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Should I be surprised by the fact that aside from me a couple other people have just finished The Trial? I had no idea that Kafka's novels were at all popular, especially since this was my 3-4 time trying to read one and the first time I was able to. It's just not the most engrossing writing out there. The dialog is so structured and formal, which not only owes to K's job as a Bank Manager, but I kinda felt was supposed to be reminiscent of the language of a Trial itself in the constant reasoning towards some kind of conclusion (especially evident in the initial arrest scene). Interesting to think about, boring as hell to read. I liked it, especially since every minor lull was usually followed by an incredibly intriguing part. I kinda thought that the painter with the depressing heathscapes that were all the same was kinda like Kafka and his stories, all depressing and mostly the same.  Another thing that stood out but I can't quite get a grip on is K.'s relationships with women. His women are always out of reach and/or being taken away from him, even Elsa who forces herself on him. I've been trying to patch it all together into a Queer reading (cause I felt The Metamorphosis worked so well as one) but can't get past simply piecing together his general frustration with women and the themes of judgment in order to reach an overarching Queer narrative. Not that I really expected to find one. His frustration with women seemed like a sort of tipoff toward that kind of reading. Oh plus the vaguely BDSM-y scenes of The Whipper and Block's meeting the The Advocate. I mean seriously. So gay. Steely McBeam fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Mar 16, 2008 |
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Mar 16, 2008 12:00
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Just finished Despair by Vladimir Nabokov. Despite the title and plot (a guy wants to murder his doppelganger because he's bored of his life and wants the insurance money) the whole thing was hilarious. The main character is a self-deluded rear end in a top hat and has absolutely no regard for human life or the feelings of others; most of the book is about how he manipulates people into his plan, along with some reminiscing and character development. There's a great twist at the end that throws the whole book into new light, and it seems completely logical in the context of everything. I don't pick up on 99.99% of Nabokov's literary allusions, but he has an amazingly sardonic writing style with a great ear for cadence, and every word fits perfectly. Definitely recommended.
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Mar 17, 2008 09:19
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Just read Syrup and Jennifer Government by Max Barry. Syrup is an amusing satire of corporate marketing that follows a naive marketing graduate who pitches an idea for a new soda to Coke - only to have his idea stolen and forcing him to fight for it by teaming up with a Coke marketing person. It's a pretty entertaining read - Barry's an ex-marketing person himself and he has a sharp sense of humor. Jennifer Government reads a bit like a lighter version of Snow Crash in some respects - it's a fast-paced thriller that again pokes fun at corporate America. It takes place in the near future where corporations run every aspect of life and government has been privatized. It starts out with Nike marketing people hatching a scheme to sell their hot new shoes by releasing them on the market, then killing the first few people to buy the shoes, creating hype as a result. I didn't like this quite as much as Syrup - it gets a bit convoluted towards the end with so many characters, but it's still a fun read.
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Mar 18, 2008 05:40
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The Illuminatus! Trilogy! I get the feeling this would have made a bit more sense if I was on drugs, but once I stopped trying to grasp the narrative and just went with the flow, it was a lot more readable. It could easily have come off as preachy, were it not for the authors pointing out the flaws in their own narrative in great detail, and contradicting the conspiracy theories they spent half the last book building up. The first book seemed to be mostly a fun romp and drawing random connections between real and fictional events in history, but there were some surprisingly thought-provoking bits later on--the presentation of human history through Laurel and Hardy's catchprase "Look what you made me do.", and the "big secret" of the Illuminati at the end.
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Mar 18, 2008 20:43
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World War Z. I'm prepared for the zombie apocalypse. How about you?
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Mar 19, 2008 13:07
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Patrovsky posted:World War Z. No you're not. I'm getting ready to read The Zombie Survival Guide, which will get me ready. I loved World War Z too, except for the parts about the space station. Those made me want to kill.
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Mar 19, 2008 13:31
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LooseChanj posted:No you're not. I'm getting ready to read The Zombie Survival Guide, which will get me ready. I loved World War Z too, except for the parts about the space station. Those made me want to kill. But I have read the Survival Guide. I've got one up on you still.
