The Book Discussion Thread

[Hugh_Grant]

Anyone read any Hilary Mantel?

I have a crazy goal of reading all the Booker Prize winners, but I have to say that neither Wolf Hall nor Bring Up the Bodies looks appealing to me at all. I don't really know why because I usually love historical fiction.

[dreamdead]

I've blown through about half of Atwood's Cat's Eye in two days. I'm about to undergo a massive lack of free time after sitting in airports/planes, which enabled the reading spree. Nonetheless, the central conflict between Cordelia and the narrator is developing nicely, and the historical examination of 1950-60's childhood is fully formed. Looking forward to finishing it out.

[megladon8]

I've just not been able to develop an appreciation for Atwood.

I hated "Oryx and Crake", but I'm also now unsure how much of it was genuine dislike, and how much of it was due to it being a book I read for a high school english class. We spent an entire semester with that one book and I was just so damn sick of it I practically gagged just looking at the cover.

[Mara]

I like Atwood quite a bit, but I remember Cat's Eye being sort of minor in my mind. Then again, I probably read it 15 years ago. Maybe I should revisit it.

[megladon8]

There was some talk about true crime lit. a while back, and while I know this isn't a true crime story, has anyone here read "The Gods of Gotham" by Lyndsay Faye?

Seems intriguing but I can't tell from the reviews if it is dime-a-dozen poorly written trash, or a good piece of historical crime fiction.

I'm just fascinated by that place and time (late 1800s NYC).

[Grouchy]

A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick, 1977) - This is a stunning, deeply involving novel and it makes it impossible for me to stop seeking out Dick's works. It also helped my enjoyment inmensely that I haven't seen the film yet. The novel follows the misadventures of Bob Arctor (a DEA undercover agent posing as a drug dealer) and his group of friends and it's full of delightful banter between them and Dick's usual depictions of paranoia. However, the latter half of the book gets a lot more somber and, at least for this reader, going through the ending chapters was a monumental gut-punch. Very recommended.

[kopello]

Absolutely flying through Lonesome Dove since I got it at xmas. McMurtry's characters are so simple, yet completely fascinating at the same time.

[megladon8]

Continuing on through "The Crimson Petal and the White" (it's a damn long book, okay?? :lol:) and I am finding it gets much better as it goes along.

The relationship between William and Sugar gets more interesting with each passing chapter, as they each grow to rely on one another more and more, with that reliance slowly turning into genuine love. Sugar's hatred for all men seems to be tempering as she grows to understand William, and even the actions he takes which she does not condone.

I feel like the first couple of chapters (with the particularly explicit sex scenes) were meant purely as shock value and to "grab" the reader right off the bat before providing a Dickensian story of love and loss. Seems rather "meta" (whether intentional or not - I'm leaning towards the former) with the book's characters spending much of their time examining the shame of sexuality and realizing that everyone feels the desire for sex, and the book opening with explicit sex scenes to get the reader's attention.

Indeed one of the most fascinating scenes in the book is a confrontation between William and his pious brother Henry, as William explains that Henry's dying female friend (of whom he is ashamedly lusting after) probably just wants to "get fucked before she dies". William even shares with his brother that he has slept with hundreds of women (mostly prostitutes) and many of them get just as much pleasure from (and feel just as much desire for) sex as men do.

[dreamdead]

Finished up Atwood's Cat's Eye. It's very much a book that teaches you how to read it, as the opening chapter is all about experiencing memory as, essentially, a continuum. In turn, the book's all about painter Elaine processing her childhood memories and deconstructing the emotions that were leveled against her by, most dominantly, Cordelia. Amidst all this are some musings about the art industry and the role of critical theory, which Elaine mocks. Most of the childhood material, however, resonates most strongly, and the adult Elaine is a bit underdeveloped (her fling with her ex-husband leading up to her exhibition cries out for more consideration, as is the final encounter with Cordelia). Still, the book's engagement with small details allows the tapestry of the past to emerge, and those sections are never less than convincing. It's a book that doesn't strive to do too much (I'd initially thought it would cover the 1980s far more than the 50s-60s), but those childhood yearnings and suffering are devastatingly conveyed.

Next up is Camus's The Plague.

[dreamdead]

Finished up Albert Camus's The Plague, which was rather unsettling. The two sermons especially had a power to them, and the way that Camus orchestrates how arbitrary the disease is keeps growing throughout the book. And rather than the final section being uplifting, the pallor remains when Camus wants to underscore the indifference of fate, even in the face of growing health and renewal. This made me want to revisit The Stranger (and I found the intertextual link back to that book's main incident entertaining enough), but memory makes me believe that this book is more culturally and socially constructed, whereas the earlier novel was more individualistic and less concerned with the societal experience. What a strong, powerful book.

Starting Huxley's Brave New World, which I've somehow neglected during high school and college days...

[ledfloyd]

I am pretty deep into Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot. While it is undoubtedly lesser than Middlesex, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It is also creating a desire to dig into Victorian era literature, which I may have to satiate.

[Mara]

I am pretty deep into Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot. While it is undoubtedly lesser than Middlesex, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It is also creating a desire to dig into Victorian era literature, which I may have to satiate.

I did not enjoy this book. Which was very disappointing, since I looooved Middlesex.

[ledfloyd]

I did not enjoy this book. Which was very disappointing, since I looooved Middlesex.
I remember you saying this, which had me skeptical at first because I was thinking "Wait, Mara didn't like this? With it's obsession with the Brontes et al. it feels like it was written for Mara!"

I'm only about two-thirds of the way through, and it certainly doesn't possess the verve it did early on, but I'm still pretty engaged. I'm curious to know what your issues with it were.

[Mara]

I remember you saying this, which had me skeptical at first because I was thinking "Wait, Mara didn't like this? With it's obsession with the Brontes et al. it feels like it was written for Mara!"

YOU'D THINK, RIGHT? I thought it was tailor-made for me, but I became increasingly dissatisfied with it as it progressed. I felt like it was an idea for a book, instead of a book itself. I didn't feel like it was saying something... that it was a book about something. I expect more from Eugenides.

[D_Davis]

http://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townne ws.com/pricecountydaily.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/e/df/edf15830-1a1c-11e2-955c-0019bb2963f4/50819fbf216b8.preview-300.jpg

This is a very good book, written by an author who is definitely one to keep an eye on. While reading it, I thought to myself that Kiesbye is "the next Thomas Ligotti." I do not mean that the two authors are similar in style; what I do mean is that Kiesbye writes with a strong, seasoned, mature voice, and that he could very well end up being an author that will carry the torch being slung by authors like Ligotti and Cisco now.

Unfortunately, the book is heavily front-loaded, with its most remarkable contribution coming in the second chapter; not surprisingly, this chapter was also published as a standalone short story. It is phenomenal, one of the creepiest and most haunting things I've read. But like I said, this is a little unfortunate because the book never again reaches this mark; Kiesbye raised the bar too high, too early, and thus I was just a little disappointed by everything after this moment, even though it is still really good.

Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone is a horror novel for the lit-minded reader, one that will appeal to admirers of Shirley Jackson, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, MR James, and Arthur Machen. It's not horror in the sense of its genre conventions, it is horror in that it depicts human beings being cruel to one another in horrible ways, displaying traits that can only be labeled, "evil."

[D_Davis]

Next up...

http://benjamintmiller.files.wordpres s.com/2011/06/warlock.jpg

[dreamdead]

Huxley's Brave New World was a quick read. Pretty immense as well. The criticism of the uniformity that Ford's capitalistic monopoly engenders was well played, and the ways in which it touches on religion and modernity were also intriguing. The book has a touch of misogyny in that no women ever secures the level of individuality that the men do, but otherwise it comes off relatively flawless to me. It still conveys so much about the comparative white noise of contemporary culture, and resonates all the more when I think back to those final scenes between John and Mustapha, which concisely critique the excesses and abuses of entertainment. I'll be honest when I say that this comic (http://www.oesquema.com.br/trabalhosujo/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/aldous_huxley_vs_george_orwell .jpg)compelled me to finally sit down and read it. Quite happy that I did. I'll be impressed if anything dethrones the 1-2 of Huxley and Camus moving forward.

As it stands, I'm moving onto Willa Cather's early study of midwestern life in O Pioneers! next.

[D_Davis]

D you always find books with the neatest cover artwork.

It's one of the main things I look for when choosing a new book to buy. I almost always judge books by their covers, and it usually pays off.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Heard great things about Warlock, would love your thoughts when you get into it a ways.

[Mara]

Huxley's Brave New World was a quick read. Pretty immense as well. The criticism of the uniformity that Ford's capitalistic monopoly engenders was well played, and the ways in which it touches on religion and modernity were also intriguing. The book has a touch of misogyny in that no women ever secures the level of individuality that the men do, but otherwise it comes off relatively flawless to me. It still conveys so much about the comparative white noise of contemporary culture, and resonates all the more when I think back to those final scenes between John and Mustapha, which concisely critique the excesses and abuses of entertainment. I'll be honest when I say that this comic (http://www.oesquema.com.br/trabalhosujo/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/aldous_huxley_vs_george_orwell .jpg)compelled me to finally sit down and read it. Quite happy that I did. I'll be impressed if anything dethrones the 1-2 of Huxley and Camus moving forward.


I really enjoy this book. I sort of wish it wasn't constantly compared to 1984, because whichever ends up "winning" I still think they're both excellent works that shouldn't be disregarded.

[D_Davis]

Heard great things about Warlock, would love your thoughts when you get into it a ways.

I am not liking it much at all. It's well written, but it's all so dry and dull.

[Winston*]

Halfway through this atm.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_x2TThMsyaYA/S93p6_49EZI/AAAAAAAAEYI/IHBbVWaYSfY/s1600/pictures+at.jpg

An exhaustive history of the 5 films nominated for Best Picture in 1967. Really compelling.

[Lucky]

Has anyone read Denis Johnson's Angels? Halfway through, very bleak so far.

[dreamdead]

Has anyone read Denis Johnson's Angels? Halfway through, very bleak so far.

Just Fiskadoro and Train Dreams for me. The former was rather average, while the latter was quite captivating in its depiction of 1930s America. I am interested in his collection Jesus' Son and in Tree of Smoke. He doesn't get much attention in the academic circles that I read, which I find odd.

[D_Davis]

I recently got this awesome set of books from one of my favorite authors; it's now the rarest thing I own. Only 300 will ever be made. I only hope he gets as famous as Thomas Ligotti. If so, I'll be very rich some day! http://www.idmforums.com/images/smilies/general/smile.gif

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/543797_486706874713295_1885939 556_n.jpg

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/r270/263210_486707064713276_2049763 587_n.jpg

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/550744_486707004713282_1585384 466_n.jpg

[Lucky]

Cool. I've been having fantasies lately of things to do when I own my first place. One being a library so I can start collecting things like that.

[megladon8]

Managed to get my hands on copies of "The San Veneficio Canon", "The Traitor", "The Tyrant" and "The Narrator" by Cisco all for really great prices.

[dreamdead]

Willa Cather's O Pioneers! is a typically fast and short novel, layered with yearnings for the open midwestern landscape and a progression beyond the stoic judgment of hard-set resentment from male immigrants. Throughout the novel, Cather offers a sympathetic glimpse into farming, knowledge, and celebration that are all coded as markedly feminine. In contrast, masculine pursuits end up being portrayed as fatalistic and judgmental, save for perhaps old man Ivar, who is himself ostracized by the men in the Nebraskan town for his Old World beliefs. It's interesting to see how little Cather condemns the affair that frames the story between Emile and Marie. in part because of them are framed as so guided by feminine impulses. The lack of revenge that is ultimately shown by Alexandra, our chief protagonist, is similarly interesting. And the focus on the diversity of immigrants that first came to the then-western America is always welcomed when so much of early 20th-century American literature by major authors try to gloss if not villainize that experience. Good stuff, even if it's not as ultimately powerful as A Lost Lady or My Ántonia.

