What are we reading?

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

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wilder

Obst was interviewed on this week's episode of KCRW's The Business, beginning at the 8 minute mark.


Lottery


This again. I really need some new fiction.
Has anyone read Asimov's Foundation series? Is it good? His short stories are pretty damn good.

jenkins

i read two asimov robot books in high school and since then i've read random short stories, so i'm not helpful in that area. are you in the mood for sci-fi alone? if not, what other kind of literature tends to interest you?

Sleepless

He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

Lottery

Quote from: trashculturemutantjunkie on September 04, 2013, 02:22:24 AM
i read two asimov robot books in high school and since then i've read random short stories, so i'm not helpful in that area. are you in the mood for sci-fi alone? if not, what other kind of literature tends to interest you?

Not necessarily sci-fi but I want to read some of the good classic stuff. Otherwise, anything really (that said, I do feel like reading something post 1940s though). For reference, my favourite authors are (I think, there's probably someone major that has sipped my mind)) Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Cormac McCarthy.

Frederico Fellini






I made it to page 92 today. It's fucking hard to read Pynchon. I actually spend less time reading it and more time googling references, historical facts and meanings of words I've never read or heard before. But it's fun.
We fought against the day and we won... WE WON.

Cinema is something you do for a billion years... or not at all.

jenkins

Quote from: Lottery on September 05, 2013, 11:49:03 PM
I want to read some of the good classic stuff.
post 1940s
Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Cormac McCarthy.

seize the day is saul bellow in 56, his fourth book, followed eight years later by herzog (!) (TIME magazine named it one of the 100 best novels in the English language since "the beginning of TIME")

saul bellow writes about people. people mania. classic existentialism

not a classic, not on wikipedia, a book i'm reading mentioned béla tarr. this is the conversation's ending
QuoteBéla Tarr would discern what is absolute about my yard, W. says. He'd register its every detail in a twenty minute tracking shot. The sewage, the concrete, the bin bags and rotting plants . . . the yard would mean more to Béla Tarr than all our nonsense.

Béla Tarr said that the walls, the rain and the dogs in his films have their own stories, which are more important than so-called human stories. He said that the scenery, the weather, the locations and time itself have their own faces. Their own faces! Yes, we're agreed, the yard, the horror of the yard, is the only thing around here in which Béla Tarr would be interested.

Cloudy

QuoteBéla Tarr would discern what is absolute about my yard, W. says. He'd register its every detail in a twenty minute tracking shot. The sewage, the concrete, the bin bags and rotting plants . . . the yard would mean more to Béla Tarr than all our nonsense.

Béla Tarr said that the walls, the rain and the dogs in his films have their own stories, which are more important than so-called human stories. He said that the scenery, the weather, the locations and time itself have their own faces. Their own faces! Yes, we're agreed, the yard, the horror of the yard, is the only thing around here in which Béla Tarr would be interested.
[/quote]

Really enjoyed the quotage, been trying to consume as much Bela Tarr as possible. It's weird, it took me getting physically sick with a head-ache and fever to truly plunge into it. Now I can't leave, it's all so musical and flows unlike anything else.
The book doesn't sound like anything that would mention Bela Tarr. Interesting.
Also, this Saul Bellow quote seems totally relevant:
"The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. it is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything."

JG

here are some of the best stories i've read in the past 6 months or so:

John Williams - Butcher's Crossing (novel)
Herman Hesse - Demian (novella)
Pushkin - The Captain's Daughter (novella)
Stephen Crane - The Open Boat (short story)
Carson McCullers - Member Of The Wedding (novella)
Dash shaw - Bodyworld (graphic novel)
Thomas Mann - Death in Venice (novella)
Herman Melville - The Happy Failure: A Story Of The Hudson River (short story)
Tobias Wolff - Desert Breakdown 1968 (short story)

what are yours?

©brad

I just met a girl who was a Mad Men writer's assistant during the first half of season four, until Matt Weiner told her to her face "You know, I need someone hotter in here." She was promptly fired and given a job at Breaking Bad. She said Vince Gilligan was the nicest boss she'd ever had, in and out of Hollywood.

Reason I share that is I just read this:



A fun read that's 70% about the Sopranos and how the "golden age of television" is indebted to David Chase. A few other tidbits:

A David Chase writer's room seems scarier than Guantanamo Bay.
David Milch (creator of Deadwood, Luck) is by far the craziest of all these loons.
The road that let to make The Wire happen is almost as fascinating as The Wire itself.
Matt Weiner is a queen bitch and control freak.
Writers often run to the bathroom to cry after receiving "notes" from Weiner/Chase on their scripts. 
Vince Gilligan is a total mensch, as rare a showrunner as Breaking Bad is a show. 


jenkins

in movie news, this week i watched david chase's not fade away, and, hey, question tv people: creatives who've homerunned in tv, have any of them later converted to cinema? what's the most exciting tv-to-movie conversion that's happened? not fade away didn't have exciting cinema

Reel

Did the movie have subtitles? Because I don't see what that has to do with reading...

Frederico Fellini






Just finished this one.  Instantly one of my favorite books ever, mainly because of how it relates to my situation right now.

Whatever you do in life, whether it is music or movies or writing, if you're gonna do it, THEN FUCKING DO IT, SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET'S GET ON WITH IT... And once you do it, don't just do it, BECOME A FUCKING MASTER AT IT.

We have a finite existence here on this earth, inside these bodies, with the ability to think and take action. So just pick something that makes you happy and make it be your "vocation in life". Devote your life to it, truly enjoy it. master it and do your part to make the world a better place.

I honestly recommend this book to everyone who is still pursuing their dreams, especially here where pretty much everyone has a script written or trying to get a movie made.

BTW you can thank this book for me spending less time embarrassing myself in the shoutbox and more time doing real shit in real life that's gonna help my future.

10/10 book. Freddie has become The Master.
We fought against the day and we won... WE WON.

Cinema is something you do for a billion years... or not at all.

jenkins

Quote from: Reelist on January 22, 2014, 05:46:43 AM
Did the movie have subtitles? Because I don't see what that has to do with reading...
excellent example