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Mar 19, 2008 14:12
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Gravity's Rainbow: I did it! It took me about a month and Steven Weisenberg's fantastic companion, but I did complete this monster. I am not really sure what to say about GR, not sure what I think of it. It is definitely a great novel, a work of genius, an expansive and important work. Many times I stayed up too late, blasting through pages and really entranced by the book. At others, I found it to be a slog, and I would stare at the brick on my desk and be totally uninterested in picking it up. It didn't help that I wasn't reading anything else concurrently. I guess what GR really did for me is make me ask, How hard do I want to work at reading a book? How difficult is too difficult for a book? And I guess the answer would be, I haven't met "too difficult" yet (give me Finnegan's Wake and we'll talk later), but certainly there are books that must be read somewhere quiet and without distraction, and even then you have to have time enough to reread paragraphs and sentences more times than you'd think you'd need to. White Noise by Don DeLillo. I picked this up because DeLillo is one of the Four Great Authors still working according to the curmudgeon Harold Bloom. Pynchon's one of the other three, and I've read three of his works now (The Crying of Lot 49 and V.) and, well, Let's see how the others stack up, I thought. This was a much easier read than GR, and it was hilarious and engaging. Parts of it were sort of boring, but all in all, a quick, great read. American Pastoral by Philip Roth. Another of Bloom's Four, the only book by Roth I'd read before AP was Goodbye Columbus, so I was expecting something like that--a book about mid-20th century Jews living in New York. Well, sorta. This book was pretty good. I recognize that its a staggering literary achievement, but it really got hard to read near the end. The first three hundred pages were good, I was a happy reader, but after that I was tired of the style of advance the plot with one paragraph, discuss to the most minute detail the reactions and internals of each character w/r/t/ this advancement for a chapter. It just got to be a little much toward the end. As an aside, any time anyone rebukes any writing in CC with "show don't tell" (practically the motto of the writing critiques in that forum), cite this book as an example of that rule broken completely, yet yielding good results. The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. I read an article by Colson Whitehead in the Times in which he discusses being a "Brooklyn Writer" and it was funny and cool, so I picked up this, his debut, and really, what a debut! Intensely creative, fantastic, occasionally moving, and well, I couldn't put it down and finished it in two days. I totally reccomend this book. Whitehead's prose is tight and imaginative and really fits well with the story and with the main character, Lila Mae Watson, the eponymous Intuitionist, who is quiet and intelligent. Really great read.
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Mar 20, 2008 00:42
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Just finished A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - Thorougly enjoyed it and found it a much more enjoyable read then when i attempted to read Charles Dickens "The Pickwick Papers" (never finished it) Even though i had seen the story played out in a bunch of films i really enjoyed the humour of the book. It did seem to jump every where but it was good because you kinda got a feel for the changes he was making. Disappointed with the ending but overall the book made up for it. Picked up "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" which i am hoping i will enjoy just as much
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Mar 20, 2008 13:06
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I just finished Salem's Lot Definitely a great/scary book, but got a little shallow at points and wish certain characters had been developed more. I did like it a ton though.
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Mar 20, 2008 17:46
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Gonzo, a Hunter Thompson biography thing, and Naked Lunch both interesting reads
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Mar 21, 2008 07:54
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Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov The prototypical  story, for the SA book club. Haven't read this since I was 14, and man is Humbert orders of magnitude creepier than I remember. It's possibly because I was 13 at the time, and so socially awkward that's the sort relationships I had with 13 year old girls, minus the boning.
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Mar 21, 2008 20:01
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Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove. This book is really boring. The battle scenes are dull while being repetitive and the characters are one dimensional. I had to push myself to finish it. Not recommended. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I thought this was overrated. It was okay, but nowhere as good as people say.
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Mar 23, 2008 14:51
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Towing Jehovah by James Morrow. It has a great premise: God dies and his two mile long corpse falls into the ocean, and the catholic church leases a tanker to tow him. Wacky and hilarious, right? The book was OK, funny in places and insightful in others, but it seems like he really could've done so much more with that premise. It's worth a read, but don't expect something incredible.
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Mar 24, 2008 02:47
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Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson. I take back everything bad i ever said about it from just reading its abstract, i guess I'm more into cyberpunk than i thought. I bloody loved this book. Whoever most immediately likened it to Morgan's Altered Carbon was bang on, that is the nearest book i could possibly compare it. Hiro Protagonist is the man.
