I've been reading Murakami all summer long and he has quickly become one of my favorite modern novelists. I've read six of his books in the past 2 1/2 months and am sure i could reread them all right now and get so much more out of them. In its own way each book seems to chronicle a way of thinking, a philosophy as well as a phenomenologically different way of perceiving the mind. And it doesn't hurt that I love the archetype he uses for his leading males. All the way around, if you have never read him and have any inkling to do so, get to it.

im unpinning all the now $(verb)ing threads due to clutter. they are easily searchable if you want them, or you can subscribe to the thread

I'll be finishing this tonight.

i ALMOST picked this up today at B&N

post yr thoughts on it

it's sort of a lesser paul auster work, but still very good. He is, I think, my favorite living author.

What have you read from him, I could probably recommend 5 others that are better and in paperback.

haven't read anything, read a synopsis on Amazon was interested

I don't know what it was about Man in the Dark that interested you. I can tell you that it has two themes common in Paul Auster books.

1) Not knowing what's going on. For a time, there is a complete sense of not knowing what the fuck is going on. In both this book and his 2nd most recent book (Travels in the Scriptorium, his only book I haven't finished (yet))), characters wake up with no memories whatsover. This can certainly be disconceting.

2) Stories within stories. (meta-fiction)

Often stories will have multiple layers. I think the extreme (and best) example of this is The Book Of Illusions. The story is about a biographer of a little-known silent movie star (a contemporary of Chaplin, Keaton and Arbuckle, but lost to the ages). You get his story, the story of the movie star, and then you also get the stories of the actual short films he made.


Anyway, if you're interested, I'll try to tier his books into my favorites.


THE BEST

The Book Of Illusions
The aforementioned book about the biographer of a silent movie actor.

The Red Notebook
An extremely tiny book, and apparently non-fiction. A fantastic read that's mostly about coincidences.


Smoke
I was going to recommend the book I have of the script of SMOKE, which came with Blue in the Face, but I see the republished it with another of his screenplays as well. If you haven't seen the film of Smoke, this is HIGHLY recommended.

Timbuktu
A Small book, and a pretty quick read. Told from the perspective of a dog. Will probably make you cry. Consider it one of my goals in life to turn this into a animated feature.


THE ALSO GREATS

The Brooklyn Follies
Mr. Vertigo
The Music Of Chance
Oracle Night

That's like 8 that I would recommend over the new one. Most of the other ones I don't remember that well, it's probably been about 10 years since I've read any of them.

Favorite things by Paul Auster:

Music of Chance
New York Trilogy (Still my favorite)
Book of Illusions
Leviathan

I remember liking Leviathan and the New York Trilogy, but like I said. It's been a decade...I'm not sure where to place them.

I guess our consensus point is Book Of Illusions.

i read man in the shadows last week and i agree mostly. it's a little too austerian at points, and the story within the story isn't that interesting. but the last third has some really moving stuff.

if any of you like him and haven't read what for me was the rosetta stone of his work, seek out the invention of solitude. it's memoir-ish stuff, where he writes about leaving his wife and kids and living a less than sane existence in paris, and also his dysfunctional relationship with his own father. it gives you a direct look into auster's life, and into many of his reoccurring themes.

Book of Illusions is so good. It begins in heartbreak, moves into a sort of hopeful optimism.

I also love The Red Notebook and Oracle Night. I also remember Hand to Mouth being pretty good, a non-fiction, autobiographical one about his early struggling years as a writer.

I own Timbuktu but just can't get into it. Maybe someday soon I'll try again.

I have like 25 pages left of the new one.

I actually really liked the story within the story, once it started going.

I know I think anything great that I read should be a movie, but how great would book of illusions be? with various short films made with only the technology of the day?

book of illusions is the rare book that would make a better film.

what do you think of the last twenty five pages? they contain pretty much all of my favorite passages from the book. that nearly last bit, the conversation, is beautifully staged and more human that auster often is.

Haven't finished it yet. Will finish it tonight when I go to bed.

Didn't particularly care for the ending.

I remembered when I went to bed that I'm slightly annoyed at the no quotation marks.

The book that got me into Auster was Moon Palace, which is weird. When I read it a second time, I found it close to awful.

What an amazing book this is. How do I talk about this without resorting to mere hyperbole?

