Rolling "Books Recently Read" Thread - Page 15

murgle · 10-11-2009, 06:39 PM

currently reading:

I've read Me Talk Pretty One Day, but none of his other books. I really like Sedaris.

nth0 · 10-16-2009, 12:26 PM

http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/co...1843431817.jpg - A

Nice collection of short stories... Bolaño rocks. This would be a good introduction to his work.

Does anyone here have a goodreads or shelfari account?

threetwooneZERO · 10-16-2009, 01:02 PM

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/s...07/31/1984.jpg

not sure why it took me this long to read this, i found a copy that my dad owned from the 60s and loved every minute of it.

redbreegull · 10-16-2009, 01:44 PM

http://wwwedu.ge.ch/po/stael/anglais...ofthescrew.jpg
I read the Jolly Corner first and I hated it. The verbosity and sentences of seemingly boundless longevity threw me off at first but I wound up liking this book a lot.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c1371.jpg
Cool story

http://stevenhartsite.files.wordpres...s-thursday.jpg
This book is superb. I recommend it to everyone.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pe...ooks/550-1.jpg
Boring and pointless. I did not understand the social comment this was attempting to make at all.

http://www.cclapcenter.com/archives/heartofdarkness.jpg
Another great story.

http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/be...-2008/12-7.jpg
Reading this now. I've never read a graphic novel before. It's ok. It seems like Bechdel doesn't have much to say and fills in all the empty spaces with pictures, but perhaps that is my personal adversity to this literary medium.

Sarcastic Smile · 10-18-2009, 11:30 PM

"How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill

Had to read this for a my history course..

A little sensationalized and biased. The author gave all credit to the Irish for the saving of Roman literature or "civilization" (blah). They did play a major part but he completely left out the fact that the Byzantine Empire remained intact and preserved a great deal of it (as well as Roman traditions) and that it was also being copied and translated by Arabic and Greek scribes.

Author uses the foiling of characters as the back bone for this book.. spends a lot of time giving background information and references some random shit I think make the book not very inviting to people who don't have a decent history/literature background.. I would think with a title like that he is trying to pull in a broad audience but this is has the feel of a really long research paper in some places. I know a few people in my class got annoyed after a few chapters and just did the spark notes or whatever

I'm researching reviews now because I need to write a critical essay on wether or not I agree with the title/Cahill's point of view and other people seem to be annoyed with his hyperbole too.

Anyone read this? Nothing it coming up in search.

Trotskilicious · 10-18-2009, 11:43 PM

they're assigning that POS for history classes? where do you go? the University of Fiji?

Eric Blair · 04:24 AM

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P...2.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This book is practically perfect.

Sarcastic Smile · 10-19-2009, 12:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

they're assigning that POS for history classes? where do you go? the University of Fiji?

Just about everyone disagrees with the author including the professor, I don't know why he assigned this... He assigns extra assignments that aren't really consistent with what is talked about in lecture.. we have 3 books after this where we need to do the same thing.. He's a pretty young professor.. I think he may practicing some kind of offbeat teaching methods on us by assigning us these random books associated with history

However I am in a basic World History.. forget the exact title.. not that it matters

Trotskilicious · 10-19-2009, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Reading this now. I've never read a graphic novel before. It's ok. It seems like Bechdel doesn't have much to say and fills in all the empty spaces with pictures, but perhaps that is my personal adversity to this literary medium.

Main Entry: ad·ver·si·ty
Pronunciation: \ad-ˈvər-sə-tē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural ad·ver·si·ties
Date: 13th century

: a state, condition, or instance of serious or continued difficulty or adverse fortune
synonyms see misfortune

Mo · 10-19-2009, 03:24 AM

http://www.abload.de/img/390px-wantedhp3j.jpg

I almost didn't buy it because the movie was so, so terrible. Whew.

severin · 10-19-2009, 03:54 AM

so, so awesome. the story and text of love and prejudice wonderfully set into an england which is overrun by zombies. awesome read

Araneae · 10-19-2009, 05:46 PM

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/image...fa861210.L.jpg

It was pretty good. I've never read anything from him before, but I might check out his others novels now too.

Deadeyes · 10-20-2009, 03:17 AM

http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_...sLovecraft.jpg

Something perverse to sullen the mind at this strange hour in life.

TuralyonW3 · 10-20-2009, 03:25 AM

man redgreebull has pretty stuffy taste

Eric Blair · 10-20-2009, 03:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TuralyonW3

man redgreebull has pretty stuffy taste

What? How many of those books have you even read and how exactly are they stuffy?