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Mar 25, 2008 01:04
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I mentioned a couple pages that back that I was about to read Altered Carbon and have since finished it. I really enjoyed it, it struck me as a cross between The Big Sleep and some William Gibson-esque cyberpunk. I also though the philosophical implications of resleeving were pretty fascinating and am going to propose an independent study class to do a survey of modern sci-fi in relation to Philosophy of Mind theory. Now I'm about halfway through Lolita for the first time. Amazing prose. This is one of the few books that I've read in recent memory that has me referring to the dictionary regularly. Somehow though, it's still incredibly readable and accessible. I definitely plan on reading more Nabokov soon. I'm also about 3/4 through Heidegger's Being and Time for an Existentialism class I'm taking. It's been a pretty excruciating read though it's picking up a bit towards the end. If you decide to brave it, try to avoid the Stambaugh translation. Lawen fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Mar 25, 2008 |
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Mar 25, 2008 07:00
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Shame by Salman Rushdie - VS Naipaul always seems to get plaudits as the greatest living novelist writing in English, but Rushdie at his best, as with Shame, is just as good. loving fantastic novel, and I understand Pakistan a lot better after reading it - behind the theme of violence caused by shame or shamelessness, it fictionalizes the career of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Benazir's father), and his eventual executioner Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, weaving the story of the main characters around their lives. Fun fact, he received a literary award from a ministry in the Iranian Islamic government for the book. Also, according to Brian Aldiss, if the publishers hadn't removed his debut novel Grimus from the running for a SF award judged by Aldiss, Arthur C Clarke and Kingsley Amis (where it was the likely winner), he would stuck as a genre writer, and TBB would be wanking about him in the same manner as China Mieville, Neal Stephenson, Neil Gaimen and Orson Scott Card. Heh East, West by Rushdie - short stories, some really excellent (At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers, Chekov and Zulu), some not so good. Half a Life by VS Naipaul; very good novel, beautifully written, the life of an Indian immigrant to London, and later Africa and Germany. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - about a South African professer who is disgraced and exiles himself to his sisters farm after an affair with a student, and the eventual collapse of that relationship, played out against the changing political state of SA. Coetzee's an awesomely skilled writer, easy read as well, if relentless.
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Mar 25, 2008 11:07
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Lolita by Nabokov, which I read because it was in the book barn hall of fame and I'm ever so grateful it was. Amazing book.
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Mar 25, 2008 17:05
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Underworld by Don DeLillo, and Pornucopia by Piers Anthony. Looking to read something nonfiction now, probably Stiff.
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Mar 25, 2008 20:08
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Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich - Entertaining historical adventure that reads a bit like Indiana Jones meets Umberto Eco. The story starts out in post-Revolution France with the protagonist (an American gambler who was formerly apprenticed to Ben Franklin) winning a mysterious gold medallion while gambling, which turns out to be linked to the Masons and the Egyptian Rite sect of Freemasonry. After being framed for the murder of a prostitute, he joins Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and seeks to discover the purpose of the medallion while getting caught up in Napoleon's grandiose schemes for Egypt and the ongoing French conflict against the British. I enjoyed it quite a bit - Dietrich obviously did a fair amount of research into the period as well as Egyptian mythology, and his portrayal of Napoleon is particularly interesting. I do wish Dietrich had told the story in one book, though. (the continuation of the series comes out next month).
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Mar 25, 2008 21:56
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Bullet Park, by John Cheever, who is quietly one of my favorite authors. I liked this book a lot; it was quick, very well written (as Cheever always is), and treads familiar territory in an interesting way. Cheever writes mainly about life in affluent 1950s/1960s society (often suburban) and its interesting to see how strongly ideas of alienation, midlife crises, sexual repression, and so on still resonate today. At least, for me they do. I think it is somewhat the inferior of The Wapshot Chronicles, but is considerably more to the point. Kinds of Minds, by Daniel Dennett. Interesting discussion of the various types of minds he thinks things can have. He tries to show how it is possible for creatures to behave as if they had conciousness, without actually being concious. He tries to show that in our capacity for language and the ability to organize and reorganize our minds, we as humans are unique in our self-conciousness. Interesting, but I don't think altogether very compelling. The Human Factor, by Graham Greene, which is (another) spy novel by one of my favorite 20th century authors. As usual, it's nuanced, morally ambiguous, and subtly devastating. A quiet but interesting look at the life of a rather domesticated double-agent. Another Day of Life By Ryszard Kapuscinski was a fantastic read, and a really compelling piece of 20th century journalism. A first hand account of the collapse of government in Angola and the ensuing civil war, it is really a harrowing series of vignettes in which things go from brooding to violent and back again. On top of the intensely interesting subject matter, Kapuscinski is truly a master stylist, and has a way of turning the violent and senseless into something both mystical and devastating. There is a great passage excerpted here: http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/006083.html hmm, busy week for me...
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Mar 25, 2008 22:34
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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, god that was such an engaging story. I read it all in one day. The main character has such pride in himself, but he never escapes the grip of his ancestors. I can see why this is touted as the first real work of English language African Literature. The pacing is so weird. He focuses in on a specific moment in time and then jumps ahead days or even years at a time. The Ibo language proverbs confused me with their lessons a bit. It is incredible how detailed the culture of Lower Niger was shown to be in such a short book.
