Author Topic: Fave Books / Currently Reading  (Read 947472 times)

Scot

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 165
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #600 on: January 30, 2009, 11:06:46 PM »
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. That's some heavy shit.

That book ruined me.  It gave me nightmares for weeks. 

Easily the most disturbing book I've ever read. 

Also one of the best.  I don't go for the gruesome stuff, either. 


Yeah, that book was rough stuff. It's a good book, but I'm 100% sure I'll never read it again. Like you say, the most disturbing thing I've ever read.

I'm at page 200 or so, and every so often I'll find myself flipping to the author photo and staring into his mild, content face, and thinking, who is this maniac?

The only thing I can think of that's comparable in terms of bleakness is The Room by Hubert Selby Jr. Not that his other stuff is a terribly lighthearted, but that's a whole new level of ugly.

i've read "blood meridian" (twice!). what i'm reading now outdistances cormac, i think: roberto bolano's "2666," specifically chapter four, "the part about the crimes." i'm about 80 pages into that chapter and if things continue on their present course, i do not think i will need to read the word "rape" again for about 26 years.

crumbum

  • Tarsel tunnel syndrome
  • Posts: 470
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #601 on: January 31, 2009, 12:05:11 PM »
i've read "blood meridian" (twice!). what i'm reading now outdistances cormac, i think: roberto bolano's "2666," specifically chapter four, "the part about the crimes." i'm about 80 pages into that chapter and if things continue on their present course, i do not think i will need to read the word "rape" again for about 26 years.

I finally finished off Blood Meridian last week, and as much as I've heard only great stuff about 2666, based on your description I don't think I can face it just yet. I need something lighthearted for now... I'm thinking John Hodgman's latest, perhaps.

Ignore Function

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 170
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #602 on: January 31, 2009, 01:16:42 PM »
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.  I wonder what that guy would have thought about Twitter.

Also listening to the audiobook of Black Boy by Richard Wright, as this thread dictates.

Ike

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 196
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #603 on: January 31, 2009, 05:05:34 PM »
i've read "blood meridian" (twice!). what i'm reading now outdistances cormac, i think: roberto bolano's "2666," specifically chapter four, "the part about the crimes." i'm about 80 pages into that chapter and if things continue on their present course, i do not think i will need to read the word "rape" again for about 26 years.

I finally finished off Blood Meridian last week, and as much as I've heard only great stuff about 2666, based on your description I don't think I can face it just yet. I need something lighthearted for now... I'm thinking John Hodgman's latest, perhaps.

YEP AND YEP. 

It is very good, but crushing my brains.  I had to put it down. 

I picked up Plainsong by Kent Haruf and Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.  I just finished the Road, again, as I'm teaching it this semester. 

Lately I've been immersed in LOTS of short fiction: Gish Jen, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Denis Johnson, Murakami (butchered his name, I'm sure--the After the Quake collection is wonderful), and about 392828 more. 

Well it's been a long time since I've had my favorite drink

Dan B

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 642
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #604 on: January 31, 2009, 07:41:02 PM »
I'm taking a 20th Century Lit class called The Grotesque . The booklist is pretty amazing.
A few Edgar Alan Poe short stories
Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories
Henry James - Turn of the Screw/ The Aspern Papers
Cormac Macarthy - No Country For Old Men
Nabokov - An Invitation to a Beheading
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy
O'Connor - The Violent Bear it Away
and we also have to watch Vertigo.


Matt

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 1021
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #605 on: January 31, 2009, 10:37:13 PM »
About to start in on David Copperfield. I will become cultured, even if it kills me.
It ain't ego, it's my love for you.

SJK

  • Tarsel tunnel syndrome
  • Posts: 306
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #606 on: February 01, 2009, 10:52:41 AM »
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.  I wonder what that guy would have thought about Twitter.
There is a lot packed into that short read, dense and very interesting. I downloaded a lecture from him sometime ago, smart guy.

Working on a book called, The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser. It is toying with my agnostic/atheist tendency.