Mo · 10-20-2009, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Araneae

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/image...fa861210.L.jpg

It was pretty good. I've never read anything from him before, but I might check out his others novels now too.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is another good book.

Trotskilicious · 10-20-2009, 04:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TuralyonW3

man redgreebull has pretty stuffy taste

trying real hard and/or assigned books for his LA degree

Trotskilicious · 10-20-2009, 04:20 AM

i mean other than the graphic novels which he has great "adversity" towards

Eulogy · 10-20-2009, 09:47 AM

These are all books I've read for school this semester:

http://ireadashortstorytoday.com/upl...on-742998.jpeg

Pretty much a big mindfuck. Some really strange/disturbing/unusual images, most of which are presented in a totally subdued and deadpan way. It's a quick read, for sure. Pretty enjoyable. But nothing mindblowing, I don't think.

http://fc2.org/martone/michael/michael.jpg

Meh. The concept is fucking cool. And it stays interesting for a while. Eventually it got pretty tedious though.

http://www.graywolfpress.org/downloa..._Be_Lonely.jpg

This just felt like a big, whiny, essay. It read quickly so it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but jesus christ. I do not recommend.

http://handheld.softpedia.com/images...an-Swift_2.jpg

This was the first time I read it. :-/ It's a classic for a reason, I suppose. Some pretty interesting parts that still hold plenty of water today.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c3414.jpg

Totally fucking awesome.

http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebook...0031090_s4.jpg

Not my favorite story by Twain. But not a bad read.

http://www.mhpbooks.com/media/image/...orrupt_RGB.jpg

I liked this one better.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c3/c16970.jpg

I've posted about these two in other places lately. Just fucking awesome.

redbreegull · 10-20-2009, 12:49 PM

My tastes aren't stuffy, those are just good books.

And yeah, I was thinking of the word averse when I wrote adversity. Oh well. See Trots, you did get something from your degree.

Araneae · 10-20-2009, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mo

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is another good book.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

I also finished reading this, along with a few more. I have a terrible habit of reading multiple books at the same time.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/image...bba15110.L.jpg

It was really creepy and I liked it.

Trotskilicious · 09:56 PM

McCarthy's prose is sparse, brutal, and poetic. I knew what was coming most of the way because I had seen the movie but it has more oomph as a novel. There's also a bit that wasn't in the movie at all that makes you think about Moss a little differently, but it doesn't exactly spell anything out for you either even in that event so you make up your own mind. However the movie changed the episode where Chigurh meets Carla Jean in Odessa, and I sorta like the ambiguity of how that event plays out in the movie but I suppose that was done to make up for the ambiguity of the last night of Moss's life as it played out in the book. And I want to say also that McCarthy's prose is forceful and choppy in the way James Ellroy's is but it doesn't ever feel forced, like Ellroy's does. My one little niggle is that I don't understand how Chigurh can find Moss after he gets rid of the tracking device but he is not exactly a realistic character to begin with. A

Now I'm probably going to try to read All the Pretty Horses again. It's a hard book to start because everyone is referred to in pronouns for the first 20 pages or more.

D. · 11-11-2009, 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eulogy

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c3414.jpg

Totally fucking awesome.

i know, right? did you read zadig? i haven't yet.

D. · 11-11-2009, 10:01 PM

as for me, i have been lazy in my reading. all i've read in the last month or so is a brief book B got me when she was in Salem (about the witch trials) and a few Fitzgerald short stories.

Trotskilicious · 11-11-2009, 10:05 PM

i got a big pile of boox that i aim to read

i've also started a few that I haven't finished or got very far in like the Flounder by Gunter Grass (which is hilarious but mindfuckingly weird), as mentioned above All the Pretty Horses and The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which is hauntingly beautiful but terribly difficult to read because there's no paragraphs and everything just kind of flows together in this stream of consciousness narrative. I still get lols about the passage where the narrator is talking about the cow on the presidential balcony and in a almost throwaway aside he says, "What a shitty country."

I also want to read another Naipaul book but I'm not sure which one I want to read, either Guerrillas which seems like more my kind of thing or A House for Mr. Biswas which is lauded as his best.

I also acknowledge that whenever I post in this thread it's like talking to a total vacuum.

D. · 11-12-2009, 01:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

i got a big pile of boox that i aim to read

i've also started a few that I haven't finished or got very far in like the Flounder by Gunter Grass (which is hilarious but mindfuckingly weird).

i have the novella "cat and mouse" by this dude in my HUGE stacks of books I want to read before i die.

