Book recommendations

[vivalaultra 0]

Yeah...Memories of my Melancholy Whores. Really good book, and quite short. I've been motivated to learn Spanish so I can read Garcia Marquez in the original language, although I've heard the translations of his works are very well done and faithful to the original Spanish.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

My Fantasy and Social Values anthropology class this semester has the following books:

 

The Left Hand of Darkness (Le Guin)

The Mote in God's Eye (Niven)

Dune (Herbert)

The Dispossessed (Le Guin)

Ender's Game (Card)

Riddley Walker (Hoban)

 

Left Hand is first, and it's...interesting. I need to get used to reading sci-fi.

[bob_barron 0]

I read The Toy Collector by James Gunn. Really good book, and it's both very funny and very depressing. Recommended

[snuffbox 0]

Reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time on the Roosevelts during WW2 now...very interesting.

[Guest Felonies!]

I was at the bookstore yesterday looking for some Garcia Marquez, but I didn't know what to get! I should've checked Book Recommendations before I left the house.

[vivalaultra 0]

His best book (and the best book ever written, in my humblest of opinions) is One Hundred Years of Solitude, but Love in the Time of Cholera is also excellent. But, then again, it might be kinda offesetting to jump into Garcia Marquez if you're not used to his style, so he has a bunch of short stories that would be good introductions. But I have full confidence in your ability to enjoy Garcia Marquez, so I'd go for One Hundred Years of Solitude. And, if those Chicago bookstores are anything like the bookstores down here, there's a good chance that Garcia Marquez books will be in the Ms...and not the Gs like they're supposed to be. I've had to correct a few bookstores on that matter.

[Guest Felonies!]

They were in the Gs. Nonetheless, these Espanophones need to pick one surname and run with it. Quit your waffling.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Although I agree with you, I almost did a similar thing with my mom's maiden name and my original surname, to get rid of my middle name (Felix, which is my asshole POS father's name). Must be an espanophone thing.

 

Oh, and at my bookstore, we have it in the G section. Which is funny because Felonies mentioned to me before he goes to Borders, and I thought we had all our stores organized the same way..

 

anyways, on topic, I'm currently reading Harry Turtledove's How Few Remain along with the couple religious nonfiction I'm reading (Religion Explained by Pascal Boyle, and Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Palahniuk), although I sped through Hunter S. Thompson's Screwjack while on lunch earlier this week. Having not read any of his work before, but being a big fan of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the film) it didn't throw me off all that much because I knew what to expect, but it was pretty funny shit and I've got to check out some more of it. The only thing was, Screwjack was in the fiction section, not in journalism, so I expected it to be different than what his "normal work" would be, and it seemed like more of the same. Anyone confirm this?

 

Also saw another book he wrote at a young age in fiction, although I forget the title. I'm interested in picking that one up.

[snuffbox 0]

Rum Diary?

[Ravenbomb 0]

House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski

[vivalaultra 0]

I abhorred House of Leaves. So pretentious...so utterly, utterly pretentious.

[snuffbox 0]

Can we turn the conversation in this thread back towards Hunter Thompson, please?

[Guest Vitamin X]

Yes, Rum Diary, that's it.. Is it any good? What is it like?

 

And what's his best anti-Nixon rant?

[snuffbox 0]

I liked Rum Diary...supposedly it will also be Johnny Depp's next movie as well. It has a decent story to it, and its interesting to read how he was writing before going with the all-out Gonzo Journalism thing.

 

His best Nixon stuff is in the Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail/1972...and his eulogy from '94.

[Guest Felonies!]

Although I agree with you, I almost did a similar thing with my mom's maiden name and my original surname, to get rid of my middle name (Felix, which is my asshole POS father's name). Must be an espanophone thing.

It is an Espanophone thing. What is it, given name/father's name/mother's maiden name? So like a kid who goes by Carlos Sandoval for all his school records and to his friends and all that is really Carlos Sandoval Dominguez. Just a unique cultural quirk, I don't believe the French do this, and the Italians may, but I don't recall.

 

I believe Icelandic is the only Nordic language to actively maintain patronymics in lieu of actual surnames. Whereas we've pretty much institutionalized all your basic Anderson/Robinson/Hansen fare, "Simon Larsen" actually means "Simon, the son of Lars" over there. So that's kind of neat.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_naming_customs There we go!

