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Thread: Top 10 Books First Read During 2013

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    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Top 10 Books First Read During 2013

    01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    02.
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    10.

    Terrific start to the new year.

  2. #2
    A Platypus Grouchy's Avatar
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    I'm just gonna use this thread to list everything I'm reading.

    1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)

  3. #3
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    Man - it's all gonna be downhill from there.

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    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Man - it's all gonna be downhill from there.
    I'm excited to see if something can beat it. The gauntlet has been thrown down.

  5. #5
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
    I'm excited to see if something can beat it. The gauntlet has been thrown down.
    Have you read any of Bester's short stories?

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    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting D_Davis (view post)
    Have you read any of Bester's short stories?
    Not yet, no.

  7. #7
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    If you get a chance this year, check out Virtual Unrealities.

    Just make sure you stay far, far away from his post-The Stars novels.

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    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    1. Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor

    Now reading Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

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    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    02. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
    03.
    04.
    05.
    06.
    07.
    08.
    09.
    10.

  10. #10
    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    1. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
    2. Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor

    Now reading: Days of Blood & Starlight - Laini Taylor

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    Best Boy ContinentalOp's Avatar
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    1. Devil Red by Joe R. Lansdale- 8
    Out of ****:
    Chef- ** 1/2
    The Interview- ** 1/2
    White Bird in a Blizzard- ** 1/2
    Frank- *** 1/2
    A Walk Among the Tombstones- ***

  12. #12
    Zeeba Neighba Hugh_Grant's Avatar
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    1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky
    2. Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea - Barbara Demick
    3. Two Solitudes -Hugh MacLennan

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    something real elixir's Avatar
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    1. Raise the Roof Beam High Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, J.D. Salinger
    2. Dubliners, James Joyce
    3. Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace
    4. Summer Blonde, Adrian Tomine
    5. The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald
    6. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
    7. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
    8. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
    9. Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami
    10. The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus

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    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    1. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
    2. A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
    3. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)

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    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    1. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
    2. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
    3. The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
    4.
    5.
    6.
    7.
    8.
    9.
    10.

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    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting ledfloyd (view post)
    1. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
    2.
    3.
    4.
    5.
    6.
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    10.
    Favorite essay?
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  17. #17
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
    Favorite essay?
    It's so difficult to choose. "E Unibus Pluram" is engaging and insightful; it also makes me wonder what DFW thought of TV post-Sopranos. "David Lynch Keeps His Head" is a brilliant profile of one of my favorite artists by one of my favorite artists. And "Getting Away from Pretty Much Already Being Away from It All" and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" are both uproariously funny and slightly despairing in that typically Wallacian way. I had read the first two before in their edited forms, but finally going through this was exhilirating and just as revelatory as when I first read Consider the Lobster. His non-fiction just embodies everything I aspire to and am incapable of attaining as a writer.

  18. #18
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting ledfloyd (view post)
    It's so difficult to choose. "E Unibus Pluram" is engaging and insightful; it also makes me wonder what DFW thought of reality TV.
    This is what I was thinking.

    Anyway, I thought they were all amazing except for the first one.
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  19. #19
    The Pan megladon8's Avatar
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    I want to read a few more books by Thomas Pynchon this year.

    I still feel eternally indebted to Benny for piquing my interest and getting me to read "The Crying of Lot 49" (which I read cover to cover three times in a row). One of the best reading experiences of my life.

    I have "V" and "Vineland" on my shelf.
    "All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"

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

  20. #20
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting megladon8 (view post)
    I want to read a few more books by Thomas Pynchon this year.

    I still feel eternally indebted to Benny for piquing my interest and getting me to read "The Crying of Lot 49" (which I read cover to cover three times in a row). One of the best reading experiences of my life.

    I have "V" and "Vineland" on my shelf.
    V is not as accessible but it is a lot more epic and ambitious. I'd go with that one but be prepared.
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

  21. #21
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
    This is what I was thinking.

    Anyway, I thought they were all amazing except for the first one.
    Yeah, it does seem a little directionless, it initially seems to be about his affinity for math, but it never really circles back to examine that to any notable degree. The one on poststructuralism et al. didn't do a whole lot for me either.

    Have you read Both Flesh and Not? I will inevitably get to it, but it worries me that the vast majority of the essays are ones he ostensibily considered for his other two collections and decided not to publish.

  22. #22
    Scott of the Antarctic Milky Joe's Avatar
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    His uncollected stuff is definitely worth reading. If you haven't read his essay on Roger Federer, you should absolutely get the book just for that. One of the most beautiful pieces of sports writing ever published. The essay on David Markson's novel Wittgenstein's Mistress is stunningly brilliant also, if a bit dense.

    The book I want most is a collection of his letters, which I think is coming this year. Can't wait for that.
    ‎The severed arm perfectly acquitted itself, because of the simplicity of its wishes and its total lack of doubt.

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    Moderator TGM's Avatar
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    1. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
    2. Days of Blood & Starlight - Laini Taylor
    3. Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor

    Now reading: American Gods - Neil Gaiman

  24. #24
    Whole Sick Crew Benny Profane's Avatar
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    1. Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson
    Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu

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    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    1. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
    2. Albert Camus's The Plague
    3. Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye
    The Boat People - 9
    The Power of the Dog - 7.5
    The King of Pigs - 7

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