What Are You Reading?

[MX7]

Recently I've realised that videogames suck, so this past week I've read The Outsider, Factotum and Almost Transparent Blue. All of which are slim books with similar themes of nihilism and apathy. Suits me pretty well at the moment. Re-reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble which is an absolute must read for anyone with a hankering to challenge the traditional sex/gender binary. The kind of thing that would send right-wingers bonkers with rage if they could actually understand it.

What should I read next with regards to low-life vomit soaked fiction/feminist critical theory?

[blackoak]

I highly recommend Journey to the End of the Night by Celine if you enjoyed Bukowski's Factotum. Personally, I greatly prefer to Celine to Bukowski and similar later writers. Strangely I hated Journey for the first 10 pages, but its great after that. My favorite novel by far.

I'll have to ask my friend about the feminist critical theory stuff...

[CIT]

Re-reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble which is an absolute must read for anyone with a hankering to challenge the traditional sex/gender binary.

Uh-oh, theory hipstaz in tha house!

For an entertaining challenge to Butler's notion of absolute social constructivism I recommend the following:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp0tg8 ... radox_news

[CMoon]

Just about done reading 'Yeast, a practical guide to beer fermentation'. Nothing much to report unless you brew beer.

[MX7]

Re-reading Judith Butler's Gender Trouble which is an absolute must read for anyone with a hankering to challenge the traditional sex/gender binary.

Uh-oh, theory hipstaz in tha house!

For an entertaining challenge to Butler's notion of absolute social constructivism I recommend the following:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp0tg8 ... radox_news

Looking forward to watching it! While it's all very well and good to see gender as a fully malleable construct, in practice there's a lot of (residual?) very important differences still present. Was fascinated that my own research in gender differences in learning in my teacher training dissertation completely confounded my hypothesis, and actually teaching girls and boys requires radically different approaches.

@blackoak - cheers for the rec, looking forward to checking this out!

[sjewkestheloon]

For the feminine lit crit side I can recommend a book called The Mad Woman In The Attic, the authors of which I don't recall. For fiction I appreciate Iris Murdoch, maybe The Severed Head, and the Angela Carter collection called The Bloody Chamber. Possibly some Virginia Woolfe if you are partial to a bit of modernism.

As for the more grimy side, try Burroughs, Beckett's Molloy, Edward Bond's drama such as Saved, maybe some Sarah Kane. If you are up to it Roberto Bolano's 2666 is blissful.

[Arvandor]

Finshing up The Sword, the Ring, and the Chalice, a trilogy by Deborah Chester. Surprisingly good!

Must finish that up so I can start on Cold Days! The Dresden Files is by far my favorite book series ever. So awesome!

Then it's back to the Myron Bolitar books by Harlen Coben. Very VERY good books.

[NTSC-J]

Underground by Haruki Murakami

Over 60 interviews with survivors of the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo by the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Burly stuff and very readable, although its a massive book. At nearly 800 pages, its definitely the longest book in Japanese I've ever read, and while its got a lot of crazy stories in it, much of it is kind of repetitive.

One thing I like is that I'm usually reading it on the way to work when I'm riding on the same train lines that the attacks took place at around the same time of day, so it makes it that much more terrifying.



Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart Ehrman

While I don't think most of the mistranslations/typos/intentional changes or omissions Ehrman discusses here will really challenge someone's belief in the overall message of what Jesus taught (or is said to have taught), I think the point is made that the Bible is a very human book and anyone who believes it to the letter isn't thinking things through.

Even putting the religious stuff aside, it's an interesting read for the history of book making. It's amazing any written work that old survived in any form, no matter how butchered.

[xris]

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue - a semi- humorous history of modern American English. I have alot of respect for most of our users that understand and can properly communicate in my seriously backward language. Apparently, we use one of the only languages that likes 'do-ing' stuff.

[Moniker]

On a Murakami bender. Read the short story collections After the Quake and The Elephant Vanishes. Then moved on to Wild Sheep Chase, and am currently reading The Wind-up Bird: Chronicle. The first is what got me into Murakami (esp. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo), the last might just be one of those life-changing literary experiences. I'm pretty pissed that the translation is abridged, but what can you do?

