The Book Discussion Thread

[lovejuice]

Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit...
i'll start this soon. maybe we should compare note from time to time.

[Melville]

i'll start this soon. maybe we should compare note from time to time.
Sure. I've previously read the first half, which, unfortunately, seems to contain most of the stuff that I'm interested in.

[Spaceman Spiff]

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one of the best things I've read. Astounding. Explosive. Prose of mad rhythms. Words like fire. Lacerating psychology. Sublime frenzy. Totalitarianism as insane logic, kinematics, ritual. Love as insane liberation—from both the Self and the They. Love as imagination, imagination as soul, as living, trembling receptivity.

:pritch:

[D_Davis]

Almost done with Gang Leader for a Day; it's incredibly interesting. I like that it is written in a very simple, and straightforward manner. In college I found that all too often sociology texts were written in such a way that the authors seemed to be passing judgment on their subjects; while this may not have happened in a direct manner, it came across in the way style, as if they were showing off their big brains striving to define the words "pedantic" and "didactic." Sociology texts were the only books I had to read with a dictionary in the other hand, and the language served no purpose other than to build up an ivory tower of academia. Venkatesh doesn't write like this. I might even argue that he is not a very good writer in terms of prose. However, his simple and direct voice speaks volumes about his connection to the subject.

It's also a very sad and troubling book, because it further illustrates just how wrong the system is. We can't fight drugs or poverty with any more success than we can fight terrorism. The drug trade, more precisely the economy of crime, is not something we can wage war on and win; we can throw, and do, throw away billions of dollars a year on that "war" and nothing ever changes. We can't fight a concept, or a way of life. If change is to come at all, it has to come from within because there is absolutely no trust in the other. I wake up, get ready, go to work, come home, hang out with my wife, play with my dogs, make music, watch some TV, play some games, and hang out with my friends. This is my normal life. Someone in the projects wakes up, goes to his corner, sells drugs, makes little money, avoids the cops and rivals, tries to stay alive, and if he's lucky he has a place to call home where he can return to and get some rest. That's his normal life. Our two worlds are totally different. I can't expect him to change anymore than he can expect me to.

Reading this along with watching The Wire has been a fantastic experience. One that I'll always remember.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I thought Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a solid read. Foer is a bit too cute at times, and Oskar is inconsistent as all get out, particularly with what he comprehends and what he doesn't, but it has some fairly interesting things to say about the ability of humans to forgive and to deal with loss. He was able to hit an emotional chord quite often, even if at times he fell into melodrama a bit too quickly. Still, it was easily the best novel we read in that class, and it's the best novel I've read so far this year.

Now on to The Master and Margarita, which is for pleasure rather than for school! Hooray! Read the first 50 pages on the train and really enjoyed them.

[D_Davis]

Now on to The Master and Margarita, which is for pleasure rather than for school! Hooray! Read the first 50 pages on the train and really enjoyed them.

I'm going to read this later this year.

[Ezee E]

I thought Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a solid read. Foer is a bit too cute at times, and Oskar is inconsistent as all get out, particularly with what he comprehends and what he doesn't, but it has some fairly interesting things to say about the ability of humans to forgive and to deal with loss. He was able to hit an emotional chord quite often, even if at times he fell into melodrama a bit too quickly. Still, it was easily the best novel we read in that class, and it's the best novel I've read so far this year.


Really afraid of how that movie will turn out because of its dramatic scenes. Seems like it'll come off as too hokey on film.

[baby doll]

Ah, if only I could permanently dwell in the atmosphere of Tarkovsky's compositions..."I'm English. We like to be cold and wet."

(Incidentally, that line isn't in the book.)

[dreamdead]

I thought Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a solid read. Foer is a bit too cute at times, and Oskar is inconsistent as all get out, particularly with what he comprehends and what he doesn't, but it has some fairly interesting things to say about the ability of humans to forgive and to deal with loss. He was able to hit an emotional chord quite often, even if at times he fell into melodrama a bit too quickly. Still, it was easily the best novel we read in that class, and it's the best novel I've read so far this year.


Good to hear. I was looking forward to your thoughts. Yeah, these are basically my thoughts about the book as well. Oskar simply doesn't work as a precocious eight-year-old; his experiences and vernacular don't remain consistent with the intellectual structure of that age group. I would have loved his character had Foer decided to up his age to 13 or so, as I could then buy his complexities and neuroses as following from the psychology of a young adult. That said, like you I nonetheless become enraptured by whole strings of Foer's prose, and the last three pages of prose, coupled with the reverse images, are powerfully evocative. They communicate with the grace that Foer elsewhere overdoes, even if he's building to a useful point. I don't think it's perfect by any stretch, but I'll be teaching it in my Introduction to Fiction class this fall for the reasons at the end of your thoughts...

How have the rest of the class responded to the book, if I may ask?

[dreamdead]

Finished up Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, a 1930s cynical riff on the kind of romanticized doomed relationships that are Hemingway and Fitzgerald's fair (specifically The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby). Time and again we see the wasteland of Hollywood as a cesspool, consuming itself, rooted only to ideals of success and materiality, forgoing any notion artistic or aesthetic belief to the city or its citizens. West also underscores how superficial the girl, Faye, is, urging us to remember that Fitzgerald's female lead in TGG was Daisy Faye before she married. The two are thus connected-and the materiality of both are lampooned. Here she gets by only due to her body, which so automatically constructs her sexually that she is forgiven her stupidity by Tod, our frequent narrator. Yet his conscious lapsing into a Chandleresque hard-boiled prose cannot redeem him from the desire to do her harm, even fantasizing about raping her, as though that will somehow awaken her to a true desire and humanity. It's a cynical book, but West balances it with moments of grace that keep him from coming as superior to the characters. Though the child actor Adore gets it pretty bad. Nonetheless, good stuff for those who like satires with more than a touch of tragedy.

[ledfloyd]

wow, so people weren't kidding about the greatness of catch 22. i've plowed through 300 pages. so good.

[Kurosawa Fan]

How have the rest of the class responded to the book, if I may ask?

Most of them seemed to take to it, but I wasn't at class on Thursday, as I was traveling to Chicago, so I'm not sure how everyone felt about the conclusion. I can see some being upset about the revelation of the key, but I thought it fit the novel perfectly.

It was right in step with what the upstairs Mr. Black said about his notecards of important people, and how each is important for terrible reasons. Seemed to be a minor thesis of the novel that things (and people) are only as significant as we allow them to be.

[lovejuice]

Finished up Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust...
did you avoid using the word, "post-modern", in your short review purposefully? I myself can't think of the book any other way. Your interpretation, however, seems to be richer than what the book is generally taken. I especially like the connection to The Sun Also Rises and The Great Gatsby.

[baby doll]

I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude last night. Yowsa!

[Qrazy]

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is one of the best things I've read. Astounding. Explosive. Prose of mad rhythms. Words like fire. Lacerating psychology. Sublime frenzy. Totalitarianism as insane logic, kinematics, ritual. Love as insane liberation—from both the Self and the They. Love as imagination, imagination as soul, as living, trembling receptivity.

The only flaw is that it contains a discussion of the square root of negative one that is completely wrong in multiple ways. Strange, since Zamyatin was an engineer. Maybe the translator, Natasha Randall, took liberties, though the prose is too dazzling to allow me to really criticize either of them for this one problem.

Was that my recommendation?

[Melville]

Was that my recommendation?
SpaceOddity's. You're a fan?

[Spaceman Spiff]

I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude last night. Yowsa!

Pretty much.

I picked up Crying of Lot 49, and two Robbe-Grillet stories (Dans la labyrinthe and La jalousie). Good job spaceman spiff?

[Mara]

wow, so people weren't kidding about the greatness of catch 22. i've plowed through 300 pages. so good.

I found it very readable and engaging, and far funnier than I expected. That said, it didn't really stick with me much... I felt more profoundly impacted by say, Slaughterhouse Five.

[Grouchy]

Sorry, Davis, but that last post of yours is one of the most naive things I've ever read. Had to say it.

Currently re-reading my favorite novel The Long Goodbye, for the first time in English. Bloody awesome.

[D_Davis]

Sorry, Davis, but that last post of yours is one of the most naive things I've ever read. Had to say it.



I'm going to read this later this year.

But I am, really. Borrowing it from a co-worker.

[D_Davis]

Started this today at lunch:

http://image.ebook30.com/data_images/2010/01/04/1262619245-515y95fahhl.jpg

[ledfloyd]

I found it very readable and engaging, and far funnier than I expected. That said, it didn't really stick with me much... I felt more profoundly impacted by say, Slaughterhouse Five.
hmm... while i admire slaughterhouse five i've always found it to be one of vonnegut's weaker books. but then i've always considered breakfast of champions my favorite, so what do i know?

i guess time will tell how catch 22 effects me but yossarian is easily one of my favorite characters i can recall.

the sole complaint i have with the book is the female characters seem only to exist for sexual gratification, but i suppose that's appropriate to its milieu.

[Kurosawa Fan]

But I am, really. Borrowing it from a co-worker.
:lol:

[Duncan]

About halfway through Pynchon's Against the Day. My impression so far is that this book is too long. I can't believe I still have like 550 pages left.

[D_Davis]

:lol:

;)

[Duncan]

I'm looking for something to read while on vacation. Where should I start with Thomas Pynchon?

Is it best to go chronologically and read V.? Of course, there's always a benefit to taking that route, but would it be all that horrible if I started with something like The Crying of Lot 49 instead?

The reason I am leaning towards the latter is because I will only have a week and I would like to finish whatever I am reading within that time frame (more or less).

It's fine to start with TCoL49.

[Benny Profane]

About halfway through Pynchon's Against the Day. My impression so far is that this book is too long. I can't believe I still have like 550 pages left.


I know what you mean. But I think it works far more than it doesn't.

[Grouchy]

;)
Heh, I didn't answer at first because I frankly didn't get it.

But no, the one before that.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I went to "An Evening with David Sedaris" last night and was able to meet him after the show. He couldn't have been nicer. Funny, engaging, everything you hope for in an encounter with someone famous. Had him sign one of his books for me, in which he drew a two-headed bird and wrote "You a crazy motha focka" above his signature (a line from his show last night).

The show was great. He did all new material, most from a book coming out in October which is about animals. Sounds, odd, I know, but it's trademark Sedaris material, however because the stories are fictional they felt fresh and had more bite. He said that he hesitates to call the stories fables because, well, fables have morals. It's going to be illustrated too. Outside of those stories, he read a few essays he's been working on as well as some excerpts from his diary, which are basically just quick observations about people. It was a fantastic evening.

[Mara]

That sounds amazing.

[Melville]

About halfway through Pynchon's Against the Day. My impression so far is that this book is too long. I can't believe I still have like 550 pages left.
This is my impression of Infinite Jest. I keep hoping it'll get shorter.

[Benny Profane]

The Naked and the Dead by Mailer is 721 pages long. I'm on page 598. I keep hoping it will get longer.

Great book so far.

