Book recommendations

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Presently making my virgin excursion through The Satanic Verses. The controversy surrounding the novel overlooks the fact that Rushdie really, really likes Thomas Pynchon, and that he must've read Gravity's Rainbow a number of times. Which isn't a bad thing.

 

Interesting. I've been reading Midnight's Children off-and-on for the last couple months and haven't really noticed any kind of obvious or pronounced Pynchonian influence. In what ways does it show up in TSV?

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I related to Holden Caulfield eerily well when I read The Catcher in the Rye a short while ago, so I shouldn't really throw bricks from a glasshouse w/r/t literary identification.

Every 16-year-old kid that reads Catcher in the Rye thinks Holden is bad ass. He's the total antihero. By the time you're 18 you realize what an utter doucebag he is. Or you'll still identify with him and we'll know that you're the doucebag. Simple litmus test, really.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Presently making my virgin excursion through The Satanic Verses. The controversy surrounding the novel overlooks the fact that Rushdie really, really likes Thomas Pynchon, and that he must've read Gravity's Rainbow a number of times. Which isn't a bad thing.

 

Interesting. I've been reading Midnight's Children off-and-on for the last couple months and haven't really noticed any kind of obvious or pronounced Pynchonian influence. In what ways does it show up in TSV?

No other Rushdie novel I've read is quite like this one, in terms of the style and music of the prose. Plenty of Pynchonian digressions, with a number of the characters even bursting into song. (Though that may owe something to the influence of Bollywood, what with one of TSV's principle characters being a Bollywood actor.) It's the rhythm of the language, really, something hard for me to point out w/o quoting lengthy excerpts.

 

That said, I'm about 40 pages from the end. While I've enjoyed the book, it doesn't always work. The allegory for the founding of Islam that serves as one of the novel's subplots—and what caused Rushdie to go into a fatwa-induced hiding for nine years—while interesting, never quite gels with the rest of the novel.

[Guest Israeli Mixed Wrestling]

I related to Holden Caulfield eerily well when I read The Catcher in the Rye a short while ago, so I shouldn't really throw bricks from a glasshouse w/r/t literary identification.

Every 16-year-old kid that reads Catcher in the Rye thinks Holden is bad ass. He's the total antihero. By the time you're 18 you realize what an utter doucebag he is. Or you'll still identify with him and we'll know that you're the doucebag. Simple litmus test, really.

As I mentioned upthread or possibly in another thread, people who are so touched by Catcher as to name their sons Holden are the douchebags of douchebags. Dennis Miller is one of them, no surprise. And I like Dennis Miller.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I ain't never read Catcher in the Rye and never plan to do so *crosses arms defiantly*

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I read it for college. Honestly, if hadn't been for that one class, it would probably have been forever unread by me.

[Nighthawk 0]

Trainspotting

 

Now that was a difficult book to read.

[godthedog 0]

I related to Holden Caulfield eerily well when I read The Catcher in the Rye a short while ago, so I shouldn't really throw bricks from a glasshouse w/r/t literary identification.

Every 16-year-old kid that reads Catcher in the Rye thinks Holden is bad ass. He's the total antihero. By the time you're 18 you realize what an utter doucebag he is. Or you'll still identify with him and we'll know that you're the doucebag. Simple litmus test, really.

 

this about sums up my opinion of 'portrait of the artist as a young man' too. yet another reason why 'ulysses' is awesome is to see dedalus get stripped of his pretenses and be outed for being a self-isolating, vagrant shitbag.

[Beast 0]

Just read Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck. Great, great read. It's a 58 year old Steinbeck traveling from Long Island through New England, Maine, the Midwest, Montana, Oregon, Northern California, Texas, and the Deep South with his French poodle Charley in 1960. He's got a decked out camper and meets tons of interesting people in his quest to rediscover America. He spends three months doing what almost any man would love to do; just see the country with no strings attached. However, his initial expectations are eventually replaced by the realization that America as a common people has morphed into something totally different than he ever hoped. It's crazy reading this for the first time and seeing how many of the subjects he delves into are still especially relevant today. I'm going to have to let my feelings on this rest for a few weeks, but I might go as far as to say it's my favorite book, def my favorite Steinbeck.

[Youth N Asia 0]

I ain't never read Catcher in the Rye and never plan to do so *crosses arms defiantly*

 

I really don't think you're missing out on much. It's an ok book

[Gary Floyd 0]

At the moment, Stephen Romano's Shock Festival. This is a must as far as tributes to B-Movies go-especially when you consider the fact none of the ones in this exist.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Trainspotting

 

Now that was a difficult book to read.

 

Yeah it is, but you get used to it, particularly if you aren't reading anything else and you get into it for long stretches of time. Pretty fun to enunciate some of the words in there too, although that draws strange looks from people in public.

[At Home 0]

The Kite Runner, at the moment. What a boring book. Halfway through, and it's a biography of a fictional dad. The son is a weak character and the whole story has nothing to do with Afghanistan in the slightest.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

My school gave everyone in my Freshman class a copy of that stupid book at orientation in an attempt to create some kind of campus-wide book club or something. I've yet to meet a single person who actually read it.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I had heard good things about it from some less than stellar faux "readers" I know, and my ex had to read a copy of it for some class a couple semesters ago. She hated it, but she's also kind of an idiot, so I've been conflicted about bothering to read it.

