The Book Discussion Thread

[Milky Joe]

I read Philip K Dick's We Can Build You yesterday. I think it's my favorite of his novels I've read yet (aside from VALIS). I love how it purports to be about the whole concept of creating perfectly life-like simulacras of historical humans, and the societal ramifications thereof, but ends up being a meditation on mental illness and obsessive love, with the whole android thing being basically a subplot. You can really feel how his focus turned somewhere in the middle as he was writing it. Normally this would indicate a poorly written novel, but with Dick it just once again highlights his grander ambitions outweighing his identity as a 'pulp' sci-fi writer.

[megladon8]

I've begun reading "Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book" by Gerard Jones.

It's very good so far. I read the 10 page prologue and the first chapter (22 pages) and it's beautifully written. It's currently telling the story of the many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who came to live in New York City at the turn of the century, and how many of them ended up in organized crime.

[Ezee E]

Picked up Salem's Lot to read while I wait in lines or while I'm in the gondola at Telluride. Looking forward to it.

[Duncan]

Read The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I liked it much better than American Pastoral. Here he doesn't belabor his points to such an irritating degree, just lays down the raw, painful facts of these people's lives. It's got a weirdly sensationalistic/ironic premise, but it overcomes that pretty deftly. Expertly written, outraged, explicit, honest. Good novel.

Started The Collector by John Fowles. Creepy so far.

[D_Davis]

I read Philip K Dick's We Can Build You yesterday. I think it's my favorite of his novels I've read yet (aside from VALIS). I love how it purports to be about the whole concept of creating perfectly life-like simulacras of historical humans, and the societal ramifications thereof, but ends up being a meditation on mental illness and obsessive love, with the whole android thing being basically a subplot. You can really feel how his focus turned somewhere in the middle as he was writing it. Normally this would indicate a poorly written novel, but with Dick it just once again highlights his grander ambitions outweighing his identity as a 'pulp' sci-fi writer.

Nicely said. Phil's "plots" are rarely what they are said to be about...or something. While I didn't like it as much as you did, I do think it is an under-appreciated book of his. Like any great SF writer, Dick simply uses the SF elements as a catalyst to explore other areas - in this case mental illness - with some much needed perspective.

[ledfloyd]

Read The Human Stain by Philip Roth. I liked it much better than American Pastoral. Here he doesn't belabor his points to such an irritating degree, just lays down the raw, painful facts of these people's lives. It's got a weirdly sensationalistic/ironic premise, but it overcomes that pretty deftly. Expertly written, outraged, explicit, honest. Good novel.

Started The Collector by John Fowles. Creepy so far.

huh, i was looking for the human stain at the library today. i settled for indignation and delillo's point omega.

in other news my library now has a cat named stacks. which is cool.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Reading Dubliners at the moment. I love how every single story has a big anti-climax.

[Sven]

Got Under the Dome, the massive $75 edition, for TWO bucks. I have no idea when I'm going to get to it, but it's nice to be excited to visit a new work from an old favorite from whom I haven't read anything in a while.

[Mara]

Bless our poor virginity from underminers and
blowers up!

I'm shocked to find I have never before read All's Well that Ends Well. I'm seeing the play next week, so now I have to read it. I thought it was the one with the nun and the girl named Juliet-but-not-that-Juliet who gets preggers. (Apparently, that is Measure for Measure, and have you ever noticed that Shakespeare's tragic titles are very concrete, and his comedy titles are very vague? Othello is about this man named Othello, and Hamlet is about this man named Hamlet. Meanwhile, Much Ado About Nothing is about bastards and thieves and virginity and masks; and As You Like It is all cross-dressing shepherds and sluts and stuff.)

[D_Davis]

Got Under the Dome, the massive $75 edition, for TWO bucks. I have no idea when I'm going to get to it, but it's nice to be excited to visit a new work from an old favorite from whom I haven't read anything in a while.

It's so good. I think you'll love it. The first 200-300 pages is probably the best stuff King has ever written. I couldn't put it down.

