The Book Discussion Thread

[Qrazy]

Melville is dead wrong about it.

It's not often cited as one of the greatest science fiction books ever written for nothing.

My reivew:

Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place,
The stars my destination.

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard dying...but nobody thought so.

The Stars My Destination is punk-effing-rock. It's a primal scream of prose, written with verve, skill, style, and a desire to tear down established norms - it's controlled insanity. It gives the big middle finger to the science fiction genre, punches it in the face, curb stomps it, steals its car and drives away with its girlfriend.

I cannot imagine having read this upon it initial publication in 1956; imagine Mozart hearing Minor Threat or Voivod - major head explosion. It shames many of its contemporaries, makes them look dated and small, and it continues to do so now, fifty-two years later. Samual R. Delany said that it is “considered by many to be the single greatest SF novel written,” and I wouldn't disagree with anyone making this proclamation.

Alfred Bester tells us the story of Gully Foyle, one of the most memorable protagonists I've ever encountered. This dude is a bad-ass: an amoral anti-hero hell-bent on revenge and the destruction of the establishment. He is THE anti-hero, all others cower in his presence: “I am vengeance, I am the night, I am Batman,” ha! It is to laugh. The catalyst for his plight, his anger, his quest of passion, and his ultimate growth into a moral being is a simple one; in a word, he was betrayed.

Foyle is a powerful character, a sledgehammer of personality, one that dominates the entire narrative. He is an imposing force; a foreboding storm cloud lurking over the heads of those who would stop him; a man driven by an idiot's determination and a primal urge. He is the definition of tenacious, he spits in the face of the absurd society in which he lives and laughs while walking away.

So much of what we consider modern “science fiction,” or “cyberpunk” can be traced back to Bester's novel, and even if he didn't invent these conventions, he did perfect their molds.

A partial checklist of ass-kicking found within:

* Men augmented with cybernetics to enhance their physical and mental abilities.

* Bullet-time, and martial arts.

* A world overrun with monstrous conglomerates, broken up into clans of ruling families and controlled by megalomaniac businessmen.

* Tribes of techno-bohemians living on asteroids where they brand each other with garish tattoos - a cult of savage scientists.

* People travel by “jaunting,” a kind of personal teleportation. A jaunt here, a jaunt there, a meeting on the West Coast at 9 a.m., a jaunt to the East Coast for an early lunch, followed by a jaunt back home thousands of miles away. It's a personal information super highway.

* Radioactive body guards.

* Men and woman who have deprived themselves of all senses in hopes of enlightenment.

* A telekinetic, seventy-year old child.

...And the list could just go on. Bester glances at as many ideas in this one book as some authors cherish during their lifetimes. That he handles it all with only a trace of the old infodump is his true genius. It's couldn't be more jam-packed with ideas, trust me, I think this was scientifically proven.

While I personally like The Demolished Man more [this is not true anymore], The Stars My Destination possesses an edge sharp enough to slice through an atom. It's an unrelenting trek through the stars, and beyond, spearheaded by a man bursting with unbelievable energy and emotion. With these two novels, Alfred Bester helped to bridge the gap between the pulps and the new wave; he was at the vanguard of literary science fiction, genre fiction that made outsiders pay attention.

The Stars My Destination benefits from this transitional period. It possesses a rip-roaring, hardboiled adventure yarn, and probes deep into more experimental territories with the use of typographical manipulation and a modern attitude. What's most astonishing is how dangerous it still is. This is a daring book, one that takes chances, and it is bolstered by its unwillingness to conform. For all that is said about the cyberpunk sub-genre, I find it a little telling that its most brave, interesting, and punk-rock example was written three decades before the term was even coined.

It makes sense, though, that one of my favorite books is one of his least favorite. :) We're like polar opposites. One of my most despised novels of all time is Moby Dick. :)

2001 wishes it had a tenth of the brilliance of Bester's book.

I've read the book 7 times, and the last time I read it I immediately started over, reading it twice in a row. It's the only book I've ever done that with.

Well my tastes do tend to be more in line with his than yours when it comes to film and books. But I think I also have a higher tolerance for middling prose in the name of a good story than he does so I'll definitely give it a shot.

[Qrazy]

Have you read the Hyperion Cantos D? It's one of my dad's favorite series.

[D_Davis]

Have you read the Hyperion Cantos D? It's one of my dad's favorite series.

I've tried a few times but can't get into Simmons writing. To me, it feels obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. I want to read it all someday, but I can't seem to crack the 100th page barrier.

I know many people who swear by it, though, so you should give it a shot.

[D_Davis]

Looks like I should hit my revised goal of reading 70 books this year. Started at 65, raised it to 75, and then finally lowered it down to 70.

It's been a really good year for me. Read two Pulitzer winners (the most I've ever read in a given year, I think), and one of them (Lonesome Dove) now ranks as one of the best books I've ever read. I will never forget my time spent with those characters.

Discovered three great new-to-me authors - Vladimir Sorokin. The Ice Trilogy is probably the best science fiction I've read all year. And with Edward Erdelac's Merkabah Rider series, I discovered the uber-coolness of mixing Jewish folklore and religion with the mystical western genre. And last but not least, Manly Wade Wellman; the Silver John stories will be hard to beat.

Also, three great novels from long-time favorites: 11/22/64, from Stephen King; Never Knew Another, from J.M. McDermott; and The Great Lover, from Michael Cisco, one of the most challenging and rewarding books I've ever read.

Hopefully I'll finish up the year with a few more good reads.

[Qrazy]

Nevermind, I will not be reading The Stars My Destination as after reading the first few sentences I was reminded that I read it in high school. I remember enjoying the plot for the most part but finding the writing mediocre on the whole. I think I agree(d) with Melville's structural criticisms.

Wikipedia has also informed me that I agree with Damon Knight about both Bester and Bradbury.

On Bester: 'The well-regarded science fiction writer and critic Damon Knight, in In Search of Wonder (1956),[13] wrote of the novel's "bad taste, inconsistency, irrationality, and downright factual errors", but called the ending of the book "grotesquely moving".'

On Bradbury: 'Although [Bradbury] has a large following among science fiction readers, there is at least an equally large contingent of people who cannot stomach his work at all... His imagination is mediocre; he borrows nearly all his backgrounds and props, and distorts them badly; wherever he is required to invent anything—a planet, a Martian, a machine—the image is flat and unconvincing.'

[Qrazy]

In fairness to Bester I decided to read Demolition Man instead. I'm about halfway through and zipping along. It's a very tight work which I like. It could perhaps use a bit more nuance in regards to the psychologies of it's characters but as a future noir tale of murder and intrigue it is certainly delivering. And really this one has more in common with Hammett than Dostoyevsky so I can't and shouldn't really expect philosophical angst.

It's also an extremely cinematic work. I'm surprised it hasn't been adapted yet.

[Melville]

I think I agree(d) with Melville's structural criticisms.
The entire plot hinges on a wholly unearned twist and the flimsiest love story ever. And the homage to Count of Monte Cristo is very half-assed.

[kuehnepips]

...

Hopefully I'll finish up the year with a few more good reads.

Not if Melville recommends them. :lol:

I read The Hyperion Cantos years ago: waste of time.

I'm back to Stark's Parker books. Today it's Comeback. Recommended: Ask the Parrot and Backflash.

[Melville]

Not if Melville recommends them. :lol:
Dostoevsky or nothing!

[Qrazy]

The entire plot hinges on a wholly unearned twist and the flimsiest love story ever. And the homage to Count of Monte Cristo is very half-assed.

Care to expand? It's been 13 years since I've read it.

[Melville]

Care to expand? It's been 13 years since I've read it.
The protagonist spends most of the book brutishly seeking revenge, all of a sudden he falls in love in the most spectacularly unconvincing bit of romance ever, and then he discovers that the girl he loves was responsible for the thing he's been seeking vengeance for. Realizing the complexity of humanity, he becomes like Dave Bowman and transcends time and space, overcoming his brutish and blind simplicity and thereby signifying humanity's limitless potential. Since the girl is only introduced fairly far into the book and the romance (along with the characterization and dialogue throughout the book) is so incredibly half-assed, the twist, and its impact on him, is risible.

[dreamdead]

Now that I'm finished with it, I remain really impressed with DeLillo's Underworld. The measured cadence of DeLillo's sentences, together with the engaged theme of Cold War destruction echoing through the entirety of the novel, is something that is a strong achievement. More interesting, however, is the coda, which cogently offers an assessment of '90s politics and capitalism in '97, and offers what I still find to be the most transcendent treatment of the internet and its possibility for human "connection" in the last 10-12 pages. That finale is just breathtaking, and worth coming back to and lingering over every few weeks. Really excited to have finished it.

Reading Willa Cather's The Professor's House now, which is as divorced as possible from DeLillo's themes and treatment.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm having a lot of trouble reading Paradise Lost. The language is warm and inviting, but the more it attempts to graft logic onto the twin stories of Satan's fall and the loss of paradise, the more it reveals the inherent contradictions and impossibilities that exist in the two. Furthermore, while the first half finds much success by focusing exclusively on Satan's delusions, arrogance, and attempted retaking of Heaven (with a last-minute interception courtesy of Jesus H. Christ), the second half dealing with Adam and Eve suggests that Milton had some serious issues with women that needed sorting out. Or can I just blame it on the time period? Either way, I think it's horrible to try and re-frame the Eden story by making Eve an easily smitten, vain idiot...but making Adam a more intelligent being who essentially "takes one for the team" when he eats the apple. He knows what's going to happen, but he eats anyway so he can stay connected to Eve. Awwww. Great husband, awful wife.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm reading this, but I'll be gladder when I'm done.

[dreamdead]

I finished up Willa Cather's The Professor's House; it's an understated treatise on art, peace, and Old World values in the midst of a dehumanizing modernity and avoidance of, and elegy of those lost in, the First World War. It actually, too, empathizes with Jewish minorities more than I expected, regarding racism against them with judgment rather than approval. So that was nice to see, and makes me feel that Cather was more inclusive with regard to ethnic minorities than most of her peers. If it doesn't flounder much, it also doesn't strive too hard. Good and enjoyable, but it's the least of hers considering My Antonia and A Lost Lady.

[monolith94]

Currently about a third of the way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Really? This sold 21 million copies? This? I don't think I'll be changing my policy about avoiding beach reads anytime soon.

[Mara]

Currently about a third of the way through The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Really? This sold 21 million copies? This? I don't think I'll be changing my policy about avoiding beach reads anytime soon.

It's awful. And the ending is particularly bad.

[D_Davis]

Started Joe R. Lansdale's latest, All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky. Being a YA novel (Lansdale's second), you can tell the parts where he dials things back, but it doesn't feel like it's missing anything. It's basically Lansdale's take on The Grapes of Wrath, mixed in with a coming of age story and some crime genre stuff. It's very well written, of course, and contains Lansdale's expert use of dialog and character. It'd be nice to see this on the top of the YA charts, but it probably won't be.

[Kurosawa Fan]

This might be my favorite new site (http://www.literature-map.com/), so long as the tool proves useful. It's a virtual literature map, in which you type in an author's name and it provides a map of other authors you might like that share similarities. The closer the name appears on the map, the more they have in common, or the greater chance that a reader would like that author.

[dreamdead]

Thanks for posting that, KF. I'd never seen it before, but it's plenty cool. I look forward to experimenting with it in the coming weeks...

[Mara]

This might be my favorite new site (http://www.literature-map.com/), so long as the tool proves useful. It's a virtual literature map, in which you type in an author's name and it provides a map of other authors you might like that share similarities. The closer the name appears on the map, the more they have in common, or the greater chance that a reader would like that author.

Interesting. It doesn't go for the obvious, either... putting David Sedaris close to Oscar Wilde is surprisingly apt.

[D_Davis]

Interesting. It doesn't go for the obvious, either... putting David Sedaris close to Oscar Wilde is surprisingly apt.

Yeah - both satirists. I think I've heard people compare the two before.

However, that site does put J.G. Ballard really far away from J.G. Ballard, twice.
:D

Actually, it's a really cool site. Love stuff like that. Discovered a new author close to Michael Cisco that I want to check out. I love how there are only 5 or so authors "like" Michael Cisco, and one of them is Thomas Ligotti.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Yeah, it has some kinks. I've seen authors show up twice, only with different spellings. It's pretty bare bones, but it seems like a really solid way to discover new authors that would appeal to the sensibilities of just about any reader.

I wish the site explained more about their formula for connection. The closest match to Edgar Allen Poe is Mark Twain. Seems a bit odd, since most fans of Poe go all in for his gothic and macabre style, and that certainly isn't something replicated by Twain.

[Benny Profane]

Site is awesome. Good stuff there. Would be even better if you could name an author and book title and have a map of that, since if you've never heard of the author before, how would you know which one of his/her books you should try.

[D_Davis]

I wish the site explained more about their formula for connection.

I'd like to know more about this as well.

[Qrazy]

I wish the site had a better aesthetic.

[dreamdead]

Reread Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector for class tomorrow. I think I am actually more impressed with its thematic weight now than I was back in March. The interplay between pilgrimages and materialism, love and delay, activism and enterprise, surveillance and family--all of them feel part of a dialectic rather than a solitary view forced onto the reader. I'm looking forward to the reaction from students...

I'll be rereading DeLillo's Falling Man to prep for chapter two of my dissertation, and will likely finally tackle Harthorne's The Scarlet Letter, which I've somehow avoided during my literary classes.

[Mara]

I am almost done with The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, the first of a four-part science fiction series that is supposed to be one of the all-time greats. And... well. I find myself almost equally enraptured and frustrated. The language is dense and the entire book is reader-unfriendly. He won't explain anything that is going on, from the time period of the book, to the social structure, to the language. It's written as if we were inhabitants of this medieval world (that I think is actually supposed to take place thousands of years in the future) and therefore are given no context, clues or insights into what we're hearing.

