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I just started David Michaelis' biography on Charles Schulz and I'm already really enjoying it. I like how he illustrates his thesis - that Schultz's strip was a reflection, or at least a distillation, of his life experiences - by tying it to the strip early an often.
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Apr 23, 2009 01:32
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I'm tearing my way through DFW's Consider The Lobster right now. Between his take on the Porn Awards and linguists taking dictionaries way too seriously, I've loving it.
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May 10, 2009 03:54
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I finished Consider the Lobster (it was great) and started Jon Franzen's The Corrections over the weekend. I'm already about 100 pages in and absolutely enjoying it.
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May 19, 2009 04:40
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Just started John Leland's Hip: The History a couple days ago. It's interesting stuff. Not so much a history of what's cool, but of the steady progression of American pop culture.
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Oct 15, 2009 04:58
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schoenfelder posted:Also bought Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. I haven't read any of his other books so I don't really know what to expect but the teaser on the backcover sounded interesting. That's a really great book. One of the best ones on mountain climbing I've read.
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Oct 17, 2009 21:31
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Just started Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes: The Way to the White House. It's a huge book on the 1988 election on one level, but I've heard it's a detailed examination of the kind of personalities and lifestyles on the campaign trail. Plus, I really liked the other book I've read of Cramer's (his great biography of Joe DiMaggio).
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Nov 1, 2009 00:44
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Just started Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union the other day. So far it's pretty cool, kind of like a cross between Mordecai Richler and Raymond Chandler.
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Dec 8, 2009 18:17
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I just started Dave Cullen's Columbine. I was kind of how surprised that the narrative started so close to the shooting (only a couple days before, with the prom. It's not a fun read so far by any means, but it's amazingly investigated. Cullen has all kinds of little details that show he's really spent time at this. The way he's tracing how so many different people - shooters, victims, the sheriff and so forth - and how they all fit into the tragedy is something. barkingclam fucked around with this message at 06:18 on Jan 18, 2010 |
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Jan 18, 2010 06:16
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I picked up a used copy of Homer's Odyssey today. I've never read a poem anywhere near this long, but I've always wanted to read his works, so why not. I also grabbed Machiavelli's The Prince, another book I've been interested in reading for a while.
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Jul 5, 2010 23:59
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I started Tom Wolfe's The Purple Decades the other day. It's kind of a greatest hits of his, a mix of book excerpts and magazine features from the 60s and 70s. It's great so far - his piece on Nascar driver Junior Johnson is one of the best pieces of sportswriting I've ever read.
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Jul 10, 2010 03:51
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I picked up a few books over the last few days, most of them used Penguins: - Canterbury Tales - Chaucer - The Iliad (EV Rieu translation) - Homer - The Last Days of Socrates - Plato - The Conquest of New Spain - Bernal Diaz - Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver I'm looking forward to the last one the most. I'm a really big fan of Carver's writing and I'm glad I finally found a used copy of one of his books.
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Aug 9, 2010 02:13
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I picked up a Norton anthology today (Masterpieces of World Literature vol. 1). It's crazy how much of the stuff in there is stuff I've been interested in picking up for a while - ranging from Ovid to the Koran to Milton. Thanks again for the posters who steered me towards it, it's a hell of a bargain for what it contains.
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Aug 19, 2010 22:56
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I just started Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago the other day. It's been on my bookshelf for a little while and with election season kicking into gear, I kept getting an urge to finally read it. That said, I'm already a chapter in and it's an interesting read. I'm glad I got around to it. Also, I picked up Dickens' Pickwick Papers today. I've heard good things and it seems like as good a place to start with his work as any.
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Sep 19, 2010 23:22
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I just started The Iliad. I was at a used bookstore and found a copy of EV Rieu's translation for a couple of bucks, so I figured why not - it's something I've meant to read for a while. It's good, although since I'm reading a prose translation, I'm sure I'm missing out on something. I also picked up Robert Graves' I, Claudius while I was there too.
