What Book Did You Read Last Night??? (10 Viewers)

[hermie]

Just finished The Corrections, wasn't sure how into it I was at the start but thought it was brilliant by the end. Onto Bukowski's Women

 

[rettucs]

Its my first attempt to read a book on the kindle. I'm not enjoying it at all.

I need to stop reading books I don't enjoy. This is about the 3rd in a row.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I need to stop reading books I don't enjoy. This is about the 3rd in a row.[/QUOTE]

I need to stop starting books that I don't like. Giving up on them just compounds the sense of failure that these books bring me. Last year wasn't great overall but this year is going a bit better so far.

Has anyone read War And War by Laszlo Krasznahorkai? I never heard of it or its author until today but I'm putting it on my list. "formidable density accumulates through the succession of immensely long sentences" - I'm not sure how I feel about immensely long sentences.

 

[St. Fechin]

I need to stop starting books that I don't like. Giving up on them just compounds the sense of failure that these books bring me. Last year wasn't great overall but this year is going a bit better so far.

Has anyone read War And War by Laszlo Krasznahorkai? I never heard of it or its author until today but I'm putting it on my list. "formidable density accumulates through the succession of immensely long sentences" - I'm not sure how I feel about immensely long sentences.

I have Melancholy of Resistance but I haven't got round to reading it yet.
Immensely long sentences? Bring 'em on. Central European writers seem to love that shit. This is great, and is made up entirely of one huge sentence (it's a short novella admittedly):

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I was just looking at The Melancholy of Resistance there. I might start with that one. The plot outline is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Immensely long sentences lose their appeal after you read one book with immensely long sentences although a book that is all one sentence is allowed as this type of thing, not exactly original admittedly, and usually suffering from the symptoms, also felt by the reader themselves, of an author who had a great idea but now has to go through increasingly tedious motions of executing it and realising that their grand idea was only really good as that, an idea, and doesn't work so good on paper, is alright by me.

 

[SomethingManic]

It's funny because he wrote a long sentence.

 

[rettucs]

I bought Bill Callahan's book at the Bill Callahan gig last night. I predict it will take about 10 minutes to read.

 

[St. Fechin]

Recently:

I just got this in the mail one day. Some stranger in Brazil sent it and wrote, "You'll like this". Because it's a thin book, I read it. If it had been a thick book, I would have discarded it.
I was shocked by how charming and amusing it was. I couldn't believe he lived as long ago as he did. You would've thought he wrote it yesterday. It's so modern and so amusing. It's a very, very original piece of work. It rang a bell in me, in the same way that The Catcher in the Rye did. It was about subject matter that I liked and it was treated with great wit, great originality and no sentimentality.

Good man Woody.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/06/woody-allen-top-five-books

 

[Nate Champion]

Just started Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut - so far, so what? I hope things start to deepen.

I finished The Heart is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers yesterday - beautifully written book, even if the context is quite dated.

I've put on hold The Rest is Noise for the time being - there's no way I'm lugging around that thing on holiday with me. Loved the opening chapter on Mahler & Strauss, althogh some of the chat about notation and tones leaves me in the lurch.

 

[St. Fechin]

Overwritten, overlong. Took forever. Mostly cobblers.
I didn't have the foggiest what was going on much of the time.
I now understand some of the problems people have with Amis.

I also read Areopagitica on my e-reader - looks like Milton won. !gloat

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I read 100 pages of Ægypt by John Crowley

Its a bit crap so I'm giving up on it. Its all hippy age of aquarius shit, stardust and acid but written in the 80s when there was no longer and acceptable excuse.

 

[ratmonkey]

A biography of Lance Henriksen.

 

[rettucs]

hmm, I have mixed feelings about Roth.

Philip Roth, the much-lauded author of Portnoy's Complaint , has won the biennial Man Booker International Prize today.
Roth, whose work includes his noted 1959 debut Goodbye, Columbus , has also won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral , featuring favoured narrator Nathan Zuckerman.
The Man Booker International prize, announced during the Sydney Writers' Festival, is worth £60,000 (€68,000) for the winner, and living authors whose works of fiction are either originally in English or generally available in English translation are eligible.
It honours a writer's body of work as opposed to the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which is awarded for a single book.
Other nominees for the award included Rohinton Mistry, Philip Pullman and Anne Tyler.
British author John LeCarre, known for spy classics such as The Spy Who Came in From the Cold , had rejected his nomination, saying he did not compete for literary prizes, but the judges kept him on the shortlist anyway, citing their admiration for his work.
Chinese writers featured in the 2011 shortlist for the first time in the form of Wang Anyi, who wrote The Song of Everlasting Sorrow published in 1996, and Su Tong, whose novella Wives and Concubines was the basis of the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated movie Raise the Red Lantern .
Previous winners of the award were Canadian writer Alice Munro (2009), Nigeria's Chinua Achebe (2007), and Albanian Ismail Kadare, who scooped the inaugural prize in 2005.
The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in London on June 28th.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

hmm, I have mixed feelings about Roth.

one of the judges has quit over him getting the prize

Emperor's clothes: in 20 years' time will anyone read him?

heh heh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/18/judge-quits-philip-roth-booker

 

[St. Fechin]

one of the judges has quit over him getting the prize



heh heh

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/18/judge-quits-philip-roth-booker

We have read our guts out for the last 18 months

yuck

 

[Jim Daniels]

I've just finished "The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim", which wasn't bad, apart from an out-of-nowhere ending. Fairly easy to read though, with some nice sections - even if it has been told numerous times (middle aged man having a mid life crisis)

Am now re-reading "What Was Lost" by Catherine O'Flynn, cause it has a lovely mood to it.

 

[jonah]

Whats the point of reading books, anyway?

 

[SomethingManic]

Whats the point of reading books, anyway?

The wonderful places they take us? The emotions we feel when we connect with characters? The moments that shock you, take your breath away, and frustrate you. The imagination it can help you create, and the freedom to make your own worlds, people, everything.

Books are amazing. They educate you, make you feel at ease for a while, and they make you forget about every shit little thing that the world can throw at you. They are always there when you need them, they don't need batteries or electricity, all they require is imagination.

I LOVE BOOKS <3

 

[jonah]

Thank you Ash Ketchum.