I guess just because he kind of builds himself up as this regular kid who didn't have any direction in life, but by the time he's in his mid 20's, he's traveled the world, absolutely kicking ass in school and becoming this rising academic star. Reading about someone with real talent and drive made me aware of how little I had by comparison and only reinforced the realization that my own little college plans weren't going to get me anywhere fast or even in the long haul.

It's people like that who have made me realize how little I've done with my life. It is a sobering thought that when he was my age, Mozart had been dead for two years. -Tom Leher

Ah, Good-Bye Chunky Rice is a lovely book. Craig Thompson is great. If you haven't already, I suggest you read Blankets and Carnet De Voyage next.

Just found this in the library:

Touch Me I'm Sick: The 52 Creepiest Love Songs You've Ever Heard by Tom Reynolds.

It's the follow up to I Hate Myself And I Wanna Die, and follows the same pattern...analysis of a stoopid pop song in a totally snarky way. Should be fun.

I'm actually doing a re-read as well.
just about done with half-blood. I'm not really a huge fan of half-blood, if only because it goes by so fast and really feels like a montage. Whereas Order felt like you were totally immersed within the world, half-blood feels like a summary of the year and that Jo only is showing you the most important stuff.

Maybe I'm just so negative towards it because it really pails in comparison to the the books it comes between (order and hallows.)

i agree. HBP was my least favorite. i never really put it into words, but it's probably for the same reasons you didn't like it. my favorite aspect of the series is the depth and immersion in the world and HBP overemphasizes the big main-plot events while the general events at hogwarts are downplayed. this is probably the reason i love goblet of fire. it's all about how harry&co. get through the days and the series plot jumps in at the end, combining elements from the small events to progress the series. it could also be i read it at the age when i was most receptive to the books and my initial love brings back some nostalgic enjoyment.

yeah.... just finished HBP. I mean with most of the books the final chapters are a highlight, but it is almost more true for HBP because that is the only section of the book where things slow down, and you really get detail about what is happening. Hell the last 200 pages cover roughly four days, and I think that is why it clearly rises above the rest of the novel.
Really geeked to start Hallows tomorrow. It'll be the fourth time that i have read it, but first time after re-reading the series. I honestly think the middle section of Hallows (harry in Godric's hallows, Rons Departure) is my favorite section of Harry Potter, period. Just the sense of aimlessness and a feeling of having no idea is so pervasive and powerful, it is really special. Especially when it is sandwiched in between the non-stop action of the opening half and closing half. Plus her writing is really stunning in that section too.

Sadly i am unsure of how the movies will handle this middle section. On one hand I could see the cutting it because it feels so aimless and a little too uneventful. But on the other hand Ron's departure would be an amazing end to the first movie.

i think ron leaving will be the movie split part. however, i'm not sure there will be enough action leading up to it for a solid ending sequence. going to be interesting. the wait between the two halves might ruin the movies, though. i see no problem with a 4hr lawrence of arabia style thing with a 15min intermission.

Honestly, I kind of ticks me off that studios no longer feel comfortable making long movies. I mean the seperate Kill BIlls were great, but taken as a whole, it is so much better.

Chuck Klosterman- Killing Yourself To Live:

It was ok book,But way too much emphasis was put on this dude's love life. I thought some of this was quite humorous,But other parts were just distracting and losing focus of the book's theme. Overall, It's a mixed bag and I'm not sure if I'm going to pick anything up from him again(Is there anything really worth getting by him?),

I really like the scene in which he does coke in that interviewees truck. At least I think it was a truck.

tom robbins - fierce invalids home from hot climates

possibly the funniest writer alive

In the times we are living in, economically speaking, a 4 hour running time with an intermission is just not feasible, but epic film of 2 1/2 hours time and more are not uncommon nowadays. (Geez, Sex In The City was 2 1/2 hours long!)

I'm reading The Road now. After reading Blood Meridian this one almost reads like a kids book.

That's how I felt. Blood Meridian and Suttree are so dense and rich and The Road just feels... kind of empty. Same with No Country For Old Men. Both good books, but I would've preferred a more detailed approach. I heard a rumor about No Country that the original manuscript was much, much longer and that for whatever reason it was edited down considerably for publication.

Joe Hill is Stephen King's eldest son, and based on what I've read already of Heart Shaped Box, he is a worthy successor to his father's horror writing.

I finished Heart Shaped Box a month ago and loved it. Each time I expected the story to droop it would pick right back up again. Nothing ground breaking but a very solid little ghost story.

Thanks to the trailer before TDK. First graphic novel I've ever attempted to go through.

Ditto



Every other week I try and pick this up. I read about 20 pages and lose interest. I just can't get into it for whatever reason. Does it pick up after the begining?

Man, I've gotten about 1/3 of the way through that book twice and I haven't finished it either time. I like the way it's written a lot. I actually like the beginning and how sweet (for lack of a better word) Chabon treats his characters. I just get distracted too easily. I know it's supposed to pick up quite a bit when the girl gets introduced to the story, but I haven't made it that far... besides reading how the boys see her for the first time as she runs out of an apartment semi-naked.

I just finished it myself. I would recommend committing to read a couple of chapters at a time...once you get sucked in, you'll want to read more at a sitting. There are brief slow parts and long parts you'll zip through. I agree w/ Dread's characterization as "sweet." All in all, a very engaging tale from an amazing writer. This sort of historical fiction or fictionalized history, done well, is my favorite kind of read.

That's what I thought. I'll have to save this for a long trip where I can hammer out a number of chapters in one sitting.

Not Reading...Aggie shouldn't care, right?