[Obiwanshinobi]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - didn't finish it back in my days of hectic reading, but something about it got stuck in my head and needs to move on. Another one will be most likely A Spy in the House of Love (had a similar story with it back then).

[xavierjesus]

Finished Montefiores' "Young Stalin".

Wow, mind blown! Getting access to this level of detailed information (unseen archive material of interviews with his mother for example), regarding the formation of a dictator, was un-put-downable page-turning stuff; what a red-neck psychotic gangster! And given how history unfolded, the realisation that he wasn't even Russian is staggering to me.

Total power-house of a book!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Young-Stalin-Si ... 0753823799

[xavierjesus]

Presently on: Dave Eggars' "How We Are Hungry".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Are-Hungry- ... 0141020040

Collection of short stories. Quirky, dark, comic, existential. So far, all good. Certainly a good writer - has ability to vocalise a lot of thoughts (at least, mine)... Let's see how this pans out.

@NTSC-J
Thanks for the 'Misquoting Jesus' heads up.

[Moniker]

Finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Fairly disappointed. I very much enjoyed The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, & Snow Crash, but his latest was marred by a combination of bad writing and disconnected ideas.

He had three main ideas:

The first was to reverse scientific & religious orders, making the technocrats into monks. This may have been interesting, had not monasteries served as the guardians of knowledge throughout the middle ages, making the notion fairly boring when compared to A Canticle for Liebowitz.

The second was positing a very basic form of Platonism. It got pretty boring leafing through many thinly-disguised pages of explanations of Plato's cave.

The third was synthesizing 2 with a string theory based (although he never alluded to it.. probably too technical for the layman) view of multiple universes.

All this might have been okay if there were strong characters and interesting dialogue. Sadly, neither ever arose, and the novel concludes with a sort of mystical resolution that isn't very well-explained, making the journey rather pointless.


tl;dr - don't bother with Anathem. Read his other stuff instead.

[Leandro]

"Tenda dos Milagres" by Jorge Amado. "Tent of Miracles" in english speaking countries

[NTSC-J]

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Becker's theory is that all our actions are tied to our fear of dying, and our attachment to symbols is an attempt at immortality.

His writing is dense and not really something you can speed read through, but its thoughtful and often profound. His writings on depression, anality, and the horror of being human were most interesting to me. It seems kind of unpleasant, but I also found it to be a pretty inspiring read as well.

I also learned that Hitler used to have his young mistresses shit and piss on his face.

[drauch]

Hitler's love for scat is in that book? I'm curious on the facts of such information.

[NTSC-J]

Its only mentioned briefly, but its from "Adolf Hitler's Guilt Feelings", Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

[mesh control]

Underground by Haruki Murakami

On a Murakami bender. Read the short story collections After the Quake and The Elephant Vanishes. Then moved on to Wild Sheep Chase, and am currently reading The Wind-up Bird: Chronicle. The first is what got me into Murakami (esp. Super-Frog Saves Tokyo), the last might just be one of those life-changing literary experiences. I'm pretty pissed that the translation is abridged, but what can you do?

Finished 1Q84 last week and finished Sputnik Sweetheart this evening.

1Q84 has some nice imagery and loads of trite. It's mostly trite, though. Book 3 should have never been written and it doesn't have a solid conclusion. I hate this book. Fuck this book.
Sputnik Sweetheart reminds of On the Road, as the story progresses the characters eventually become sadder and sadder. It falls asleep at the wheel around 2/3 of the way through.

I have Kafka on the Shore on my book shelf, but I'll probably never read it.

[Rob]

Everyone reading Murakami. I think I hate most of his characters. Sputnik Sweetheart - about 2/3rds of the way is where it stopped feeling like a complete rehash of Norwegian Wood, so I guess I liked the asleep at the wheel part the best.

Now reading: Heaven - Mieko Kawakami

[Temia Eszteri]

Previously, East by Edith Pattou. Cute book, has the feel of a classic folktale in the main character's quick and lateral thinking, as well as the handling of the fantasy elements.

