Book recommendations

[Smartly Pretty 0]

I have the weekend to read Walden, and then do the assignment that goes with it. Do I actually have enough time to read this thing, or should I spark note it? It seems kind of boring, does it ever get interesting?

[King Kamala 0]

Oh man, Thoreau (and to a lesser extent, Emerson) were the bane of my existence during Junior English. Spark Note that shit!

[Guest Brady's Torn ACL]

I bought Les Misérables from the used bookstore in the Gurnee public library for a dollar. I didn't need it, but I figured I'd be better off with a book than a dollar. Got a lot of book for my dollar. I'm never going to make the time to read this, am I.

[Lil' Bitch 0]

Any James Bond novel by Ian Fleming. They're better than most of the actual films.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

"Strange" is a little bit of an understatement.

 

War & Peace is really, really (really) good but holy shit it just does not end. Like, I love every single page of it but I'd really like to be able to move on and read something else at some point.

The only time W&P ever seriously drags is right at the end, in the second half of the epilogue. The novel is over by this point; it's just 30-plus dry, tedious, and brutally boring pages of Tolstoy pontificating on the nature of war, God, and whatever the hell else comes to his mind. Such a miserably dull way to end a book so full of life.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

The worst part is that the points he belabors in those 30 pages were all quite well-drawn out and illustrated within the actual narrative itself, rendering the whole thing not only mind-numbingly dull but also incredibly pointless.

[Jingus 0]

Inc, where the hell you been?

I bought Les Misérables from the used bookstore in the Gurnee public library for a dollar. I didn't need it, but I figured I'd be better off with a book than a dollar. Got a lot of book for my dollar. I'm never going to make the time to read this, am I.

It's actually pretty good, but it depends on a few variables. Firstly, whether it's the full version, or an abridged one. This isn't one of those "director's cut is always better" cases, since Hugo has one of the world's worst cases of word vomit and will frequently and cheerfully stop the book dead in its tracks to spend a couple chapters talking about any random thing which happened to catch his attention. I found some of it, like the long treatise about the history of Paris's sewer system, to be kinda fascinating; but others (the seemingly pointless and endless part about Waterloo, or the long section about the slang words of the criminal underclass) are filler at best. But then he gets to the actual meat of the story, and while some of it is a bit melodramatic and penny-dreadfulesque, a lot of it is really compelling. His description of the failed revolution is particularly rousing. Also, like any foreign-language classic, the book has come out in various different English translations over the years and some are better than others.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon working my way through Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond. The theories put forth in this book are just fascinating, but I wonder how they hold up to intense academic scrutiny (and from checking the internets, not that well). Oh well, it's still a fun read. Can't wait to finish it.

 

As the warm air fades into the chilly and rainy winter, I'll start getting back into my reading. Blood Meridian and Confederacy of Dunces are both waiting to be tackled next.

 

I just finished reading Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty as well. I thought this was supposed to be some important work discussing the construction and maintenance of a winning club. Instead it was just 300 pages of Yankee ballwashing.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I don't even know how you could've gotten through 300 pages of that, especially as a Red Sox fan.

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

I don't even know how you could've gotten through 300 pages of that, especially as a Red Sox fan.

I guess I was expecting something different. I wanted Olney to discuss the factors that lead to the team's downfall. Instead it was all Steinbrenner's great, I love Paul O'Neil more than my own wife, Torre is a God, Jeter is Jesus and so on. Olney's thesis appeared to be that the team was so great that they collapsed under the weight of their own greatness, or some such bullshit. It was horrible.

[CanadianChris 0]

Thanks for that, Cheech, I've been debating whether or not to bother with that book for awhile now. I'm not impressed with Olney's ESPN work, so I was understandably hesitant.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I finished Guns Germs and Steel recently and enjoyed it a ton. Really opened up a vein that I didn't think existed, in regards to my own interests. His categorizing of Eurasia is a bit unfair to all parties, though, given its total landmass and diversity of cultures and people. Still, he brought up a ton of stuff that made a bunch of sense, so I generally agree with his pov, and it certainly has changed the way I view various geo cultural tings, particularly how mans evolution to germs has affected the world.

 

Rereading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy right now, as well as reading Broken Angels (sequel to Altered Carbon). Angels is very good thus far, but lacks the pull of Carbons murder-mystery/whodunnit. Might dummy a bunch of pages tonight, but I don't have this pressing need to finish it.

 

Took me forever to finish The Picture of Dorian Grey, which was under 200 pages and probably took me a better part of 2 months to read. For the most part, a very good and surprisingly easy read. The only time it dragged was when Wilde went chin-deep into description for the most unnecessary of fanciful objects. Must've been the fag in him coming out.

