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Look At That ---> A Book Thread! (pg. 6)
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| chlola |
| Kabul Beauty School/D. Rodriguez |
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| couch-potato |
Just finished this:
It's hilarious. Now going through a collection of short stories by Hemingway. It's a bit of a let-down going from light-hearted comedy to serious, tight prose. I love his writing though. |
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| Meat187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by couch-potato
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So how was Infinite Jest?
I still can't bring myself to start it. :( |
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| couch-potato |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
So how was Infinite Jest?
I still can't bring myself to start it. :( |
Due to it's sheer volume, I took it as a side project. Something to take a break with while I'm reading whatever. I'm still going through it, with a lot left :nervous:
I don't know what to think of it. Some parts have me laughing hysterically, others I have to force myself to drudge through. There was one instance near the beginning of the book where a character is nervously waiting to buy weed. It was a five page paragraph. NOTHING HAPPENED. Just the character mentally rewinding & overthinking every detail that comes to mind. The entire book is like that, actually.
It's so damn big because it's full of quirky related facts. The author did his homework, turned in extra credit, & wrote a ing thesis about every detail. It reads like an encyclopedia on whatever topic the characters happen to be doing at the time. At times it's nauseating. At others, it's hilariously insightful.
Time magazine nailed it in their review: "There is generous intelligence & authentic passion on every page." |
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| tubularbills |
| a book that was recommended to me was called "A Few Good Captains". think i might check into it. |
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| couch-potato |
Going through this now:
Planning on reading something by Palahniuk soon. Still reading Infinite Jest. I love that goddamn book. Wallace was one hell of a thinker. |
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| Meat187 |
I recently finished:
- Stephen King - Under the Dome
Good, but not brilliant. I still think King is among the best narrators ever but most characters are a bit to one dimensional and the whole plot lacks purpose and clarity.
- Marcel Proust - Un amour de Swann
Surprisingly entertaining, but I can't imagine reading the entire recherche du temps perdu.
- John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat
Great read, delivered some lulz.
- Now I'm reading Andrzej Szczypiorski - The beautiful Mrs. Seidenman
So far not really bad but pretty forgettable. Also, :wtf: at his name.
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| R.j. |
| quote: | Originally posted by couch-potato
Due to it's sheer volume, I took it as a side project. Something to take a break with while I'm reading whatever. I'm still going through it, with a lot left :nervous:
I don't know what to think of it. Some parts have me laughing hysterically, others I have to force myself to drudge through. There was one instance near the beginning of the book where a character is nervously waiting to buy weed. It was a five page paragraph. NOTHING HAPPENED. Just the character mentally rewinding & overthinking every detail that comes to mind. The entire book is like that, actually.
It's so damn big because it's full of quirky related facts. The author did his homework, turned in extra credit, & wrote a ing thesis about every detail. It reads like an encyclopedia on whatever topic the characters happen to be doing at the time. At times it's nauseating. At others, it's hilariously insightful.
Time magazine nailed it in their review: "There is generous intelligence & authentic passion on every page." |
This is why I won't read that book or Gravity's Rainbow. Okay, maybe I'd read Gravity's Rainbow. "V" wasn't so bad.
As for me, I've recently (in the last 2 months) finished:
Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom! (2nd Reading)
Joyce - A Portrait of the Artist (2nd Reading)
Joyce - Dubliners (Don't know why I hadn't read this before)
McCarthy - Blood Meridian
Coetzee - Disgrace
Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain (Bad! bad! bad! The four books I've read from this man were all horrible.)
Cortazar - Hopscotch (I found a copy of this stashed in the back room)
Dante - The Divine Comedy (All of it)
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Canterbury Tales
I'm currently reading:
Slaughterhouse-Five by Mr. Vonnegut |
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| R.j. |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Surprisingly entertaining, but I can't imagine reading the entire recherche du temps perdu.
[/list] |
I'm very curious about that book. I don't mind long books (War & Peace never bored me), but I hear this one is MASSIVE. |
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| Meat187 |
| quote: | Originally posted by R.j.
I'm very curious about that book. I don't mind long books (War & Peace never bored me), but I hear this one is MASSIVE. |
I'd say don't waste your time with it. His writing is very unrewarding, he often brings up characters who are of no significance, talks a while about them then drops them only to later waste another 5 pages on them. The "lost time" in the title is actually the time you spend reading it. |
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| Esiotrat |
| I just started re-reading Eight Skilled Gentlemen, which was Barry Hughart's long-awaited conclusion to the Bridge of Birds trilogy. Except it isn't so much a trilogy, as a 7-book cycle that got disrupted by publisher infighting. And not so much a conclusion, as a book thrown together to fulfill contractual obligations. what I'm trying to say is, I didn't really like it all that much when I read it the first time, and so I'm trying it again to see if it comes across any better |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
I recently finished:
- Stephen King - Under the Dome
Good, but not brilliant. I still think King is among the best narrators ever but most characters are a bit to one dimensional and the whole plot lacks purpose and clarity.
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My girlfriend read this and she and I both read Rose Madder. What I'm thoroughly convinced of is that King is in a rut where he writes himself into a corner and then loses interest, between pages 300-450, with the subject but has to make good on the work he's put into it by grinding towards a starkly dull and uninteresting ending. It's like reading the biography of an abused car tire. It's purchased by an evil psychopath who sells the car five years later with the tire being over-inflated. The new owner figures out it's over inflated and lowers the pressure. The tire starts losing air, because it was over-inflated, until, one day, in a crowded shopping center, the owner changes the tire because it is completely flat. Voila! |
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