 

Fuck it. I've been reading Catch-22 anyways. No way Kite Runner is more entertaining.

[At Home 0]

It's not, I can guarantee you.

[godthedog 0]

i tried getting through 'catch-22' a couple times, but i could never make it. i enjoyed it a lot, but...there was just so much of it and it wasn't going anywhere, just a series of jokes strung together. so i couldn't really get up any motivation to keep going through it.

 

just started reading neil gaiman's 'coraline' now. it's shaping up to be very good.

[Guest Vitamin X]

i tried getting through 'catch-22' a couple times, but i could never make it. i enjoyed it a lot, but...there was just so much of it and it wasn't going anywhere, just a series of jokes strung together. so i couldn't really get up any motivation to keep going through it.

 

That's exactly the same way I feel about it. The observations and anecdotes are the funniest parts, until you realize that the entire book is essentially just that, humorous observations and funny anecdotes about being piss bored while being overseas. At least through what I've gotten of it. I seem to start this book up every time I go on break from school and then it gets ignored for something else.

 

Still sounds better than the stupid Kite Runner, though.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

i tried getting through 'catch-22' a couple times, but i could never make it. i enjoyed it a lot, but...there was just so much of it and it wasn't going anywhere, just a series of jokes strung together. so i couldn't really get up any motivation to keep going through it.

 

It comes together beautifully in the second half. The humor becomes a lot more gallows-y and it becomes this really sad/moving meditation on, like, war and death and capitalism and shit. It's definitely worth seeing through to the end.

[Guest Czecherbear]

Just started Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which I guess only came back into print in July. Big fan of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, so no reason why I shouldn't like it. snuffbox, did you read it?

 

Also, since I loved Mark Kurlansky's Cod, I got Salt!

[Jingus 0]

Based on you guys' talk, I finally picked up Infinite Jest from the library. They'd had a copy, but it was missing. Then outta nowhere, it shows back up on the shelf, minus its barcode and security chip. Which means someone stole this book from the library, ripped off the library labels, and then returned the stolen merchandise to its proper place. Fuckin' weird.

 

But anyway, point is: jesus christ I had no idea how long it was. Not just page length, I can handle a thousand-page book, done it many times. But it's also a thousand big pages of small type. If you made this into a paperback, you'd have to separate it into two separate volumes. The first couple pages are interesting, but didn't really grab me. Should I soldier on here?

[Copper Feel 0]

Spooky. I bought Infinite Jest today as well.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Just started Mailer's Miami and the Siege of Chicago, which I guess only came back into print in July. Big fan of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, so no reason why I shouldn't like it. snuffbox, did you read it?

 

Also, since I loved Mark Kurlansky's Cod, I got Salt!

 

 

It's pretty good. I like Cod better, but that's just because fishing is more exciting than Salt mining. He goes off on a lot of tangents here, and I don't remember it really coming together too well in the end, but it's been a while since I read it.

 

He has another one called A Basque History of the World. I almost bought it a few days ago, but got Mein Kampf instead.

[Guest Czecherbear]

I'll read the shit out of that. As I've mentioned, the Basques are fascinating.

[godthedog 0]

just started reading neil gaiman's 'coraline' now. it's shaping up to be very good.

 

this was awesome.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I love the entire Sandman series, but pretty much gave up on Neil Gaiman the novelist after Neverwhere and American Gods. Lovely writing in parts, but not a lot more to distinguish them from normal airport trash thrillers otherwise. What's Coraline like?

[godthedog 0]

it's a kids' book. you could probably read the whole thing in an hour. the titular little girl finds a door in her house that opens up a surrealistic one-off version of her own house & neighborhood, where everyone has black buttons for eyes. coraline's "mother" in this world wants her to stay there so she can take care of her forever. excitement, fantasy characters, and life lessons ensue.

 

hard to describe why exactly i liked it without giving things away, but it's able to get pretty dark & scary without losing its identity as a kids' book. the fantastical elements are very well-defined without dragging the plot down, coraline is a good strong central character, and every element feels it's in its right place. he does a lot with a very little amount of words, and it seems effortless in the way that most really good children's literature reads.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Sounds much more akin to my beloved comics of his than the rather overwrought novels. I'll investigate.

[Jingus 0]

You didn't like American Gods or, more importantly, Neverwhere? Okay. Stay the fuck away from Anansi Boys, then, you'll hate it even more. It's like the others, but even more so, if that makes any sense. Plus it feels like Gaiman really started blatantly repeating his material there. (Admittedly part of my love for Neverwhere is an inherent fascination I have for stories about underground tunnels in urban environments. Preston & Child got me unfortunately hooked on their books with Reliquary via that method.) I never read the original version of Coraline, but did catch a graphic novel adaptation which seemed fairly generic and middle-of-the-road. Is it pretty safe to say that The Sandman stands on a plateau far above all of Neil's other work? I can't think of anything else he's done that approaches it. His beginning to Books of Magic wasn't bad, but I don't think I'd state it any stronger than "wasn't bad".

[Gary Floyd 0]

At the moment, it's "Nixonland", as well as re-reading "Watchmen" for I lost count at this point. Also, any good books about Andrew Jackson, because I'm obsessed with the man's insanity at the moment.