Books, CAN YOU READ?! Options

[Dr Strum]

Finished Wobblies and Zapatistas, definitely drawing some inspiration and the idea for my current read: The Punishment of Virtue by Sarah Chayes. Pretty awesome book so far.

[Rhiannon]

I finished Irish Myths and Legends by Lady Augusta Gregory today! And to think, I've only been reading it for... a year or something. It's also the first book I've actually finished this year because this year was awful. I'm also about 1/4 through What is the What by Dave Eggers, though my progress with that has been really slow too. And I'm probably going to start the second volume of Dreamsongs today, because I need to read something but can't pay attention to non-short stories anymore apparently.

[Dr Strum]

I finished The Punishment of Virtue a couple of weeks ago, then read Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzales. Both are really good, nonfiction. The former was an autobiographical account of Sarah Chayes' time in Afghanistan from October 2001 - 2005, mixed with discussions of historical Afghanistan, Pakistani-relations, the Taliban, tribal life, corruption, etc. The latter was a kind of whirlwind tour of the Americas, focusing on US-Latin American relations (particularly Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America), starting with the beginning of colonization and nationhood, how the nations influenced each other culturally, politically, socially and spending much historical discussion pointing out how the US is to blame for all of its own "immigration problems."

Currently reading The Horse, The Wheel and Language by David W. Anthony. Also still slowly plucking away at Pope's translation of Homer's Illiad (currently on book 6).

[Rhiannon]

I'm half way through What is the What now and yesterday I got/started The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski. It probably won't take very long to finish it since half the pages have no words, but something tells me there is more than one way to read this. CAN I TAKE ALL THESE QUOTES FROM ONE COLOURPERSON AND REARRANGE THEM TO MAKE SENSE WITHOUT ANY QUOTES FROM OTHERCOLOURPEOPLE?

EDIT: NO I JUST FINISHED THE FIFTY YEAR SWORD IT'S GOOD, AT LEAST BETTER THAN ONLY REVOLUTIONS

I also read, uh... the first story in Dreamsongs Volume II. Yeah. Not much to say right now. I just hope there are more stories like the horror ones in the first volume. Those were awesome.

This post has been edited by Rhiannon: Oct 17 2012, 06:46 PM

[Dr Strum]

I loved OR, but I'm definitely excited to see Danielewski perform T50YS next weekend. Then I might decide if I wanna buy and read the book. (I heard the iOS version of the book is animated...?)

Also, addendum to my last post: I also read The Heart of Whiteness by Robert Jensen. About interpreting and confronting white privilege. Pretty good, it was more of a personal account of his experiences dealing with white privilege, but with lots of take away.

[Dr Strum]

Didn't get to finish The Horse, The Wheel and Language before the library demanded it back, but I got from it what I wanted at least. Really good if you have an interest in the history of PIE (diachronic linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, etc).
I did, however, finish Naked Economics which was okay overall. Definitely reshaped some of my questions on the world, but some of the ideas presented, I felt, unnecessarily minimized other fields' contributions and relevance to the search for the answers.
Somewhere around book eleven of Homer's Illiad.

Not doing much reading in general this month due to NANOWRIMO.

[Dr Strum]

Clearly I've been reading too much. Almost finished with Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts. Definitely enjoying it so far. My next read will probably be Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, if the library ever gets me my copy.

[Dr Strum]

I finished Raw Shark Texts last week, loved it. I think it's the first novel I've read since finishing Kafka on the Shore last year.

Still plodding through the Illiad while I wait for my library to tell me they have Pedagogy of the Oppressed in.

[Dr Strum]

Well, an update, three months later:

Finished Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was awesome, but I really need to read it again (kind of rushed through it).

I also read Huxley's Brave New World for the first time and lurved it. Been reading from an Edgar Allen Poe collection I picked up at the used bookstore (I first got into reading through Poe - my dad introduced me and from there I picked up Goosebumps and Stephen King).

And just a bit ago I finally finished the Iliad. As my friend warned me, it was a pretty big waste of time. Before continuing on to the Odyssey, I'm probably going to read The Great Gatsby, much more Poe, and I would like to crack open this Shakespeare collection I've had lying around.

[Rhiannon]

Maybe I should post since I've been reading. I finished What is the What (it was good) and proceeded to reread all of Deltora Quest because CHILDHOOD. Don't really remember what else I read in 2012 aside from these four collections of flash fiction (all of which I've read before anyway).

And then 2013 happened, and I read a fun short story by Nabokov about how they punched out this guy and then kept him locked up in their bathroom for years and years and years. Also read two things by Sarah Manguso, The Guardians and The Two Kinds of Decay. I ALSO READ AN ENTIRE PAGE OF The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wooow. Also attempted to read 元気がでる魔法の口ぐせ again, and had much greater success than when I first got it. I'm confident I'll be able to read it all without dictionaries before the year is over.

Currently reading A Hologram for the King by Dave Eggers. Probably going to finish it today, actually. Not sure if it's because Dave Eggers reminded me that I like reading, I just have more time, or if I'm just not under all the stress and depression I was in St. Cloud or what, but reading is happening more and that makes me happy. And probably going to start Le Fanu's The House by the Churchyard after I finish.

[Dr Strum]

Didn't like the Shakespeare collection I had. (PDFs r teh s uck)
But, since the last post I've read The Great Gatsby which I thought was fantastic, especially because Fitzgerald wrote the way I speak (Minnesota hurrah!), and Macbeth which was also quite fantastic, especially because Shakespeare wrote the way I'd like to speak.

