Books, CAN YOU READ?! Options

[Dr Strum]

It made me want to read On the Road really badly, so that's probably the first thing I'll read when I get the chance.

Read it fast. In no more than a weekend. It has a rhythm and if you put it down for a day you'll have a hard time getting back into it.
With that said, I really enjoyed it. I happened also to read it while hitchhiking myself.

I've finished two books recently:

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - McCullers
This one took me a while to get through. Part of it was the writing - oh that southern dialect! - part of it was that it was very slow and subdued. That ending though, my goodness. I knew Singer was going to react poorly, but what happened was unexpected. But what really got me was a quote from near the end, of Brannon's experience:

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimps of human struggle and of valor ... and of those who labor and those who - one word - love.

And then his reaction to the crushing weight of this epiphany closes the novel and the heart breaks.

Sputnik Sweetheart - Murakami
I just put this down. I loved it a lot, but like almost everything I've read by the man (except 1Q84, that seemed relatively clear cut) the ending was a huge "wait wtf?" and I'm still trying to decipher the onslaught of symbols in those final paragraphs.

For fiction I'm probably going to start Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor soonishly, though before that I think I'm going to go back and reread bits of The Master and Margarita; and for non-fiction I'm still working on Metaphors We Live By and The Foucault Reader, but I'll be setting aside both to blaze through Doctorow's Information Doesn't Want to Be Free, which I've already started and love.

[Frisk]

In Cold Blood - I never finished it.

The Crying of Lot 49- Oh man. This wasn't exactly dense, but there was a lot of stuff I didn't realize I wasn't getting until our professor went over it. It's incredibly complex in its references and (maybe) structure, but pretty simple in its narrative. But I did enjoy it, even if

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

the entire segment dealing with Oedipa's psychologist and her husband felt incredibly shoehorned and only there to make her more alone. I mean our professor can say it's an example of Pynchon playing with chronology and temporal displacement all he wants, I'm not buying it.

It's also incredibly short, so there's that.

Soldier in the Mist, by Gene Wolfe- Do you like Greek mythology? Complex Greek and Roman language jokes? Reading something that makes you look at the history of the time period it's set in to understand it? If these are things you like in a book, you will like this book. If you want a more plot related description, it's about a Roman soldier/mercenary who gets injured in a battle, and loses his ability to remember things after a day. However, he can now see gods. It's framed as him writing his daily events in a scroll, always meant to be read the next day. I haven't finished it, but I definitely recommend it. It has a surreal atmosphere to it, with everything being erased and started over by the next chapter mixed with the coming and going of the gods.

Upcoming- Being There by I don't remember.

HEY RHIA DID YOU EVER READ STEINBECK STUFF WHAT DID YOU THINK?

[Dr Strum]

Been readings.

Information Doesn't Want to be Free - Doctorow. Really awesome, nice a short, brilliant and sweet read. Presents some fascinating insight on the internet copyright wars and the future of profitable art ventures.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (or something like that) - Murakami. I've noticed a theme in Japanese art that's something along the lines of "life will suck, and you'll get over it, and doing so will not be a terribly exciting story." But the (admittedly translated) writing was wonderful.

Down and Out in Paris and London - Orwell. This one clicked with me. I mightn't ever have been quite as broke as Orwell was in these stories, and I'm certainly better off based on my era alone, but everything he says about poverty - it's causes, symptoms and the generally exhausted ennui of the experience - resonated quite deeply with me. This might challenge Homage as my favorite Orwellian work (I like using that adjective in it's second sense).

Presently working on Where Angels Fear to Tread by Forster. It's not that great, I may dump it. Also started working my way through Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.

[Raijinili]

I don't like it when the story and plot are literally just backdrops for the author's ideas, and this book was one hundred percent that.

I hated Animal Farm way more for that criticism.

COME JOIN ME IN MY HATE

[Dr Strum]

I'm curious what ideas you believe are the author's in Animal Farm.

