Rolling "Books Recently Read" Thread

[FoolofaTook]

TKAM is totally VISCERAL!!!

that's my new word meaning badass/hardcore in other words SENESCENT

say it with me, visceral!

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

TKAM is totally VISCERAL!!!

that's my new word meaning badass/hardcore in other words SENESCENT

say it with me, visceral!

senescent wtf is wrong with your head

[The exploding boy]

you may not know he uses the word senescent for everything regardless of its actual meaning. Just roll with it.

[The exploding boy]

or used to. i guess its visceral now. Actually better because easier to use correctly.

[FoolofaTook]

h9trs b h8ting!!

but me and fuzzy just keep rolling like that linkin park song yo!

[Cool As Ice Cream]

i've read the number one bestseller "the girl on the train".
it was an entertaining read.

[FoolofaTook]

but was it senescent?

[FoolofaTook]

oh and I read two Agatha christies

Hercule Poirot's Christmas

and

Murder on the Orient Express (2nd time was better)

[Cool As Ice Cream]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

but was it senescent?

nope.

[Cool As Ice Cream]

SORRY BUT IT SIMPLY WASNT

[D.]

To round out November, I've got these in the pipeline:

Lorrie Moore - A Gate at the Stairs
Ian McEwan - The Cement Garden
John Nichols - American Blood

[slunken]

finally read of mice and men. didn't realize it was so short.

what should i read next:

??

light in august OR sound and fury by faulkner
winesburg ohio by sherwood anderson
postman always rings twice - james cain
underworld - don delillo
tender is the night - f. scott fitzgerald
sun also rises - hemingway
trail of the hawk - lewis sinclair
american pastoral - philip roth
last exit to brooklyn - hubert selby
neuromancer - william gibson

[redbreegull]

The Sound and the Fury is a very tough read. The Sun Also Rises is short and easy but criminally boring. These are all my thoughts, good luck!!

[redbreegull]

honestly if anyone is interested in reading a "classic" that is very short and easy but also really entertaining, funny, thought-provoking, and poignant, I suggest The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton. It's one of my favorites and I was just thinking about it the other day.

right now I am in the last third of what I keep describing to myself as a real-time reading of Anna Karenina. I started it almost a year and a half ago and keep coming back to it from time to time. It's actually very engaging and very readable for its length, but I just have developed this thing where fiction cannot hold my attention at all anymore

[slunken]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

The Sound and the Fury is a very tough read.

tough how? becaue i was leaning towards more faulkner.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by slunken

tough how? becaue i was leaning towards more faulkner.

I've read a few things by him. What have you read so far? I think I started with A Rose For Emily which is one of the most perfect short stories... but when I read some of his novels, the stylistic difference was hard to overcome.

The Sound and the Fury often follows stream of consciousness style storytelling which can leave the clarity of what is actually happening in the plot anywhere between foggy and incomprehensible. The reading is very dense and syntactically very challenging. I think Faulkner was brilliant and a book like this, in an objective, literary way, is a testament to his chops as a writer willing to push the envelope to the extremes. However, I would not recommend this book to anyone as pleasant reading. Subject matter is also quite difficult but you probably expect that if you have read Faulkner before.

Have you read Go Down, Moses? I liked that better and the different sections differ in how much they rely on traditional narrative form vs. being really experimental and opaque like The Sound and the Fury.

[vixnix]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

honestly if anyone is interested in reading a "classic" that is very short and easy but also really entertaining, funny, thought-provoking, and poignant, I suggest The Man Who Was Thursday by Chesterton. It's one of my favorites and I was just thinking about it the other day.

right now I am in the last third of what I keep describing to myself as a real-time reading of Anna Karenina. I started it almost a year and a half ago and keep coming back to it from time to time. It's actually very engaging and very readable for its length, but I just have developed this thing where fiction cannot hold my attention at all anymore

I just can't bring myself to read that book. It's about necessary pain and betrayal and juvenile romantic love and has a terrible ending. From the outside it seems to me like a padded out mills and boon that ends prematurely and has more interesting characters..

I just finished the Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman. it was terrible. Currently reading the Lighthouse by P.D. James

[Dogfighter28]

A huge chunk of The Sound and The Fury is told from the perspective of a mentally challenged manchild, and Faulkner doesn't clue you in to it. So don't give up if the first part of the book seems like bullshit.

[slunken]

looking back, ive only read "as i lay dying" and actually didn't enjoy that much. not to say i didn't like it.

[D.]

Originally Posted by slunken

postman always rings twice - james cain

This one!