Ike

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 196
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #607 on: February 01, 2009, 12:07:12 PM »
I'm taking a 20th Century Lit class called The Grotesque . The booklist is pretty amazing.
A few Edgar Alan Poe short stories
Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories
Henry James - Turn of the Screw/ The Aspern Papers
Cormac Macarthy - No Country For Old Men
Nabokov - An Invitation to a Beheading
Patrick Suskind - Perfume
Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy
O'Connor - The Violent Bear it Away
and we also have to watch Vertigo.

Now THAT sounds like a great, great class. 

Enjoy it.  Do not drink while you read for this class. 




Well it's been a long time since I've had my favorite drink

ben

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 520
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #608 on: February 22, 2009, 07:50:57 AM »
'how puppies grow' by millicent selsam is a pretty good read, highly recommended.
Sounds like someone was working as a conduit for nature's natural vengeance.  Just like Jesus.  And some of the others.

DoodleJump!

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 793
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #609 on: February 22, 2009, 08:23:13 AM »
About to start in on David Copperfield. I will become cultured, even if it kills me.

I love Dickens! He is one of my very favorites, and has been since I was 9.

I am currently reading A Clockwork Orange, and after that I have a book called
My Lobotomy by Howard Dully.
Has anyone read this? I am wondering if it will be fascinating, or just weird.
"Enough with the bandana, already." -Trace Atkins to Donald Trump

yesno

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 3426
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #610 on: March 23, 2009, 05:31:16 PM »
currently reading:

The Rest is Noise -- Alex Ross

slow going, but only because I have to stop listening all the time to listen to the music he's talking about.

Is There a God -- Richard Swinburne

very well-argued book from a committed Christian.  he makes a number of really astonishing assumptions and mischaracterizations and so on and ultimately I think his argument is profoundly flawed.  But still, it's a pleasure to read something so insistently contrary.


Just read:

The Mote in God's Eye:  a really good sci-fi novel.  Spin:  ditto.  Hominids:  awful, awful novel with fascist utopian undertones.

Big Plastic Head

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 977
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #611 on: March 23, 2009, 05:46:01 PM »

The Mote in God's Eye:  a really good sci-fi novel.

I read Lucifer's Hammer by the same two authors back in the 80's. Mostly what I remember about it is that a comet hits the earth and a surfer in LA catches the giant tsunami produced by the comet and rides the wave until he smacks into a building in downtown. I thought that was SO funny when I was younger.
Congratulations. You are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program that the client can control by speaking, emailing and instant messaging.

Steve of Bloomington

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 2262
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #612 on: March 23, 2009, 07:13:18 PM »
Right now:

Twitter API: Up and Running (my twitter account SoundSystemSDC gets thanked in the acknowledgement section, yay me)
Ivan Bratko's Prolog Book
Return Engagement (Settling Accounts: Book 1): Alternate history book, WWII is the US vs the CSA, who are committing a holocaust against black people
Spark by Eric Hagerman (how to keep your brain from deteriorating in old age)
Tropical Truth by Caetano Veloso (account of the Tropicalia movement etc)
The Vinland Sagas
The Bible (it was free on the Kindle...actually, Deuteronomy)

Matt

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 1021
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #613 on: March 24, 2009, 02:10:50 AM »
About to start in on David Copperfield. I will become cultured, even if it kills me.

I love Dickens! He is one of my very favorites, and has been since I was 9.

Yeah, I never started reading this thing.

Right now I'm about a hundred pages into Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. I like this one - I may even finish it.

From there, on to either Edward Dahlberg's Because I Was Flesh or something from the Flann O'Brien Complete Novels collection. (Which I'm only considering reading because it's a part of the Everyman's Library, and I'm an Everyman!*)

* Not THE Everyman.
It ain't ego, it's my love for you.

JBillington

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 158
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #614 on: March 24, 2009, 04:30:15 AM »
Rabbit, Run - John Updike

I got a 40+ year old copy that has the price in old (british) money - 4 shillings. I have to read it quickly before it falls to pieces.