I've never read anything like this. And what I mean by that is, I've never read a novel or a short story that's content to concern itself with such ordinary people in such uneventful circumstances. Published in 1919, probably before psychoanalysis began to change literature as we know it, we get to know all these characters intimately, their conscious and unconscious thoughts and desires, so familiar and relatable even to the modern reader. I've always loved Catcher In the Rye (published 30+ years after this to a very different world, perhaps a comparison isn't really warranted) but suddenly the events of that book seem very contrived and forced. George Willard, Seth Richmond, Alice Hindman, Helen White... I mean, most of the characters in this book struggle with the most ordinary kind of indecisiveness and melancholy, the kind that doesn't spur people to quit school and have a nervous breakdown, but a kind that hangs over one's head and robs a person of their resolve and ability to become the person they want to be. The Thoreau quote has become one of those repeated cliches that doesn't have the impact anymore that it should, but it's true. "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." Some people die alone. Some people never find their way in life. And that's a horrible thing but a very evident fact that's all around us. And we still believe it will never happen to us. It just couldn't. Not me.

This book is almost 90 years old but it just rings truer than anything else I find being published today. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough? Do any authors even try to write like this anymore? I look around and all I see are shock authors who either want to provoke or disgust their readers, "quirky" writers who come up with unbelievable characters and then fill their mouths with writerspeak, "smart" authors who drop pop culture references onto every page and earn amazing praise for it.

But I feel too inspired and enlightened by this book to waste any further energy complaining about things like that. What a fantastic novel. Is it a novel? I don't know, hard to think of it as a series of short stories when so many of them are so related to one another. Maybe you read this in school and don't need me to give you any Cool Books for Hot Summer Reading tips or anything like that. I never read this in school or even remember it being mentioned. It's just as well, probably wouldn't have been able to appreciate it as much then as I do right now.

OTM. The current literary landscape is depressing as hell.

Winesburg, Ohio just moved to my short stack. It's been highly recommended to me for years. Probably about time I got around to reading it.

I'm going to second the upthread recommendations for Breakfast of Champions, which is my second favorite Vonnegut after Slaughterhouse Five. You've got to love a novel where Vonnegut himself is a minor character who is writing the book Breakfast of Champions. And Kilgore Trout recognizing that he might be a character in a book, but acting independently. And many other cool things, too, like the artwork and all characters, even incidental ones, getting back stories.

Just finished reading Alan Moore's Lost Girls. Incredible book. Surprisingly affecting and beautiful.

yeah. none of that distracts from how absolutely smutty it is, but then again, the smut never distracts from how affecting it it.

the segment at the end of the second book kills. zebra panic thundering down the pubic veldt?

and the book is wholly successful as a defense, not only of pornography and sex, but of literature and fictions. even still,the characters are distinct, fully realized. that this book succeeds on so many fronts is what surprises about it.

That final silent section of the book with the soldiers is stunning. There's so much going on in this book. Contemporary lit writers could learn a thing or two from how Moore explores his themes.

uh huh. but this is a book fated for obscurity. were it prose, it would have won the pulitzer. or some equal international award i cannot think of right now. but those pesky cartoons and all those vaginas make it a difficult choice for open discourse.

this is a mind cluster.

Finished this last night:



I'm not crazy about fictionalized accounts in the first person, but this was a well-constructed book. I'm not sure exactly what Eggars' aim was in writing it-- just to tell this man's story, or to call attention to the mass slaughter of the Sudaneese and the misery that came from just trying to survive. If so, he made some peculiar choices in terms of structure and voice. In some ways, it's a bit voyeuristic, particularly with the lack of an ending-- it just runs out of gas.

Because it was a holiday weekend, I read some fluff:



Not much to say here-- just a fun read.


Interesting book. With our current administration, it's easy to lose sight of the dirty men that proceeded them.

Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilan. Witty fast paced inappropriate sex drugs and rock n roll type book.

Great book so far, highly recommended if you want a few laughs.

Thought I'd give you all an update on my exploration of Vonnegut. I am just finishing Cat's Cradle after a week break from reading while on vacation. It's easily my least favorite one so far. Bokonon is cool and that aspect is as witty as anything else I've loved by the man but the rest is kind of blah. I'm hoping I didn't derail my Vonnegut train by taking a break last week.

Ice-Nine is great. If Cat's Cradle is the worst of Vonnuguts books well then I should read the rest of his material.