[Duncan]

Finished The Collector by John Fowles. It was alright. It's about a guy who becomes obsessed with this young woman, kidnaps her, and then keeps her in his cellar. The first half of the book is told from his perspective, and it basically plays out like you would expect a psychopath's account of how he kindly kept this woman as a guest in his home for a while. It was pretty suffocating and his mind is so one-track that it becomes a little dull. The second half is told by the girl in a diary she keeps, and almost immediately the book becomes wonderfully more expansive. It turns into a kind of treatise on art and on two very vague and I would say arbitrary ways of living: as a collector or as a maker. The girl is a maker, an art student, and though the book may scream ALLEGORY a little to loudly, her fate does feel genuinely tragic. But ultimately I just didn't think what it had to say was particularly interesting, though it does do the I'm-going-to-write-a-genre-novel-that-is-secretly-a-literary-novel thing pretty well.

[Benny Profane]

Jonathan Franzen getting a ton of good pub for his latest book. Anyone plan on reading it soon?

Want to know if I should buy into the hype.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I liked The Corrections enough to give it a whirl, but with school and such, I can't say it'll be any time soon.

[Milky Joe]

I just bought it yesterday. Plan on starting it soon.

[Duncan]

I liked The Corrections a lot, but I read an excerpt from Freedom in The New Yorker a year or two ago, and it felt a little bit 19th century to me. Just very traditional storytelling, utter realism, still funny, but not nearly the irony of TC. I also read in an interview that he was trying to reach an even larger audience with this book and that he wrote it with straightforwardness in mind. All these things make me very wary. I think I'll wait until some people whose taste I've got a handle on recommend it.

[ledfloyd]

Reading Dubliners at the moment. I love how every single story has a big anti-climax.

the last paragraph of 'the dead' is one of my favorite things ever written.

[megladon8]

So...any input on how exactly one is supposed to read "The House of Leaves"?

[MacGuffin]

So...any input on how exactly one is supposed to read "The House of Leaves"?

No offense, but I'm not really sure what to tell you. Firstly, I read it in order of front cover to back, only skipping around to read footnotes. When the formatting got fucked up, I tried to look at everything on the page in the order I felt was top to bottom. I haven't read it for a few years, but I really don't remember anything too difficult and I think the concept rises above gimmick as the disjointed style of formatting adds atmosphere and flavor to the text as well as mirroring the mental states of the characters in the book; Danielewski is an admirably creative writer.

To give an example of how unsettling the story is, take that Russian hiking story I posted a few weeks ago, multiply that story's tension by ten at least, and you still wouldn't be there. The "Explorations" in the story are similar to the explorations in The Descent, but the actually exploring is plagued by unexplainable occurrences that are science-fiction and fantasy-based, so it really becomes that much more incredible and literally haunting.

[megladon8]

Well I'm talking about sections of text that are written backwards, upside down and sideways.

How do I go about reading that? Am I supposed to turn the book upside down and read it with a mirror?

[MacGuffin]

Well I'm talking about sections of text that are written backwards, upside down and sideways.

How do I go about reading that? Am I supposed to turn the book upside down and read it with a mirror?

I guess you could do that. I think when I read the book and got to those sections, I just looked at it and tried to decipher what I could (there's a whole lot of stuff in the book—including completely monotonous and pedantic, but nonetheless cool and distinctive footnotes—that really only need to be glanced through). The beauty of the whole thing is that it wants you to interact with it on a metaphysical level. It is truly a book where the reader invests as much of themselves into it as they'd like and are then rewarded in spades for doing such.

[megladon8]

"Men of Tomorrow" continues to be quite fascinating. I'm reading this one significantly slower than I have been reading books the last while, because it's quite dense. I'm finding it hard keeping some of the names (and stories accompanying them) straight.

But it's amazing to read how a character as pure as Superman came from such corrupt and scummy origins.

[megladon8]

Wow, this book cover isn't even trying to be subtle.

[megladon8]

"Men of Tomorrow" was a fantastic read. Funny, sad and informative.

I learned so much about the history of comic books. I had no idea there was so much corruption and back-stabbing in the beginnings of the industry - it could give Hollywood a run for its money.

[Grouchy]

Finished Junky by William Burroughs. One of the best books I've ever read. Bill's prose is simply without match. His recollections of his years of shooting heroine achieves the level of an anthropological study of a culture and a language - and the book is surprisingly modern in its view of social classes and drug use, often pointing out the hypocrisy of anti-drug laws and enforcement. It starts with a bang and never goes down.

[megladon8]

Just read Dennis Cooper's "God, Jr." in one sitting.

Not very good. Not very good at all.

A few interesting phrases and statements but other than that, it's a mess of sentimentality and druggy weirdness.

Imagine something written by Mitch Albom if he took a few hits of acid.