What've you been reading lately?

[larryhead]

Haven't had a book thread on here in a bit... :huh:

I just finished "Diary" by Chuck Palahniuk (he wrote "Fight Club"). It was a pretty quick read, I think it was described as sort of a "Rosemary's Baby" updated for the new generation, which is a pretty fitting description. The book starts off with this woman who's husband is in a coma.. he previously used to remodel people's summer homes and she's now getting all these phone calls from pissed off clients who are missing bathrooms and kitchens and rooms that used to be in their houses... dum dum dummmmmm!!!! It was good, but I liked Fight Club better.

I'm currently reading "The Metamorphosis and other Stories" by Franz Kafka... sort of one of those stories/books you always hear referenced that sounded neat so I finally picked it up. It's about a traveling salesman who wakes up as an insect one day... originally published in 1915.. it reads surprisingly "current" though. Anyone else a Kafka fan?

Before that I read "The House of Sand and Fog"... was sort of a slow read for me.. the ending was pretty good though.

[matty]

I haven't read Kafka in many years, but I always really liked him. Some of his stuff is GREAT, and some of it is so depressing you'll want to slice yourself up. Good luck.

[larryhead]

thanks for the warning :lol:

[hotfoot]

I'm slowly working my way through "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation" by Jeff Chang. The book is dense but highly readable. I particularly enjoy Chang's attention to context (e.g. the construction of highways through downtowns) and how it affected the evolution of hip hop.

[Soul Queen]

I'm reading A Green History of the World by Clive Ponting.

It is a history of civilization and the devastation to the environment. Its been uplifting.

[ElRiche]

I've been reading 'The Manifesto of the Communist Party' and other central Marx literature. That chap was a bit off his rocker on some points, and perhaps was astute on some points - namely the role of capitalism in the then world order. True enough, I suppose, that capitalism introduces certain frictions or 'antagonisms' into the international system, but its rise is fairly established, and still rising. Poor old Marx sat around waiting for the one revolution until he passed away. I'm no apologist for that impoverished system of understanding capital flow, and its enduring influence on people rich and poor, but I am slightly sympathetic. Not empathetic, but sympathetic.

[LoveDog]

I finished reading Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy last summer, so now I've started continuing the series with The Restaurant and the End of the Universe. These books crack me up, I love em.

[False Alarm]

a feast for crows, book 4 of george r r martin's seven-book, 1,000,000,000-page fantasy series, "a song of ice and fire." it's fairly badass, but i'm about halfway thru and i ain't sure i like it as much as the first three. i think it's kinda a transitional book, though, so i still expect the final three to be great.

[mrjohnchimpo]

feast for crows and dance with dragons (book 5) were supposed to be one book but it was too big so he had to split it.

[False Alarm]

feast for crows and dance with dragons (book 5) were supposed to be one book but it was too big so he had to split it.
i know.

[mrjohnchimpo]

i know.

well alrighty then. i was just confirming your transitional book hypothesis.

[larryhead]

I finished reading Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy last summer, so now I've started continuing the series with The Restaurant and the End of the Universe. These books crack me up, I love em.

I tried getting through the first book, and it was sorta funny and enjoyable... however, I unfortunately saw the movie (read: totally nonsensical nonsense crap) prior to starting the book and it sort of soured my will to finish reading it.

[matty]

Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy is almost so zany that it's hard to follow in my mind. I get the books all mixed up, forget about important characters, etc.

Even worse by Douglas Adams are the Dirk Gently books. I think they're funnier in a way, more cynical, but there are vast holistic plot lines that involve inanimate objects, which appear only briefly every couple of chapters or so. I would have never picked up on it if I hadn't read about it somewhere.

One of my favorite things from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is that he's got a couch that got wedged into a stairwell at a mathematically impossible angle and is permanently stuck. It would take another mathematical impossibility to free it. I think about that every time I'm moving a large piece of furniture up a staircase...

