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Thread: The Book Discussion Thread

  1. #51
    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)


    You won't regret it. I'm not the only fan of the show who thought the book was terrible. I lent it to a friend and he had the exact same complaints I had.
    I trust you.

    I have started to read The Chronicles of Narnia (I'm following a strict order here) and any new books will have to wait. I'm hoping to do one a day and I noticed the only way I can get any reading done is if I turn the computer off. It isn't enough to log off anymore, I've got to shut it down completely.

    I can't plan to read any specific books because everything depends on my mood. If I'm feeling particularly low I have to stay away from melodrama or I'll spend the rest of the day sighing dramatically.

  2. #52
    Screenwriter Duncan's Avatar
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    I didn't like Life of Pi. I thought it relied far too heavily on its ending to make its point, and then didn't even argue it effectively.

  3. #53
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    favorite books?

    The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
    If on a winter's night a traveler
    Lolita
    Pale Fire
    Breakfast of Champions
    Jitterbug Perfume
    House of Leaves

    i think that's good.

  4. #54
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Duncan (view post)
    I didn't like Life of Pi. I thought it relied far too heavily on its ending to make its point, and then didn't even argue it effectively.
    ah yes i remember we had this discussion before. i on the other hand think the ending is actually the weakest part. perhaps depend on how you interpret martel's "point." i actually think that ending defeats the whole purpose of life of pi.

  5. #55
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Favorite books?

    Hmmm....if I had to pick some off the top of my head...

    Days of Life and Death and a Trip to the Moon - William Saroyan
    A Scanner Darkly - PKD
    The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - PKD
    A Thin Red Line - Joe R. Lansdale
    Wolves of the Calla - Stephen King
    White Light - Rudy Rucker
    The Science Fiction Short Stories of J.G. Ballard
    The Demolished Man - Alfred Bester

  6. #56
    Just rattling off what comes to mind:

    A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell
    No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie
    The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins by Dr. Seuss
    The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
    The Trial by Franz Kafka
    Monkey/Journey to the West by Wu Cheng-En
    The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
    The Odyssey by Homer (Robert Fagles translation FTW!)

  7. #57
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Sycophant (view post)
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
    I can't remember if I like this, or Tom Sawyer more, but I need to re-read both because it has been years since I've done so.

  8. #58
    Quote Quoting Daniel Davis (view post)
    I can't remember if I like this, or Tom Sawyer more, but I need to re-read both because it has been years since I've done so.
    Pathetically, I haven't actually read Tom Sawyer.

  9. #59
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Sycophant (view post)
    Pathetically, I haven't actually read Tom Sawyer.
    Well, I haven't read either of them since I was in junior high. I went on a big Twain kick a few years ago, but I only read his non-fiction.

  10. #60
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    I have some favorites, but I am not very well-read - that is to say, I haven't read nearly as many of the "classics" as I would like to have, and I haven't read a lot of modern lit. either...I guess all in all I just haven't read tons of books.

    But some favorites of all time would include...

    "Persuasion" by Jane Austen
    "I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson
    "'Salem's Lot" by Stephen King
    "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut
    "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
    "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
    "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
    "Crime and Punishment" by Theodor Dostoyevsky

    ...yeh that's pretty much all I can think of at the moment.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

    "Rick...it's a flamethrower."

  11. #61
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    I have some favorites, but I am not very well-read - that is to say, I haven't read nearly as many of the "classics" as I would like to have, and I haven't read a lot of modern lit. either...I guess all in all I just haven't read tons of books.
    I think that being "well read" and reading the "classics" are not the same thing. From what I've read of your posts, you've probably read far more of the "classics" than I have, but I consider my self pretty well read.

  12. #62
    I have an excess of favourites. It took effort to reduce them to 30.
    *shakes fist at effort*

    Henry James - The Wings of the Dove,
    Antoine De Saint-Exupery - The Little Prince,
    Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights,
    Marguerite Duras - The Ravishing of Lol Stein,
    Edith Wharton - The House of Mirth,
    Borges - Dreamtigers,
    Oscar Wilde's Fairytales,
    George Eliot - Daniel Deronda,
    C.S. Lewis - The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,
    Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle,
    Virginia Woolf- Orlando,
    Thomas Hardy - Tess of the D'Ubervilles,
    Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago,
    J.M. Barrie - Peter Pan (the novel),
    Andre Gide - Strait is the Gate,
    C.S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces,
    Laclos - Les Liaisons Dangereuses,
    E. Nesbit - The Phoenix and the Carpet,
    Lermontov - A Hero of our Time,
    Nancy Mitford - The Pursuit of Love,
    Salman Rushdie - The Ground Beneath her Feet,
    Elizabeth Gaskell - North and South,
    Simone de Beauvoir - All Men are Mortal,
    Evelyn Waugh - Brideshead Revisited,
    Victor Hugo - The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
    Graham Greene - The End of the Affair,
    John Masefield - The Box of Delights,
    Angela Carter - The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman,
    Zola - Nana,
    Haruki Murakami - Sputnik Sweetheart

  13. #63
    Ubuesque Amphetamine Llopin's Avatar
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    So I was at History of Literature class the other day and suddenly the teacher started raving about J.M. Coetzee for no apparent reason, who acording to her is the best english contemporary writer (still alive and working). Encouraged also by one of my classmates, I decided to check out "Age of Iron" and so far it's mostly interesting. Any other suggestions?