It's just my personal opinion, but I would mark Sirens of Titan and Mother Night as far superior, and Slaughterhouse Five as quite a bit better as well.

just remembered i did read Slaughterhouse Five, remember liking it but don't remember a thing about it.
sucks getting older when you can't even remember the classics.
even the top 10 ten movies in the last 10 years has me frightened by how bad my movie memory has become.

I had originally read Slaughterhouse Five when I was in junior high but totally forgot if I even liked it. When I reread it about a month or two ago it was like reading something totally new. Great book though - check it out and fall in love all over again.

Trudging through this. The second and third books in the series were page turners, but this extended flashback with Susan is a bore. Wondering if I will even bother to finish this series or just look up the end. I know I read something about things getting all meta with Stephen King being a character in the books.

reading yet another ron suskind book about the bush white house/war on terror. this one, not so good.

It is worth the while to finish the series...If you are really discouraged, you could skip to part V, Wolves Of The Calla, and take in King's prologue that catches up where things have left off (you won't be able to do so from that point onward). Your spoiler is correct--the conceit is handled quite interestingly, because it's not as simple as other authors have done it.

Rough Guide to Led Zeppelin

Wow: Acknowledgment that the band stole much of it's best music, verifying the Mudshark incident, stating that rampant drug abuse slowed the band's music production and negatively affected the final production of several albums, a 14 year old girl kept locked up in hotel rooms for sex on tour, infighting, abuse, assault... and this was written by a Friend of the band!

Finishing up Beyond Good and Evil and am about to pick up Conspiracy of Art and Picture of Dorian Gray.

netherland by joseph o'neill

it's a really sharp, beautifully written about post 9/11 new york from the perspective of a british man and various other internationals. reminds me of zadie smith in style. very precise with language, but that just serves to heighten the experience here. if this thing doesn't peter out, it could be the first unreservedly great 9/11 book i've read.

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.

Reading Infinite Jest for the first time.

I just heard him read an essay on the radio and it peaked my interest to other writings by him. I think I'll have to give IJ a go sometime soon. Unless there are any other suggestion on where to go first...


My return to reading novels:



First Updike book I've read, and so far I'm really enjoying the way he writes. So clear and pretty. You get to really feel what the characters feel without being first person, which I think is impressive. Enjoyable book.

i love this thread, I have it bookmarked for every trip to the library.

Music and the Mind
by Anthony Storr


"Rejecting the Freudian notion that music is a form of infantile escapism, British psychologist Storr ( Solitude ) argues that music originates from the human brain, promotes order within the mind, exalts life and gives it meaning. In an engaging inquiry, Storr speculates on music's origins in preliterate societies and examines its therapeutic powers, even in people with neurological diseases that cause movement disorders..."



Has anyone read this? or heard anything about it? I think I need to get it.

This book is fucking mindblowing and I cannot conceive of how anybody could have possibly written this. This man was a genius and he will go down in history as such. I can't even believe it.

This may not be what you're looking for, but have you read The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro? I ask, because that Thoreau quote immediately reminded me of it. They made a movie out of it in 1993 with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson that is a fairly accurate interpretation of the story, but I'd recommend the book to really get the full effect. Plus it's a fairly quick read at 256 pages.

To give you a little more information, the book takes place in 1930's England and is a first person account of a butler (at an age when butler's were no longer common or what they once were) and it's basically about his difficulty at the end of his life to justify his past actions and his missed opportunities. And the prose is great too. Nothing flashy, just clean, simple, and very poignant. A very enjoyable read and one that I think you'd like based on the above post.

Broom Of The System is a softer intro to DFW. Introduces many of his signature quirks--funny tragic stories (or was that tragic funny stories?) that might or might not have really anything to do with the major characters, ultra-real dialogue, wacky character names, unusual pop culture references, and absurd situations.

Bought this on a whim off of a bum on the street during a drunken walk home from the pub with my girlfriend.

Just getting started on it and loving it so far. Can't wait to watch the movie as soon as I'm done.

can you tell me more about this book? I wanna wiki/amazon it, but i'm afraid it might give too much away

First one was so good I had to go back and check out:



The characters rarely give you anything to feel good about, but it's so great to read just because of how well it is written. It alters your mood. The ending of the first book made me feel so anxious/nauseous, but I couldn't stop reading it. Pretty cool to have access to see where the story goes from how the first book ended.

Not sure if I'll go with the last two volumes of this series after this or take a break and go with a different author.