[TuralyonW3]

Originally Posted by slunken

finally read of mice and men. didn't realize it was so short.

what should i read next:

??

light in august OR sound and fury by faulkner
winesburg ohio by sherwood anderson
postman always rings twice - james cain
underworld - don delillo
tender is the night - f. scott fitzgerald
sun also rises - hemingway
trail of the hawk - lewis sinclair
american pastoral - philip roth
last exit to brooklyn - hubert selby
neuromancer - william gibson

American Pastoral is excellent. As is lots of Roth

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Dogfighter28

A huge chunk of The Sound and The Fury is told from the perspective of a mentally challenged manchild, and Faulkner doesn't clue you in to it. So don't give up if the first part of the book seems like bullshit.

he is also tripping on psychotropic drugs the whole time. I don't think I would have understood this book much if I hadn't read it in class. Although one of the best critical essays I ever wrote in school was on it.

Faulkner also considered himself to be the greatest living writer, which is just bleh to me like how can someone have so much of an ego?

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

I just can't bring myself to read that book. It's about necessary pain and betrayal and juvenile romantic love and has a terrible ending. From the outside it seems to me like a padded out mills and boon that ends prematurely and has more interesting characters..

I just finished the Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman. it was terrible. Currently reading the Lighthouse by P.D. James

err well you read a Jonathan Kellerman book what were you expecting?

are you referring to Anna Karenina? I think there are many, many layers of things happening in it and your analysis is a little reductive. the book is primarily about social station and class in my opinion so far. I know the end but I haven't finished it yet. all the soap opera romance stuff is the direct result of the characters living in a deeply constraining, repressive social system. Their suffering is real, and yet just beyond their doors is a whole other world of true, physical suffering from poverty and hunger, but this is beyond their understanding, even Levin's though he tries very hard to grasp it.

[D.]

Originally Posted by TuralyonW3

American Pastoral is excellent. As is lots of Roth

i've got portnoy's complaint in the pipeline!

[vixnix]

Yeah I realise AK must have something that makes it interesting to read for a lot of people. But you were saying that it's hard going, and to me, something that centres around a forbidden romance is kind of juvenile, for an adult reader. I find that hard to get excited about, whatever the context.

Jonathan Kellerman has written a lot of good whodunnits, I liked all the early Alex Delaware books. They're formulaic and it's light holiday reading but for something in that category it's a bit more interesting than most, because of his background in clinical psychology.

It's more like a sudoku in novel form than actual English literature. I guess that's why I like them. But his later work is kinda him phoning it in.

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by vixnix

Yeah I realise AK must have something that makes it interesting to read for a lot of people. But you were saying that it's hard going, and to me, something that centres around a forbidden romance is kind of juvenile, for an adult reader. I find that hard to get excited about, whatever the context.

tbh I think perhaps pop culture understanding of the story is coloring your ideas about it, the same way people think of romeo and juliet as being a romance. Tolstoy was way too smart to write an 800 page novel and have the topic be omg forbidden romance. He was an astute social critic, philosopher, theologist, etc. and all this comes out in Anna Karenina. It had never even occurred to me that the romance is what the book is about, although the nature of different sorts of relationships in the model of the Russian aristocracy is a big topic. Anna and Vronsky's relationship, like most of the book, is very un-romanticized. It's quite easy to read, it's just long. But my problem with reading books has nothing to do with Anna Karenina specifically, it started after I graduated and ever since has gotten worse. I just don't have the patience to read a book. I digest hundreds of pages of news and non-fiction a week, it's specifically a problem with novels

[FoolofaTook]

lol @ karenina being "hard going"

try war and peace, motherfuckers. or don Quixote. or les miserables.

OR THE FUCKING KJV!!!! (including leviticus and numbers, no cheating now!)

(this why you, unlike me, will never be anything near senescent)

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by FoolofaTook

lol @ karenina being "hard going"

try war and peace, motherfuckers. or don Quixote. or les miserables.

OR THE FUCKING KJV!!!! (including leviticus and numbers, no cheating now!)

(this why you, unlike me, will never be anything near senescent)

none of those books are as hard to read as faulkner. or fucking Ulysses

[FoolofaTook]

as much as i hate to agree with you, yes that is true. i have tried faulkner a couple of times and given up each time. and i am not even giving ulysess a go. fuck that shit. portrait is good enough for me.

have you read gravity's rainbow? i gave up 30 pages in. maybe i should try again. it was pretty cool. just a lot of work.

[FoolofaTook]

oh and a hard book to read that is mos def worth the effort is the worm ouroborous.

fucking EPIC