@allegro , i cannot put into words how utterly incredible that book is, it its mind boggling variety of themes, styles, voices and types of narrative distance.
The author also has some kind of fucking preternatural grasp of the english language and vocabulary.
AND, a whole bunch of it centers around addiction.
I now understand why DFW fans seem elitist, because it's the "hardest" thing i've ever read (and i've read Ulysses and East of Eden and a bunch of shit like that.) I now understand why people say they wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone because i think you have to possess a certain intellect and also either be reasonably well versed in etymology or familiar with a lot of semi archaic words if you want to have to keep from reading it with a dictionary close by.
That being said, @kleiner352 possesses the requisite intellect and the aforementioned linguistic veracity, and he just read it also, and he thinks it's awful, self indulgent horse shit, so go figure.
Last edited by elevenism; 08-27-2016 at 02:51 PM.
Yeah well, remember, I have read some pretty difficult shit (archaic? we had to deconstruct Milton's "Paradise Lost and we had to spend weeks with friggin' "BEOWULF")) for a B.A. in English Lit. and the reviews I read of "IJ" pretty much agreed with @kleiner352 so it pushed it to my "meh" list. But I'm glad you were positively affected by it.
If you love that complicated stuff, go tackle Tolstoy's "War and Peace" with French and nicknames and a patronymic list ...
Last edited by allegro; 08-27-2016 at 04:24 PM.
ZOMG go to your room.
Here is a sample from this translation (because pretty much no undergrad can read Old English, but this maintains the rhythm [meter] of the original):
Last edited by allegro; 08-27-2016 at 03:59 PM.
I will say despite not enjoying Infinite Jest, I've seen plenty of people say their life changes due to it and how impacting it is. I wouldn't personally care to call it trash because I hate doing that with things and find it very dismissive but it just most certainly was not for me. Seems to be the kinda thing that either really, deeply resonates with you or absolutely fails to capture you.
I'm reading Atlas Shrugged to the sounds of Ghosts by NIN. They're a match made in soundtrack heaven.
Ghosts is really the perfect noise to block out noises.
Started The Gunslinger by Stephen King on my tablet until my tablet broke. Then I switched gears to Baudolino by Umberto Eco. Both great reads so far.
So many people talk about this book not being as enjoyable as the rest of the Tower series, but I really did fall in love with it from the start. Great to here you're enjoying the start of that incredible journey! In case you don't know, I'd highly recommend reading some other King inbetween books, because they all kinda interlock and it'll make a lot more sense as you go. Bare minimum, having read The Talisman, Insomnia, Hearts In Atlantis, 'Salem's Lot and The Stand will help with several aspects of the series making more sense to you.
I absolutely loved The Talisman, even more than The Stand. Of the books you listed I have yet to read Insomnia and Hearts In Atlantis. His forward to this edition told of how he had since come back to the entire Dark Tower series after completing it to make it more cohesive, so I'm excited to dig my way through them. I've since got a new tablet so I've been back into it. It very much has the scent of Talisman and Stand.
John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse" has long been my favorite short story.
I just got the collection, and i think it's really cool that the stories in the collection are thematically linked.
Also, the first story, "frame tale," is a fucking mobius strip onto which are printed the words "once upon a time there was a story that began" with fucking instructions to cut it out and assemble it, creating, of course, and endless loop (once upon a time there was a story that began once upon a time there was a story that began once upon a time...(ad infinitum.) Now if that's not avant garde artsy bullshit, i don't know what is
rereading Clive Barker's "The Great and Secret Show." This is a masterpiece. He's so under sung for his lyrical wit and satire because he gets tossed in the "horror author" bundle. The Great and Secret Show though... god, it's like a window into another world. After a while, you're not even reading a book anymore.
I am just finishing Lolita (thanks @kleiner352 . )
I've gotten a REALLY big kick out of it, and read it quite slowly to try to catch all of the legendary wordplay. And good god, there is a lot of it.
Next i think i'm going to try The Girl on the Train before moving on to White Noise by Don DeLillo. I haven't read anything that isn't billed as some type of intellectual masterpiece in a hot minute.
Sharp Objects is officially the most upsetting book i've ever read
my friend was very disappointed in the movie
Last edited by elevenism; 10-08-2016 at 11:06 PM.
cool... returning to Guns, Germs and Steel after pausing on page 220 for a few months.
@eversonpoe have you read Dark Places?
I'd say it's far more disturbing than Sharp Objects.
I really love Flynn's work. "Sharp" is the best way to describe it.
edit: seriously though, don't watch the Dark Places movie. it's REALLY fucking bad.
Oh...also, did you see this? http://www.echoingthesound.org/commu...=sharp+objects
Sharp Objects is to be an HBO mini series starring Amy Adams, produced by jason blum, directed by Jean Marc Valee (dallas buyers club) and Marti fucking Noxon is the showrunner-this adaptation promises to be good
Last edited by elevenism; 10-08-2016 at 11:12 PM.
i saw that about the HBO series and that's why i decided to read the book, actually.
haven't read dark places. my mom said that's her favorite of the three. i'm interested but wary, given how upsetting sharp objects was for me.
