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- Chill Out Room
-- What Are You Reading? Part Deux.
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Just finished Gravity's Rainbow. Checked out The Bell Jar.

Let me know if the Bell Jar succeeds in being more interesting than its author. I mean, she did stick her head in the oven with her kids in the next room

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Originally posted by couch-potato Let me know if the Bell Jar succeeds in being more interesting than its author. I mean, she did stick her head in the oven with her kids in the next room

what could possibly be more interesting than that????

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Originally posted by couch-potato Let me know if the Bell Jar succeeds in being more interesting than its author. I mean, she did stick her head in the oven with her kids in the next room

And she was a looker too.

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Originally posted by couch-potato Received a bunch in the mail today. Anna Karenina, War & Peace by Tolstoy The Sound & the Fury by Faulkner After Dark by Murakami Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by Joyce Almost finished with Infinite Jest, I have less than 200 pages left. I think I'll start with Faulkner after that.

nice! how do you like infinite jest? i've been meaning to reread that... i've been rereading a lot of his stories and essays lately. there are certain stories in brief interviews that i've probably read a dozen or more time.

that's a great list of books. gonna have to give yourself some time to get through it. i'd say read portrait of the artist next. it's (relatively) short and something i love reading on planes or while traveling. Dubliners was okay.

I used to be huge on Faulkner - the only author I can thing of whose prose I enjoy more than Faulkners is Nabokov. Then again, they're quite different styles - Faulkner is more visceral and tactile. I think the general rule of thumb with Faulkner is to jump from Sound and Fury into As I Lay Dying. I'd recommend Absalom, Absalom above the latter, though. Either way, do yourself a favor and pick up his Collected Short Stories. So many gems in there.

And, god, Murakami is so addicting. After Dark is nowhere near his best but it really resonated with me, being myself a bit of an insomniac and certainly someone who enjoys the world after dark, when most others are sleeping.

currently reading catch-22. pretty entertaining.

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Originally posted by LAdazeNYnights nice! how do you like infinite jest? i've been meaning to reread that... i've been rereading a lot of his stories and essays lately. there are certain stories in brief interviews that i've probably read a dozen or more time. that's a great list of books. gonna have to give yourself some time to get through it. i'd say read portrait of the artist next. it's (relatively) short and something i love reading on planes or while traveling. Dubliners was okay. I used to be huge on Faulkner - the only author I can thing of whose prose I enjoy more than Faulkners is Nabokov. Then again, they're quite different styles - Faulkner is more visceral and tactile. I think the general rule of thumb with Faulkner is to jump from Sound and Fury into As I Lay Dying. I'd recommend Absalom, Absalom above the latter, though. Either way, do yourself a favor and pick up his Collected Short Stories. So many gems in there. And, god, Murakami is so addicting. After Dark is nowhere near his best but it really resonated with me, being myself a bit of an insomniac and certainly someone who enjoys the world after dark, when most others are sleeping.

I finished Infinite Jest last night. The whole thing is bittersweet. Its central theme is addiction to entertainment and the different forms it takes, and what happens to the people involved with it... It's funny, the ending leaves no resolution whatsoever (not really a spoiler since it's not your traditional narrative), so you're just sitting there suddenly cut off from something that's so goddamned big you kind of expected it to last forever (at least in my case) and has been a part of your life for months and months and then it just fades away. And then...you want more

On the surface, it's a funny book. But often after I had finished laughing I felt this profound sadness for the people going through their withdrawal/addiction/existential crisis/etc., literally taking life one breathe at a time, constantly feeling as if they're underwater and every cell in their body is screaming for air but it never comes, even if they can overcome their personal struggles and find themselves a fucking hero for going through such agony...the people walking next to them on the sidewalk will almost certainly never know nor care. Whether they die or live in torment or get better the world just goes on. It all seems like a big joke (an infinite jest )

I'll go through Dubliners before I read Portrait to keep it in chronological order. I have the first two Faulkner books you mentioned, and also Nabokov's Lolita, which I'll get to eventually (I've read the first few pages and I agree his prose is something fierce). I have seven books from Murakami sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read, bought in a frenzy after I stumbled upon a short story of his and was awestruck. I have a feeling in my gut that once I read Murakami I won't want to read anything else for a while, so I'm purposely putting it off for now while I finish other stuff.

Buuut before any of that there's nonfiction I'll plow through. Stuff like How to Read Literature Like a Professor; Psychoanalysis, Creativity, & Literature; and The Seven Basic Plots, which hopefully won't be tripe.

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Originally posted by couch-potato Let me know if the Bell Jar succeeds in being more interesting than its author. I mean, she did stick her head in the oven with her kids in the next room

It's a pretty fucking depressing story.

http://www.amazon.com/One-Square-In...l/dp/1416559086

Non-fiction, about all the noises humans make and how they intrude on the habitats of other life and our own ability to have quiet "wilderness" experiences. Pretty interesting so far.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates- Tom Robbins

I've been reading this and while it has Robbins' clever if improbable plot twists and his masterful wordplay that I have come to love it just isn't grabbing me like the rest of his novels I have read. It's by no means bad but to me it just isn't great. (oddly enough most fans of his writing find this to be one of their favorites).

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Originally posted by couch-potato Let me know if the Bell Jar succeeds in being more interesting than its author. I mean, she did stick her head in the oven with her kids in the next room

Well, I finished it on Friday. Oddly, I'm still trying to decide what my exact feelings about the book are. But, despite that, I can tell you that it's a good book... to a degree anyway. It's basically Catcher in the Rye, only played out by a female protagonist. Some passages were brilliant, points where Esther's "state" was perfectly delineated, and some passages (most of which were toward the beginning) were stale and seemed to be trying too hard to convince the reader that she was very much a disturbed lady.

I'm in love with every page of this book, every moment I had with it (which was usually with some unexpected company), and every idea it gave me.

"Works of Love" is a lovely work

Haven't come across anything I've wanted to read, as of late. I guess I've been busy writing.

Maybe something will pop up soon.

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Originally posted by Renzo Haven't come across anything I've wanted to read, as of late. I guess I've been busy writing. Maybe something will pop up soon.

What are you writing?

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Originally posted by Renzo I guess I've been busy writing.

Me too!

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Originally posted by couch-potato Me too!

You'd better be writing something pornful and juicy!

Winner of the Faulkner Award. About halfway through, and its one of the better historical fiction books I've read. I do love Doctorow's prose though - "City of God" is probably one of my favorite books.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6022001593.html

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Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov Winner of the Faulkner Award. About halfway through, and its one of the better historical fiction books I've read. I do love Doctorow's prose though - "City of God" is probably one of my favorite books. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6022001593.html

Just fyi, this was a really excellent book. Historically fairly accurate, and the way that Doctorow uses a cast of characters to describe an event and the multiple ways that it influences personal history is really intriguing. One of my favorite authors.

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Originally posted by infiniteJEST Buuut before any of that there's nonfiction I'll plow through. Stuff like How to Read Literature Like a Professor; Psychoanalysis, Creativity, & Literature; and The Seven Basic Plots, which hopefully won't be tripe.

These books are tripe. I am disappoint.

Dubliners is great stuff.

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Originally posted by couch-potato These books are tripe. I am disappoint.

Don't bother reading pop-analysis books like that. They're not academic texts, they're not worth shit. If you want to read up on a concept, I recommend this series:

http://www.routledge.com/books/seri...l_idiom_SE0155/

Just finished Lemmy Kilmister's autobiography and started on The Dave Grohl Story.

im re-reading this cause i'm cool

I'm going to write "Marcus Lira: Double Rainbow Six".

Yeah!

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