[Milky Joe]

This is my impression of Infinite Jest. I keep hoping it'll get shorter.

Aw, don't have that attitude. It's supposed to be fun. How far are you? The first 200 pages are incredibly fragmented (it's a weeding out, kind of like the first 25 pages of Finnegans Wake) but after that it settles down a bit.

[Dead & Messed Up]

The House of the Seven Gables is a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I am almost done with this book. One more disc on the audio version. This book is a good book, mostly, although it's never quite captured me emotionally with the characters. This may not be its goal. The most sympathetic moments involve a chicken named Chanticleer. The tenants of the house feel distant and cold, as though they are figures examined under a microscope. This may be its goal. Hawthorne enjoys words like "piquancy" and "torpid." I have been told this is one of Hawthorne's most humorous books, which leads me to believe that Hawthorne was not a hit at parties.

[lovejuice]

I have been told this is one of Hawthorne's most humorous books, which leads me to believe that Hawthorne was not a hit at parties.
:lol:

[Melville]

Aw, don't have that attitude. It's supposed to be fun. How far are you? The first 200 pages are incredibly fragmented (it's a weeding out, kind of like the first 25 pages of Finnegans Wake) but after that it settles down a bit.
Yeah, I'm only 135 pages into it (plus 20 or so pages of the endnotes). I was really liking it for about half of that—I thought the sense of the mass of the world, of information, weighing down on the characters was quite good. But then I ran into some really tedious sections—the chats at the tennis academy, the two spies, the endnotes listing a filmography and quoting a mock-academic article—and I just keep thinking, "Jeez, do you really need all this stuff, and can there really be 900 more pages of it?" However, I'm holding out hope that all the details will have a cumulative power.

I've never made it past those first 25 pages of Finnegans Wake. :P But in that case I find it exhausting rather than tedious.

[Milky Joe]

Certain things, like the filmography, which that review I posted before referred to rightly as the novel's thematic spine, will be referred to again and again. So some of it almost functions as reference material, which reading through word for word can definitely become tedious, overwhelming really. But in snippets becomes quite fun, not to mention funny.

[D_Davis]

Someday I will read Finnegans Wake, mainly because of how much Robert Anton Wilson loved; I could listen to him talk about that book for days on end. He knew that book like it was nobodies business, and talks in great detail about it in Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything. Man, I miss that guy.

[Milky Joe]

Doesn't he talk mostly about Ulysses there? I seem to remember being disappointed by how little he talks about Finnegans Wake, especially given how incredible the stuff he writes in Coincidance about it is. His stuff about Ulysses on there is great though. I particularly love when he says that Joyce is best read while you're stoned. So very true.

[D_Davis]

Doesn't he talk mostly about Ulysses there? I seem to remember being disappointed by how little he talks about Finnegans Wake, especially given how incredible the stuff he writes in Coincidance about it is. His stuff about Ulysses on there is great though. I particularly love when he says that Joyce is best read while you're stoned. So very true.

Yeah, you may be right on that one. I know he loves both, and was a Joyce scholar in general.

[Milky Joe]

Seriously, his stuff on Finnegans Wake may be the most perceptive material written on it, period, and that's saying something. There is a veritable garbage dump of exegesis written about that book.

[D_Davis]

Seriously, his stuff on Finnegans Wake may be the most perceptive material written on it, period, and that's saying something. There is a veritable garbage dump of exegesis written about that book.

Outside of the esoteric circles, is RAW celebrated much for his scholarship on Joyce? I read him for years, and only relatively recently - a few year before his death - did I know of that fact about him. Pretty crazy. I mean, are his ideas on Joyce discussed in colleges, or does academia dismiss him because of all the weird (as in totally awesome) shit he was into? If not, then their loss.

[Milky Joe]

Outside of the esoteric circles, is RAW celebrated much for his scholarship on Joyce? I read him for years, and only relatively recently - a few year before his death - did I know of that fact about him. Pretty crazy. I mean, are his ideas on Joyce discussed in colleges, or does academia dismiss him because of all the weird (as in totally awesome) shit he was into? If not, then their loss.

No, I don't think anyone pays any attention to him at all. Though I may be mistaken, as I'm not exactly an expert. Just his referring to Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker ('protagonist' of FW) as a "system-function" should be a standard within the field. That shit comes straight out of Joyce's journals (not that phrase but the way he derives it).

[dreamdead]

Well, so long as I'm not usurped by anyone higher up NIU's professorial food chain (Profs sometimes end up taking grad students' classes from them if their own classes don't make), I've turned in my reading lists for my English 110: Experience of Fiction classes that I'll be doing in the Summer/Fall. Listed below are the reading lists for each, should anyone be interested...

Summer class

Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers (1925)
Busiek, Anderson, and Ross’s Astro City: Life in the Big City (1999)
Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977)
Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007)

and the short stories: Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820), Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home” (1938), Raymond Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” (1981), Dennis Lehane’s “Until Gwen” (2004), H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928)

Fall class

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852)
Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth (1905)
E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel (1971)
Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine (1989)
Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995)
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III’s Promethea: Book 3 (2001-2)
Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III’s Promethea: Book 4 (2002-3)
Alan Moore and J. H. Williams III’s Promethea: Book 5 (2003-5)

[kuehnepips]

I'm looking for something to read while on vacation. Where should I start with Thomas Pynchon?

....I will only have a week and I would like to finish whatever I am reading within that time frame (more or less).

Well, Mason&Dixon is a fun read (took me a couple of hours), very easy.

Which Finnegans Wake is not btw.

[Qrazy]

SpaceOddity's. You're a fan?

Fo shiz

[Melville]

Fo shiz
Cool. You should make a list of your favorite books. Might be more feasible than that ever-elusive top 100 favorite movies list.

[Qrazy]

Well, Mason&Dixon is a fun read (took me a couple of hours), very easy.

Which Finnegans Wake is not btw.

It took you a few hours to read 770+ pages?

[Qrazy]

Cool. You should make a list of your favorite books. Might be more feasible than that ever-elusive top 100 favorite movies list.

I think we both know that either list is unfeasible. :)

[Melville]

I think we both know that either list is unfeasible. :)
Indeed. However, you already made a list of favorite authors:

Gogol
Hemingway
Fitzgerald
Steinbeck
Camus
Dostoyevsky
TS Elliot
Wallace Stevens
Spinoza
Dickens
Huxley
George Orwell
Joseph Heller
Voltaire
Keats
Eugene O'Neill
Kafka
Chaucer
Shakespeare
Joyce
Isaac Asimov
Stephen Crane
Robert Jordan
William James
Ibsen
Beckett
Zola
Balzac
Hume
Sartre
Heidegger
Kant
Nietszche
Faulkner
Nabokov
Maugham
Moore

Just add Zamyatin and a title or two next to each name, and you're done!

[Qrazy]

Indeed. However, you already made a list of favorite authors:

Gogol
Hemingway
Fitzgerald
Steinbeck
Camus
Dostoyevsky
TS Elliot
Wallace Stevens
Spinoza
Dickens
Huxley
George Orwell
Joseph Heller
Voltaire
Keats
Eugene O'Neill
Kafka
Chaucer
Shakespeare
Joyce
Isaac Asimov
Stephen Crane
Robert Jordan
William James
Ibsen
Beckett
Zola
Balzac
Hume
Sartre
Heidegger
Kant
Nietszche
Faulkner
Nabokov
Maugham
Moore

Just add Zamyatin and a title or two next to each name, and you're done!

Pffft that list was far from comprehensive. It will take me at least 3 years and a task force to put together a working beta version of the true list.

[Melville]

Pffft that list was far from comprehensive. It will take me at least 3 years and a task force to put together a working beta version of the true list.
I admire the stringency and/or apathy with which you approach the act of list-making.

[Qrazy]

I admire the stringency and/or apathy with which you approach the act of list-making.

:lol:

[kuehnepips]

It took you a few hours to read 770+ pages?

Yes, why?

Depends, of course: I've started Musil's Mann ohne Eigenschaften in the early 80s but haven't finished it yet. :lol:

[Winston*]

Saw this in a book shop today.

http://media.mightyape.net.nz/serv/get-image.dyn?imageId=6748575

Confusing.

[lovejuice]

Saw this in a book shop today.

http://media.mightyape.net.nz/serv/get-image.dyn?imageId=6748575

Confusing.
:lol::lol::lol:
to be fair though, it's not that different from the novelization of a movie like, say, Jurassic Park.

[Mysterious Dude]

The Swiss Family Robinson is easily the worst book I have ever read. There is no tension whatsoever. Any obstacle the characters may face, they will overcome by the end of the paragraph. They are gods of their environment. The world is theirs to rape and pillage. This is absolutely dreadful storytelling.

As I was reading it, I started to imagine a different novel. One about a man who is stranded on an island with his family and tries to keep them alive, but over time, he watches his family die one by one in various horrifying ways.

For example, there's a chapter with a boa constrictor. Of course, at the end of the chapter, they kill the boa constrictor. I imagined a different scenario. Say two of the boys are out together. One of them climbs a tree to pick its fruit, while the other stays on the ground to catch and gather them in a basket. As they are doing this, the boa constrictor slowly approaches. The boy in the tree sees him first, but is too stunned to warn his brother, who doesn't notice the snake until it has circled itself around him. It coils itself around the boy and squeezes him until he passes out. Then, the boa swallows him whole, while his brother watches from the tree, horrified. He is too afraid to get down from the tree until the boa has left, which is several hours later. Then, he descends and walks back to camp, where his worried parents ask him where his brother is. The boy can't speak, but bursts into tears, and though his parents don't know what has happened, they know that their son is dead.

So anyway, that's one of the ways I would have changed The Swiss Family Robinson. Walt Disney was a little more kind. He added pirates. Man, this book sure could have used some pirates.

[ledfloyd]

Saw this in a book shop today.

http://media.mightyape.net.nz/serv/get-image.dyn?imageId=6748575

Confusing.
i saw that about a month ago, it hurt my head

[ledfloyd]

I started reading The Handmaid's Tale. The prose takes some getting used to. It's a bit stilted and it seems like most sentences have one comma too many in them. The story and storytelling however is reeeally engaging. Kind of loving it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I just wanted to pop in and express my absolute love for The Master and Margarita thus far. I just finished 'Book One', and this is quite literally one of the best books I've read. I'm hoping beyond hope that it continues this way to its conclusion. If so, it would immediately crack my top five, maybe even compete for the top spot.

[Mara]

I suppose I should read The Master and Margarita. I went on a flipping awful date with a pretentious, irritating jerk who spent the better part of two hours going on and on and on about that book, so I kind of have a mental block against it.

[ledfloyd]

I started reading The Handmaid's Tale. The prose takes some getting used to. It's a bit stilted and it seems like most sentences have one comma too many in them. The story and storytelling however is reeeally engaging. Kind of loving it.

finished this. harrowing.

[Mara]

finished this. harrowing.

I'm a fan.

[Sven]

Just read True Grit. Loved it.