    Also, a few days ago I read Henry Miller's "Opus Pistorum". The fun...

  14. #64
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    I really liked Coetzee's Disgrace. I certainly wouldn't put him anywhere near the best English contemporary writers based on that novel, but it's worth reading for sure. It's a book of settings though. It's a much better book when the protagonist is at school than it is when he's visiting his daughter at her farm.

  15. #65
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Ooh, I love the "favorite books" question. Here's my brief list:

    Crime and Punishment by Doestoevsky
    A Confederacy of Dunces by Toole
    Lolita by Nabokov
    The Power and the Glory by Greene
    Atonement by McEwan
    Go Tell it on the Mountain by Baldwin
    Blankets by Thompson
    Life of Pi by Martel
    The Road by McCarthy
    Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut
    Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Marquez
    High Fidelity by Hornby
    The Screwtape Letters by Lewis
    1984 by Orwell
    Catch-22 by Heller
    The Bell Jar by Plath
    'Salems Lot by King
    Ham on Rye by Bukowski
    Me Talk Pretty One Day by Sedaris
    East of Eden by Steinbeck

    I don't know how many books that is, but those are the first books to pop into my head.

  16. #66
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Kurosawa Fan (view post)
    I really liked Coetzee's Disgrace. I certainly wouldn't put him anywhere near the best English contemporary writers based on that novel, but it's worth reading for sure. It's a book of settings though. It's a much better book when the protagonist is at school than it is when he's visiting his daughter at her farm.
    i totally agree with your last statement. only difference is i think the second half hurts the book more than you do. in fact i only consider the whole thing mediocre. last week i picked up foe from the bookstore, and after finishing it i might be able to better judge coetzee.

  17. #67
    *unawed by Coetzee's Disgrace*

  18. #68
    My list of favorites is very short right now.

    The Stranger (Camus)
    Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell)
    The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
    Things Fall Apart (Achebe)

    I expect this list to grow considerably over the next few years, but right now, I'm getting bogged down by Marcel Proust.

  19. #69
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Antoine (view post)
    The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
    I can't believe I left this off my list. I'm ashamed.

  20. #70
    dissolved into molecules lovejuice's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Antoine (view post)
    Things Fall Apart (Achebe)
    want to contemplate? i definitely don't like it as much as you do, although i appreciate the book to some degree. as far as the story about a fallen man goes, i feel like achebe rushes up near the end. i can't really see the main character do, you know, that thing that he does which i can't say...where the heck is spoiler tag!?

  21. #71
    Quote Quoting lovejuice (view post)
    want to contemplate? i definitely don't like it as much as you do, although i appreciate the book to some degree. as far as the story about a fallen man goes, i feel like achebe rushes up near the end. i can't really see the main character do, you know, that thing that he does which i can't say...where the heck is spoiler tag!?
    I like the "rushed" style. I see it simply as the African way of telling a story, being very to-the-point and lacking the density and minute details of the European style which we may be more familiar with. A Long Way Gone has kind of a similar style in that regard.

    Okonkwo's choice at the end certainly was abrupt, but I think I could understand it, after he had seen his civilization destroyed so easily before his very eyes, and watched his family and brethren submit to the outsiders.

  22. #72
    So... "The Phantom of the Opera" is crap in all mediums.
    And this is from a girl who always coveted kidnapping from a guy with a transcendent voice.
    *thwarted*

  23. #73
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    Favorite Books without repeating authors:

    One Hundred Years of Solitude -- Marquez
    Crime and Punishment -- Dostoevsky
    Ham on Rye -- Bukowski
    The Master and Margarita -- Bulgakov
    Go Tell it on the Mountain -- Baldwin
    V. -- Thomas Pynchon
    The Sound and the Fury -- Faulkner
    1984 -- Orwell
    East of Eden -- Steinbeck
    War and Peace -- Tolstoy
    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter -- McCullers
    Herzog -- Bellow
    Slaughterhouse Five -- Vonnegut
    Under the Banner of Heaven -- Krakauer
    Darkness at Noon -- Koestler
    A Handful of Dust -- Waugh
    Tender is the Night -- Fitzgerald
    The Road -- McCarthy
    Rabbit, Run -- Updike
    Nostromo -- Conrad
    Catch 22 -- Heller
    Atonement -- McEwan
    The Remains of the Day -- Ishiguro
    A Confederacy of Dunces -- Toole
    The Fountainhead -- Rand
    The Stranger -- Camus

  24. #74
    Too much responsibility Kurosawa Fan's Avatar
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    Chico?

  25. #75
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Today I bought:

    The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
    Red Harvest - Dashiel Hammett
    More than Human - Theodore Sturgeon

    and I found an old vintage copy of Deus Irae - Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelanzy

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