Moving onto Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer for my second attempt at that book. Since a few of us are looking at reading it in the next few months, I'm going to make a thread devoted to thoughts of it as I'm reading...

[Lucky]

Just Fiskadoro and Train Dreams for me. The former was rather average, while the latter was quite captivating in its depiction of 1930s America. I am interested in his collection Jesus' Son and in Tree of Smoke. He doesn't get much attention in the academic circles that I read, which I find odd.

Angels left me empty. I'm more impressed by the author's style than the actual novel. Others at my book club had great things to say about Jesus' Son. I've added it to my recommendations list.

[D_Davis]

Managed to get my hands on copies of "The San Veneficio Canon", "The Traitor", "The Tyrant" and "The Narrator" by Cisco all for really great prices.

Now let's hope you like him! :)

[ledfloyd]

I adored Tree of Smoke, but I've yet to dig deeper into Johnson. Train Dreams and Jesus' Son are the two I always hear bandied about, and I've been meaning to check them out for awhile.

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Jesus' Son has been on my to-read list forever, will probably make a point of getting around to it this year.

[megladon8]

Now let's hope you like him! :)

You have very, very rarely steered me wrong.

And at less than $20 for 4 of his books all brand new, if I enjoy even one of them I'll consider it a victory.

[dreamdead]

I read Kevin Powers's The Yellow Birds in a quick burst since the local library has it listed as a 7-day book. It doubles with Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk as 2012's fiction books about soldiers serving in Iraq and how successfully, or not, they handle re-integration. It's a far more internal book than Fountain's text, and it isn't as overtly political and critical of the war. That said, it remains a fascinating treatise on how the body, even when delivered home safely, suffers from residual fallout from the constancy of danger overseas. And Powers's prose is quite tactile and methodical in its use of poetic form. Really nice, though I think I like Fountain's book just a little more.

Moving onto Don Lee's Country of Origin, since it's a shorter read than the Alexie book.

[Qrazy]

Well, The Wheel of Time series has finally ended. The last book was a solid conclusion to the series. It certainly has it's flaws but I'm glad I stuck with it. The scope of the world building is still beyond any other fantasy series I've ever read.

[ledfloyd]

Finally finished The Marriage Plot (there was a week in there where life happened and I didn't get any reading done), it definitely fizzles out a bit, but I still think it was worthwhile in the long run. A far cry from Middlesex, but still pretty solid. At the very least it has inspired an urge to read Austen, Eliot, and the Brontes, so that's something. I'm willing to take recommendations for starting points.

[Mara]

At the very least it has inspired an urge to read Austen, Eliot, and the Brontes, so that's something. I'm willing to take recommendations for starting points.

Oh! OH! I'm here, I'm here!

Austen is great at the comedy of manners, with a gentle outlook of life and a sly wit. (I know she's not popular on MC, but I find her laugh-out-loud funny.) She is willing to poke fun at her characters but shows real affection towards them at the same time. Pride and Prejudice is her most romantic outing, and Emma is probably the funniest, but her most mature work and my absolute favorite is Persuasion.

The Brontes are much more emotional, exciting, dark, and humorless. They're not afraid to have morally compromised characters (unlikeable, in many instances) and destructive connections. Charlotte is the smart one, and Jane Eyre is her masterpiece, full stop. She had other works, with different strengths, but never had anything else that worked so well as a cohesive whole.

Elizabeth is the sociopathic one, and I just can't with Wuthering Heights. Elizabeth hated people-- all people-- and wrote about hateful characters treating each other hatefully until they all die horribly, because she hates them. I won't deny that it is a brilliantly-written book, but if you ever meet someone who describes it as romantic, walk quickly in the other direction before they nail your puppy to a tree.

Anne is the overlooked one, and for some reason people will try to get you to read Agnes Grey, which is pretty much Jane Eyre-lite, instead of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is brilliant and under-read, and has a fascinating look at gender relations that was generations ahead of its time. Anne was also the only Bronte sister to realize that emotionally manipulative, physically abusive men should be the villains of the story, not the heroes. I think Anne was less in love with Branwell than the other two.

George Eliot is one of my favorite writers of all time, and much more than any of the above wrote books that were supposed to be taken seriously. (I mean, when you come down to it, Austen wrote comedies and the Brontes wrote soap operas.) Middlemarch is her masterpiece, but if that's too ambitious a starting place, Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss are also excellent. I find Silas Marner to be too brief and obvious to be considered one of her greats.

[ledfloyd]

What about Daniel Deronda? That one gets mentioned a lot in The Marriage Plot.

Outside of that I'm seeing Emma, Persuasion, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Middlemarch? I've been meaning to read Austen for awhile now, so I'll probably start there and see where it takes me.

Also, I find it weird that even though the Bronte's pen names have fallen by the wayside we still use George Eliot.

[Winston*]

Also, I find it weird that even though the Bronte's pen names have fallen by the wayside we still use George Eliot.

We still use 'William Shakespeare' as well.

[Mara]

What about Daniel Deronda? That one gets mentioned a lot in The Marriage Plot.

I have tried to get through the Kabbalah stuff twice. It's sitting on my bookshelf's "to finish" pile with a bookmark stuck halfway through.

/ashamed

My theory on male/female names is that Eliot kept publishing under Eliot even after her real identity was an open secret, but when Currer Bell was unmasked as Charlotte Bronte, she republished all hers and her sisters' books under their real names. Austen, of course, wrote anonymously under "A Lady."

[D_Davis]

I'm going to be playing an ambient show at the Seattle University's School of Theology Search for Meaning book festival, on March 9. This is a great festival with all kinds of theological books, talks, debates, and ideas, and this year the main speaker is Michael Chabon. I'm hoping he'll stop by and have a listen.

http://www.seattleu.edu/stm/searchformeaning2013/

[Melville]

Finally finished The Marriage Plot (there was a week in there where life happened and I didn't get any reading done), it definitely fizzles out a bit, but I still think it was worthwhile in the long run. A far cry from Middlesex, but still pretty solid. At the very least it has inspired an urge to read Austen, Eliot, and the Brontes, so that's something. I'm willing to take recommendations for starting points.
Wuthering Heights is well worth reading. It can be frustrating and tedious in both characterization—Heathcliff is a pretty ridiculous caricature by the time he's forging his son's love letters—and narrative—the redemptive second half of the diptych structure is dull, even though thematically it works perfectly. But the book as a whole is a unique and powerful vision, with moments of tremendous force and brilliance. And it has a fascinating way of structuring information for the reader, which I touched on in the 2012 movie's thread. It's wormed its way into my head since I re-read it last year.

I dislike and loathe the other novels I've read by those authors (Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice, respectively)

[Sven]

Go for soundscapes, stay for Rabbi Falcon.

[D_Davis]

Go for soundscapes, stay for Rabbi Falcon.

That's right. This probably won't be the venue to debut my extreme dubstep set.

[Duncan]

Started reading A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas. Only 85 pgs in and it's dense, slow going, but also pretty awesome so far. It's 700+ pgs so I've got a long way to go.

[Duncan]

Finally finished The Marriage Plot (there was a week in there where life happened and I didn't get any reading done), it definitely fizzles out a bit, but I still think it was worthwhile in the long run. A far cry from Middlesex, but still pretty solid. At the very least it has inspired an urge to read Austen, Eliot, and the Brontes, so that's something. I'm willing to take recommendations for starting points.

Middlemarch - One of the better books I've ever read. Top 25, even.
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights - Both really good.
Pride & Prejudice - Actually made me angry while reading it I hated it so much.

[Mara]

I know she's not popular on MC

See?

[ledfloyd]

Now I feel like I need to take up Pride and Prejudice as a challenge.

[Lucky]

I downloaded the free version of Anna Karenina on my Kindle today. Didn't realize how long it was. ...hesitation.

[Mara]

I downloaded the free version of Anna Karenina on my Kindle today. Didn't realize how long it was. ...hesitation.

Absolutely worth it* and never feels long.*


*except the chapters about hunting
*except the chapters about hunting

[megladon8]

I really like Jane Austen.

"Persuasion" is in my top 5 favorite books.

[Lucky]

Absolutely worth it* and never feels long.*


*except the chapters about hunting
*except the chapters about hunting

I appreciate the push, I'm invested in the novel more than I expected to be so soon. This won't be a chore at all to finish. I've never read Tolstoy before, and I'm instantly enamored by his abilities to characterize so effortlessly. The subtext behind every line of dialogue is crystal clear. It makes the read both fascinating and easy. I don't think I've read a classic work before that has such propulsion. I'm already through Part 1.

[Mara]

I really like Jane Austen.

"Persuasion" is in my top 5 favorite books.

Attaboy.

[Mara]

I appreciate the push, I'm invested in the novel more than I expected to be so soon. This won't be a chore at all to finish. I've never read Tolstoy before, and I'm instantly enamored by his abilities to characterize so effortlessly. The subtext behind every line of dialogue is crystal clear. It makes the read both fascinating and easy. I don't think I've read a classic work before that has such propulsion. I'm already through Part 1.

I did not expect to love Anna Karenina as much as I did, and it inspired me to tackle War and Peace soon afterward, which similarly threads so many plot lines and characters together so effortlessly that it never feels as long as it is.

[megladon8]

I've always loathed people who use the "you don't like it because you just don't get it" line, but when people who hate Austen use the excuse that her works are regressive with regards to women's rights and values, I do kind of want to say "you just don't get it".

Like Mara said, some of her work is laugh-out-loud hilarious in its absurdity.

Or, in the case of "Persuasion", just a damn good, heart-wrenching love story.

[Irish]

Pride & Prejudice - Actually made me angry while reading it I hated it so much.

Wait, why?

[Duncan]

Wait, why?

I don't even remember. I think it was that I found some of the characters so insufferably annoying instead of funny. The mother and I think Elizabeth's intended (i.e. not Darcy). But for sure every time the mother opened her mouth I wanted to quit reading. It was only for the sake of being able to say that I had read a book by Austen that I persevered. Maybe I'll read Emma or Persuasion some day. Not any day soon though.

[Mara]

I can accept people not finding Austen funny-- humor is subjective, and if you don't find her funny, you're not going to enjoy her books-- but Austen was very forward-thinking in terms of women's rights, even if it was sometimes subtly drawn. (Replying to Meg's comment here, not Duncan's.)

104ujhmnujhmnujhmnujhmnujhmnuj hmnujhmnujhmnujhmnujhmnujhmnuj hmnujhmnujhmnujhmn

^^^
Says my cat. She had a strong opinion, here.

By the way, in my opinion, the most hilarious thing Austen ever wrote was a piece of juvenilia called Love and Freindship (sic), which you can find online. It lacks the polish, sophistication, and maturity of her grown-up works, but holy crap is it funny.

[dreamdead]

Completed Don Lee's Country of Origin, which complicates the typical parameters of ethnic identity. Everyone in the novel, which takes place in Tokyo, is never wholly one ethnic identity. Instead, there are people struggling to blend into a Japanese society that derides half-breeds, so that Korean and African-American, Korean and American, and Korean and Japanese, all struggle to find a way out of their fractured ethnic psychology. If this sounds boring, I assure you that it's not. Lee engineers a mystery novel pace and sentiment to the novel, so that it engages with ethnic themes fluidly; he never overrides the plot with identity machinations, but instead lets it unfurl naturally. Between this and his current The Collective, I'm really starting to vibe with his narrative and psychological themes--it's far more nuanced and transgressive than much of the current canonical works on ethnic identity.

After the last two excursions, it's time to do Alexie's Indian Killer. For realsies.

[Watashi]

I read The Great Gatsby for the first time since high school.

It's awesome. I'm excited for the movie even more now.

[Irish]

I read The Great Gatsby for the first time since high school.

It's awesome. I'm excited for the movie even more now.

Far and away my favorite novel. So I can't quite get your excitement for the movie; I'm loathing its arrival & hoping Anonymous DDOSes every digital theater in the country, and any 35MM prints spontaneously combust.