[Ezee E]

130 pages into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I swear it's all just been people talking to each other about things that already happened. Here's to hoping things change.

I suppose I like the Salander character. But still...

[kuehnepips]

.... Here's to hoping things change...

A lot.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Master and Margarita held up through the end. One of the best books I've read. I wish I knew more about Russian history, because I'm sure some of the jabs went right over my head. The criticisms of a Stalinist Russia were plain enough, as was the criticism of the nature of faith, and its application in daily life. Also particularly enjoyed the quick jab at psychiatry. It wasn't just the themes though. The novel was so well written, flawlessly interweaving three separate, tangentially related stories. Truly an impressive work. I can't recommend it enough.

Picked up my son's copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Need to see what all the fuss is about. Also, since that will probably be finished by the end of the day, I'll be moving on to Joshua Ferris' Then We Came to the End.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Finished Hugo Cabret. Very interesting combination of mediums. The artwork was fantastic, and the fact that the story was about the magic of films (something I didn't know before picking it up) was a bonus. I was surprised to find that the story was based around Georges Melies' real life. Very sad, fascinating life he led.

[D_Davis]

Started Who He? Alfred Bester's "lost" mainstream novel from 1953. It's a psychological thriller about a writer of a television quiz show who begins to suffer from some kind of psychotic breakdown. Bester was totally fascinated with Freud and psychoanalysis, and used these ideas for this book as well as its SF counterpart, The Demolished Man. So far, it's incredibly interesting and very well written, once again showing that Bester wrote on a level far beyond any of his contemporaries.

I absolutely love the opening paragraph:

Every morning I hate to be born, and every night I'm afraid to die. I live my life within these parentheses, and since I'm constantly walking a tightrope over hysteria, I'm perceptive to the dilemmas of other people as they cross their own chasms.

[Cherish]

finished this. harrowing.

Definitely. I read it long ago, but it has real staying power. I just read Atwood's Oryx and Crake -- another dystopia with a little more sci fi. It's good, too.

[Winston*]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Former supermodel Tyra Banks has signed a deal for a series of fantasy novels about the world of modeling, her publishers said on Tuesday.

Banks, the host of reality competition "America's Next Top Model" and whose own TV talk show is set to end this year, will write three books, Delacorte Press said.

She has already finished the first, called "Modelland", which is about a teen girl in a make-believe society at an academy for exceptional models called Intoxibellas. It will be published in the summer of 2011.

Writing on her web site, Banks said the book was "for all the girls and guys who want a lot more FANTASY in their lives … and some fierceness and magic, romance and mystery, crazy and wild adventures, and yeah, some danger too."

Publishers Delacorte Press described "Modelland" as showcasing issues ranging from relationships to body image and empowering women of all ages.

Pre-ordered.

[Derek]

She's got a long way to go to top her talk show...

http://www.wreckthetapedeck.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tyra-banks-drama-free-relationship-for-darren-aka-skeletor.jpg

[kuehnepips]

Just finished this book Warlock by Oakley Hall. Really amazing. ...

edit: Also, Thomas Pynchon called it "One of our finest American novels," which is why I read it in the first place.

You're right, this book is amazing. And thank you very much: I read it in the first place because you recommended it so well.

*passes bottle*

@lovejuice: Should I send you my copy?

[dreamdead]

Struggling through Chopin's The Awakening right now. Down to 55 pages left, but there's something so remote and uninvolving about her prose style, something that Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland did not suffer for me last week. I know the story's important, so I keep on slogging through, but I'm wishing some energy in the narrative would hit.

[lovejuice]

You're right, this book is amazing. And thank you very much: I read it in the first place because you recommended it so well.

*passes bottle*

@lovejuice: Should I send you my copy?

You are too kind! :) That'll be ok though, since I am planning on ordering a hefty amount of books from Amazon and have my friend carry it back to Thailand.

Also, planning on reading and disliking Beatrice and Virgil, so I can finally write about a not-so-good book for my column.

[Duncan]

You're right, this book is amazing. And thank you very much: I read it in the first place because you recommended it so well.

*passes bottle*

@lovejuice: Should I send you my copy?

Cool, glad you liked it.

[Duncan]

Read Rabbit, Run. Did I just interpret it wrong, or is that book really as repellent as I think it was?

What's the general consensus on Updike here? This was the first I've read of his, and I'm thinking it might be my last. Aside from what I took to be rampant, callous misogyny, some of the lines in here are just laughably bad. "His groin aches to weep," has got to be the worst sentence I've ever read in a well respected book.

[ledfloyd]

yes, it seems one has to take such misogyny as part and parcel of updike. i enjoyed rabbit, run. but it's certainly not a pretty book by any means. and i read it in high school, not sure i would enjoy it as much now.

[Benny Profane]

Read Rabbit, Run. Did I just interpret it wrong, or is that book really as repellent as I think it was?

What's the general consensus on Updike here? This was the first I've read of his, and I'm thinking it might be my last. Aside from what I took to be rampant, callous misogyny, some of the lines in here are just laughably bad. "His groin aches to weep," has got to be the worst sentence I've ever read in a well respected book.

Rampant, callous misogyny - I don't have a problem with that. ;)

I don't remember that particular line, or any bad lines in general. He's a pretty fluid, insightful writer. One of my favorites.

[Milky Joe]

Read Rabbit, Run. Did I just interpret it wrong, or is that book really as repellent as I think it was?

What's the general consensus on Updike here? This was the first I've read of his, and I'm thinking it might be my last. Aside from what I took to be rampant, callous misogyny, some of the lines in here are just laughably bad. "His groin aches to weep," has got to be the worst sentence I've ever read in a well respected book.

I don't know, but you should read this (http://www.observer.com/node/39731) review by David Foster Wallace of one his (Updike's) last (and worst) books. It might confirm some things for you. Unless but do I remember you having already read Consider the Lobster?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Vonnegut: Overrated? Or mondo-overrated?

[dreamdead]

Struggling through Chopin's The Awakening right now. Down to 55 pages left, but there's something so remote and uninvolving about her prose style, something that Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland did not suffer for me last week. I know the story's important, so I keep on slogging through, but I'm wishing some energy in the narrative would hit.

Finished it. The second half reads quicker, and the narrative actually gets moving, but the themes aren't addressed any differently or more radically than other female stylists of the time (Wharton, Gilman). And for being a one of the earliest feminist texts, it's rather surprising that Edna's whole awakening is constructed as being predicated on a man, rather than her swim...

A hundred pages into Frank Norris's McTeague now. The same worries of mediocre prose are counteracted by the ludicrousness of the plot, which is awesomely overcooked thus far.

[ledfloyd]

Vonnegut: Overrated? Or mondo-overrated?
it depends. i think slaughterhouse five is overrated, but i think breakfast of champions is incredibly underrated. vonnegut as a person couldn't possibly be overrated.

[lovejuice]

Vonnegut: Overrated? Or mondo-overrated?
which one? the famed novelist or the underrated meteorologist?

[Duncan]

I don't know, but you should read this (http://www.observer.com/node/39731) review by David Foster Wallace of one his (Updike's) last (and worst) books. It might confirm some things for you. Unless but do I remember you having already read Consider the Lobster?

Yeah, I read it last year, but I went back and re-read that review. It seems pretty spot on to me.

[baby doll]

Vonnegut: Overrated? Or mondo-overrated?I've just read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five, and both were quick, pleasurable reads. So... I dunno, how highly rated is he? He can't be more overrated than Cormac McCarthy (at least if Blood Meridian is any indication).

[Dead & Messed Up]

Vonnegut: Overrated? Or mondo-overrated?

Rated pretty accurately. Then again, I'm just now jumping onboard the Vonnegut train, thanks to strong responses to Slaughterhouse-Five and Welcome to the Monkey House. Maybe after five books of hearing the name Kilgore Trout, I'll be sick of his shit.

EDIT: Today I picked up an audio recording of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. After finishing up The Road (one disc left), I'll dive right in.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I just read the short story 2 B R 0 2 B by Vonnegut and was impressed. So far I've enjoyed everything I've read by him. Can't say he's overrated in the slightest.

[Qrazy]

Based solely on Slaughterhouse-Five he's overrated, but not mondo-overrated.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Speaking of overrated, I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road yesterday.

:D

In all seriousness, I was taken with the story, but it's curious how, every time I switched discs, I was never dying to know what was happening next. I suspect that's a result of the story's intentionally wandering narrative, in which no event necessarily pays off or facilitates later events. I'm aware of the story's emphasis being on life absent of direction (the coast is less a place of salvation, more a goal to keep them busy), so that tempers this complaint (which is already somewhat trivial).

However, I loved the repetitive dialogue between the father and son, and the continual moral quandaries they encounter on their journey. The idea of them as "good guys" becomes increasingly nebulous until, about halfway through, I realized such terms were meaningless under the circumstances. Everybody in this world would be a "good guy" in their life's story, because survival has become the dominant virtue. Probably the only virtue. More complicated notions of morality, justice, etc. have been entirely cast aside. Which makes for harrowing, fascinating dilemmas.

So despite my contrarian introduction, I'm a big fan of the book.

[ledfloyd]

i'm about a third of the way through inherent vice and i can't really find anything in the book to recommend. even on it's most basic levels it doesn't really work for me. the detective story fails to generate intrigue and the majority of the stoner humor and cultural references seem a bit forced or too derivative. this is coming from someone that enjoyed vineland.

[Mara]

EDIT: Today I picked up an audio recording of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

I couldn't finish it. The man is just not my style.

[Duncan]

Read The Corrections. Very good stuff. Had a lump in my throat for the last 50 pages. It takes some missteps, like a trip to Lithuania and maybe some of the hallucinations, but Franzen sure does nail the cumulative, depressing assault of seemingly trivial comments, missed personal connections, defense mechanisms, and other self-destructing details of behaviour, and also the total, sad, hilarious collapse that can ensue. It reads very fast for a long book.

[dreamdead]

Read The Corrections. Very good stuff. Had a lump in my throat for the last 50 pages. It takes some missteps, like a trip to Lithuania and maybe some of the hallucinations, but Franzen sure does nail the cumulative, depressing assault of seemingly trivial comments, missed personal connections, defense mechanisms, and other self-destructing details of behaviour, and also the total, sad, hilarious collapse that can ensue. It reads very fast for a long book.

Yeah, it was probably one more edit from being a powerhouse of a novel. As it is, it's really good, and like you say it has a solid emotional crescendo that is sustained despite thematic errors or overdetermined passages. I remember at the time the book being called Delillo-lite, as Franzen is apparently trying his hand at an Underworld-like narrative. All of the mother and father's scenes are what still linger in my mind years after the reading.

Halfway through Toni Morrison's Beloved, a novel that I've avoided for far too long. Morrison's prose is gorgeous and even while I wait for some of the payoffs and worry over the handling of Paul D thus far, it's proving eminently worth my time.

