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Down and out in Paris and London Post Office Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
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Oct 10, 2016 18:35
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Siddhartha Dune Kafka on the Shore
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Oct 10, 2016 18:45
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macdonal hamborkles posted:Down and out in Paris and London All three are great books that I've read more than once. In fact, the first one was recommended to me here.
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Oct 10, 2016 18:51
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Ulysses - I haven't actually re-read it yet but I'm including this because it's the only book I already wanted to re-read before I was done Lord of the Rings - really benefits from reading before the Silmarillion and after Something Wicked This Way Comes - it's a perfect example of a straightforward, plot driven story that still has JUST enough going on beneath the surface. I think it works read once in the early teens for that coming of age, once when you're a bit older when you have more perspective, and I get the feeling that it'll resonate really well in middle-old age, too
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Oct 10, 2016 18:57
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Anybody read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72? I read it this summer to get into the spirit of the election and it was a horribly depressing account of how idealism failed in American politics and as a document of its time it demonstrates how American politics tended to follow the worst possible outcome
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Oct 10, 2016 18:58
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Doctor J Off posted:Anybody read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72? I read it this summer to get into the spirit of the election and it was a horribly depressing account of how idealism failed in American politics and as a document of its time it demonstrates how American politics tended to follow the worst possible outcome Both my name and av come from that book. I always thought I would never see a US election that would turn out to be similarily interesting and depressing. Then this election came along. Ibogaine fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 19:08
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Doctor J Off posted:Anybody read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72? I read it this summer to get into the spirit of the election and it was a horribly depressing account of how idealism failed in American politics and as a document of its time it demonstrates how American politics tended to follow the worst possible outcome I did. It's a great insight into the reason political mavericks often fail so spectacularly in US politics, at least in the last 100 years. The notable exception here is Carter, perhaps.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:08
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HST was quite impressed by Carter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SLeFZFTIco I don't think he had liked any politician afterwards.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:20
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Honestly, the two books that I've found myself returning to the most times have been "The Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter". I've read them both multiple times because they are easy to get into, have lots of bonuses upon rereading, and have multiple layers that come about upon rereading. I've read lots of other big serious books. And got something out of them. But if I were to take a relaxing summer vacation, and wanted to bring some reading with me, those would be them. I might take Remembrance of Things Past if I was literally going up to a fire lookout for three months, though.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:22
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1) T.S. Eliot - The Waste Land: 2) John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces 3) Hamlet
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Oct 10, 2016 19:24
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I can only think of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I've reread it through the different stages in my life and it gets better every time. I find myself reflected in characters that had always been foreign to me before. Could also list Blood Meridian as a book to go to for a gently caress Everything type of mood.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:41
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The Bible The Constitution The Art of the Deal
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Oct 10, 2016 19:48
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Ibogaine posted:Both my name and av come from that book. I always thought I would never see a US election that would turn out to be similarily interesting and depressing. Truth - and this following the terrible election of '68, in which a sitting president was ousted in the primary, the candidate leading in the primary was assassinated, a signature Moderate Businessman democrat took the nomination, and the police gassed and beat the protesters disillusioned with that choice. Thompson goes into some detail about all that, and how the two in sequence really ruined the democrats for a generation. H.H posted:I did. It's a great insight into the reason political mavericks often fail so spectacularly in US politics, at least in the last 100 years. Yeah, it goes into great detail about the backroom/convention deals that really kill the independent spirits, which is also how the republicans shook off Watergate like nothing while the democrats stumbled for 30 years.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:52
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Carter was a good guy who honestly tried. That also means he fundamentally had to betray the manipulators that got him the votes to get there, and that motion also leads to manipulators abandoning ship. These manipulators then have an exceptionally easy time marking you as Judas, or at least as a man without a cock. People don't like a complicated story that ends in ambiguity, so instead of people glorifying Carter we have a nation of loving simps sucking Reagan off and trying to mentally do this with every other guy on their team: [bush with big forearms behind a podium political cartoon] raton fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 19:54