(Although, I do think the casting director has been right on the money, with the exception of Tom Buchanan. That should have been Tom Hardy all the way).

[Watashi]

Far and away my favorite novel. So I can't quite get your excitement for the movie; I'm loathing its arrival & hoping Anonymous DDOSes every digital theater in the country, and any 35MM prints spontaneously combust.

(Although, I do think the casting director has been right on the money, with the exception of Tom Buchanan. That should have been Tom Hardy all the way).

I dunno, when Fitzgerald is describing the parties and neverending butlers and champagne, it looks exactly outlandish the trailers make it seems. Of course the genius of Gatsby are the words within the dialogue, but I think the booze and sex of 1920's New York is a good enough place for Luhrman's craft. We'll see if he can nail the characters.

[Lucky]

Got through the first hunting episode and didn't find it a slog, heh. As soon as it started I braced myself, though.

What did surprise me was the omission of Anna and Vronsky's affair. Was this due to the times and censorship? Or was this purely an artistic choice? I find it peculiar as the majority of the first part of the novel was building to that, and it was merely glossed over.

[Irish]

I dunno, when Fitzgerald is describing the parties and neverending butlers and champagne, it looks exactly outlandish the trailers make it seems.

Totally with you there. From the trailers, I think they nailed the gaudiness of Gatsby's parties.

The production design really isn't my problem, though. It's that a movie could never approach the beauty of Fitzgerald's language, and language is 99% of the book's appeal. The 'plot,' such as it is, is almost cut-rate Cain.

[Mara]

What did surprise me was the omission of Anna and Vronsky's affair. Was this due to the times and censorship? Or was this purely an artistic choice? I find it peculiar as the majority of the first part of the novel was building to that, and it was merely glossed over.

I don't know... Tolstoy doesn't have a problem talking about a bunch of controversial topics, like birth control, abortion, adultery, etc., so my guess is that once the temptation is given into, it's just not that interesting to delve into. The Russians, though, were much more willing to talk about this stuff than the English, or even the French.

[megladon8]

Finishing "A Whale For the Killing" today and planning to move on to "The Divinity Student" next.

[megladon8]

I'm not sure that I can fault Farley Mowat's "A Whale for the Killing" for being "too preachy" since that is very much the intent of the book, but Mowat switches styles and tones a few times (particularly in the first 120 pages) which makes the read feel a bit uneven. He can't seem to decide whether he wants to tell the story of what happened with the whale in Burgeo, educate readers on the biology and families of whales, or simply write an essay on the evils of the whaling industry. He could have done all three seamlessly but he doesn't, frequently breaking off in the middle of one tangent or chapter of the story to completely change topic and tone.

The overall effect of the book was one that, I would say, successfully rallies the reader to Mowat's cause. I was disgusted and brought to tears by the story of the whale that was trapped in the pond at Burgeo, Newfoundland in the late '60s. Rather than take this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime chance to study such an enormous creature at such a close range, the citizens of Burgeo chose to use the whale for target practice.

The last 50 pages of the book read the way the rest of it should have - a non-fiction novel. Mowat certainly has the literary talent to tell a story, with a natural inclination towards beautiful, regional prose. But in that first half of the book he veers off too many times with fact-spouting and angry tangents for me to say that it was entirely successful as a piece of literature.

[Grouchy]

I went to the beach for a week and I read like there's no tomorrow.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was amazing, one of the most engrossing reads I've done in a good while. I literally couldn't put it down and found Dick's insights funny and often premonitory - that whole blending in with Mercer thing is amazing and one could draw a lot of paralells to Facebook. The only negative aspect of reading this is that it makes me think a lot less of Blade Runner and how it seemingly took a lot of efforts to avoid the most unconventional aspects of the story, turning Deckard into a typical embittered P.I. type instead of a low-class married worker.

Captain Alatriste - The first of the novel by Pérez-Reverte about sword-for-hire Diego Alatriste y Tenorio in the so-called "Siglo de Oro", the Spanish 17th Century. A pure adventure novel, secret plots, traps and duels in the night. I enjoyed it inmensely and look forward to read all following six novels. It's true that Pérez-Reverte can't control himself sometimes and rambles on with tirades about how corruption and hedonism in the royalty of the time destroyed the power of the Spanish Empire, a theme he feels strongly about. I didn't mind the historic tirades, actually, except that he often repeated himself. Still awesome, the kind of stuff that was made to be read on the beach with a bottle of beer at hand.

The Talented Mr. Ripley - Entertaining and witty. I'd seen both film adaptations of the novel. Both movies are astoundingly unfaithful to the book, specially the ending, which is strange because Highsmith writes a story that's suitable for a film adaptation without changing a word, only abridging certain events. I didn't love this but I enjoyed it and wouldn't mind reading the rest of the Ripliad.

[Mara]

I'm usually leery of books my book club chooses that seem... book clubbish? Like they were written for book clubs? But I read Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation in one sitting last night without that ever being the intention. Fiction with heavy autobiographical details, it tells the story of a young girl who immigrates from Hong Kong to Brooklyn in the 1980's, and lives in unimaginable poverty and works at a sweatshop, while simultaneously excelling academically at a private school. It would hardly be believable if it wasn't pretty much the experience of the author. My response was similar to that of Kimberly's American friend:


"No one in America lives like this."

I stated the obvious. "Actually, they do."

The terrible situation of Kimberly and her mother is exasperated by social and cultural issues: they don't know anything about social services, and if they did, it would hurt their pride to accept them. Although her mother has a visa, they illegally squat in a condemned building because they are honorably bound to pay back Kimberly's aunt for the money she put into getting them visas and getting them out of Hong Kong, getting them sweatshop jobs, and various other expenses. This pretty much plays out as modern-day indentured servitude-- they work for years to pay back the debt, while scrounging fabric from dumpsters so they don't freeze to death in the winter.

Kimberly's academic excellence is hindered by the fact that her English is poor, which makes her struggle in a system with no help for a new immigrant. (Her first public school has apparently never heard of ESL, or anything that will help this poor kid.) The book focuses a great deal on the social implications of being such an outsider in young American culture.

Anyway, the book isn't going to change anyone's life, but it was an easy read with troubling implications, and I'm still thinking about it twelve hours later, which doesn't always happen.

[Lucky]

Re: Anna Karenina Pt 2

Man, it took me a couple days to get through Kitty's spa trip. And am I just trying to modernize the novel or are those intentional lesbian vibes I'm picking up on?

The symbolic value of Vronsky's racehorse was a little on the nose, but I liked going back and getting the viewpoint from Karenin. I also really enjoyed the chapter on their carriage ride home from the race. Wasn't expecting Anna to release so quickly. Which begs the question of where will this novel go in 400+ more pages? I know less about the plot than I originally thought.

[ledfloyd]

I finished Zadie Smith's The Autograph Man last night. It starts out okay, gets pretty good, and then all but falls apart towards the end. There are interesting ideas in it, but they never quite coalesce. Definitely deserving of its stature as her worst novel.

I picked up a copy of Underworld at a used bookstore the other day, so that is likely next. I read, and loved, about a third of it a few years ago. Looking forward to going cover to cover. The Victorians will have to wait.

[Mara]

Any final thoughts on Anna Karenina, Lucky? I'm surprised you read two books that were better this year.

[Lucky]

Oh, for one I'm not finished. And for two, I didn't realize that was a ranking thread. I misinterpreted it as a chronological order throughout the year. I'm still in Part 3. I was busy with my portfolio for school last week. I'll post updates as I finish each part.

[D_Davis]

Started this again:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pR4QUaKCDSQ/T2UPAJwZ7oI/AAAAAAAACOs/MnmujWlZ_n0/s1600/illuminatus1.jpg

[dreamdead]

A little more than halfway through Sherman Alexie's Indian Killer now. It reads with the pace of a lightweight thriller, which is to say in a fast rush, but the themes are never simplistically presented. It's a multivalent study on ethnic identity, the responsibility of a majority to the minority, and the role of vengeance on a Native American populace so obviously neutered socially. This book, however, is most interesting for its treatment of the majority/minority divide, questioning whether such relations are inexorably split or whether there can be a fruitful convergence. This is especially valuable when Alexie directly frames the material on Native American literature and critiques whether or not exposure to literature about Native Americans (but not by them) distorts the issue or whether it can still offer some insight. Don Lee's recent The Collective asked similar questions about the essentialist attitude of Korean Americans and those "white" creative writer students who want to chronicle the plight of the marginalized. These issues are broached but happily aren't easily answered by either Alexie or Lee, and the material about them proves illuminating.

I'm hoping it has a suitable payoff at the end...

[D_Davis]

It's absolutely mind-boggling to imagine, to know, that Illuminatus! was in fact merely written by two mortal men; it didn't just always exist in some supernatural, super-cosmic sense. It's so dense, complex, emotional, hilarious, insightful, relevant, insane and bonkers. How Shea and Wilson wrote it, how they plotted the damn thing, how they kept everything on the rails while the thing was constantly exploding and imploding and folding out and in on itself and bucking and consistently on the verge of complete and utter chaos is something that I cannot fully understand.

[D_Davis]

Today on Goodreads, someone asked me if they should read Illuminatus!, to which I responded, yes, if you have an interest in any of the following:

justified ancients of mumu
hp lovecraft
cthulhu
political assassinations
magik
john dee
freemasons
hermetic order of the golden dawn
secret (secret) societies
bankers
jews
american indians
american history and pop culture
world history
aliens
religion
anti-religion
rock n roll
drugs
experimental fiction
science fiction
detective fiction
stream of consciousness
military industrial complex
private prison system
justice system
authority
discordianism
chaos
church of the subgenius
vast right-wing conspiracies
vast left-wing conspiracies
nixon
political scandal
human sacrifice
satanism
the occult
fascism
communism
left-wing publications
socialism
the crusades
the knights templar
dan brown ( ;) )

I think that covers just about everything.

[Duncan]

Syllabi (http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/02/i-urge-you-to-drop-e67-02-course-syllabi-by-famous-authors/273578/)from courses taught by various famous authors. Even DFW's course intro spiels are interesting to read.

[dreamdead]

I've lifted aspects of Wallace's syllabi (specifically his section about preparedness and what constitutes it). It's beautifully direct.

Finished out Alexie's Indian Killer. 'Tis a tricky text in how open-ended Alexie leaves many of the main threads, but it rewards nonetheless. The main concepts are all dealt with intelligence, and the late-in-the-game revelation regarding Professor Mather's true specialty is interesting in that it complicates why he's teaching his course to begin with. Wilson, ultimately, is the most interesting character for me since the novel questions what it means, and what is secured if, one self-identifies as Indian without garnering the least amount of respect.

My resolution for this year in reading is to read the same number of male and female authors (made as a corrective to a reading log that often veers male-heavy by about 3-to-1). Next up is Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall...

[Benny Profane]

Barthelme's list looks awesome. Bookmarked.

[Mara]

Next up is Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall...

I unabashedly love this book. It has been unfairly overlooked.

[D_Davis]

Illuminatus! Volume 1 has one of the greatest ending-sequences of all time. The book builds to a bombastic crescendo of chaos, dumping plot, information, confusion, trickery and action on the reader by the metric ton. I had also completely forgotten about the part when one of the characters reviews the book, calling it absolute rubbish. Just hilarious. One of the great experiments in literature, a classic practical joke, a force of creative energy, a rip-roaring, globe-trotting, time-spanning, consciousness-altering experience.

[D_Davis]

Up next...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5a/Illum_GA-1975.jpeg/220px-Illum_GA-1975.jpeg

[Derek]

Stumbled across a used copy of the whole Illuminatus! Trilogy for $6 yesterday and picked it up. I'll save it for beach reading over the summer. It sounds wacky as hell!

[D_Davis]

Stumbled across a used copy of the whole Illuminatus! Trilogy for $6 yesterday and picked it up. I'll save it for beach reading over the summer. It sounds wacky as hell!

