PKD Book Club

December 16, 2015 4:49 PM

Anyone interested in doing a readthrough of Philip K Dick books?

I've been meaning to do a reread of his "bigger" books (I have this collection as a starting point), and then go through the Exegesis that was published a few years ago. Is anyone interested in reading along with me on this?

posted by hobgadling (7 comments total)

I'd be interested in doing this. PKD has been on my "should read" list for a long time.
posted by toomanycurls at 5:34 PM on December 16, 2015

Sure, I'm in. Haven't read near enough of his work especially given the massive, largely unrecognized effect he's had on popular culture & the deeply rich personal narrative that inspired & informed his writing.
posted by scalefree at 8:58 PM on December 16, 2015

I think I've read all or almost all the books in that collection (I attempted to do an "all of PKD" reading journey when I was an undergrad and got through...I think 28 novels was the final count? before my university library system ran out of books), but the Exegesis has been sitting on my shelf for a few years making me feel guilty. I'd be happy to discuss, and maybe dip into rereads of some of my faves.

I also recommend giving a shot to a few of his lesser-known works; PKD is a fun writer to read in that a lot of fairly terrible books by him have been published too. It seems like after a while his publishing house just started publishing his manuscripts without editing them much and for every novel of his that manages to hang together okay there's one that starts out promising and then spins off the rails catastrophically. You really get to know him, his fears, what makes him tick and what preoccupies him. Some of my favorite "bad" PKD novels include Time out of Joint and We Can Build You.
posted by town of cats at 11:23 AM on December 17, 2015

Okay, I set the club up. Here's a preliminary list of books to read:

Solar Lottery
Eye in the Sky
Time Out of Joint
The Man in the High Castle
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Clans of the Alphane Moon
Dr. Bloodmoney
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Ubik
A Maze of Death
We Can Build You
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said
A Scanner Darkly
VALIS
The Divine Invasion
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Any thoughts on this, or how often we should have posts? Two weeks feels about right to me.
posted by hobgadling at 4:33 PM on December 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Is that the order?
posted by sammyo at 10:27 AM on December 21, 2015

sammyo: Yes, that's in order of publication, I figured that was the best way to do it.
posted by hobgadling at 5:02 PM on December 21, 2015

So apparently book posts are open only to a couple of people for right now, cortex said they'd open up to everyone else soon, so as soon as that happens, I'll start the club with Solar Lottery.
posted by hobgadling at 6:17 PM on January 4, 2016