What are we reading?

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

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Film Student

Anyone read any Donna Tartt? The Secret History is fucking amazing, as is The Little Friend.

Most recent (worthwhile) reads:

Why I'm not a Christian- Bertrand Russell
Letters to a Young Poet- R.M. Rilke
The Human Stain- Philip Roth
On the Road- Jack Kerouac
Naked Lunch- William Burroughs
Understanding Power- Noam Chomsky

Favorite book of all time:

Crime and Punishment
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

godardian

Quote from: Film StudentAnyone read any Donna Tartt? The Secret History is fucking amazing, as is The Little Friend.

Most recent (worthwhile) reads:

Why I'm not a Christian- Bertrand Russell
Letters to a Young Poet- R.M. Rilke
The Human Stain- Philip Roth
On the Road- Jack Kerouac
Naked Lunch- William Burroughs
Understanding Power- Noam Chomsky

Favorite book of all time:

Crime and Punishment

I've read Secret History. Long ago, when a teenager. Pretty good. Everyone says the new one is tons better, though. It's on my list.

I've always meant to read that Russell... all the rest on your list are sublime, except I've never cared so much for Kerouac.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

Film Student

Quote from: godardian

I've always meant to read that Russell... all the rest on your list are sublime, except I've never cared so much for Kerouac.


Russell makes the strongest case for atheism I've ever heard. Having grown up in an extremely fundamentalist christian home, that says a lot.

A lot of people don't care for Kerouac, understandably... His writing is very dry and straightforward, but his abundance of joy and love for life shines through every page of On the Road, for me at least.
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

Pedro

Kerouac shares a love for life similar to mine...on the road changed my life...maybe all this joy for being and living is bullshit, but its made me a more positive person.

Film Student

Quote from: Pedro the WombatKerouac shares a love for life similar to mine...on the road changed my life...maybe all this joy for being and living is bullshit, but its made me a more positive person.

agreed.
"I think you have to be careful to not become a blowhard."
                                                                          --Ann Coulter

Slick Shoes

Plowed through Breakfast At Tiffany's over the weekend. That Truman Capote, he sure can write...

RegularKarate

Kerouac really bores me.

I had a friend who was so big on Kerouac that when he was arrested and put in jail, he used his one phone call to call me to ask me to bring his copy of "on the road" he had left at my apartment.

I also really hate the way his name is tossed around.  It's too pluggy.

I can understand liking him, but please leave your copy at home in the bathroom where you read it... it's not the fucking bible, you don't have to get a shirt made or anything.

***note, I'm not talking about those here who have already said they liked it, I'm talking about others... people I don't like.

MacGuffin



Also, for Chuck fans:

Chuck's hysterical, controversial short story GUTS will be in the March 2004 issue of Playboy magazine. Here's the blurb at the end of the February issue:
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

SoNowThen



It's almost as good as Easy Riders...., which means that I can't do anything in my spare time but read it!!
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

Pubrick

Quote from: RegularKarateKerouac really bores me.
i can't get into him either. at least it proves i'm not sum pseudo-intellectual prick.
under the paving stones.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Quote from: MacGuffin

Let me know how Survivor is please, Mac.  I wanted to read it, but as with movies, I don't get around to reading movies or reading books without buying them.  I guess I feel the need to get my money's worth after I buy it or something, but please let me know how it is.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

Chest Rockwell

I'm reading Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I'm such a sellout.

godardian

Quote from: SoNowThen

It's almost as good as Easy Riders...., which means that I can't do anything in my spare time but read it!!

Me too. That and Gulliver's Travels, but the Biskind is a complete easy-juicy read, which means you can just pig out on it day after day until it's done, which is bound to be sooner than you want...
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

cron

this belongs in  the What are we going to read? thread   but i can't wait to get the von Trier on von Trier... does anyone knows when it's going to be released?
context, context, context.

©brad

i'm currently obsessed w/ bret easton ellis. i'm just about done w/ american psycho, and man, it's intense. i've never read a book that has made me laugh, angry, disturbed, sad, wired, inspired, and disgusted as this fucking book has.