Book recommendations

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Anyone else read The Plot Against America? It's good. Plausible, even, up until about the last 60-or-so pages, wherein the book goes off the deep end. Lame. Also lame, in order to extricate the story from drowning in its potboiler of a climax, a bizarre conspiracy theory is presented to somewhat justify why Lindbergh was so friendly with the Nazis.

 

And, to alleviate Czech's fears, I can say while Charles Lindbergh is very much present throughout the story, he's more of a ghost than an actual character. The novel mostly concerns itself with the tribulations of one Jewish family in New Jersey, and the troubles—both real and imagined—the Lindbergh presidency presents. He's never depicted as personally leading Jews to the gas chambers or anything of the sort.

 

I'm going to rank the Philip Roth I've read thus far:

 

1. Sabbath's Theater

2. American Pastoral

3. Operation Shylock

4. Portnoy's Complaint

5. The Plot Against America

 

I'm next gonna pick a couple of his shorter works, The Breast and The Ghost Writer.

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

Books I got:

 

Against the Day (this won't be touched until after I finish Gravity's Rainbow)

The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio (I'd mentioned wanting to find a book on 1970s freeform FM radio, and here it is)

Academy Zappa

Fast Food Nation (Finished this already. Bit of a letdown. Most of it kind of read like a Molly Ivins book, with its bleeding-heart anecdotes of well-meaning dimwits whose lives have been not-so-indirectly decimated by the Republican Party. I mean, it's sad that hard-working illiterate Kenny Dobbins was sucked dry and discarded by his corporate meatpacking plant, but how many safety nets are you entitled to in life when you can't write your fucking name? The early chapters on the early history of fast food by way of the recently emerging car culture in southern California, with biographical information on Carl Karcher and Ray Kroc [Walt Disney was in there too by way of Kroc] was interesting. I was hoping it would be more along those lines than a second-rate Jungle.)

 

 

I have a $30 gift card for Barnes & Noble that I'm using on Wednesday, so I'll scour this thread for titles.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I don't think I "get" Philip Roth. I found American Pastoral to be pretty dull (except for that part where he uses absurdly florid prose to describe a girl sticking her fingers up her cooter. That was cool). Portnoy's Complaint was really funny in places, but I though it was kinda slight overall. Maybe I'm just not Jewish enough?

[snuffbox 0]

My Xmas haul was...

 

Brautigan - Trout Fishing/America, Watermelon Sugar, Pill vs. Mine Disaster, & Abortion/1966

Robert Persig - Lila/an Inquiry into Values

Michael Perry - Off Main Street

Harley Race's autobiography

Edmund Morris - Theodore Rex

Richard Clarke - Against All Enemies

Martin Buber - I & Thou

Ken Kesey - Demon Box

[Guest "Go, Mordecai!"]

I don't think I "get" Philip Roth. I found American Pastoral to be pretty dull (except for that part where he uses absurdly florid prose to describe a girl sticking her fingers up her cooter. That was cool). Portnoy's Complaint was really funny in places, but I though it was kinda slight overall. Maybe I'm just not Jewish enough?

Did you find the beginning to be ridiculously repetitive? That was a gripe of mine. Things got going eventually, but it was just page after page of "Swede Levov/glove factory" for a while there.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I actually thought the Zuckerman-centric stuff at the beginning was was the most interesting part of the book. It was when he fully switched over to telling the Swede's story that I started to lose interest.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I don't think American Pastoral was repetitive in any spot. Zuckerman's recalling his childhood idolization of the Swede—and his discovery of the Swede turning into a shallow dullard later in life—fit right into his (Zuckerman's) discovery of the tragedy that had befallen the Swede in the interim.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Oh and Czech, since you were given Against the Day I guess what I'm about to say doesn't apply to you, but, I'd have gone with every other of Pynchon's novels first. AtD is good, but about 300 pages too long. Anyone interested in reading it should just wait for the paperback.

[snuffbox 0]

Dick Clarke doesn't have a good showing for himself in Against All Enemies. I cant imagine how terrible his novel would be.

[The Man in Blak 0]

I'm not an avid reader by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt compelled to spend some Christmas money on some literature for the 30 minute train ride to work, grabbing Naked Lunch and the aforementioned Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. I considered picking up some Pynchon in there as well, but I'll freely admit: the sheer size of Gravity's Rainbow is a little intimidating for somebody who has read three books in the last two years.

[snuffbox 0]

Reading something like Naked Lunch on the train/bus is good times.