[Copper Feel 0]

I am currently reading On the Road which is tedious enough that it will probably have taken me as long to finish as it did for Kerouac to write by the time that I do. I plan to read Ulysses when I have finished with this, which I look forward to.

[Guest C*Z*E*C*H]

You find Kerouac tedious but look forward to Joyce? Have fun.

 

Has anybody read any Joseph Epstein? Quite a pleasant essayist, author of the books Snobbery and Friendship, which I bought last week. I also polished off his mini-book Envy (part of a multi-author series on the seven deadly sins) at the library last Monday. I like his style, which is very dry and sophisticated, but he's obsessed with mentioning Henry James. I think he also contributes to The Weekly Standard. So far, I'm kind of hopping around the various snobbery and friendship essays, and enjoying them quite a bit, but admittedly, they're not books where you read the whole thing in one sitting.

[Copper Feel 0]

You find Kerouac tedious but look forward to Joyce? Have fun.

 

Not tedious in the sense of being particularly challenging, just fairly dull.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

Why are you still reading it if you think it's dull? It doesn't get any better, if that's what you're hoping.

 

As for Ulysses, approach it with caution. It's a wonderful book, yes, but it has its reputation for a reason. If you don't know what you're doing the only thing you're likely to get out of it is a headache.

[Jingus 0]

Every few years I go back and try to read Ulysses again. Every time, pathetic failure. I mean, I can get through anything from Shakespeare to A Clockwork Orange to House of Leaves if I just make the effort, I can even force myself to finish Laurel K. Hamilton's ever-decaying series of degenerating "we used to be murder mysteries but now we're pr0n" vampire shit, but I keep bouncing off Ulysses like it's a brick wall. This time I reasoned that maybe I should ease myself into things, so I picked up Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man instead, someone told me that one's a much easier intro into Joyce's style.

 

And hey, small world, I got Picture of Dorian Grey too. I read part of it like a decade ago and vaguely remember liking it, but never got around to finishing it. Something different to read in between my usual stacks of graphic novels, textbooks on abnormal psychology, and everything Terry Pratchett ever did.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

The trick to enjoying Ulysses is to not even bother trying to "understand" it. Don't treat it like some secret code you have to decipher. Let the language wash over you.

[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.

[snuffbox 0]

I dont think I've ever seen On the Road referred to as dull before.

[Copper Feel 0]

What did you find to like about it?

[snuffbox 0]

I liked the jazz phrasing that Kerouac came to incorporate in his books following his Wolfe impression with Town/City. I liked how it exposed the lives and lifestyles of people that were often kept quiet, especially in the 1940s and 50s. I can understand if it's too confusing or abstract or whatever, but dull seems like the wrong word to use for an exhuberant, hyper travelogue. I find it awfully hard to label a book that drove millions of people from comfort and into their own adventures in America and throughout the world to be dull.

 

Are you sure you're not confusing "dull" with "bad grammar"?

[Copper Feel 0]

Well, when I call On the Road 'dull' I am more referring to Kerouac's writing style than anything else. Maybe 'poorly organised' would be a better way of phrasing the issues that I took with the novel. The lack of pontification was kind of frustrating.

 

Also, I gather that the reader is supposed to feel some degree of empathy for the character of Dean Moriarty, but I just found him to be insufferable.

 

Are you sure you're not confusing "dull" with "bad grammar"?

 

Yes, I generally don't care about a writer's grammar unless it hampers their coherency.

 

I'm reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles for the second time at the moment. I think this is going to cement it as my favourite novel.

[snuffbox 0]

Neal Cassday, vibrant as he may have been, was definitly an asshole.

[Turbo Lion 0]

On a slightly different note, I'm currently digging Lirael by Garth Nix. Second book, after Sabriel in the Abhorsen trilogy.

 

Darker fantasy, dealing with necromancy and death. Set in a world not unlike World War I era europe mixed with usual fantasy. Loved the first book, loving the second so far.

[bob_barron 0]

I really enjoyed Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. While it should've been written in 2004, I thought it was an interesting look at how the Yankees were put together

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Neal Cassday, vibrant as he may have been, was definitly an asshole.

 

I haven't read it in a while, but I identified with him almost completely.

 

[snuffbox 0]

You flake out under the slightest pressure all the time, too?

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

You flake out under the slightest pressure all the time, too?

 

At age 19, you bet. Also, the wanderlust and druggie hellraiser that drives like a maniac.

 

Pretty far removed from that now.

[Copper Feel 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.