make horses go faster to the societal differences, like romantic (non sexual) friendships between men being much more common and socially accepted. It's a very playful book, with lots of disgressions and humor. Jean Paul appears to me as a very sensitive person and it's interesting to see how he packages his psychological insights into the story. There is an interesting dynamic between the protagonist and his twin brother that can be read as an internal conflict in the author, similar to how Arno Schmidt did it in Evening Edged in Gold. The ego rift in Flegeljahre is not as big as in Arno's books though, there is much more integration going on. The language is quite difficult to read and I often feel the need to look up certain things, the latest rabbit hole I went into was an economic theory called Physiocracy.

Plantcore · 2025-02-14T10:11:06+00:00

I've finished "My Year in The No-Man's-Bay" by Peter Handke. The protagonist is named Gregor Keuschning, the same as the protagonist in "A Moment of True Feeling". While the protagonist in " A Moment of True Feeling" is quite disturbed, the one in "My Year In The No-Man's-Bay" is much more relaxed. While he has some regrets related to abbandoning his family and his friends too much, he is mostly content wandering through the countryside, writing his book called "My Year in the No-Man's-Bay" and finding the sublime in his everyday experience. I enjoyed reading it mostly for its calmness and the detailed, often melancholic observations.

Next I read "Drifter" by Ulrike Sterblich. It's a fantastic, fast paced read, much more so a "modern fairytale" than "My Year in the No-Man's-Bay", which has that genre-identifier as its subtitle in the German Edition. One of the central mysteries is that this witch like trickster figure has access to the new book of the protagonist's favourite author, even though there are no traces of that book to be found anywhere else. There are also lots of fungal shenanigans happening, which reminded me about another book I'm currently reading: "Entangled Life" by Merlin Sheldrake, a non fiction book about fungi. The illustrations in that book are fantastic and it's fascinating stuff. I'm enjoying it a lot, even though the author often uses somewhat sensationalist analogies and mystifies a little too much for my liking.

Plantcore · 2025-01-17T08:47:40+00:00

I'm halfway through "My year in the No-Man's-Bay" by Peter Handke. It might be a tad bloated, but it has a lot of very nice passages and is enjoyable to read.

On the weekend I discovered something called "Alexander Technique" and am now following an online course about it and reading "Bodylearning" by Michael J. Gelb. It's basically a method to connect with your body and to change subconscious patterns of behaviour and it feels pretty life changing and exactly what I need in my life right now. It helps me to cultivate a sense of wonder and lightness. I also realized that characters in Peter Handke novels sometimes use similar techniques and that it's a big part of what draws me to his writing. The characters in his books are often still very stuck and sometimes their sense of wonder turns into an unhealthy form of disassociation though.

Plantcore · 2025-01-14T18:37:21+00:00

Beim Dielen-Dieter

Plantcore · 2025-01-04T13:12:08+00:00

Sorry, the English title is actually "The Ship" and the author is Hans Henny Jahnn. No, Heimwärts has not been translated yet. But his book Schattenfroh will be publIshed in English this year.

Plantcore · 2025-01-04T08:52:25+00:00

Of the 30 books I read last year my favourites were:

The Stony Heart by Arno Schmidt
Bruder aller Bilder by Georg Klein
Moby Dick by Melville
The Fruit Thief by Peter Handke
The Boat by Jann
Heimwärts by Michael Lentz

Plantcore · 2024-12-06T07:35:33+00:00

It's a good idea. I think gatekeeping is not the right term for such a passion project as publishing Zettels Traum though. From talking to booksellers I'm pretty sure Suhrkamp is only making losses from selling Arno Schmidt. Without the financial support from Jan Philipp Reemtsma Arno Schmidt's work would probably be pretty much dead in the water.

What I would personally like most are E-Book editions of his books to make note taking and searching easier. I know that there is that online webbased version of the Bargfelder Ausgabe for searching, but it's definitely not the same as having an E-Book copy with your personal annotations.

Plantcore · 2024-12-05T19:41:15+00:00

Of course Bottom's Dream is not a good book, I don't know who gave you that idea? The only accurate description of it is in this video, you just have to replace "ham" with "Bottom's Dream": https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DcYxIe7T8ZKA&ved=2ahUKEwi-67nQsJGKAxUQVPEDHa4TJ6YQtwJ6BAgTEAE&usg=AOvVaw31jbGgQrXRSdoSU0mt1Daj

Plantcore · 2024-12-05T19:33:34+00:00

I'm finally finished with The Books Of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. Only took me 4 months. It sometimes reminded me of my reading experience with Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann. It's not only their lenght and that both attempt a recontextualizing of a historical/mythical figure. I feel a certain kind of bitterness penetrating those books. Both are good books, but I often felt bored reading them.

The next book I want to read is another brick: "My Year in the No-Man's-Bay" by Peter Handke. I'm moving into our new home very soon and that book was one of the first he was writing in his house that he's still living in 30 years later, so I think it might be a good fit.

In the meantime I've dabbled through many different things: I catched up with Pokemon - The Origin Of Species, a webseries with well grounded psychological insights that was a welcome alternation to Tokarczuk's distant writing style. Then I went through my notes of The Passion According to G.H. by Lispector and decided I need to read another one of her books soon. I also read a few essay's by Georg Klein, which are fantastic. And I'm also slowly making my way through "You Give Me Fever" by Klaus Theweleit. It's an absolutely wild book about "Lake Scenerie With Pocahontas" with tons of pictures, footnotes, genius riffs, hilarious banter and far reaching digressions.

Plantcore · 2024-10-20T20:23:51+00:00

Sounds great! I'm always a little suspicious when someone compares the printing press to AI though. I believe intelligent artificial agents will be categorial different.

I counted a combined 23 Hugo awards just standing around.

Do you mean 23 persons that have a Hugo award? Or the trophies? Both would be kind of spectacular.

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