What are you reading right now?

I began Finnegans Wake today.

I now understand the first 2 pages, kind of.

Agape Agape by Gaddis and "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin. Also Lord of the Rings as nighttime reading.

I'm ~360 pages into Stephen King's 11/22/63 and still really loving it. It's a very different kind of book for him.

started All the Pretty Horses (McCarthy) last night. I craved the West and boy am I getting it

I am planning on rereading the first two books of that trilogy and then finally reading the third one in the near future. But it might be more like the distant future. It's a plan.

Or I could finish Dizzie's memoir and simuread it with you. THE PLAN COULD BE THE NOW ?

WOG I'd love that, when (tentatively) will you be reddy

70 pages left in book, no plans other than playoffs and an exam tomorrow morning... Tuesday?

I abide

I think you should not cut your facial hair until you've finished the book.


I hit a wall somewhere in the middle of All the Pretty Horses and couldn't get past it.
Finished most of Lost in the Funhouse but I will admit to skimming Menelaiad and Anonymiad and had to simply respect those chapters from a distance.

Though bits like this were clever but exhausting:
"'(")('(("What?"))')(")'
"'"'"'Why?' I repeated," I repeated," I repeated," I repeated," I repeated," I repeat.

(the parenthesis are supposed to be as raised and tiny as the quotation marks but I don't know how to do that)
I enjoyed Life Story, LiTF, Echo, Ambrose His Mark--actually found most of the rest enjoyable, even if I didn't get what was going on. Amazing imagination going on.

I've spent about five and a half hours so far. I'm about five and a half pages in. But I've enjoyed every moment of it and expect that to continue.

Also Bob Brandom has the best fucking beard. If he lets me touch it I shall consider my graduate school experience an unqualified success, whatever else happens.

read Echo and Glossolalia out loud and you'll start to understand them.

Man. The Wheel of Time series gets better and better every time I read it.

Taking a stab at Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. We'll see where it takes me or how far down the road I go.

Started Ham on Rye, the first fiction I've read since wading through Another Country months ago and my first Bukowski. First 25 pages make it hard to put the rest down. I really wanted to pick up Post Office but this is all they had

Your opinion is wrong and bad.

Wouldn't go quite as far as Kahless but I didn't much care for it.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

it's so fucking good, but I feel like an asshole because there are so many things it has in common with infinite jest that I keep wanting to point out. specifically a ridiculous near-future full of environmental disaster and a more pervasive and permissive entertainment industry (also a bunch of smaller things, like the fact that jimmy and crake like to play tennis)

Well, 30 pages in and I have hot and cold feelings between "Eh, whatever" and "Yes, amazing."
My wife used to teach it to her high school English classes and I'm frankly glad I'm reading it on my own terms. I'm really only doing it to gear up for a possible second run at Ulysses.

I'm about halfway through Infinite Jest. I think I've been reading it for 5 months. Holy shit.

What about Russell's History of Western Philosophy?

FUCK Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

You might get some useful recommendations in a similar but less shitty vein here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/recommended-histories-of-western-philosophy.html

you better not be hatin on russell

hi i'm robert brandom and i know nothing about semantics

He knows a lot about growing beards, which is why he graces my avatar.

But by all means, continue praising the guy whose most noteworthy accomplishment is failing to prove that 1+1=2.

sorry for thinking induction is possible

Please elucidate to what you are referring with that comment.

no idea, i haven't read russell's book yet

russell backwards is husserl

mind = blown

I don't think I'd recommend Russel's history as an intro to philosophy book. Russel is p cool though. I love the paper where he gets all grumpy with Strawson.

Bertrand Russell is a total dude.

Russell is a fuckhead worthless shittitties

Principia is worthless?

Whitehead contributed everything good in it. Everything.

definitely reading history of western philosophy just to make pnoom mad (he will be mad [don't deny it pnoom {he'll deny it}])

I also would have thought that Russell's paradox wasn't a worthless observation.

it made frege very sad, a worthwhile endeavour

Russell's teapot also happens to be the easiest way to explain burden of proof to morons.

Speaking of Russell, I recall this being a decent summer read a long time back:
The World As I Found It by Bruce Duffy

I ain't even denying that I'm mad

Dracula.
Pretty bad, brah.

Finished All the Pretty Horses. Now polishing off the last couple short stories of DFW's Oblivion. The difference in subject matter and style is jarring. All these thoughts! All this punctuation!

Finished Oblivion. I enjoyed it, but I felt like almost every story had a "Why was this story written?" that was just barely eluding me. Now reading Robin Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. It's cool being a jazz fan and liking the big names because there's books written about them.

Cat's Cradle

Martin Buber: I and Thou
Elaine Scarry: On Beauty and Being Just

I took a detour from Portrait to check out William Gibson's Neuromancer. I don't know why I keep buying/checking out these kinds of books. I really can't stomach more than 30 or 40 pages.

I really liked Neuromancer when I read it, although the part with the space rastafaris was kinda stupid.

Finished Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man yesterday. I thought the shift to journal form in the last couple of pages was weird at first, but then I realized what it meant and got a boner. Great book.