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Oct 7, 2010 19:38
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Picked up a used copy of Cellini's Autobiography. It's been on my to-read list for a while and I'm looking forward to starting it once I've finished my current reads.
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Oct 20, 2010 00:26
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Facial Fracture posted:I was at a thrift store and I got Homer: His Art and His World by Joachim Latacz and Homeric Questions by Gregory Nagy for $2 each, which is great because they appear to be unread. I'm really excited about the first one and from what I've read so far, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Homer. I'd like to know what you think of both of these once you've read them. After reading The Iliad, I've gotten interested in learning more about the history of his works.
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Nov 1, 2010 18:56
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Just started Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War this morning. It's a dry read, but it seems to be worth it thus far. I read Herodotus a while back and this is kind of the other side of the coin: where Herodotus was all about quoting oracles and attributing events to gods and fate, Thucydides is blaming people. I also started The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens a few days ago. I'm really liking it, it's a hilarious read. I'm kind of surprised too: I've never actually read anything by Dickens before, so I've always assumed he wrote really bleak and depressing books. And aside from an odd side tale here and there, Pickwick is a really fun story so far (and Sam Weller is pretty wicked).
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Nov 5, 2010 15:46
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I was visiting a friend yesterday and his town's library was having it's annual book sale (fill a bag for nine bucks), so I grabbed a bunch. Some highlights: Pamela, Winesburg, Ohio, The Shipping News and a couple Thomas Hardy novels. This about rounds out my book buys for the year.
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Nov 7, 2010 20:37
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Red Pyramid posted:CON: The last essay in CTL about conservative talk radio really pushes the boundaries of how much one can abuse footnotes. I like DFW's style of sortof using footnotes to take the reader down a different path that may not get explored otherwise, but it's so gratuitous here that it just kills the essay's momentum. Well, it was meant to be read online, I think. I certainly works a lot better in that format and I actually wonder sometimes why more people haven't tried it.
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Nov 13, 2010 03:37
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Picked up a copy of John Hodgman's More Information Then You Require as a Christmas present today. I read some of it while waiting in line (place was packed) and it wasn't bad - I'm going to try and finish it before I give it to my friend.
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Dec 13, 2010 01:52
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Just started Bringing the Heat by Mark Bowden. I've heard good things about this book and I like Bowden's magazine pieces, so I've got high hopes.
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Dec 20, 2010 05:07
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Picked up a used copy of the collected plays and fragments of Menander. I'm not really sure what to make of it so far - most of what's left of his plays is a few lines and scenes, so I feel like I'm missing the bigger picture, but one of the plays is contrasted with an adaptation written by Plautus, so I'm looking forward to that.
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Jan 8, 2011 01:52
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Facial Fracture posted:Also, heads up, if there's no foul-mouthing in your Menander collection, it's probably not the greatest translation. Yeah, my copy somehow doesn't have the phrase "shiteater" in it. Must have been from a particularly bad manuscript or something. Finally got around starting to Cellini's autobiography. 50 pages in, he's stabbed people, lipped off pretty much everybody, gotten into a swordfight and been kicked out of Florence - and has an interesting look at how art is made and the kind of people who make it. I can tell I'm going to like this one.
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Jan 15, 2011 05:12
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Started Bradley K. Martin's Under Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader today. I'm only a couple chapters in and I'm really liking this book, especially in how it's trying to separate the propaganda from truth. It'd be really to just cherry-pick examples of the country's outrageous propaganda, but Martin's really going in depth at the workings of the country. In a word, it's penetrating.
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Feb 1, 2011 04:14
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Used book store in town was having a sale so I picked up a few books: Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Go Down, Moses, Richard Russo's The Risk Pool and one I'd never heard of: The Family Mashber by Der Nister. It's sounds like an interesting read and it's a New York Review of Books edition, so I figured I'll give it a shot.