Blue*Carbonite · 11-12-2009, 07:52 PM

Ugly · 11-12-2009, 10:12 PM

Got it for a buck at a used library book sale I stumbled across completely by accident. It's not very well written, every character seems to be an expert on SOMETHING, and the hero is impossibly knowledgeable and sage and deadly when the case calls for it. BUT the main reason I picked it up, having just randomly seen it lying there, is that Sylvester Stallone said he was going to adapt it into RAMBO V. But now AICN says he isn't and the story is being changed yet again. So I have no idea what's going to happen. But it's an interesting sci-fi action infused hunt-and-chase-book with a killer monster/genetically engineered werewolf as the main villain in the woods that a black ops group / Hunter (who is basically Rambo) is chasing. Not quite done yet, but it has the odd good action sequence and a good creep-out sequence here and there. Although the first time Hunter/Rambo confronts the monster he defeats it with a mesh cloth to confuse it. And there's a really pointless cop in the city sub-plot about a Fed looking for clues about the monster's identity, but it's pointless because the monster's identity is given away in the first 50 pages or so. I'll make for a good Rambo movie, something different for sure. But now I'm not even sure if it IS going to be a Rambo movie anymore.

talk show host · 11-12-2009, 10:22 PM

Currently:

http://lamiradadetiresies.files.word.../pynchon-8.jpg

28if · 11-12-2009, 11:35 PM

Some of the books I've enjoyed most this Fall:

Wordsworth/Coleridge - Lyrical Ballads
I'm a big fan of romanticism so I dug this a lot. I'm taking a whole class on British romanticism next semester should be pretty sweet.

Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo - Nietzsche
This is the only Nietzsche I've read besides Zarathustra, I've loved it all. Guy is a genius, lots of fun to read and think about after.

Heart of Darkness - Conrad
I got halfway through this before I realized it was the basis for Apocalypse Now. Good read, I enjoyed it a lot. Marlow and Kurtz are such great characters.

Berlin Stories - Isherwood
Great stuff. I'm a bit personally invested in the time period/setting as George Grosz was my great-uncle. Apparently that whole side of the family was all artsy and Communist back then. Wish I could have been around.

Turn of the Screw is a real mindfuck, I liked it a lot once I got past the initial shock of the writing style. GK Chesterton is the man as well, leave redbull's stuffy tastes alone.

10-18-2009, 11:56 PM	#427
Eric Blair Apocalyptic Poster Location: Let's hang ourselves immediately! Posts: 2,275	http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P...2.LZZZZZZZ.jpg This book is practically perfect. Last edited by Eric Blair : 10-20-2009 at 04:24 AM.

11-11-2009, 09:50 PM	#442
Trotskilicious Banned Location: I believe in the transcendental qualities of friendship. Posts: 39,439	McCarthy's prose is sparse, brutal, and poetic. I knew what was coming most of the way because I had seen the movie but it has more oomph as a novel. There's also a bit that wasn't in the movie at all that makes you think about Moss a little differently, but it doesn't exactly spell anything out for you either even in that event so you make up your own mind. However the movie changed the episode where Chigurh meets Carla Jean in Odessa, and I sorta like the ambiguity of how that event plays out in the movie but I suppose that was done to make up for the ambiguity of the last night of Moss's life as it played out in the book. And I want to say also that McCarthy's prose is forceful and choppy in the way James Ellroy's is but it doesn't ever feel forced, like Ellroy's does. My one little niggle is that I don't understand how Chigurh can find Moss after he gets rid of the tracking device but he is not exactly a realistic character to begin with. A Now I'm probably going to try to read All the Pretty Horses again. It's a hard book to start because everyone is referred to in pronouns for the first 20 pages or more. Last edited by Trotskilicious : 11-11-2009 at 09:56 PM.

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10-11-2009, 06:39 PM	#421
murgle Shaz doesn't fuck around. Location: dallas Posts: 9,258	currently reading: I've read Me Talk Pretty One Day, but none of his other books. I really like Sedaris.

10-16-2009, 12:26 PM	#422
nth0 Amish Rake Fighter Posts: 6	http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/co...1843431817.jpg - A Nice collection of short stories... Bolaño rocks. This would be a good introduction to his work. Does anyone here have a goodreads or shelfari account?

10-16-2009, 01:02 PM	#423
threetwooneZERO Apocalyptic Poster Posts: 3,894	http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/s...07/31/1984.jpg not sure why it took me this long to read this, i found a copy that my dad owned from the 60s and loved every minute of it.

