What are you currently reading?

[SwampD]

I read "Pillars" a long time ago and it is a good book, I never thought about reading the sequels, perhaps it is time.

I just got done reading the first chapter of World Without End because of this thread. The book has been sitting on my shelf for at least three years. I'm in.

 

Another book that's fun in that Clockwork Orange kinda way is Vurt by Jeff Noon. Although, if you are flying to Japan, you might have to spend a little more time in the drug shakedown line if they see it.

[darksabre]

Started the KJV Bible today with the New Testament. I figure I'll read a bit every day. I gotta admit, all I can think of us this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1LoYbSBA

 

[frissonic]

Marilyn Manson - The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

 

Previous recent reads are Walk This Way, The Dirt, The Heroin Diaries, and I Am Ozzy.

 

Next up is gonna be Anthony Kiedis' Scar Tissue.

 

I love rock bios if you hadn't noticed.

 

They're not exactly rock bios, but I've been reading a lot of Neil Peart lately. His lyrics have always fascinated me, and I thought his books would make for interesting reading. I was not disappointed. "Ghost Rider" has been my favorite, simply because of the subject matter (written as a documentary of his motorcycle trip after his wife and daughter died.) I find ways that people cope with such severe loss to be a fascinating read.

 

Of course, I find Neil Peart fascinating on his own. I'm a big fan of drums. There are maybe a handful that fall in line with Neil on the 1-10 scale (Danny Carey is one, but that's just because Tool pretty much ignores anything conventional. You know you've got a good groove going when my wife says "Whoa ... that's slick," referencing the intro to "Ticks and Leeches").

 

Also reading the Dick Cheney auto-biography, "In My Time" and "Steve Jobs." In queue, there's Bush's "Decision Points," "The Anatomy of Peace" byThe Arbinger Institute, and a few other.

[Randall Flagg]

 

 

They're not exactly rock bios, but I've been reading a lot of Neil Peart lately. His lyrics have always fascinated me, and I thought his books would make for interesting reading. I was not disappointed. "Ghost Rider" has been my favorite, simply because of the subject matter (written as a documentary of his motorcycle trip after his wife and daughter died.) I find ways that people cope with such severe loss to be a fascinating read.

 

Of course, I find Neil Peart fascinating on his own. I'm a big fan of drums. There are maybe a handful that fall in line with Neil on the 1-10 scale (Danny Carey is one, but that's just because Tool pretty much ignores anything conventional. You know you've got a good groove going when my wife says "Whoa ... that's slick," referencing the intro to "Ticks and Leeches").

 

Also reading the Dick Cheney auto-biography, "In My Time" and "Steve Jobs." In queue, there's Bush's "Decision Points," "The Anatomy of Peace" byThe Arbinger Institute, and a few other.

Peart has always been my favorite drummer, but I have never thought of reading his books before. I'll have to give them a look!

[mphs mike]

Great thread.

 

I'm currently reading "Cold Mountain" -- civil-war-era fiction recently made into a movie. I'm not far into it but so far it's very good.

 

If anyone needs some lighter vacation/beach/pool reading, I've just read a few books in the Joe Pickett series by CJ Box (murder mysteries set in Wyoming with a game warden as the protagonist) -- pretty enjoyable.

 

I've also recently read "Freedom" and "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen -- outstanding contemporary US fiction.

 

Finally, if you're interested in really well written short stories about the immigrant experience, I recommend any of Jhumpa Lahiri's collections.

 

I read almost no fiction, but I read Cold Mountain when it first came out. A wonderful read - Charles Frazier put together such beautiful language, that I have never seen the movie for fear of having the book "ruined".

[That Aud Smell]

Have any of you read The Road? Thinking about picking it up, but would like to have a heads up.

 

i see that there's already a lot of good counsel on that book upthread.

 

eleven is right to suggest the border trilogy as the proper introduction to mccarthy. that trilogy = all the pretty horses, the crossing, and cities of the plain (i read the first two, but not the third and last).

 

the road is a masterpiece, but it is not for the faint of heart.

[That Aud Smell]

Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake ultimately have no meaning. Joyce is just using highly stylized word-smything to put pedestrian ideas into your brain. I was so disappointed when I realized that.

 

Of course, it was during my second expedition into Ulysses.

yes, and it was mozart who merely used highly stylized and overly ornamental compositions as a means of planting facile emotions in the listener's mind.

 

seriously. gimme a break.

 

take issue with the work being needlessly impenetrable, but it's rubbish to say that it's a pointless exercise in linguistic ######.

 

as for finnegan's wake, i have tried to get through it several times, each time without any real success. i think that joyce took matters too far with that piece, or at least further than i am capable of going (or willing to go, anyway).

