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What is the last good book you read? (pg. 12)
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| Unique2701 |
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceGiant
Masterpiece! My fav. book. |
Is that style comparable to Kafka, in a "cats can talk" and "elephants can fly" kind of way, spiritual deaths etc? I like Murakami's other stories more such as South of the Border, West of the Sun / Sputnik Sweetheart / Norwegian Wood. |
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| Palladium |
in high school
book, but is the only i completely read all the way thru so far... |
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| TranceGiant |
| quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
Is that style comparable to Kafka, in a "cats can talk" and "elephants can fly" kind of way, spiritual deaths etc? I like Murakami's other stories more such as South of the Border, West of the Sun / Sputnik Sweetheart / Norwegian Wood. |
It's Murakami's most "surreal" book, if you will. At the same time it's greatly connected with the most banal day-to-day situations in a very David Lynch like fashion. I definitely prefer his "mystical" books to the romantic onesn (although they are awesome, too), but you had the bad luck of getting your hands on probably the weakest example of this part of Murakami. Meaning that I found "Kafka Off Shore" too random and with no real hero to relate to. Wind-up Bird takes you to the craziest places, but since the story and the characters are flowing and interconnecting so greatly you're happy to go along and be constantly amazed. |
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| Unique2701 |
| quote: | Originally posted by TranceGiant
It's Murakami's most "surreal" book, if you will. At the same time it's greatly connected with the most banal day-to-day situations in a very David Lynch like fashion. I definitely prefer his "mystical" books to the romantic onesn (although they are awesome, too), but you had the bad luck of getting your hands on probably the weakest example of this part of Murakami. Meaning that I found "Kafka Off Shore" too random and with no real hero to relate to. Wind-up Bird takes you to the craziest places, but since the story and the characters are flowing and interconnecting so greatly you're happy to go along and be constantly amazed. |
Oh ok, I think I'll give it a shot :) Probably after I read After the Quake first. Just finished After Dark, a bit of a disspointment I must say.. Have you read any of Banana Yoshimoto's books? A bit of the same themes as far as I can tell: death as a spiritual happening, destiny, the journey a main character must make.. I've only read two of her books, Kitchen and Amrita. I really like Kitchen :) |
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| diggerz |
| quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
Is that style comparable to Kafka, in a "cats can talk" and "elephants can fly" kind of way, spiritual deaths etc? I like Murakami's other stories more such as South of the Border, West of the Sun / Sputnik Sweetheart / Norwegian Wood. |
Kafka's "metamorphosis" is one (if not the best of his books) in my honest opinion. It's not easy to put this kind of work inside a box, it can be referred to as "existentialist" but it uses elements and traits of other styles aswell. |
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| TranceGiant |
| quote: | Originally posted by Unique2701
Oh ok, I think I'll give it a shot :) Probably after I read After the Quake first. Just finished After Dark, a bit of a disspointment I must say.. Have you read any of Banana Yoshimoto's books? A bit of the same themes as far as I can tell: death as a spiritual happening, destiny, the journey a main character must make.. I've only read two of her books, Kitchen and Amrita. I really like Kitchen :) |
Heard about the author. What I like most about Murakami, though, are his Western pop-cultural referrences (music, film and literatur), so I'm not sure I'd feel the same with a classical, more "authentic" Japanese writer...I'll give her a try someday for sure... |
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| chach |
| About to start reading The Silmarillion again :) Going down to the keys for my 21st w00t, and need a good book for vacation. |
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| Slylee |
it's hard for me to get into novels because i'm ADD, but Chuck Klosterman's "Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs" was pretty damn good. i didn't put it down and was done in a few days.
i tried getting into his "Killing Yourself to Live" a couple of times, but no luck. i just have to get in the reading mood again.
i think RJT would like Chuck Klosterman actually...rob, check him out.
| quote: | | There's quite a bit of intelligent analysis and thought-provoking insight packed into the pages of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which is a little surprising considering how darn stupid most of Klosterman's subject matter actually is. Klosterman, one of the few members of the so-called "Generation X" to proudly embrace that label and the stereotypical image of disaffected slackers that often accompanies it, takes the reader on a witty and highly entertaining tour through portions of pop culture not usually subjected to analysis and presents his thoughts on Saved by the Bell, Billy Joel, amateur porn, MTV's The Real World, and much more. It would be easy in dealing with such subject matter to simply pile on some undergraduate level deconstruction, make a few jokes, and have yourself a clever little book. But Klosterman goes deeper than that, often employing his own life spent as a member of the lowbrow target demographic to measure the cultural impact of his subjects. While the book never quite lives up to the use of the word "manifesto" in the title (it's really more of a survey mixed with elements of memoir), there is much here to entertain and illuminate, particularly passages on the psychoses and motivations of breakfast cereal mascots, the difference between Celtic fans and Laker fans, and The Empire Strikes Back. Sections on a Guns n' Roses tribute band, The Sims, and soccer feel more like magazine pieces included to fill space than part of a cohesive whole. But when you're talking about a book based on a section of cultural history so reliant on a lack of attention span, even the incongruities feel somehow appropriate |
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| Meat187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Cloudburst
I'm reading Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Funny ass book. :toothless |
So true. I never thought a book could get me to laugh hysterically, but stuff like this totally cracked me up:
CARELESS TALK :
It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur said "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle," a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant Galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time.
A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jewelled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green sweet-smelling steam, and, with a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother.
The creature stirred in his sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table.
Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.
Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark.
For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog.
Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it.
"It's just life," they say. |
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| SuspicionVandit |
I stopped halfway through Death by Black Hole by Neil DeGrasse Tyson a few months ago, so I'm re-reading it.
Astrophysicists are so funny, not! |
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| Sunsnail |
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| washout |
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