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Mar 25, 2008 22:38
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The Know It All by A.J. Jacobs. I remember having this book recommended in a non-fiction thread and I put it on my list to read and eventually got to it. I wish I had read it sooner. I think the book has a wonderfully unique style and is quite funny on almost every page. I recommended it to my brother and he is only about fifty pages into it but enjoying it immensely. What a great read. Velocity by Dean Koontz. I've never read any of Dean Koontz works except for maybe fifteen pages of Seize the Night years ago and I remember not enjoying it. Velocity on the other hand was fast paced and well written. I loved the twists and turns that took place through out the book. I finished the hardback version in just one day. I haven't done that with a book for awhile. If any other works by Dean Koontz are this good I plan on reading them soon. There were a few minor flaws but the pace was fast and it was just a fun thriller.
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Mar 25, 2008 22:56
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Dean Koontz gets a lot of crap but for my money he shits all over the other popular authors. You probably want to look into Watchers and One Door Away from Heaven and From the Corner of His Eye. One Door Away from Heaven has the honour of being the first really adult novel that I ever read so I may be overrating it, but I swear at least Watchers is good.
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Mar 26, 2008 01:31
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I just finished 'The Love Song of J Edgar Hoover', by Kinky Friedman. The guy is a brilliant detective novelist. Highly reccomended! Im reading another of his at the moment, 'Stepping on a Rainbow'. Up to Chapter 9, and there's a great story developing.
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Mar 26, 2008 04:31
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Dextromethod posted:I just finished 'The Love Song of J Edgar Hoover', by Kinky Friedman. The guy is a brilliant detective novelist. Highly reccomended! Im reading another of his at the moment, 'Stepping on a Rainbow'. Up to Chapter 9, and there's a great story developing. I cannot stand Kinky Friedman. He comes off as pretentious and arrogant. He tries to adopt a film noir type voice, but he overplays it by putting in a witticism in every second sentence. He can be very verbose at times, and his writing comes off as a poor tribute to detective novels. I just finished W. Somerset Maugham - Theatre. It was a quaint little book, and it really gets into the mind of an actress, as well as general theatre culture at the time. Julia was written so that she was aware of her status, but not a snob. While it's not the most exciting of Maugham's novels, it's a very nice quick read. His writing style is still something I would sex, though.
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Mar 26, 2008 07:34
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The Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks Absolutely loved this, it read like a GBS thread on the topic of "let's get ready for the zombie apocalypse".
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Mar 27, 2008 16:46
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Yesterday, I finished Leon Uris' novel Mila 18. Until I was given the book a few weeks ago, I'd never heard a thing about it, but I am glad that I was given the book. Gives a pretty good look at how bad things were in the Warsaw Ghetto. While it's a novel, the only thing that makes it so is the fact that none of the characters were actual Ghetto residents - apart from that, everything else probably happened in a way not unlike it was described in the book (right down to the smallest of details) Prior to that, I'd read Jose Saramago's Seeing. Figured I might as well read it right after finishing Blindness. The first half of the book was tough to get through - I just didn't much like it. Thankfully the book redeemed itself somewhere in the middle. In the end, I guess I'm pretty happy I finished it. Now it is on to Dominic Streatfeild's Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography which, of course, is about the history of Cocaine. I've never hosed with yeyo so the book is just satisfying a curiosity that I didn't yet know I had.
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Mar 28, 2008 00:48
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Aerosol Burns posted:Bullet Park, by John Cheever, who is quietly one of my favorite authors. I liked this book a lot; it was quick, very well written (as Cheever always is), and treads familiar territory in an interesting way. Cheever writes mainly about life in affluent 1950s/1960s society (often suburban) and its interesting to see how strongly ideas of alienation, midlife crises, sexual repression, and so on still resonate today. At least, for me they do. I think it is somewhat the inferior of The Wapshot Chronicles, but is considerably more to the point. Bullet Park was my personal favorite, and it's great to see another John Cheever fan on here. I myself just finished Falconer by John Cheever, and David Ritz's 'Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye'. Falconer was very good but it felt like the 'prison-life' plot had been treaded and overdone through the years which really dulled its impact. Divided Soul was incredible, and really gave a lot of focus on Marvin Gaye's troubled short life.