 

EDIT: so, "ma$turbation" gets caught by the filter? huh.

Goodness, are you a relative of Joyce's? I would never call Ulysses "needlessly impenetrable" - it's clearly penetrable and the style isn't a function of "need", but, rather, personal choice. Joyce chose the style he wrote it in; good for him; and who is to say it's "needless"?

 

I never called it "a pointless exercise in linguistic self-pleasuring" ( what is it with this forum and straw men?), but you must admit all of the accolades the book has received over the years suggest the book is more than the style, which it is not. That is all I am saying.

 

If you remove style from art then there would be nothing new, fresh, and original.

 

i apologize. i didn't mean to create straw men or put words in your mouth. but when you talked about how those works involve nothing more than "highly stylized word-smything", i placed you in the camp of critics and detractors who would, how you say, preferred to have joyce eschew obfuscation.

 

you say that ulysses is "penetrable." by that, i take it you mean "accessible" or something close to it. that, i submit, is a load of hooey. there's a reason that well-read people talk about how they've tried, without success, to read the book. it's tough sledding. IMO, the book persistently resists comprehension and rewards the effort to unravel its meaning.

 

i can't say i feel compelled to admit that the accolades the book has received over the years falsely suggest that the book is something other or more than the style in which it is written -- your ipse dixit insistence to the contrary notwithstanding.

[Eleven]

i see that there's already a lot of good counsel on that book upthread.

 

eleven is right to suggest the border trilogy as the proper introduction to mccarthy. that trilogy = all the pretty horses, the crossing, and cities of the plain (i read the first two, but not the third and last).

 

the road is a masterpiece, but it is not for the faint of heart.

 

Adding to that... Thing is, even though McCarthy is a Yank, he is a Southern Gothic writer at heart (compare to Faulkner, Warren, Welty, etc.). And The Road, while great stuff, isn't his normal milieu. Nor is No Country for Old Men, which was freaking amazing.

 

So it depends: If someone is interested in well-written genre fiction, by all means, go after The Road. Or if someone is into exploring the father-son relationship that d4rk found special in that work, same thing. But if someone wants to just get a start with Cormac McCarthy, I think it has to be either Horses or Suttree, if a novel, or Stonemason (which is very short and very amazing) if not.

Edited February 21, 2012 by Eleven

[X. Benedict]

Adding to that... Thing is, even though McCarthy is a Yank, he is a Southern Gothic writer at heart (compare to Faulkner, Warren, Welty, etc.). And The Road, while great stuff, isn't his normal milieu. Nor is No Country for Old Men, which was freaking amazing.

 

So it depends: If someone is interested in well-written genre fiction, by all means, go after The Road. Or if someone is into exploring the father-son relationship that d4rk found special in that work, same thing. But if someone wants to just get a start with Cormac McCarthy, I think it has to be either Horses or Suttree, if a novel, or Stonemason (which is very short and very amazing) if not.

I'd recommend All the Pretty Horses for anyone starting Cormac McCarthy.

[...]

 

you say that ulysses is "penetrable." by that, i take it you mean "accessible" or something close to it. that, i submit, is a load of hooey. there's a reason that well-read people talk about how they've tried, without success, to read the book. it's tough sledding. IMO, the book persistently resists comprehension and rewards the effort to unravel its meaning.

 

 

No, when I say Ulysses is "clearly penetrable" I mean it is clearly penetrable. If you're having problems with a chapter, paragraph, or sentence, there are countless references available for help. Do you suppose someone read a book, come across a word they don't know the meaning of, can't make out its meaning within the context of the book and/or through a quick etymological exercise, and so decide to skip over the word? No, one picks up a dictionary (or loads one up on their mobile device) and looks up the word. No different with Joyce.

 

I certainly didn't call Ulysses the best novel of the 20th century, the Modern Library library did. And I didn't set up the countless courses on the book, or publish the hundreds of books and websites on Ulysses. If the book were seen as nothing but style, like a comic book, then I doubt it'd have received so much recognition.

 

Curious, what kind of meaning do you suppose Ulysses contains?

[Randall Flagg]

I am reading Bag of Bones by Stephen King for a report due on Thursday, and I am roughly 400 pages away from being finished. Probably going to have to make stuff up or read all night to get it finished on time. Oh well.

[That Aud Smell]

No, when I say Ulysses is "clearly penetrable" I mean it is clearly penetrable.

 

oh. now i get it.

 

If you're having problems with a chapter, paragraph, or sentence, there are countless references available for help. Do you suppose someone read a book, come across a word they don't know the meaning of, can't make out its meaning within the context of the book and/or through a quick etymological exercise, and so decide to skip over the word? No, one picks up a dictionary (or loads one up on their mobile device) and looks up the word. No different with Joyce.

