[108]

[Felix]

i read lolita a couple months ago

was new to college and pretty out of touch with people as-was

thought i was losing my mind.

repeated this reading crime and punishment maybe a month later.

right now am reading catch-22.

i regret crime and punishment because i am not at all jackass enough to read long, boring, russian novels for fun. girlfriend's mother was a russian major, girlfriend wanted me to read anna karenina because obviously her childhood was robbed from her; i took one look at anna karenina, realized it was like seven hundred pages, and decided to read crime and punishment instead which i by no means enjoyed so i guess you lose a few and you lose a few.

mikhail lermontov's a hero of our time, however, is actually really good. and it's less than a couple hundred pages long. the anti-russian novel.

mostly anything tom robbins ever wrote i would recommend just on the grounds of his books being so much fun. vonnegut, also, is more often than not great, just don't ever read slapstick - it follows his usual sad-funny formula to a T except somehow the "sad" and "funny" are horrendously out of balance (might've been the point!) and it left me miserable afterwards. he usually makes me happy.

best robbins: fierce invalids home from hot climates, jitterbug perfume
best vonnegut: god bless you mr. rosewater, breakfast of champions

uhh i really like franny and zooey but i think most people do, donald barthelme's the dead father is quasi-PoMo (never had a chance to say that before) and definitely worth a read especially for the ic crowd i think, and nick hornby is good too.

[Isfet]

around here, this reading choice might not seem too daring, but i recently finished Murakami's After the Quake. i'm attempting to use it for a final paper in my post-colonial lit. grad course. making a japanese work fit into post-colonial lit. is going to take some fabulous bullshitting sprinkled with occasional knowledge.


anyway, it was the first thing i'd ever read by him and i'm pretty happy with it. all the stories are good, but some really know how to hit the right spot.

[108]

I thought After the Quake was pretty limp, actually. You should read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World or just A Wild Sheep Chase.
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[Isfet]

i read through half of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle before deciding there wasn't enough material for me to use there. i was enjoying it, though, so i'll get back to finishing it sometime after next week.

maybe After the Quake is limp in comparison to other Murakami; i wouldn't necessarily know. however, parts like the end of "landscape with flatiron" really struck me as particularly moving. i'll definitely check out your recommendations, though, as the idea that what i've just read is limp in comparison to something else is somewhat exciting.



getting back to actual post-colonial literature, anyone who hasn't read Midnight's Children should really do so. but it's not the kind of book you can skim through, so make sure you have time for it.

[negativedge]

I really like those Russian dudes, but hell if most of their works aren't hard to get through (yes, I realize most of Nabokov's work was originally in English).

[Mr. Business]

I finished reading Musashi just as I was heading to summer school at the beginning of June. I never could get used to the way Yoshikawa would make these matter-of-fact statements that just simply were not so, or that would later on be reversed. I guess that he was stating the opinions and viewpoints of his characters as observations by the otherwise unassuming and omniscient narrator. So, what was Musashi's current opinion about his attitude towards Otsu would have been stated as some universal fact, until Yoshikawa would choose to overturn that fact later on with another equally tenuous one. It was jarring for me, since I tend to place far too much trust in the narrator.I also wonder at length what I might have missed out on by not reading it in the original Japanese. Probably a good bit.

My intention is to read Great Expectations over this winter break, but we'll see how that pans out. People who I have told of this intention have frequently reacted with either great amusement or simple bewilderment.

I don't think I have the big, metallic balls necessary to tackle fine Russian literature. However, I am somewhat tempted to read Lolita, since Kubrick's film rendition was quite a fine piece of work.
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Taking a break.

[oligophagy]

Regarding After the Quake, "Landscape with Flatiron" and "Honey Pie" make me resist calling the whole work limp, even if "All God's Children Can Dance" and "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" kind of fall apart at the end. I recommend Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, his most recent (English) short collection; it's a wide spread with some really good older work like A 'Poor Aunt' Story and Nausea 1979.

Also, read Sputnik Sweetheart soon but not Dance, Dance, Dance until (and unless) you really love him.

[sethsez]

Lolita's a masterpiece.

I'm greatly looking forward to starting Thomas Pynchon's new novel soon!

[Intentionally Wrong]

[another coma]

[Lestrade]

I am currently reading Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski, my favourite author. His previous book, House of Leaves, is probably my favourite book of all time.

I've never read a book before where I phone my friend and ask, how are you reading this? It's like a puzzle.
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Illustration Portfolio | The Gamer's Quarter

[robert]

i really just couldn't get into house of leaves when i tried to read it, but now that i've got a lot of free time i might try it again. i certainly like the idea of the format, but i found the execution of it a little boring and long winded last time i tried to read it.

[boojiboy7]

The new Pynchon is good. Fuck the reviewers that can't get into it.

OK, it probably isn't Gravity's Rainbow. Nothing ever can be. That book hit at such a perfect moment in history (1973) for its tone, style, paranoia, and just everything about it. Sadly, not enough people have read it. I think Kojima has been trying to make it into a game for awhile now (particularly MGS3).

Lolita is one of the funniest things I have ever read, though obviously there is a lot more there than that.

House of Leaves is good, but has some issues. The over-sexed nature of the main character gets a little annoying, and it takes a little too long to get going. Still has some good stuff going on in it.

Only Revolutions is interesting as well, but I'm still working on it. I don't quite now what to make of it, but it does have some fun stuff. The whole 180/360 words a page thing gets a little too gimmicky though. It is almost as if the style the words are printed on the page in is more important than the words themselves at times.

Edit:

[Felix]

i've actually had gravity's rainbow sitting in my drawer right now for a while.

by now, i've read just about everything else i bought in that one fantastical used book store trip at the beginning of the semester, but, for whatever reason, not gravity's rainbow.

i'll get to it.