[Ag Au]

i just finished reading "the painted drum" by louise erdrich. she is a very beautiful writer who deals with a lot of mother/daughter themes as well as how our pasts influence our futures. erdrich is part ojibwe and all of her books deal with native american characters and settings as well. i have read several of her books and would recommend them all.

i also just finished "the nimrod flipout" a book of short stories by etgar keret. he is a contemporary israeli author that has an interesting writing style. it seems very simplistic, but the ideas are strange and confrontational. not all of the stories are good, but it is worth a read.

i just started "number 9 dream" by david mitchell, who also wrote "cloud atlas". i really loved cloud, and am liking 9 as well. mitchell seems to really like messing with time lines and constructing nonlinear plot development. he also likes the future and has fun with constructing new realities. so mix a little sci-fi with magical realism in future tokyo and you have the setting for this one. so far there have been floods, stun guns, evil lawyers, crocodiles, breaking and entering, etc. to make this more of an action book than i was expecting! thumbs up. :thumbsup:

[professor booty]

I am reading The Taijiquan Classics as translated by my teacher Barbara Davis, albeit at a snail's pace.

I am also reading Joseph Campbell's Historical Atlas of World Mythology, Vol. I: The Way of the Animal Powers which is incredibly fascinating. It is a very well done scholarly look at all the cave art, tools, and artifacts of the earliest hominids and what they might tell us about the beliefs and myths of people before historical record.

Good stuff.

[andikay]

Anyone else a Kafka fan?




If you like Kafka, try the early short stories of Chekhov.

[Lori Burger]

I haven't had time for pleasure reading recently until I had to fly out to San Diego at the last minute. I really should have been grading, but instead I picked up a book from the genre I like to call "chick lit - beach reads"; it is called the Bergdorf Blondes. Now I'll admit that I had a hard time getting past the first few pages due to the main characters' glaring similarity to a Paris Hilton type, but after I was used to her, time flew. There are very few situations which I like less than flying 5.5 hours, so anything that helped the time pass like this book deserves a shout out. Now, I'm not even sure if brain cells are required for this read, so if this book sounds appealing to you in any way, please understand what you're in for.

I don't enjoy reading Kafka at all, though sometimes I like thinking about his works after I've read them. However, I've been deeply engrossed in my existentialism unit at work (we read Camus's The Stranger), which I guess explains my desire to read the Blonde book. And it's a good transition into my next unit, which involves examining the female ideal through Cinderella stories throughout the world as a lead in to Ibsen's A Doll House. Or maybe I'm trying to justify my enjoyment of trashy lit. :p

[matty]

I'm sure the Fun Nazis are going to come down on me, but I don't think there's anything wrong with trashy literature. I like to think of trashy lit as sort of reality TV in book form--Just turn your brain off and enjoy a tawdry or ridiculous story.

There's this really dumb book called "Sex Toys of the Gods." I can't even remember who wrote it, but I've read it twice. It's really funny and trashy, and I never admit to reading it.

[Lori Burger]

There's this really dumb book called "Sex Toys of the Gods." I can't even remember who wrote it, but I've read it twice. It's really funny and trashy, and I never admit to reading it.

Sounds awesome :)

I like to read all sorts of books (except ones with dragons and wizards), and I try not to be too snobby about it. Especially one a plane: I can't read true literary stuff with screaming babies around and weird old people trying to strike up conversation. I'll bet a David Sedaris book would be a good plane read...

[ElRiche]

Any suggestions for good fiction in the William Gibson category?

[larryhead]

Any suggestions for good fiction in the William Gibson category?

I've read and enjoyed these fine William Gibson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson_(novelist)) books:

- Burning Chrome (collection)

The Sprawl trilogy:
- Neuromancer
- Count Zero
- Mona Lisa Overdrive

If you are a fan of the cyberpunk genre, check out Bruce Sterling... I think Schismatrxi is considered one of his best books. I read it in college and really enjoyed it.

Here's a big list of cyberpunk books (http://www.nyx.net/~astoker/cpbooks.html) too.

[ElRiche]

I read those, and I also liked 'All Tomorrow's Parties,' though it doesn't have the gravity of 'Neuromancer.' I'll pick up a Bruce Sterling title for my summer reading. Thanks.