[snuffbox 0]

There are points in Demon Box when Kesey taps the vein he swam in for the entire epic of Sometimes/Notion. I'm about halfway thru & it is better than expected. The Neal Cassady tribute chapter and the foray into Egypt that reads like something Tom Robbins would write is pretty good stuff for a guy that was, by most accounts, terribly burnd out at the time.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I'm taking Introduction to Spanish literature right now, so I'll be catching up on my reading purposefully now. The class is completely in Spanish, and we're reading Bodas de Sangre (Weddings of Blood) by Federico Garcia Lorca. Anyone ever read it? Doesn't seem too long, but that's probably because it's heavy wording and it'd be tough on the gringos in my class. Which works out nicely for the native speakers.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I read Blood Wedding (in English) for a 20th century drama course in grad school. It's pretty cool. Like, very fucked up and surreal, if I recall. It was sort of a testing site for his "Play and the theory of the Duende" concept, which was an artistic manifesto he wrote arguing that art's greatness comes from a few different things, namely connection with your nation's soil and history, awareness of death, and an understanding that reason has limits and that weird shit sometimes happens outside those boundaries. Lorca's a pretty neat guy.

[vivalaultra 0]

I've not read Blood Wedding, but I have some experience with Garcia Lorca's poetry and know of basic ideas explored in his plays and other literature. Yeah, his poetry's really good, though. It would probably be better if I could read it in its original Spanish. That's always my great regret of reading literature in translation; that it loses alot in the translation.

[snuffbox 0]

Read another quick Brautigan novel, Abortion/1966. He has definitly become one of my favorite writers during the past month or so.

[Jaxxson Mayhem 0]

You gotta read the Alex Cross series by James Patterson. Here's the books in the series.

 

Along Came A Spider

Kiss the Girls

Jack & Jill

Cat and Mouse

Pop Goes the Weasel

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

Four Blind Mice

The Big Bad Wolf

London Bridges

Mary, Mary

Cross

 

 

All of which are incredibly good.

 

I just finished Cross a couple weeks ago.

[vivalaultra 0]

I've been going through a Faulkner period lately. I started off with Absalom, Absalom! and then read As I Lay Dying and then a few short stories and now, after finishing Beautiful Losers, which I got for Christmas and I found...interesting and only slightly pretentiously overly-wordy, I'm starting on Light in August.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I keep wanting to click on the book titles in vivalaultra's posts.

[Red Baron 0]

I finished ready Dean Koontz Intensity again.

 

It was much better the first time around.

[snuffbox 0]

Little over halfway thru Edmund Morris' bio of Teddy Roosevelt, 'Theodore Rex', and I find myself struggling to put it down. I will have to give his Reagan bio a try sometime after this is finished.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

I'm reading Guns, Germs, & Steel for the second time & it rocks my socks off. Probably one of the most important books of the 21st century.

[snuffbox 0]

Theodore Rex is one of the 5 best books I've read yet in th history/biography genre.

[Wyld Cannon 0]

I got Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves and tore through it in like 3 days. It was awesome. I also got his next book, Only Revolutions, but I haven't cracked it open yet. Anyone know if it's as good or better?

[snuffbox 0]

'Lila' the follow up to Robert Persig's 'Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' is an incredible bit of work for the writer. Lots of stuff to take from the pages, brilliant observations, and an even more compelling narrative than Zen/Motorcycle. His skewering of the pretentious & nerdy (himself included) is quite believable coming from the Ultimate Nerd.

[vivalaultra 0]

I was looking at reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance a while back ago, but I didn't because I heard somewhere that it's a 'self-help' book. Is it a self-help book? Does it have anything to do with all of those other Zen and the Art of... books? What's the deal with those anyway?

[snuffbox 0]

I'm not familiar with the other Zen & the Art of... books.

 

But, no, Persig's 'Zen/Motorcycle' isn't a self-help book. You won't learn either how to achieve some kind of weird Buddha state or how to fix your motorcycle by reading it. Basically, it is philosophy wrapped inside a narrative where the main character (Phaedrus) travels the country on a motorcycle with his young son & a couple friends ride along as well. There is some human interaction here though that doesn't play as integral a part as it does in 'Lila'. The narrative in Zen/Motorcycle largely acts as a catalyst for extended philosophical rants & theories, as well as flashbacks to the narrator's teaching experience and mental breakdown. Persig himself was certainly a genius and many aspects of both books are autobiographical. At times both books can get a bit long and tedious but never as bad as reading stuff like Kierkegaard or Kant or the like.

 

If the idea of a modern genius giving a thick dissertation on his understandable philosophy via a fairly compelling storyline intrigues you at all I definitly recommend it. If you like it, I would say trying 'Lila' after that is a must.

[snuffbox 0]

"After 121 rejections, you only need one acceptance."

 

-Bob Persig

[Guest CWMwasmurdered]

I'm reading Guns, Germs, & Steel for the second time & it rocks my socks off. Probably one of the most important books of the 21st century.

 

 

Is this the book about why people from certain areas of the world came to dominate the world? I've been watching the 3 part documentary and it's been pretty interesting.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I was flipping through Zak Smith's One Picture for Every Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow, today. It's an interesting concept, but too many of Smith's drawings are so cluttered as to leave me wondering what I was even looking at. Still, others were neat, but the nicest thing I can say about the whole project is that it further stoked my desire for a film adaptation of GR. (Not that it will ever happen.)