Amazing Books (1 Viewer)

[Ex-User (1146)]

has anyone here ever read 'infinite jest' by david foster wallace?

 

[uncle_meat]

Dice Man by Like Reinhart (Rheinhardt?) - class buk.

Sin city comics are ded gud 2.

 

[P. Littbarski]

Originally posted by conor


can



worms

GO!

Yes

Yes they can

 

[Rimbaud]

Nah, Kerouac is pretty deadly i think - all a matter of taste though.
And Milan Kundera - a realist me thinks.

The thing that sickened me so much in the last 10 years when it came to books was firstly.. Mr.D. Fuckhead Couplands Generation x stuff.
Secondly Irvine Welsh`s trashy novels - bsides trainspotting that is.
As well as Will Burroughs death.

 

[vertrauen]

i'm not much of a fan of douglas coupland, that all families are psychotic was painful to read. generation x was alright, though. i loved the unbearable lightness of being, the joke is pretty damned good too, but not as good as the unbearable lightness. donna tart's secret history is really really good, although i haven't gotten the chance to read her new one. contrary to popular opinion, zadie smith's new one is also very good, although not as good as white teeth (the negative reviews, i'm convinced, are due to jelous failed hacks in the times and guardian).

somebody said something about not liking on the road the first time and then coming back to it a couple of years later and loving it: how strange, the exact same thing happened to me.

also Them: adventures with extremists (or something) by someone, is fucking hilarious and scary too.

germaine greer anybody? haven't read anything by her, although i have the female eunuch at home (i have an awful habit of buying books and not reading them).

yes yes, camus! but the wasp factory was the most depressing and black (as opposed to 'dark') book i have ever read. I loved Whit by Iain Banks, though. Slaughterhouse 5 was fantastic. i'm not really offering any original books, am i? i'm just telling everyone they were right what they said (apart from douglas fucking coupland).

 

[Wilbert]

Originally posted by snakybus


hey Wilbert, I thought all you read was old Seinfeld scripts and X-Men comics.

Seinfeld scripts (in a book my sister bought me, not downloaded from the internerd) = yes.
X-Men comics = no.
I am not that much of a nerd.
Actually, who am I kidding?

 

[vertrauen]

somebody mentioned salman rushdie ... were would you recommend i start?

have to agree on the bible: one of the best works ever. ..

 

[Anne OMalley]

If it's the rural-nightmare-McCarthy you're after, try "Child of God".

Originally posted by minka


yesyesyes. also "suttree". features the most impressive description of a hangover ever, culminating in the narrator realizing that he has a)been asleep in an abandoned car and b)that someone has pissed on his head. and the immortal bit where his useless mate gets off on charges of bestiality because "a watermelon ain't no beast".

 

[egg_]

The Bible: implausible situations, incoherent plot, thinly-drawn characters, poorly written prose. Load of shite.

 

[Juno]

Originally posted by vertrauen
somebody mentioned salman rushdie ... were would you recommend i start?

have to agree on the bible: one of the best works ever. ..

I'd definitely say 'Midnight's Children' is the best place to start and I liked 'The Moor's Last Sigh' too but above all don't even think about reading 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' - a waste of so many hours I'll never get back

 

[Pantone247]

Originally posted by egg_
The Bible: implausible situations, incoherent plot, thinly-drawn characters, poorly written prose. Load of shite.

its a gas when you're on the doob

some of the old school wacky God of rage stuff in the old testament

 

[Jimmy Magee]

"My Life in Tights" by Burt Ward - if nothing else for the immortal lines (this is himself doing the business here) ...."and she took more than she was accustomed to, both in width and in length"

 

[kstop]

John Banville - Mefisto or Copernicus are good.
Ursula Le Guin - The Left Hand Of Darkness or The Dispossessed.
Stanislaw Lem - Fiasco or the Futurological Congress or any short stories
Douglas(?) Hofstader - "Godel, Escher, Bach, an eternal golden braid"
William Burroughs, any and all.

This is all very familiar.

 

[Jimmy Magee]

And in a non-ironic vein...some faves, off the top o' me head...

Gogol - Diary of a Madman (funny, but hints at the shiteness behind the humour)
Turgenev - First Love (in a sort of nostalgic, yearning way)
Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath (monumental)
Graham Greene - End of the Affair (poignant)
Levi - If This is a Man (one for our friend Faurisson, although he'd probably deem it fiction)

Probably other ones that I'm not thinking of...