[Lestrade]

[Takashi]

I'm reading The Golden Bough, what is a wonderfull way to remind me that books, once upon a time, actually contained information. Also, Les Miserables.
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low-end.net | Whimsy (soon) | Serfdom 2.0

[boojiboy7]

[haze]

I read Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and enjoyed it a lot. It felt important in the end somehow, more than anything Murakami has written. I mean I enjoy Murakami, it's just he never reaches some kind of profound climax.

[winkerwatson]

Read Lanark bitches
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tim?

[!=]

For the past six few of our months I have got Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury on my bookshelves dedicated to books-to-read-soon. I have read it in my native language earlier, after having read it name-dropped in one of Murakami's books*. I like to practice hyperlinking in the literature domain. (From books to books to music to movies)

The Sound and The Fury is a great if very confusing read, especially for someone like me who dabbled in stream-of-consciousness writing in the past. I then bought Absolom! Absolom! in American English, which I pondered a lot about. About whether one could translate this work to another form, visual or gaming related.

But The Sound and The Fury, original version, still sits on my shelves, confident of its quality.

* The Murakami book I believe was the followup to the Wild Sheep Chase, Danse Danse Danse! I love the genuine freshness of Wild sheep chase, the first Murakami novel I've read. After having been recommended Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End Of The World. I kept thinking the old man in Wild Sheep Chase was supposed to be Yoshio Kodama. Murakami refuses to give proper names in his books, I like that. Is he trying to make us think of his characters as allegories?

[Adilegian]

[lakhesis]

I'm reading The Diamond Age as a breather between Only Revolutions and Ulysses. For the first time in a while, I've got more new books than the one I'm currently reading, and it's kind of nice. Sometime after Ulysses is Jonathan Safran Foer's newest, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

[sethsez]

House of Leaves stuck me as a nifty trick, but nothing more. A literary "hey y'all, watch this" if you will. From what I've seen of Only Revolutions I get a similar feeling... a big literary lark.

MZD's got talent, no doubt, but I'm still waiting for him to take his style and apply it to something with a bit more substance. So far I just get a feeling he's trying to say "boy, this sure looks like something Jorge Luis Borges would write about, doesn't it?" and doesn't really have much of his own to add.

[Elder Toups]

I am motherfucking down with the following novels:

Solaris
Foucault's Pendulum
Ada, or Ardor
Rice

[ani]

I read about half-way through House of Leaves, and that took me a few weeks of constantly reading it, and then life got too busy and I never finished it. From what I read, though, it was really great, and I'll probably return to it sometime in the next ten years.

I've read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and actually I became aware of it because of tim's article way back. I liked it and might read some more Murakami novels in the near future.

Great Expectations is an excellent book.

I'm currently reading Lord of the Flies for English class, which I've loved so far.

I've recently read some books by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin), which were pretty good.

I want to read Lolita and probably will sometime soon.

Same goes for things written by Thomas Pynchon.

Oh, and I'm currently reading La Catrina for Spanish class. Which is a good book or something.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Today I bought Goethe's Faust, the one where the German is on the left page and the English translation is on the right, and The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (Finca Vigia Edition, whatever that means).

Part of my New Year's resolution will be to finish Henry Miller's The Rosy Crucifixion (all three books!), plus all the assorted Mark Twain (Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn) and Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot) that I've got laying around and haven't dug into yet. Also read Moby Dick and Oliver Twist. Maybe finish up those Sherlock Holmes collections.
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[lakhesis]

I got the most out of HoL when I realized what MZD was doing and exactly how far he was going to go with it. It also creeped me the hell out, which was pleasant.

It does have a nifty trick at the center of it, but I thought it was particularly nifty.

OR is a different story (har). I understand what he was doing but it wasn't as compelling... and the "check this out" aspect was more baldface. It was a story wrapped around a trick instead of the other way around.

[Adilegian]

There's a pretty good interview with Murakami in The Georgia Review's Fall 2005 issue. The title is "In Dreams Begins Responsibility," and it was conducted by Jonathan Ellis and Mitoko Hirabayashi.

Thought that might be a useful resource for anyone with access to the journal.

[Mr. Apol]

i finished reading the death of ivan illyich recently, and it was very good. it totally didn't have to have the ending it did, but it was very, very welcome after all the shit that book puts you through.

reading it was basically like the three years of my childhood i spent terribly afraid that i was going to die. i couldn't go to sleep at night, and i wouldn't touch any sort of chemical bottle that stated it could cause death or blindness. i'm really glad i got over that.
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[boojiboy7]

Great Expectations can kiss my ass.

On the other hand, Solaris and Foucault's Pendulum are excellent.

Read Gravity's Rainbow! EVERYONE!

[Focus]

EMERGENCY!!


I'm maybe slightly over a third done with Gravity's Rainbow. But, it has been a while since I've picked it up.

Should I continue from where I left off, or start over?




YOU CALL THE SHOTS!!
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[boojiboy7]

Oh fuck, that is a tough debate. How much of it do you remember? Maybe go back to the beginning of the section you are in and go from there?

Man, now I want to hit GR up for some love, but I want to finish Against the Day first.

[Focus]

I'm thinking I'm going to go clean slate here. It is probably for the better, anyways.
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[internisus]

[boojiboy7]

Probably, but i didn't know how hesitant you were about it.

[oligophagy]

[108]

[sethsez]

Borges feels like he had all sorts of great ideas for novels, but never really felt like sitting down and actually writing them, so he wrote short stories about them instead.

[108]

[sethsez]

I still have no idea how I feel about Ulysses.