What are you reading right now?

Fuck I need to get moving on Portrait. It's not like it's a long book, and I'm just puttering around. I'm all the way up to chapter 2 after two weeks.

dude book takes forever. I felt the same when I read Crying of Lot 49 - I saw the book and figured "170 pages fuck that I can probably do this in like 2 days" wrong faggots it's just not easy reading, baby

also, in the past two weeks I finished McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, DeLillo's Point Omega, Dominguez's House of Paper, and almost done with Jean Toomer's Cane. Reading The Instructions by Adam Levin (1,030 pgs) at a steady pace, hoping to finish it before Summer of Ulysses 2k12.

I think I read CoL49 in three days because once I got about halfway through I could not put it down. Agree that it's not easy reading tho.

So I finally finished Stephen King's 11/22/63. Really, really fantastic book. It's so incredibly different in tone and feel for him that I'm surprised at how well he pulled it off, frankly. If I were to rank it among his books, I'd probably rank it juuuuuust behind The Shining to make it my third favorite of his (The Stand being at the top of the mountain). And for those who complain that he often doesn't know how to end his stories, it's got a great ending. It's happy and sad in just the right mixture in just the right way. Highly recommended to occasional fans of his work who often feel cheated by poor endings.

Started The Girl Who Played With Fire today. I already know that I wish there were more than three of these books.

Reading Nausea for the second time. I understand more of it now than three years ago, but it's not as good as I remembered. I guess the last time I thought it was really good because I didn't understand it, being an indie fgt in high school. I liked the part about people not f*cking immediately since going on shitty dates is what gives yr life meaning.

better hope you don't throw up all over the book

forty pages into my first noam chomsky book

what the fuck america

dfw's a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again. just finished "e unibus pluram: television and us fiction" and holy fuck.

in the near future I plan on reading:
cormac mccarthy's blood meridian
haruki murakami's blind willow, sleeping woman

Reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Holy fuck, what an incredibly hilarious book...maybe the funniest book I've ever read. Really well-written too, interesting characters, nice anti-war commentary. Even though it's a "classic" I feel like this book is underrated in the American literary canon. dudes should read it

Next I want to read some Nabokov. Should I start with Lolita?

Lolita is a fine place to start for Nabokov.

Started The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

I need some book recommendations, should I ask for them here or start a new thread?

Now, so I actually do contribute to this thread, I am currently reading Game of Thrones. I have never read the series before and since watching the show I wanted to get into the book, and I must say, the book is much better (not that I thought it wouldn't be).

Really? I read 80 pages of the first book and decided I would never touch them again because the writing was gross.

Now, maybe the cinematography, etc. in the show is just as bad, but as I'm less sensitive to that, at least at this point, I find the TV show to be a much better way to engaging with the story.

Really? I read 80 pages of the first book and decided I would never slouch them again because the writing was boss.

Now, maybe the cinematography, etc. in the show is just as rad, but as I'm less sensitive to that, at least at this point, I find the TV show to be a much lesser way of engaging with the story.

Goddamnit, 5/8, if you're going to tell me there was an error, don't fucking post what I sent you.

Well, I do love the show as well, it is the reason that I started reading the books. What draws me to the books in the history behind everything which is often hard to understand in the show when one hasn't first read the books.

I do need to read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, I did enjoy the film. How about a humorous book with excellent dialog? I've been trying to do some writing recently and always have a hard time when it comes to dialog, especially funny dialog that isn't cliche, so I've been trying to find good examples of this.

Blu, read John Dies at the End by David Wong. Funniest book I've ever read, just ahead of Hitchhiker's Guide (which also has great dialogue)

I actually do have John Dies at the End on my to-read list, I'll bump it up to number one.

I've jumped back into A Feast For Crows, which is fun for about five pages before it feels like I'm choking down a dried sea anemone every time I pick it up. God damn, what happened to the grab-your-meat-and-holler quality of the first couple of books? How did GRRM live with himself while popping this one out?

I also started The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi which is pretty cool in its opening chapters so far.
Still need to finish Vollmann's Poor People, which has been great, but well reality and all. I need frequent breaks.

I went to my library's book sale and picked up Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Stephen King's Full Dark, No Stars, and Gene Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun. The stack of books by my bedside is getting ridiculous.

read anything else by Vollmann? Also could you talk some about Poor People? take my commands.

fret buy shelf

So far I have read You Bright and Risen Angels, The Ice Shirt, The Royal Family, Argall, and The Rainbow Stories. I feel like I've read a ton of his work already, and yet this seems to barely scratch the surface. I plan on consuming most of his work, but as great as I think his writing is, it is like a triple-bock beer sometimes and I have to go very slowly. On my shelf yet I have Europe Central, Imperial, Rising Up and Rising Down (single volume abridgement), and Kissing the Mask.

I don't know if I could talk too well on Poor People yet. It is scattered--he jumps around wildly in location and chronology in order to focus the material on a structure of ideas he has about poverty. It's a bit maddening because he just offers a window to the reader to see the people he has seen and talked to, and guides the reader's thoughts along certain paths without feeding the tendency towards judgement. The book contains a lot of photographs in the back that he personally took of all of the people he visited. It's been pretty fascinating so far. It's a slippery book. It's going to need re-reading in order for me to really collect some good coherent thoughts on his methods and conclusions.

Starting Michael Thompson's Life and Action now that I'm done with McDowell's Mind and World.

A Game of Thrones
The Loser - Thomas Bernhard

Finished Sagan's Cosmos last night.

