What are we reading?

[Neil]

I'd like to hear what you think about that...

I'm sinking into this.

[Stefen]

^SHOW OFF!

[Gold Trumpet]

Just twittered this, but currently reading (and about to finish) Jane Mayer's The Dark Side. A portfolio on torture during the Bush Administration, this book is not only convincing that criminal efforts were ongoing, but is very revelatory about the abuses being some of the worst in American history. I follow the news steadfastly and torture is currently a prime subject, but this book goes to exhaustive ends to show that the media is beyond simplifying the problems from the last 8 years.

This also was a finalist for the National Book Award. Deservedly so because the writing and research is, in short, depth. I recommend it to anyone who wants more information on the torture issue than short newsfriendly quips.

[MacGuffin]

I'd like to hear what you think about that...

Chuck's worst book. While, I'm very happy he dumped the multiple personal accounts of storytelling that he used in his last few books (Haunted; Rant; Snuff), the hero of this book talks in broken English that gets real old real fast. It's like learning a new language when you start (think Clockwork Orange), but once you get used to it and learn his alternatives of common English (Chuck does have a way with words after all), it just starts becoming longwinded. His take on the Bible Belt and middle America are funny, it's just that I wasn't laughing, which is a real disappointment in a Palahniuk book.


Onto this now:

[squints]

[Neil]

Due to the current fist fight i'm having with faith a gap needed to be filled, and boy did this do the trick.

I highly suggest

[The Perineum Falcon]

I'm shocked to find that I haven't posted in this thread since mid-November. I've been reading even more furiously since then (with no more school to worry about, I've finally been able to focus on things that I actually want to learn about), and thinking the whole time that I'd been updating you all with books that you're very likely never to want to read (for the most part, there may be exceptions):

At the beginning of the year I tried Danielewski's Only Revolutions. Still haven't read House of Leaves yet, which I'd really have preferred to read (probably won't now), but the local library didn't have it, so I picked this up instead.
I didn't like it, couldn't really make sense of it. There's a lot of information on the page (though, not as much as House), but you don't really know what to do with it. There are lists and dates off to the side, but when am I supposed to read that? There's no flow or any real interaction between the lists and the "poetic" narrative next to it. The story begins on opposite sides of the book (basically, each cover represents one of the two lovers and as you read [flipping back and forth] the closer you get to the middle, the closer the characters become), and so you have upside down text as well. Certain words or phrases are bolded, but it's hard to say if they really hold any significance either.
Honestly, it just seemed to me that author was REALLY in love with his concept, words and, well, himself.

I didn't even make it to the middle, honestly.

David Lynch - Catching the Big Fish. I really enjoyed this. It's very simple and a very quick read. Kind of humorous, as well.
It's basically Lynch going on about his experience with Transcendental Meditation, the benefits that he has experienced, and a few of his thoughts on film (his own films and the work of a select few).

I began my linguistic study with Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue by John McWhorter. I followed this with Sociolinguistics by Peter Trudgill, The Story of French by Jean-Benoît Nadeau & Julie Barlow, and Words, Words, Words by David Crystal.

While all that was going on I made my first attempt at War & Peace. Didn't finish it. When people ask me what I thought of it, I always refer them to a Woody Allen joke I'd heard or read somewhere:
"I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes.
It's about some Russians."

Next was Ella Minnow Pea: A progressively lipogrammatic epistilary tale by Mark Dunn, for word-nerds.

Then The Pianoplayers by Anthony Burgess.

During this time I fell head over heels for Salinger and zipped through the last of his published works that I'd yet to read: Nine Stories and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Now, I'm just waiting for him to die.

And continuing my linguistic interest I picked up The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Stephen Pinker. Then it was The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson.

Followed by Norwegian Wood and A Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World by Murakami. Though the former was enjoyable, and the latter interesting (for a short time), I didn't enjoy either as much as Wind-Up Bird.

Then it was the wonderful Repetition by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the same guy who wrote Last Year at Marienbad, so you can have a wild guess at the structure of the book. If anyone else has read his work, I'd love a recommendation.

Woody Allen - Mere Anarchy, funny at first, then became repetitive (like some of his films).

and finally, catching us up-to-date:




Her - Ferlinghetti

and (at last)


(funny, i'm almost positive i've forgotten a few along the way....)

[Stefen]

I haven't liked anything by Salinger outside of Catcher in the Rye. But I REALLY love Cather in the Rye.

Where would you suggest someone who isn't familiar with Haruki Murakami should start? I've heard The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is his best but it's also his most difficult. Is this true?

[Gold Trumpet]

I should post more here because I read more than I do anything else. Switching up between fiction and political literature, I just got done with Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven and am now onto this:

[The Perineum Falcon]

I haven't liked anything by Salinger outside of Catcher in the Rye. But I REALLY love Cather in the Rye.

Where would you suggest someone who isn't familiar with Haruki Murakami should start? I've heard The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is his best but it's also his most difficult. Is this true?

I haven't really read a lot of Murakami, honestly. Norwegian Wood is, like, required reading in Japan apparently, but it's unlike anything else he's written. Though I had some difficulty getting through Hard-Boiled Wonderland that's because I started with Wind-Up Bird (which, I've also heard is his best).
So, I guess my suggestion and advice would be to NOT start with Wind-Up Bird, because it may actually ruin your experience with his other books.

[The Perineum Falcon]

Huis clos, Jean-Paul Sartre

I've also picked up The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice by Ginsberg.

[Kal]

Wrote an article about one of my favorite writers and his books, and some other stuff about the transition to digital books, Kindle, etc.

If anybody is interested: http://www.andyk.net/blog/2009/7/7/chasing-chase.html

[Alexandro]

I just read Herzog's Conquest of the Useless and it's by equal parts hilarious, nightmarish, endearing and inspiring. He's a pretty cool writer. And the book really is like an inmersion in his tortured brain. Highly recommended.

[SiliasRuby]

Some of its BS but I'm really enjoying it all the same.

[Neil]

found this for 70 cents at the Goodwill. What in the actual fuck?