Author Topic: Fave Books / Currently Reading  (Read 947206 times)

Creekmore_Banks

  • Plantar Fasciitis
  • Posts: 16
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #900 on: August 19, 2009, 12:07:02 PM »
Currently reading:

Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth
Fat City-Leonard Gardner (loved the movie so much, started reading the book after hearing good things about it during Patton Oswalt's quiz on TBS)
Point to Point Navigation-Gore Vidal


Shaggy 2 Grote

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 3892
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #901 on: August 21, 2009, 11:00:48 PM »
Auntie Christina: I liked Rip It Up OK, but I know what you mean -- the approach is so obsessive and completist that it feels suffocating sometimes, like he just HAS to cram in every single pop band from 1978-84.  Sometimes this leads to some really interesting/bizarre trivia -- like, who knew that Bow Wow Wow was Malcolm McLaren's big project after the Sex Pistols and that the lead singer was a 12-year-old Burmese British girl that he pretty much abused?  But sometimes the book is like being trapped in the kitchen at a party with an obsessive music fan.  It made me think of how Our Band Can Be Your Life just stuck to something like 10 bands -- I'm sure Michael Azzerad wanted to cram in plenty of bands he didn't mention, but it made for a clearer and more focused book.

Also, I didn't realize this until the Wurster postpunk call, but a lot of those bands kinda sucked.
Oh, good heavens. I didn’t realize. I send my condolences out to the rest of the O’Connor family.

Ignore Function

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 170
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #902 on: August 22, 2009, 12:58:30 AM »
Currently 2/3 into The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano.  Keeping all the characters straight isn't easy but the book is enjoyable.

Currently 1/8 into the audio book version of The Israel Lobby

Shaggy 2 Grote

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 3892
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #903 on: August 22, 2009, 09:30:24 AM »
I.F., if it helps, you don't really need to keep track of most of the characters, just a couple of them, and then the two who never speak: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima.  I really dug that book.
Oh, good heavens. I didn’t realize. I send my condolences out to the rest of the O’Connor family.

icepants

  • Policemans heel
  • Posts: 98
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #904 on: August 23, 2009, 04:10:05 PM »
Do the FOT like Paul Auster?  I'm a big fan of city of glass.

Ike

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 196
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #905 on: August 23, 2009, 06:25:43 PM »
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. 
Super, super confused by this book.  I think, honestly, Pynchon got obsessed by the Big Lebowski and decided to give it the Crying of Lot 49 treatment.  It twists and turns in exactly the same way.  I'm not seeing much "psychedelic" noir yet, but I'm only 100 pages in.  The most readable, by far, of anything I've read by him. 

Parts are very, very funny. 

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

samir

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 1652
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #906 on: August 23, 2009, 09:28:31 PM »
I am reading 'Youth in Revolt' - it's pretty okay, but I feel a little too old for it. Some funny bits.
"Son, there's a thin line between crazed and rabid"


wood and iron

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 770
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #907 on: August 31, 2009, 12:06:03 AM »
During my time working at Knoebels Amusement Park, whenever I'd find some free time I'd work on reading All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. That book was a trudge. It won the Pulitzer and I'm not sure why. It had nothing new to say about politics (guess what, any idealistic candidate eventually has to lower himself into the muck of politics to get things done) and in fact had little to nothing to with politics for a book that is praised for its depiction of said arena. The book read as if Warren tried to have some big deep meaning in every other paragraph. In other words, the whole book consisted of purple prose. Oh and there was the fifty page section about the narrator's great-uncle that had literally no bearing on the main plot at all.

And for all the trouble the book gave me, I couldn't let myself put it down. First, if I start a book, I have to finish it. That's the way I'm made and I can't change. Second, I couldn't let this specific book win. Every time I sat down with a few free minutes I'd see the horrible red glow emanating from the book cover daring me to continue down the literary road and once again enter the purgatory that was the plot of the book.

For my first post back from my hiatus this is a poorly written one, but this book really gets to me. Do not read. Thumbs down.

Do the FOT like Paul Auster?  I'm a big fan of city of glass.
I read Man in the Dark by Paul Auster and really dug the first hundred pages but thought it ended very weakly.

samir

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 1652
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #908 on: August 31, 2009, 11:49:15 AM »
I'm now on to Mingering Mike, a book which I received from our own Chris L as my Secret Santa present last year. Interesting stuff - here's an intro if you don't know the saga.

"Son, there's a thin line between crazed and rabid"


dave from knoxville

  • Space Champion!
  • Posts: 5108
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #909 on: August 31, 2009, 03:35:00 PM »
I am reading Stanislaw Lem's "Mortal Engines", but I am NOT a nerd!








kittykittymeowmixhead

  • Tarsel tunnel syndrome
  • Posts: 280
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #910 on: August 31, 2009, 05:40:59 PM »
I am reading 'Youth in Revolt' - it's pretty okay, but I feel a little too old for it. Some funny bits.

Definitely a book that is best read as an adolescent. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, saw it twice. Not sure if it's out yet but if and when it is - see it! Zack Galifianakis is great in it.

kittykittymeowmixhead

  • Tarsel tunnel syndrome
  • Posts: 280
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #911 on: August 31, 2009, 05:44:32 PM »
I am reading Stanislaw Lem's "Mortal Engines", but I am NOT a nerd!

I read Solaris a long time ago. Pretty mind-altering stuff!









Scot

  • Achilles bursitis
  • Posts: 165
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #912 on: August 31, 2009, 05:48:37 PM »
is anyone here a fan of pete dexter? i think he's sort of totally amazing. and he has a new book, which i cannot pry from my wife's hands, coming out in the next few weeks. i am very much looking forward to it, having long ago exhausted my supply of his novels.

just finished the new pynchon. soggy in the middle but strong beginning and end. makes me wanna read james crumley and "gravity's rainbow" again.

about to finish "the chocolate war," and then i dunno what!

wood and iron

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 770
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #913 on: August 31, 2009, 07:25:24 PM »
Finished Frankenstein last night. Read it for my Victorian Monsters senior seminar class but it was on my pile of books to read anyway. Not too bad. Has the bad Victorian habit of giving nearly every character a deep back story and using a lot of exclamation points when they speak. I was a bit thrown off by how much and how eloquently the creature spoke. But worth a read.

Reeleyes

  • Achilles Tendon Bursitis
  • Posts: 609
Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #914 on: August 31, 2009, 09:53:16 PM »
Just finished The Road. I liked it a lot.
You look like a really healthy Arthy Lang.