Book recommendations

[vivalaultra 0]

Everyone should quit whatever it is that they're doing and go read The Road. I've taken shit for my hyperbole, so I won't go too overboard, but, seriously, just...quit your job or school or having sex or whackin' off or whatever you're doing and go read it. It's exceptional. I think I can call it the best work of fiction in the last many years without getting too much shit since it's by Cormac McCarthy and not Stephen King, so I'll call it that. And just yesterday, it won the Pulitzer, so you know it's good.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Right, with all the hype it's been getting, I think I feel compelled to read it now.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'm still a little stunned McCarthy will actually be on Oprah's show. While he's not at Pynchon-levels of publicity-shy, he's only done one print interview (which was 15 years ago) and no television interviews. Good for him, though, what with the deserved increase in book sales and the Pulitzer and all that. Here's hoping the Coen Brothers's take on his No Country for Old Men delivers.

[vivalaultra 0]

I wonder when the interview's actually going to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if it just fades into oblivion and never actually takes place. I think the Coen brother's are going to do well by McCarthy. They've directed some of my most favorite movies of the last several years; just as long as they get the subtleties right and don't try to make the whole thing just some violent 'drug deal gone wrong' action cliche, which I don't see them doing. I'm also interested to see what's going to come of the movie version of 'The Road'. Nick Cave's good buddy John Hillcoat's directing; the only movie I've seen by him is "The Proposition" and that was really good, so I'm hopeful.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I'd read that about Hillcoat, too; if The Proposition was any indication, him filming The Road could be good, but, now that the source material is a Pulitzer Prize-winning "Oprah book," how long before Hillcoat's set aside and Spielberg comes in and ruins everything?

 

EDIT: Hey, he did an interview in Vanity Fair just two years ago! That one slipped by me.

[theintensifier 0]

Finished The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks a few weeks ago. Outside of its obvious comical theme, I liked the book. Of course its nothing ground breaking nor Earth shattering, but it is enjoyable. I've ventured out and bought his second book, World War Z (which is being made into a movie by Brad Pitt's company) and this is a more serious toned book, and I like how the story is presented, via interviews. Brooks ability to describe the surroundings in both books is fantastic, although not on par with many famous writers. I recommend both, mostly to zombie genre fans and buffs.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Bump.

 

I'm currently reading The Deer Park, by Norman Mailer. I think he's gonna be the next author I get on a really big kick of. Next in line is the new Michael Chabon novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I picked up the other day. Can't wait to start.

[Guest Richard McBeef]

I always get a big kick out of that clip of Rip Torn beating the shit out of him with a hammer.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I was let down when I finally saw that; I was expecting a lot more bloodshed. I did like how, at the end of it, Mailer says, almost proudly, "Now that's an actor for you!"

[Guest Richard McBeef]

I was lucky to have come in with no expectations whatsoever. I was just putzing around on some non-youtube video site and there was some featured video labeled as "Rip Torn Beats Up Norman Mailer With A Hammer."

 

"I met Mailer at a party. He tries to punch you in the stomach to see how tough you are. He's pathetic. 'COME ON, MAN!' What? You've gotta be kidding. Somebody step on him. Go write a Bible."

[snuffbox 0]

Currently reading-

 

Marquis James - The Life of Andrew Jackson (2 Volumes, 1938 Pulitzer Prize)

Jack Kerouac - Desolation Angels

Nelson Algren - The Man With the Golden Arm

James Scully (editor) - Modern Poetics (essays on poetry by Yeats, Pound, frost, Eliot, etc)

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

Robert Rankin is always a good read if you like your surreal comedy stories.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

Currently reading-

Jack Kerouac - Desolation Angels

 

I got this as a gift a year or two ago and never got a chance to start it. Let me know how it is.

 

 

My first book of the summer is probably going to be Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

[snuffbox 0]

I'm reading it for the third time. I recommend it if you like Kerouac. Desolation Angles was the book where he was able fully get inside his 'spontaneous prose' vein.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Next in line is the new Michael Chabon novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I picked up the other day. Can't wait to start.

About 130 pages into this. Very spotty in parts—the detective story cliches are grating, though I suppose Chabon's previous book, the novella The Final Solution, should have prepared me for this (even still, I was hoping he'd gotten the genre fixation out of his system with that particular exercise; I guess not)—but there's enough good stuff here, including Chabon's graceful prose and fine wit, to keep me reading. A bit of letdown, though, considering this is his first "proper" (i.e. non-short story/mystery novella/children's book) follow-up to the great The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, published seven years earlier.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Another 100 pages down and I'm really starting to dislike this book.

