I have only read his spider world novels, took me years to track down the last 3 in the series. Always wanted find out if his other works are just as good

What an honor to see my book waved about on the Big Screen! And surrounded by NYRBs and Calamaris! A special pleasure-thank you, sir. :D

Love the Shirt !!!

I have preference for the old books, too many books too little time, so get those new books off my lawn por favor… no room in the 🛁…

Whiskey Tit 😂😂 your face was priceless when you read that out. 😅

Love me some NYRBs. They just had one of their 40% off sales and I overindulged as usual. Thank you for your service 😇😛🤪.

I love the cover art on this edition, by a painter named Grimshaw (can that be right?) The Turn of the Screw and The Beckoning Fair One are two of my favorite long ghost stories.

I have read Zama, the first in Di Benedeto's trilogy. It's a good book, especially if you want the narrative of a man mentally falling apart. The second volume is on my shelf, patiently waiting for me to take it down. Buzzati is a writer I have heard good things about, but have not read yet. And the next four years or so maybe a good time to get a lot of reading in.

One of the advantages of being in that part of the bathtub where the soap bar by the name of Blood Meridian is cradled lovingly, in fact built in, is the KZbin algorithym has picked up on my interest in Blood Meridian. I get all sorts of suggestions for videos about Cormac and Blood Meridian, and it is all so damned great. There's this one woman, very cute, especially when she tipples in white wine as she unwinds into her ecstatic vision of Blood Meridian. I wish I could get back to her. She's a professor of English, bathtub gin, or beer. I've got a clip where James Franco is envisioning the making of Blood Meridian. I've also got a clip where one of the most distinguished students of literature in America, Harold Bloom, of Yale, tells how he taught Blood Meridian many times, and loved it. I hope someone out there can tell why Bloom, of whom, many a moon, danced, thought of Blood Meridian as didactic. Tell me, please.

Malaparte wrote "Kaputt" : a semi autobiographical book about his time embedded in the German army in WWII. It's an excellent, albeit disturbing, read. There's one scene where he describes frightened horses running into freezing water in a Nordic country that is horrific. He also describes life on the Eastern Front in great detail. Worth reading.

You're right. Trevor Kennedy is in Belfast. I must check it out. I just found out that he does a podcast where he reviews movies so I am going to check that out as well.

Intergalactic ... pixelated water.

Who has time to be an iconoclast when there are so many good books to be read?!? I have been using this as my alibi for the last eight or so years.. Heh.

Hey Scott shaman of all pointless reading! With your affinity for ghost stories, why not give give Peace a chance? I know Gene Wolfe's novels havent quite done it for you as opposed to his short stories. Glad Turn of The Screw is one of James' stories that you like.

Turn of the Screw is one of my favorite James stories and ghost story in general. Henry James the playwright was, politely, a failure.

I love your appreciation of James' 'ambience', you really helped me to think more about this, thank you for giving me some focus.

I'm really excited to have discovered your channel, we share many obsessions, so I'm really keen to follow your bookish adventures. I'm about to upload a video of my own on this novel (hence my curiosity to watch your take). I am also new to horror & Gothic, but am enjoying it. I've spent the last few weeks with Shirley Jackson - very enjoyable. Thanks for a very engaging video.

One of my favorite books, ever. Impossible to put it down once you start reading.

We think of a love story, and we don't think of Blood Meridian. We think of a western, and, perhaps regrettably, we think of Blood Meridian. We can say definitively there's little love in Blood Meridian. This is perhaps a betrayal of love, heterosexual love that is. There's lots of blood in that kind of love. Once a month. Are there even women in Blood Meridian? If so, they are in the minor roles. If that. Whose custom was it to have a blood meridian? The apache? The Glanton gang? The judge? The kid? Or the loose aperature and appendage of the appendix? Okay, then. That time of the month, when there is blood, may be considered western. And in the west, travelling counterclockwise, into the blood, is a meridian. Shucks. It all comes down to the outhouse at the end of the story. The judge is in there with the kid.

Hi Scott, For some real fun, check out Michael Winner's movie prequel to The Turn of the Screw, The Nightcomers (1971) in which we see the goings on with Quint, Miss Jessel, and the children. Who plays Quint? Marlon Brando!

Love your t-shirt!! <3

Enjoying more of the Henry James content! I feel Robert Aickman must've liked this book, it seems like the forerunner to his ambiguous style. Have you read any Walter De La Mare, Scott?

I loved this one.

I thought she sounded familiar but I confused her with Eudora Welty (who also writes about rural poverty, but in Mississippi).

Recently the YT algorithm has been sending me all kinds of stuff about how nasty and fked up John Steinbeck was. Fortunately, I don't retain anything. I'll be looking for Babb at Pegasus and Moe's.

Finished today a reread of Day of the Locust, less than a century old, and prescient of our current spiral out to the daily excitement and chaos of our newly elected major domo -whose putting together a major vaudevillian and provocative production for 21st Century Fox of gargantuan proportions for an expectant populace 🎉 a good book for the 🛁…

I learned nothing. Well done. Enjoyed it.