Nice! I've got an omnibus version, too, but I stumbled upon these 1st edition paperbacks last year and had to pick them up; I love the covers.

Might be a little heady for beach reading. :)

Very stream of conscious - often switches POV multiple times per page, jumping forward, backward, and sideways in time while doing it. It's wacky and absurd, for sure, but also a whole lot more. The narrator is never identified, but it moves in and out of first and third person (the narrator can jump inside of people's heads), maybe even some second person if I remember correctly, and some of the characters might or might not be the same person, or they might all be the same person at different points in time. It's pretty wild.

[D_Davis]

Someday I need to get around to reading James Joyce, so that I can understand Robert Anton Wilson better.

Should be interesting to read Joyce after having read and listened to Wilson's thoughts and studies of the author, and after Joyce being such a great character in the Illuminati sequel.

I love his talk about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in The Golden Apple.

[Qrazy]

You'd probably like Dubliners most from Joyce imo.

[D_Davis]

You'd probably like Dubliners most from Joyce imo.

Cool, I'll keep that in mind.

I'm most interested in Finnegan's Wake, because of it's experimental nature.

[dreamdead]

Haven't been able to get too far into Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall due to work and grading (only about 70 pages in). But I love how questioning the book is of gender performance, and how critical Helen Graham is toward alcohol and issues of consumption related to her son. It's interesting to read a novel that contrary to the accepted lessons of permissiveness as it relates to how each gender should respond. The ease with which our protagonist is willing to manipulate Eliza to his whims when he wants is likewise fascinating in its indictment. This weekend I'm hoping to be able to get further into it, but I've been pleased by the prose and story so far.

[Mara]

Another interesting thing to pick up on in the novel is Anne's personal belief in universal salvation-- which was seriously shocking at the time (near blasphemous) and is always mentioned by reviews of the time, along with her really, really forward-thinking views on gender politics.

[Kurosawa Fan]

111 Male Characters of British Literature, in Order of Bangability (http://www.theawl.com/2011/04/111-male-characters-of-british-literature-in-order-of-bangability)

First, I love that she used the word "bangability." Second, kicking things off with Frankenstein's Monster was a bold choice. Third, how did Willy Wonka rank so low? He'd be so fun and energentic!

[Lucky]

...Aslan? And James Bond is top 10 material, come on.

[Grouchy]

...Aslan? And James Bond is top 10 material, come on.
She put Orlando over him! Alan Moore would be pleased.

[Mara]

That list has some ridiculous choices. Casaubon from Middlemarch is such a baffling choice that I think she must be confusing him with another character. Like maybe Lydgate? Also St. John from Jane Eyre proposes a sexless marriage to Jane, which I thinks makes him ineligible for this list.

[D_Davis]

I read more than anyone I know IRL, and I don't know who 99% of those characters are.

I guess I'm in a niche.

[Mara]

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson was an unexpected delight. I've read a couple collections of Jackson's short stories and consider myself a fan, even though I had never read any of her full-length novels. WHALINC takes everything that is great about Jackson's writing-- her anxieties, her misanthropy, and her darkness-- and creates a brief but nearly perfect little gothic novel out of it.

The narrator and main character (Mary Catherine, or Merricat) is one of the most bizarre, unreliable narrators I've ever encountered. The fey, weird, awkward woman-child is standard in this kind of novel, but Merricat takes it to extreme lengths; she is more or less a sociopath, deeply mentally ill, and superstitious. She appears to have more or less stopped growing up six years previously due to the trauma of losing almost her entire family: mother and father, brother and aunt were all poisoned at the dinner table. Her sister Constance was charged with but ultimately acquitted of the crime, and now the two sisters and an infirm uncle are the only people still living at their family mansion, removed from the small village nearby, which hates and fears them.

It's a short novel, with a very short list of characters, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

[Hugh_Grant]

Chinua Achebe has died.

I am sad, very sad.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/22/175025166/chinua-achebe-nigerian-author-of-things-fall-apart-dies

[D_Davis]

Alright, 8 pages into Gravity's Rainbow.


****

Finished Illuminatus! last night. So glad I re-read this as an adult. I got so much more out of it this time around, because I knew more about all the stuff it references; I've spent quite a bit of time over the last 15-20 years researching the various secret societies, people, places, rituals, events, and ideas. Of course there are still things that I don't fully get, and I'm sure I"ll read it again some point in the future.

I also got a lot more out of it because of how much I've read and listened to Robert Anton Wilson over the last 20 years. I don't think my opinion on the matter carries much weight, but I think he was the most brilliant man to live in my lifetime. Let me phrase that in RAW syntax: I have not discovered a more brilliant man, yet. And the fact that he is relatively unknown outside the fringes is, I think, a great tragedy. I especially love RAW's talks about Korzybski, general semantics, and "the map is not the territory," and this whole part of the book three of the trilogy was among my favorites.

[D_Davis]

30 pages into Gravity's Rainbow.

1. I'm surprised by how easy it is to read. Compared to Illuminatus! with its constantly shifting POV, its constant time-shifting (sometimes hundreds of years) in-between paragraphs without any out-of-context clues, and it's stream of conscious tangents, the prose in Gravity's Rainbow is downright simple. I imagined it being a harder book to read. I think it was good to re-read Illuminatus! before this. It is elegantly written.

2. I'm surprised by how hilarious it is. Tons of funny stuff.

3. It's reminding me a lot of J.G. Ballard. I think Ballard started writing a few years before Pynchon, and had published a lot more before Pynchon published GR (a handful of novels and another handful of short story collections). The only other Pynchon I've read is The Crying of Lot 49, which didn't remind me of Ballard at all, but GW is entirely Ballardian. Although GW is funnier by far.

[Mara]

I finally managed to get Les Miserables on audiobook from the library, so that is happening.

[D_Davis]

Is it a sing-a-long?

[Grouchy]

Read Richard Stark's The Hunter all in one sitting yesterday. Some wonderful prose. I kept picturing Lee Marvin as Parker all the way.

[D_Davis]

Huh. Giant monsters, questions of reality, pre-cogs being used to determine where rockets will strike, extreme paranoia...I didn't know Gravity's Rainbow was so SF. If it focused on the plot more, it'd could be a really long PKD story.

[D_Davis]

After Illuminatus!, and Gravity's Rainbow, I think I'll continue to focus on (but not exclusively) large challenging novels.

Might as well read Infinite Jest, and this will be a perfect time to read Delany's Dhlagren, and to give John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar another try.

I'll also read Finnegans Wake.

Any other suggestions?

[D_Davis]

Added to the long challenging novel list:

Don Quixote
House of Leaves
Tristam Shandy
Journey to the West - all 4 volumes
Dhalgren
Stand on Zanzibar (2nd attempt)
Infinite Jest
Finnegans Wake
Gormenghast (3rd attempt)
2666
JR


I want stuff that's a little weird, or experimental - not just long and normal.

[Mara]

My book club pooh-poohed my suggestion of We Have Always Lived at the Castle because they don't like creepy stuff. Phhbt.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Any other suggestions?

2666 by Roberto Bolaño.

[D_Davis]

2666 by Roberto Bolaño.

Great choice! Thanks for the reminder.

[Benny Profane]

JR by Gaddis.

[D_Davis]

JR by Gaddis.

That sounds cool - never even heard of that one.

Thanks!

[dreamdead]

Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall benefited from some extended reading time due to spring break. The first seventy pages took about two-three weeks, but the other 410 pages flew by in five days. I think part of the issue was that Gilbert Markham's narration took up that first portion, and his section is so focused on exteriors that it takes until we're inside Helen's headspace to truly fathom the particulars. And I must say that the prose concerning Arthur Huntingdon was just devastating. The agony and ridicule that he afflicts upon Helen remains astonishing today, and is a powerful testament to Anne's authorial commitment to present a full picture of the debauchery. Lord Huntingdon's disgust toward his wife was palpable through the pages, and the efforts he made to turn all against her demonstrated the full demonic potential of men, especially with the laws before 1857 being what they were in refusing to acknowledge male psychic or physical abuse. I found it fascinating, then, that as Mara noted earlier, Helen still suggests that a renunciation of Arthur's ways on his deathbed will alleviate his transgressions. That's some strong faith there indeed, and I can easily see how that kind of pronouncement would be viewed as dangerous. I will admit, however, to empathizing with Markham's hesitance to re-seek Helen out in the final pages. Her decision to issue forth no word makes his trepidation much more logical, even if he is likewise inexact in revealing a lasting affection.

All in all, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall exceeded every expectation that I had toward it. Thanks for pimping it, Mara. Never would have considered it otherwise. Up next is Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood.

[Melville]

I want stuff that's a little weird, or experimental - not just long and normal.
I'd drop Don Quixote from the list, then, though it's worth reading. I'm planning to finally get to Finnegans Wake this year as well.

[D_Davis]

Don Quixote sounds totally weird to me - from what I've read, it's kind of absurd and deals with questionable reality.

[Melville]

Don Quixote sounds totally weird to me - from what I've read, it's kind of absurd and deals with questionable reality.
Yeah, there's absurdity. And it does play with reality a bit, especially in the second half, but not a lot. In terms of form, it's straightforward prose and episodic narrative. My favorite aspects were the paralleling and intertwining of Quixote's imagined romantic adventures with people having actual romantic adventures in the first half, and Sancho's devotion to Quixote despite realizing Quixote's fancies are absurd at the end of the second half.

[Milky Joe]

I would recommend reading Gaddis's The Recognitions before J.R.. I suppose it's a little less experimental, but a lot more gorgeous and readable.

[D_Davis]

I would recommend reading Gaddis's The Recognitions before J.R.. I suppose it's a little less experimental, but a lot more gorgeous and readable.

I'm leaning more towards experimental/harder to read stuff if possible.

[D_Davis]

Yeah, there's absurdity. And it does play with reality a bit, especially in the second half, but not a lot. In terms of form, it's straightforward prose and episodic narrative. My favorite aspects were the paralleling and intertwining of Quixote's imagined romantic adventures with people having actual romantic adventures in the first half, and Sancho's devotion to Quixote despite realizing Quixote's fancies are absurd at the end of the second half.

Yeah - that sounds like something I would totally dig.

[Milky Joe]

Have you read Beckett's trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable? Definitely put that on your list if you haven't.

[D_Davis]

Have you read Beckett's trilogy, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable? Definitely put that on your list if you haven't.

Will do!

Another book that I am being constantly reminded of while reading GW is PKD's Dr. Bloodmoney.

[megladon8]

I've wanted to read "Gravity's Rainbow" for a long while.

D, you should definitely also read "Vineland" and "The Crying of Lot 49".

[Mara]

Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall benefited from some extended reading time due to spring break. The first seventy pages took about two-three weeks, but the other 410 pages flew by in five days. I think part of the issue was that Gilbert Markham's narration took up that first portion, and his section is so focused on exteriors that it takes until we're inside Helen's headspace to truly fathom the particulars. And I must say that the prose concerning Arthur Huntingdon was just devastating. The agony and ridicule that he afflicts upon Helen remains astonishing today, and is a powerful testament to Anne's authorial commitment to present a full picture of the debauchery. Lord Huntingdon's disgust toward his wife was palpable through the pages, and the efforts he made to turn all against her demonstrated the full demonic potential of men, especially with the laws before 1857 being what they were in refusing to acknowledge male psychic or physical abuse. I found it fascinating, then, that as Mara noted earlier, Helen still suggests that a renunciation of Arthur's ways on his deathbed will alleviate his transgressions. That's some strong faith there indeed, and I can easily how that kind of pronouncement would be viewed as dangerous. I will admit, however, to empathizing with Markham's hesitance to re-seek Helen out in the final pages. Her decision to issue forth no word makes his trepidation much more logical, even if he is likewise inexact in revealing a lasting affection.

All in all, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall exceeded every expectation that I had toward it. Thanks for pimping it, Mara. Never would have considered it otherwise. Up next is Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood.

