What Are You Reading?

[mrs jesus]

I just got finished reading 'Invisible Monsters' by Chuck Palahniuk and now I am starting on one of his other novels, 'Survivor: The Novel'.

survivor is a great book

[Disestabulistic]

Right now I'm reading posts on the bored

[Gob]

I hear that Stephen Colbert is penning a book which is to be out in `07. I hope this outing is better than "Stephen Colbert

[matrix]

I just finished reading 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown.

[heyrabbit]

I'm reading two books: Straw Dogs by John Gray, and a book about Einstein, I forget the title and author.

 

Straw Dogs expresses the authors fascinating opinion that human progression is a myth. He argues that human progression is a myth created by science in the same manner that providence is a myth created by Christianity. knowledge is cumulative. (what is gained in one generation can be lost in the next) and even though we make technological gains, ethics remains the same. the thesis is basically that humans aren't any different than any other animal. Ive only jsut started reading it, so I'm sure his opinion is much more extensive than this.

[Converge]

Survivor by Palahunik is his best in my opinion. Sadly i read it first and found the rest of his stuff to be pretty lame. But i did love survivor.

 

Right now im doing my spring ritual of reading William S. Burroughs: Junky followed by Naked Lunch (for the 2nd year in a row...i dont know why)

 

Has anyone read "Battle Royale"? Its a Japaneese writer...i can't spell his name and i've lent the book out. Lord of the Flies-esq...only ultra violent and ultra crazy. Some of the stuff gets tangled in translation, but i found it entertaining!

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

Survivor by Palahunik is his best in my opinion. Sadly i read it first and found the rest of his stuff to be pretty lame. But i did love survivor.

 

Right now im doing my spring ritual of reading William S. Burroughs: Junky followed by Naked Lunch (for the 2nd year in a row...i dont know why)

 

Has anyone read "Battle Royale"? Its a Japaneese writer...i can't spell his name and i've lent the book out. Lord of the Flies-esq...only ultra violent and ultra crazy. Some of the stuff gets tangled in translation, but i found it entertaining!

Wow. Agreed on the Survivor bit. Best Palahniuk I've read. Loved Fight Club, enjoyed Choke. Couldn't be bothered with the rest of his stuff. I'm going to try not to ramble here. I probably won't succeed.

 

Chuck's work has always left me feeling hungry afterwards. Yeah, I know he's supposed to be minimalist, but there's minimalism, and then there's selling yourself short. There are many points where I just feel like he's allowed to give the reader just a little bit more than he does.

 

A couple other authors I'd suggest to those who dig Palahniuk's work, but are maybe looking for something a bit meatier: Craig Clevenger, Stephen Graham Jones and Will Christopher Baer. They've got a collective messageboard together. It's a pretty interesting literary scene. They may be a bit darker tinged, but they definitely deliver in terms of writing ability.

 

Just to keep from cluttering the place with an superlative-laden rant, I'm just going to suggest a book from each, if anyone's interested:

 

Dermaphoria - Craig Clevenger (Hyper-hallucinogenic storyline, in which a chemist tries to reclaim his memory by taking an experimental new drug called "Derma" or skin. He woke up in the desert covered in burns with a single name on his lips: Desiree)

 

Kiss Me, Judas - Will Christopher Baer (Think Raymond Chandler's noir with a contemporary facelift. Phineas Poe, ex-cop, recently-discharged mental patient, lost his job and his mind when his wife died under mysterious circumstances. Spends the night in a cheap hotel when a woman drugs him, and he wakes up in a bathtub of ice, short a kidney. This one morphs into a trilogy, but really all the books are fairly stand-alone, too.)

 

Bleed Into Me - Stephen Graham Jones (ww.demontheory.net has a literal cornucopia of Mr. Jones' writing. He's unsettlingly prolific, and I don't even know where to begin. He somehow takes pulp and genre writing and makes it academic, without losing that delicate emotional connection between the reader and author.

 

Good to see someone else braving Naked Lunch. I've read it twice from cover to cover, and tend to just rifle through it at random whenever the mood takes me. Same with Junky. I'm thinking about picking up Queer once exams are over with and giving that one a gander. Apparently it chronicles Burroughs' life after he shoots his wife in Mexico.

 

I read Battle Royale a couple years ago. Koushun Takami is the author's name. Very weird book. I really liked it, though. I'd advise against the manga stuff based on it. The translation is absolutely atrocious. That said, I don't stomach manga well, for some reason. I keep having flashbacks to friends of mine in high school obsessing over sailor moon and feeling unsettled.

[Ravenous itchy]

I need a new book!

[Converge]

Muttersometaxicab:

 

Thanks for the recomendations! Post exams i'll try and tackle a few of the books. Summer time is my big reading season and im looking for some books to add to the list!