[ledfloyd]

the stuff with the father in the corrections absolutely killed me. i think they had added effect cause i read it around the same time i found out my grandfather had parkinson's. i really love the book though. his next one is supposed to be coming out later this year.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I couldn't finish it. The man is just not my style.

He hasn't blown my skirt up yet, although I kinda liked The Crack in Space's eventual satire on manifest destiny, and "The Minority Report" was a cute little concept piece. So far, Androids is holding my interest.

It's also one of the few books-on-CD at the library that's not twenty-five hours long. Those are incredibly difficult to get through.

[Benny Profane]

Duncan - did you ever finish Against the Day?

[Duncan]

Yeah, it was probably one more edit from being a powerhouse of a novel. As it is, it's really good, and like you say it has a solid emotional crescendo that is sustained despite thematic errors or overdetermined passages. I remember at the time the book being called Delillo-lite, as Franzen is apparently trying his hand at an Underworld-like narrative. All of the mother and father's scenes are what still linger in my mind years after the reading.

Halfway through Toni Morrison's Beloved, a novel that I've avoided for far too long. Morrison's prose is gorgeous and even while I wait for some of the payoffs and worry over the handling of Paul D thus far, it's proving eminently worth my time. Well, I don't know about Underworld, but it seemed like twice the novel White Noise is.

I'm reading some plays at the moment, but after that I'm going to read Beloved. I keep seeing it on my shelf and thinking I should read something by Morrison, so...

[Duncan]

Duncan - did you ever finish Against the Day?

Yeah, I finished quite awhile ago. Meant to post something then never did.

I ended up really liking it, but at the same time I think it's pretty fundamentally misconceived. It really did feel like it should have been broken apart into maybe three different novels, or, honestly, been ~300 pages longer for everything to hang together.

The Chums of Chance started off interesting, and there's a scene with Miles and one of the Visitors (totally undeveloped and basically dropped, it seems) about halfway through that is kind of brutally sad, but I got tired of them by the end. The individual characters are about as one-note as one-note can get, and their adventures in the second half of the book seem tangentially goofy at best, tiresomely digressive at worst.

The Traverse family saga is the heart of the book, and it feels like there's a really great novel in there just waiting to be carved out of the nebulous slack of the rest. Kit and Dally feel like real people, something I don't think he's really done well since Mason and Dixon. I was actually invested in their fates, cared about what was happening to them, was worried that he could veer into real tragedy with them. Cyprian, too, but then he just ends up joining a monastery or something and I was like, wait, what? Webb's fate was genuinely sad, and there's a great western genre riff with Reef looking for his body in that hellish town. Basically, there are a lot of highlights there, and the book actually has some narrative drive when it's following them.

And then there are all the other digressions, some awesome (like that real-life meteor event in Siberia) others just exhausting. His standard mystic Eden (Shambhala) is here, but no one seems to want to find it that badly. Most are just searching for it because they've got nothing better to do.

It's weird, for all his arcane references, verbal pyrotechnics, and thematic complexities, when it comes down to it, at least in his later novels, he's really kind of a sentimentalist. The whole book is strangely bloodless for the good guys (and I think it's safe to say that there are definitely "good guys" here). They go through trials, their lives are not always their own, but everyone (except Webb) comes out alright in the end. Maybe it could have used a touch more tragedy, but he seems happy to be writing as the disappointed dreamer, waiting, still, for the magical airship world to take everyone out of time. I guess that's nice and I'm glad for him? I don't know.

Still, I come away overwhelmed and impressed and confused and glad that it was written and glad that I read it.

[Benny Profane]

The Traverse family saga is the heart of the book, and it feels like there's a really great novel in there just waiting to be carved out of the nebulous slack of the rest. Kit and Dally feel like real people, something I don't think he's really done well since Mason and Dixon. I was actually invested in their fates, cared about what was happening to them, was worried that he could veer into real tragedy with them. Cyprian, too, but then he just ends up joining a monastery or something and I was like, wait, what? Webb's fate was genuinely sad, and there's a great western genre riff with Reef looking for his body in that hellish town. Basically, there are a lot of highlights there, and the book actually has some narrative drive when it's following them.

And then there are all the other digressions, some awesome (like that real-life meteor event in Siberia) others just exhausting. His standard mystic Eden (Shambhala) is here, but no one seems to want to find it that badly. Most are just searching for it because they've got nothing better to do.

It's weird, for all his arcane references, verbal pyrotechnics, and thematic complexities, when it comes down to it, at least in his later novels, he's really kind of a sentimentalist. The whole book is strangely bloodless for the good guys (and I think it's safe to say that there are definitely "good guys" here). They go through trials, their lives are not always their own, but everyone (except Webb) comes out alright in the end. Maybe it could have used a touch more tragedy, but he seems happy to be writing as the disappointed dreamer, waiting, still, for the magical airship world to take everyone out of time. I guess that's nice and I'm glad for him? I don't know.

Still, I come away overwhelmed and impressed and confused and glad that it was written and glad that I read it.


Totally feel the same way. He still has all his reckless brilliance, but he is definitely getting more sentimental, and what most impressed me about AtD was how romantically beautiful his prose can be/has become. I must have underlined a few dozen passages that just floored me. I definitely agree that there were too many digressions, and the Chums of Chance wore on me as the novel went along as well.

Some of the more fantastic elements of the story I could have done without, like fourth dimensions, bilocation, and counter-Earth theories, but then parts like where photographs come to life were vintage Pynchon. He even extends these themes into the romantic aspects, like when two characters are embracing "long enough to estabilish some two-fold self" he's not only talking about human love but how two things can be one (bilocation). In many ways an expansion of the double-sidedness of life that he lays out in V. I agree that the Colorado miners/labor disputes/Traverse revenge story was the heart of the novel, but I think I enjoyed the section in the Balkans the most.

Did the mathematical equations and formulas make any sense to you?

I'm reading The Sot-weed Factor by Barth right now, which I think you'd really dig. It's like a cross between Mason & Dixon and Candide. Definitely check it out.

[D_Davis]

Starting my first Dostoevsky novel this weekend - Demons.

Looking forward to it. Should occupy a good chunk of the 17-hour flight this Monday.

[Duncan]

Totally feel the same way. He still has all his reckless brilliance, but he is definitely getting more sentimental, and what most impressed me about AtD was how romantically beautiful his prose can be/has become. I must have underlined a few dozen passages that just floored me. I definitely agree that there were too many digressions, and the Chums of Chance wore on me as the novel went along as well.

Some of the more fantastic elements of the story I could have done without, like fourth dimensions, bilocation, and counter-Earth theories, but then parts like where photographs come to life were vintage Pynchon. He even extends these themes into the romantic aspects, like when two characters are embracing "long enough to estabilish some two-fold self" he's not only talking about human love but how two things can be one (bilocation). In many ways an expansion of the double-sidedness of life that he lays out in V. I agree that the Colorado miners/labor disputes/Traverse revenge story was the heart of the novel, but I think I enjoyed the section in the Balkans the most.

Did the mathematical equations and formulas make any sense to you?

Some of them did. Equations about the Aether though, those can't actually make sense, because that was a theory back then that has since been superseded. Basically, he's starting with false assumptions and working from there to write metaphorically about unseen mediums, forces that can't quite be explained, including but not limited to those of capitalism and war and how, from our limited perspective, it seems like they just have to be there (all of which I'm sure you got without the equations). So I think those are always supposed to be on the cusp of making sense, but never quite there. There's also a lot of talk about the complex (or imaginary) plane, and that's sort of his jumping off point for a lot of the more fantastical stuff. Instead of an x and y axis, you have an axis representing real numbers, and an axis representing imaginary (I'll just use "imaginary" because that's what he uses), and points in that plane have both a real part and an imaginary part. So basically he's taking this mathematical construct and again mapping it metaphorically on the narrative. Yashmeen is trying to solve Riemann's hypothesis, which is one of those super hard math problems that no one has done to this day, as far as I know. I forget exactly what it is, but it has to do with finding the zeros of that zeta-function she keeps obsessing over along a certain line in the imaginary plane. Or something. But really, the Riemann hypothesis is probably many years of study beyond me before I could even get a handle on what exactly was going on and why it's so hard to solve, and so the short answer to your question is, no, I don't understand that at all. I think the fourth dimension stuff is pretty essential to the book. Sometimes he seems to be referring to a "real" imaginary dimension, but often he's just referring to time, I think, and obviously that's one of his big concerns throughout his books. Bilocation I never quite got, to be honest. Like why were there two professors? But I like your answer above.


I'm reading The Sot-weed Factor by Barth right now, which I think you'd really dig. It's like a cross between Mason & Dixon and Candide. Definitely check it out.
Have you read Chimera by Barth? I read it earlier this year and wasn't too keen on it. But I've heard good things about The Sot-Weed Factor from a number of reliable sources, including you, so I guess I'll have to give him another chance.

[Benny Profane]

Have you read Chimera by Barth? I read it earlier this year and wasn't too keen on it. But I've heard good things about The Sot-Weed Factor from a number of reliable sources, including you, so I guess I'll have to give him another chance.


No, this is my first Barth. It's basically about an amateur poet sent to the Americas to be the laureate of the rise of the colony. It's a cross between an historical novel and an adventure tale, but it totally flips those genres on their ass. It's really unique and enjoyable with some incredibly beautiful prose. Pretty humorous as well.

[lovejuice]

Starting my first Dostoevsky novel this weekend - Demons.

Looking forward to it. Should occupy a good chunk of the 17-hour flight this Monday.

It's actually my least favorite of his. Still a pretty great novel though.

[D_Davis]

It's actually my least favorite of his. Still a pretty great novel though.

The guy who loaned to me said it's his favorite.

I don't have a favorite, yet!

:)

[endingcredits]

it depends. i think slaughterhouse five is overrated, but i think breakfast of champions is incredibly underrated. vonnegut as a person couldn't possibly be overrated.

In the Breakfast Of Champions, I found Vonnegut's refusal to explain as a bit of a cop-out. It is as though he was saying that trying to understand anything complicated is futile. Maybe he deliberately over-simplied everything to get us to look more deeply at the obvious. Still a great book and is one of my favs by him.

[Mysterious Dude]

So I want to read some novels (or very literary memoirs) about war and/or living under a dictatorship. Here's my lineup so far:

The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque)
A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway)
Journey to the End of the Night (Céline)
Darkness at Noon (Koestler)
The Quiet American (Greene)
The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)
A Bend in the River (Naipaul)
July's People (Gordimer)
The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien)
War Trash (Ha Jin)

What do you think? I'm kinda trying to avoid World War II at the moment, but you might be able to convince me not to.

[lovejuice]

July's People (Gordimer)

Is this one good? I saw it in a second-handed bookstore. Not a fan of the conservationist though.

[Mysterious Dude]

Is this one good?
Are you asking me? I haven't read it.

[megladon8]

I just read the short story 2 B R 0 2 B by Vonnegut and was impressed. So far I've enjoyed everything I've read by him. Can't say he's overrated in the slightest.


Completely agree.