At the same time, it's kind of beautiful and fascinating. I JUST DON'T KNOW.


"M-m-master, when I was on the Quasar I had a paracoita, a doll, you see, a genicon, so beautiful with her great pupils as dark as wells, her i-irises purple like asters or pansies blooming in summer, Master, whole beds of them, I thought, had b-been gathered to make those eyes, that flesh that always felt sun-warmed. Wh-wh-where is she now, my own scopolagna, my poppet? Let h-h-hooks be buried in the hands that took her! Crush them, Master, beneath stones. Where has she gone from the lemon-wood box I made for her, where she never slept at all, for she lay with me all night, not in the box, the lemon-wood box where she waited all day, watch-and-watch, Master, smiling when I laid her in so she might smile when I drew her out. How soft her hands were, her little hands. Like d-d-doves. She might have flown with them about the cabin had she not chosen instead to lie with me. W-w-wind in their guts about your w-windlass, stuff their eyes into their mouths. Unman them, shave them clean below so their doxies may not know them, their lemans may rebuke them, leave them to the brazen laughter of the brazen mouths of st-st-strumpets. Work your will upon those guilty. Where was their mercy on the innocent? When did they tremble, when weep? What kind of men could do as they have done-- thieves, false friends, betrayers, bad shipmates, no shipmates, murderers and kidnappers. W-without you, where are their nightmares, where are their restitutions, so long promised? Where are their chains, fetters, manacles, and cangues? Where are their abacinations, that shall leave them blind? Where are the defenestrations that shall break their bones, where is the estrapade that shall grind their joines? Where is she, the beloved whom I lost?"

These are the first words we hear from the character, then we never see him again.

What?

[D_Davis]

The lack of exposition is what makes that book what it is, at least for me. I wish more followed suit. I love being kept in the dark about the world - too many fantasy things spend far too much time world-building out of context.

I didn't love it as much as many people (I still need to read the second half of the series), but I really appreciate it and respect it.

If you end up liking it, I highly recommend The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco. Similar in atmosphere and style, but I prefer the story Cisco tells and the world he creates even more (it's also shorter). I also think that Cisco is the better writer of the two, at least with my somewhat limited experience with Wolfe.

[Mara]

Yeah, I'm reserving judgment for now.





Of course, pointing out that the female characters are really weak is pretty redundant at this point. What is it with classic science fiction and women?

[D_Davis]

Of course, pointing out that the female characters are really weak is pretty redundant at this point. What is it with classic science fiction and women?

I found that especially odd and troubling here, seeing as how so many people talk about this book as being so bold and progressive. This is NOT a work of classic science fiction, and Wolfe is often heralded as some break-through author, and yet his depictions of women in these books is as dates as they come.

I would again point to Cisco as someone who does not fall prey to these traps. Cisco is far more literary and progressive in his portrayal of gender roles. He is not writing for the SFF crowd, he is writing for the more literary minded (whatever that means, right?).

I think Cisco will go down in history as one of the great writers of our time - regardless of genre. I hope I am proven right in 50-100 years time.

[ledfloyd]

a friend dumped as i lay dying, geek love, and a book called witches' rings by kerstin ekman on me while i was visiting, so i guess those are my next three reads. i've started geek love and am enjoying it thus far.

[Mara]

I think Cisco will go down in history as one of the great writers of our time - regardless of genre. I hope I am proven right in 50-100 years time.

I'll have to put him on my reading list. By the way, the stuttering sex-doll guy showed up again, so I'm less annoyed.

[Lucky]

Looking forward to starting Light Years tonight before bed. It took ms eight months to finish A Clash of Kings so this will be a refreshing change of pace.

[D_Davis]

All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky, by Joe R. Lansdale

3.5 Stars

This is a very solid book. But I was hoping for more.

All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky (wins my award for best book title of the year), is The Grapes of Wrath done up Lansdale Style. Being a YA novel (not his first, despite what it says on the jacket), it contains most of what makes Lansdale Lansdale, but dialed back a few notches. I don't read much YA fiction at all, but I'd bet it would be safe to say that it is better written than most - it is from Lansdale after all.

And ultimately that's what left me a tad bid disappointed - I wanted more emotion and pathos. I thought it would be more like The Bottoms, or Lansdale's crowning achievement A Fine Dark Line. While it is more adventurous and exciting than either of those novels, it doesn't contain the same emotional punch. This was especially surprising given the short novel's grim beginnings - three youngsters from Oklahoma find themselves orphaned after their parents die during the dirty thirties.

I was expecting a journey of self-discovery and loss innocence, and while those aspects are in place the tale Lansdale weaves is more genre-focused, complete with gangsters, a bank heist, and a showdown at a carnival. And although all of these elements are handled with the care and skill I've come to expect from my favorite East Texas yarn spinner, it also felt kind of dialed in.

I will give credit to Lansdale, though, for depicting what I think is his first good Christian character. It's no secret that he harps on and on about how evil and corrupt he thinks Christianity is, and usually his religious characters are evil incarnate. And so when he describes a character as being a charitable Christian, I thought she was going to end up being a she-devil in disguise poised and ready to do the most despicable things. And then I was surprised to discover that she really was a good person.

I'd like it if this book became popular in schools. I can see it being read along side something like Where the Red Fern Grows. I think boys and girls would both like it, as Lansdale does a fantastic job of creating both male and female characters. And while I might have been somewhat disappointed due to high expectations, a new young reader just discovering Lansdale will probably really like it. And boy howdy will they be surprised by what else that guy has in store for them.

[Izzy Black]

Reading Gail Fine's Plato on Knowledge and Forms: selected essays and Plato's Theaetetus. I'm also reading Jason Stanley's Knowledge and Practical Interests.

[monolith94]

Mara, this is a major major spoiler but...

Severian himself is, to a certain extent, a female character. Somewhere along in the series, he takes part in a ceremony where he eats a scifi chemical + a piece of of her body and in the process takes on her memories and a bit of her personality.

I can really, really understand how someone would potentially see the female characters as... not strong female characters, but I really don't think so. I <3 Dorcas.

[monolith94]

Mara, don't read that! That's such a huge f'ing spoiler. Just read the whole series. Even if you hate it.

I love The Book of the New Sun so much. I love it more than Hamlet.

[monolith94]

I'd sooner give up the ability to eat chocolate ice cream than give up the ability to reread the book of the new sun.

That's love.

[Mara]

Mara, don't read that! That's such a huge f'ing spoiler. Just read the whole series. Even if you hate it.

I don't hate it. I just find it a little bit frustrating. I started the second book but I've been busy this week. Maybe this weekend.

[lovejuice]

My friend and I are going to open a small publishing house in which we buy the right to and translate books in English. We are going to focus on non-fiction Chick Lit. yes, you read it correctly. A genre I have zero knowledge of, but I heard sold a million in Thailand.

Any recommendation? I am thinking along the line of, perhaps,

http://www.amazon.com/Hes-Just-That-Into-Understanding/dp/068987474X

or

http://www.amazon.com/Mars-Women-Venus-Communication-Relationships/dp/006016848X

It doesn't have to be uber-famous. Since we are a small house, I rather have a moderately-known book that is actually quite good.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Woo! Finished the Bhagavad-Gita. Only took a year of pecking away at it.

Interesting stuff. Some significant agreements with and divergence from my Christian upbringing. The upshot's chiefly about abandoning the desire for rewards for our actions. The old, useful idea of rejecting temporary pleasures, making peace with ineffable mysteries, with the end result being enlightenment and post-mortem unity with God (or Krishna). Bonus being that Krishna seems to recognize that the Hindu cosmology is really just representative of more elemental, fundamental truths. This is a bit more enlightened than certain other religions that hold their cosmologies to be a literal part of reality.

I read a translation by Eknath Easwaren, and it was pretty good, if short on poetic flourishes. I have another translation at home, so I should check it out.

Anyways, highly recommended.

[Benny Profane]

The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker. A rambling collection of observations from a young, lonely character, who analyzes (and you can even say obsesses) over the smaller moments of life (tying your shoes, running simple errands) and the products associated with them. The "plot" takes place entirely over the course of an escalator ride in a corporate building. The man gets in very deep detail about items like shoelaces, straws, staplers, vending machines, toilets, office small-talk, dry-clean hangers, etc, professing marvel and wonder at the genius of things we take for granted. After all, daily life isn't comprised of big character arcs or even interesting events or dialogue, it's mostly fleeting thoughts and observations going on entirely inside our head, and for this character, in an office environment. If this doesn't sound very exciting, it isn't. But it's always interesting and mostly insightful. At only 135 pages it is mercifully short, and the perfect length for an exercise like this. Though I must warn you, there are footnotes, and lots of them. He even goes out of his way to justify them late in the book. Recommended to people looking for something a little different.

[dreamdead]

Man, subtlety isn't the name of the game for Hawthorne. Reading Scarlet Letter and every few pages he's sure to reinforce the sinful shame woven onto Hester's person. Gorgeous prose, something I remember from The Blithedale Romance, but I'd forgotten how heavy-handed some of the early American literature can be, even if I know he's going to try to subvert that to expose Puritan hypocrisy later...

[Lucky]

Yeah, I never finished The Scarlet Letter. I had similar complaints. I was also reading it for a Great American Novels class, and reading is never as enjoyable when you're assigned pages every night. Speaking of which, that class introduced me to a novel called Hope Leslie which I thoroughly enjoyed and never heard talked about since. I can remember envisioning it would make a pretty decent movie. Have any of you read it/heard of it? Mara?

[Grouchy]

So I've been reading some literary classics lately.

Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls was very readable. I spent more than 200 pages wondering why everyone talked in such a weird way until I realized that he was trying to find equivalent words for Spanish in English even if the translation did not really mean the same thing. That was bizarre. I would be curious about the movie version except it's fairly obvious that the political debate and the ruminations on war must have been completely excised by Hollywood. I did imagine the main characters as Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Then I read The Stranger by Albert Camus in one sitting. Incredible prose. Incredible depth an implications for such a simple narrative. It's scary how easy it is to identify with Mersault a lot more than the people who surround him. I think that's perhaps because he's so honest about his apathy instead of giving in under the pressure that society puts on him.

[Mara]

Yeah, I never finished The Scarlet Letter. I had similar complaints. I was also reading it for a Great American Novels class, and reading is never as enjoyable when you're assigned pages every night. Speaking of which, that class introduced me to a novel called Hope Leslie which I thoroughly enjoyed and never heard talked about since. I can remember envisioning it would make a pretty decent movie. Have any of you read it/heard of it? Mara?

No, I haven't. I'll have to put that on the list.

And Hawthorne may not be subtle, but I think The Scarlet Letter is pretty amazing.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I read a translation by Eknath Easwaren, and it was pretty good, if short on poetic flourishes. I have another translation at home, so I should check it out.

Anyways, highly recommended.

Okay, got a chance today to look at some of the differences between Easwaren and Swami Prabhupada (author of the Bhagavad Gita As It Is). The differences are significant:


2:12 There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed.

vs.

2:12 Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be


6:46 Meditation is superior to severe ascetism and the path to knowledge. It is also superior to selfless service.

vs.

6:46 A yogi is greater than the ascetic, greater than the empiricist and greater than the fruitive worker. Therefore, O Arjuna, in all circumstances, be a yogi.

I know I'm probably talking to myself right now, but here's one more:


18:61 The Lord dwells in the hearts of all creatures and whirls them round upon the wheel of maya.

vs.

18:61 The supreme Lord is situated in everyone's heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.

Basically, if any of you guys ever plan on reading this thing, skip the functional Easwaren translation and go for Prabhupada's.

[Melville]

Man, subtlety isn't the name of the game for Hawthorne. Reading Scarlet Letter and every few pages he's sure to reinforce the sinful shame woven onto Hester's person.
I liked how every few pages he's sure to reiterate that the kid is the scarlet letter. Blunt symbolism can work if the bluntness points to something deeper, as in Melville's writing, but I don't remember it doing that. I much preferred The Blithedale Romance.


Basically, if any of you guys ever plan on reading this thing, skip the functional Easwaren translation and go for Prabhupada's.
The important question is which one, if either, includes the line "I am become death, shatterer of worlds'. I've read two translations, one that was part of (a condensed version of) The Mahabharata and one standalone, and neither one had that line.

[Benny Profane]

So I've read 450 pages of Freedom in 5 days. I'm tempted to search for what Raiders found so unlikeable about it but I'll wait til I'm finished. Whatever he said, he is dead wrong. ;)

[dreamdead]

So I've read 450 pages of Freedom in 5 days. I'm tempted to search for what Raiders found so unlikeable about it but I'll wait til I'm finished. Whatever he said, he is dead wrong. ;)

I've got thoughts here (http://match-cut.org/showpost.php?p=339942&postcount=4637) as well (helpfully spoilered, in case you read them before finishing the novel). I think it starts strong, but the women become more and more a part of the narrative, and Franzen doesn't really know what to do with them, that he starts negating some of his own grandiosity. There are strengths to his work, but I'm left deflated by the end, which is transparently partisan and self-congratulatory in an annoying way.

[Dead & Messed Up]

The important question is which one, if either, includes the line "I am become death, shatterer of worlds'. I've read two translations, one that was part of (a condensed version of) The Mahabharata and one standalone, and neither one had that line.

Neither. The "I am become death" line from 11:32 was a misquotation by Oppenheimer in two ways. One, there was never a "become." That was his own flourish. Two, "death" is an incomplete translation of the Sanskrit word. Krishna's referring to himself as the force that takes away all of existence. Which is the passage of time, not death.

Bummer, right?

Easwaren says "I am time, the destroyer of all," and Prabhupada says "Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds."