Currently, I'm doubling up with a little-known but intriguing and amusing gaslamp fantasy book collection called the Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy (by Avram Davidson) while re-reading my old ratty copy of Snow Crash at the same time.

[null1024]

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams.
that ending is mean though

My favorite of the H2G2 books. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'd rate them in reverse release order in fact. Couldn't stand to read Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing though, and I usually enjoy his books.

[EmperorIng]

I finished Dune last night.

First third: fun sci-fi world-building stuff

Rest of the book: disappointing, clumsy junk.

As soon as all your main characters become prescient and all-knowing, it's really hard to care about them.

[Ed Oscuro]

I went looking for some old book by Andre Norton, found my Neuromancer and Count Zero paperbacks instead. I have a few quibbles with Neuromancer (anachronisms, an implausible world, and a hell of a lot more focus on style over substance, but it also puts things into focus that often escape the attention of sci-fi novelists) but there's no denying Gibson keeps the pace up and that makes it much more enjoyable than many well-engineered but sedate fictional worlds. I last read this well over a decade ago, so I probably understand a lot more than I would have then (for example, the opening of Count Zero, which explains a "CZI" psuedo-instruction, is ironically supposedly taken from another book I have bought since, Rodnay Zak's "Programming the Z-80" - but I suspect he got it wrong since Zaks is a much more careful writer on technical matters).

[ncc]

I bought Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational for $3 as a Kindle Daily Deal, and it's a pretty good read. It doesn't drown you in high-level vocabulary and other things that kind of go in one ear and out the other if you're not educated in the social sciences (Which I appreciate since most of my college education involved rolling my face across a keyboard until code that would compile came out), but still goes in depth enough that you feel like you're learning something. I expected it to be dry reading, but it's actually kind of fun.

10 Billion Days & 100 billion Nights is something else I picked up because I'm generally a fan of the novels that Haikasoru publishes. I'm not really far enough into it to comment on the story at all, but I can say that the author had a real hard on for descriptive writing. The entire first chapter describes in excruciating detail the birth of the planet and several billion years of subsequent development, including the evolution of life.

[Moniker]

Hamlet.

Pretty good so far. The ghost is fucking badass, but the main character is a bit too emo.

[O. Van Bruce]

Who of you has read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

My inner fanboy keeps telling me that someone here has also been graced by the lecture of such masterpiece.

And it truly is... for everyone of you that are a bit melancholic and nostalgic I'm sure you'll love it. It may take a little getting used to the way Marquez handles relationships for you northerners though.

I keep dreaming of the day some mangaka draws the story.

If you browwse /v/ you can't imagine the amount of FEELS the story gave me...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundre ... f_Solitude

[blackoak]

I read 100 Years of Solitude a couple years ago, but hated it... mostly the writing style which I found affected and cloying. Not sure how much the English translation contributes to that feeling. But I mostly don't like "magical realism" either, so there you go. With rare exceptions like Calvino, it always feels like a thin excuse for bad writers to wax sentimental. Though with Marquez I do realize there's a history I'm not in touch with that would probably mitigate that impression...

I just finished Catcher in the Rye for the first time. I would almost certainly not have liked this as a teenager, but as an adult with some knowledge of the world, I really enjoyed it. I want to read Salinger's short stories sometime.

[Moniker]

Never read Solitude, but I read Love in the Time of Cholera in school. Have sort of the same opinion of that as blackoak. Possibly I was missing something.

As for Salinger, Nine Stories ("For Esme," in particular) & Catcher are fantastic. I'd steer clear of the rest. I'd recommend Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; it's sort of a female version of Catcher, although that's selling it short. Really great roman a clef.

[CMoon]

As for Salinger, Nine Stories ("For Esme," in particular) & Catcher are fantastic. I'd steer clear of the rest.

Awwwwww, I always really liked Franny and Zooey.

Started reading A Game of Thrones because I've been enjoying the show. I'm not expecting greatness, but it is very big and if not of high literary standards it should at least be entertaining.