KZbin is an online sharing platform. The Pacific Ocean is an offshore sharing platform. The Galapagos Islands are an offshore isolating or insular, solipsistic, selfish, "evolving it", platform. These islands, an archipelago, are volcanic in origin. "Platform" suggests offshore oil drilling, for example, near Santa Barbara, in the latter of the 1960's. Blood Meridian suggests there is.... Something archetypal about the cowboy. Something volcanic about violence. Something violent about the volcanic. KZbin is an online sharing platform.

If you know anything about Jung and evolutionary psychology, you will realize that The Mind Parasites is closer to truth than fiction. I highly recommend you read Paul Levy’s Dispelling Wetiko as well as Robert Falconer’s The Others Within Us. Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind and Spiritual Possessions to name but a few who are aware of them. I assure you that as someone who has been in this field for over 20 years and who has done e extensive work on myself as well as others…mind parasites are quite real. Just take a look at what is happening in the USA right now and the reaction to the election on both sides. It’s time we all wake up and deal with the darkness within to cure the darkness out there. The Truth is often stranger than fiction.

“NY 2140” by Kim Stanley Gardner about my 23rd St NYC neighborhood, the obsessive style reminded me of Pynchon. Next chapter came the word **Pynchonesk**or similar wordage. Scratched muy hay’ed, is KSG really TRP? Nah, unpossible. 21st Century mind control via Elon satellite AI in the sky DEW.

New Grub Street and Gissing himself just got a mention in my Victorian Lit textbook and that was it. On your recommendation, I'll get it out of the library.

❤Richard Brautigan

I'm currently reading Gravity's Rainbow. Wish me luck.

LOVE the tee-shirt

Love the old ones. I’ve got some amazing stuff. I’m holding on to stuff and I’m old

OHHHH, master bather; Like Trumbo, Roman Catholics and Baptists.

Have you talked about your experience living in London/UK before? Would be interested to hear more, not least since I'm from England. I read Paul Theroux's The Kingdom by the Sea, which I really loved and felt was spot on (not to mention Iron Rooster for China). Maybe a US perspective is one of the best for understanding the place? Never heard of Gissing but I love Orwell's novels. It's now on the list!

Thanks for covering this book, I really enjoyed it when I read it. My favorite character was the anemic guy who spent years working on the hyperrealist novel about a grocer and his wife, describing every last detail of their lives. He was 100+ years ahead of his time, the late Victorian Knausgaard.

Lovely video, Scott. I've found the last eight years very difficult from both a personal and social/political/cultural viewpoint. Your videos have helped me enormously as I have slowly turned away from the identity politics that has turned so much of our modern culture into little more than propaganda - and, what's worse, bad art. I don't watch the news anymore and I know this might sound crazy but . . . I feel strangely hopeful after Tuesday. Don't get me wrong, I was petrified after Trump was elected in 2016 and now see my own media-induced fears reflected in the reactions of many of those around me this week. But I think we're going to be okay. I think the American people got it right and that the Deep State lost and that makes me happy. God bless America. Anyway, back to Vineland. Again.

Thanks Scott! What the world needs now is a long soak in the 🛁… more master bathing!

This is the second book I read on my Kindle, a gift from my daughter. Loved it (the novel, that is.) The first was also by Gissing, The Nether World, also great. A good friend first mentioned him to me and I later asked what was his favorite book by Gissing. He said he'd never read any of them, just thought I'd appreciate knowing of him.

Love Gissing. His work can be summarised in three words: 'Not...enough...money.' Dorothy Parker wrote a verse about not having read him before.

Stay safe, brother.

You’re good people Scott. Pleasure to see a video like this one. Cheers!

Well it’s all decided now, and decidedly so, and now we have a beautiful future ahead of us. I’ll be moving back to the states asap. A comment has also inspired me to finally get to Oakley Hall’s Warlock, in some LOA edition I have. Ill let “y’all” know how it goes

你叫泡澡教授，特朗普可以叫泡女教授，那个混蛋！😂

Would have been nice if some of the “leaders” in the Democratic Party had listened to Bernie a little more eh, Scott? Thanks for the video after that nightmare.

On Monday I began reading an account of Napoleon's invasion of Russia and the disastrous retreat. And Napoleon started with such confidence, thinking everything would work out to his benefit because he simply declared it would. This reminds me of somebody, I can't think who?

If you had made the decision to film your 5K special from within the bathtub promoting the Democrats I’m sure you would have nudged Kamala to the forefront, always remember that your subscriber base consists mostly of people in senior positions of government as well as special interest donors. Considering that, it’s a beautiful thing that you decided not to intervene, I think it was very gracious of you.

I voted for Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party. I'm shocked he wasn't elected. I now turn my attention to Warlock by Jim Harrison and the Rattle bag-a poetry anthology that looks uplifting.