[ledfloyd]

So I've read 450 pages of Freedom in 5 days. I'm tempted to search for what Raiders found so unlikeable about it but I'll wait til I'm finished. Whatever he said, he is dead wrong. ;)
i tried telling people this back when it came out.

[Mara]

I have a dilemma with my new commuting book. I've been on a waiting hold for months for two popular audio books, and now they are both available and ready to be picked up, but I can only listen to one at a time. The library is surprisingly stringent about renewing audio books so I don't think I'd be able to do them both.

They are both huge classics that I'm ashamed I haven't read yet: The Grapes of Wrath and Moby Dick.

What to do?

[Kurosawa Fan]

Steinbeck. When it doubt, choose Steinbeck.

[Benny Profane]

I think GoW would be better/easier to listen to.

[Mara]

I think I will check them both out, and then listen to Grapes of Wrath first. And then get as far into Moby Dick as I can before I have to return it.

[Duncan]

I think I will check them both out, and then listen to Grapes of Wrath first. And then get as far into Moby Dick as I can before I have to return it.

Honestly, I think you should just read Moby Dick in book form. I can't imagine it being a good commuter listen.

[Melville]

Yeah, Moby Dick doesn't seem like a good choice for a book on tape. Things like the section written in the form of a stage play would lose all their impact. Other things that rely on their textual form, like the opening twenty pages of quotations, could be made to work, but it would require some stylized reading that would make it more an adaptation than just a reading of the text.


Easwaren says "I am time, the destroyer of all," and Prabhupada says "Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds."
Krishna totally should have got Oppenheimer to edit his material. Those phrasings just don't have the same oomph. Too many 'the's' in the second one.

[Mara]

Yeah, Moby Dick doesn't seem like a good choice for a book on tape. Things like the section written in the form of a stage play would lose all their impact. Other things that rely on their textual form, like the opening twenty pages of quotations, could be made to work, but it would require some stylized reading that would make it more an adaptation than just a reading of the text.

See, this is good to know. Thanks, guys.

[dreamdead]

The Scarlet Letter is my I-feel-bad-I-haven't-read-this-yet book for this year; Moby Dick is my book for next year.

And the former has now begun to seduce me with its prose and structure, as narrative elements that I was afraid would be belabored until the finale are coming to fruition. And Chillingsworth's alchemy/medicine is a nice touch, as is his whole history. Only a hundred pages to go!

[Sven]

Plus, the diagrams of whale parts and boat geography aided the text immensely.

[Sven]

In Moby Dick, that is. The whale parts in Scarlet Letter were just disturbing.

[dreamdead]

In Moby Dick, that is. The whale parts in Scarlet Letter were just disturbing.

Ohmygosh. That would be so awesome if that were true. :lol:

[Dukefrukem]

So I'm 50% done Hunger Games and I'm just not the impressed. How is this not just a rebranded Battle Royale?

(I’m at the fire scene)

[Benny Profane]

If you've read both Blood Meridian and Franny and Zooey, this one's for you:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/franny-and-zooey-and-glantons-gang

[dreamdead]

If you've read both Blood Meridian and Franny and Zooey, this one's for you:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/franny-and-zooey-and-glantons-gang

That reminds me of this site (http://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/), where people review chain restaurants and the like with McCarthy prose. I'm rather fond of the Victoria's Secret entry.

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is really a solid work. The narrative really hits overdrive in the last sixty pages, with the forest scene being a standout. And the intrigue with necromancy, while certainly a product of the time, allows the text a degree of indeterminacy that allows it to transcend its strictly Puritan context, so that it can deconstruct those same avenues of faith and mystery.

I'm deliberating on next tackling either Alice Walker's Meridian or Don DeLillo's Libra.

[Mara]

I finished up Dracula quickly so I could return it to the library, and I'm pretty pleased with it. It holds up much better than other horror books of the period that became classics (I'm looking at you, Frankenstein.)

The mythology is convoluted and sometimes the story doesn't obey its own internal logic. Other times seemingly obvious solutions to problems don't seem to occur to our heroes. (If the vampire has been invited into a house and keeps coming in nightly to prey on your women, move to a different house.)

But, overall, it is a tense, well-plotted, and surprisingly sexy and gory little thriller. I really enjoyed revisiting it.

[Grouchy]

I finished up Dracula quickly so I could return it to the library, and I'm pretty pleased with it. It holds up much better than other horror books of the period that became classics (I'm looking at you, Frankenstein.)
Huh, Frankenstein is a lot more readable and holds up better to contemporary standards than Dracula.

[Mara]

Huh, Frankenstein is a lot more readable and holds up better to contemporary standards than Dracula.

I dislike Frankenstein. I find Shelley's prose almost unreadable, and the plot is a mess.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I dislike Frankenstein. I find Shelley's prose almost unreadable, and the plot is a mess.

Totally agree.

[Lucky]

I couldn't finish Frankenstein so I can't offer a legit argument, but Dracula is on my favorites list.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I remember enjoying both, but they were school readings, which means that I was inundated with reasons for why they were great throughout the readings. I'd be curious to go back now and re-read them, especially Frankenstein, which is getting a whipping in here.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Frankenstein was frustrating for me because the idea was fantastic, the allegory timeless, but the execution was sooooooo poor, I couldn't get around it. Shelley completely bungles the action, is repetitive, and her prose is clunky and dull. I understand its relevance, and why it's considered a classic, but it makes for some pretty poor reading.

[Mysterious Dude]

I love Frankenstein so damn much.

[Grouchy]

I think what you are all having is problems with the kind of whiny soliloquy that goes with the territory of Gothic and Romantic sensibilities. Well, that or you read a completely different book than I did.

Dracula could easily be trimmed to half its lenght. Structurally, it's a much weaker book than Frankenstein.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I think what you are all having is problems with the kind of whiny soliloquy that goes with the territory of Gothic and Romantic sensibilities. Well, that or you read a completely different book than I did.

Dracula could easily be trimmed to half its lenght. Structurally, it's a much weaker book than Frankenstein.

Nope. I haven't read Dracula, so I can't comment, but I've read plenty of Gothic and Romantic literature, and that wasn't the problem with Frankenstein.

[lovejuice]

Anyone's ever read anything by Le Carre? To hype myself up for the movie, I pick up Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and can't get beyond page 100. It seems poorly written, endless exposition that doesn't quite go anywhere. From way back when I still read Tom Clancy, I don't remember his prose being this bad.

[Melville]

Nope. I haven't read Dracula, so I can't comment, but I've read plenty of Gothic and Romantic literature, and that wasn't the problem with Frankenstein.
What was the problem with it? I liked it a lot but don't remember it well.

Dracula is lame. As Grouchy said, it's poorly structured: once Dracula gets to England, the plot meanders, and nothing is done with potentially interesting plot points like the spider-eating guy in the insane asylum; and its tension continually decreases, with Dracula seeming completely non-threatening and easily machete-d by the end. It also doesn't have developed characters, a pronounced or interesting style, or depth to its themes. But I don't think there's much reason to compare it to Frankenstein in any case, since they're from different periods, written in very different styles, and have very different goals.


Anyone's ever read anything by Le Carre? To hype myself up for the movie, I pick up Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and can't get beyond page 100. It seems poorly written, endless exposition that doesn't quite go anywhere. From way back when I still read Tom Clancy, I don't remember his prose being this bad.
I've read that one and Smiley's People. All I really remember is that he makes everything, from characters to setting to style, very purposefully grey and drab, like the anti-James Bond version of spy thrillers.

[Kurosawa Fan]

What was the problem with it? I liked it a lot but don't remember it well.


I voiced my frustrations with it above.

[Melville]

I voiced my frustrations with it above.
I was hoping for some more details. How does Shelley bungle the action? Which aspects were repetitive? Could you point to a sentence and say what's clunky about it (say, in comparison to other Gothic or Romantic literature you liked)? Or are you referring to an earlier post?

[Kurosawa Fan]

I was hoping for some more details. How does Shelley bungle the action? Which aspects were repetitive? Could you point to a sentence and say what's clunky about it (say, in comparison to other Gothic or Romantic literature you liked)? Or are you referring to an earlier post?

Well, this will be off the top of my head, but take for instance the moment in which Dr. Frankenstein sees The Monster in the hills as he's travelling home by train. We are given pages of Dr. Frankenstein's mental state, yet when he sees his creation off in the distance, or thinks he sees it, it's two or three sentences and then on to something else. This happens repeatedly throughout the novel. It's pages of the psychology of Dr. Frankenstein, which was interesting, but then when action takes place, it's dealt with quickly and sloppily. Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me, nor the time (I'm studying for finals right now) to pluck out more specific instances directly from the text, but they're fairly frequent. Another example, again of the top of my head (so hopefully I'm not incorrect) is during the creation of a companion to The Monster. We have an entire chapter of Dr. Frankenstein travelling up to northern Scotland and getting to work, coming close to completing her, and then having a crisis of conscience and quitting the task. All very interesting, certainly, but when The Monster shows up to see how his companion is coming along, and Frankenstein tells him he won't do it, that moment essentially boils down to a quick exchange and an "ARGHH!" as The Monster bounds off.

I'm exaggerating, of course, but my point remains: Shelley was great at creating palpable tension, a very distinct atmosphere, but when it came time for payoffs for that tension, she was rubbish. It's completely unsatisfying on a visceral level.

As for it being repetitive, that's kind of a short-hand way for complaining about Shelley's attempt to make The Monster omnipresent. Everywhere Frankenstein goes, The Monster has either already been there or will be there shortly. At a point, the coincidences became too much to swallow, and the book devolved into a predictable series of events.

As I said prior, I understand the book's status as a classic, and I think it has a deserving place in the cannon if only for the strength of the allegory and it's place in history (as well as it's influence on artists post-publication). I just didn't find it a very fulfilling experience.

[Melville]

Good points. I was in my early teens when I read it, so I have no memory of that kind of stuff. I only remember the mood and allegory, which I thought were great examples of Romantic grandiosity.

[Mysterious Dude]

For me, Frankenstein wins out in the end because of its treatment of the villain. Dracula has some dialogue in the opening chapters (the best part of the book), but after Jonathan discovers his true nature, Dracula never speaks again. He becomes nothing more than a monster who must be destroyed by the righteous heroes.

Frankenstein's monster, on the other hand, narrates several chapters in the middle of the book so that we have a much better understanding of what he is, what he wants and I personally feel sympathy for him. And Frankenstein is not such a righteous hero. I find it so much more interesting than Dracula, which seems like pretty standard horror fare by comparison.

[Benny Profane]

Freedom - Much like The Corrections I can pick apart the flaws of the book but it makes no difference. I'm officially a Franzen fanboy. It may be middle-brow writing for middle-class suburbanites with choir-preaching politics, but I was so wrapped up in the family dynamics refracted through the lens of America's post 9/11 fucked-up-ed-ness I just went with it. Franzen has the ability to create lifelike, relateable characters and take them to the brink of lifelike situations perhaps as well as any author I can think of. His style isn't florid or unique but it's told in such a deft manner that's well paced and structured and that builds in emotionally twisting ways. I do agree with dreamdead that Jessica is unfairly ignored and Lalitha's death was severely underwhelming, but I disagree that he can't write female characters well. Between Patty and Denise(?) from The Corrections, you have two pretty amazing characters right there. And Walter's kindness and anger, I don't know, these just feel like people you know. I couldn't get enough of the Berglunds.

[Mara]

I'm a handful of chapters into The Grapes of Wrath, and really absorbed so far. The prose, typical of Steinbeck, is gorgeous without ever sounding polished or forced. There isn't much story to tell, yet, but I'm loving the themes of the needs of the individual versus the good of the community, and the complex thoughts on ownership and responsibility.

[Qrazy]

I find it difficult to get on board Steinbeck's ideological bandwagon. I find he whitewashes his worlds in a specific style of romanticism (particularly of the lower class) that doesn't fully gel for me. All in all I do enjoy his prose though.

[ledfloyd]

i agree completely on freedom. it has flaws but... the characters and storytelling are just so good. i could not put that book down and read it in a ridiculous amount of time.

[Melville]

I find it difficult to get on board Steinbeck's ideological bandwagon. I find he whitewashes his worlds in a specific style of romanticism (particularly of the lower class) that doesn't fully gel for me. All in all I do enjoy his prose though.
Agreed. (http://match-cut.org/showthread.php?p=313375#post31 3375) I quite liked Of Mice and Men, though, which focused on a specific human tragedy rather than preaching.

[Qrazy]

Agreed. (http://match-cut.org/showthread.php?p=313375#post31 3375) I quite liked Of Mice and Men, though, which focused on a specific human tragedy rather than preaching.

I like Cannery Row the most I think.

[D_Davis]

I find it difficult to get on board Steinbeck's ideological bandwagon. I find he whitewashes his worlds in a specific style of romanticism (particularly of the lower class) that doesn't fully gel for me. All in all I do enjoy his prose though.

Yeah, he romanticizes the poor and working-class - that was basically his whole thing.

Although William Saroyan does it better, mainly because he comes from an authentic immigrant family and his life is tightly connected with the Armenian experience. I think his stories focus more on individual experiences, rather than broader strokes.

I think Saroyan is the better Steinbeck, although I do like both.

[Qrazy]

Yeah, he romanticizes the poor and working-class - that was basically his whole thing.

Yeah well his whole thing sucks balls then.


Although William Saroyan does it better, mainly because he comes from an authentic immigrant family and his life is tightly connected with the Armenian experience. I think his stories focus more on individual experiences, rather than broader strokes.

I think Saroyan is the better Steinbeck, although I do like both.

I don't think you can romanticize the poor better, you can just do it equally badly.

[dreamdead]

I don't think you can romanticize the poor better, you can just do it equally badly.