"Cat's Cradle" is still one of the most memorable reading experiences I've ever had. It blew my 14-year-old mind.

[Milky Joe]

Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a lovely book. Not a Great Novel by any means, but possibly a Great First Novel; the fact she wrote it at like 22 (my age) makes it even better. I don't know what Benny's on about. I look forward to reading her work as she matures. She wrote a beautiful essay on Kafka for The New Yorker a few years ago also that just confirms my admiration for her.

[Hugh_Grant]

By the way, my students loved White Teeth. Some found the ending contrived, which is a very valid observation, but I was impressed by how she brought it all together. We had some great class discussions.

[dreamdead]

Finished up Beloved. It's a book that ends a little anti-climactically, but such an ending toward emotional recovery while simultaneously recasting who controls the narrative of Beloved the individual allows for greater depth. Also, despite an occasional abandonment of Paul D's narrative voice for mother/daughter bonds with Sethe and Denver/Beloved, Morrison works an interesting angle in through the character of Amy, the white woman who aids Sethe back to health after her beating. The name Amy apparently has ties back to meaning "Beloved," so the idea of the novel is doubled and offered to possess both a positive African American and white context. Cool stuff, and the kind of small but meaningful tidbit that aids in my appreciation for it. It's one that could easily rise in esteem as I dwell on it.

Gonna alternate reading Falling Man by DeLillo and The Marrow of Tradition by Charles Chestnutt next.

[Grouchy]

Mario Puzo's The Sicilian. It's the first Puzo novel I've ever read and it's good stuff. I was completely taken by surprise when, forty pages left for the ending, I discovered it was a real story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvatore_Giuliano). Since characters from The Godfather appear (the action takes place in Sicily while Michael is doing his exile) I inmediately assumed the whole thing was an invention. Where Puzo excels, I think, is not so much at the plotting but at creating memorable, bidimensional characters with only a few broad strokes of introduction. This novel is written to be a best-seller, it reads very fast and it has a few notable things to say about the sociology of a place like Sicily. So, it's a worthy read.

[lovejuice]

Mario Puzo's The Sicilian.
I also remember liking The Godfather quite well. It's among the first english novels I've ever finished. It however contains one extremely silly chapter about a vagina.

[Winston*]

I also remember liking The Godfather quite well. It's among the first english novels I've ever finished. It however contains one extremely silly chapter about a vagina.
That chapter is so awful that in my memory it lasts like half the book.

[Grouchy]

Well now I have to read that.

[Ezee E]

Yeah. But Grouchy's right in how he can paint a picture of an entire character in a paragraph or less. Luca Brasi being the best example.

Loved The Godfather book as much as the movie. Haven't read his other stuff.

I've started creating a list of books to read. This thread has provided me with a lot of options.

[Hugh_Grant]

Cutting and pasting from my FB status update:

I finished up Alexander McCall Smith's hilarious trilogy The 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom yesterday. If you have experienced the exasperating pettiness of academia (cue my flashbacks to grad school), German culture, and linguistics (the hapless Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is a Romance philologist), then this is the series of books for you.

[Hugh_Grant]

The New Yorker Picks Young Writers Worth Watching (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/books/03under.html?ref=books)

The list:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32
Chris Adrian, 39
Daniel Alarcón, 33
David Bezmozgis, 37
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38
Joshua Ferris, 35
Jonathan Safran Foer, 33
Nell Freudenberger, 35
Rivka Galchen, 34
Nicole Krauss, 35
Yiyun Li, 37
Dinaw Mengestu, 31
Philipp Meyer, 36
C. E. Morgan, 33
Téa Obreht, 24
Z Z Packer, 37
Karen Russell, 28
Salvatore Scibona, 35
Gary Shteyngart, 37
Wells Tower, 37.

[Benny Profane]

I'll take "Authors I've never heard of" for $200 please, Alex.

[kuehnepips]

You know Foer because Everything Is Illuminated

[Hugh_Grant]

Here's the list from 1999:

George Saunders
David Foster Wallace
Sherman Alexie
Rick Moody
A.M. Homes
Allegra Goodman
William T. Vollmann
Antonya Nelson
Chang-rae Lee
Michael Chabon
Ethan Canin
Donald Antrim
Tony Earley
Jeffrey Eugenides
Junot Diaz
Jonathan Franzen
Edwidge Danticat
Jhumpa Lahiri
Nathan Englander
Matthew Klam

[kuehnepips]

Enchanté, madame!

*passes bottle*

[Milky Joe]

Nicole Krauss' History of Love is one of the better novels of recent years--far better than her overrated husband Foer.

[Mara]

Nicole Krauss' History of Love is one of the better novels of recent years--far better than her overrated husband Foer.

That book was actually excellent.

[Malickfan]

Have you guys heard of this new book called Witz? It's starting to get some rave reviews. I've read samples of random pages and the prose is incredible...and the dude (Joshua Cohen) who wrote it is only 29. He'd been working on it for close to 10 years. For the people here who've read Gravity's Rainbow or Infinite Jest, you might want to add this to your list. It's a monster, 800+ pages.

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/book/?GCOI=15647100283710

[monolith94]

Anyone else here read much G.K. Chesterton? I've been sick for the past four days, and I've been passing some of the time reading his Father Brown detective stories. I have the omnibus checked out from the library, and man is it thick. Some of them can be... quite politically incorrect. Some of them can be quite well-written, however, although the way that the mysteries turn out are starting to become a tad predictable.

[Philosophe_rouge]

I have a strong urge to read some childhood favourites, most notably L.M. Montgomery's Emily series. I was never particularly fond of Emily of New Moon, but the two other books were incredible. I'm worried they won't hold up though. Still, I might go for it.

[Duncan]

Read Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. There's nothing exactly wrong with it, but it's not really my taste. It's an exceptionally well written book told by protagonist Paula Spencer (whose voice Doyle nails) about her life as a battered wife. It's hard realism set in poverty-stricken Ireland, and I suppose a male author trying to inhabit the life of a woman in this situation is ambitious from a certain point of view (and, again, he definitely nails it) but it's not the kind of ambition I'm typically looking for in a novel. It's moving and he captures her weaknesses (alcoholism, for one) and her strengths, but it's the kind of book where I think, damn, that's really sad, and then I just move on. There was nothing much for me to think about after. But if gritty, first-person realism is your thing, then I'd certainly recommend it.

[SpaceOddity]

I have a strong urge to read some childhood favourites, most notably L.M. Montgomery's Emily series. I was never particularly fond of Emily of New Moon, but the two other books were incredible. I'm worried they won't hold up though. Still, I might go for it.

Am possessive of the Emily books. Whenever anyone mentions reading 'em, I wanna claw their eyes out and go 'Read them in brail, bitch.' ;)

[Grouchy]

Wow, I met a girl and somehow we ended up talking about The Godfather. When I said I'd read Puzo's The Sicilian, she said: "That book is about Turi Guiliano. My great-grandfather".

Fucking jaw dropped to the floor.

[baby doll]

I just finished The Portrait of a Lady, and though it's rather good in many respects, it's just a little too stately and genteel for my liking. I haven't decided definitely which book I'm going to read next, but I'm leaning towards Last Exit to Brooklyn just because, after all that civility and elegant prose, I really want to read a book about a hooker getting gang-raped.

[Grouchy]

Have pretty much the same recollection about Portrait of a Lady. I knew it was good prose, but I was bored out of my fucking skull.

You should follow it up with Naked Lunch if you never read it.

[dreamdead]

Halfway through DeLillo's Falling Man. 9/11, even though it feels like the most obvious DeLillo subject since he was prescient enough to anticipate the rise of a terrorist culture back in 1992 with Mao II, manages to work with his staccato rhythm for dialogue and narrative. The conversations where Keith (the narrator) and Florence relive their harrowing escapes from the Twin Towers, filled with detail and buried scars for those left behind, are created with solid psychological nuance and keep the characters from being ciphers for DeLillo's philosophical musings. And though the postmodern issues of alienation are in full force, there's a sense of elegaic longing to return to the past and reorder the moment, which is unusual for most of DeLillo's most famous work (Underworld excepted). Looking forward to finishing this one up in the next week or so.

Also rereading Huck Finn. That one's going through a re-appraisal in my mind, as I used to detest it for perpetuating the racism which it seeks to critique. The clarity of Twain's attack against institutionalized racism feels much clearer now.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Based on recommendations in this thread, in combination with my resolution to read more this year, I'm now through the first three parts of 2666. Loving it so far, but based on talk that the fourth section is the slowest (and also the longest), I've decided to take a temporary break from it and read The Zero.

[Ezee E]

Based on recommendations in this thread, in combination with my resolution to read more this year, I'm now through the first three parts of 2666. Loving it so far, but based on talk that the fourth section is the slowest (and also the longest), I've decided to take a temporary break from it and read The Zero.
You're just begging for rep from Kurosawa Fan aren't you?

[ThePlashyBubbler]

You're just begging for rep from Kurosawa Fan aren't you?

:D

[Kurosawa Fan]

You're just begging for rep from Kurosawa Fan aren't you?

I only give rep for rave reviews of The Zero. ;)


Read Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma for my history class. Good read. Destroys the myth of Pocahontas reiterated by Disney, and kills any notion of a romantic relationship between she and John Smith. Now back to Then We Came to the End.

[Ezee E]

Guh... Never will I read a book based on a recommendation by a coworker. It's taken me nearly two months to get through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. While I was intrigued by the actual mystery of the story, it's so awfully written that it was painful getting there. Salander is the only interesting character, while the others are sort of one-note.

Kind of a noir feeling to it, except Bjokvist (?) has to explain everything to himself each time he uncovers something.

[Benny Profane]

My first Calvino....if the rest of the book is as awesome as the first 35 pages, I might have a new all-time favorite.

I need to check my expectations though. Don't want to get too excited.

[Kurosawa Fan]

My first Calvino....if the rest of the book is as awesome as the first 35 pages, I might have a new all-time favorite.

I need to check my expectations though. Don't want to get too excited.

Awesome. My English professor was raving about Calvino last semester, so I made this a priority during my eight week break. Can't wait. I bought it a while back after it appeared on lovejuice's top novels list.

[Raiders]

I've put off starting 2666 until my vacation in two weeks, but I'm having a hard time holding off... or keeping my expectations in check.

[Milky Joe]

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier returning to the range, admire?
Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all possible substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colors in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its bouyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, iceflows: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the wandering moon.

Happy Bloomsday!

[Hugh_Grant]

KF, I've taken a break from my postcolonial kick to read The Zero. Just thought you'd like to know. :)

[Kurosawa Fan]

KF, I've taken a break from my postcolonial kick to read The Zero. Just thought you'd like to know. :)

:pritch:

[Duncan]

Read The Interrogation by J.M.G. Le Clezio. Basically, it's about this young Frenchman named Adam Pollo, who may or may not have been in Algeria at one point, but who is now living in an abandoned house on top of a hill in an anonymous town, and who tries to inhabit a kind of unifying way of being. It's essentially plotless. For instance, he spends about 20 pages just following a dog through town and commenting on random things and philosophizing, etc. Good stuff, though. Maybe doesn't quite reach what it's reaching for, but I admire it for reaching all the same. A couple quotes I liked:

"...I'm here this evening, needing fresh air and cigarettes and with malnutrition lying in wait, asking myself why there shouldn't be just a very few more unimaginable things."