 

the experience of the overwhelming majority of people who read the book is that, if they want to understand most of what was written there, they need to flip back and forth between the book and an annotation on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis (and sometimes on a line-by-line basis). that is plainly not the experience that most readers have with most books; the orders of mangitude are entirely different.

 

to liken the ordinary process of occasionally referring to an outside resource in order to understand something in a book to the process of slogging through ulysses and an accompanying annotation is ... i'm not sure. the best i can do is that it's like equating the process of dealing with an occasional bump in the road of a finely groomed roadway in germany to the process of driving down a hopelessly pothole-ridden highway in some developing country. both roads have obstacles, sure. but the process of navigating them is entirely different.

 

I certainly didn't call Ulysses the best novel of the 20th century, the Modern Library library did. And I didn't set up the countless courses on the book, or publish the hundreds of books and websites on Ulysses. If the book were seen as nothing but style, like a comic book, then I doubt it'd have received so much recognition.

 

you certainly did not call it any of those things. you said that the book amounted to nothing "more than the style" in which it was written. by the above, you appear to acknowledge that others (perhaps a great many others) perceive the book differently.

 

Curious, what kind of meaning do you suppose Ulysses contains?

 

i gotta get after that stack of stuff in my inbox, so i don't have the time to respond to this properly. ulysses is an epic adapted to a new tradition, a new world perspective. but it's still an epic and befittingly addresses itself to plumbing the depths (and heights?) of human experience -- god, love, death, friendship, religion, community, sectarianism, relationship, art, identity, etc. i don't think it has anything to teach in a didactic sense. and i certainly don't think that the plot of the story, such as it is, is anything to cherish. i think that the truths that the text can reveal to an attentive and patient reader are personal to the reader. and, to your original point, i think that the wordplay, allusions, and lyrical beauty are all a key part of that process.

 

but to each their own. there are people a whole lot smarter than me who have reached a conclusion similar to yours -- that the book is something of a meta-joke, an exaltation of form ("style," as you put it), perhaps a literary hoax perpetrated with a quiet snicker.

[...]

 

but to each their own. there are people a whole lot smarter than me who have reached a conclusion similar to yours -- that the book is something of a meta-joke, an exaltation of form ("style," as you put it), perhaps a literary hoax perpetrated with a quiet snicker.

 

So, why did you start this "conversation" with the hostility you did? I'm not a threat to your ego, I'm just words on a screen. You came at me guns a-blazing just to wind up saying that my conclusion is no different than what others have concluded. What could have been an interesting conversation has been blighted by the knives-out attitude you brought to thread.

 

And, regarding the style, you're failing to acknowledge my statement "If you remove style from art then there would be nothing new, fresh, and original." Style is nearly everything in art - a point that Joyce was clearly making with Ulysses. If you remove Joyce's style, what is Ulysses?

[That Aud Smell]

So, why did you start this "conversation" with the hostility you did?

 

because that's my style.

 

:P

 

i probably came on a bit strong. the principal reasons for having done so are (1) that i (perhaps foolishly) place a level of ethnic pride in upholding the greatness of the irish masters and (2) that i did not perceive the apparent nuance in the position you were staking out.

 

What could have been an interesting conversation has been blighted by the knives-out attitude you brought to thread.

 

what's with the could have been and the blight? in the same way that your words on a screen are no threat to my ego, i should hope that you'd have a thicker skin when confronted with my words on a screen (on a motherfunking sabres message board, btw) re: your opinion on joyce and ulysses.

 

And, regarding the style, you're failing to acknowledge my statement "If you remove style from art then there would be nothing new, fresh, and original." Style is nearly everything in art - a point that Joyce was clearly making with Ulysses. If you remove Joyce's style, what is Ulysses?

 

i did leave that one alone. partly because i had sh!t to do.

 

but also partly because i have found your position on these matters to be elusive. you say most recently that style is nearly everything in art and that, without it, there would be nothing new, fresh, and original in art (perhaps that there would be no meaning?). but in your original post you remarked that ulysses has no meaning inasmuch as it uses highly stylized language to convey pedestrian ideas, and that you were "so disappointed" to have reached these conclusions.

 

i dunno. i won't purport to be qualified to talk about what joyce was trying to accomplish with ulysses. i can only say that, from my perspective, he wrote a magnificent book -- one that has taught me as much as anything i have ever read.

[...]

 

 

because that's my style.

 

:P

 

i probably came on a bit strong. the principal reasons for having done so are (1) that i (perhaps foolishly) place a level of ethnic pride in upholding the greatness of the irish masters and (2) that i did not perceive the apparent nuance in the position you were staking out.

 

 

 

what's with the could have been and the blight? in the same way that your words on a screen are no threat to my ego, i should hope that you'd have a thicker skin when confronted with my words on a screen (on a motherfunking sabres message board, btw) re: your opinion on joyce and ulysses.