So working class literature from this time period, which Steinbeck, Cather, Saroyan, and Dos Passos belong to, is somehow more annoying than that about the upper class (Fitzgerald, James, Wharton, or Hemingway) or just annoying in a different, more cloying way? Can you give non-Steinbeck examples, Qrazy--I'm interested in this idea...

Alice Walker's Meridian excels at complicating the dynamics of black and white relations in 1960s America by continually examining how these two groups also treat the minority Jewish individual. It's in these moments that the text moves beyond some of Toni Morrison's subject matter, for the novel is both more radical and more nuanced in its depiction of racial identity, but it nonetheless lacks the lyricism that emboldens Morrison's best work. Pretty solid, and a pleasure to think about in its period radicalism.

[Benny Profane]

East of Eden is my favorite of the 6 Steinbeck's I've read. I never felt like he was romanticizing the poor there. Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row, Tortilla Flats, yes. Of Mice and Men and The Pearl, to a lesser extent. He's still a great writer.

[Qrazy]

So working class literature from this time period, which Steinbeck, Cather, Saroyan, and Dos Passos belong to, is somehow more annoying than that about the upper class (Fitzgerald, James, Wharton, or Hemingway) or just annoying in a different, more cloying way? Can you give non-Steinbeck examples, Qrazy--I'm interested in this idea...


I'm not sure I believe Fitzgerald and Hemingway romanticize the upper class at the expense of the lower class, while Steinbeck does do the inverse. But anyone who does romanticize the upper class at the expense of the lower is certainly reprehensible.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I just finished Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. When I'm reading Salinger, I always feel like he should be my answer when asked "Who's your favorite writer?" He was a master of prose. Just brilliant. Even with such little exposure to the actual character, sometimes I feel like Seymour Glass is one of the most vivid, remarkably well-crafted characters in literature. His first entry into his diary was just heartbreaking. It was one of those moments where, as a reader, I have to stop reading for a minute and sort of figuratively take a breath. He's such a brilliant tragic figure, and the way in which every character in the Glass family is shaped by his life and his death is staggering. All this and I haven't even read Seymour: an Introduction yet. I really hope more of Salinger's works are published soon, and that the Glass family is prominently featured in whatever comes our way.

[Derek]

I just finished Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. When I'm reading Salinger, I always feel like he should be my answer when asked "Who's your favorite writer?" He was a master of prose. Just brilliant. Even with such little exposure to the actual character, sometimes I feel like Seymour Glass is one of the most vivid, remarkably well-crafted characters in literature. His first entry into his diary was just heartbreaking. It was one of those moments where, as a reader, I have to stop reading for a minute and sort of figuratively take a breath. He's such a brilliant tragic figure, and the way in which every character in the Glass family is shaped by his life and his death is staggering. All this and I haven't even read Seymour: an Introduction yet. I really hope more of Salinger's works are published soon, and that the Glass family is prominently featured in whatever comes our way.

Kudos! Always good to read some Salinger love. Seymour is also great, probably on par with Raise High... I used to consider Franny & Zooey my favorite novel, but it's been so long since I've read it that I usually put a few others ahead of it. Fortunately, it's my pick for a newly formed book club I'm in, so I'll be returning to it again, this time after a good 10 years. Love, love, love the Glass family.

[Mara]

Well, romanticizing the poor or not, I'm being gobsmacked by Grapes of Wrath. It's an extraordinary work.

[ledfloyd]

I really hope more of Salinger's works are published soon, and that the Glass family is prominently featured in whatever comes our way.
yeah, i've been hoping some unpublished glass family works would surface in the wake of his death.

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone a member of http://www.goodreads.com/ ?

[Mysterious Dude]

Anyone a member of http://www.goodreads.com/ ?
Several of us are. We had a thread (http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=1055) about it.

[Dukefrukem]

yeah, i've been hoping some unpublished glass family works would surface in the wake of his death.


Several of us are. We had a thread (http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=1055) about it.

:)

[Kurosawa Fan]

I was less enamored with Seymour, but it was still a great read. It felt a lot more stilted, which I'm sure was part of the exercise, but rather than Salinger organically inserting Seymour into a story, by having Buddy pour out his feelings about his deceased brother in this confessional manner, the portrait of Seymour is far more pristine, and the constant effusiveness of the narrative makes the material drag in spots. I did appreciate the sardonic humor pulsing throughout, and the tone of the material certainly blurred the line between author and character, which was equal parts fascinating and frustrating.

I decided to read my first Oe after Raiders' praise a while back. I bought Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids a year or so ago, and in my futile attempt to make it to 52 books before the end of the year, I've made it my next read since it's short enough to keep the dream alive for now.

[dreamdead]

Knocked out DeLillo's story collection The Angel Esmeralda. It compiles material from the 70s to this year that DeLillo has written, and I find that beyond the magnificent title story, which was incorporated into Underworld, the last two stories (and also, perhaps not coincidentally, his most current stories) work the best. One tackles the stock market collapse in interesting ways, utilizing children and language fascinatingly, and the other name-checks Aoyama's film Eureka, which makes my nerd quotient quite sated. Not always wholly engaging, but always thoughtful and provocative to consider.

[Grouchy]

Read a book by French author Tonino Benacquista, The Bites of Dawn - that's my own translation. Engrossing stuff. It's a crime novel told through the point of view of a bum, a guy who lives the nights of Paris looking for social events where he can get free food and drink. When his accomplice is kidnapped and held for ransom, he has to use his people skills for tracking down a couple of mysterious characters the kidnappers want to reach. It's great fun, short and expertly told. I have no idea if this is translated to English but I recommend it.

[Ezee E]

I feel like I'm going to be lifting weights with this 11/22/63 book.

[Mara]

I liked The Virgin Suicides and I really liked Middlesex.

So count me as completely baffled by The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel. There are some characters, and they do things, and then it ends. I don't understand. Was there a point? Was he trying to say something?

The prose and style all have Eugenides' tone, but there's no gravitas or thoughtfulness. I didn't relate to the book emotionally or intellectually, and now I'm sort of frustrated.

[Mara]

I'm almost done with the second book of The Book of the New Sun and I might be through with it. The attitude towards women in it is downright disturbing. The women are never anything but empty-headed or evil, and either way they don't think about anything other than Severian, and always end up having sex with him.

There was this little gem:


...Jolenta's desire was no more than the desire to be desired, so that I wished, not to comfort her aching love like the love I had felt for Thecla, nor to protect her as I wished to protect Dorcas, but to shame and punish her, to destroy her self-possession, torment the ghosts that have fled them.

Then he forces sex on her while she is unconscious in a boat, despite being in love with another girl. The girl who loves him cries. Of course. Then everyone pretends it never happened.

Seriously, fuck this guy.

Also, I just don't like it. I've always disliked books that spell everything out and are too obvious, but these books swing too far the other way, and are deliberately obtuse and nonsensical. The book isn't without value, but I'm not enjoying it at all.

[Lucky]

I feel like I'm going to be lifting weights with this 11/22/63 book.

The experiencing of reading a hardback book of that size is cumbersome to me. I'll wait for paperback or e-read it.

[Mara]

Finished up The Grapes of Wrath, and even if it's not a perfect novel, it's pretty amazing. The last few chapters, especially, veer towards the sentimental. Even so, it does an excellent job of describing a very specific time and place, and Steinbeck's prose is, as always, impeccable.

[dreamdead]

I rather love the final Rose of Sharon moment in TGoW, even if it veers toward the maudlin. I don't think I ever fully read it, but I remember skimming bits and parts of the novel when I appeared in the play of it at my university.

And I've opted to forgo the 11 months of will-I-or-won't-I-finish-the-big-book concept this year by just starting Moby Dick now. About 30 pages in, and it'll be my Seattle book when we fly out there on Monday. I'm surprised by how "modern" it feels--as Melville's already experimented with direct address, second person, and third person voices. Very cool.

[Mara]

I rather love the final Rose of Sharon moment in TGoW, even if it veers toward the maudlin.

I would have found it more affecting if it wasn't so out of character for her. Rose of Sharon is self-obsessed in her youth and her marriage and her pregnancy. She's shattered at the end of the book, and she's suddenly... her own mother? The endless giver?

It's an interesting moment, and ties together a lot of the themes of poverty and generosity in the book, but I found myself a little bit skeptical.

[Mara]

Also, for the record, I listened to The Grapes of Wrath on CD for the first three-quarters, until it was due back at the library, and then finished it in book form. The narrator for the audio book was excellent. He had a rich, blue-collar drawl that was expressive and earthy without being overblown or exaggerated, and he did the women's voices without sounding silly.

When I read the rest of the book, I read it in his voice.

It would have best book-to-CD conversion I'd ever heard, if they hadn't decided to have a harmonica wail in between chapters, which was distracting and unnecessary.

So, War and Peace is still the best. The narrator to that one had to do, like, seventy-five accents.

[dreamdead]

Mat Johnson's Pym is pretty excellent throughout. It takes Poe's novella as its starting point, while also mixing in commentary about African American theory and concerns, but it is essentially a adventure story about monsters and how humanity tries to compensate for the loss of humanity. What's exciting about it are the various ways that Johnson uses Poe (and Lovecraft after him) to build an allegory about slavery. It's just a delight to read during these moments, as its captures ideas about how blacks traded on their race to secure their own gains, or how the "white woman" adopted Negroes for their pleasure. When it moves away from allegory, it's not quite as exciting.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I think I set the bar too high for this year, because the first book I read was Kasuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which was good, and then very good, and then sorta great, and then wow, just so satisfying and engrossing. The premise allows for this askew look at how schools (and childhood in general) fail to prepare us for the complexities and tragedies of life, and the main voice of Kathy. At first I thought she was a little irritating, given how deferential and wishy-washy she was. Every other sentence of her narration is basically "I thought I would do this, or maybe that, but when it came right down to it, I did the other thing." But that makes for a strong contrast with Ruth, who's more motivated (and manipulative).

When I got to the end of the book, I was engaged, but I was also sort of beside myself, wondering if the author was going to successfully complete the high-wire act of finishing the book strongly. I know there's more to stories than their ending, but I get so much satisfaction out of a perfect ending, one that completely follows through on the premise and says exactly the right thing. Never Let Me Go has that. It's heartbreaking and nostalgic and bittersweet and so many other adjectives, and the final sentence sums it all up without being forceful.

Wow!

[Lucky]

Well, if you enjoyed the novel that much let me recommend the film to you. I found the film far more affecting than the stagnant pace of the novel. I enjoyed the novel until they left the prep school, then it tread(ed? - doesn't sound right) water until the conclusion. The film manages to incorporate the strongest points of the narrative with memorable performances and imagery and still maintains your perfect ending. I think you'll appreciate it, and the film deserves more of that.

Let me also recommend to you a better Ishiguro novel if you haven't read it already - The Remains of the Day.

[Mara]

I'm a chunk into 1Q84 and I don't know how I feel about it. It's leisurely and, considering its length, has a very small cast of finely-drawn characters. Sometimes, though, it drags (let's describe everyone's breakfast!) Plus, the sex scenes are badly written, and there are a lot of them.

Still, so far the story is intriguing and I'm curious to see where it goes.

[Duncan]

Just got word that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication by a small literary journal here in Toronto. Pretty happy about that.

[Qrazy]

I found the film of Never Let Me Go to be quite bad.

Congrats Duncan.

[D_Davis]

Just got word that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication by a small literary journal here in Toronto. Pretty happy about that.

Way to go!

[Irish]

Just got word that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication by a small literary journal here in Toronto. Pretty happy about that.

Wow, congratulations!

[Lucky]

I found the film of Never Let Me Go to be quite bad.

Did you read the novel?

[Kurosawa Fan]

I found the novel to be a fairly shallow read. Never bothered with the movie.

[Qrazy]

Did you read the novel?

Nope.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm curious to both watch Never Let Me Go and read The Remains of the Day. That said, "shallow" isn't a descriptor I'd give to the book. I thought it was very good at using its out-there premise to make some classic, possibly cliche narrative subjects feel new and vital. The story's deceptively familiar, maybe, but that's not a bad thing. It's kinda fun. Deep beneath the mystery and uniqueness of the plot (which carries its own concerns) beats the heart of classic coming-of-age bittersweetness.

[Lucky]

Nope.

Oh, I thought for a second you were defending the novel over the film. I wasn't understanding that since the film is a very faithful adaptation to the original source. Having said that, I would not recommend you ever read the novel.

[Lucky]

I'm curious to both watch Never Let Me Go and read The Remains of the Day. That said, "shallow" isn't a descriptor I'd give to the book. I thought it was very good at using its out-there premise to make some classic, possibly cliche narrative subjects feel new and vital. The story's deceptively familiar, maybe, but that's not a bad thing. It's kinda fun. Deep beneath the mystery and uniqueness of the plot (which carries its own concerns) beats the heart of classic coming-of-age bittersweetness.

I think you would really enjoy Remains of the Day. It tackles a similar theme of bittersweetness but in a much more fulfilling, adult manner. I think you'll have another "perfect ending" experience with that novel.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I'm curious to both watch Never Let Me Go and read The Remains of the Day. That said, "shallow" isn't a descriptor I'd give to the book. I thought it was very good at using its out-there premise to make some classic, possibly cliche narrative subjects feel new and vital. The story's deceptively familiar, maybe, but that's not a bad thing. It's kinda fun. Deep beneath the mystery and uniqueness of the plot (which carries its own concerns) beats the heart of classic coming-of-age bittersweetness.

My original thoughts, which are brief, but will have to do since I remember very little about the book aside from not thinking highly of it:


I didn't much care for it. It was a fascinating concept, but it felt too easy-going and never established any substatial dramatic weight. It all ended up feeling very inconsequential. I'm still looking forward to Remains of the Day, but Never Let Me Go was a big disappointment.

[Mara]

Just got word that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication by a small literary journal here in Toronto. Pretty happy about that.

That's great! Congrats!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Oh yeah, and congrats to Duncan!