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H.H posted:I didn't read the Exegesis but I'm guessing it's similar to VALIS. I liked VALIS, so I should probably read this as well.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:02
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Angelas Ashes - Frank McCourt Slaughterhouse five - Kurt vonnegut Night - Elie wiesel
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Oct 10, 2016 20:30
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Doctor J Off posted:Truth - and this following the terrible election of '68, in which a sitting president was ousted in the primary, the candidate leading in the primary was assassinated, a signature Moderate Businessman democrat took the nomination, and the police gassed and beat the protesters disillusioned with that choice. Thompson goes into some detail about all that, and how the two in sequence really ruined the democrats for a generation. Rick Perlstein's "Nixonland" contains lots of insights into the elections of '68 and '72 (among other things). It's fascinating how HST and a lot of the left wing supporters of the Democratis actually played into Nixon's hands, who knew that beneath the apparent rebellious nature of the new generation, the majority of young people actually still clung to conservative virtues. By painting the opposition as spoiled no-gooders who were making whoopie on the back of hard-working god-fearing Americans, he was able to attract a large part of the population. The silent majority had until then been largely ignored by intellectuals and sociologists, and most of them were completely surprised by the turn to the right that the US took back then. Reading the optimistic articles from the period which pronounced a new age of enlightenment is a rather sobering and depressing experience. tldr: Nixonland is a very good book and everybody should read it. Ibogaine fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 20:31
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The Stand, because I'm human garbage. Moby Dick. And probably The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:32
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Ibogaine posted:tldr: Nixonland is a very good book and everybody should read it. Sounds interesting, thanx for the tip
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Oct 10, 2016 20:36
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shelley posted:The Stand, because I'm human garbage. I remember how much I enjoyed The Stand and how much its conclusion pissed me off. Somehow, my anger at the ending overshadows my previous enjoyment when I think about it.
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Oct 10, 2016 20:52
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Ibogaine posted:I remember how much I enjoyed The Stand and how much its conclusion pissed me off. Somehow, my anger at the ending overshadows my previous enjoyment when I think about it. I think this is like a secondary sign of something not being literature, which is kinda interesting
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Oct 10, 2016 20:56
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Ibogaine posted:
I have a copy of that lying around here someplace. someone bought it for me a while back but i had no idea if it was good or not so never got to it. i reckon i'll give it a read
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Oct 10, 2016 20:59
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macdonal hamborkles posted:Down and out in Paris and London I just reread Down and Out so it'd be fresh before I leant it to a coworker. Great book, educational and super accessible. Not sure I could reread it forever, though. I do think Orwell wrote better nonfiction than fiction, despite 1984 and Animal Farm being stupendous. I have two picks for now: 1. The Anatomy of Melancholy (possibly cheating because Burton cites so many other works) 2. The Golden Bough, which despite its reputation is quite readable and interesting, even if the thesis might be out dated. Will have to chew on the third.
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Oct 10, 2016 21:29
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Outer Dark - Cormac McCarthy Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder Lord of the Flies - William Golding
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Oct 10, 2016 21:38
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Ibogaine posted:I remember how much I enjoyed The Stand and how much its conclusion pissed me off. Somehow, my anger at the ending overshadows my previous enjoyment when I think about it. it's actually really enjoyable if you tear out like the last half of the book and just assume the last people slowly died off without running into one another in the vast, unoccupied wastes
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Oct 10, 2016 21:53
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Childhood's End The Stranger Perfume (although this one gets hard to read at times)
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Oct 10, 2016 22:11
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I don't re-read books very often because there are at least a hundred on my shelves I haven't gotten around to yet, but these are exceptions: The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov Grimhaven (and/ or Sideswipe) - Charles Willeford United States - Gore Vidal Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais I've also read Candide a bunch of times. It's short, hilarious, and pretty much perfect. Same with The Epic of Gilgamesh, now that I think about it. And the Book of Ecclesiastes.
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Oct 10, 2016 22:43
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Gutter Phoenix posted:I don't re-read books very often because there are at least a hundred on my shelves I haven't gotten around to yet, but these are exceptions: Sell me on Rabelais, that book's been on my shelf for ages but I've not cracked it open yet.
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Oct 10, 2016 22:58
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Shogun, and Vinge's A fire Upon the Deep and the Deepness in the Sky. He wrote a sequel years later, but it's trash.
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Oct 10, 2016 23:03
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Catch 22 The Yiddish Policeman's union Some discworld book - maybe Night Watch or Small Gods. They are are in that perfect re-reas comfort zone of 'easy to read, bit with enough meat to be worth re-reading '. Catch-22 is the only one I would consider a truly great work of literature, but the books I end up re-reading aren't always the tough " important "ones. I've gone through Nueromancer a lot more often than Infinite Jest, for instance.