 

i couldn't agree more with you on Palahunick, although to say hes not as great as half the world thinks he is often leads to me getting chirped by my friends. I can understand how he might be seen as profound during the teen angst years, but once you've moved on and picked up a few more well developed authors its hard to enjoy his work!

 

I had plans to read Queer this summer, and really wouldn't mind getting his entire catalouge of books. I enjoy anything hes written, and love most of the stuff by the group he ran with (Kerouac, Ginsberg).

 

Have you read anything by Ethan Hawke?

Ash Wednesday was great. and although i havent read "the hottest state" yet, my friend wanted to break up with his girlfriend when he finished it just so he could go through the same torment as the character in book....

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

Yeah. The summer's the only time I really get to read all the stuff I pick up during the school year, since I'm usually up to my neck in class reading. Most I can seem to manage during the exam period is books of short stories as I can usually read one on a study break. That's how I read Neil Gaiman's Smoke & Mirrors and John Gould's "Kilter: 55 Fictions." It's a good time, and I'm probably going to do that over the weekend with Haruki Murakami's "The Elephant Vanishes"

 

I think this year my Girlfriend and I are doing a sort of reading list for the summer. One of us starts at the bottom, the other starts at the top, and basically just plow through as much as we can.

 

I haven't read any of Ethan Hawke's stuff, but I've been meaning to. Came as news to me last year when my girlfriend brought it up. I'll have to try and sneak one of his books onto the list somewheres.

 

Edit: And just out of curiosity (May be a long shot) but is your username by any chance reference to the band of the same name?)

Edited April 7, 2006 by MuttersomeTaxicab

[garsk]

saddly nothing, i guess i should start looking for a good summer book to read.

[Converge]

My screen name is indeed taken from the band of the same name. i was racking my brain trying to come up with a name and looked at my playlist. i was listening to the song "Shallow breathing/i abstain" and figured 'converge' is as good as anything else!

 

Are you a fan?

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

My screen name is indeed taken from the band of the same name. i was racking my brain trying to come up with a name and looked at my playlist. i was listening to the song "Shallow breathing/i abstain" and figured 'converge' is as good as anything else!

 

Are you a fan?

Very, very much. I saw them in Toronto last October with Cursed and Mare. (If Terror was there, I tried not to notice)

 

Amazing show.

 

I tend to be an oddity among Converge fans, though. I tend to enjoy You Fail Me the most out of all their stuff. The whole album has this crazy gritty feel to it that blows me away.

[Quammy]

I've been reading some of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. I loved the first book, but I just read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and thought it was kinda lame. I don't know if I should even bother reading the rest of the series.

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

I'm very much a sucker for Douglas Adams, but I haven't had the chance to really give his stuff some quality time. I picked up the whole box set of the Hitch Hiker's Guide, though, so I'll probably read that this summer.

 

My last exam is this morning (in about two hours)

 

Then I'm free to read what I want. For the first time in nearly eight months.

 

Excited? You bet.

[Disestabulistic]

I've been reading some of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. I loved the first book, but I just read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and thought it was kinda lame. I don't know if I should even bother reading the rest of the series.

Read 'em. "Restaurant" is a low point. Great books.

Edited April 11, 2006 by Disestabulistic

[silentshadow]

Tried to read Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, but it's all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about a angry Captian obssesed with a big white dick(whale that is).

 

;)

[Disestabulistic]

I'm reading "the shadow of the wind" by icantremeberhisname. It's set in Barcelona in the mid 1900s and deals with the sinister underground world of used book merchants. So far, a good read.

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

Tried to read Moby Dick, by Herman Melville, but it's all a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about a angry Captian obssesed with a big white dick(whale that is).

 

;)

Been meaning to read that at some point. I expect I'll be pleasantly surprised. I tend to enjoy near-incoherent novels.

 

Right now, reading Ubik by Philip K. Dick and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

[darko]

Women in Love by DH Lawrence. Best book ever.

[inescapableus]

I'm trying to read the Bob Dylan Chronicles as well as 'A million little pieces' by James Frey. Both are taking me forever to finish though because I haven't had time to read much lately.

[MuttersomeTaxicab]

I'm trying to read the Bob Dylan Chronicles as well as 'A million little pieces' by James Frey. Both are taking me forever to finish though because I haven't had time to read much lately.

The witch hunt that went down with Frey over that book was bloody despicable.

 

Oh shit. A writer made something up? Perish the thought.

 

Picked up the first graphic novel of Preacher yesterday. Finished it today. God damn, it's a good time.

[inescapableus]

Yeah I heard about James Frey's questionable non-fiction... I can't say that it has really affected my view of the novel so far. I mean it's about a drug addicts stay at rehab. It's a story, maybe not necessarily his story exactly....

[Ruettiger]

The nutritional facts of my apple juice.

[Ryan44]

this forum. that is all