[Frisk]

I don't like it when the story and plot are literally just backdrops for the author's ideas, and this book was one hundred percent that.

I hated Animal Farm way more for that criticism.

COME JOIN ME IN MY HATE

MAN BUT LIKE I WAS REALLY YOUNG WHEN I READ/HAD ANIMAL FARM READ TO ME SO I WAS JUST LIKE PIGS ARE DICKS AND THE TEACHER WAS LIKE PIGS ARE REPRESENTING REAL PEOPLE AND I'M LIKE OH THAT'S NEAT I GUESS.
I'd have to reread it to say for sure if I hate it/like it or not.

Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe- I haven't finished Soldier of the Mist yet, but I picked this up yesterday and I like it a lot more. It has a ton of description in it, but for once I really like the abundance of details.

Being There by Jerzy Kosinski- this was the final book I had to read for my American novel class. It's rather short, at just around 150 pages. It'll make you reevaluate your perception of other people (maybe), and will make you laugh at how obsessed with appearances we as a whole are (probably).

[Dr Strum]

Finished Where Angels Fear to Tread. I developed a greater appreciation for the writing style: it was concise and descriptive. The novel itself was only 135ish pages, and despite feeling short, it felt very perceptually and emotionally expressive... But it probably wasn't worth how long I spent reading it and not more enjoyable things things.

After that I was doing some occassional light reading of some philosophy and poetry, not wanting to start a new book because I was waiting for The Familiar, Volume 1, which I then read. But I hate discussing individual entries in a series. This one certainly has a distinctly episodic feel. But it's rad. I'm excited for the next one - fall, apparently?

Now... I may finally tackle Crime and Punishment. If not that, it's probably still going to be Russian literature. Or Ready Player One. My friend's been on my case to read that one.

[Raijinili]

I'm curious what ideas you believe are the author's in Animal Farm.

"See this guy right here? He's bad. His ideas are lies and sweet whatsits."

[Rhiannon]

HEY RHIA DID YOU EVER READ STEINBECK STUFF WHAT DID YOU THINK?

🐙

I finished the book I'd started in December or January, Life & Times of Michael K. I liked this a whole lot, and it was significantly different from Coetzee's other things I'd read, which made me very happy that he is not a one trick pony because although I like ponies very much, just having it walk you around, or even trot you around, is super extremely lame when you know you could be cantering instead. Cantering is so perplexingly wonderful and horrifying. That said, I really really wish he had not included a sex scene into it, and certainly not near the end like that. It was totally out of place and it added nothing. Don't make me roll my eyes at you, Coetzee. I enjoy that you don't shy away from writing about sex in your stories, and problems with sex, or problematic and immoral sex. But don't put it where it's completely out of place. :(

I also read another one of those Kenji Miyazawa stories. This time was 注文の多い料理店/The House of Many Orders, I read both the original Japanese and a super old English translation that uses weird things. I didn't understand as many words from the Japanese in this as I did with the previous story in this collection, but I at least managed to figure out they were going to be eaten like pages before they realized it themselves. :( It was also a much more normal story than the Mountaincat and Acorns, although I don't know if I ever posted about that. It involved a guy being dragged out to a place and told by this jerk cat to help him deal with these Acorns, who were arguing about who has the best stem and what constitutes the best stem (BIGGER IS BETTER! NO WAY SLIM AND SLENDER BABY) or some other disturbing thing like that. They might have been wearing socks or pants, too. I don't remember. Anyway, that was that. House of Many Orders was fine. Very easy to follow despite my lack of kanjibulary, but also very normal for a short story for a kid. I guess not everyone can be Oscar Wilde, or I guess for Kenji Miyazawa I should probably say not everything can or should be Night on the Galactic Railroad.