...

I've been reading the sole novel my late grandfather got published, a mostly unremarkable small-town whodunit called A Place Like Hessberg. Better as a snapshot of the long-lost bustling American small town than as any sort of story proper.

It's hard to read, not for any sort of emotional reason, but because, God help me, sometimes my late grandfather sounds like Madman:


On Sunday morning after breakfast, I took a walk, something that I do frequently because I like to do it.

:|

[Hugh_Grant]

I think I've mentioned before that I've had this personal goal of reading all the Man Booker Prize winners. Silly, but goals are good.
However, I'm about 75 pages into Vernon God Little, and frankly, I have little desire to continue. Has anyone else read it?


Just got word that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication by a small literary journal here in Toronto. Pretty happy about that.
Awesome sauce!

[Winston*]

I think I've mentioned before that I've had this personal goal of reading all the Man Booker Prize winners. Silly, but goals are good.
However, I'm about 75 pages into Vernon God Little, and frankly, I have little desire to continue. Has anyone else read it?



I have. Remember finding it pretty funny at the start and then liking it less as it went on.

[Hugh_Grant]

Well, that doesn't sound promising.

I'm generally not bothered by vulgarity--shoot, my favorite book is Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, which as one of my students said, would make a boat full of sailors blush--but the excessive foul language in Vernon God Little really adds nothing to the proceedings. I can tell that Pierre is going for a Holden Caulfield-like protagonist, but his characterization is not really successful, at least from what I have read so far.

[Duncan]

Um, and now that same story has been accepted by like a pretty legit journal. It'll get national (and probably international, among academic circles) publication.

[Milky Joe]

Awesome! Link us to it when it becomes available.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Um, and now that same story has been accepted by like a pretty legit journal. It'll get national (and probably international, among academic circles) publication.

Congrats! I would definitely love to read it if you can find a way to either post it or link to it at some point.

[Mara]

Or, when it comes out in the publication, just give us the info so we can pick it up somewhere. (The library. I'm cheap.)

[Benny Profane]

Um, and now that same story has been accepted by like a pretty legit journal. It'll get national (and probably international, among academic circles) publication.



Why so cryptic? What journal? Say it!

http://hastyruminations.files.wordpre ss.com/2009/11/sam-kinison.jpg

[Duncan]

Why so cryptic? What journal? Say it!

http://hastyruminations.files.wordpre ss.com/2009/11/sam-kinison.jpg

The Dalhousie Review (http://dalhousiereview.dal.ca/history.html). Past fiction contributors include Margaret Atwood, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer and Malcolm Lowry.

[Benny Profane]

The Dalhousie Review (http://dalhousiereview.dal.ca/history.html). Past fiction contributors include Margaret Atwood, Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer and Malcolm Lowry.

Bravo!

Do they not update the website a lot? It says the current issue is Fall 2010 and when you click the tab it appears to be a broken link.

Either way I look forward to reading your story.

[Duncan]

Bravo!

Do they not update the website a lot? It says the current issue is Fall 2010 and when you click the tab it appears to be a broken link.

Either way I look forward to reading your story.
Yeah, I noticed that too. I've seen more recent issues, so it must be that they just don't update the website.


Thanks for the support, guys.

[dreamdead]

I decided that I'm really not ready to tackle the monolith of Moby Dick yet, maybe after I get further into the dissertation writing, so I've moved onto Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. It's fine and pleasurable in its take on ethnicity and the progression into adulthood. I've been doing the short stories thus far, though, and haven't tackled the title story. I'm hoping for something amazing, akin to my first experience with story "The Conversion of the Jews," as I'm planning on getting American Pastoral sometime later this month.

[kuehnepips]

The last week in 2011 I spent with The Hare with Amber Eyes (de Waal), a book that had me in tears like no other recently. Very recommended, esp. to Qrazy.

[Benny Profane]

Under-fucking-world! Wow! Gonna go back and read some recent reviews from people here.

[dreamdead]

Under-fucking-world! Wow! Gonna go back and read some recent reviews from people here.

I'm so pleased that you enjoyed it. The cadence of the text, while monolithic in size, is just a pleasure to luxuriate in. Between the beauty of the prologue, the philosophical inquiry of the bomb and its many permutations in the 1950s, the "bombshell" Jayne Mansfield and her attraction as a lesser Monroe, treatment of waste -- whether nuclear or mere condoms-- and concealment of the physical body from touch, I found it endlessly dialectical in structure. DeLillo constantly lets scenes recall earlier moments even as he reframes concepts or conclusions. It's just a joy to recall; I cannot wait to start Libra in the next few months.

[Mara]

I have to return 1Q84 to the library because there are holds and they won't let me renew it.

I'm ambivalent about continuing altogether. It's interesting, but not compelling. There are a couple hints of things that intrigue me, but they're buried in a sprawling, only mildly engaging larger narrative.

[Benny Profane]

I'm so pleased that you enjoyed it. The cadence of the text, while monolithic in size, is just a pleasure to luxuriate in. Between the beauty of the prologue, the philosophical inquiry of the bomb and its many permutations in the 1950s, the "bombshell" Jayne Mansfield and her attraction as a lesser Monroe, treatment of waste -- whether nuclear or mere condoms-- and concealment of the physical body from touch, I found it endlessly dialectical in structure. DeLillo constantly lets scenes recall earlier moments even as he reframes concepts or conclusions. It's just a joy to recall; I cannot wait to start Libra in the next few months.

The prologue and any subsequent details about the Bobby Thomson ball, including Marvin's fictional chase for it, were definitely my favorite portions of the novel. I also latched on easily to the Cold War and inner-city devastation themes, and all the scenes with Matt Shay in New Mexico(?) and Nick in the Bronx were spot on. Nick at the beginning (older) compared to Nick at the end (teenager) was a remarkable but credible trajectory.

I agree with you regarding waste treatment, and would take it a step further than nuclear/condoms, but human waste. By which I mean, people who are the equivalent of waste, such as those destroyed by being downwind of nuclear testing sites, or slum kids in NYC. Outsiders of the system who have basically been discarded.

There are so many layers to this one. It felt both grand and intimate in scope. Immediate thematic comparison would be Gravity's Rainbow in terms of government/human lust for scientific advancement and control of catastrophic weapons, but Underworld succeeds on a more familiar scale, with regards to characters and plot especially.

Also really enjoyed the Lenny Bruce sequences, and J Edgar Hoover at Capote's black and white party was classic. The chess teacher and Sister Edgar (her Commie paranoia in particular) were great too. I never really got swept up in Klara Sax's character, or any of the arty NYC stuff. I kinda kept waiting for something interesting to happen there and it never went anywhere. I could've lived without Marian starting to use heroin in her 50s and her affair with Brian, too. Just felt out of place. The book probably could've used an edit here and there but never felt it's 827 page length. I was way more impressed with this than White Noise and very glad I read it.

[dreamdead]

Indeed, I appreciate the questioning link of waste between more technological forms of waste and those of Esmeralda and the other inner-city youths, who are administered to with the same level of contamination fears by Sister Gracie. I love the language and interplay of technology and salvation woven through Sister Edgar's last scene in the novel-it's none too unintentional that the bomb is considered an Old Testament God, and thus the internet comes off as a New Testament God, one which still can lead to destruction, but which also now offers respite and the chance for nations to come together. It's one of the most hopeful conclusions of any novel I've read, and it comes off fully earned.

Most critics feel that Klara is woefully underwritten, and it's true that her sections feel the most speciously linked; they hold together symbolically and thematically, but don't feel wholly lived in.

Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and Five Other Short Stories ends up having the best material first. The title story is a wonderful Bildungsroman, full of personal growth and mistakes. However, it is "Defender of the Faith," a short story concerning Jews readying themselves for combat in WW2 that works best, as it continuously undercuts each narrative turn, and leaves off with a bitter aftertaste that's steeped in irony. The later stories in the collection never rise to that level of human horror or betrayal, and thus the final stories cannot duplicate the successes. Considering I've own the collection since 2001, I'm happy that I finally read it.

[D_Davis]

If I could magically make these 25 boxes full of books I packed into Kindle books, I totally would. Man would it make moving easier.

[ledfloyd]

i really need to revisit underworld.

[Lucky]

i really need to revisit underworld.

I forgot which thread I clicked on for a second and thought you were referring to the movie. Needless to say, I'm not confused anymore.

[Mara]

I guess I should update with all the non-fiction books on the Amazon I've been reading? I have trouble thinking about non-fiction as being... you know... real books.

River of Darkness: Francisco Orellana's Legendary Voyage of Death and Discovery Down the Amazon by Buddy Levy. An in-depth play-by-play of the first conquistadors to sail the length of the Amazon, mostly by accident, and somewhat miraculously. Yes, in case you were wondering, conquistadors were genocidal maniacs with little or no idea how to survive in a jungle environment. Interesting book, if perhaps a little sentimental bout Orellana himself, who was not quite as genocidal as his compatriots, and is therefore sold as a hero. Not sure what I expected from a grown man named "Buddy."

The River Sea: The Amazon in History, Myth, and Legend by Marshall De Bruhl. Excellent overview of Amazonian (written, therefore colonial) history, but seriously lacking in myth and legend. Who titled this? I guess they were trying to convey the fact that they were focusing on the interesting stories instead of every repetitive story of murder, rape, and imperialism. Overall, pretty fascinating.

Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon by John Hemming. Exhaustive and well-written, this is more Amazonian history than I can imagine anyone to want. However, the author intersperses fascinating insight by way of his personal experiences in the region, and there are lots and lots of pretty pictures.

A discussion with my step-dad (an anthropologist) landed me with two serious scholarly works on the region that I'm going to try to tackle, although I find anthropologists difficult to read. For instance, one of the books, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing by Michael Taussig is described by Amazon (the website, not the geographical region) as:


Working with the image of the Indian shaman as Wild Man, Taussig reveals not the magic of the shaman but that of the politicizing fictions creating the effect of the real.

I don't know what that means. I know all the individual words, but... I don't know what that means. We'll see, Dad.

[Morris Schæffer]

Bought Jeffery Deaver's 007 novel Carte Blanche yesterday. I'm enjoying it so far and I certainly wonder where the story is going to go, curious whether after 40+ years there is some originality left in the franchise. There are some breaks with canon - Bond drives a Bentley and is an ex-soldier of the war in Afghanistan - but it feels Bondy enough for the moment.

[Robby P]

I finished Stephen King's '11/22/63' a couple weeks ago. It has many of the same flaws as most of his other books. It's an interesting premise but it really drags in the middle and some of the dialogue is just awful. I like King's ideas but I'm not crazy about the voice he uses to express them. I'm looking forward to the movie but I hope they can do something else with the ending.

Currently finishing up Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom', which has been something of a disappointment. It lacks humor and empathy.

[Mara]

Currently finishing up Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom', which has been something of a disappointment. It lacks humor and empathy.

I'm listening to this for my commute. It's... okay. I read The Corrections when it came out, remember enjoying it, and then forgot it completely. There wasn't anything that really struck a chord. I'm having a similar reaction to this one.

I did laugh out loud, yesterday, during one portion where Patty explains how her hatred of her neighbor is, by several loosely tied threads, connected to her sexual attraction to President Bill Clinton.

But generally, it's just kind of passing the time.

[Irish]

There are some breaks with canon -Bond drives a Bentley

it used to be worse. IIRC, in the 80s Gardner had him driving a damned BMW.

[Morris Schæffer]

it used to be worse. IIRC, in the 80s Gardner had him driving a damned BMW.

Bond drove a BMW in Goldeneye as well. And Tomorrow Never Dies. And The World is not Enough. :)

[Irish]

Bond drove a BMW in Goldeneye as well. And Tomorrow Never Dies. And The World is not Enough. :)

Gah! That's right! It was tht roadster they were pushing at the time. So wrong.

[Mara]

I'm roughly halfway through Freedom by Franzen and I'm sort of considering returning it to the library. I don't hate it, but I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of it, either. (I don't regret what I've read so far, but I wish it were over.) I'm not usually a quitter partway through a book, and this would be the second in a row that I'm returning unread, but I can't help but feel that my time would be better spent on something I enjoy more.

I feel like this is the sort of book that Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys would write. For better or for worse.

[dreamdead]

I'm roughly halfway through Freedom by Franzen and I'm sort of considering returning it to the library. I don't hate it, but I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of it, either. (I don't regret what I've read so far, but I wish it were over.) I'm not usually a quitter partway through a book, and this would be the second in a row that I'm returning unread, but I can't help but feel that my time would be better spent on something I enjoy more.


Firstly, I love the Wonder Boys reference, even if I've only seen the film. Secondly, I'm pleased that someone else has similarly felt only a sense of obligation to keep plugging away at it. It has patches of brilliance, but there's something about Franzen's style that kept alienating me rather than bringing me deeper into the plot. A year later and I remember painfully little about this book.

I'm halfway into H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness. I'm reading it slowly and luxuriating in its prose, which is wonderful. Since Mat Johnson's Pym was a kinda-updating of it (along with Poe's ...Pym), I have little to be surprised by, but I love the sense of awe and dread that is layered throughout the prose.

[ledfloyd]

I'm roughly halfway through Freedom by Franzen and I'm sort of considering returning it to the library. I don't hate it, but I don't feel like I'm getting anything out of it, either. (I don't regret what I've read so far, but I wish it were over.) I'm not usually a quitter partway through a book, and this would be the second in a row that I'm returning unread, but I can't help but feel that my time would be better spent on something I enjoy more.

I feel like this is the sort of book that Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys would write. For better or for worse.
that's too bad. i read the book in two or three days, i was completely engrossed in it and couldn't put it down. but there's no reason to keep yourself trudging through something you aren't getting anything out of, and it sounds like you've given it more than a fair chance.

