Official Books thread (Post about your literary interests)

[BlueTsunami]

I've been all about recreational reading these past 6 months and I thought I would create this thread to bump whenever anyone on the board finishes or buys a book and feels the need to post about it. So go crazy!

I'm personally looking to re tread through Dicken's "Great Expectations", partially cause I want to read it again and also because I want to buy the Everyman's Library Hardcover print

[Raban]

My favorite book is probably the Hitchhiker's Guide and all of its sequels, then Cat's Cradle in a close second. I just finished reading Into the Wild, which was a pretty nice nonfiction book. I've recently felt the need to read an Ayn Rand book, but most of her shit is very boring. Atlas Shrugged was really slow, The Fountainhead was okay, and I was thinking of trying Anthem because of how small it was, but I'm not sure.

[BlueTsunami]

I've actually been meaning to check out "Into the Wild". Read the book then watch the movie or something (its been getting praise). I've never read Hitchiker's Guide either (another one I'll definitely get too down the line).

I've been looking at this too...

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Novels-American-Postman-Nightmare/dp/1883011469/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202482830&sr=8-3


The same people who printed the Philip K. Dick book I've bought and the H.P. Lovecraft print thats should be coming to me next week.

[Ichirou]

Reading Bob Saget's autobiography now... it's pretty wykyd...

Hmmm...maybe I'll read John Stamos's next...I want to see his views on allt his Full House stuff and see if his recollections match up with Saget's...there's some pretty crazy shy t in Saget's book....

After that I'm gonna probably go to the local mall that has this massage parlor and I'm gonna get me a massage...so wykyd.  And then I'm probably gonna smoke a bowl with some frends...u know...marywanna...

Pretty fukkin awsum weekend it's gonna be.

[Eric P]

i like and will read damn near everything

but i inevitably pick up science fiction, horror, mystery and the like.

genre stuff.  i enjoy it because the best of it goes absolutely mad in directions that "mainstream" literature can't or doesn't.  which doesn't mean that i'm indiscriminate when it comes to genre fiction.

i tend to hate high falutin' modern literature and would like to see the brooklyn magical school impaled upon spikes as a warning to williamsburg bloggers.

i enjoy post modernism and have found The Modern Word to be a good resource (http://www.themodernword.com/themodword.cfm) for assistance in this direction.

I'm currently reading A Song of Fire and Ice and enjoying it.  It's my first fantasy in a long time.  I generally have a low tolerance for Tolkien rip offs so i don't read a lot of fantasy (probably as penance for reading too much dragonlance as a kid).  Though i do have a weakness for Robert E. Howard and that ilk of pulpy sword and sorcery born of $.50 specials in the used bookstores of my youth.

I'm also reading The Secret History of the World as Told by Secret Societies.  It's rather entertaining if horribly written.  You'd think a book written by an editor, even an editor of "new age" garbage would be far less self indulgent.  Imagine the Da Vinci code mixed with The Secret mixed with World Weekly News but told with the wide eyed fanaticism of someone who thinks he's imparting great wisdom and is smug about it (did you know Beethoven predicted Jazz?)

I also read a lot of comics and have my whole life.  It's kind of nice that hoi polloi have caught up because it gets more interesting things into print (like Fun Home which everyone should read) so i don't have to rely upon fantagraphics and kitchen sink.

My weakness is used bookstores.  If i see a new one, i MUST stop in to see what I can find.

[Eric P]

Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s: http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Novels-American-Postman-Nightmare/dp/1883011469/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202482830&sr=8-3

there's some great stuff in these.

check out the dasiell hammet volume as well if these float your boat.  Along with The Maltese Falcon, it has the two novels which gave us the modern PI (The Continetal Op in Red Harvest and The Dain Curse), the thin man which is a comedic homage to drawing room mysteries.

also, Red Harvest is the novel which gave us Yojimbo (in plot)

[BlueTsunami]

I've got to check those out

For the time being though, I bought Great Expectations (Hardcover) from Amazon for $18. I was also looking at the the Everman's Library site and they're selling their essential 100 Hardcover books for $3000:lol . If I actually had money I would someday like to build out a personal library or something...I don't know why though.

[Eric P]

i recently got into dickens (within the past 4 years of so) because a series of essays by ron rosenbaum who had me go back to read some of that hated stuff.

it's really quite good.

i think that my favorite items by him are still the short stories he did but i do enjoy his characterization and his ability to set scene.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

hey Eric P have you read Phonogram?

I just read it yesterday and it was pretty awesome. Gonna blog it up later tonight or tomorrow.

[Eric P]

the comic?  hell yeah

britpop magic and secret london?

that's like all my buttons being pushed at once

check out vinyl underground currently being produced by the same guy

oh, and PM incoming

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I was kind of afraid because Kieron Gillen is the man who invented New Games Journalism

but, Phonogram is too awesome to be denied

[Eric P]

there's a new games journalism?

[Howard Alan Treesong]

yes, and Kieron Gillen invented it

it means you take yourself WAY too seriously, and say "distinguished black fellow" a lot to show how uptight the establishment is, but it's okay when you say it because you're transcendent, and also you don't ever actually talk about the game, it's more about how the game made you feel, and the Cheetos you were eating

[Eric P]

so basically, it's gonzo journalism without the substance?