YESSS. I am so glad you liked it. I am such a fan that reading your response makes me want to revisit it again.

[D_Davis]

"The Crying of Lot 49".

Read it. Didn't care for it.

[Grouchy]

Don Quixote is one of the greatest books of literature. Everyone should read it, although it's obviously better in Spanish.

I don't think it plays with reality. The protagonist constantly misunderstands reality, of course, that's the point. But the fun is in his character and in the many small adventures that are contained within the narrative.

[Mara]

So I decided to brush up on French history to try and help my understanding of Les Miserables and I had never known that the monarchy was restored after the defeat of Napoleon. That seems like a big thing to have missed. I thought the line died out when Louis XVII was executed as a child, but apparently his uncle lived long enough to become king again. They ran through three kings in fifty years before giving up on the monarchy again.

[D_Davis]

GW updated - I'm at the first section that I loath - the whole episode with Katje after Holland. Good lord this is mind numbing. I'm on skimming mode until the next episode.

[Derek]

That sounds cool - never even heard of that one.

Thanks!

JR is awesome. I can't guarantee you'll love it, but I doubt you've ever read anything like it.

And although it's not crazy long (a shade under 600 pages), I'll throw Julio Cortozar's Hopscotch, which I read and loved based on someone's recommendation here.

[dreamdead]

Some of Sarah's college roommates stayed with us this past week, and so they extended thanks to me by getting me Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse (one of the girl's favored books). It exists as a fascinating echo of Camus's The Stranger in its study of indifferent pathology and sexuality, where a teen girl sabotages her father's shift to stability in order to maintain a more bohemian life. Sagan balances the shifts between an honorific sensibility toward this new life and utter abhorrence gracefully, and her protagonist is fully formed throughout the book. I wish that in this case I hadn't read the introduction, which contextualizes the work, because it discusses the ending rather overtly, and that removed some of the surprise regarding the text's climax. Nonetheless, the development of empathy and regret that washes over the book give it an intriguing update of the 1930s-40s existentialist texts. Really good and quick reading.

Onto O'Conner's Wise Blood for realsies now.

[D_Davis]

JR is awesome. I can't guarantee you'll love it, but I doubt you've ever read anything like it.

And although it's not crazy long (a shade under 600 pages), I'll throw Julio Cortozar's Hopscotch, which I read and loved based on someone's recommendation here.

Thanks.

My friend at work and I are going to read JR in a few months. Should be nice to have someone to read it with.

[megladon8]

"House of Leaves" is a very slow read, but man is it unsettling.

Spent an hour reading today and only read about 30 pages.

[Grouchy]

And although it's not crazy long (a shade under 600 pages), I'll throw Julio Cortozar's Hopscotch, which I read and loved based on someone's recommendation here.
Heh, it might not have as many pages as the others, but it does have two alternative reading orders.

[D_Davis]

Heh, it might not have as many pages as the others, but it does have two alternative reading orders.

Speaking of that, with Dhalgren I might start at a point other than the "beginning." It's a cyclical novel with multiple entry points.

[D_Davis]

A couple of new additions - 1 thanks to Derek, and 2 others, while not particularly long, look somewhat experimental and challenging.

Don Quixote
House of Leaves
Tristam Shandy
Journey to the West - all 4 volumes
Dhalgren
Stand on Zanzibar (2nd attempt)
Infinite Jest
Finnegans Wake
Gormenghast (3rd attempt)
2666
JR
Pale Fire
Omensetter's Luck
Hopscotch

[D_Davis]

And I want to add Under the Eye of God, a SF novel by David Gerold.

Not because it's long or challenging, but because it's one of the few novels written in E-Prime. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime)


E-Prime (short for English-Prime, sometimes denoted É or E′) is a prescriptive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescriptivism) version of the English language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language) that excludes all forms of the verb to be (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_be). E-Prime does not allow the conjugations of to be—be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being— the archaic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaism) forms of to be (e.g. art, wast, wert), or the contractions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_%28grammar%29) of to be—'s, 'm, 're (e.g. I'm, he's, she's, they're).


Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing.[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime#cite_note-1) For example, the sentence "the film was good" could not be expressed under the rules of E-Prime, and the speaker might instead say "I liked the film" or "the film made me laugh". The E-Prime versions communicate the speaker's experience rather than judgment, making it harder for the writer or reader to confuse opinion with fact.

[megladon8]

It's kind of ingenious how "House of Leaves'" nigh-indecipherable format mimics the findings of its protagonists.

Really cool book so far. Up to page 74.

[megladon8]

Aaannnd the labyrinthine corridors and hallways of this house have officially sucked me in.

If I didn't have to work tomorrow, I'd stay up all night reading until I'm finished.

[ledfloyd]

Pale Fire gets cycled in and out of my "Best Book Ever" slot with a few others. Excited to see what you think of it Davis.

And meg, I think I actually did read House of Leaves in a single night. Incredibly engrossing.

[Melville]

A couple of new additions - 1 thanks to Derek, and 2 others, while not particularly long, look somewhat experimental and challenging.
Have you read Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson? I haven't. But it's 1152 pages long and consists of the mystical reflections of Beelzebub aboard the spaceship Karnak.

[D_Davis]

Have you read Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson? I haven't. But it's 1152 pages long and consists of the mystical reflections of Beelzebub aboard the spaceship Karnak.

Woah! That sounds rad.

[Milky Joe]

You haven't heard of Gurdjieff? Kinda surprising given your love of Robert Anton Wilson.

[D_Davis]

You haven't heard of Gurdjieff? Kinda surprising given your love of Robert Anton Wilson.

There are probably 1,000s of authors I've never heard of.

[D_Davis]

Finished "Beyond the Zero," the first section of Gravity's Rainbow. I liked about half of it. One of the things I like about genre fiction is that it embraces and elevates plot; one of the things I tend to dislike about literary fiction is that it obfuscates plot. There is a lot of stuff going on in GW, but I don't care about nine-tenths of it. I'm not attached in any kind of dramatic way to any of the characters, nor do I care about them at all. I like many of the ideas (psi-OPs, humanity searching for connections, questions of insanity/sanity, paranoia, destiny vs. randomness; ideas explored in a great many SF novels of the time) , but I think those ideas were explored better in previous novels/stories from Philip K. Dick (Dr. Bloodmoney, Martian Time Slip) and J.G. Ballard (a multitude of short fiction).

Pynchon is a great writer, no doubt (more than a few times I marveled at a turn of phrase), but part of me can't help but feel that it's a lot of mental masturbation. It's like the guitar playing of Yngwie Malmsteen: just throw a bunch of notes at it; it's maximalism to the extreme. Sure it probably all means something, and I can see how people have spent a lifetime parsing through it all, but when there is so much meaning most of the really meaningful things get lost a sea of lesser meaning. I keep expecting something profound to happen, a turning point in which I get completely enveloped in the madness, but it hasn't happened yet.

Still glad I'm reading it though if only to expand my horizons, and to help me further define what it is I love about the fiction I tend to read most often. If anything, maybe it will give me more leverage by making me a more better-read person. But I can't say I'm enjoying it in the same sense that I enjoy a great SF/horror novel.

[ledfloyd]

I tend to enjoy writers showing off, but I felt more or less the same about Gravity's Rainbow. I really need to give some of his other work a shot at some point.

[D_Davis]

I tend to enjoy writers showing off, but I felt more or less the same about Gravity's Rainbow. I really need to give some of his other work a shot at some point.

I sometimes like it when writers show off, so long as there is still a strong plot and characters. For instance - Michael Cisco. Easily the best writer I've read. With each subsequent novel his prose gets more complex, exquisite, and puzzling, and his themes get more deep and powerful. In his last three novels - The Narrator, The Great Lover, and Celebrant - each page is a puzzle, on which is piled upon layers and layers of metaphor and allegory, all while Cisco writes like a literary gymnast from the fourth-dimension; he mixes time, POV, tense, and syntax as if he's on a quest to completely obliterate the very idea of the novel, while simultaneously telling rip-roaring stories full of dramatic tension, interesting characters, and incredible mind-bending set pieces.

With GW I'm getting one side of that - the great writing - but not the other.

I also can't tell you much about the characters at all. So far they are entirely one-dimensional. Mainly because none of them really has enough page-time to be developed beyond their most basic devices. I fully expect that to change over the next 600 pages, and I"m looking forward to it.

I like it when musicians show off too, but not at the expense of the over all composition. A perfect example of this is the early Adrian Belew era of King Crimson - Discipline through Three of a Perfect Pair. These three albums rerpesent a perfect mix of musical virtuoso and songs with strong hooks, melodies, and harmonies.

[dreamdead]

It's been over a decade since I went through my Pynchon phase, so I sadly can't defend GR except to say that the plot will become more apparent as you continue. Not sure about the character depth, though.

Finished up Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood and Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The former engages in how the grotesque struggle to find and purchase meaning, with vehement acts of violence done in the name of (non)faith. Although the idea of Enoch dressing up in a gorilla costume to extend a hand to others, since that's the context in which someone first extended him a hand, is devastatingly original and odd, there's something about O'Connor's parable here that keeps it from resonating as fully as some of her shorter fiction resonates. Interesting to read, but not as transformative as I'd hoped. I'll return to her shorter fiction later in the year, though.

Given that my teen years were spent in community theatre, I probably saw about 40-60 performances of A Christmas Carol. Thus, the actual reading of it confirms how much of Dickens's prose is out-and-out lifted for theatre productions. In turn, I focused in my reading on the rhetoric that the narrator engages in. And it's there that the novella hammers home. The narrator is immense, detailed in his assessment, and able to bring out the universal aspects of the story at a much deeper level than the stage productions ever could. Additionally, it's fascinating how comparatively little of the book Tiny Tim appears in; the stage plays would often overly-emphasize him, inoculating the more bitter themes with a sense of precious. By limiting him to just one appearance, Dickens achieves a far sturdier impact, navigating the emotion of loss via negativa. Powerful despite its familiarity, and newly rewarding.

I'll probably read Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, Don DeLillo's Libra, or Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mom next. Not sure yet.

[Lucky]

Well I took a reading break as school was hitting hard at the end, but I read Anna Karenina Pt. 3 over the past day. I quickly remembered why I lost motivation in reading this--spending time with Levin and his farm is a slog. Unfortunately, that's about half the material in this part of the novel. It's difficult to find Tolstoy's immediate purpose in justifying the lengths of this chronicle. I feel that this portion of the story coupled with Kitty's extensive spa visit from the previous part is gumming up the momentum the novel previously had. For a book entitled Anna Karenina, it's shocking to see that this far she can be largely forgotten about for extended passages. Speaking of Anna, the triangle of Anna/Karenin/Vronsky is the standout strength. The characterization and motivations behind the trio are palpable and complex. I enjoy the story's omniscient viewpoint of all of their minds equally.

[megladon8]

I'm actually flying through "House of Leaves" pretty quick. I'm at the halfway point.

I had forgotten that there are long stretches of pages that have like 2 words on them. Some have none.

I usually find with most books my reading speed is about a page every 30-60 seconds (depending on font, font size, page size, etc.).

"House of Leaves" has some pages that take a good 5 minutes to peruse through, then sections where you'll read 30 pages in less than 5 minutes.

So really, in the end I think it'll average out to be about the same amount of time as any other book of its relative size.

[Lucky]

Karenina definitely fell back into its groove in Part 4. The characters are together again and the plot wheels are turning. Levin/Kitty's declaration of love was one of the most unabashedly romantic scenes I've ever read. And I mean this in a good way. It may seem over the top out of context, but after suffering through Levin and Kitty's depressed isolation for a hundred pages, this was a rewarding payoff. I'm starting to lose grip on Anna a bit. Perhaps she is just as confused as I am, but her journey during this section didn't seem as organic as the men. I wasn't expecting to feel this much sympathy for Karenin; his exterior cracked and revealed a different man. Onward to Italy...

