I enjoyed The Stranger, but as far as Existential literature goes nothing can compare to Nausea. Even now I still believe to question everything and everyone as Sartre did takes a lot of courage. Clearly there's a whole truth behind the idea of existentialism. Something that doesn't seem to be discussed about anymore.

Did Sartre embrace the idea of being an Existentialist? I know he's the father of that kind of thought, but is all of his work pretty much actively illustrating the ideas? I can't remember. I've only read Black Orpheus, so I'm not very familiar with Sartre. I was going to read The Age of Reason in a month or so. Would you recommend I start with Nausea instead?

I know Camus rejected the Existentialist label outright and said his work had nothing to do with it.

Sartre did write "Existentialism is a Humanism," so I would assume that he did embrace the term for part of his work. But he also dealt with nothingness and phenomenology. With nothingness strongly emphasized in The Wall. I would call Nausea the holy grail of Existentialism. Or maybe the most refined definition of the term. Haven't read Age of Reason yet, but I do recommend Nausea as prime reading.

I seriously did nothing but read today, so I finished these books today:



Both are totally fantastic, and both hit me real hard when I finished them. Kavalier and Clay was a such a delicious read!

And I then placed these books on the reading table which I have found has greatly increased the reading I do:

I am now roughly fifty pages into it, and I think it is great, but not blowing me away yet. Usually though, with a lot of graphic novels the full emotional impact is usually found in the end (Save for Jeff Lemire's Ghost Stories, which hit hard the whole way through.)

About thirty pages in now. Love the style, will probably read more tonight.

Half-way though on loving it.


I usually like to have three different books going at once (one fiction, one non-fiction, and one graphic novel...) but I have not found a non-fiction book that I want to read right now. ALthough I have heard good things about "The Pixar Touch." Which I may start later this week when I finish "Incognegro."

Jimmy Corrigan is such a brilliant piece of work. I've been collecting Chris Ware's stuff for a few years now. He's seriously one of the best writers currently working in any medium, and his artwork is equally stunning.

I recommend you pick up this beautiful thing, Quimby the Mouse. You can get it pretty cheap if you buy it used. http://www.amazon.com/Quimby-Mouse-ACME-No...9671&sr=8-8

Also, check this one out. Really wonderful stuff. http://www.amazon.com/Acme-Novelty-Library...9671&sr=8-5

Here's a really bad scan I did from the second book. The pages are huge so I had to scan it in two parts. It's one of my favorite Ware strips. Incredibly depressing. Check the link below to see it larger.



http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3181/262262...5b7ec6254_o.jpg

Yeah Ware is so awesome. I just wish i had the money to invest in his stuff. I feel like Corrigan might be one of the few purchases of his I might make. It's just so tough to lay down 20 bucks for each of the ANL volumes.... especially when they really don't hit 100 pages.

I never expected to see 'the bell jar' and the word fun in the same sentence. It is a great book though.

I just borrowed this from Slackmo. I'll be starting it tomorrow morning on my way to work.

Finished The Fall and now I'm reading this handsome thing.

Just found out about this series from a guy working at the local comic store. The dude just gave me the last three issues and let me sit in the store and read them because he thought it was the best thing he has read in a while.

He is right, they are funny, violent, and full of real promise. Consider me hooked:

Me Write Book: The Autobiography of Big Foot by Graham Roumieu: So awesome. Funny, violent, and written and illustrated as if it were drawn by Big Foot, himself.

that was really good
should probably be essential reading for every American, it touches on the basis of our nation, reality, and idealism

I've been enjoying this new one from David Guterson, who did Snow Falling on Cedars. The two main characters are so much like me (in terms of upbringing, background, same Seattle demimonde) that it's positively eerie.

It's getting mixed reviews, and it does peter out a bit and feature lots of baggy exposition, but it's well-written, and there are some nice apercus here. It's a very detailed Seattle novel with a great feel for places and culture in that City.

collected essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

someday, thanks to Chris Ware, I'm gong to have to check out Windsor McCay's stuff. He was a genius.