Righteous, I've been really interested in Vollman since I read an interview with him in the Paris Review where he talks about rescuing a 12-year-old Taiwanese sex slave and also hanging out exclusively with hoodrats and hookers. I'm probably gonna start with The Ice Shirt next year, how'd you like it / any suggestions/amendments?

also, 20% through with The Instructions, it's rull rull rull good. I've laughed out loud quite a few times. I've read some "hey, even precocious kids don't talk like that" reviews, but there are already one or two vaguely magical-realism moments in the book that send it even further into fictional territory than I anticipated. A lot of Roth influence in the prose, especially in a one-off chapter that was like forty pages of Gurion describing a Shabbos with his family and friends. tl;dr, Jews.

Got about 4/5 through Charles Dickens' Great Expectations
taking a quick break with a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis called One Minute to Midnight

hot damn are we educated folk or what

never let me go. so far it's a boring book about kids at a boarding school where a lot of vagueness happens/is felt

Finished JG Ballard's complete short stories collection. After that an account of the Iron Column during the Spanish Civil War by Abel Paz. Then The Diceman because it was recommended by Mark Hollis and William Bennett so it had to be good and it was. Now Infinite Jest even though I got it months ago. My job is great because it isn't much of a job at all. So I read.

right now i'm into 90s girl magazines with sex horoscopes, fashion tips for fat women and lots of inspirational stuff. gonna try and get through some of gramsci's work over the summer.

can anyone recommend me some gide also. i read strait is the gate earlier this year and loved it cuz i love dichotomies except for the false ones.

fucking right idot

I just browsed the front of The Instructions, but I liked what I tasted, and will have to give the rest of it a read.

For Vollmann suggestions, it seems like the best route would be to say try reading one of his books that looks the most intriguing, and if you don't like it, try a different one. I have no idea what brought me to You Bright and Risen Angels other than encountering him maybe through Pynchon and Joyce and other authors on this site http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/vollmann.html. It's been too long to remember. It was tough, and I read it during a summer when I had little responsibilities weighing on me. I don't know that I could read it now. The Ice-Shirt is similar in difficulty, but definitely has more focus, being a part of the Seven Dreams. I tried The Ice Shirt once, and couldn't deal with it. Then I read The Royal Family and Argall, along with bits of Rising Up and Rising Down and snippets of other books, and got much more of a feel for his voice and style, and was then able to understand his approach to mythology and how it fit into his North American Landscapes epic.

I'd say if you liked the hooker/hoodrat angle to his experience, I would start with The Royal Family. You're not intimidated by size, and the characters, dialogue, and overall narration in this one are more immediately identifiable/accessible. I mean, how can you not be interested after an exchange like this:

But I did think The Ice Shirt was pretty fucking great when I got to the top of the mountain and down again. Anyone not ready for some mind-bending, though, would likely be put off by Vollmann for good.

I'm reading Thomas Pynchon's V. Also slowly but surely making my way through Les Miz. Am jealous of both authors' abilities. Love how V goes from goofy to heartwrenching with a couple perfect sentences, and Hugo writes the loveliest cliffhangers.

Also I now own 3 parts of Les Recherches des Temps Perdus. Maybe someday I'll start reading them.

Literally just started this! Post ur thoughts.

Finished Catch-22, and it is sooooo goooood. Now reading V., as just mentioned.

Additionally reading Kundera's The Art of the Novel, which is siq as fuq so far. I bought my girlfriend a copy of The Braindead Megaphone (essays) by George Saunders. Read six or seven of them and I was in love. Saunders is so creative and witty it makes me blush.

Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk.

I forgot how much I love this man and his writing. Probably going to go through his whole bibliography again after this. I never got to finish Tell-All and never read Damned, either.

So I finished The Dark Tower series.
Fuck.

Also just read Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design. While I don't pretend to understand absolutely everything he talks about, there's some really fucking fascinating theories in there. Holy mind bending shit.

I think next on my list is High Fidelity, on my wife's recommendation. After that, who knows.

I was at Printer's Row LitFest the other day and overheard this bit of dialogue:

Guy: Guh, I hate Stephen King's writing style.
Gal: What about it?
Me: (internal) maybe I'll butt in and mention how he can't end a book to save his life
Guy: Like, he only writes in run-on sentences...
Me: (internal) nvm
Guy: and he goes off on all these random tangents that have literally nothing to do with the story. Also, you know words like "can't" and how they have apostrophes? Sometimes he just doesn't do that.
Gal: So he's like a modern-day texter?
Guy. Yeah. Fucking idiot.
Me: (internal) Fucking idiot.

Very funny. Quick and engaging read. None of those run-on sentences or dumb tangents.

Never Let Me Go turned out awesome. I love books with so many possible subtexts and readings but where it's never clearly one or another. also the coming-of-age tack in this one is super poignant. gonna watch the movie soon because Carey Mulligan is the biggest celebrity crush I've ever had.

gonna read Dubliners right quick before the summer of ulyssers

That book is fucking bleak.

Good lord. If there's anything to criticize SK about it's certainly none of that, and I don't even know what the fuck he's talking about regarding apostrophes.

On that note, I started looking at Full Dark, No Stars at bedtime, which I picked up at my library's book sale, and so far the first story is fucking awful.

I'm over halfway through A Feast For Crows and even though a lot of it has been speed-readable and terrible, there have been enough interesting scenes and interactions to make it worthwhile chugging through in order to get to the next book.

The second story is much better than the first. The third (which is very quick) is okay. Never got to the fourth.

Just started The Eyre Affair last night. I remember vaguely some people here saying they enjoyed it, so I picked it up at a used book sale for $2.

Anybody read Snow Crash?

this thread

First Neal Stephenson book I read and I enjoyed it. Everything of his I tried after that, not so much.