[Mara]

It's probably been over a year since I checked Bookmooch, and yet this morning a book from my wish list showed up, and I still had a couple points to pick it up.

Awesome.

[dreamdead]

Yeah, At the Mountains of Madness is unmitigated awesomeness. Haven't read such evocative prose in about two months, so that was a delight; and the last four or five pages suggest such awe and dread that they positively overwhelm. Might read a few of his other short stories later in the year.

[D_Davis]

Yeah, At the Mountains of Madness is unmitigated awesomeness. Haven't read such evocative prose in about two months, so that was a delight; and the last four or five pages suggest such awe and dread that they positively overwhelm. Might read a few of his other short stories later in the year.

It must be really good, because I like it a lot even though it contains, in abundance, everything I can't stand about Lovecraft - mainly the oodles and oodles of exposition and use of passive voice to tell rather than show.

However, the main reason I do like it is that is so perfectly encapsulates so much the of the mythos that other authors I like better would go on to explore.

Have you read Thomas Ligotti or Michael Cisco? I bet you'd enjoy their writing quite a bit.

For anyone interested, I'll probably selling most of my Lovecraft stuff soon. I don't have a lot, but I have some (well, I do have everything he wrote in one volume). I always sell it all, and then buy it again hoping to get into the guy. But then I always come to the conclusion that, while I LOVE his ideas and the authors he inspired, I just can't stand his writing.

Anyhow, I'll post a list of what I'm selling if there is any interest here.

[Melville]

Yeah, At the Mountains of Madness is unmitigated awesomeness. Haven't read such evocative prose in about two months, so that was a delight; and the last four or five pages suggest such awe and dread that they positively overwhelm. Might read a few of his other short stories later in the year.
The collection The Best of HP Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre is great. One of my favorite books. The Rats in the Walls is my favorite of the bunch.

I've been reading a collection of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, and during some of the more macabre ones, I kept thinking Lovecraft would have done so much better with the same ideas and images. Where Lovecraft builds atmosphere and dread with his prose, Poe just piles dry, needlessly detailed, unevocative descriptions on top of the narrative—except in the few stories narrated by unhinged minds, the erratic and self-deluding nature of which Poe captures extremely well.

[D_Davis]

Lovecraft did a good job in building on Poe's foundation, and Ligotti has done an even better job building on top of Lovecraft's. I wonder who the fourth pillar of American horror will be, and we can we expect them?

[dreamdead]

It must be really good, because I like it a lot even though it contains, in abundance, everything I can't stand about Lovecraft - mainly the oodles and oodles of exposition and use of passive voice to tell rather than show.

However, the main reason I do like it is that is so perfectly encapsulates so much the of the mythos that other authors I like better would go on to explore.

Have you read Thomas Ligotti or Michael Cisco? I bet you'd enjoy their writing quite a bit.


I found the exposition to work because of how thoroughly Lovecraft is devoted to it. Because so much of the story is told from that perspective, I found it not contrived or delimiting, but rather a pure way to tell the story. Maybe it's because I've only read this and "The Call of Cthulhu," but I found the style internally consistent, which negates my ability to critique it. I had hoped for a bit more coverage on the "socialistic" angle, and was hoping to see more cultural commentary, but it was haunting enough for me to love it regardless.

I have not read either of those two authors, no. I'm thinking I might go on a bit of a pleasure reading streak later in the month, and will keep these guys in mind. I'll see what the library has of them. For now it's on to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf...

[Robby P]

I was fairly indifferent towards 'Freedom' as well until the ending, which ties together the themes of the book quite nicely. It was a worthwhile investment of my time and I would have regretted finishing it prematurely.

Currently engrossed in Tom Rachman's 'The Imperfectionists', which is just lovely. Highly recommended reading.

[Morris Schæffer]

Bought Jeffery Deaver's 007 novel Carte Blanche yesterday. I'm enjoying it so far and I certainly wonder where the story is going to go, curious whether after 40+ years there is some originality left in the franchise. There are some breaks with canon - Bond drives a Bentley and is an ex-soldier of the war in Afghanistan - but it feels Bondy enough for the moment.

Pretty cool that I'm 200 (out of 500) pages in without a clue of what the big masterplan is. There's definitely more spying in this one and little action, the story keeps me riveted enough.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Hey, I've read When the Women Come Out to Dance and am currently working through The Hot Kid, but this Elmore Leonard guy isn't driving me crazy. Can anybody recommend me a quote-unquote great book by the guy, ideally one that exemplifies what makes him special?

He's good, don't get me wrong.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Hey, I've read When the Women Come Out to Dance and am currently working through The Hot Kid, but this Elmore Leonard guy isn't driving me crazy. Can anybody recommend me a quote-unquote great book by the guy, ideally one that exemplifies what makes him special?

He's good, don't get me wrong.

I haven't read anything by him in over a decade, but when I was a teenager, my favorite of his was Swag.

[D_Davis]

I loved Get Shorty and Rum Punch, and I'm going to read all of his Westerns this year - I've heard they're excellent. Really looking forward to reading "Three-Ten to Yuma."

However, I think Joe R. Lansdale has kind of taken over his spot as the best, edgy, modern crime-fiction writer. His Hap and Leonard novels are way better than anything I've read from Leonard, and his stand alone crime novels are even better than that.

[Mara]

I'm still plugging away at Freedom and I've decided to compromise. I think one thing that's bothering me is how much time I'm putting into it versus what I'm getting out of it, so I'm going to return the audio book to the library and get the hardcover. I can read it silently probably twice as fast as listening to it, and can therefore enjoy the things I'm enjoying about it without investing the next couple of weeks to finish it.

I generally think Franzen is great at writing characters and somewhat weak at writing plots. (Things happen, and then more things happen, and then some other stuff happens.) And the characters are really fascinating, even though I want to smack Joey's smug face at all times. Also, Patty is not nearly as smart as Warren, Joey, and Richard like to protest that she is. In fact, she seems to lack any kind of common sense. Not that she's a bad character-- she's not-- she's just not very smart.

[Mara]

Finishing Freedom in book form was a good choice. I think the actor reading the audiobook did it a disservice. I didn't realize until I was reading it on my own how peevish and sarcastic he made each character sound, in a way that I don't think was supported by the text. As a result, the smugness and condescension of the book (which were present) were aggravated.

I still didn't love it, but I felt a little more compelled by the story. The ending was a little forced and convenient, but plot was never really Franzen's strong suit. The characters were well-drawn and complex. I'm not sure I'll ever be a really big fan of his, but I don't regret reading it.

[ledfloyd]

yeah, if i have a problem with the book it's that the ending doesn't completely work. but i really loved everything up until that point. shame about the narrator, franzen does seem to walk that line with his characters and they certainly don't need a nudge over the edge.

[dreamdead]

Finished Denis Johnson's Fiskadoro, a post-apocalyptic novel set in Florida, after nuclear bombs have decimated the rest of America. Johnson structures this move so that the remaining survivors descend into primitivism, finding the Koran, the Bible, and Jimi Hendrix's music to all wield equal power over their lives. It's an interesting premise, as is the bartering for the few books that still remain, as when survivors read a tale of Nagasaki after America dropped a bomb over it, none too subtly suggesting the political treatment that we have reaped what we had earlier sown. It never quite pulls its fascinating ideas together enough to become a stand-out text, unfortunately, but it's decent enough.

Probably back to Woolf after this, since Sarah demands that I finish it. :) After talking with her, I think I understand more of To the Lighthouse, but those first 50 pages were so ephemeral that I felt initially like I had gained no sense of the narrative or symbolism at work. Hopefully I have a better grounding now.

[Mara]

Started To the Lighthouse as my new commuting book. Very dreamy and reminiscent of Mrs. Dalloway, which I enjoyed.

I'm also rereading The Lost City of Z as part of my current obsession with the Amazon. It's an interesting story, but I'm not sure that Grann's prose is really up to the task. His interjections about his own voyage are kind of boring, and he often dwells far too long in speculation about the mental and emotional state of the historical figures involved.

Also, now that I've read a couple other historical accounts of Fawcett, Grann's portrayal of him seems overly rosy. He all but ignores Fawcett's racism and poor judgment, which led to his death.

Still, it's not a bad book.

[D_Davis]

John Christopher, the author of the Tripod Trilogy, recently passed away. He wrote one of the first SF books I ever got into. I still have memories of the comic book version serialized in Boy's Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Youd

[Mara]

John Christopher, the author of the Tripod Trilogy, recently passed away. He wrote one of the first SF books I ever got into. I still have memories of the comic book version serialized in Boy's Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Youd

Sad. I totally love the Tripod Trilogy, although not the unnecessary prequel.

[dreamdead]

Finally reached the halfway point of To the Lighthouse after about a week away from the text. It still feels a little diaphanous in that it's hard to sustain a narrative arc for me at times (largely because I'm reading it in 10-20 page spurts), but whenever I put aside the time I'm pleasantly surprised at how full the world is, and how deep its connections go. I'm hoping to be more consistent with the reading at night, which I think will also deepen my appreciation.

[Grouchy]

So why did I deprive myself of the inmense pleasure of reading Terry Pratchett until now? Possibly because he's not even nearly as popular in the Spanish-speaking world, but still...

Just finished Mort. Hell of a book. Killer premise, interesting characters and the best cosmic sense of humor this side of Monty Python. The man has a unique sense of timing and a knack for making cinematic tricks work wonderfully in the printed page.

I've now bought The Color of Magic and Witches Abroad and plan on reading a lot more.

[Morris Schæffer]

I bought

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Jaws-Memories-from-Marthas-Vineyard-book-cover.jpeg

http://www.007collector.com/bond/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/book_bondonset_CR1.jpg

[Benny Profane]

Anyone read any Thomas Wolfe? (Not to be confused with Tom Wolff).

I'm about 125 pages into Look Homeward, Angel which supposedly gets lots of love in lit circles but I'm having a difficult time getting into it.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Anybody here read Tristram Shandy? Did a quick search and it looks like a few burned out on it -- something I'm feeling unfortunately close to after 200 pages. I dig the whole extended loopy digression shtick, but it can be just intimidatingly dense.

[Watashi]

Finally finished A Clash of Kings. I'll probably take a break and read some other books before I dive in to A Storm of Swords.

I also have to juggle a lot of early American literature for classes.

I think the next book I will read from my ever-growing backlog will be The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I think the next book I will read from my ever-growing backlog will be The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

You should think again.

[Mara]

Anybody here read Tristram Shandy? Did a quick search and it looks like a few burned out on it -- something I'm feeling unfortunately close to after 200 pages. I dig the whole extended loopy digression shtick, but it can be just intimidatingly dense.

That was pretty much my experience. But I'd like to finish it someday. I didn't dislike it-- it's just kind of a chore.

[Watashi]

You should think again.
You are the first person to tell me this.

Nearly all my professors tell me to read this.

[Melville]

Anybody here read Tristram Shandy? Did a quick search and it looks like a few burned out on it -- something I'm feeling unfortunately close to after 200 pages. I dig the whole extended loopy digression shtick, but it can be just intimidatingly dense.
One of my favorite books. I found it amusing the whole way. "Amusing" is too small a word though—more like it set off a constant stream of bright sparks in my head. It's bursting with wit and energy. It does a lot of the same things postmodernists do, but without the glibness and irritation. The story it eventually centers on (about his uncle) has a nice, sympathetic homey warmth too. My favorite bits are probably him talking about how he'll write a chapter on buttons and a chapter on chapters.

[Kurosawa Fan]

You are the first person to tell me this.

Nearly all my professors tell me to read this.

Blech. They must be big Stuart Scott fans. That's who the narrator reminded me of from start to finish. Annoying as all hell.

[dreamdead]

Shaila Abdullah's Saffron Dreams tells a story of Pakistani-American Arissa surviving the after-effects of leaving her homeland, struggling through the racism in New York City after 9/11 (and losing her husband in the Windows of the World), and working to recover a new post-widow identity. Abdullah's narrative voice is strong, and the writing is frequently strong and well-rounded, with only occasional lapses into a simpler (and thus delimiting) story. It's solid and quite informative in its study of ethnic identity, and useful to understand another perspective. While I find its treatment of Arissa's stunted child interesting, there are parts where I think Abdullah could have further developed her characters.

[dreamdead]

Woolf's To the Lighthouse definitely picks up in the second section, which is admittedly wonderful. The narrative voice, from none of the characters but rather from time itself (outside of human experience in many ways), is awesome and the way that Woolf reconciles and undercuts narrative developments with this device is wholly remarkable. I find that I had a hard time internalizing the plot because so much was stream-of-consciousness and moving between sketched characters, which impeded my ability to consistently have a firm grasp on each character. That, ultimately, is more my problem than Woolf's since I've typically gotten other high Modernist experiments by Faulkner, Dos Passos, and Eliot, but it did make for a never quite engrossing read.

I'd like to go back and finish Mrs. Dalloway someday, since I remember that text's psychology being more connected to plot as well.

[ledfloyd]

this is weird, i was about to agree with KFan saying that i had high expectations going into Oscar Wao but it was ultimately an unfulfilling experience. then i remembered i blogged about it when i finished it, so i went back and dug this (http://ledfloyd18.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-diaz/) up. and i apparently really enjoyed it. it's strange how your memory can distort your reaction to something over time. if someone had asked me today what i thought of the book i would've said it wasn't worth reading, but that's not what i thought when i was reading it?

[dreamdead]

Goodness, Miller and Shales' Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN is a longass book. It was interesting to read about the formation of the sports empire, but so much of the narrative reveals how assholey and regressive the corporation was regarding sexual misconduct that I now find myself less respectful of ESPN than I was before. And again, damn, what a long work of nonfiction.

I did like Bill Simmons's notes, as they took the piss out of the grandiosity extolled by others. But when Simmons is your least cliched individual...