Finished Nausea, finished my reread of Watchmen, and now onto Moby Dick.

The Ophiuchi Hotline - John Varley

One of the first Transhuman novels, with a forshadowing of Steampunk thrown in for good measure, that tells the story of the The Invasion, the Eight Worlds and the start of the Human Diaspora.

nice little book that i am falling in love with from a local debut author.
about half way through it, i just hope it doesn't jump the story arc shark and get out of control.

Reading Moby Dick and came across this wonderful sentence, "In New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their daughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece." This book is great.

A wonderful excerpt from Moby Dick:

We felt very nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors; indeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the room. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the top of your nose or the crown of your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in general consciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.

So what did you think?

I don't know why I do this to myself, but I am gonna try to read this

I liked Nausea quite a bit, though I thought it was best when Antoine was interacting with other people. The Self-Taught Man or Anny. The section around the middle where the Nausea overwhelms him was pretty stunning as a piece of writing. And I liked the last 20 pages more than anything else in the book. However, I thought it too often became more of a philosophical treatise than a narrative and in novels philosophy rarely interests me more than character and conflict. Camus' work maintains a better balance between the two.

There were definitely some very interesting ideas, though. I understand Existentialism a lot better now than I did before, and I'm a bit confused about why Camus often gets lumped in as an Existentialist. His ideas seem markedly different than Sartre's.

But either way, it was a good book and one I think I'll read again in a year or so to better appreciate.

Eros and Civilization looks like it'd be right up my alley. Let me know if it's any good.

Funny that you mention Antoine's lack of human bonding since this was the contingent position that made his case as a non-humanist(?) human. And it was this disposition that made me wander whether Sartre was a fraud or one of the greatest writers ever. This book was a complete eye opener for me, but it also managed to make me miserable shortly after. It's the genius of Sartre!

Currently 100 pages into Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane.

I read the first 4 books in the Kenzie/Gerrano series.
Great writer

I wound up getting my 4th choice at the library today (that joe hill book). I should have looked for shutter island.

i read snuff the other night and jacked off for like half the book and now i'm reading prep to get into the mindset of the 14 year old girl i'm trying to bone

shutter island is fucking great, best book i read in high school
you should post something after you finish it

I read snuff a while ago. at the end of may? Had a good ending, but it's one of his worst books, I think.

I just found out this was published:



One of my favorite authors, so I might go buy it instead of waiting for the library.

I just read Shutter Island earlier this summer.

1/5 through Pride & Prejudice

Cool, hopefully i'll finish it by the end of the week

I just finished The Road last night. This was the first McCarthy book I've read. I liked how McCarthy treats the audience the same way the father treats his kid. The reader isn't really sure why or how the world came to its state. The reader is just told that most people are the bad guys, and they're the good guys and you just have to take the father's word for it.

However, the plot wasn't very interesting and it was rather repetitive. I enjoyed it overall, but I'm puzzled as to how it won a Pulitzer and I'm not entirely motivated to read this copy of Blood Meridian on my coffee table.

I saw this picture for the movie for The Road. The boy is a lot older than what I had in mind.

Heart Shaped Box? It is starting to fall apart for me, sadly.

The Road is in no way representative of the kind of work that Cormac McCarthy normally does. And you really can't get further away from The Road than Blood Meridian. Blood Meridian is an incredible, awe-inspiring book. The prose flows as from the mouths of gods, the imagery is at once beautiful and horrifying, the story monolithic, haunting, and strange. I tremble just thinking of its quality. McCarthy probably wrote The Road on a weekend. Blood Meridian took him five years. One of the greatest books I've ever read.

I really think the Pulitzer is less for The Road and more in recognition of his past accomplishments, Suttree, Blood Meridian, and the Border Trilogy.

Here's one my favorite paragraphs from Blood Meridian (and really, the entire book is written just as brilliantly as this):

They entered the city haggard and filty and reeking with the blood of the citizenry for whose protection they had contracted. The scalps of the slain villagers were strung from the windows of the governor's house and the partisans were paid out of the all but exhausted coffers and the Sociedad was disbanded and the bounty rescinded. Within a week of their quitting the city there would be a price of eight thousand pesos posted for Glanton's head. They rode out on the north road as would parties bound for El Paso but before they were even quite out of sight of the city they had turned their tragic mounts to the west and they rode infatuate and half fond toward the red demise of that day, toward the evening lands and the distant pandemonium of the sun.

if you don't like the road or no country for old men, you just don't like mccarthy
this is his new style, i don't think he's gonna go back at this point

Did you post this without capital letters and minimal punctuation on purpose?

^ taking bets on whether he can read any book without pics.

I don't know about that. He's only done two books in this style and he delivered both in a very short period of time, No Country in 2005 and then The Road in 2006. As well, those books are thematically linked (the dream at the end of No Country is more or less the story of The Road), so it's possible he thought that particular style was most appropriate for those stories.

It's been two years now since The Road and there's been no new book and normally he takes many years to write a piece, so it's possible he's working on a much denser piece. Certainly, he might not go back to the style of Suttree or Blood Meridian, but I wouldn't be surprised if his next book looks nothing like The Road.

But either way, just because someone doesn't like The Road and No Country and may not enjoy his future books doesn't mean they shouldn't go back and explore his eight pre-No Country novels. Someone could very easily hate New Cormac but love Old Cormac.

(For the record, I think The Road and No Country are great.)

Just finished The Savage Detectives (totally, jaw-droppingly, brilliant)
and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (fun, but nothing that substantial).

When I read The Road, my eldest son was 10, and I found myself at times putting ourselves into the characters.

With that in mind, the child in the picture looks about right (maybe a little older).