the books we read

[red]

Started the Dharma Bums this evening.  Any other Kerouac (aside from On the Road) worth reading?

[aMillionDreams]

Started the Dharma Bums this evening.  Any other Kerouac (aside from On the Road) worth reading?

I enjoyed Big Sur.  It's by a much older Kerouac when he is no longer hitching, he is mainly staying at his mother's house, getting drunk on port wine, and taking visits from famous friends.  Kerouac finds a way to make getting drunk in his moms backyard a mystical, nearly religious experience.  

[sidney]

My buddy gave me a sweet photography book for my b-day. It's by a Canadian guy who lives somewhere in Europe. Anyways, i'm not a huge photography fan, but i think this book is pretty rockin'.

Just wanted to pass along the news. Here's a link I found.

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/706254
:)

[dragonboy]

Not a lot of reading involved but I've been after this book for a while. Found a copy in Germany via amazon marketplace sellers that didn't cost the earth.

[Angry Ewok]

Just finished A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, now I'm reading Dubliners. Even only a chapter into Dubliners, I think I'll enjoy this much more than Portrait (which was good).

[Crispy]

I'm on a Post-Apocalyptic fiction kick now, I read King's The Stand, McCarthy's The Road, just finished Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, and am now on The Book of Dave by Will Self.

[Angry Ewok]

How is The Stand?

[Crispy]

Well, it *is* a Stephen King book, but it's excellent. I read it once back in high school, which would have been the original version, and loved it. He "rewrote" it around 1990 and added a bunch of superfluous and now dated material, but some good stuff too. It's great storytelling, but as far as scariness, it's just mystic hocus-pocus, as opposed to The Road, or Oryx and Crake, which are actually conceivable in reality, and hence, far more frightening.

[Bumbeli]

Just finished A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man, now I'm reading Dubliners. Even only a chapter into Dubliners, I think I'll enjoy this much more than Portrait (which was good).

I got myself the portrait a while back, never got to read it though.
But I've reread Ulysses in english recently, hard read but rewarding as ever.

And, even though it's not what I usually read, I read "The road" last week after all the chit-chat on this board, and it was quite good and I couldn't really put it away while reading, thank good it's a pretty shor one, even less sleep would probably kill me

[TheBigChicken]

The Otis Redding Story   Steve Turner
Bad Moon Rising The Unofficial History Of CCR   Hank Bordowitz

[pawpaw]

The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd

I read this one like 7 or 8 years ago, just started reading it again last night. It's a fun book, fiction, about an Art Student going to "State".

I have a pretty bad memory, so it's great that I can re-read SOME books after several years and really not have a clue what will happen.

I also just finished After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, and I really wasn't all that into it. I'm a big fan of his too!

[Ruckus]

Also re-reading Winds of War and War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk.

Quite possibly the greatest, most epic work of historical fiction (and definitely of WWII).  It's rare that I reopen books but these two were easy to after a 4 year break.

[Angry Ewok]

Finished James Joyce's Dubliners. Really, really enjoyed it! Took me a while to get through A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, but breezed through the short stories with ease. Great, diverse characters in a very interesting time period (days of Irish Nationalism)...

Now I'm on Palahnuik's Diary. Chuck is really starting to bore me, all of his novels remind me of this little smiley,



I'm intrigued with the story, but all of the characters, all of them, are always woe-is-me, whiney and bitchy, and they all seemingly have the exact same thought process and dialogue. What was wonderful and original in Fight Club was sort of familiar in Choke, but now its just worn out...

I've got a few books headed my way.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge
Boone: A Biography
The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings Boxed Set

Also on the shelf is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far, and the remaining two volumes of Shelby Foote's Civil War Narrative.

[Angry Ewok]

Now I'm on Palahnuik's Diary. Chuck is really starting to bore me...

Done. Take out all of the stupid, repetitive shit and it's about 50 pages. And wow did those pages suck. This tidbit of a review says it well,

What isn't a confusing mess or a bizarre and stupid "curse" story is paint-by-numbers Palahniuk that any one of his fans could throw together without any help from the author. You've got your heavily repeated statements to drive his point home. His over-eagerness to share useless trivia he acquired while researching the book. His fragmented sentences and overly short chapter breaks. All things that are charming and amusing in his other books, but here they feel forced and pointless. It's almost as though Palahniuk is satirizing himself.

He's just tired, I mean, three books of this kind of shit - a cheap way to flesh out characters?

Without access to true chaos we'll never have true peace.
Parenthood being the opiate of the masses.
When people dance to fire alarms and gun shots, something is wrong.
Masochism is a valuable job skill.
Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.
It's the martyrdom of Saint Me.
In America, if your addiction isn't always new and improved, you're a failure.
All women have to do is get naked, and we give them all our money. I mean, why are we such slaves?
The magic of sexual addiction is you don't ever feel hungry or tired or bored or lonely.
Nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Art never comes from happiness
Every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married
The magic of sex is it's acquisition without the burden of possessions. No matter how many women you take home, there's never a storage problem.
We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
By the time you're thirty, your worst enemy is yourself.
How can it be prostitution if all the women were dead?
A good addiction takes the guesswork out of death.
The only thing that separates us from the animals...is we have pornography.
I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy.
(Insert word) isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.
Nobody can expect you to remember every near-death experience.

Like I said,

[TheBigChicken]

Trouble Man  The Life And Death Of Marvin Gaye    by Steve Turner
Lovesick Blues  The Life Of Hank Williams    by Paul Hemphill

[Soulshine]

My Horizontal Life - just finished

Are You There Vodka? Its Me, Chelsea - currently reading

both by Chelsea Handler and both have me laughing out loud!  ;D

[LEATHER KID]

I'm currently reading "Being Young" a biography of Neil written by his half sister Astrid.  Really slow start but im in the meat of the book now and I'm pretty captivated.  She did a lot of backup singing for Neil in the early 90's for him and the reader gets a lot of behind the scenes info.

[Penny Lane]

My Horizontal Life - just finished

Are You There Vodka? Its Me, Chelsea - currently reading

both by Chelsea Handler and both have me laughing out loud!  ;D

i LOVE my horizontal life....! i need to read her other one.

i just finished

Slam-Nick Hornby
Fight Club --Chuck P.
When you are engulfed in flames--David Sedaris

just starting

Pharoahs Army--tobias Wolfe

[Angry Ewok]

Last night I finished Volume 2 of Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative. This morning I started with Volume 3. I've been talking about taking a break from the war long enough to read something a little more lighter - but after taking down 2,000 pages, I'm eager to put away the last 1,000. I just know I'll have a huge sense of accomplishment once I've finally done it. This is a great, great series... It's really required reading for anyone interested in American History.


Waiting on my shelf...

Thomas Paine's Common Sense
Washington's Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge
Boone: A Biography
All the Pretty Horses
The Crossing
Cities Of The Plain
LOTR The Hobbit
LOTR Fellowship of the Ring
LOTR The Two Towers
LOTR Return of the King
Rainbow Six
A Bridge Too Far

[Soulshine]

Eat Pray Love

Making a Living While Making A Difference