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Oct 10, 2016 23:09
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Slaughterhouse Five- Kurt Vonnegut Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (well his earlier more focused treatises on guerrilla warfare were better but very applicable to life much like the art of war) Buddha's Little Finger/Chapaev and Void- Victor Pelevin (need to get another copy)- cool novel I had to read for a class in college (about madness in culture), about this poet in revolutionary era Russia who meets the man who would become the famous civil war hero Vasily Chapaev. But every night he has nightmares that he's in a mental hospital in modern Russia and it sort of goes back and forth and gets pretty crazy.
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Oct 10, 2016 23:21
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This will probably change every time I think about it but I'm in a nerd phase again 1. Good Omens 2. Altered Carbon 3. Perdido Street Station queef anxiety fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 23:23
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The decameron was good, it's not got much of a plot it's just a frame for a bunch of relatively short and mostly funny or rude stories that remind you that people have p much always been the same Life and fate was also awesome, the eastern front of world war 2 is really interesting and it's essentially a first hand account of life in the Soviet Union at the time. It's genuinely emotional too. Bonus censored by the Soviet Union during Grossman's life time and smuggled out to the west cred too I'd probably pick something by Gogol too, maybe dead souls or some short stories Or crime and punishment was quite good Or long fellows translation of the divine comedy IDK something renaissance or russian
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Oct 10, 2016 23:32
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Xenomrph posted:2001: A Space Odyssey, Jurassic Park, and maybe Rendezvous With Rama. I come back to those three every few years and consistently get something new out of them each time. Rendezvous With Rama would be on my list if I hadn't made the mistake of reading the godawful sequels. I used to read it once every couple of years but now just thinking about it makes me queasy with horrid memories of eagle robots, robot spider rape, and anal beads.
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Oct 10, 2016 23:37
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A Strange Aeon posted:Sell me on Rabelais, that book's been on my shelf for ages but I've not cracked it open yet. It is hilariously filthy, especially the second book. Panurge is a great character. I would definitely suggest the translation by M.A. Screech. Ditto for his translation of Montaigne's Essays. I guess to sell it though, I'd say that if you enjoy any of the satirical work by Swift or Voltaire, you ought to dig it. Gutter Phoenix fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Oct 10, 2016 |
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Oct 10, 2016 23:38
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Kuato posted:I've read Dostoevsky's Demons a few times and still don't get it, so that'd be one. Maybe Dune, because it's a solid book IMO. Schlesinger's RFK bio covers a lot of ground, so that'd be my third. I think the point of Demons is that atheism turns people into psychotic murderers. Anyway, about a week after I read Demons, I learned that there was a famous chapter, "Stavrogin's confession", that was censored when the book first released and was censored in the edition I read. I'm actually not surprised that that chapter was censored, because it sounds really hosed up. Apparently, they sell an entire book that is Stavrogin's Confession with long commentary by Virginia Woolfe and Sigmund Freud. And some people even claim that Stavrogin's confession is actually a (very exaggerated) version of some crazy poo poo Dostoevsky himself did, and is really Dostoevsky's own confession. It's crazy.
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Oct 10, 2016 23:46
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the da vinci code angels and demons inferno
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Oct 10, 2016 23:49
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1. A choir of Ill children 2. Boomer Bible 3. The sparrow Top shelf horror, satire, and science fiction. I've read these many times.
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Oct 11, 2016 00:37
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Their flashing tongues, spitting out blood and poison.
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What is with all the love for Kafka on the Shore? I read some Murakami short stories and liked them, then I read KotS and pretty much stopped reading Murakami thereafter. What did I miss or fail to understand that made that book so good? My 3: The Adult short stories of Roald Dahl These are all delightfully hosed up and weird and can be enjoyed multiple times. Even if rereading doesn't add much they remain amusing and grotesque, like the literary version of trash TV. House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski The typesetting makes the book in a lot of ways and it takes a long time to puzzle through the complex maze created by it, which of course mirrors the labyrinth that is the focus of the story. Nostromo - Joseph Conrad I have struggled with this one many times and failed to finish it, but I want to so badly. If I was going to be trapped on a desert island I would bring this book just so that I could drat well finish it! Descend to slumber fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 11, 2016 |
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Oct 11, 2016 01:19
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I have to admit, a lot of Stephen King's stuff, mostly before the accident, is eminently re-readable.
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Oct 11, 2016 01:23
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