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Post by Rebecca on Sept 14, 2009 22:42:02 GMT -5
Reading Anansi Boys right now. It rules so far. Such a good book. I went into a bit of a Neil Gaiman kick when Coraline came out (the movie) , and this was one of my favorites. I'm currently reading The General and his Labyrinth by Gabriel García Márquez.
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missy
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Post by missy on Sept 14, 2009 22:43:37 GMT -5
'things set in weird places in the 1950's' anything else you can recommend along those lines?? sounds like something i'd be into. almost finished with 'the cure for death by lightning'. 1940's farm/homestead + native american magical realism elements. and there's old-fashioned recipes worked in here and there, which i always like. how i feel about it as a whole is going to depend on the ending (i'm hoping it'll just kind of...end, without tying it all up too neatly, and it's looking likely to go that way).
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Post by Terp Torp on Sept 14, 2009 22:47:19 GMT -5
Reading Anansi Boys right now. It rules so far. I got a hardcover copy of this for 3 bucks from a clearance at a Waldenbooks, haven't read it yet though. I love Neil's short story collections but Sandman is still my favorite of his things. Trying to get the Absolute editions of all those.
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Post by jeremyzero on Sept 14, 2009 22:48:11 GMT -5
Reading Anansi Boys right now. It rules so far. Such a good book. I went into a bit of a Neil Gaiman kick when Coraline came out (the movie) , and this was one of my favorites. He's pretty much my favourite author.
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Bridget
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What didn't Diddy do?
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Post by Bridget on Sept 14, 2009 22:52:52 GMT -5
I'm kind of a simlutaneous reader. I just finished "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe (whiny, yet poignant) and "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser (amazing, even though the data is almost a decade old), wrapping up "Northhanger Abbey" by Austen (funny but a little self-important), and starting "Collaspe" by Jared Diamond. Yesterday, I paged through Calvin and Hobbes' "There's Treasure Everywhere". Not the best one of thier books, but still pretty funny.
And if the amount of books here makes anyone feel dumb, it should be stated for posterity that I am currently unemployed and broke, and live near a bitchin' library. It's all I got.
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Post by cauliflowerholdr on Sept 14, 2009 22:53:52 GMT -5
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and White Noise by Don DeLillo for my American fiction classes.
Trying to read What we talk about when we talk about love by Raymond Carver on the side.
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Post by Hannah. on Sept 14, 2009 23:19:35 GMT -5
I'm "reading" Seeing Redd, The Time-Traveler's Wife, and The Graveyard Book. Mainly just The Graveyard Book, the other two I'm just in the middle of. I'm about 40 pages from the end of Time-Traveler's wife but I know it's going to be depressing and I'm waiting until I'm in a good, sad mood to read it so I can cry. And I lost interest in Seeing Redd a couple of months ago but I still remember what's going on so I'll probably pick it up again in another month.
I've also been reading through Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Daniewleski, but it's too damn hard for me to concentrate. It's a brilliant book but I've never actually read it through completely. There's tons of made-up words in it, for anyone that doesn't know, and it almost reads like poetry. You also read 8 pages on one side, then flip it over and read 8 pages on the other, etc. The book is 360 pages long ONE WAY, so reading it both ways it's 820 pages. Ugh. But it really is interesting.
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Post by Terp Torp on Sept 15, 2009 0:48:27 GMT -5
I didn't really like Only Revolutions as much as House of Leaves. I remember when I first heard of House of Leaves I was like "there is no way this can be legitimately good because it's so gimmicky" and I read it and it was mostly awesome and the gimmick worked. Only Revolutions though, not so much.
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Post by tj on Sept 15, 2009 1:03:29 GMT -5
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and White Noise by Don DeLillo for my American fiction classes. Trying to read What we talk about when we talk about love by Raymond Carver on the side. Fully backed. All of the above are great authors. Carver's in my top 5.
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Post by tj on Sept 15, 2009 1:05:15 GMT -5
I'm kind of a simlutaneous reader. I just finished "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe (whiny, yet poignant) and "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser (amazing, even though the data is almost a decade old), wrapping up "Northhanger Abbey" by Austen (funny but a little self-important), and starting "Collaspe" by Jared Diamond. Yesterday, I paged through Calvin and Hobbes' "There's Treasure Everywhere". Not the best one of thier books, but still pretty funny. And if the amount of books here makes anyone feel dumb, it should be stated for posterity that I am currently unemployed and broke, and live near a bitchin' library. It's all I got. Collapse is pretty good. I like it better than his other (more famous) book, but it's also a little more personal for me. If you like it (and if you haven't already), check out Reisner's Cadillac Desert. Pretty much the staple as far as environmental literature goes.