Now about half way through Voltaire's Candide - okay, so far, with significant jabs at Leibniz, but on the whole depressing. After this I'm planning to read King Lear.

[Frisk]

Clash of Kings- Oh Theon, you don't want none of that, no sir.

But, since the last post I've read The Great Gatsby which I thought was fantastic, especially because Fitzgerald wrote the way I speak (Minnesota hurrah!)

How's that, old sport?

This post has been edited by Noir: Jun 9 2013, 04:27 AM

[Dr Strum]

I can't really be specific, it's hard to pinpoint, but the rhythm and ordering of his words just feels natural to me in a midwestern way.

But since that post I have read some books. Can't really remember which ones. I finished Candide, it was okay, and right now i'm in the middle of Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality. Kind of good, but unnecessarily wordy.

[Rhiannon]

Reading is disappointing again.

I reread the first half of Pnin on an airplane because that's the only place I've ever read the book so it seemed right. I couldn't really focus on it as well this time, though, so I didn't finish it despite both flights being double the length of the two flights I'd initially read it to completion on.

I started the first volume of Sara Yajima's Tales of Rebirth light novels (probably terrible) because waiting until I actually know the majority of the kanji it uses is for people who didn't get bored after learning the first 100 grade 3 kyouiku kanji. It's going okay, I guess. I've managed to read a page a day before deciding I've spent way too much time and stopping. If I keep this up I'll finish the prologue tomorrow! Woo!

Started Brave New World yesterdayish, but it's hard to pay attention to right now so all I've read is the introduction and the first chapter. Actually, reading it was easy until I started chapter 1.

Also been continuing reading Dreamsongs Volume II, and I'm disappointed in it. I mean these Haviland Tuf things are pretty cool, but today I read that Twilight Zone script he wrote and it's just... I don't like reading screenplays, and I don't think it was very good. Next is another screenplay so I decided to check the table of contents to see when I might get to something I'll like more. I see no horror section! That was like the best part of volume I. Even though I probably will like other stuff in this, I feel discouraged now.

And then there's The House by the Churchyard. I'm on chapter 20, which seems really far until I check and remember that this has 99 chapters (UNLESS HE PULLS AN IN A GLASS DARKLY AGAIN AND HAS ONE CHAPTER NUMBER INEXPLICABLY SKIPPED). I can only handle so much learning vocabulary literally nobody uses (like moe) and weird guys acting weird before I get depressed at the complete lack of creepy atmosphere. Man, the back of my copy is even like "FROM THE OUTSET IT HAS SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE OF FOREBODING AND IT IS SUCH A HAUNTING TALE" but nope.

[Rhiannon]

WOW GUYS READING'S OKAY AGAIN PROBABLY BECAUSE OF DEAD IRISH GUYS WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT.

I finished The House by the Churchyard. It got much better suddenly around chapter 40, thankfully. Unfortunately, though, I feel like there was too much stuff I missed or didn't understand because I never managed to keep all the characters straight (I mean this in two different ways). I think by the end I only sort of had good ideas of who maybe three characters were, and I had still forgotten important things involving them from earlier in the book. This is the only book that's managed to cause me comprehension problems from not being able to keep track of who everyone is... others like A Game of Thrones caused some problems, but they were resolved before I missed anything other than nonessential details and foreshadowing. Definitely need to reread this to have a real opinion. I guess before I read Finnegans Wake, since that's apparently secretly in love with this book.

I also read through Sarah Manguso's "poetry" collections, Siste Viator and The Captain Lands in Paradise. "Poetry" because I guess people have yelled at her for her poetry being too prosey, and y'know, I don't really know what makes a thing poetry anymore. Siste Viator was really good, and The Captain Lands in Paradise was definitely not as good, but on the other hand it was a lot more humorous. I wasn't expecting it to be as good, anyway, since she wrote it first.

I read Doorways in Dreamsongs Volume II finally. Another screenplay. But it made me feel okay and secure about not liking reading screenplays because I didn't like reading it but at least could recognize that it was good. NOT KNOWING KISS. GOING NOW, KISSING LATER. I read the introduction before the Wild Cards thing, but no more than that. Wild Cards does sound more interesting though, now that I've seen it described as "mosaic novels."

What else... I read a few chapters of Brave New World. Still not into it yet, but it's definitely more interesting now. I've also been reading through these poems in this COMPLETE TALES AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE book I've had since my age was probably still one digit, or close to it. I read through them all before, back when I got it, but I've forgotten everything and definitely didn't get most of these anyways. SOME OF THESE ARE ABOUT SEX I JUST KNOW IT

And today I started reading Le Fanu's A Lost Name because it's the first thing in the last volume of this huge collection of his work and I decided to read the volumes in reverse order because I don't actually have 1 or 3 yet and 2 and 3 include Uncle Silas and The House by the Churchyard, both of which I am totally willing to reread but rereading all those Chapelizod shenanigans so soon would probably literally destroy me. Also it's apparently a "sensation novel" which Wikipedia appears to be telling me is most likely trashy. Either way, someone said "He came into my room at dead of night, like a great cock" and I'm already making speedy progress towards reading the entire first half of the book as if every male is secretly homosexual. JUST LIKE WITH THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD AND THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.