what are you reading now?

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
James Joyce - Ulysses, I guess it's time...
So far so good. By coincidence realised yesterday that one of my friends is also reading it - and has been doing so for over year, mainly because he insists on reading every chapter three or four times with a guide book type thing to make sure that he gets every single allusion and point in the book. I won't be doing that.
I not that it is Bloomsday in a few days. Probably won't celebrate it.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I finished Don Quixote recently, a full dozen years or so since I started it. I'm not as slow a reader as that implies, since I had a break of a decade or so in between parts I and II. Didn't help that the version I was reading hadn't had any modern typesetting done on it, so whole pages were presented as single paragraphs of text, dialogue and all. Still pretty good though, I can see why it's regarded so highly.

I fancied something quick and easy to read after that so tore through Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in a couple of days. I like how he presents these great ideas in what is actually very simple, sometimes almost childlike writing. He's also got some great observations on the practical uses of religion.
 
Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze

I'm trying to shut up
dispatches.jpg
 
Local Authority

Local Authority

bitch city
Finished reading Amulet by Roberto Bolano recently, beautiful book even if it was a bit dense. Moved onto Le Grand Muelnes which is proving a good read, although it can drag on at points but thats the case with most literature from that period.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Patrick Swayze said:
dispatches.jpg
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dispatches is a great book. also iirc it was an inspiration for scenes in both apocalypse now and platoon

on the vietnam tip: bernard fall (streets without joy, hell in a very small place, etc), philip caputo - a rumor of war, david halberstam - the best and the brightest. and fiction: karl malantes - matterhorn, bao ninh - the sorrow of war. the latter is a an autobiographical bildungsroman by an nva veteran, one of the first north vietnamese novels about the war I believe, hugely powerful. oh and gustav hasford - the short-timers (the source for full metal jacket), the book shits all over the movie even tho the movie is obv very, very fine

on a personal note I'm currently about halfway through blood meridian
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
oh also: graham greene - the quiet american is essential. his best book imo and kind of a novelistic equivalent of battle of algiers

also wrong category but, on the not to watch list: Indochine. what a piece of racist, colonialist french nostalgia bullshit. of course it won an oscar.
 
Patrick Swayze

Patrick Swayze

I'm trying to shut up
HMGovt said:
If you like that, this is a good companion work

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Some of the scenes he describes remind me of Tarkovksy's Stalker, probably because they're the same places....
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Thanks will keep an eye out for this. I just finished writing a dissertation on Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and now wish that'd I'd focussed it on a stylistic comparison between that and Dispatches.


padraig (u.s.) said:
dispatches is a great book. also iirc it was an inspiration for scenes in both apocalypse now and platoon

on the vietnam tip: bernard fall (streets without joy, hell in a very small place, etc), philip caputo - a rumor of war, david halberstam - the best and the brightest. and fiction: karl malantes - matterhorn, bao ninh - the sorrow of war. the latter is a an autobiographical bildungsroman by an nva veteran, one of the first north vietnamese novels about the war I believe, hugely powerful. oh and gustav hasford - the short-timers (the source for full metal jacket), the book shits all over the movie even tho the movie is obv very, very fine

(u.s.);301074]oh also: graham greene - the quiet american is essential. his best book imo and kind of a novelistic equivalent of battle of algiers
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Thanks man.

on a personal note I'm currently about halfway through blood meridian
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My Dad lent me this ages ago and I still haven't read it :eek:

/

The next book on my list is A Scanner Darkly
 
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Local Authority

Local Authority

bitch city
Mr. Tea said:
How does it compared to 2666, if you've read that? I thought it was pretty dope, wouldn't mind checking out some of his other stuff but haven't yet.
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A lot more accessible and considering its only 100 or so pages doesn't have the opportunity to meander as much. Saying that I read 2666 a few years ago so its hard to remember. It was quite a hard book to follow in terms of plot, chronologically and its less concise than 2666, even if that was quite a large read, you can tell he wrote Amulet when he was younger. The language is a lot more colourful and there's a heavy use of metaphors that tend to spiral into themselves.

How did you find 2666? Read it when I was only 17 so don't think I took as much as I should have from it but when I look at it to read it again it looks so daunting.
 
Local Authority

Local Authority

bitch city
Patrick Swayze said:
My Dad lent me this ages ago and I still haven't read it :eek:
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Noticed No Country For Old Men at yours, or was it the film? You read that yet? Would love to start a book club, or attend one, or just get through Cormac Mcarthy's work. Once I finish Le Grand Muelnes, got a copy of The Road that I still need to get through. Otherwise I'm going to start going through Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

On the topic of philosophy, has anyone got any recommendations to books on morality within a post-modern/urban society, preferably within the last 20 years.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Started Day of the Locust today and will probably finish it today too. Seems pretty good so far... pleased to note that it has a character named Homer Simpson.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Anyone care to recommend a book by Iain Sinclair? I read a piece by him in the LRB about Thatcher and really enjoyed it.
 
hucks

hucks

Your Message Here
I'm reading KLF: Chaos, Magic, Music and Money by John Higgs. It's fucking great, and a totally different take on the standard music biog. It's sort of chronological - so Echo and the Bunnymen and Julian Cope come before the JAMMS who come before the KLF, but it's really a bunch of tangents about things that are related to Drummond and Cauty. So obv there's the Illuminatus books, also JFK assassination, Jung, Alan Moore, loads of good stuff. Fair rattles along, too.
 
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