Don't hesitate! Check out McCay's stuff as soon as you can. His Little Nemo is brilliant.

Buy this. Only 23 bucks, or 17 if you buy it used. About a foot tall, hard cover, 432 pages. Every single Little Nemo strip of the original run. It'll keep you busy for a long time. I've had it for over a year and I've barely dented the thing. Those strips are dense!

http://www.amazon.com/Little-Nemo-1905-191...2970&sr=8-1

Exploring the world of public domain literature and audio books.

Currently via free podcast via http://scottgadwa.libsyn.com/:



"At the side of the everlasting 'why?' there is a 'yes.'"

A Room With a View is marvelous. Forster is one of the few classic authors I can read book after book without experiencing that feeling of irony.

This might be up your alley

http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?...p;action=Search

The group has set out to record as many public domain works as possible and release them free on the 'net. Mind you, they are not professionals--one poor soul reading a portion of Joyce's "Ulysses" seriously fucks it up for posterity--but hey, whadaya want for free?

I just finished "The Colour Of Magic" by Terry Pratchett and I must say I was a bit disappointed. After hearing about how funny the series is, I was let down quite a bit when the laughs just wouldn't come. Now don't get me wrong it was an enjoyable book,However it wasn't as funny as I'd hoped it would be. I'm going to give a couple more of the Discworld books a chance,But I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with the series.

Oooo I want this.

Been waiting to read this forever, got a chance to get 100 pages in during last week's vacation. I'm probably the last advertising creative to read it, but if not, it's highly recommended. Tons of great insight, and written with a lot of humor and wit by one of the best writers from one of the best agencies in the country.

listened to the first part of this last night while cleaning:




I have mixed feelings about audio books. I tend to drift in and out of attention and miss parts. It works fine while I'm at the office, though.

so marvelous! the end!!!

The first book is a lot of sorting out and setup. It's not really until MORT that Pratchett finds his legs.

And then promptly loses them in the next book.

Order it. And set aside plenty of time to read it. McKay had the ability to do amazing detail without crowding the panel or distracting from the story or the action. Masterpiece of visual storytelling.

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

AMERICA

I know! le sigh...

However, Hower's End contains my favorite Forster moment in a certain passage that takes place in the forest during twilight hours.

I've only read A Room... and parts of A Passage to India.
More more! I'll make this my Bloomsbury summer!

finished dero's "Let It Blurt"

started bukowski's "Women"

S l o w l y making it through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay but have skipped ahead to read the ending. Twice. Why must I always do this? Everything takes so much longer to read as a result of this stupid habit.

I'm about 50 pages in. I really like this so far but I can't see how Ignatius' character is going to stretch for the length of this book and I can definitely see him getting on my nerves (and not in a good way) soon.

This book made me cry a couple times along the way.

Ignatius is probably the least relatable main character in a book i've encountered. the supporting cast starts to pick up the pace as the story moves along, and he also starts to grow on you. solid novel.

I've been meaning to read Confederacy... for years. A favorite book of my mother and others who I respect.

Almost done with Winesburg, Ohio and it's totally devastating. I love it.

He doesn't. Finally having read that in its entirety after years up thinking it'd be right up my alley, I was disappointed.

It sort of was the fore-runner of a sensibility that's been popularized and done better since.

I mean: it it sort of like a prelude to the post-nuclear family and cultural satire that runs so rampant today; so it was probably a lot fresher 25 years ago.

"Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling"

I'm currently reading the Leggy Starlitz stories, damn good amoral fun.

Just finished. Not as satisfying as Cold Mountain. Characters are less substantial. Narrative feels hurried. Still, pretty good historical fiction, and my people are from Western carolina - my Dad has a summer house about exactly where the story is set.

Also disappointing, but I can't really say why. Wouldn't want to give the endingaway.

the new name didn't come from nowhere... rereading before tackling Updike's latest.