[dreamdead]

John le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was thoroughly engrossing. Full of ideological twists and reversals, the characters struggle against their beliefs, or co-opt new beliefs, without censure. I wish le Carré would have further interrogated some of the ideas of Jewishness around which the plot revolves; there are instances where Jews are judged or belittled without much development. While I understand such bald prejudice is commonplace, I think he could have critiqued that mindset a little more. Otherwise, the ending recycles the central nihilism that opens the novel, beautifully exposing how cosmic, and futile, Cold War politics were viewed at the time.

[Mara]

I'm reading Brideshead Revisited, which I have a sneaking suspicion that I haven't read. I'm sure I've read part of it, and also seen part of the miniseries of it from the 80's, but never actually the whole thing at any given time.

[ledfloyd]

i reread slaughterhouse five over the weekend. good times. if you're ever in cody, wyoming, just ask for wild bill.

[Mara]

I'm reading Brideshead Revisited, which I have a sneaking suspicion that I haven't read. I'm sure I've read part of it, and also seen part of the miniseries of it from the 80's, but never actually the whole thing at any given time.

I was enjoying this (it was read by Jeremy Irons!) but the CDs are so damaged that I can't keep going with it. I'll have to finish it in book format.

I am having so much trouble with audio books lately.

[dreamdead]

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a solid short story collection. It had been fairly consistent in the early goings, but the title story and "The Approximate Size of my Favorite Tumor" were both exceptional, and so my appreciation multiplied as I kept reading. Although the subject matter is frequently defeatist, there's a humor throughout the text that levels that same sense of defeatism. Looking forward to reading Alexie's Indian Killer in a few months.

[dreamdead]

Through the first of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club's four sets of stories. It's reading effortlessly, and thematically its treatment of multiple generations, ever fearful of being ignored by the succeeding generations, is powerful material. I'm glad that I finally decided to start this book.

[Dukefrukem]

Anyone read? It's amazing. I can't believe how long Madoff got away with his scheme.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41UZdAYHfbL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Mara]

In a major compromise for my book group, we read The Walk by Richard Paul Evans. I've somehow avoided reading anything by him up to this point.

I expected it to be bad. But I was unprepared for how absurdly, horrifically bad it was. It may be the worst book I've ever read. I was furious about it, and if I hadn't been able to read the whole thing in about two hours, I probably would have just chucked it.

I'm 99% sure that my crazy sickness of the last 48 hours was food poisoning, but I can't discount the possibility that it was just a biological reaction to how awful this book was.

[dreamdead]

In a major compromise for my book group, we read The Walk by Richard Paul Evans. I've somehow avoided reading anything by him up to this point.


That summary from his website does not look good.

Last year my "Why is this book popular?"" read was Sapphire's Push. This year it will be Kathryn Stockett's The Help. I'd like to believe that it'll be better, but I have no high expectations...

[D_Davis]

Started Lansdale's latest Edge of Dark Water. It's one of his more mainstream, genre-lite offerings, similar to The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line. I'm liking it so far, but it contains one of pet peeves when it comes to first person narrative. The main character is 16 old girl, living in the river-bottom land deep in East Texas. She mentions that she's not educated, and can only write a little.

So who is writing the book?

I just don't believe that a character like her would take the time to write a 400 page novel. And even though her language sounds authentic (Lansdale is the modern master of affected, rural, and folksy language), her grammar and spelling are impeccable!

This kind of thing bugs me a bit.

[Mara]

Last year my "Why is this book popular?"" read was Sapphire's Push. This year it will be Kathryn Stockett's The Help. I'd like to believe that it'll be better, but I have no high expectations...

Oh, no, it's not good. It's not worthless trash, but there's no reason to read it. I was bored, annoyed, and slightly offended the entire time.

[D_Davis]

Do you guys read books like the novelization of Precious based on the novel Push, by Saphire Push and The Help in order to stay connected to popular general lit culture, or because you think that they might be good?

[dreamdead]

Do you guys read books like the novelization of Precious based on the novel Push, by Saphire Push and The Help in order to stay connected to popular general lit culture, or because you think that they might be good?

For me, on some level, it's to determine how facile the general public treats race and racism. If books like Push are raised up by the general public to proclaim that we're beyond such discrimination, then there's a problem since the text is very myopic about its representation of culture. I'm wary of The Help, but I also recognize that many of the masterpieces of the early twentieth century were those by popular writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I'd like to believe that the general public could still support a text with as much sophistication as those writers, at their best, had.

I've also been getting intrigued by Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist, for example, but I expect that novel to be legitimately well developed and thorough in its treatment of race.

[D_Davis]

For me, on some level, it's to determine how facile the general public treats race and racism. If books like Push are raised up by the general public to proclaim that we're beyond such discrimination, then there's a problem since the text is very myopic about its representation of culture. I'm wary of The Help, but I also recognize that many of the masterpieces of the early twentieth century were those by popular writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. I'd like to believe that the general public could still support a text with as much sophistication as those writers, at their best, had.


Cool.

I'm always curious about why people choose to read those kinds of books, and totally not in a judgmental way.

[number8]

Curious about what you guys think of this. (http://www.justpressplay.net/articles/9222-can-you-turn-qtwilightq-fanfic-into-movies.html)

Is it ethical?

[Lucky]

I think it's ethical. If people are that stupid that they want to invest in this product, so be it. This seems to be a concurrent theme throughout history with entertainment literature, fan fiction is just the modern way. Check out ancient Roman comedy playwrights, for instance. They all used stock characters, similar plots, and sometimes the exact same characters would appear in others' works. Again, if the audience is willing to be entertained by the exact same story, have at it.

[Lucky]

To a lesser extent, you could make a similar argument for standard romantic comedies. That's probably the closest example we have to this at the moment. Audience goes into the movie (play in the old days) knowing exactly what characters and supporting characters to expect and precisely how it will end up.

This latest example just takes it up a notch. And a large one at that.

[Mara]

Do you guys read books like the novelization of Precious based on the novel Push, by Saphire Push and The Help in order to stay connected to popular general lit culture, or because you think that they might be good?

My book group chose it. I don't think I would have read it on my own. Sometimes I read popular books with the mistaken idea they might be good, often because a friend or relative recommends it. Sometimes a positive print review deceives me. (I'm looking at you, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.)

[D_Davis]

So after getting past my niggles (and being ultra critical on Lansdale simply because I want to always expect great things from him (because he a capable of very great things)) I am enjoying Edge of Dark Water a great deal. If there is one thing I know in this world, it's that Lansdale can spin one hell of a yarn, and when he's neck deep in that East Texan dialect and atmosphere, he's a nigh-unstoppable literary force.

[dreamdead]

I found Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club quite affecting by the novel/collection's end. There's a brief spell where things seem circular and all of the daughters seem to experience the same basic breakdown of marital happiness, but as the last set of narratives role in Tan really distinguishes these characters. The chasms of loss that June feels for her mother, especially as she recognizes too late what her mother wanted for her, is heartbreaking, as is the final scene that closes the text. And many of the narratives display this same struggle for independence regardless of the mother/daughter generation, and it's Tan's expert handling of these scenes that I'll ultimately remember.

[Mara]

I read The Joy Luck Club in high school and remember almost nothing except the story told in flashback about the red candle, which I still recall vividly.

[D_Davis]

Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

In Edge of Dark Water, Joe R. Lansdale treads the all-too familiar territory that he previously ventured into with The Bottoms, A Fine Dark Line, and All The Earth, Thrown to the Sky - only it's not as good as even the lesser of those. It lacks the social impact of The Bottoms, doesn't have half the heart as A Fine Dark Line, and the adventure seems more insignificant than All the Earth.

Right off the bat I had some trouble with the novel. Most importantly, the POV character seemed like an odd choice to me. I still don't understand why Lansdale wrote from the POV of a teenage female, especially since she's a total tomboy and basically acts like a dude. There is a perfectly good male character that would have made a much more interesting POV character (especially given Lansdale's ability to write about persecution, of both the racial and sexual varieties). Also, I don't believe for a moment that the main POV character would have, or could have written such a tale.

If it sounds like I'm being ultra-critical, it's because I am. From many other authors, this thrilling offer would rank among their best. It's well written (above niggle aside), and contains many examples of Lansdale's expert ear for regional dialog, and he creates some truly harrowing moments. There's a chase down a river that is truly something special, and I thought the novel was going to turn into something great at this point - it did not.

Truth is, I expect more from Lansdale, and I want him to return to greatness; I truly believe that he is a National Treasure, easily on par with Mark Twain and Flannery O'Conner when it comes to southern-fried lit. It seems to me as if Lansdle has lost his edge, or that he needs to find some new inspiration. There is an old saying that one should write what one knows, but I think it'd do Lansdale some good to venture outside the boundaries of East Texas and the south. I know he still has it in him, but I can't help but accuse him of being a bit lazy, and relying too much on what he knows. There was a time when Lansdale was pushing the boundaries of thrilling fiction - he once started where every author would stop.

That's no longer the case, and thus I'm left feeling disappointed, even if the work isn't necessarily bad. I want the King to return, and I hope he does. At least the Hap and Leonard novels are still good, and I do have Devil Red still on my to read shelf.

[Mara]

I finished Brideshead Revisited and feel positive about it. In the subgenre of "Rich Aristocratic Alcoholic English People Who Hate Their Spouses"-- is that a subgenre?-- anyway, as far as RAAEPWHTS goes, this one has some surprising heft, mostly because it's not afraid to call out the characters on the ugliness of their lives, and because it mixes some serious discussion of Catholicism into the normal level of self-hatred. I was, however, annoyed by the random plot structure that abandoned the most vibrant and interesting character halfway through the book and then never really returned to him.

Meanwhile, I picked up what I thought would be a light-as-air audiobook while I was waiting for the one I really wanted to read, and have found myself surprisingly emotionally distressed about it. The book is Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, AKA Lemony Snicket, and it's a YA book about a high school romance. BUT I'M TOTALLY SHAKEN UP BY IT AND WANT TO DISCUSS IT. I'll probably write up full thoughts when I finish it, which should be shortly.

[fvr]

Curious about what you guys think of this. (http://www.justpressplay.net/articles/9222-can-you-turn-qtwilightq-fanfic-into-movies.html)

Is it ethical?

humbly,
I think it's not ethical, because it's lowering the already-low-to-begin-with bar.
If this goes, why shouldn't anything else for that matter?
What's to stop anybody to spur gossip stories into movie plots, the gossip magazines sell also, don't they?
:pritch:filth:pritch:

[Spaceman Spiff]

Recommend me some little known but well written absurdist works in the vein of Kafka, Camus or Gogol. Bonus points if the book is dry and droll while remaining disturbing/creepy.

Much appreciated.

[Irish]

Recommend me some little known but well written absurdist works in the vein of Kafka, Camus or Gogol. Bonus points if the book is dry and droll while remaining disturbing.

Much appreciated.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

I Served the King of England and Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal.

[Milky Joe]

Beckett's Trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable

[fvr]

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.


Best book ever !
Also, try Magus by John Fowles, although is not so much in the same lines, it provides a good, somewhat ecstatic, unexplained chain of evens.

[Irish]

Best book ever !
Also, try Magus by John Fowles, although is not so much in the same lines, it provides a good, somewhat ecstatic, unexplained chain of evens.

Magus is a good suggestion. I'm not sure it fits the criteria of absurdist, but man... What a weird f'ing book. :lol:

[Melville]

Have you read all of Kafka? Of his less-famous short stories, I most liked The Burrow, The Judgement, A Country Doctor, and Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.

Dostoevsky also has some absurdist short stories. The Crocodile is hilarious. The Double might qualify, and it's awesome.

Quadraturin by Krzhizhanovsky is very Gogol- and Kafka-esque. Presumably, his other short stories are as well.

Bernhard's books have some of the same absurd and agitated psychology, but not really the fantastical events. Concrete and Correction were both good.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Cheers Irish. The Bulgakov is closer to what I had originally envisaged/wanted, but all 3 books sound interesting.

Milky Joe: I tried getting into Molloy a year (or two) ago and for some reason it didn't grab my interest, and I stopped maybe a third of the way through. I love Beckett in theory, and his ideas and thematic concerns are all terribly interesting, but for some reason I can't get into his prose. I'll give it another go though because somebody like Beckett just has to click with me.

fvr: This sounds weird alright, but not exactly the kind of weird I'm looking for. I want something either harrowingly creepy or terrifying in a kind of absurdist way. Very dark humour is also appreciated. This sounds more like 'surrealism' or possibly 'magical realism' which is also cool but not nearly as much of my kind of thing. I could be wrong though, and I'm open to persuasion.

Melville: I've read nearly all of Kafka but not Blumfeld or an Elderly Bachelor (they are not in my Kafka compilation I guess). I'll check these out.

Dostoevsky is actually a good shout. I've only read Notes, Crime and Punishment, and I've never actually finished Brothers K, but I'll certainly get around to that at some point soon. Might have to start over though. It's been a while.

I actually have a compilation of Krzhizanovsky's works and Quadraturin is indeed one of my favorites. He's another writer who completely speaks to me thematically, but formally he's no Kafka (or Camus).

As for Bernhard, I've never even heard of him so much obliged.

---
Basically to further explicate what it is that I want: I want a novel (the shorter the better - heh) with an almost choking atmosphere of dread, where the protagonist is essentially unable to understand or deal with the plot at hand, either through the uncaring nature of the world he inhabits or due to his uncontrollable/bizarre/absurd psychology. I've just re-read 'Ice' by Anna Kavan and it's possibly my favorite book of all time because it totally and perfectly embodies the kind of atmosphere I'm searching for. If you have any obscure film recs that fit with this admittedly very precise rubric, I'd greatly appreciate those too.