[Copper Feel 0]

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell. This is predominantly about poverty but advertising is satirised throughout as well. Orwell makes his point through the character of Gordon Comstock, one whom is so scared of being caught in "the money trap" that he gives up a well payed job in advertising to work in a book shop. The best characterization in the book comes when Gordon is interacting with other people (rather than the many narratives in which he is left alone with his thoughts) as we see how his complete and utter lack of wealth makes virtually all social situations downright miserable. Highly recommended.

 

A Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This is about the daily life of a Russian prisoner under Stalin's reign of terror. The writing was perhaps too dry for me as the lack of character development stopped me from quite enjoying the book.

[Guest Vitamin X]

bump

 

I'm in the midst of reading Atlas Shrugged for a scholarship, and it's a tad intimidating having not read any of Ayn Rand's work before. I like it, but god knows when I'll finish it. Has anyone read it, and if you did how long did it take you?

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Ayn Rand is probably the single worst thing to ever happen to books.

[Murmuring Beast 0]

I got One Hundred Years of Solitude out of the library but I'm still only half way through Pride and Prejudice. I am an incredibly slow reader and can't risk reading both at the same time.

[Guest Felonies!]

Ayn Rand is probably the single worst thing to ever happen to books.

Let's hear it.

[snuffbox 0]

I always get a kick out of anti-women women.

[vivalaultra 0]

I will concur with the Ayn Rand being the worst thing to happen to books. She writes possibly the worst characters ever...characters being used loosely, since everything that happens in any of her books is a "symbol", but...she's got shitty ideologies, so by virtue of that, she has shitty symbolism which means she has shitty characters which equals shitty books. She's shitty shitty.

 

I hope you're being forced to read Pride and Prejudice...I'm not a big fan of Jane Austen. Female authors are the worst thing to happen to books ever. Women are only good for sexin' and cookin'.

[Guest Felonies!]

I like her ideology!

[tominator89 0]

Her ideology is interesting, but I question her ability to write a good story. I read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and they both bored me half to death. She would have done her readers a favor by cutting those books in half, at least.

 

Plus, I tend to dislike most of the people I've met who worship her philosopies. She ended up becoming a writer who assholes use to justify themselves being just that.

[Guest Felonies!]

Boy, I'd hate to hear what you have to say about Noam Chomsky, then.

[vivalaultra 0]

I agree with Chomsky's slant on linguistics and grammar, but only with some of his political views.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I read Anthem in 8th grade, and never picked up another page of Ayn Rand. Heard it was a good decision on my part.

 

Ian McEwan's Atonement. I don't really know who I'm recommending it to, but what a book. I posted about it on the first page of the thread and revisited it again recently, and it's real good. It's the kind of book that seems slightly slow and perplexing at first, but everything falls into place. I don't mean that in the sense of "oh, how clever" or "shit son, he's Keyser Soze," but that what seems slow and odd becomes the foundation for two fantastic character studies, and that the whole book ends up feeling like 350 fluid pages when viewed as a whole. Great work of fiction that also manages to be metafictional and insightful. I might still like Saturday a bit more since I'm a sucker for taut, propulsive narrative, but I again highly recommend Atonement to literature nuts, especially fans of Woolf.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'm becoming fully and wholly dedicated to Philip Roth. I finished Sabbath's Theater earlier today; I'm deciding between either Operation Shylock or The Plot Against America next, though I'll read both eventually. As well as all his other books, too.

 

Anyway, Sabbath's Theater. Not as emotionally draining as American Pastoral—the only other Roth I've read—but still very moving in parts. And funny. Twisted, perverse and funny. Mickey Sabbath, the aging, lecherous ex-puppeteer at the book's center, is a hedonist, a deviant and an asshole of the highest order, yet he's the most engaging scumbag I've encountered in fiction in years, if not ever.

[Guest Felonies!]

I was very pleased with American Pastoral. I'm probably gonna have to get around to The Plot Against America eventually, despite my initial reservations as to how he'd handle it.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

You can get through The Human Stain in a weekend if you want some more Roth. Reads very fast, much faster than American Pastoral, I think, and quite good too. Follows a similar model of starting one way and shifting utterly and completely after the first act. I've heard very good things about Operation Shylock from one of my Roth-junkie friends, too.