 

[hugh]

Originally posted by egg_
I read three quarters of it, thought it was shit, then went back years later and read it again and loved it. For some reason the trip to Mexico (which I missed out on first time) makes the whole book make sense

I had the same thing with Cormac McCarthy. Tried to read Blood Meridian (twice) years back and couldn't get past page 50 or so. Read the Border trilogy ones recently and am now working my way back through everything else. It's ALL great. I was stupid back then obviously.

Originally posted by egg_


Most boring book I ever attempted to read was something by Graham Greene, can't exactly remember the title, twas set in Africa I think, main protagonist is an honest uncorruptable policeman in a very corrupt environment. During a very boring train journey I discovered that sitting there NOT reading the book was less boring than reading it.

Edit: 'The heart of the matter' I think it was

Wow. Heart Of The Matter is one of my favourites. Brilliant atmosphere ... great characters.

In the interests of contributing something original to all this has anyone read those novels by Robert Wilson set in West Africa? He is quite well known now for these Portugese detective novels he writes (which aren't that great) but before that he wrote this series of private eye type books set in West Africa somewhere. Its kind of like Philip Marlowe meets Heart of Darkness - full, of corruption, violence, sleaziness, and outright evil. Like an 18s certificate Graham Greene ....

By the way, that's not Robert ANTON Wilson. He's great if you are 12 but pales a bit after that .....

 

[minka]

also Them: adventures with extremists (or something) by someone, is fucking hilarious and scary too.

'tis by jon ronson. quite brilliant.

i'm afraid, like those failed writer journos, i thought the new zadie smith was kind of dull. it certainly didn't fully distract me from ye liveliest awfulnesse that is four hours in gatwick airport. grand, like, but nothing special.

also, am i the only one who wasn't bowled over by donna tartt's "the secret history"? i remember when it came out, friends of mine were hugely enthusiastic about it, saying i must read it, best book ever, etc. so i did. and lo, for it was an above-average psychological thriller with an added side order of pretentiousness and guilty "ooh, i shouldn't like this, it's so...elitist" thrills. her new one's supposed to be quite good, mind.

 

[nlgbbbblth]

Biggles?

 

[vertrauen]

Originally posted by egg_
The Bible: implausible situations, incoherent plot, thinly-drawn characters, poorly written prose. Load of shite.

Well, it is a collection of lots and lots of books, written over approximately three or four hundred years. the implausible situations are common to most near eastern religions, and really only implausible from our point of view. If it was all that implausible, the book would never have been as popular as it was (in fact, the implausibility of the New Testament is largely due to the gospel writers attempting to put a Greek slant on to their religion - ie, the union of the head God with a human female and the creation of a kind of superman/god, in order to make it more plausible. oh the irony). The plot isn't really all that incoherent at all, in fact, especially the Old Testament. It's only with Jesus (or rather, Paul's reading of Jesus) where the story gets a bit hazy regarding the covenant and just who exactly the people of Israel are. The thinly drawn characters (in the New Testament anyway) i'd have to agree with you, well everyone apart from Jesus, and maybe Paul and to a lesser extent Pintias the robber. However, if you read the four gospels as one novel, you could consider it the first post-modern work of fiction. As for the the poorly written prose: not really a fair criticism, as you're only reading the translation (unless you know Greek). The King James version is quite spectacular. although i have only basic Greek, i can see the beauty of the New Testament. kind of. there are lots of contradictions, however, but that only adds to its perverse charm.

but anyway, i liked the secret history, although i haven't really read many thrillers, so i can't say whether it's only an above average one or not. I found the ending (ie, the wrapping up part) very odd and kind of pointless. but apart from that, i did enjoy it.

i just bought chomsky, the book on media somebody recommended. some of you people make me feel very inadequate about my reading, but hey recomendations are great. the chomsky book is quite old, though, and i hope the facts still hold true.

 

[potlatch]

I never learned to read.

Ah no... "Perfume" by Patrick Suskind is a rollocking rollercoaster ride of thrills ans spills. Absolutely un-notreadable. And Kubrick was planning on making a moving picture about it.

 

[Anne OMalley]

On the contrary, if it was too plausible it would hardly have become the basis for a religion.

"Bloke named Jesus tries to preach a set of values to his people, then gets executed for doing so." That's not the kind of pitch that makes for an inspiring story. You need the implausible shit to make it work i.e. the resurrection bit. Religion is about making people believe in a story, not about making them believe it. It's about the difference between the mythical and the literal.

In other words, if the Bible turned out to be true, we'd have to write another one.

Originally posted by vertrauen
If it was all that implausible, the book would never have been as popular as it was