Spoiler: by the way, i was 100% convinced Adora was the killer pretty early on in the story (never, ever thought it was a man, even before hearing the kid's story), not just of Marian but of Anne & Natalie, so it was a terrifying shock when it turned out to be Amma who killed the other two girls. oof.
@eversonpoe , it's been seven or eight years since i read Sharp Objects, but i don't remembering it fucking my head up that much.
But i feel like i should warn you that Dark Places lives up to its name. It's one of the rougher things i've ever read. It revolves around a ghastly massacre style murder that includes children, and if i remember it right, it tells the story multiple times as more clues come together.
There's some like family abuse stuff in there too.
I remember it being pretty damned shockingly intense and brutal.
H.P. Lovecraft.
I've got my greedy hands on a wonderful anthology edition. It has:
The Shadow Out of Time
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Call of Cthulhu
At the Mountains of Madness
The Outsider
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Shadow over Innsmouth
I love you, book.
The only thing that kind if piss me off is that they did not translate the famous "In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming." properly. In French, they turned it into: "Dans sa demeure de R'lyeh la morte, Cthulhu attend en rêvant". What they did is that they applied the adjective "dead" to R'lyeh instead of Cthulhu, which changes the meaning of the phrase. /end of anal retentive rant.
Dr. Eben Alexander - "Proof of Heaven". This whole NDE stuff is fascinating and I don't know what to think of it, maybe I'd say "I'm trying NOT to believe", but... maybe...? (I consider myself an agnostic)
currently on the fifth (and possibly final) Johannes Cabal book. each one has been vastly different, which has made them all fun and refreshing to read. highly recommend the entire series.
This thread.
I just finished Libra by Don DeLillo. I am reading the Twin Peaks book. And i have a few stories left to go in John Barth's incredible collection, Lost in the Funhouse, the titular story having long been my favorite short story of all time.
The other books i have purchased recently are Fight Club, American Psycho, Underworld by Don DeLillo.
I also got Anne Rice's second Jesus book, Songs of the Seraphim book, and The Wolf Gift (this stemming from a policy of reading everything she writes that has been going on since i was about 13.) And i've got The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter Thompson-he fucking cracks me up.
I am a voracious reader. I am always, always in the process of reading a book. But i somehow didn't realize that there was actual comtemporary literature being written. I have read a LOT of shitty books from the grocery store, and i mean a LOT.
Then i finally got around to reading House of Leaves, which blew me away, as it pushed at the envelope of what a fictional work even is. This took me down the path to David Foster Wallace and Infinite Jest, which, with its maximallist prose and utterly fucking insane depth and number of themes and styles, seduced me into a couple of months of obsession.
So now i am all about post modernism and post-post modernism or the "new sensitive" or High Octane Monkey Fuckery or whatever you want to call this stuff. Before, it was every Stephen King, Anne Rice, John Steinbeck, and Michael and Kathleen Gear book, with the occasional classic like, say, A Clockwork Orange or The Invisible Man or Catcher in the Rye, but more often than not, when waiting for the new King/Rice/Gear book, i read bestsellers culled from the grocery store. Many of these were entertaining, and some of them. like The Poisonwood Bible, approached greatness, but 99 percent of them were utterly forgetable and a LOT of them were flat out BAD. I read them, however, as since i was about 3 years old, i read, pretty much every day. It's a compulsion. I will read the backs of shampoo bottles and cereal boxes. I will read the fucking yellow pages :P
Now that i know about about writers like Wallace and DeLillo, i feel as though i have arrived quite late to a party, but it's like a late 90s rave party with 10,000 people and an unreal lineup and i have eaten 4 or 5 ex pills with a beautiful girl
I am reading books that challenge me, books that open my mind, books that ask deep questions about God and Love and the Nature of Reality. And the amazing thing is that these books are fairly contemporary! I mean, i always thought that such books generally contained stuffy language and anachronistic jokes and outdated political and cultural allusions.
I don't know why i thought that. I don't know, for the life of me, why i thought that "literature" was no longer being written.
But now i am in a new world of words and ideas that is nothing short of ecstatic.
Please forgive me for writing a fucking essay here, and thank you if you actually read it
Finished reading Matt Ruff - "Set this house in order", recommended by a friend of mine who knows me, obviosly. :-) That kind of book, where you can return to re-read first chapter and know better this time. "I was twenty-six years old when I first came out of the lake" - like, what? :-) Recommended.
Not sure if anyone else here reads "short" franchise fantasy novels, like for Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, etc. They're perfect to read when you have a few hours as most of them are just over 300 pages and the font is rather large...
I just read World of Warcraft: Illidan and it was rather good. Being the first Warcraft novel I've read by William King, I had no expectations and ended up happy. If you enjoyed The Burning Legion expansion, or like The Legion in general, you will be smiling the whole time. There's a lot of Akama, The Black Temple, Argus, etc.
I am going to read Fight Club i think, before DeLillo's Underworld, just for a quick change of pace and also because so many of you guys have talked about it.
But i am seriously looking forward to nearly 1000 pages of Don DeLillo's seductive writing-i fucking adore his singular style.
Also, i read a review somewhere that said that there were two masterpieces written in the 90's, with one being Infinite Jest and the other being Underworld. This, to me, is very promising.