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Mar 28, 2008 02:01
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How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers. I read "What is the What" over Christmas, and thought it was really masterful; it was my first taste of Egger "Us, and I liked it, despite is reputation as a somewhat overblown wunderkind. "How We Are Hungry", a collection of short stories written for various magazines and journals. It's decidedly so-so IMO. Two of the stories were excellent however. "Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance" was an interesting exploration of the 'friendship' between two friends, both of whom are damaged but only one of which seems aware. "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" was about a woman's hike up Mt. Kilamanjaro, and the costs we are prepared to incur on others. That's my reading at any rate.
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Mar 28, 2008 02:14
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Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. A 1000+-page argument to the effect that man's survival and happiness depends on people acting in their own self-interest and not for the sake of others, Atlas Shrugged is both a fascinating novel in its own right as well as an interesting defense of a philosophical stance.
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Mar 28, 2008 23:13
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A Couple of Goons on the Last Page posted:The Terror I really really want to read this book and it's been sitting on my nightstand for over a year. I've tried a couple of times but the pacing is deathly slow (I'm on, like, page 90). Does it ever pick up? Just finished: House of Leaves. I simply do not understand how people are saying this book is "the scariest book evar!". It had its moments, maybe I need to be claustrophobic or afraid of the dark or something. That said, I did greatly enjoy it, and it actually gave me some screwed up dreams, which I can't say many books ever do, so I'd recommend this. Its nature was a bit frustrating at times to the point where I read it slower than I'd read something more "traditional". Currently reading: Blood Meridian. Christ, McCarthy is a loving god. This is definitely more wordy than The Road, or even Child of God but in a good way. e: Thanks p_s! 
epoch. fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Mar 31, 2008 |
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Mar 31, 2008 17:57
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idhindsight posted:I really really want to read this book and it's been sitting on my nightstand for over a year. I've tried a couple of times but the pacing is deathly slow (I'm on, like, page 90). Does it ever pick up? Yes, but it's okay to skip long parts about the characters' past lives and information on the boat that will never be interesting. The story doesn't suffer.
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Mar 31, 2008 17:59
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idhindsight posted:I really really want to read this book and it's been sitting on my nightstand for over a year. I've tried a couple of times but the pacing is deathly slow (I'm on, like, page 90). Does it ever pick up? To be honest - not really. There isn't a lot of action aside from the Thing On The Ice coming around and loving poo poo up occasionally - there are a couple of particularly tense scenes. It's a good read but the pacing is glacial  at times - there are stretches that focus on not much beyond "men dying slowly or freezing various body parts off".Edit: Finished Lolita over the weekend - now that was a great book. Humbert is such a creepy gently caress but Nabokov's prose is fan-loving-tastic. About mid-way through Hadrian's Wall by William Dietrich at the moment. Encryptic fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Mar 31, 2008 |
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Mar 31, 2008 19:49
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I just finished TOR's free edition of "Crystal Rain" by Tobias Buckell. I'm now reading "Gardens of the Moon" on SA's recommendation (crosses fingers).
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Apr 1, 2008 00:05
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Naked Lunch (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Apr 1, 2008 01:32
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frasierdog posted:Naked Lunch From your bold words about this book, I imagine you loved it.
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Apr 1, 2008 04:42
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On The Road by Jack Kerouac, and I absolutely loved it. I thought it was funny, entertaining, sad, thoughtful, insightful, you get the point. It was awesome and I really, really enjoyed it. Rant by Chuck Palahniuk. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was entertaining, and disgusting at times, and hilarious at others. It was a rather fast read too, I finished it in 3 days of casual reading. I have a small stack that's soon going to get larger, but it consists of IV by Chuck Klosterman, Hotel Honolulu by Paul Theroux, and The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby by Tom Wolfe so far. I'm trying to read all the "classics" such as One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Catch 22, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, amongst others. Any recommendations to books similar to those or one you think I'd enjoy are welcome.
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Apr 2, 2008 01:42
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Hadrian's Wall by William Dietrich - Decent read set along Hadrian's Wall during the Roman occupation of Britain. While it's certainly good for historical detail and the writing is solid (I liked the interludes with Inspector Draco in particular), I didn't get that charged up over the plot - it's predictable up to the end. I'll be reading Dietrich's other books but this wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the other one I just read.
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Apr 2, 2008 17:23
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Molloy by Samuel Beckett - This is a first person narrative written by a completely unreliable guy in the most unique style of stream of consciousness I've ever seen. Hes a very sick, very old man who can't remember where he is or how he got there. The book is basically just him erratically re-telling events from his life. As the book unfolds you start to see the method in his madness though and then it goes from just extremely clever and well written to extremely clever, well written and super engaging. Totally awesome. Made me realize what loving garbage I've been reading lately.
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Apr 2, 2008 17:47
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