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Mar 4, 2011 05:44
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Picked up Rashomon and other stories today. I just watched (and loved) the movie and I'm curious to see how it compares. I also grabbed a couple of used books, too: Stephen Bach's Final Cut a book about Heaven's Gate, the movie that killed an entire film studio, and Prometheus Bound, another Greek tragedy I've been meaning to read.
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Mar 18, 2011 05:34
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Just started Lives of the Later Caesars. I liked Suetonius' book so I think I'll like this one, too. Also the mystery surrounding the manuscript itself is interesting also.
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Apr 1, 2011 21:24
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You should read the Solzhenitsyn eventually. He's a good author and the Red Wheel series (which that book opens) is a good read on the birth of the Soviet Union. It's not really a starting point, but I wouldn't throw it away.
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Apr 5, 2011 02:53
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Hedrigall posted:I just started reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I'm a sucker for contemporary family drama; one of my favourite books of all time is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I hope this one is as good! Nice! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I first read it. Now that it's been distanced from the hype around it (and the whole Oprah book club thing which was really stupid) I found the book was a lot easier to judge accurately. I started The Big Sleep a couple days ago. I'm a sucker for good hard-boiled stuff and this might be the best of the bunch.
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May 4, 2011 18:21
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Picked up a few used books this morning: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, The Names by Don DeLillo and A House and It's Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett. I know Yates' book is supposed to be good and I usually like DeLillo, but I'm really intrigued by the last one. I think I'll read it first.
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Jun 10, 2011 17:54
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Started Rabelais' Gargantua & Pantagruel. It's awesome and funnier than you'd think something written by a monk over 500 years ago would be.
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Jul 19, 2011 04:43
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Picked up the ESPN oral history today. It's one I've wanted to read for a while now, so I'm glad I finally got a copy.
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Jul 22, 2011 23:46
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Picked up Cynthia Ozick's Metaphor & Memory and Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday today at the library. I've been wanting to read Mao for a while and I gave up on finding a used copy. Ozick's book was a blind buy, but it looks interesting - it's a bunch of literary reviews and criticism - and it was only a dollar.
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Aug 8, 2011 17:28
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I started reading Mao: The Unknown Story a couple days ago. It's somewhat dense, but there's a lot of detail about his early life in here.
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Aug 12, 2011 15:48
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Picked up Penguin's Li Po and Tu Fu collection today. Since reading The Pillow Book, I've been interested in reading classical Chinese poetry and this, plus Songs of the South, seems like a good place to begin.
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Sep 4, 2011 04:06
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Idonie posted:I'm not stalking you, honest, but I too got into classical Chinese poetry from The Pillow Book so I'm excited to hear what you think. And the Chinese Literature thread needs more input! Oh, I haven't started them yet, I'm petty deep into some other stuff at the moment.
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Sep 7, 2011 03:01
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I started Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes a few days ago. I'm enjoying it: it's dark, it's funny and I suspect a lot more true than Exley claimed at the beginning of the book. It reminds me of David Foster Wallace a lot, too.
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Sep 10, 2011 22:22
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I've been on a real noir kick the past few months, reading a lot of Chandler, Hammett and Jim Thompson, so I decided to splurge a bit and ordered a copy of the Library of America's collection of crime novels.
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Sep 23, 2011 00:15
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Recently? I just finished Thompson's Savage Night the other day. It's a short, violent and disturbing story which was pretty cool. I saw The Killing, a movie he wrote the screenplay for, a while back and liked it a lot, too.
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Sep 23, 2011 14:49
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Mustard Snobbery posted:Started on Moby Dick today because apparently it's good. So far I agree, though some of the more literary references are going over my head, so I'm hoping it's still going to be a bloody good story about a big gently caress-off whale. If it gets to be too much for you, there's a few websites that have an annotated version that might help.
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Sep 27, 2011 03:30
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