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Post by tj on Sept 15, 2009 1:07:26 GMT -5
Men to Match Our Mountains, it's by the guy who's going to interview me for my dream job in October. It's pretty much a history of awesome dudes in Wyoming. This sounds cool. I might check it out. Western fiction/non fiction pretty much kicks the ass of any other type of regionalism literature. I mean, we got Stegner. Who the fuck else y'all have?
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Post by leoz maxwell jilliumz on Sept 15, 2009 2:03:20 GMT -5
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. pretty good. how is it?
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Post by tawny on Sept 15, 2009 6:12:59 GMT -5
Probably going to start The Metamorphosis next. Whenever someone mentions this book I immediately think they're talking about Ovid's Metamorphoses and then I read the sentence again and get disappointed. /Latin nerd I just read my first Vonnegut book because I fail and am way late on everything. I dunno what's next. Me too, I'm just about to finish Slaughterhouse Five. My boyfriend couldn't believe I hadn't read it and basically thrust a copy into my hands. I'm also in the middle of the Journals of Sylvia Plath.
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Post by tara on Sept 15, 2009 6:38:56 GMT -5
Damn, ya'll are some cultured motherfuckers.
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Post by kr on Sept 15, 2009 6:40:18 GMT -5
I love reading, but I haven't read anything new in so long. I just keep re-reading.
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Post by kristin on Sept 15, 2009 6:41:44 GMT -5
;Northhanger Abbey" by Austen (funny but a little self-important) If you can face it, you should definitely try to track down the 1986 movie version, hahahaha. Hilarious and worth it for the saxaphones, synthesizers, and perhaps the most quotable line anywhere, ever: "Since you left us, the white rose bushes died of grief". So melodramatic and amazing. Northanger Abbey 's a good one. -- Crisantemo, I'm not sure if this short list will help, haha, but other than Red Dog, Red Dog which is just gritty and flat out awesome, I'd put Joyce Carol Oates Foxfire which is just stupendous and was completely totally raped by the revisionist movie of the same title in the 1990's, and (though maybe more 1940's, and also moving around through different periods) Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin. Even though it's more the cusp of the 1960's, Anne Marie MacDonald's The Way the Crow Flies is also quite incredible at creating very specific environments and atmosphere. It's set by and large on an Air Force base in 1962, and written through the various lenses of different characters in the same family, as they're all so close in proximity but reacting to many of the same things so differently. It comes together beautifully. Edit: The Cure for Death by Lightening sounds like a great read; I'll be checking this out.
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missy
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Post by missy on Sept 15, 2009 12:36:00 GMT -5
hahaha, yeah, i've read 'foxfire' and everyyything by atwood, and a.m. macdonald's earlier book 'fall on your knees'...but i missed 'the way the crow flies', so i'll look into that and 'red dog red dog'. thanks!
and 'the cure for death by lightning' was anderson-dargatz' first novel, but she's written several more since. apparently there's been some comparison to alice munro, which of course is ridiculous because no one compares to the perfection of munro, but...i can see hints of similarities. regardless of how 'lightning' finishes up, the strength of the writing is such that i'm excited to check out her others. i think you won't be sorry if you give 'lightning' a try.
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Post by Brittany on Sept 15, 2009 12:41:51 GMT -5
I just started Against the Grain, its interesting so far.
FYI, its the same book that Dorian Grey read in the book The Picture of Dorian Grey.
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Cary
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Post by Cary on Sept 15, 2009 12:58:33 GMT -5
Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. pretty good. how is it? I like it a lot so far, but I'm not far into it at all so I don't know how qualified my opinion is. A lot of what I've read has been "in" humor where he just talks shit about certain types of people in the proletariat. I'm reading it for my Soviet History class, and I downloaded the film from Google Video, so I'm pretty stoked to watch that once I'm done.
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Post by tj on Sept 15, 2009 13:41:12 GMT -5
Wow, people are talking about how great Alice Munro is.
This board is already a million times better than that other place, and having to wade through 3,000,000,000 pages of utter shit.
(As elitist as that sounds - and it is - I still much approve of the fact that people are reading, even if its garbage)
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2009 13:59:50 GMT -5
I'm about to give Anna Karina a go. And I'm still slowly making my way through Palimpsest by Gore Vidal.