[Benny Profane]

Basically to further explicate what it is that I want: I want a novel (the shorter the better - heh) with an almost choking atmosphere of dread, where the protagonist is essentially unable to understand or deal with the plot at hand, either through the uncaring nature of the world he inhabits or due to his uncontrollable/bizarre/absurd psychology.


These may be obvious suggestions, but:

Catch 22
The Crying of Lot 49

[Melville]

I've read nearly all of Kafka but not Blumfeld or an Elderly Bachelor (they are not in my Kafka compilation I guess). I'll check these out.
It's only one story; Blumfeld is the elderly bachelor. It's also very comedic, which doesn't sound like what you're after. Though Kafka and Gogol are both laced with some degree of humor.

Of Dostoevsky's stories, The Double definitely sounds most like what you're talking about.

If you liked the obsessive anxiety and repetition of The Burrow, I'd guess you'd like Bernhard. And you should give Beckett another go.

I'm curious about your grouping of Camus with the others. He doesn't seem very similar.

EDIT: have you read anything by Hamsun, Hunger in particular? It's getting pretty far afield from Kafka and Gogol, but it has a similar sense of psychology constrained by absurd anxieties, gesticulations and conflicting ambiguities.

ANOTHER EDIT: as for movies, check out more Zulawski.

[Spaceman Spiff]

These may be obvious suggestions, but:

Catch 22
The Crying of Lot 49

I don't find them obvious, but then again I've read both and neither are what I'm looking for (although I can sort of see where you're coming from with regards the protagonist's inability to influence the proceedings of the plot despite his best intentions). Catch 22 is very funny but there's definitely a little too much filler, and I'm not a fan of Pynchon's style (sorry).

Melville: I am always down for Kafka, as they say. I actually find a lot of his work bleak, depressing and downright scary in a 'what if I was in Josef K/Gregor Samsa/The guy from the Judgement', kind of way. I do prefer those works to his lighter stuff.

The Double sounds awesome.

Will do (re: Bernhard). Beckett will have to wait. I've given him two shots, and neither did it so I'll get around to him eventually but probably not anytime soon.

Well with Camus I'm only talking about The Stranger and the Plague (haven't read anything else). I definitely think he's cut from the same Kafka cloth, but while Kafka is more tormented by the mental (feelings of inadequacy, guilt, shame), Camus is concerned with the inadequacy of man within the cosmic sphere, which perhaps makes his work less personal (and certainly his very clean/simple/emotionless writing style accentuates this). Both strike me as absurdly neurotic though, and I find their works absurd, yet deeply moving in a terrifying way. I think the Plague is a better example of this (Oran as the site of mass death and sickness by the uncontrollable forces of a virus).

I haven't read anything by Hamsun but I remember you putting him in your top 10 (or something), so the name does ring a bell. Hunger sounds very cool.

As for Zulawski, well yeah. He's the tops. As a matter of fact, I saw La Femme Publique for the first time about a week ago, and while it's very sexy, it's no Possession (or The Devil).

[D_Davis]

Recommend me some little known but well written absurdist works in the vein of Kafka, Camus or Gogol. Bonus points if the book is dry and droll while remaining disturbing/creepy.

Much appreciated.

Check out Thomas Ligotti's My Work is Not Yet Done, and Teatro Grottesco.

[number8]

Ah, Ligotti. It's like Kafka fucked a demon in hell and gave birth through Clive Barker's vagina.

[D_Davis]

Ah, Ligotti. It's like Kafka fucked a demon in hell and gave birth through Clive Barker's vagina.

Pretty much. Just add a few metric tons of pessimism and misanthropy.

Pretty much the very definition of "little known but well written absurdist works in the vein of Kafka."

He's been called the contemporary Kafka by more than one critic.

[Derek]

Recommend me some little known but well written absurdist works in the vein of Kafka, Camus or Gogol. Bonus points if the book is dry and droll while remaining disturbing/creepy.

Much appreciated.

I'll add Melville's short story, Bartleby, the Scrivener.

[dreamdead]

I read The Joy Luck Club in high school and remember almost nothing except the story told in flashback about the red candle, which I still recall vividly.

My biggest worry with Tan right now is overreacting to what her collection elicited in me. I can see how only a few minor notes could resonate years later, but I'm hopeful that the battling children, one a chess pro and the other struggling for some form of identity marker, will linger and flourish. Humorously, I already don't remember the red candle moment, so maybe I'm too hopeful.

Gonna do Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer next, with some José Rivera plays thrown in the mix as well.

[Mara]

My biggest worry with Tan right now is overreacting to what her collection elicited in me. I can see how only a few minor notes could resonate years later, but I'm hopeful that the battling children, one a chess pro and the other struggling for some form of identity marker, will linger and flourish. Humorously, I already don't remember the red candle moment, so maybe I'm too hopeful.

It was the flashback about the kids in China with an arranged marriage and the boy is too inexperienced to consummate the marriage, so the girl comes up with an elaborate ruse to get out of the marriage. I don't know why that really stuck with me after all these years. (The rest is a bit of a blur. Chess. Mah-jong.)

[Mara]

So I finished Handler's Why We Broke Up, his post-Lemony-Snicket YA outing. And I had an intense emotional reaction to it, but I'm not sure I can say that I actually liked it. More accurately, I found the book really upsetting.

The set up is pretty simple. The book is a letter written from Min, a precocious, "arty" high school student and budding cineaste, to her ex-boyfriend Ed, the popular, dim-bulb basketball star who fell in love with her. She is returning to him a box full of the detritus of their relationship: presents, flower petals, ticket stubs, etc. As she catalogs the contents, she gives us her version of their relationship and why they broke up.

On that level, it's pretty clever.

However, the book exists on this completely other level that I found kind of disturbing. Min, writing from her own perspective, is a very limited narrator, and she comes across convincingly as a teenager, with all that implies: poorly organized thoughts, cognitive underdevelopment, overly emotional thinking, and a lack of self-awareness and reflection that make her blind to her own faults and shortcomings. You could take that as bad writing, but it's not: it's actually a very accurate depiction of what it means to be a young pre-adult. In its own way, the book is a scathing and damning treatise on teenagers. Min isn't a bad person, she's just a child trying to play a grown-up game. In a few years, actually, she'll probably be a fascinating and intelligent woman, but meanwhile, she is everything I hate about teens, and everything I hated about being a teen.

I guess that's why the book ended up upsetting me so much. I really, really identified with Min. I was the same way as a teenager, both for the good, the bad, and the deeply annoying. The criticism of the book struck a nerve, because I could see myself writing this overblown, overemotional treatise if anyone had broken my heart in high school. Her descriptions of school were so eerily accurate to the way I felt about my school that I actually wondered if the book took place in the mid-90's. (Like A Series of Unfortunate Events, the book is pretty vague about time periods. The kids talk on land lines and ride the bus. Nobody discusses cell phones or computers or social networking. There were perhaps two comments that placed the book as being contemporary; without those it could have taken place any time from the early 80's to today.)

So, yes, this silly little YA book totally gave me traumatic flashbacks to high school and my youth, and how much I hated both those things. Not what I expected at all.


“Ed, it was everything, those nights on the phone, everything we said until late became later and then later and very late and finally to go to bed with my ear warm and worn and red from holding the phone close close close so as not to miss a word of what it was, because who cared how tired I was in the humdrum slave drive of our days without each other. I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did. But that’s why right there it was doomed. We couldn’t only have the magic nights buzzing through the wires. We had to have the days, too, the bright impatient days spoiling everything with their unavoidable schedules, their mandatory times that don’t overlap, their loyal friends who don’t get along, the unforgiven travesties torn from the wall no matter what promises are uttered past midnight, and that's why we broke up.”

― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

[dreamdead]

Picked it up yesterday and I'm already halfway through Colson Whitehead's zombie tale Zone One. I'm fascinated by the general quality of the prose, which is just gorgeous in its eviscerated detail, and by how he brings more of a cultural context. Whitehead starts with Romero, and then plumbs that foundation to derive more cultural goodness, but without the hamfisted quality that hampers Romero's recent works.

Also interesting since Whitehead, like Michael Chabon before him, reveals such an ease in building his prose style and rhythm onto ostensibly genre tales (also interesting to study how critics respond to this trend of authors' attempts to abolish high/low art divides). Hoping to finish this in the next day or so.

[Qrazy]

So is the Hunger Games any good or is it as shitty as I fully expect it to be?

[Mara]

So is the Hunger Games any good or is it as shitty as I fully expect it to be?

It's okay. The prose is fine, and it has a likeable heroine and some interesting commentary on society. The action/adventure stuff is pretty good, and the romance is a little boring. The worst part of the books, in my opinion, is they are really poorly paced.

I wouldn't knock down any doors trying to find a copy, but you won't hate yourself for reading it.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

I think a bunch of people gave impressions of it in the film's thread too, Qrazy.

[Kurosawa Fan]

So is the Hunger Games any good or is it as shitty as I fully expect it to be?

I suspect you'll dislike it pretty strongly.

[MadMan]

For my 13,000th post, a book review.

Alright, so I did finally finish reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway.

My feelings about the book is that the first part, which takes place in Left Bank Paris is truly marvelous and completely engaging. Hemmingway does a fantastic job of giving the novel a rather quick pace while at the same time giving his characters feelings and their own voices. Yet when the novel switches over to Spain midway through, for a while the book lingers too much and doesn't really go anywhere.

Luckily though the rest of the main cast re-enters, and the novel greatly picks back up again. Hemmingway masterfully details bullfighting in Spain while also diving even further into the characters' problems, their insecurities and their flaws. Jake Barnes is someone I can so easily identify with its a bit unnerving, yet I find his friend Bill to be more like me, the whole "Let's go fight while we're drunk" aspect aside. Never have I known any Robert Cohens, although if I have well I was never really friends with any of them. Its hard to stick around with someone who can't take a hint, or who ends up assaulting you for a rather foolish reason.

Now I have known a Lady Ashley or two in my time, and even liked a few of them in the same hopelessly fashion that Barnes does. Their dynamic is rather interesting, if quite a little tragic, and through them Hemmingway properly establishes his mirroring of his own travels and times in Europe. Although not as good as the masterful classic The Old Man and the Sea, this is still a near great book, and I actually liked it for it being a first time novel. I have in my possession also from the library For Whom The Bell Tolls, and I also finally picked up The Great Gatsby, too, even though that's written by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

[Irish]

Although not as good as the masterful classic The Old Man and the Sea, this is still a near great book, and I actually liked it for it being a first time novel.

*smack* I think Ernie just rolled over in his grave.

If you just finished the book, you might get a kick out of this article. Talks a lot of Hemingway's early life and discusses some of the technical differences between Sun and Old Man:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/assessment/2012/03/ernest_hemingway_how_the_great _american_novelist_became_the_ literary_equivalent_of_the_nik e_swoosh_.single.html

[MadMan]

*smack* I think Ernie just rolled over in his grave.

If you just finished the book, you might get a kick out of this article. Talks a lot of Hemingway's early life and discusses some of the technical differences between Sun and Old Man:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/assessment/2012/03/ernest_hemingway_how_the_great _american_novelist_became_the_ literary_equivalent_of_the_nik e_swoosh_.single.html
I'll have to read that article. And I was only mentioning The Old Man and The Sea because I have only read two Hemmingway books now, so I had to something to remotely compare The Sun Also Rises to. Regardless, I stand by my opinions.

[kuehnepips]

Recommend me some little known but well written absurdist works ...


http://www.danielcharms.com

[dreamdead]

The way that The Sun Also Rises is taught today actually centers on the prejudice leveled at the Jewish Robert Cohn by all of the others. He is one who is able to move ahead in the world and it's only through Barnes' narration that he is systematically infantilized. Although Barnes and Hemingway both lambaste Cohn, we typically read these scenes as a European critique of the Jewish immigrant traversing class distinctions and succeeding in post-war America, and work to understand what all Cohn strives for (and how much he's a mirror of Lady Brett Ashley)...

[Mara]

I'm a few days into James' The Portrait of a Lady and I think we're going to get along just fine. I may revisit the few books of his I read in high school because I don't think I really appreciated his prose at the time. It's gorgeous.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Totally agree. I was completely taken in by James's prose.

[Irish]

The way that The Sun Also Rises is taught today actually centers on the prejudice leveled at the Jewish Robert Cohn by all of the others. He is one who is able to move ahead in the world and it's only through Barnes' narration that he is systematically infantilized. Although Barnes and Hemingway both lambaste Cohn, we typically read these scenes as a European critique of the Jewish immigrant traversing class distinctions and succeeding in post-war America, and work to understand what all Cohn strives for (and how much he's a mirror of Lady Brett Ashley)...

Interesting! I think the strains of anti-Semitism come from Hemingway's background, growing up in a fairly homogeneous Protestant community where Jews were the objects of some derision (one of Hemingway's nicknames in high school was 'Hemingstein,' because his friends thought it sounded funny).

None of the characters come off well. They're all self involved and destructive. I'm not convinced it's Jake's narration that does Cohn in; he mostly behaves like an ass, especially where Brett is concerned.

I have trouble reading into it too deeply, though, because all of the main characters are heavily based on real people and the events in the novel closely follow Hemingway's own life circa 1924.

[Mara]

“There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding.”

That's a very Oscar Wilde-ish thing to say, Henry James.

[Melville]

Let's say I thought the first third-to-half of Gravity's Rainbow was brilliant but that it eventually grew tedious from lack of characterization or new ideas. What other Pynchon books might I like?

[EyesWideOpen]

I just finished Battle Royale. I'm a big fan of the movie and I've started reading the novel multiple times but finally read through it over the last two weeks. And while it was an above average book I find the movie to be a lot better. The majority of the character dialogue is super cheesy and dated and I much appreciate the shortened back stories for characters that you get in the film. In the novel pretty much every student is secretly in love with another student and you get tons of uninteresting backstories for characters that aren't that interesting to begin with.