01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
02.
03.
04.
05.
06.
07.
08.
09.
10.
Terrific start to the new year.
01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
02.
03.
04.
05.
06.
07.
08.
09.
10.
Terrific start to the new year.
I'm just gonna use this thread to list everything I'm reading.
1. A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick)
Man - it's all gonna be downhill from there.Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
I'm excited to see if something can beat it. The gauntlet has been thrown down.Quoting D_Davis (view post)
Have you read any of Bester's short stories?Quoting Dead & Messed Up (view post)
Not yet, no.Quoting D_Davis (view post)
1. Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor
Now reading Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
01. The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
02. The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
03.
04.
05.
06.
07.
08.
09.
10.
1. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
2. Daughter of Smoke & Bone - Laini Taylor
Now reading: Days of Blood & Starlight - Laini Taylor
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- ***
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
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
- The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester, 1956)
- A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemingway, 1929)
- The Essential Kabbalah (Daniel C. Matt, 1995)
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.
Favorite essay?Quoting ledfloyd (view post)
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
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.Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
This is what I was thinking.Quoting ledfloyd (view post)
Anyway, I thought they were all amazing except for the first one.
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
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."
V is not as accessible but it is a lot more epic and ambitious. I'd go with that one but be prepared.Quoting megladon8 (view post)
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
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.Quoting Benny Profane (view post)
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.
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.
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
1. Battle Cry of Freedom - James M. McPherson
Now reading: The Master Switch by Tim Wu
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