And just today I finished Steinbeck's The Red Pony. I kept thinking about the book for months after I almost bought it but bought The Pearl instead. So I didn't read any Steinbeck until I went back, resolved to find that 100 page copy of The Red Pony I'd failed to buy previously. It was really nostalgic for me at horsey parts, since I used to read all of the horse books that ever horsed around, and it was kind of heartbreaking at times. In a very subdued way, if that makes sense. I thought it was great that the horrible things that happened weren't followed up with some kind of revelation that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL AFTER ALL because that's not actually how it works. And when a good thing happened it was just like. Just kidding that wasn't happy, that was bittersweet, at best. And the last chapter was reminding me a lot of some of the stuff I got out of Your Fathers, Where are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?. And yo, that spoke to me a lot. Loved this book and now hyped for Steinbeck.

I've also been slowly reading through a book Walrus sent me, Leslie H. Whitten's Moon of the Wolf. It is bad, as everyone suspected. I have more thoughts but I'll save them for when I finish. I started the first volume of The Familiar too, and have mixed thoughts. I think the changes in his writing and formatting work really well in some, even most cases, but there's been one or two that just seemed like, instead of adding anything, he just decided to do a thing because he can, so it ends up being kind of annoying. I'm not very far yet, though, and don't have a good grasp on anything yet.

[Rhiannon]

I finally read Steinbeck's The Pearl. It was nice, but I really am glad that I decided not to read any Steinbeck until I got The Red Pony.

When I was walking home from the state fair (NO HORSES BEYOND THIS POINT sign scared me away) I ran into a bunch of people who weren't even white, pushing bibles on me. I said no thanks to the bible, and this Asian lady told me to take this other book. She said take this at least two times so I took it. It also saved me from further biblepushings (more were waiting under the bridge I had to cross under). Since I brought it home I decided to read it. It's called Basic Elements of the Christian Life Volume One by Witness Lee & Watchman Nee. Unexpected authors. I was reading it and noticed the edge of the first page was folded back, so I unfolded it... They hid a trapezoid growth on the page with machine precision. How do you even... whatever. It kind of creeped me out with all its mentions of using the blood of Christ, and then by the end I thought it was interesting, because of this part:

We are always considering what is right or what is wrong. We think that if something is wrong, we should not do it, but if something is right, we must do it. This is not the way. Right and wrong is the teaching of religion. If we are acting according to religion, then Christ is of no value.

I wouldn't be against reading a volume 2, to be honest.

After that I finished Walrus's grandmother's(?) book, Moon of the Wolf by Leslie H. Whitten. This was bad. And oddly seemed to try hard not to be racist. That was kind of impressive, since this book is like super old. It had a lot of technical problems in its writing, and also some strange things like using "polyglot" to describe a breed of dog... which I think is unacceptable in any era, but it felt right. Also, phone was encephalitis. Just saying.

I started Cervantes' Don Quixote. Using the Edith Grossman translation, for those curious. This is so hilarious and awful. Like, you're laughing at hilarious events but you feel like you're a terrible person for finding it amusing. That's what kind of book this is. I read like 100 pages when I meant to just read the first few chapters. I like it.

I'm still reading through The Familiar really slowly. It's just not really catching my attention at all anymore. Might start one of these other books Walrus sent me, especially now that he finally sent me the Amityville Horror.

[Dr Strum]

I've been working on Crime and Punishment for a few months now. Almost finished finally, and loving it, I just don't have enough time to put into it. It's so dense that I have to sit down with at least an hour in mind to read it... And not during the day or I fall to sleep and my pleasant reading time becomes a nap.

But I've also been reading other things on the side, mostly a fuckton of comics. Really been on Alan Moore and Rick Remender kicks these past few months, and I blazed through the first three trades of Saga (Brian K Vaughn) last week.