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Post by kristin on Sept 15, 2009 14:55:08 GMT -5
and 'the cure for death by lightning' was anderson-dargatz' first novel, but she's written several more since. apparently there's been some comparison to alice munro, which of course is ridiculous because no one compares to the perfection of munro, but...i can see hints of similarities. regardless of how 'lightning' finishes up, the strength of the writing is such that i'm excited to check out her others. i think you won't be sorry if you give 'lightning' a try. Alice Munro is the best thing since...I don't even know. She's totally fantastic. I wandered back through the 'Dance of the Happy Shades' collection recently, just to remind myself how really marvellous short stories read, and will move on to 'Moons of Jupiter' again soon. I like to keep Alice on my nightstand, because I can usually get at least a story in before I fall asleep. Have only heard good things about the new one.
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Post by Meredith on Sept 15, 2009 15:43:26 GMT -5
I'm rereading all of the Harry Potter books, and I'm on the The Goblet of Fire right now. School is definitely cutting into my reading for pleasure time.
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Post by leoz maxwell jilliumz on Sept 15, 2009 15:54:38 GMT -5
I like it a lot so far, but I'm not far into it at all so I don't know how qualified my opinion is. A lot of what I've read has been "in" humor where he just talks shit about certain types of people in the proletariat. I'm reading it for my Soviet History class, and I downloaded the film from Google Video, so I'm pretty stoked to watch that once I'm done. his work usually requires contextual explanation, good thing you're reading it in a class. not just the biblical references, but even the parts about communist russia, these sort of veiled hints that mean something completely different when placed in the time he wrote it.
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Post by leoz maxwell jilliumz on Sept 15, 2009 15:58:54 GMT -5
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson and White Noise by Don DeLillo for my American fiction classes. Trying to read What we talk about when we talk about love by Raymond Carver on the side. the more i read by delillo, the less i like him. i got about a hundred and some odd pages into underworld put it down and never picked it up again. read pafko at the wall when you're done with white noise, it's a novella and probably his best work. i used to love carver. i was happy back then ....
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Post by shine on Sept 15, 2009 16:09:22 GMT -5
the last 4 or 5 books i've read have been cyperpunk/sci fi a la william gibson, robery heinlein, fred brown, etc.
its really fucking good stuff.
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missy
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Post by missy on Sept 15, 2009 16:34:20 GMT -5
Alice Munro is the best thing since...I don't even know. She's totally fantastic. I wandered back through the 'Dance of the Happy Shades' collection recently, just to remind myself how really marvellous short stories read, and will move on to 'Moons of Jupiter' again soon. I like to keep Alice on my nightstand, because I can usually get at least a story in before I fall asleep.
Have only heard good things about the new one. since ever, i think. i had a bad attitude about short stories until a contemporary fiction/short story class in high school wherein i ended up assigned to 'the moons of jupiter'. holy shit. i wish i still had the essay i did on it, i'm sure it was full of instant-conversion fangirling and way too many pretentious superlatives, haha. and thanks to alice, i was able to go back and give carver and cheever and such a fair read, which i'd previously turned up my nose at and refused to bother with. oh my. she remains my favorite in the genre, not just for sentimental reasons but because i can go back and reread any of it and find it only grows richer and more luminous the older i get. ... haha, still prone to fangirling i guess, sorry. >_< CAN'T WAIT for 'too much happiness', i hope the paperback edition will follow the hardcover release quick-quick.
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Post by cauliflowerholdr on Sept 15, 2009 17:17:11 GMT -5
the more i read by delillo, the less i like him. i got about a hundred and some odd pages into underworld put it down and never picked it up again. read pafko at the wall when you're done with white noise, it's a novella and probably his best work. i used to love carver. i was happy back then .... Thanks. I'll pick that up the next time I'm at the book store.
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Post by mechabunny on Sept 15, 2009 17:52:35 GMT -5
Me too, I'm just about to finish Slaughterhouse Five. My boyfriend couldn't believe I hadn't read it and basically thrust a copy into my hands. That's exactly what Devyn did. Since I finished that I haven't started anything else. I don't know what to read next.
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Post by Lucky Jarmes on Sept 15, 2009 18:52:45 GMT -5
You could keep with Vonnegut and read Cat's Cradle or Breakfast of Champions next. I think you'd really like both of those, probably more than Slaughterhouse.
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