[Joe Molotov]

I've made some headway on my Top 5 list of books to read this year. I've read Book 1 of the Illuminatus! Trilogy

[BlueTsunami]

 

[Madrun Badrun]

sexy.  I have a raging hard on right now.

is every mans library and American library from the same company?  If so I'll have to start buying more of those instead of the modern library  hardcovers.

[BlueTsunami]

Nope, different companies

Everyman's Library seems to be devoted to printing singular literary works where Library of America does it by Author (like the assorted works of Philip K. Dick and Lovecraft). Those two books were only $20 on Amazon too.

[Phoenix Dark]

I'm currently reading George RR Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice series; I'm almost done with the second book, A Clash of Kings, and will be moving to the third asap. Fantasy is one of my favorite series but I've stayed away from most swords n magic yarns. Martin has really blown me away because his books aren't simply tales of war and sorcery. The level of political infighting is truly fascinating to me.

Soon I also plan on getting The Big Sleep

[BlueTsunami]

I'm a few stories in but "The Shunned House" is a great Lovecraft short. Its not over descriptive to the point of adding useless fluff (like some of the stories proceeding it). Its the right mixture of progressing the plot and lingering on a scene. I believe the stories are chronologically ordered too so you're seeing him progress as a writer after each story.

Also, I love his ability to channel dread in scenarios where one would be scared.

[recursivelyenumerable]

As an engineer I am mostly an a-cultural illiterate but on the rare occasions I do read, it's usually something from the 19th or early 20th century.  Currently reading Franz Kafka's short stories.

[Candyflip]

I just started The Brothers Karamazov yesterday. Slooooow right now but hopefully it picks up.

[brawndolicious]

I'm right now going through this:


really good book.  apparently our number one reason for uninsured emergency room visits is gunshot injuries, not mehicans.

[Eric P]

currently reading

In this most original examination of America’s post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country’s psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore “traditional” manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling “security moms,” swaggering presidential gunslingers, and the “rescue” of a female soldier cast as a “helpless little girl”?
 
The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by nonwhite “barbarians” on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms.
 
Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us—and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.

Fascinating stuff.  I don't really pay attention to mainstream media (no TV, I listen to NPR exclusively but do go through the NYT and Washington Post), so I didn't get a lot of exposure to this.  What's really kind of annoying is when she keeps sourcing the same thing (IE the New York Post) so you can see that they just build on and on and on.

check out this interview in the guardian.  The stuff about McCain at the end is really interesting.

I just picked up The Age of American Unreason based largely on this

[Rman]

I read mostly non-fiction.  I like business, food writing and cookbooks--yes, I read cookbooks cover to cover, cultural studies, science, and environmental and progressive topics.

I want to read more fiction in the future.

[Eric P]

progressive topics such as what?

[GilloD]

I was so starved for an English language book while traveling that I read a Patrica Cornwell novel. Awful. Terrible writing aside, there's almost no mystery for it's 400 page run. There's not even a juicy payoff. Ugh.

But Joshua Ferris' "And Then We Came to the End" was a real delight, the most captivating thing I've read since "Heartbreaking Work of...". I also downed Rick Moody's "3 Right Livelihoods" and was really pleased to find the 3rd story to be a 1st rate sci-fi reader, equally on par with Philly K Dick.

[GilloD]

yes, and Kieron Gillen invented it

it means you take yourself WAY too seriously, and say "distinguished black fellow" a lot to show how uptight the establishment is, but it's okay when you say it because you're transcendent, and also you don't ever actually talk about the game, it's more about how the game made you feel, and the Cheetos you were eating

It's sort of priggish, but there is a distinction between the "GRAPHICS GET A 5 AND THE CONTROLS GET A 4" journalism and the kind of games writing that happens in the Gamer's Quarterly or the Escapist.

[Eric P]

I was so starved for an English language book while traveling that I read a Patrica Cornwell novel. Awful. Terrible writing aside, there's almost no mystery for it's 400 page run. There's not even a juicy payoff. Ugh.

i read 4 of those books when i was much younger and you're right.  they're pretty much crap.

i liked reading about the medical investigation portions though.  that was neat.

Neither one is worth anything, though.

really?  I enjoy the escapist's content if not it's layout.

[Rman]

progressive topics such as what?

The green movement, environmentalism, poverty and such.

[Rman]

I like them both as well, Eric P.  They are much more interesting than the product review style journalism that is pervasive in most gaming media outlets.

[Bloodwake]

When I have time/attention span for it:



when I don't have the attention span for it:



Yes. Again. Mainly because I just got all of the books and it's something I can read without having to devote too much attention to it.

After A People's History, I'm going to hit up some Palahknuk and this summer will be the summer of Philip K. Dick.

[Eric P]

progressive topics such as what?

The green movement, environmentalism, poverty and such.

gotcha

i like reading about the history of leftist movements in america

fun stuff

always more exciting than the history of right wing (unless you go extreme right wing)

this summer will be the summer of Philip K. Dick.

beware

i read a dozen or so of his books back to back one summer and started to doubt my own existence