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Speaking of Pynchon, synopsis for his new book, The Bleeding Edge (512 pages):


Thomas Pynchon brings us to New York in the early days of the internet

It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.

Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?

[Mara]

You know, the meticulous, careful battle scenes in War and Peace actually propelled the plot forward.

I am really enjoying Les Miserables but this digression into a play-by-play of Waterloo is a bit much.

[D_Davis]

You haven't heard of Gurdjieff? Kinda surprising given your love of Robert Anton Wilson.

I now made the connection. Heard of the author years ago, but now he's actually on my radar. Synchronicity strikes again. I'm re-reading Prometheus Rising (it's my in-bed reading, because GW puts me to sleep in about 1 page), and, like all of RAW's work, the older I get and the more I know about stuff, the more I get out of it.

[Milky Joe]

That's for sure. I recently read Cosmic Trigger I for the first time and was so engaged I just blitzed through it in a couple of days.

Gurdjieff was more than an author, he was sort of a fourth dimensional mystic magickian philosopher, kinda like Aleister Crowley. I haven't really read much of him, but he's an interesting dude.

[D_Davis]

That's for sure. I recently read Cosmic Trigger I for the first time and was so engaged I just blitzed through it in a couple of days.


I'm going to be re-reading the Cosmic Trigger books this year as well. Really looking forward to it.

[dreamdead]

I appear to have chosen badly. Need to get work done this weekend but I started Stephen King's The Long Walk anyway. 80 pages in and I feel this is going to end with me reading the weekend away. :D

[megladon8]

I've got two days off coming up and I can't wait to get caught up in some reading. I'm a little past the halfway point with "House of Leaves" (if you consider the fact that it has like 40 pages of index and bibliography at the end).

[D_Davis]

I appear to have chosen badly. Need to get work done this weekend but I started Stephen King's The Long Walk anyway. 80 pages in and I feel this is going to end with me reading the weekend away. :D

So good. Really hope Darabont gets to make his film version. It would be fascinating.

[Mara]

After the massive Waterloo digression, Les Miserables got really interesting again. Hugo's disinclination to move the plot forward actually sort of leads to higher tension, because as he dithers (right now Valjean is sitting for several chapters watching the Thénardiers abuse Cosette) you as the reader get more and more invested ("RESCUE HER ALREADY, SHEESH.")

[dreamdead]

So good. Really hope Darabont gets to make his film version. It would be fascinating.

This would make an interesting film. It has the suspense and tenseness down. The ending, while logical in the context of what's come before, though, seems to lead nowhere and doesn't extend anywhere interesting. We already understand that the walk only brutalizes the individuals involved, and that chance strikes down each of them at will. But by ending with the sort of madness routine, even if it works as Vietnam War draft allegory, seems to leave it rather static. There needed to be a little more emphasis on the futility of the victory in the form of the spoils of war, not just psychological self-immolation. Because it stayed at that level, it undercut the tension of what came before for me.

McVries and Scramm, though, were quite fascinating. Even the Indian brothers had a mystery to them. King knows how to develop his secondary characters so well. Just wish this had gone somewhere further in the last two or three pages...

[D_Davis]

1/2 done with Gravity's Rainbow.

I'm liking the 3rd part - In the Zone - the best so far. The episode about the Herero people is incredible, as is Slothrop's escape from the limerick-spouting soldiers. Some gonzo stuff to be sure.

[Mara]

I am really into Les Miserables-- the prose really is stunning-- but I kind of laugh at it, too. Since I'm listening to it in audiobook, it's easy to make fun of how detailed it is.

I drive to work: Jean Valjean is in an alley. Hugo describes the alley.

I drive to the pool during lunch: Jean Valjean is looking at the alley.

I drive back to work: Jean Valjean is looking at the alley.

I'm considering running over to get gas to just to give him a chance to get out of the damn alley. I don't like leaving him there.

[megladon8]

Finished "House of Leaves".

It was something else. I could write pages and pages about it.

[D_Davis]

Finished Gravity's Rainbow.

Can't say that I liked it much, but I can understand why some people love it.

I just wasn't on its wavelength enough to really care about anything that was happening. I rarely felt anything. There were too many tangents to care about the main dramatic drive, and too many characters with too-brief a time for me to care about them. I liked the main arc - Slothrop's story - but I wasn't invested enough in his journey to care whether or not he failed or succeeded.

However, there are parts I remember fondly. Mainly, I like the book's humor, and I liked Pynchon's used of song and limerick, and his obvious appreciation for music in general. My favorite tangent involved the Zone Herero people - that section was very cool. It's obviously well written, but I can't say that I appreciated it much. Every time I sat down to read it, it felt like I was working, and as I got further along mt desire to return progressively shrank.

In all, I'm glad I read it, if mainly because I can say I have even if I wasn't fond of it, or didn't really get it.

[Benny Profane]

Finished Gravity's Rainbow.

Can't say that I liked it much, but I can understand why some people love it.

I just wasn't on its wavelength enough to really care about anything that was happening. I rarely felt anything. There were too many tangents to care about the main dramatic drive, and too many characters with too-brief a time for me to care about them. I liked the main arc - Slothrop's story - but I wasn't invested enough in his journey to care whether or not he failed or succeeded.

However, there are parts I remember fondly. Mainly, I like the book's humor, and I liked Pynchon's used of song and limerick, and his obvious appreciation for music in general. My favorite tangent involved the Zone Herero people - that section was very cool. It's obviously well written, but I can't say that I appreciated it much. Every time I sat down to read it, it felt like I was working, and as I got further along mt desire to return progressively shrank.

In all, I'm glad I read it, if mainly because I can say I have even if I wasn't fond of it, or didn't really get it.


Glad you gave it your best shot. It was definitely a difficult book to get through, but some find it more rewarding than others, obviously. Personally, I think that Mason & Dixon would be a much better book for you. It is far more linear, accessible, and character driven while still possessing that unique, epic, otherworldly Pynchonian weirdness. It also really delivers as a historical fiction. I'd say it combines the best parts about him into one. If you like his writing but want something that rambles less, and still want to explore his other works, I would make that my next choice.

[Benny Profane]

First page of Pynchon's new book The Bleeding Edge released by Penguin:


http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/first-page-of-thomas-pynchon-novel-bleeding-edge

[Mara]

I might be a little bit in love with Marius Pontmercy. He is much more fascinating than I expected.

[D_Davis]

Glad you gave it your best shot. It was definitely a difficult book to get through, but some find it more rewarding than others, obviously. Personally, I think that Mason & Dixon would be a much better book for you. It is far more linear, accessible, and character driven while still possessing that unique, epic, otherworldly Pynchonian weirdness. It also really delivers as a historical fiction. I'd say it combines the best parts about him into one. If you like his writing but want something that rambles less, and still want to explore his other works, I would make that my next choice.

I definitely will, thanks. I'm also planning on reading his newest one this year - I think it sounds awesome.

Even though I didn't love GW, there are parts that I loved, and I'm still thinking about it, and that's more than I can say for some books I've claimed to love.

Next up on the Long and Hard project will be Dhalgren, and then after that my buddy at work will be reading JR with me.

[Benny Profane]

Even though I didn't love GW, there are parts that I loved, and I'm still thinking about it, and that's more than I can say for some books I've claimed to love.




I remember having the strangest dreams while I was reading GR. Psychotic, really.

[Mara]

I might be a little bit in love with Marius Pontmercy. He is much more fascinating than I expected.

Strike that. He is still fascinating, but reacts very badly to being in love.

[Mara]

Strike that. He is still fascinating, but reacts very badly to being in love.

Double strike that. Marius is an idiot with very bad priorities.

You know, for a great piece of literature (and this really is) the plot of Les Miserables hinges on many, many coincidences. I can't think of another novel that is quite so coincidental, except maybe Tom Jones, which is high comedy.

[dreamdead]

Double strike that. Marius is an idiot with very bad priorities.

You know, for a great piece of literature (and this really is) the plot of Les Miserables hinges on many, many coincidences. I can't think of another novel that is quite so coincidental, except maybe Tom Jones, which is high comedy.

Marius intrigues me so much. In the musical, I always wondered how much the writers were condensing his indecision between Cosette and Enjolras. You make it sound as if that might not be so much about an inept adaptation as much as it is part of the actual story.

[Mara]

...after depositing in her heart one of the two germs which are destined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other.


One hardly dares to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way.


Women play with their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.

I don't know, Victor. You and I might have a problem.

[Mara]

Marius intrigues me so much. In the musical, I always wondered how much the writers were condensing his indecision between Cosette and Enjolras. You make it sound as if that might not be so much about an inept adaptation as much as it is part of the actual story.

I'm not that far yet, but at the moment Marius is living on love and seems to have no political thoughts whatsoever. He is so lovesick he can't eat or work and is living on the charity of his friends and wandering around like an idiot. At this time, he and Cosette have still not spoken.

Kid. Get a grip.

[Benny Profane]

A really good write-up on the 50th anniversary of V.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/04/v-by-thomas-pynchon.html

[Winston*]

Years ago, I read a novel I think based on praise here. Trying to remember its title and author. It was a first person narrative in post 9-11 New York and was structured in a series of time skips based on its protagonist's post traumatic black-outs. Can't find it on google. Any ideas?

EDIT: Never mind, found it by searching this thread. The Zero by Jess Walter. Carry on.

[Mara]

Marius is brainless and Cosette is spineless. Less of these dingbats, please.

More Valjean! More Javert! More Éponine! More Thénardier! Even more Montparnasse, who is terrifying but I find him kind of fascinating. More anyone else.

[Marley]

A really good write-up on the 50th anniversary of V.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2013/04/v-by-thomas-pynchon.html

Always been curious to read Pynchon. Would this be a good place to start for a newbie?

[dreamdead]

Always been curious to read Pynchon. Would this be a good place to start for a newbie?

That one or Crying...

All the raves for Joe Hill's NOS4A2 are starting to really pump me up. Nicole Krauss's Great House isn't quite as fascinating as The History of Love yet. Structurally it might be stronger, but emotionally it's been a rather empty affair so far.

[Benny Profane]

Always been curious to read Pynchon. Would this be a good place to start for a newbie?

It would.

[D_Davis]

All the raves for Joe Hill's NOS4A2 are starting to really pump me up.

Same here. It should be a good year for King-family reading.

[Marley]

It would.

Damn, it's 640 pages. Intimidating stuff. I booked both of them at the library and will start with which ever one arrives first.

[Mara]

Marius intrigues me so much. In the musical, I always wondered how much the writers were condensing his indecision between Cosette and Enjolras. You make it sound as if that might not be so much about an inept adaptation as much as it is part of the actual story.

Okay, I have an answer.

In the musical they really changed his relationship with the revolutionaries. In the book, he has some naive, half-formed political ideas, but he's not actually politically active or motivated. He is mostly friends with Enjolras, etc. because they take pity on him after he is estranged from his wealthy family. He doesn't attend their political rallies or have any revolutionary plans.

Meanwhile, he is rapturously in love with Cosette, blah blah blah, and when he finds out she is leaving the country he attempts to reconcile with his estranged family in order to get enough money to marry her and keep her in the country. While he is doing that, Valjean essentially spirits Cosette away in the night with no forwarding information, and Marius thinks she is lost forever. Totally despondent, he joins the barricades as a sort of suicide mission because of his heartstruck grief blah blah blah.

[Grouchy]

Reading VALIS. Dick is one of the most absorbing writers I've known in my life. I either laugh out loud or sit there in admiration of the concepts and paradoxes he describes.

[D_Davis]

Reading VALIS. Dick is one of the most absorbing writers I've known in my life. I either laugh out loud or sit there in admiration of the concepts and paradoxes he describes.

VALIS is so good.

[Milky Joe]

It's cliché to say that a book "fundamentally altered my perception of reality," but VALIS sure did exactly that.

[Marley]

It's cliché to say that a book "fundamentally altered my perception of reality," but VALIS sure did exactly that.

