What are we reading?

Started by edison, September 21, 2003, 11:20:03 PM

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csage97

Thinking about buying the new Space Odyssey by Michael Benson which is about the process of making 2001, but I'm trying to avoid the new hardcover price (which would be in Canadian where I am, plus the shipping). https://www.amazon.com/Space-Odyssey-Stanley-Kubrick-Masterpiece/dp/1501163930

Other books I've read recently:
-1Q84 by Murakami.
-The Master of Us All by Mary Blume. Read because of Phantom Thread.
-Poetry Notebook by Clive James. I don't always agree with him and his level of self-importance is off the charts, but that's what I enjoy about reading his stuff. Half the time, his arrogance and confidence in thinking he's right is funny and very entertaining, and then the other half he does have insight (he is really well read and intelligent -- and he's always sure to frequently point out the former to you ;) ).
-The Association of Small Bombs by Majahan. I bought it because, IIRC, it was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. It turned out to be OK.
-A bunch of stuff by Evelyn Waugh. His novels are really funny and sort of absurdist. The Loved One is particularly a romp, and would also make a good modern film (I believe someone did do an adaptation way back).

I have some more on my shelf that I'll maybe get to, but none are totally grabbing my attention: Neuromancer by William Gibson, Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Chabon, White Noise by Don DeLillo, Oil! by Upton Sinclair, Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. In all honesty, I'm in the mood for some good nonfiction, though, and I think something about Kubrick and his process is just the ticket (another that looks good is Stanley Kubrick and Me from his driver, Emilio).

Fitzroy

Quote from: eward on January 19, 2018, 09:04:32 AM
One of the most relentlessly horrifying, brilliantly rendered works of historical "fiction" I've ever encountered. Getting through it at a slightly slower pace than I'd like, my work schedule making it particularly difficult to just sit down and devour this morally-challenging (to put it lightly) behemoth. My highest recommendation, and I'm only about 300 pages in.


This book came to my attention thanks to your recommendation. So far it's spectacular.

WorldForgot

Long Distance Runner recommendation in the shoutbox reminded me. Murakami wrote a great memoir of sorts about the creative endeavor, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The PDF is up online, and I recommend it to any of yall looking for nonfiction or the observationz of a prose-legend.

Currently reading Kafka Goes to the Movies , having just finished John Hawkes' lush and invigorating novel Whistlejacket

Robyn

just whitnail, let's introduce this book to an american audience!

it's a Norwegian book about a love and sex and stuff. it's good. and I am reading it now.


Just Withnail

Oh my god yes! Sangen om den Røde Rubin. The Song of the Red Ruby. I remember absolutely loving it but it's about 11 years since I read it. It's the sequel to the also great "Lasso Rundt Fru Luna" ("Lasso Around The Moon"). They're about young Ask Burlefot who wants to be a violinist (?) and his love and sex adventures. They vere very really controversial in Norway and led to the so called Mykle case, trying to convict the author Agnar Mykle on obscenity charges.

I don't remember them in too strong detail, only floating images and massive amounts of sadness, frustration, fear, not knowing who one is or who one wants to not know that with, with small piercing moments of intense joy inbetween, often not spoken out in as that at all, but just as a description of gratitute for the way someone looks at you. In hindsight I can see that the feelings of weight in these relations he has throughout the book has mirrored the feeling of weigh I've ended up having in my relationships since I read it. Back then I hadn't seen the looks or wants he describes, but since I have and they've showed me a little how to handle them.

I do remember this heartwrenching speech at the end, when Ask has put his artistic plans away and is reading a very dry speech about...something? Don't remember, but it's something extremely dry and unromantic at some professional, a little conservative, gathering, reading from a piece of paper, but simultaneously, internally, pouring his heart out to his girlfriend who is sitting next to him, politely smiling. Outside: "boring, dry stuff, facts" and internally: "you know this is all for you? you know this speech is for you?". A horrible description of a scene that worked so perfectly for me, and that I'm about to seriously rip off for my own script.

KJ, do you know the part? I can't find my copy, could you maybe snap a foto of the part if you know which one it is? I'd love to read it again.

Edit: Christ, I just stumbled on somebody quoting the heartbreaking last line, that goes in the direction of the scene described above: Love is something other people don't know about. Love is a lonely thing.

Something Spanish

I've heard of coincidences, even experienced a few in my lifetime, but the ramifications of what I'm about to share with you are still freaking me the F out. It may certainly be taken as a minor occurrence of happenstance, still, like, man, it's really nuts to me. In short, this past Saturday, I was running on the treadmill listening to the Joe Rogan podcast. I have not been listening to it as of late, missing dozens of episodes in the interim. The previous day, Friday, I listened to a recent one featuring Bill Burr, dug it mucho, and followed it up the next day with an episode featuring a guest who recently wrote a book on Hunter S. Thompson. Out of the dozens upon dozens of episodes I could have chosen, that was the one I went with. Had never heard of this writer before, figured I like Hunter, I know Rogan is a fan his, so it'd be cool to hear the two talk Duke for two hours. During the podcast the guest mentions this book, a biography on Jan Wenner titled Sticky Fingers, as having some great Hunter related content, at the same time praising this Wenner book as just a great read in general. I'm thinking, sounds like a cool book, would like to peep it one day. Less than four hours later I'm in the pool of my apartment complex, go to take a leak, come out the bathroom only to notice a book laying on top on the trash lid. Curiously I pass by to see what book someone forgot or discarded, and it's a mint hardcover of Sticky Fingers. Like, holy shit man, that is weird, because had I not listened to this podcast I doubt I would have even thought about grabbing it, but told myself if no one claims it by the time I'm through with these laps that sucker is mine. Suffice to say, I'm 80 pages deep and it's a really good read. But what are the odds, out of all the books that this book would be placed in my path mere hours after learning of its existence. That's some life affirming shit man. Had to share that quickie tale because like i said, it's still freaking me out.

csage97

Quote from: WorldForgot on May 03, 2018, 11:06:31 AM
Long Distance Runner recommendation in the shoutbox reminded me. Murakami wrote a great memoir of sorts about the creative endeavor, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The PDF is up online, and I recommend it to any of yall looking for nonfiction or the observationz of a prose-legend.

