Nice, have you read any of his other work?

Nope, first one. To be honest, I was turned on to him by some of your posts in this thread.

I just finished this. I really enjoyed it, but also feel like there might have been some stuff that went over my head... it was a little difficult to follow at times. Haven't seen the film version yet, but will soon.

Yeah, I like this a lot. The film is pretty good, but it takes out some of my favorite elements of the book (by necessity, I admit, because they mostly have to do with Foer's style and use of surrealism/magic realism/jewish folklore).

I also liked Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close quite a bit. It's more straightforward narrative, so you might find it more to your liking.

this isn't directly thread related, but considering the amount of chabon discussion which has gone on here, i figured this was as good a place as any to post this info. but.

chabon has been hired to do a re-write of the pixar john carter of mars movie. if that isn't exciting lit related news, i don't know what is.

I was reading about this. Very good news.

About the film, it's not going to be a Pixar production. It's being directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) but because Pixar is an all-ages company and John Carter of Mars is to be a PG-13 movie he's directing it for Disney.



They're apparently moving away from the Frazetta influence.

that's okay with me at this point in my life. i'd rather a cartoon be smart than sexy. hopefully chabon will be less stodgy with carter than he's been with his past few genre efforts. but i mean, as far as movie projects go, i couldn't be more excited. chabon is nothing if not genuine. this might be just the kind of work to shake him out of his (minor) slump.

On second thought, I agree that the less Frazetta influence the better. That image above looks like something that'd give Zack Snyder a raging hard-on. I can imagine his "faithful" adaptation of such material.

i'm sure that gerard butler would appreciate the work.

Just finished

Really enjoyed it. Probably going to get "Good-bye, Chunky Rice" soon.

Currently about halfway through

Something I should have read a long time ago.

i finished

last week (thanks for the loan britkid XD )

and then i started this:

Wandering around Border's on Michigan Ave after work last Friday - tucked this under my arm & bought it. Started it on the subway home, read a bit before falling asleep that night & finished it up before lunch Saturday morning. He ain't trying to re-invent the wheel, Palahniuk, he's just keeping it spinning - nothing revalatory here, really, except some sordid research into celebrity deaths/pecadilloes/habits, et al.

How many of his other books have you read? I used to be such a HUGE fan of his, but I felt like each new release was worse than the one before. It seemed as though he ran out of things to say so he just made more and more disturbing scenes (trying to one-up himself from previous work) to re-tell the same stories. Would you say that's the case with this book or not?

Columbine- so far very interesting. I'm not the biggest bookworm so if I get past page 10 I usually will overrate things. However,if the story is interesting to you and you want to know more then what the tv hair-do's gave us it's worth it. Only about 1/3 of the way through but going through it quickly which is always a good sign.

All of 'em - weak spot for him I suppose. And you're totally right - he's beaten the horse, abused the horse, ridiculed the horse, pee'd on the horse, mutilated the horse, wept over the horse then reanimated the horse so he can do it all over again under the guise of a new title. But I still read him.

edit: only maybe 20 or 30 pages in (long intro!) but I've begun this the other night. Gotta' say it's made me laugh out loud a few times already:

Starting 2666 tonight.

Just about to start this as well. However, I also received The Savage Detectives for Christmas. Anyone have any recommendations on which to start first? Does it matter?

I gave an honest try at Savage Detectives last month...but was highly disappointed. Mind you, it's not a bad novel, but I was expecting more fun, more issues than Spanish literature to be covered. I'm still going to scout out 2666 when I can.

I have said likewise elsewhere. They do cut out most of the folklorish elements and stick to the (weird) reality of the journey to the woman's house...Eugene Hutz from Gogol Bordello is a phenom.

I'd say that, at the very least, the first 150 pages of The Savage Detectives is by far the most accessible introduction into Bolano. I'm only 300 pages into 2666, it's stellar, but I think that it is a slower start.

One more to go in the series. These are delightful books--about "an ancient China that never was" and include a lot of whimsical history. The protagonists are the smartest man in the world and his sidekick.

will complete the collected works of Kafka with this. so far it's ok, but not as interesting as I'd hoped.


this wasn't any good at all really, just something to chew on while commuting


endless amounts of awesome

i finished the believers by zoe heller, which comes across as a hybrid of the royal tennenbaums and the book of daniel (doctrow, not the bible). has what might be the most sensitive and realistic depiction of religious awakening, along with a good deal of insight into left wing intelligensia. not critical, but doesn't pull punches either. all of the characters are flawed, though well developed (some more than others, a drug abuse subplot feels a little shallow compared to the rest). rec'ced if you liked on beauty or the emperor's children.

