Author Topic: Fave Books / Currently Reading  (Read 947313 times)

Chris L

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1395 on: September 08, 2010, 11:12:22 AM »
I started reading Ulysses. This is the first time I've advanced more than 10 pages in. I can do this!

Made up my mind to tackle this in early 2011.  Hopefully I'll be done with Brothers Karmazov by then.

yesno

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1396 on: September 08, 2010, 11:21:32 AM »
Get the Bloomsday Book.  It's like super Cliffs Notes.  If you try to pay attention to what's actually occurring in the novel, you'll end up missing the little details, and vice versa.

Kublakhan61

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1397 on: September 08, 2010, 01:00:58 PM »
Get the Bloomsday Book.  It's like super Cliffs Notes.  If you try to pay attention to what's actually occurring in the novel, you'll end up missing the little details, and vice versa.

I disagree. Well, I don't deny that you will miss little details w/o the help of the Bloomsday Book - but I think it is best used on a second read. Joyce didn't intend for readers to go through his work with anything other then their own wits. Go it alone - Joyce would be proud!

gravy boat

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1398 on: September 08, 2010, 01:07:54 PM »
I started reading Ulysses. This is the first time I've advanced more than 10 pages in. I can do this!

Made up my mind to tackle this in early 2011.  Hopefully I'll be done with Brothers Karmazov by then.

 I quit Brothers Karamazov about 50 pages in last week -- I don't think that's a commuting book. Well, that's my excuse anyway for not having the gray matter and willpower to see it through.  Now deep into a reread of Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. 

Reeleyes

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1399 on: September 10, 2010, 04:38:16 PM »
I'm reading Sariristas and enjoying it.
You look like a really healthy Arthy Lang.

B_Buster

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1400 on: September 10, 2010, 04:55:01 PM »
I started reading Ulysses. This is the first time I've advanced more than 10 pages in. I can do this!

You might want to track down Vladimir's Nabokov's Lectures on Literature while you're reading Ulysses. He does a chapter by chapter analysis in it. When I read Ulysses, after I finished a chapter, I would read what Nabokov had to say about it. I found it very helpful. Of course, that's not to say that I didn't find the brothel scene completely incomprehensible.
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Steve of Bloomington

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1401 on: September 10, 2010, 11:22:03 PM »
Thanks for the Ulysses advice, B_Buster and yesno. I will track down the Nabokov and Bloomsday books.

Rick in Salt Lake

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1402 on: September 14, 2010, 07:52:48 PM »
I started reading Ulysses. This is the first time I've advanced more than 10 pages in. I can do this!

I haven't read that one. Several years ago I tackled "Finnegans Wake" and uit was a rewarding and amazing read. It's hard to imagine somebody would even conceive of a novel like that let alone pull it off. But my god it took a long time to read... I'm serious, man, I'd read on that book and make it thgrough a page and a half or so and look at the clock to see it took me about two hours to get that far...

But it is something else...
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cutout

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1403 on: September 14, 2010, 09:38:38 PM »
I hope I don't regret recommending this, but I read David Markson's The Last Novel a couple years ago (I think AndrewDill and I discussed this one) and in some ways it's comparable to Joyce in terms of its ability to alienate readers, but there are other more tangible/emotional things happening in the prose that don't make sense until the very end of the book, and when it all does come together it's very powerful and memorable, for me anyway, and I don't usually read that kind of thing.

Shaggy 2 Grote

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1404 on: September 15, 2010, 12:12:21 AM »
David Markson is awesome.
Oh, good heavens. I didn’t realize. I send my condolences out to the rest of the O’Connor family.

Spoony

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1405 on: September 16, 2010, 01:06:25 PM »
I'm STILL trying to read Lovecraft. I'll take a few months off, come back and try to start fresh and I still can't do it. My last attempt came when I heard they were filming "The Mountains Of Madness." I thought I might as well read that and use the momentum to finish the anthology. I can't wait to see how many things they change or add to that story to make it entertaining. I'm going to throw a party once I finish.

Anyone know an actually scary book? Boo-tober is coming up.

B_Buster

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1406 on: September 16, 2010, 03:35:05 PM »
In Cold Blood is the scariest book I've ever read, Spoony.
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put_it_away

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1407 on: September 17, 2010, 02:01:06 PM »


I'm only two chapters in, but so far really enjoying it.

Rick in Salt Lake

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1408 on: September 22, 2010, 07:53:39 PM »
I'm gearing up to read "Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality". I just completed Michael Lewis' "The Big Short", a book that makes the chaos of the sub-prime lending industry at least semi-intelligible.
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Matt

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #1409 on: September 23, 2010, 03:57:02 PM »
I'm about a third of the way through Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field. It's terrific so far, and I haven't even gotten to the "incident" yet. I'm dreading it.

From here, I'll go on to either the new David Rakoff (who was always my favorite of the Vowell/Sedaris/etc. essayist group), David Maurer's The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man or Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking.

I still haven't started on the new Gary Shteyngart novel. I'm going to put it off for as long as I can. The last way I want to escape our terrible present is to venture into our even worse future.
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