"And the sea's edge, the fringe of waves washed up with refuse, invited us to approach. Sirens disguised as hair-oil bottles, headless sardines, jerrycans and half-peeled leeks, chanted their hoarse-voiced summons; we were to go down the steps, still puddled with salt water, and without undressing, entrust our bodies to the waves. We should cross the edge, with its floating orange-peel, corks and patches of oil, and go straight to the bottom. In a little mud, stabbed with pangs of osmosis, tiny fish swimming into our mouths, we should be motionless and gentle."

[Hugh_Grant]

José Saramago has died (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/06/nobel-winning-novelist-jose-saramago-dies-at-age-87/1).

By the way, KF, I've about 100 pages thus far. Good stuff. I'll try and finish it this weekend since I have The Imperfectionists waiting for me on hold at the library.

[Benny Profane]

RIP.

Blindness was a great read.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Finished up The Zero this morning. Really enjoyed it, particularly the way it sort of effortlessly shifted from being a character piece to being a mystery to being satire. There were a few instances later in the book where I felt a bit disconnected from the Agency/Bureau debacle, but I suppose that's kind of the point. In some ways I thought this was a more engaging example of the "short term memory" storytelling device than Memento, if only because I appreciated the more disjointed confusion in comparison to the film's fairly linear (albeit reversed) timeline. Also, I'm pretty sure this book had the same ending as Fight Club. Anyway, really good read, anything else by Walter worth checking out?

[Kurosawa Fan]

Nice thoughts.

The only other Walter I've read is The Financial Lives of the Poets, which was solid, but not remarkable. Certainly didn't live up to The Zero.

[dreamdead]

Falling Man's conclusion deteriorates into more tradition DeLillo themes, so the coverage and detail of the first half lessens as themes get recycled and inculcated into this 9/11 story. The examinations into art's responsibility to push against the comforts of the present and to challenge and wake up society, seen through the performance artist falling man, are nicely handled, as is the issue of what was to be his final performance. Some of the musings on religion similarly suggest a willingness to examine and contemplate both sides of the debate.

However, once Keith (one of our narrators), settles back into a life of stasis, the novel becomes more rote and conventional, chronicling how briefly society can be shocked out of its collective materialist coma. Worse, most of the scenes from the vantage point of one of the terrorists comes off as way too forced and one-note, refusing to grant the same interiority and conflict to the Other that's granted to American traumas. It's a knowing move, generated to suggest the stasis of terrorist logic and intuition, but it doesn't register right. Overall, it's a worthy enough read, but not his best by any stretch.

[ledfloyd]

i agree, i thought the book was fantastic at first but it's power lessens as it goes on.

[D_Davis]

Well, I broke down and bought a book yesterday. Just couldn't pass it up - an original version of William Peter Blatty's Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane, the novel that Blatty eventual rewrote to become The Ninth Configuration. Found it at this little thrift store up in Katoomba, a small mountain town in the Blue Mountain region of Australia. Wow - it's completely different so far. It really is like a totally different novel, with only the very basic premise - military psychiatric inmates doing crazy things - being similar. Blatty says that he considered this version more of a straight comedy, while The Ninth Configuration is more of a theological story with humor; I'd say it has more in common thus far with Blatty's other satires. I think I prefer the later version more. However, once again I am reminded of how criminally unappreciated an overlooked Blatty's fiction is; his dialog is probably the best I've read - the dude just knows how to write hard-hitting, snappy conversations that sparkle and shine with real life and energy.

[dreamdead]

Finished out Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony as well, which is a study on the after-effects of war trauma (WW2) and psychological trauma that Native Americans suffer through, as well as an attempt to revive the old Laguna traditions rather than letting drink consume and the native stories be forgotten. There's a real artistry to Silko's descriptions, so even though the book ends up as another in a long list of 70s/80s "remember your culture" narratives, there's a fundamental force to the intentionality of her words. Really good.

I'll likely go with Jean Toomer's Cane or Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children next.

[dreamdead]

i agree, i thought the book was fantastic at first but it's power lessens as it goes on.

It was indeed depressing to see how the novel devolves into conventional DeLillo themes and prose, so that the traditional "All narratives move toward death" idea becomes overdetermined, and as the force of an ex-wife and son as unable to resurrect Keith's sense of meaning or responsibility is something that feels far too cursorily examined. I hope to do a close reading of Underworld (rather than the skimming that I've done on the beginning, middle, and end) sometime later in the year, so that should revive my appreciation of DeLillo's talent.

[Duncan]

Finished up Beloved. It's a book that ends a little anti-climactically, but such an ending toward emotional recovery while simultaneously recasting who controls the narrative of Beloved the individual allows for greater depth. Also, despite an occasional abandonment of Paul D's narrative voice for mother/daughter bonds with Sethe and Denver/Beloved, Morrison works an interesting angle in through the character of Amy, the white woman who aids Sethe back to health after her beating. The name Amy apparently has ties back to meaning "Beloved," so the idea of the novel is doubled and offered to possess both a positive African American and white context. Cool stuff, and the kind of small but meaningful tidbit that aids in my appreciation for it. It's one that could easily rise in esteem as I dwell on it. Just finished this. Not really sure what you mean by the bolded part. Aren't those mother/daughter bonds much more than occasional? And certainly there are chapters that focus on his character, but is the novel ever actually in Paul D's narrative voice? Did I miss something?

Anyway, I ended up really liking it. I really appreciated her ability to elide reality through dialogue and "rememory." Like near the beginning when they speak of a tree growing out of Sethe's back as if it was just plain fact, when in reality it is the scars from a whipping. And little formal choices like that (which also seem perfectly natural within the vernaculars of these characters) go to the book's ideas about how people can have their actual lives defined by just words and customs, and how others' conception of you transforms your self into something limited and incomplete, and how those concepts can turn to real life chain and blood.

I usually don't respond that well to books in this vein, but I was pretty affected by this. In fact, I was so outraged a couple times that I had to put the book down and pace across the room before I could keep reading. It was good stuff, probably worthy of its rep.

[baby doll]

RIP.

Blindness was a great read.Too bad it was such a lousy movie. Anyway, where's a good place to start with Saramago, keeping in mind that Fernando Merielles so traumatized me that I'd rather start elsewhere?

[Grouchy]

Blindness is a very good film. I don't know what some people were expecting from it to be so outraged.

[Duncan]

I just started Blindness last night. Pretty good so far.

[Duncan]

I just started Blindness last night. Pretty good so far.

Finished. Good stuff. Real stroll through hell and back. Despite its extremes, it seems like a fairly accurate depiction of the human condition. Also impressed by how readable it is. It's a page turner.

[dreamdead]

Just finished this. Not really sure what you mean by the bolded part. Aren't those mother/daughter bonds much more than occasional? And certainly there are chapters that focus on his character, but is the novel ever actually in Paul D's narrative voice? Did I miss something?


I suppose more of my issue comes from the fact that critics traditionally study the Sethe/Denver/Beloved storylines and shove aside Paul D as a conventional heterosexual love plot with Sethe, disavowing it of much interest. And, to be fair, Morrison does this at times, too, so that I'm left wondering why we don't get more of his psychology when Beloved essentially rapes him when she wants impregnated.

It comes, I suppose, from the fact that I find Song of Solomon to be her most affecting work, where there the interplay between men and women comes across most generously, arguing for the mutual and reciprocal communication between genders, even as it highlights the sense of honoring one's heritage in most fantastical ways.

[Hugh_Grant]

Well, KF, I finished The Zero. Yay insomnia? Couldn't sleep, finished the book. I don't know if I can give you a rave review, but I did like it. (I think I had the same problem as ThePlashyBubbler.) The term "Kafkaesque" is overused and misused, but it's perfectly applicable here. Walter did a great job of capturing that post-9/11 mood.

I also read The Imperfectionists. While I don't expect a novel about the state of print journalism in the 21st century to be all puppies and lollipops, this book was quite bleak and punctuated with a really abhorrent scene in its climax. Still, there are some redeeming qualities. I actually think the book works better as a collection of vignettes, and I liked Rachmann's depiction of ex-pat life in Europe.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Well, KF, I finished The Zero. Yay insomnia? Couldn't sleep, finished the book. I don't know if I can give you a rave review, but I did like it. (I think I had the same problem as ThePlashyBubbler.) The term "Kafkaesque" is overused and misused, but it's perfectly applicable here. Walter did a great job of capturing that post-9/11 mood.

Fair enough. I can understand the criticisms, but for me it was such a well-realized illustration of not only the post-9/11 culture, but also our proclivity as a species to, for better or worse, quickly forget the injuries of the past, compartmentalizing them into little fragments rather than keeping our focus on the full picture that its flaws were inconsequential.

Thanks for giving it a chance. :)

[Hugh_Grant]

Thanks for the recommendation! I think I may have mentioned telling a faculty member about the book because he's putting together a 9/11-themed course. He's on the hiring committee for a full-time opening. *fingers crossed for an interview*

Having been through the interview grind before, a question often asked is, "What books are you reading now?"

[Kurosawa Fan]

Thanks for the recommendation! I think I may have mentioned telling a faculty member about the book because he's putting together a 9/11-themed course. He's on the hiring committee for a full-time opening. *fingers crossed for an interview*

Having been through the interview grind before, a question often asked is, "What books are you reading now?"

Nice strategizing on your part. ;)

[lovejuice]

It comes, I suppose, from the fact that I find Song of Solomon to be her most affecting work, where there the interplay between men and women comes across most generously, arguing for the mutual and reciprocal communication between genders, even as it highlights the sense of honoring one's heritage in most fantastical ways.
I dig that book as well, but it's the only novel of hers that I've read.

[Mara]

So I haven't been reading much at all this year, because of my crazy schedule, and buying the house, and moving. When I do read, I've been revisiting old favorites that I don't care if I get interrupted.

But I made a push in the last couple of days to finish The Cuckoo's Egg and it was really pretty amazing. Cliff Stoll isn't a writer and (especially since it's nonfiction) he has a little trouble with pacing and presenting the story like a "story" instead of a sequence of events, but he has a way with words and comes across as charming and likeable man. There are pages and pages and pages of information on outdated computer code and jargon, but he tried to present it in a way that it was accessible to the layperson.

And the story really is fascinating. It reminded me a lot of All the President's Men, where a seemingly-simple incongruity leads down a rabbit hole of proportions that would seem preposterous if they weren't... you know... true. This one starts with a 75-cent accounting error and ends up on the other side of the iron curtain with hackers and the KGB. Stoll is no James Bond-- he likes to bake cookies and piece quilts in his spare time-- but he gets caught up in the ethics of hacking and what it means to the future of open information and becomes a little superhero in his own right. He goes from a cheery hippie who doesn't trust the government to someone with contacts at the FBI, CIA, NSA and other acronyms as well.