Currently reading Kafka Goes to the Movies , having just finished John Hawkes' lush and invigorating novel Whistlejacket

I like your style. I enjoy Murakami most of the time .... His stuff is often mundane yet strange, almost otherworldly. Pretty much essential descriptors of Murakami, so you know what I mean. I kind of want to check out his new one.

What I've read from John Hawkes has been great, though its very little. I like to buy my novels from the couple of used book stores in the city here if I can, and I've only come across one of his books once. I still want to read The Lime Twig.

On a note not specifically related to the quote above, and just a general nod at what I might be reading, I think I'll go back to Catch-22 since I've only read it once. What an amazing and hilarious romp. I need to read it at least twice.

WorldForgot

So far this year I've read Palahniuk'z RANT and INVISIBLE MONSTERS, both of which I thought are dangerously funny and insightful novels. Rant Casey's life presented as an oral history iz a perfect fit for Palahnuik to pervert his own mind-swap gamez and fractured narrative kink into the likes of all our retelling, misquoting, reframing wobble.

And Junji Ito'z UZAMAKI which iz a great manga of parables, obsession and body horror via the three dimensional spiral. Now currently on WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, Vonnegut.

WorldForgot

Sarah Marshall has written a great piece on The Magic Kingdom and The Florida Project, the intersection of illusion and exploitation.
QuoteYou could call it Cinderella grifting: the act of making yourself appear lovable enough, worthy enough of care and attention, to get the world to offer you a little kindness. Disney's Cinderella is where generation after generation of girls have learned that "a dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep." Anything more active than dreaming, it seems—even wishing for something when you are awake, and conscious enough to witness the strength of your own desires—disqualifies you from getting what you want. It makes you greedy. It makes you bad. All you can do is be lovable enough for the creatures around you, the birds and mice and Disney tourists, to take pity, understand your lovability, and reach out to help.

The problem arises when we import this logic to the world beyond cartoons, where pain and poverty and trauma do not, as it turns out, make their victims passive, pretty, and gentle. We would like to believe that need is always legible and appealing: that the people who most need love and care will always be immediately lovable to us, and that the more love you need, the more love your very presence will cause to well up in the hearts of others.

It is hard for human beings to accept that it does not really work this way: that if you grow up getting hit, you will learn to hit back; that if you grow up in a world where there is no one to protect you, you will learn to protect yourself whichever way you can. In America, we have learned to unthinkingly apply the terms con artist and criminal and even psychopath to people who are, likely as not, behaving in the only way the world has taught or even allowed them to behave. The word that might be more useful to us than all of the above is survivor. Sometimes being a survivor means play-acting the kind of innocent, passive suffering that people who have been able to be safe for their whole lives need in order to believe that you deserve their help. And sometimes, it means something else altogether.

jenkins

that article is great in at least four ways

Alethia

Just finished reading McCarthy's Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness In the West. Holy Hell, Judge Holden is one of the most haunting, brilliantly crafted antagonists in literature. Anyone read it?

wilberfan

Since you were kind enough to ask, I'm actually reading Helter Skelter and Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography by Eric Idle.


An exceedingly odd combination, I will grant you. 

Something Spanish

Infinite Jest. I'll let you know what I think when finishing sometime in 2020.

Something Spanish

A few hairs past the halfway mark of IJ, what a fucking marathon. The intelligent prose and occasional insightful passage keep me reading. It's very good so far, enjoying my time with it, just wish it required less commitment. This and Gravity's Rainbow were the books I wanted to read most since I've been in reading mode, getting through the former last fall, which started about 2 years ago with Helter Skelter, the remaining 3 are Ulysses, Kavalier and Clay, and The Corrections, as well as all Pynchon post GR minus IV. Shocked that I will have devoured GR and IJ with the span of a year. Never thought i'd Get through either. Jest is definitely less complex than GR, that one had me on Google constantly, this one just has me on the Dictionary app ever so often

Alethia

Quote from: Something Spanish on July 11, 2019, 11:05:44 AM
A few hairs past the halfway mark of IJ, what a fucking marathon. The intelligent prose and occasional insightful passage keep me reading. It's very good so far, enjoying my time with it, just wish it required less commitment. This and Gravity's Rainbow were the books I wanted to read most since I've been in reading mode, getting through the former last fall, which started about 2 years ago with Helter Skelter, the remaining 3 are Ulysses, Kavalier and Clay, and The Corrections, as well as all Pynchon post GR minus IV. Shocked that I will have devoured GR and IJ with the span of a year. Never thought i'd Get through either. Jest is definitely less complex than GR, that one had me on Google constantly, this one just has me on the Dictionary app ever so often

Bravo! I will one day finally tackle IJ. As for Gravity's Rainbow, I've never read it all the way through, but I've dipped in to so many sections at random over the years that I figure I must have covered at least a significant portion of it. My favorite non-GR Pynchon is Against the Day! V is also good fun. Vineland's probably the easiest read next to Inherent Vice (and serves as a terrific companion piece). I also recommend watching Alex Ross Perry's first feature "Impolex".

I just started "Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties" and it. is. crazy. Pretty credibly reveals much of the accepted "Helter Skelter" Bugliosi-prosecutorial narrative to be utter bullshit. This case is endlessly fascinating.