This is exactly how I felt after reading some of his other novels like Ubik and Scanner Darkly. I am so hyped to read Valis now.

[D_Davis]

Anyone here read David Markson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Markson#Wittgenstein.27s _Mistress)?

Sounds like he's in my wheelhouse.

[Duncan]

Anyone here read David Markson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Markson#Wittgenstein.27s _Mistress)?

Sounds like he's in my wheelhouse.

Yeah, Wittgenstein's Mistress is great.

[D_Davis]

Yeah, Wittgenstein's Mistress is great.

Ordered that this morning. My buddy and I are going to read it after we read JR.

[Duncan]

I read McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Probably as divided as I've ever been on a book. Incredible prose. I just think we're on totally different wavelengths regarding what's actually worth writing about, what we find interesting, what motivates people, etc.

[D_Davis]

I read McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Probably as divided as I've ever been on a book. Incredible prose. I just think we're on totally different wavelengths regarding what's actually worth writing about, what we find interesting, what motivates people, etc.

I feel that way about a lot of books, most recently with Gravity's Rainbow. Rarely do I read and finish something that is actually a terrible book; more often than not, I don't like something simply because I'm on a different wavelength than the author.

[dreamdead]

I can understand that response with Blood Meridian. So haunting, but so little occurs plotwise. I remember being especially taken when the boy engages with Judge Holden in the final hundred pages or so. That's what I treasure the book for. Well, that, and the complete take-down of the Western frontier as a place of American innocence.

Finally finished Nicole Krauss's Great House. It's as diffident as I've had with a book in a while. Nothing is really bad per se, but there's never any sustained development (as a set of interlocking stories, it's a thematically connected novel) and the characters remain transparently defined. On to Ian McEwan's Amsterdam for a quicker and hopefully better tale.

[Mara]

If anyone is looking for a thoughtful, intelligent book for middle readers (2nd-5th graders) I'd strongly recommend The One and Only Ivan.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Been working through Wuthering Heights (on disc 6 of 9).

Enjoying it so far, mostly. Granting Bronte's inability to go for ten sentences without using the word "peevish," the story is directed forcefully by the (seemingly two-dimensional) passions of its heroes. Still have a ways to go yet, so I'll hopefully have worthwhile thoughts once I've finished.

[dreamdead]

Another Ian McEwan novel that I never really get caught up in. Starting to feel like Atonement may have been a fluke in terms of his ability to balance character and theme. This time it's Amsterdam that never really gets going. In its comparison of ethics in music composition and in newspaper periodicals, McEwan heads toward fascinating content. However, the two main narrators, who both once loved the same deceased woman, never allow us enough entrance into how they deal with their daily personal life to adequately comprehend how we should read their professional interactions. The newspaper man is married, but his interactions with her combine to maybe three paragraphs total in his consideration of her. That in and of itself isn't damning (since it certainly conveys his reaction to caring about her), but it's in McEwan's adherence to plot and refusal to explore some of the non-plot oriented character motifs that could expand this book's content. And the ending is the sort of snake-consuming-itself postmodernism that is just bland and obvious in 1998, when it was published.

Next up is Don DeLillo's Libra, his study of Oswald and the assassination plot.

[Mara]

Been working through Wuthering Heights (on disc 6 of 9).

Enjoying it so far, mostly. Granting Bronte's inability to go for ten sentences without using the word "peevish," the story is directed forcefully by the (seemingly two-dimensional) passions of its heroes. Still have a ways to go yet, so I'll hopefully have worthwhile thoughts once I've finished.

I don't care for Wuthering Heights. In some ways, I admire it-- Emily is a powerful writer-- but she's also completely nuts. Her rampant misanthropy creates horrible characters being horrible to each other but then doesn't really go anywhere with that premise.

And the fact that it is misread (in my opinion) as a romance makes me crazy.

[Mara]

In fact, whenever a woman says Wuthering Heights is her all-time favorite book it is a red flag for me.

But then I read a memoir recently where a woman said her favorite "romance" was A Farewell to Arms and I was like, "DANGER DANGER DANGER."

[Dead & Messed Up]

I don't care for Wuthering Heights. In some ways, I admire it-- Emily is a powerful writer-- but she's also completely nuts. Her rampant misanthropy creates horrible characters being horrible to each other but then doesn't really go anywhere with that premise.

And the fact that it is misread (in my opinion) as a romance makes me crazy.

Hah. The library CD case had a quote on it that says something like, "The book that Bella loves most." Bella from Twilight. And listening to the book, I get it. I think Bronte understands that Heathcliff is a terrible human being and Cathy is a naïf, but I don't know if Meyer ever picked up on that.

[Derek]

In fact, whenever a woman says Wuthering Heights is her all-time favorite book it is a red flag for me.

But then I read a memoir recently where a woman said her favorite "romance" was A Farewell to Arms and I was like, "DANGER DANGER DANGER."

What about when a woman says The Bell Jar is her favorite book?

[Mara]

What about when a woman says The Bell Jar is her favorite book?

Favorite book?

No problem.

Favorite romance?

Well, that's just disturbing.

[D_Davis]

The first time I read Douglas Coupland's Life After God, I was in my early 20s. Now, in my late 30s, it is still profoundly good. I remember the first story hitting me like a ton of bricks, for fear of the realization that my future would relate; now that feeling has returned, in recognition that it has come to pass.

[Derek]

Favorite book?

No problem.

Favorite romance?

Well, that's just disturbing.

:lol:

Fair enough.

[Mara]

I think a number of you guys would really get something out of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It's not a perfect book, but it's so unusual and twisted and psychologically gruesome that the minor flaws are quite forgivable.

As a warning, it is really grim. The characters start out pretty awful and then get worse and worse. It's a book about sociopaths-- not one or two, but a whole fleet of them. It's also fixated on media culture, especially how it latches on to missing person cases, and how over-analyzed and sensationalized these have become.

I remember reading how The Great Gatsby didn't make a huge splash when it came out, but in retrospect it was seen as a perfect encapsulation of The Jazz Age... and to me, this book will be looked back on as a perfect encapsulation of the post-mortgage-bubble, post-9-11, post-instant-news-cycle but pre-whatever-comes-next era.

I really want to talk about it, but it's one of those books where the less you know going in, the better.

[Mara]

Also, the "unreliable narrator" gimmick can be easily misused, but having two equally unreliable narrators telling two different stories works out really well in this case.

[Mara]

It's been half an hour and nobody has finished it yet? I WANNA TALK IT OUT.

[D_Davis]

I think a number of you guys would really get something out of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl. It's not a perfect book, but it's so unusual and twisted and psychologically gruesome that the minor flaws are quite forgivable.

As a warning, it is really grim. The characters start out pretty awful and then get worse and worse. It's a book about sociopaths-- not one or two, but a whole fleet of them. It's also fixated on media culture, especially how it latches on to missing person cases, and how over-analyzed and sensationalized these have become.

I remember reading how The Great Gatsby didn't make a huge splash when it came out, but in retrospect it was seen as a perfect encapsulation of The Jazz Age... and to me, this book will be looked back on as a perfect encapsulation of the post-mortgage-bubble, post-9-11, post-instant-news-cycle but pre-whatever-comes-next era.

I really want to talk about it, but it's one of those books where the less you know going in, the better.

Sounds very Ballardian - might want to check his stuff out if you like books that perfectly encapsulate our modern culture. I'll add it to the list.

[Melville]

Hah. The library CD case had a quote on it that says something like, "The book that Bella loves most." Bella from Twilight. And listening to the book, I get it. I think Bronte understands that Heathcliff is a terrible human being and Cathy is a naïf, but I don't know if Meyer ever picked up on that.
Nothing about Cathy struck me as naive. The book deliberately contrasts her with a genuinely naive character in Isabella. (A more informed reader of Wuthering Heights pointed out to me that Isabella-->Bella; Meyer likely wanted her books to be like Isabella's view of what her romance with Heathcliff would be.)

[Mara]

I'd say Cathy is fairly calculating.

[dreamdead]

Sarah read Gone Girl and lurved it. However, she, like you, wanted someone to talk to about it and so I became the person who learned of each twist and turn second-hand. That's mildly abated some of my desire to actually tackle the thing, but I suspect it's one of the most interesting novels to be widely embraced so I expect that I'll get to it this summer.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I got the sense that she was naive when she was acting all prudent and proper with her marriage to Edgar, acting like it was the socially obvious thing to do. I didn't get the sense that she had the resulting emotional fallout from Heathcliff on her mind.

At the same time, that is a calculated decision, for sure. She wasn't oblivious to the contradiction between who she loved and who she was choosing to marry.

Maybe "naive" is the wrong word.

[Ezee E]

Jim Gaffigan's Dad is Fat reads like a transcript of his standup gigs. Chapters are only 2-3 pages, so it's a breeze of a read. Pretty funny.

[kuehnepips]

.. The Great Gatsby ...

I turned 53 on dreamdead's recent birthday but haven't managed to read Tender is the Night untill last weekend; it is sooo much better than Gatsby, I wonder why it doesn't get mentioned here more often. Melville?

[dreamdead]

I turned 53 on dreamdead's recent birthday but haven't managed to read Tender is the Night untill last weekend; it is sooo much better than Gatsby, I wonder why it doesn't get mentioned here more often. Melville?

I read it last year. For me, Tender flirts with the same sort of hallucinatory study on memory and desire. However, because it's so insistent on chronicling the constant daily affairs of Dick and others, it becomes bogged down in historiography instead of psychology, which feels closer to Gatsby. The strong sections of Tender, though, do resonate and feel decidedly more adult than Gatsby.

[dreamdead]

Finished a re-read of Don Lee's The Collective, which grew in my already positive esteem. It balances ethnic and identity issues with fascinating interrogation of how to move beyond those tropes, and I'm hoping to work the next few months on an article exploring how Lee positions his themes.

Moving onto Joe Hill's Nos4a2 now. Quite excited for it, and I hope that the book lives up to my expectations.

[Mysterious Dude]

The Master and Margarita. This book is batshit crazy. I was constantly surprised by it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Master and Margarita. This book is batshit crazy. I was constantly surprised by it.

One of my absolute favorites. Can't wait to revisit it.

[ledfloyd]

The Master and Margarita. This book is batshit crazy. I was constantly surprised by it.
Amazing. I gave my copy to a friend as a gift, I need to get another one.

[Watashi]

I've been kind of on a YA kick right now mainly because it allows my mind to take a break from all the Shakespeare and Elizabethan poetry I've read in the past three months. I'm also reading a lot of it because starting in the fall is when I start TAing at high schools to kickstart me into teaching for part of my credential program. I got to know what's hot with the kids these days.

So far I've read the usual stuff (Gatsby, Catcher, The Giver), but also some contemporary stuff (The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games). Any suggestions? I'm so out of the loop on popular YA novels nowadays.

[Mara]

So far I've read the usual stuff (Gatsby, Catcher, The Giver), but also some contemporary stuff (The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games). Any suggestions? I'm so out of the loop on popular YA novels nowadays.

I read ALL THE YA because that's what I'm writing and it's expected for me to read the genre. Some of it is quite good right now. (Wasn't The Fault in Our Stars great?) Some of it... is not.

Probably my favorites from the last year or so are (1) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, which is about a psychic girl in Virginia who gets involved with a group of rich boarding school boys who are searching for an ancient Welsh king (has ghosts, witches, prophecies, etc.) It's smart and stylish. (2) The Diviners by Libba Bray takes place in Manhattan in the 1920's and involves a psychic flapper who meets up with other psychics (a Harlem Renaissance poet, a Ziegfeld girl, etc.) to stop the ghost of a serial killer cult leader from carrying out his ritualistic murders to end the world. Really. That's the plot. It's gobs of fun.

In terms of what is popular, you can't go wrong with John Green. The Divergent series by Veronica Roth is very popular and is being made into a film, but I found it too derivative of The Hunger Games to be very enjoyable. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell is supposed to be completely amazing, but I haven't gotten to it yet.