The government is practically a character in the book, and they don't come off very well. Although certain individuals are competent, the entities themselves are willfully ignorant when it comes to computer crime, and they have no problem letting Cliff do their work for them, working a hundred hours a week, and then not giving him anything in return, either in terms of reimbursing his salary or a smidgen of information. (When they finally catch the hacker, they won't even tell him the person's name.)

Oddly enough, there's a charming little love story in there, as well, between Cliff and his long-suffering girlfriend.

Totally recommended. I really enjoyed it.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Just finished up 2666. Was there ever any additional information on that original story regarding an allegedly found part 6? I loved the book despite the lack of plot connection between the separate parts, but reading that bit of news before finishing the book left me feeling slightly unfulfilled. I think I'd rate the parts 5, 1, 3, 4, 2.

Now moving on to The Corrections.

[BuffaloWilder]

While I'm on somewhat of a Bond kick, what does everyone think about this recent news, concerning the latest installment in the series?

Jeffery Deaver's writing it - Project X it's being called. It's going to be a completely contemporary reboot, starting the series anew - which is a pretty balsy thing to do, I think. Caught my interest.

[number8]

Burned through Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson trilogy in under a week. Good stuff.

[Duncan]

Read De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage. He grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, and this is his fictionalized account. Won all sorts of awards (like the IMPAC, for one), but I thought it was pretty poor. Probably respected more for its subject matter and authenticity than it's literary value. IMO, anyway. It's kind of a cliched plot about two childhood friends who are forced down different paths--one into the Christian militia, one into petty crime--and then all the fallout from that and, of course, the eventual refugee-amazed-by-western-decadence third act. I can't really recommend much about it, but, like I said, it garnered heaps and heaps of praises, so what do I know...

[D_Davis]

Burned through Charlie Huston's Hank Thompson trilogy in under a week. Good stuff.

Huston is awesome. Great guy, and a great author.

[Winston*]

Yeah, I've read nine books by Huston. He's quality.

[number8]

I wasn't impressed by his comics. Turns out he's a better prose writer, even though he writes it in a hybrid screenplay format.

Alan Ball and him are adapting his Mystic Arts book into an HBO show. Let's see if he's as good writing television.

[D_Davis]

Started Karen Armstrong's A History of God yesterday. I really enjoy Armstrong's approach to comparative religion. She's a really neat lady.

I love the Charter for Compassion, and her corresponding TED Talk is incredibly moving.

http://charterforcompassion.org/

[D_Davis]

I wasn't impressed by his comics. Turns out he's a better prose writer, even though he writes it in a hybrid screenplay format.

Alan Ball and him are adapting his Mystic Arts book into an HBO show. Let's see if he's as good writing television.

Yeah - his comics weren't great. He's like the opposite of Neil Gaiman. Just goes to show how different writing prose novels and comic books is - one of the reasons why I believe that the two should not be confused with one another or compared to each other. In other words, Watchmen does not belong on a list of "best novels," but rather a list of best "graphic novels/comic books."

[Benny Profane]

The central conceit of If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, the second-person protagonist ("you" the reader) chasing the elusive conclusion to a novel you've already started, only to be sucked in by another one that you find equally if not more fascinating, does grow thin and too convoluted towards the end, as clever as it may be. What sucked me in most was the relationship with the Other Reader (Ludmilla), which unfortunately grows more abstract and distant as the novel progresses, and causes the rest of the framing story to lose momentum. HOWEVA, it is such a unique and whimsical point of view, the importance of "you" the reader involved in the story, and the priority of reading in general, that it's impossible not to call it a great work of art, albeit slightly disappointing after its incredible beginning. Really, one of a kind, so glad I read it.

[Benny Profane]

Now reading Why Orwell Matters, a sort of biography/essay by Christopher Hitchens. I saw him here in Philly on his book tour and got a signed copy.

[Hugh_Grant]

Now reading Why Orwell Matters, a sort of biography/essay by Christopher Hitchens. I saw him here in Philly on his book tour and got a signed copy.

Interesting.
Hitchens apparently is very ill.

[number8]

Yeah, canceled his tour. Benny got very lucky.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Finished Then We Came to the End today. It really surprised me. What started as a mish-mash of innocuous anecdotes quickly turned into a fascinating portrait of the small relationships in our lives. It focuses on the work environment, but it can also apply to school or organizations. It examines how these seemingly superficial and shallow encounters can leave strong imprints on our lives, and just how much of our self-image and importance we attribute to our career. It was both funny and poignant. Really strong work.

Next up: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

[ledfloyd]

yeah, i really enjoyed then we came to the end. in addition to the things you mentioned it also is an interesting commentary on the strange kind of relationships that exist in the workplace. the not-quite-friendships that arise and such. it's a very nuanced portrait of how we relate to one another and ourselves in the modern world.

i'm a fan of the moviegoer as well.

[EvilShoe]

I was wondering: does anyone know any good books (non-fiction) about the Cold War?

[ledfloyd]

blindness was great.

[baby doll]

I'm seventy-five pages into As I Lay Dying, and I'm so freaking confused.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I was wondering: does anyone know any good books (non-fiction) about the Cold War?

My dad read and loved this one (http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-New-History/dp/0143038273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278425582&sr=1-1), but I haven't read any myself.

[Benny Profane]

Next up: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy


Weird, my mom just lent this to me on Friday. I'll be reading it next.

[Hugh_Grant]

Next up: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this one, KF. (You too, Benny.) It bored me.

[lovejuice]

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this one, KF. (You too, Benny.) It bored me.
it doesn't bore me, but it comes out rather "pretentious." in a sense that percy's subject seems to be existentialism as canonized philosophy than as a human's condition.

[Lucky]

Has anyone read The Poisoner's Handbook? I saw it in the airport and am intrigued but I could use a quick review before I decide.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on this one, KF. (You too, Benny.) It bored me.

I have a little less than 100 pages left. I'll admit that it was certainly slow-going for the first 70 or so pages, but I'm hooked right now. Liking it a lot. Hopefully it carries the momentum through to the end.

[number8]

I'm on a pulp kick. I got some Sax Rhomer stuff. Gonna start with the Fu Manchu series.

[Dead & Messed Up]

So I wasn't much entertained or impressed by Beowulf. The translation I read (heard) by R. K. Gordon was kind of banal - I read that the translation by Seamus Heaney is much better.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I finished The Moviegoer tonight. I really liked it. Yes, it's meandering, and it kind of flounders at the start, but I liked Walker's prose, and I feel like it accurately tapped into the crisis of faith some go through, as well as the mundane nature of our existence. I also thought it raised some fairly interesting questions about the responsibility one feels for their family, and the importance of the individual. It struck a chord with me about breaking free from a family bond and living a life free of those pressures.

Started A Game of Thrones afterward. I'm intrigued by the first fifty pages.

[MacGuffin]

Has anybody read Underground by Murakami, about the 1995 Sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways?

[Benny Profane]

I finised Vile Bodies by Waugh this morning. Definitely a fast, entertaining read. I guess it's supposed to skewer the vapid young party-scene crowd of between-wars England, but it's too farcical to work as a satire, and not funny enough to work as a farce, though it definitely has its moments. As a huge fan of the other two Waughs I've read, this was pretty disappointing.

Now onto The Moviegoer.

[D_Davis]

Haven't been reading much this year. Too much personal drama to really focus. However, I am, slowly, working my way through two works of nonfiction:

Karen Armstrong's A History of God, and Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg. Both are good so far.

[number8]

Man, how come James O. Causey isn't more well-knowned? Frenzy is terrific, and I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a movie yet. Maybe I should attempt to adapt as spec...

[Hugh_Grant]

I finised Vile Bodies by Waugh this morning.

A guilty movie pleasure of mine is Bright Young Things, the Stephen Fry-directed adaptation of Vile Bodies. I haven't read the book, or any Waugh for that matter.

I just picked up Voices from Chernobyl from the library.

[Benny Profane]

Faulkner Goes Online 50 Years Later (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128513514)

[Malickfan]

Reading Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler and loving it.

[Duncan]

Read Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. It was alright. Reminded me a lot of Kafka's Amerika, except not nearly as good. Naive person is thrown into society, he has incredible ups and downs of fortune, hilarity ensues, amazing coincidences occur, yada yada. Pretty funny at times, but not especially moving or deep. I will say this, though. Waugh has an incredible sense of economy. He conveys a lot of stuff with very few words. You're never lost, you're never unsure of your footing. His prose is very skeletal (in a good way) and clean.

[dreamdead]

Reread Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods for class. Just marvelous in its depiction of a country fraught with historical amnesia of its crimes, and it serves as a good postmodern document of how subjective storytelling tries to chronicle an objective truth. I could see Duncan and Melville enjoying this one...

[Benny Profane]

I wish I'd known that Molloy by Beckett was one giant block of text before I bought it. They should say something about that in the description on Amazon. Ugh. Use a paragraph.

Guess I'll still read it next though.

[Milky Joe]

lol

[Kurosawa Fan]

I wish I'd known that Molloy by Beckett was one giant block of text before I bought it. They should say something about that in the description on Amazon. Ugh. Use a paragraph.

Guess I'll still read it next though.

What'd you think of The Moviegoer?

[Benny Profane]

What'd you think of The Moviegoer?

I agree with your praise, but I just didn't find it very memorable. Maybe because there wasn't enough exposition on some of the major characters? My favorite part was his little sojourn to the beach with Sharon and his description of the "malaise" aspect of courtship. I thought it lost steam when he jumped from her to Kate, a character that was tough to figure in terms of his desire for her. I liked it, just didn't love it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I agree with your praise, but I just didn't find it very memorable. Maybe because there wasn't enough exposition on some of the major characters? My favorite part was his little sojourn to the beach with Sharon and his description of the "malaise" aspect of courtship. I thought it lost steam when he jumped from her to Kate, a character that was tough to figure in terms of his desire for her. I liked it, just didn't love it.

I think that's a fair assessment. I thought Kate was the weak link as well, or at least his connection with Kate, and the book started to lose me during their "romance", but I thought it wrapped up really well with his discussion with his aunt after returning from Chicago. The book had far more strengths than weaknesses (I agree about the "malaise" moment being a highlight of the novel), but I do agree that the experience was rather fleeting.

[Hugh_Grant]

Made a last-minute decision to teach Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun next semester. I guess this means I had better read it first. :P
Have any of my po-co peeps read it?

[Qrazy]

I'm 1/3 through The Idiot, 2/3's through Le Grand Meulnes and 1/4 through Ulysses. I'm also thinking of finally reading Book 11 of The Wheel of Time.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm here to implore everyone, even those who aren't fans of the fantasy genre, to give A Game of Thrones a chance. It's so well written, and such a great story, and from everything I've read the series only gets better.