10-16-2009, 01:44 PM	#424
redbreegull Just Hook it to My Veins! Location: N3t4Euh Haus Posts: 32,753	http://wwwedu.ge.ch/po/stael/anglais...ofthescrew.jpg I read the Jolly Corner first and I hated it. The verbosity and sentences of seemingly boundless longevity threw me off at first but I wound up liking this book a lot. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c1371.jpg Cool story http://stevenhartsite.files.wordpres...s-thursday.jpg This book is superb. I recommend it to everyone. http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/pe...ooks/550-1.jpg Boring and pointless. I did not understand the social comment this was attempting to make at all. http://www.cclapcenter.com/archives/heartofdarkness.jpg Another great story. http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/be...-2008/12-7.jpg Reading this now. I've never read a graphic novel before. It's ok. It seems like Bechdel doesn't have much to say and fills in all the empty spaces with pictures, but perhaps that is my personal adversity to this literary medium.

10-18-2009, 11:30 PM	#425
Sarcastic Smile Amish Rake Fighter Location: I fuck in my spare time, this is what I do at work you dumb bitch.-esty Posts: 3,670	"How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill Had to read this for a my history course.. A little sensationalized and biased. The author gave all credit to the Irish for the saving of Roman literature or "civilization" (blah). They did play a major part but he completely left out the fact that the Byzantine Empire remained intact and preserved a great deal of it (as well as Roman traditions) and that it was also being copied and translated by Arabic and Greek scribes. Author uses the foiling of characters as the back bone for this book.. spends a lot of time giving background information and references some random shit I think make the book not very inviting to people who don't have a decent history/literature background.. I would think with a title like that he is trying to pull in a broad audience but this is has the feel of a really long research paper in some places. I know a few people in my class got annoyed after a few chapters and just did the spark notes or whatever I'm researching reviews now because I need to write a critical essay on wether or not I agree with the title/Cahill's point of view and other people seem to be annoyed with his hyperbole too. Anyone read this? Nothing it coming up in search.

10-18-2009, 11:43 PM	#426
Trotskilicious Banned Location: I believe in the transcendental qualities of friendship. Posts: 39,439	they're assigning that POS for history classes? where do you go? the University of Fiji?

10-19-2009, 03:24 AM	#430
Mo Immortal Posts: 20,964	http://www.abload.de/img/390px-wantedhp3j.jpg I almost didn't buy it because the movie was so, so terrible. Whew.

10-19-2009, 03:54 AM	#431
severin no more than sympathy Location: lying on the floor Posts: 14,826	so, so awesome. the story and text of love and prejudice wonderfully set into an england which is overrun by zombies. awesome read

10-19-2009, 05:46 PM	#432
Araneae Apocalyptic Poster Posts: 1,887	http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/image...fa861210.L.jpg It was pretty good. I've never read anything from him before, but I might check out his others novels now too.

10-20-2009, 03:17 AM	#433
Deadeyes Apocalyptic Poster Location: Robot Factory Posts: 1,491	http://www.brooklynrail.org/article_...sLovecraft.jpg Something perverse to sullen the mind at this strange hour in life.

10-20-2009, 03:25 AM	#434
TuralyonW3 Immortal Posts: 25,684	man redgreebull has pretty stuffy taste

10-20-2009, 04:20 AM	#438
Trotskilicious Banned Location: I believe in the transcendental qualities of friendship. Posts: 39,439	i mean other than the graphic novels which he has great "adversity" towards

10-20-2009, 09:47 AM	#439
Eulogy huh Posts: 62,456	These are all books I've read for school this semester: http://ireadashortstorytoday.com/upl...on-742998.jpeg Pretty much a big mindfuck. Some really strange/disturbing/unusual images, most of which are presented in a totally subdued and deadpan way. It's a quick read, for sure. Pretty enjoyable. But nothing mindblowing, I don't think. http://fc2.org/martone/michael/michael.jpg Meh. The concept is fucking cool. And it stays interesting for a while. Eventually it got pretty tedious though. http://www.graywolfpress.org/downloa..._Be_Lonely.jpg This just felt like a big, whiny, essay. It read quickly so it wasn't the worst thing in the world, but jesus christ. I do not recommend. http://handheld.softpedia.com/images...an-Swift_2.jpg This was the first time I read it. :-/ It's a classic for a reason, I suppose. Some pretty interesting parts that still hold plenty of water today. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c0/c3414.jpg Totally fucking awesome. http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebook...0031090_s4.jpg Not my favorite story by Twain. But not a bad read. http://www.mhpbooks.com/media/image/...orrupt_RGB.jpg I liked this one better. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c3/c16970.jpg I've posted about these two in other places lately. Just fucking awesome.