 

 

Marvelous! Water under the bridge and touche'.

 

I'm responding via phone, but just wanted to put the above away ASAP. You lead up to a more important point afterwards, which I won't attempt to reply to on the phone, but will after the game.

[Weave]

You guys should take up reading scientific journals or something. I hear that if you concentrate on just that kind of reading it puts you above these silly discussions. :P

[Eleven]

You guys should take up reading scientific journals or something. I hear that if you concentrate on just that kind of reading it puts you above these silly discussions. :P

 

nice one

[dEnnis the Menace]

girlfriend lent me A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. It's a good mystery novel, kind of an easy read. Takes place in early 1700s in Britain. I got over 100 pages in just on my flights from Elmira to Ft Lauderdale. Didn't want to put it down. I'm bouncing between that and Point of Impact

[Eleven]

girlfriend lent me A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. It's a good mystery novel, kind of an easy read. Takes place in early 1700s in Britain. I got over 100 pages in just on my flights from Elmira to Ft Lauderdale. Didn't want to put it down. I'm bouncing between that and Point of Impact

 

Agreed. It's not a bad literary thriller.

[nfreeman]

Ok, since so many of you are readers, I'll pose this question - "what should I read next?"

 

First, some background. Other than a few books I had to read for school, I have only read one work of fiction cover to cover ("Confederacy of Dunces") and that was over 10 years ago. For whatever reason, I can't "get into" fiction. I'd love to, but whenever I've started one, I lose interest and never go back. Non-fiction books, for whatever reason, are different. I've read plenty, from sports books (Moneyball, The Game) to Bios (Frank Lloyd Wright, Theo Fleury), and everything by Anthony Bourdain. I've also read everything by David Sedaris, but his is sort of a fiction/non-fiction mash-up.

 

In two weeks I have to fly to Japan for a week long business trip. What should I read? I'd like to see if anyone has a suggestion for a novel that may actually be able to keep my attention.

Why don't you try historical fiction? Maybe the blending of fiction in real historical settings will be enough to keep your attention. I like WWII stories for historical fiction. The Winds of War by Herman Wouk is a classic.

 

Or any of the early Tom Clancy novels like Hunt for Red October or Sum of all Fears might be enough to rope you in and keep you. Not really historical fiction but they certainly dealt with relevant topics when they were written.

 

Is Sci Fi/horror more your thing? Maybe take a look at some of the stuff Michael Crighton has written.

 

I guess I'll offer that maybe you should try to find a book that matches your tastes in movies. If you can give us an idea of what you like to watch on the big screen maybe we can point you to some book ideas.

 

If historical fiction is a possibility for you, Trinity or Exodus (each by Leon Uris) are both very good.

 

If you're interested in just giving some fiction a whirl, I'd suggest The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- great mystery/thriller trilogy, very hard to put down and just a bit more substance than most mysteries.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

If historical fiction is a possibility for you, Trinity or Exodus (each by Leon Uris) are both very good.

 

Excellent choice. A very good read.

[MattPie]

Historical fiction might be something. I remember reading The Killer Angels in history class in High School and I really enjoyed it.

 

Speaking of which, I read an excerpt of Papillon in HS and finally read the book a couple years ago. Great action/adventure book. In theory it's autobiographical, although some dispute that Charriere borrowed some of the events from other prisoners.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Papillon-P-S-Henri-Charriere/dp/0061120669/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1329941112&sr=8-2

[That Aud Smell]

If historical fiction is a possibility for you, Trinity or Exodus (each by Leon Uris) are both very good.

 

good stuff.

 

more recently, i have become a big fan of edward rutherford's historical novels. i tore through his new york: the novel a while ago. really well done -- takes nyc from the days of the dutch fur traders all the way through 9/11. amazing. he's done similar treatments for london and dublin, i believe. not heavy, but not pulp either.

Edited February 22, 2012 by That Aud Smell

[X. Benedict]

If historical fiction is a possibility for you, Trinity or Exodus (each by Leon Uris) are both very good.

 

If you're interested in just giving some fiction a whirl, I'd suggest The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo -- great mystery/thriller trilogy, very hard to put down and just a bit more substance than most mysteries.

 

Devil in the White City is history that reads like fiction.

 

Chicago in 1893.

[FogBat]

Started the KJV Bible today with the New Testament. I figure I'll read a bit every day. I gotta admit, all I can think of us this:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1LoYbSBA

 

Well, that was interesting with regard to The Stig.

 

As for the KJV, it was definitely written in a form of English that was used back in those days. Obviously, most people don't talk nor write like that today (unless they like to use that kind of inflection to get their own point across).