[megladon8]

I'm here to implore everyone, even those who aren't fans of the fantasy genre, to give A Game of Thrones a chance. It's so well written, and such a great story, and from everything I've read the series only gets better.


I'm so glad you enjoyed this. I was awed by it, as well.

[megladon8]

I'm about 50 pages into "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" and really enjoying it.

[Mysterious Dude]

Made a last-minute decision to teach Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun next semester. I guess this means I had better read it first. :P
Have any of my po-co peeps read it?
It's an entertaining enough way to learn a little history, but I don't find it to be great literature. Might be a good book for a class, because it's not too difficult, although it's a little long (but I don't know what your students are prepared for).

[Grouchy]

I was feeling kind of embarassed with myself because I haven't read practically anything this year, so I perused the bookshelf for something I'd bought and not read, and I ended up knocking off Bukowski's Hollywood in one night-sitting. It's my first meeting with Bukowski, and a friend who is a fan told me later that I'd picked up the worst novel to start with, but I had me a good time. I enjoyed guessing through the nickname and seeing what real-life Hollywood personality was being spoken about every time and I laughed. It doesn't amount to anything much, but it sets me on the right track for reading more of the Chinaski adventures.

[Benny Profane]

I was feeling kind of embarassed with myself because I haven't read practically anything this year, so I perused the bookshelf for something I'd bought and not read, and I ended up knocking off Bukowski's Hollywood in one night-sitting. It's my first meeting with Bukowski, and a friend who is a fan told me later that I'd picked up the worst novel to start with, but I had me a good time. I enjoyed guessing through the nickname and seeing what real-life Hollywood personality was being spoken about every time and I laughed. It doesn't amount to anything much, but it sets me on the right track for reading more of the Chinaski adventures.



Thumbs up. You should definitely read Ham on Rye, which can also be done in one sitting. You are on a good path :)

[Hugh_Grant]

Thanks, Issac. The Biafran War is a post-colonial event I cover in quite a bit of detail, so that part of my lesson plan factored into my choice. I'm sure the students will say, "It's really long!" Our anthology is fairly comprehensive, so I was just looking for a novel to supplement the book, especially the Chinua Achebe story "Girls at War."

[D_Davis]

I'm here to implore everyone, even those who aren't fans of the fantasy genre, to give A Game of Thrones a chance. It's so well written, and such a great story, and from everything I've read the series only gets better.

I'm finally starting this after I finish 'Salem's Lot.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm finally starting this after I finish 'Salem's Lot.

Can't wait to get your thoughts. I can't imagine you being disappointed.

[D_Davis]

Can't wait to get your thoughts. I can't imagine you being disappointed.

I'm looking forward to it. Probably start it this weekend sometime. I'm really in the mood for something sprawling and epic right now. I need something grand to escape to.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I just found a really bizarre, exciting place right by my house. It's called Russell's Blueberries and Book Barn (http://www.therussellcorp.com/index.html). It's a blueberry farm with a giant used book store. I'm going to go check it out tonight. If it's cool, I'll automatically be disappointed that it's only open from July 4th through Labor Day. Not very convenient for my book-buying obsession.

[megladon8]

Oh wow, that sounds like a really cool place, KF.

Blueberries are dee-lish.

[Winston*]

Those two things sound like they go together as well as blueberry stained hands and the pages of a novel.

[amberlita]

I'm here to implore everyone, even those who aren't fans of the fantasy genre, to give A Game of Thrones a chance. It's so well written, and such a great story, and from everything I've read the series only gets better.

I'm about 250 pages in. I had heard good things but it wasn't till you started raving about it that I decided to go for it. The chapters for Ned and Cate tend to drag a bit for me, but they are still solid and everything with the kids has been really awesome.

[D_Davis]

I'm hoping I like Game of Thrones more than I liked Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, the other uber-popular, "life-changing" fantasy book I recently read. I didn't dislike Wolfe's book, I actually thought it was pretty good, but it didn't blow my socks off like I thought it would.

The best single-volume fantasy I've ever read is still J.M. McDermott's The Last Dragon (absolutely brilliant in every way), and the best series is a tie between Michael Moorcock's Elric Saga, and Stephen Kings The Dark Tower.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm about 250 pages in. I had heard good things but it wasn't till you started raving about it that I decided to go for it. The chapters for Ned and Cate tend to drag a bit for me, but they are still solid and everything with the kids has been really awesome.

I'm glad you're liking it. Ned and Cate get much better as the story progresses.

D, I'm not sure whether you'll think it's life-changing, as you've read much more from the genre than I have, but for a novice such as myself, it's been fantastic.

[Duncan]

Read David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System. It was alright. Not nearly as good as IJ. It almost felt "indie" what with its quirky characters and super-hip irony. Sometimes comes off as a bunch of pseudo-people (and pseudo-parrots) discussing Wittgenstein and Auden, but with little to no pathos behind it. Also feels like he incorporated a bunch of short stories he probably wrote during college, and they're almost all a chore to get through, being barely part of the narrative, and even then only in an intellectual sense. It's definitely funny at times, and at times stimulating or whatever, but I never really got a handle on Lenore Beadsman, the main character, or why everyone seems to obsess over her. I mean aside from the fact that she's hot, that is. Basically, he got a lot better.

[EvilShoe]

For K_Fan:
The French Lieutenant's Woman: Took me a while to get into this one. Thought it would end up not being my thing, but once Fowles begins to toy around with the Victorian conventions some more it really started to grab me. By the ending I was a fan.

Cloud Atlas: The way Mitchell easily changes writing style is beyond remarkable. I wasn't fully into all of the stories (the Luisa Rey thing left me cold) but there's enough here to revisit one day. Very much loved the Adam Ewing, Zedelghem and Cavendish tales.

[ledfloyd]

i really love cloud atlas. even the luisa rey story.

[number8]

http://sites.google.com/site/fadedoasis/misterbookseller/

[amberlita]

I'm glad you're liking it. Ned and Cate get much better as the story progresses.

You're right. Actually, I feel rather stupid. About 50 pages after I said this, their storylines really took off. *headslap*

[lovejuice]

The first half of Swann's Way is as great as anything I've ever read. The second is trying my patient. A 40-pages on how jealous the main character feels is not exactly my cup of tea.

[Scar]

Picked up an old beat up hardcover of The Exorcist and read it this week while in St Louis, (and loved it). Definitely getting back into reading. I think its probably do to the books on tape I'd listen to during all of my driving with work. I listened to the whole Empire of Man series, and now am debating whether or not to buy the actual books.

[Kurosawa Fan]

We went to that blueberry farm and book barn today. Pretty cool place made all the more worth it by Val finding a 1943 copy of Wuthering Heights in great condition, which feature fantastic illustrations. I took some photos on my phone that do it no justice at all.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/mike3245/IMAG0069.jpg
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/mike3245/IMAG0070.jpg
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/mike3245/IMAG0071.jpg
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/mike3245/IMAG0072.jpg

[lovejuice]

Swann's Way: At the end the good outweighs the bad, and I'm quite satisfied. The book, though, will remain for me a curious mix of what I most like and despite in literature. It's a brilliant portrayal and study of time. My favorite part is around the end of chapter 2 when Swann starts to recover from his love pain thank to time. Yet what precedes is a most insufferable chunk. It makes sense to the structure of narrative, but I does hate it when a writer put us into the head of a "stupid character."

I feel like reading it again one day, but perhaps skipping some 100 pages or so.

[megladon8]

That is divine, KF.

I've never read "Wuthering Heights", and apparently I'm really missing out.

[Milky Joe]

Very cool. WH is one of the finest novels ever writ, by my count.

[ledfloyd]

i finished the trial today. it was very kafkaesque.

[SpaceOddity]

We went to that blueberry farm and book barn today. Pretty cool place made all the more worth it by Val finding a 1943 copy of Wuthering Heights in great condition, which feature fantastic illustrations. I took some photos on my phone that do it no justice at all.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e4/mike3245/IMAG0069.jpg


I've coveted that edition for aeons. Shall eat all the blueberries in vengence.

*chomps wrathfully*

[Mara]

I own that edition of Wuthering Heights, in great condition.

...

I feel obliged to point out that I have mixed feelings about that book.

EDIT: To add to the strangeness, I was just looking through it this morning. My brother just read WH for a class and I was going to show it to him when he came to dinner tonight.

[number8]

Best edition:

http://www.brontes.nl/wp-content/uploads/wh_twilight.jpg

[number8]

http://sites.google.com/site/fadedoasis/misterbookseller/

Oops. Link no longer working. try this one:

http://blag.ipood.net/2008/09/mister-bookseller/

[Benny Profane]

I finished Molloy the other day. Question for those who read it:

So was the first part all a creation of Moran? Or was his own story a creation by Molloy? Both talk about writing for others without really knowing what they're saying or why, so I'm a little confused. The last lines from Moran seems to indicate that a lot of what is said is a total fabrication.

Anyway, narrators like this get a little under my skin. If they really are stone-sucking, disintegrated simpletons who don't even know where their mother lives or what town they're from, how can they express themselves with such florid, precise language? It doesn't line up. Unless it's all a ruse, which is entirely possible. I liked the ideas that Beckett is conveying, but I didn't necessarily think they were executed that well. Too much "I did this, then I did that, then I did this, then I did that". It was all a little exhausting at times. But maybe that's the point, I don't know. But if that's the point, it could have been more interesting. I think I should read it again.

[Mara]

*Twilight Zone Music*

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/maragirl/001-10.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v254/maragirl/002-7.jpg

[Kurosawa Fan]

Our find feels so much more insignificant now. :sad:

[Mara]

Our find feels so much more insignificant now. :sad:

No, not at all! It's a great find, and a beautiful book. (And apparently hard to find in England.) I've been searching my brain to remember where I got mine, and I can't remember. I do know that I already had a copy of WH but I HAD to buy this one as well, because it was so purdy.

Mine has a long gift dedication on the title page in pen, but other than that, it's in pretty good condition.

[Kurosawa Fan]

No, not at all! It's a great find, and a beautiful book. (And apparently hard to find in England.) I've been searching my brain to remember where I got mine, and I can't remember. I do know that I already had a copy of WH but I HAD to buy this one as well, because it was so purdy.

Mine has a long gift dedication on the title page in pen, but other than that, it's in pretty good condition.

Only joking, it's very cool that you have the same edition. We own a different copy too, but couldn't pass it up either. Ours has a short inscription, but it's unreadable at this point. It also has Bronte's birth and death year next to her name on the title page. Not sure why.

I also bought some early 30's to late 40's editions of The Trial, This Gun for Hire, and Sons and Lovers.

[megladon8]

I'm really enjoying Hardy's "Tess".

Any other fans of this one?

[Mara]

I'm really enjoying Hardy's "Tess".

Any other fans of this one?

It's my favorite Hardy, but I find it difficult to read, emotionally. There's just suffering compounding suffering compounding suffering. Some of the prose is just achingly beautiful, though.