I know a number of people who loved loved loved The Book Thief but it left me cold.

There are at least two mega-popular NYT bestsellers that you should avoid if you value your sanity: The Selection, which is basically The Bachelor in a dystopian future, but with a prince; and Matched, which wants to be a grown-up The Giver except with lots of kissing. They are both really, really stupid.

On my to-read list that look good:

In the Shadow of Blackbirds, Cat Winters
The Nightmare Affair, Mindee Arnett
Pretty Girl - 13, Liz Coley
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein

[Mara]

I debated adding this one, but I'm going for it, because I did like it: Cinder by Marissa Meyer, which is a futuristic take on Cinderella where Cinder is a cyborg mechanic. Futuristic and dystopian future novels are mega-hot right now (thanks, Suzanne Collins!) but this is one of the few novels where the author really thought about the futuristic world and made it interesting and believable (beyond "The government is baaaaaaaaaaaaaad," which is as far as most of them go.)

[Watashi]

Thanks, Mara. I think I'll just go with more John Green and go from there. Yes, The Fault of Our Stars was really great. I was wary of it for the first few chapters, but I think once the plot started moving along, it became a very beautiful book.

[D_Davis]

I've been kind of on a YA kick right now mainly because it allows my mind to take a break from all the Shakespeare and Elizabethan poetry I've read in the past three months. I'm also reading a lot of it because starting in the fall is when I start TAing at high schools to kickstart me into teaching for part of my credential program. I got to know what's hot with the kids these days.

So far I've read the usual stuff (Gatsby, Catcher, The Giver), but also some contemporary stuff (The Fault in Our Stars, The Hunger Games). Any suggestions? I'm so out of the loop on popular YA novels nowadays.

Lansdale's two YA novels are quite good.

The Boar, and All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky. The Boar is the better of the two.

[Watashi]

Thanks.

I had no idea Landsale wrote episodes for Batman: The Animated Series. He even wrote my favorite episode (Perchance to Dream).

[D_Davis]

Thanks.

I had no idea Landsale wrote episodes for Batman: The Animated Series. He even wrote my favorite episode (Perchance to Dream).

Yep - and two Batman novels.

[Mara]

I started Eleanor & Park.

It's excellent.

Now I'm going to say something kind of stupid. This book makes me wish I had fallen in love with someone at some point in my life. It makes love sound nice.

[Mara]

...I may have finished that book in one sitting.

[Lucky]

Now I'm going to say something kind of stupid. This book makes me wish I had fallen in love with someone at some point in my life. It makes love sound nice.

Are you on your deathbed?

[EyesWideOpen]

I started Eleanor & Park.

It's excellent.

Now I'm going to say something kind of stupid. This book makes me wish I had fallen in love with someone at some point in my life. It makes love sound nice.

You sold me on it. I'll have almost a full day of flying (Phoenix to North Carolina to Boston to London to Scotland) on wednesday so I was looking for something to read.

[Mara]

Are you on your deathbed?

Ah, but this book is about young love. When I was young I was too busy hating everything to fall in love with someone. Now I'm frustrated because I have very little empirical data to mine for my own book.

Seriously. Why didn't I spend more time making out with people? Youth is wasted on the young.

[Mara]

I've been seeing this Nick Hornby quote floating around, and I like it: “I see now that dismissing YA books because you’re not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you’re not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I’ve discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that’s filled with masterpieces I’ve never heard of.”

[D_Davis]

Starting William Gaddis' JR today.

[Mara]

I told my roommate to read Gone Girl on her trip, and when I got her from the airport last night, she got in, put on her seat belt, and said, "Gone Girl: what the HELL?"

:lol:

[dreamdead]

Bummer. The characters in Hill's Nos4a2 don't quite have the dimensionality that Locke and Key consistently possesses, and that's sad. It's a compulsively readable book, but the energy of the first 100 or 200 pages starts to shrivel slightly when it becomes clear that the characters won't transform much beyond their initial archetype. The last eighty pages or so don't pack the wallop that I'd hoped. I did find Maggie a fascinating secondary character and wanted more of her life. This and Chabon's Telegraph Avenue try to compete for which novel can reference the most geek culture reference points...

Anyone read Hill's collection of short stories? I've read the comic adaptation of "The Cape" and am curious if the collection is worth a library check-out...

I'm thinking I'll do another short genre study, so I think Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects is next. Sorry, Mara. Close to the book you want people to read, but not quite it.

[D_Davis]

Bummer. The characters in Hill's Nos4a2 don't quite have the dimensionality that Locke and Key consistently possesses, and that's sad. It's a compulsively readable book, but the energy of the first 100 or 200 pages starts to shrivel slightly when it becomes clear that the characters won't transform much beyond their initial archetype.

I gave up at about 200 pages. There was nothing there beyond the thin plot; none of the much needed pathos and humanity for a gripping horror story.

[Melville]

I turned 53 on dreamdead's recent birthday but haven't managed to read Tender is the Night untill last weekend; it is sooo much better than Gatsby, I wonder why it doesn't get mentioned here more often. Melville?
I disliked it. Fitzgerald's prose is too flowery for my tastes. And I thought the story's autobiographical nature was self-serving: it was too much "I'm really a good guy, and my wife was crazy." Gatsby, on the other hand, I remember admiring a lot for how succinctly it captured the mood of an era and tied it to issues of forged identity and the American dream.

[D_Davis]

J R is something else. Goddamn can Gaddis write. 90% of the book is uncredited dialog, but when it breaks out into a bit of description, man...wow.

The last paragraph on page 17, describing the way a car takes off, is one of the best written things I've ever read.

[dreamdead]

Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects is a nifty first novel. Focused on the doldrums of Missouri, it's got a good sense of place and an intriguing if not too damaged protagonist in Camille, a Chicago reporter coming back to her childhood home to investigate a set of murders. It does fall into some forgettable decisions at the end, which concludes more or less how I expected. It would have been interesting if Flynn hadn't pursued the younger sister Amma angle, where she's a killer, as the book was gearing up to be a study on how love neglects to punish the brutality of childhood. Camille and Amma in Chicago would have been an interesting coda without that approach.

Still, the angle that Flynn chose to cover fits within the tropes that she's exploring throughout the book. It's ugly throughout and I only wish the book had interrogated that ugliness a bit more (though it kinda does with Richard ditching her immediately after seeing the scars) rather than making it a part of the book's shocker ending that eliminates the repercussions. Good enough overall, and I think I'll get to Gone Girl this year now.

Finally getting around to starting DeLillo's Libra.

[D_Davis]

Awhile back, while asking for suggestions on books that were long and challenging, someone mentioned a non-fiction book about capitalism, or wall street or something like that. I remember it being over 1,000 pages long, but I can't for life of me remember the name or anything about it, and I can't find the post here.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Mara]

I'm completely absorbed in How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore. It's a non-fiction book about a weird, possibly mentally ill young man in the 18th century who was rich, philosophical, and obsessed with virtue. He also had some horrible ideas about women that he thought he could fix if he just adopted a girl young enough and trained her up properly. And by "trained her up" I mean forcing her into menial labor, lying to her, all but kidnapping her, and torturing her with candle wax and psychological games.

Anyway, I totally fist-pumped when a young woman (not the one he was raising) just rejected his marriage proposal thus:

"In an impeccably argued response... Honora declared that she 'would not admit the unqualified control of a husband over all her actions; she did not feel, that seclusion from society was indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to secure domestic happiness,' and furthermore, she refused to believe that marital happiness could ever exist without 'terms of reasonable equality.'"

Well done, Honora.

[dreamdead]

I heard about that Moore book for some reason--I think Sarah saw it at a conference book-fair. Looks like the library has a copy, so that's totally being grabbed when I do a library run later today.

Halfway through Atwood's The Year of the Flood. It's a bit tricky to try to remember Oryx and Crake's chronology of events as I match them up against this novel, but I'm pleased that Atwood's treating the female characters. The first in the MaddAddam trilogy left the women a little cursorily sketched, albeit by design, so the attention this novel gives to them is warranted. Toby's fascinating throughout and Atwood's ratcheting up Ren's impact now, but I'm worried this novel might be a little too focused on serving as a place-holder for the final in the trilogy. That said, there's enough time to start moving toward its own emphasis. We'll see--should be done by the end of the week.

[Mara]

I actually started reading Year of the Flood without realizing it was connected to Oryx and Crake. It took me a little bit to figure it out. They're not really sequels-- more like they overlap a little bit.

[D_Davis]

Lately I've been thinking about the unthinkable: selling most of my books.

I'd still keep my author collections - basically anything by any author that I have all of or more than 10 titles from - and sell everything else.

I just can't imagine having to move them again (last move I had ~30 boxes of books, and I've purchased many in the last year).

[Benny Profane]

Books are really easy to move. You don't have to wrap them in newspaper or bubble wrap like your dishes or coffee cups. You gotta get boxes from a liquor store. Those things are designed to be strong at the bottom and they usually have handles.

So keep your books and sell all your dishes and glassware.

[Irish]

Benny, books are a serious pain in the ass to move. A single box is heavy as hell. That's a back breaker if you're moving locally and a money sink if you ever have to ship them anywhere.

I love books but I hate owning them. My apartment is overflowing; I've got books in my entryway, on the floor, on my desk, and on two sets of shelves. I've even got books in my kitchen cabinets.

I think spending $15 on a trade paperback isn't a good enough reason to obligate anyone to store it in perpetuity. Especially as most book lovers tend to treat them as sacred objects which must be preserved in some sort of pristine state. Fuck that. I'll toss em in the recycling bin, "lose" them on buses and in laundry mats, or donate them to libraries.

There's only three books I've read and reread over the years with any regularity: "The Sun Also Rises," "The Great Gatsby," and "The Long Goodbye." Sometimes I think I'm crazy for keeping around all the others.

[D_Davis]

It's the volume - mainly because I'm pretty sure that this place I'm in now is the biggest place I'll ever live, at only 1,000 square feet. I'd like to get my collection down to collections and collectibles only, preferably two bookshelves, rather than 4 with 1/2 the shelves double-stacked.

[Hugh_Grant]

Another Ian McEwan novel that I never really get caught up in. Starting to feel like Atonement may have been a fluke in terms of his ability to balance character and theme. This time it's Amsterdam that never really gets going.

I read Amsterdam shortly after its release, and frankly, I don't remember a single thing about it except that it beat out Julian Barnes's England, England for the Booker Prize.

[Mara]

I'm completely absorbed in How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate by Wendy Moore.

THIS BOOK.

[dreamdead]

THIS BOOK.

Started it, and am fascinated to see where it goes. Also gonna work through Ayana Mathis's The Twelve Tribes of Hattie concurrently.

Finished out The Year of the Flood, and Sarah and I dialogued about how that and Oryx and Crake match up. Both of us feel that the first in the trilogy posits a stronger sense of dread and ecological despair, in part because there's the idea that Jimmy is utterly alone in the world, which the second novel counteracts a little too early. That said, I'm intrigued by where the last one can go, especially if it doesn't backtrack and record a third perspective but is all forward trajectory. I think we'll devour it once it comes out in September.

[Sven]

Coincidentally, we are moving this month and have been musing on our massive amounts of books. Total pain. K & I have agreed that this is about 60% of our total books:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/iosos/matchcut/boxes1_zpsb81b7fc7.jpg

[D_Davis]

Yep. Total PITA. I've decided that I will in fact be selling a ton of books.

I just don't need them or want them.

Where ya'll moving to?

[ThePlashyBubbler]

Yep. Total PITA. I've decided that I will in fact be selling a ton of books.

I just don't need them or want them.

Where ya'll moving to?

Let all of us on here who haven't yet realized what a pain they are which ones you'll be selling!

[Kurosawa Fan]

I don't care how big a pain they are, I love my books too much. I'd only sell the ones I read and didn't enjoy. Everything else stays.