[vivalaultra 0]

In preparation for the upcoming movie, and because my love for him has been revived/reviven, I'm reading No Country for Old Men. It's as good as I remember. Anton Chigurh is still a badass. The more I read about the movie, the more I think it'll be really good. Tommy Lee Jones shall make a fine Sherriff Bell. I actually read through a copy of the script a little bit not too long ago and it looks like it's going to stay true to McCarthy's prose for the most part. And supposed the 'Oprah interview' is in the can and will be aired sometime in the next couple weeks. Excitement abounds.

[snuffbox 0]

Nelson Algren - The Man With the Golden Arm

 

Really enjoying this one.

 

Finished up the big book on Jackson, took some work to get into the style of 1930s historical nonfiction. Have started a collection of Allen Brinkley essays on twentieth-century American liberalism as my current nonfiction choice.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

I'm reading it for the third time. I recommend it if you like Kerouac. Desolation Angles was the book where he was able fully get inside his 'spontaneous prose' vein.

I appreciated it a lot more after reading The Dharma Bums.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Did I mention that, recently, I gave Don DeLillo's White Noise a fourth go and finally finished it? I did. It's still flawed and overrated, but there's good stuff in it. I am now about 130 pages into his other highly praised book, the 800+ page monster Underworld. I'm liking it so far, though it isn't living up to the very high standard set by its much celebrated "The Triumph of Death" prologue. That alone is easily the best DeLillo thing I've ever read.

[vivalaultra 0]

I haven't read much DeLillo. I did read White Noise in a class a few semesters ago. I found it slightly contrived in some parts, but decent overall. I've also read 'Pafko At The Wall'/'The Triumph of Death' but not Underworld. I have Mao II lying in the middle of my 'Stack O' Books to Read'.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I think I said this elsewhere in the thread, but Mao II is good. I've said this before, too, but, for the longest time, I was reluctant to get into DeLillo due to my hefty annoyance with White Noise, but I'm over that now.

[snuffbox 0]

Picked up Robert Caro's third LBJ bio, 'Master of the Senate', yesterday. Should be a good time.

[vivalaultra 0]

After finishing No Country for Old Men, I read another McCarthy book-Outer Dark. It was one of his earlier works, so it's not as fully realized as his later stuff, but there's still many of the McCarthy trademarks-violence, religion, existentialism, nihilism, travelling as a means to survival, randomness, etc. As far as McCarthy on Oprah, apparently the interview shall air on June 5th.

 

After finishing Outer Dark, I started Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

After roughly seven months of fitful reading, I finally finished Against the Day. It was a bit baggy and a little trimming down (to, say, 800 or 900 pages) probably wouldn't have hurt it too badly. That said, it was still (way) better than anything else I've read in some time.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Only took me a month.

 

And I'm sure I've said this elsewhere in the thread, but I really fucking hated the Cyprian Latewood character. He could've been excised from the novel entirely and the only thing missing would've been about 300 pages of bloat. So much time spent on a guy who never evolved beyond the sexually confused naif he's introduced as.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I liked Cyprian. I thought if anything could have been cut it was Frank Taverse's protracted adventure in Mexico. It added nothing to the novel. At least Cyprian provided for some fun sex scenes.

[BorneAgain 0]

Non-fiction, but Imperial Life Inside the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is a great look at the CPA in post-war Iraq, and is a solid history lesson in regards to understanding how the country changed from before the invasion to present day.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I liked Cyprian. I thought if anything could have been cut it was Frank Taverse's protracted adventure in Mexico. It added nothing to the novel. At least Cyprian provided for some fun sex scenes.

Cyprian was so thinly drawn that, his departure from the Reef/Yashmeen/Cyprian trio had absolutely no emotional effect on the reader, in spite of what must've been the author's intentions. Why devote so much space to a character who shows no growth other than the indiscriminate erections he gets over the book's other characters? Why have a person who is, at best, a joke, dominate the second half of the novel? And how did Frank's time in Mexico add nothing? If you thought his storyline was dull, fine, but it was important to demonstrate that one of Webb Traverse's sons was carrying in the late father's footsteps, unlike the upper class ventures of Kit or the just plain depraved hedonism of Reef.

 

The Traverse brothers remind me of another problem with the book. Up until around Reef being sent off to Europe and Frank going down to Mexico, I often got the two confused. Again, Pynchon shows a surprising lack of depth in fleshing out his characters, though, unlike with Cyprian, Reef and Frank are actually developed into something interesting.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I just thought that the Frank stuff could have been handled without sending him to Mexico. It almost felt like Pynchon felt obligated to somehow work the Mexican Revolution into the book and so just sort of forced Frank into it. I understand that Frank needed to be a presence in the second half of the novel, I just think it could have been handled differently. Looking back on it, though, I realize that the Mexico stuff didn't really eat up that much space, and so it's not that big of a deal.

 

As for Cyprian, I found his relationship with Yashmeen to be the most compelling part of the whole Cyprian/Yashmeen/Reef storyline. I was actually sad to see him go, because Yashmeen/Reef alone was really sort of dull and uninteresting.