Nicholson Baker - Human Smoke

Over the course of the last few years, there's been a fair bit of revisionist WWI/WWI and 20th Century History, which is the usual course in US historiography.

When I read the review of this book back in the winter, there was a brief interview with Baker, saying that as part of his newspaper archiving efforts, he'd read a lot of material regarding the pacifist movement between the wars, and had been surprised to find that it was as strong as it was. People in the US and UK were locked up for sedition and "alien sympathies".

Baker started digging deeper, to any official sources he could find. Official, in this case, led to newspaper articles, press releases, declassified government documents, courtroom testimony, depositions, journals, military reports, speeches, etc. From this, Baker's culled a set of articles or article extracts that draw an arc of the world from about 1919 to December 31st, 1941. Baker leaves the articles alone for the most part (inserting editor's marks where terms or names aren't clear), and usually leaves it at that. What you get is a portrait that pushes the conventional view of the origins of WWII aside-- the US and the UK were spoiling for a fight as much as the Axis powers. Because of the strong isolationist movement in the US, FDR was less inclined to enter the war in the European theatre-- he was more interested in fighting in the Pacific, since we had colonies and bases to defend there. Churchill was forever chasing FDR, trying to persuade Roosevelt to enter the war. Lots of descriptions of bombing missions performed by the RAF (with American supplied bombers through Lend-Lease), and they're all fairly horrible.

It's an interesting approach, and Baker does a reasonably good job of connecting the dots, although it does feel like he's cherry-picked some stuff. He's got an extensive bibliography, though, so there's a lot more to read and research.

Speaking of which, this is on deck now:



Niall Ferguson - The War of the World.

^^ That second one looks really good.


Apparently I'm having trouble letting go of my undergraduate thesis:



About Yeats's relationship with the occult.

Baker is an interesting...and frustrating...writer. His stuff ranges from The Mezzanine, the Proustian inner thoughts of a fellow riding the escalator in a shopping mall; to two porno novels: The Fermata, a riff about a guy who stops time so he can undress women-- as well as Vox, a masterbatory phone chat between an anonymous guy and gal; to The Everlasting Story of Nory, the cute day-to-day adventures of a 9 year old girl: to Checkpoint, a pretty dumb conversation about a plan to kill George W. I read his non-fictional A Box Of Matches, essays focusing on the interesting minutiae of life. He just takes an idea, and runs with it.

His books are short, so it wouldn't kill you to try anything, but don't be surprised if you come away from them feeling like he could do something else better.

There's three-part Channel 4/PBS series that accompanies the book of the same title. It's a little slick, but it's worth watching.

I just started this after much trepidation, knowing about some of the subject matter involving child abuse, but like all King/Bachman novels, you can't stop once you start. This is actually some gritty pulp fiction that King had lying in the bottom of his trunk for decades...and it shows. The best thing about it is when the narration takes the POV of the title character--a brain-damaged but kind-hearted doof--and gets into his thought processes.

Reading it for the first time.

rereading harry potter series. i think at this point i've read the first book 9 or 10 times. every summer since picking up the first i've done a full read-through. i'm still enamored with the thrill of discovery and how things play out in the series. my favorite parts are the details about their lessons and the side-plots.

I find myself picking up HP whenever the next movie is on the horizon...they are so rich with imagination and certain details, it's hard to remember too much of them. (NB: "Deathly Hallows" will be filmed as a two-parter, a la "Kill Bill")

Doesn't this strike anyone as a cheap way to make more money? 'Hallows' events will fit more readily in one film than some of the other books they squeezed into one, in my opinion. That said, I didn't much like the concluding book.

Dunno...the travels in the woods where Harry, Hermione and Ron piss each other off was kind of a drag, but on the other hand, the heavy details about Dumbledore will probably require extensive flashback sequences--the Dursleys deserve one last scene...and the action-packed battles in the last half will be pretty heavy.