10-20-2009, 12:49 PM	#440
redbreegull Just Hook it to My Veins! Location: N3t4Euh Haus Posts: 32,753	My tastes aren't stuffy, those are just good books. And yeah, I was thinking of the word averse when I wrote adversity. Oh well. See Trots, you did get something from your degree.

11-11-2009, 10:01 PM	#444
D. Consume my pants. Location: Missouri Posts: 36,099	as for me, i have been lazy in my reading. all i've read in the last month or so is a brief book B got me when she was in Salem (about the witch trials) and a few Fitzgerald short stories.

11-11-2009, 10:05 PM	#445
Trotskilicious Banned Location: I believe in the transcendental qualities of friendship. Posts: 39,439	i got a big pile of boox that i aim to read i've also started a few that I haven't finished or got very far in like the Flounder by Gunter Grass (which is hilarious but mindfuckingly weird), as mentioned above All the Pretty Horses and The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez which is hauntingly beautiful but terribly difficult to read because there's no paragraphs and everything just kind of flows together in this stream of consciousness narrative. I still get lols about the passage where the narrator is talking about the cow on the presidential balcony and in a almost throwaway aside he says, "What a shitty country." I also want to read another Naipaul book but I'm not sure which one I want to read, either Guerrillas which seems like more my kind of thing or A House for Mr. Biswas which is lauded as his best. I also acknowledge that whenever I post in this thread it's like talking to a total vacuum.

11-12-2009, 07:52 PM	#447
Blue*Carbonite Apocalyptic Poster Location: stand up and tell em you're from pittsburgh Posts: 3,868

11-12-2009, 10:12 PM	#448
Ugly Immortal Location: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed Posts: 21,248	Got it for a buck at a used library book sale I stumbled across completely by accident. It's not very well written, every character seems to be an expert on SOMETHING, and the hero is impossibly knowledgeable and sage and deadly when the case calls for it. BUT the main reason I picked it up, having just randomly seen it lying there, is that Sylvester Stallone said he was going to adapt it into RAMBO V. But now AICN says he isn't and the story is being changed yet again. So I have no idea what's going to happen. But it's an interesting sci-fi action infused hunt-and-chase-book with a killer monster/genetically engineered werewolf as the main villain in the woods that a black ops group / Hunter (who is basically Rambo) is chasing. Not quite done yet, but it has the odd good action sequence and a good creep-out sequence here and there. Although the first time Hunter/Rambo confronts the monster he defeats it with a mesh cloth to confuse it. And there's a really pointless cop in the city sub-plot about a Fed looking for clues about the monster's identity, but it's pointless because the monster's identity is given away in the first 50 pages or so. I'll make for a good Rambo movie, something different for sure. But now I'm not even sure if it IS going to be a Rambo movie anymore.

11-12-2009, 10:22 PM	#449
talk show host Apocalyptic Poster Location: I thought using a condom was assumed but like, even if you didn't use one how would putting a vegetable in your pussy cause some sort of infection? Like, you can fucking EAT IT, but you can't put it in your fucking vagina and move it around a little Posts: 2,790	Currently: http://lamiradadetiresies.files.word.../pynchon-8.jpg

11-12-2009, 11:35 PM	#450
28if Apocalyptic Poster Location: yeah seriously i think we've more than established a consensus on reality, it's not that abstract. Posts: 3,454	Some of the books I've enjoyed most this Fall: Wordsworth/Coleridge - Lyrical Ballads I'm a big fan of romanticism so I dug this a lot. I'm taking a whole class on British romanticism next semester should be pretty sweet. Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo - Nietzsche This is the only Nietzsche I've read besides Zarathustra, I've loved it all. Guy is a genius, lots of fun to read and think about after. Heart of Darkness - Conrad I got halfway through this before I realized it was the basis for Apocalypse Now. Good read, I enjoyed it a lot. Marlow and Kurtz are such great characters. Berlin Stories - Isherwood Great stuff. I'm a bit personally invested in the time period/setting as George Grosz was my great-uncle. Apparently that whole side of the family was all artsy and Communist back then. Wish I could have been around. Turn of the Screw is a real mindfuck, I liked it a lot once I got past the initial shock of the writing style. GK Chesterton is the man as well, leave redbull's stuffy tastes alone.