[Rhiannon]

I read Animal Farm like last month and thought it was fine. Except the ending where I still can't decide if I think it was being unnecessarily heavy-handed (in an insulting way, like "you're too stupid to get the point so look at this") or if it was just trying to put a weird and disturbing visual image in your mind. Maybe if my mental images didn't just look like a fuzzy black and white TV images with purple tints it would be easier to make that decision. I didn't read the Huxley book Vahn was talking about, but I did read Brave New World and found it way harder to get through than Animal Farm despite them being similar lengths. It's not like Brave New World was using tough language or anything, either, there was just something very unengaging to me about the entire story even though the ideas in it were really interesting. I don't know if that's relevant to what anyone was talking about but CONVERSATION

Anyway, I also read Frankenstein in October and that was good. Like, really good. Surprisingly good, because I found the first third or so rather dull. I also found the ending here questionable. Like, why would [censored] [censored] THEN instead of doing it earlier? While reading I thought the only reason it wasn't happening was because it was not seen as an option, but then it happened. Maybe I'm trying to use too much logic to try to make sense of something that was definitely completely driven by emotions. But anyway, when it was good it was so, so good. Also made me wonder if the kind of storytastical structure it had is/was actually a thing, too. The whole mystery/buildup --> chapters of single person handing out revelations by telling their entire life story --> things happening structure happened in the exact same way in Fevre Dream, but with vampires and much less personal anguish.

I also read Ice Whale which was awful. Embarrassingly awful. I don't remember Jean Craighead George's random wolf books I read as a kid being terrible like this whale book was. All it's got going for it is the colorful cover art. There was some Chinese proverbs book thing I read too, and all I learned from that was that Chinese proverbs are stupider than Japanese proverbs, which are sometimes stupider than English proverbs, which are already the stupidest things in the world.

I need to go back to Les Miserables before I start forgetting the story like I did with other books that I didn't finish within a year of starting...

[Frisk]

I read The Scar over the last few weeks in between games and work. Quite fantastic. I might have mentioned it before, but the authors, Sergey and Marina Dyachenko, also wrote a novella called [/i]The Burned Tower[i]. It is also pretty good. It's originally in Russian, so the translation can be very literal at times, and at other times it uses really beautiful language. It's a fantasy, set in a fantasy world, but the focus is limited almost solely to the protagonist's growth and development. It is not a story about a hero. It has wandering godlike figures, mages, cults, and a curse that must be broken.

[Dr Strum]

It's not like Brave New World was using tough language or anything, either, there was just something very unengaging to me about the entire story even though the ideas in it were really interesting. I don't know if that's relevant to what anyone was talking about but CONVERSATION

It was very sterile. Which is half a result of Huxley's writing style, half a result of the atmosphere he was trying to evoke for his dystopia. Did you notice how the language changed when he visited the "savages?"

Like, why would [censored] [censored] THEN instead of doing it earlier?

Um. Maybe use spoiler tags and then I can figure out what [censored][censored] means and we can discuss it lol. I recommend giving Paradise Lost a go and then rereading Frankenstein, as Shelley drew heavily on Milton's masterpiece for Frankenstein.

I haven't been doing a whole lot of reading RECENTLY, but I eventually finished Crime and Punishment, and that's part of the reason I haven't been reading: I've been recovering. Read a lot of comic books recently (been on a huge Remender kick) plus the second part of Persepolis (even more depressing than the first part, but at least there was some sort of hint of hope in the ending).

When I was traveling I read Ready Player One which is a dystopian love song to the eighties. Seriously. It was entertaining if not my typical jam. Going to be a movie soon I hear?

Just started Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and two chapters in I'm already loving it. This is how I want to write. THIS.

[Frisk]

I finished Shadow of the Torturer a few weeks back and moved on to the second one. I also read tremendously slow. The books use really old archaic terminology often, so if you like finding out there are words like meretices and cannily and threnodic, and then subsequently looking them up, then you're in the right place. The first half of the book takes place over roughly one year or two, and the second half takes place in roughly two days. The book does neat things, I promise, like having a narrator who has a perfect memory. There are long philosophical soliloquies, too! And they're not driving home a point, they're just meandering musings!

The series comes off as medieval fantasy, but it's actually a blend between that and science-fiction; there are just the smallest hints of that in the first book. I liked it, but I tend to like anything told through a first-person narrative.