Well, this story is just incredibly entertaining: wild shifts in POV, rich Dominican Republic history (I didn't know of their brutal dictator named Trujillo - you?), dazzling dialogue & hilarious pop-culture juxtoposition.

it is a great book, by a great author. this is his best work, imho: http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/...fi_fiction_diaz

also, if you ever have the chance to see him give a reading, do. he's sharp, self-deprecating, charming, etc. great dude. can't wait to see what he comes out with next.

if you liked bwloow, you should give a shot at lethem's the fortress of solitude. similar tone, similarly great (nerdy) book.

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms. Spent the last month reading some overly Christ-y allegorical novellas by Pär Lagerkvist. Hemingway is good medicine.

I go back to Hemingway every few months or so...I've read Sun also Rises 3 times in the past year.

Love "A Farewell to Arms". I read "For Whom The Bell Tolls" last year and though it was great, but I still prefer Farewell.

I am reading "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. omgyes.

Make sure you read "My Ishmael" too.

I got back into comics with The Watchmen a few months ago. Since then, I've re-read a lot of my old favorites growing up (The Secret Wars saga, the Infinity Gauntlet, Dark Phoenix, the Spider-Man Clone Saga) and now I've just picked this up and it is truly fantastic. I already have Vol. 2 waiting to be read but I'm getting antsy about where to go when these are done. Can any comic book fans come to the rescue? Tell me exactly what to buy (if its worth it) to continue the journey of Captain America under Brubaker.

i just read that intro right there. great shit. i'll have to give Alma a read.

Short stories...a little contrived, but not bad, all in all

How was this?

Writers of American Dad and My Name is Earl race around the world in opposite directions without using planes. A pretty funny and different travel memior. A good, funny, and quick read.

I've got a weakness for the 33 1/3rd booklets - what's that? A love letter to your favorite record? Yeah, I'll buy three. Which I did Friday at Reckless as I paid for the new Doves album - point-of-purchase product placement works, natch.



I bought & read that other, much longer Exile... tell-all that came out a year or two ago so I was already familiar with the record being done haphazardly in France-land but this Bill Janovitz guy loves this record. I mean he really loves this record and he loves to tell folks about it. He does a pretty technical breakdown of each song, each side from front to back, peppering studio & musician factoids along the way, all contrasted against the 'death-of-the-'60s'. Plus Janovitz wrote the killer song 'Soda Jerk' so if he got a buck or two more power to him.



This one was more a remembrance of the way things were for Shawn Taylor when he was shaken out of his hardcore/ska trance to become a fanatic of Tribe's debut record. While there's plenty of info about the album itself, production, sample usage, late '80's hip hop, etc the real interesting stuff is in how Taylor developed his 3 Trials music test as a knuckleheaded teen - devising a system by which he'd continue judging music well into his adulthood & career as a music critic & writer. Neat stuff!

I probably like it the best of what I've read by him. He's not a spectacular writer or anything but I feel like he has some genuinely funny ideas, and that's enough for me really. I still need to check out Downtown Owl.

Got the new Palahniuk for my birthday yesterday. Made it through 5 pages and decided I'm not going to read it.

Exchanging it tomorrow...no idea what to get.

It's pretty awful. All I got out of it was Marylin Monroe used to whittle one shoe heel shorter than the other so her ass would 'roll' nicely when she walked.

I've talked about it on her before... maybe even with you guys, but I've felt that he's gone steadily downhill since Survivor. I still like some of his after that book, but less and less each time. I decided I was over him with Rant and I have read any of his stuff since.

Steadily downhill? I thought it was a pretty sharp drop-off from Survivor to Invisible Monsters.

That's Snuff, I actually still sort of liked that one.

I'm talking about Pygmy. Apparently the "plot" is about some overseas spies that come to the united states. I'm not sure if they are children, or dwarfs, or what...but the whole book is written like this:




He's certainly had characters with distinct speaking patterns before, but I scanned ahead and this whole book is told from this characters perspective, in this way of speaking. I can't deal with that at all.

That's a pretty hip opinion there, except that Invisible Monsters was written before Survivor

Not trying to be hip. I read Fight Club because of the movie, read Survivor because of Fight Club, read Invisible Monsters because of Survivor. Loved the first two books, couldn't stand Invisible Monsters. This all happened in the span of a few months my sophomore year of high school. After that, Choke bored me, Lullaby was underwhelming, and Diary was terrible. That's the last Palahniuk book I read.

It doesn't matter when he wrote Invisible Monsters, he chose to have it published, indicating a willingness to publish any and everything he ever writes regardless of quality. From what I understand, he wrote Invisible Monsters before Fight Club, but couldn't get it published. For good reason, in my opinion.

my point was, it's hip to say their first books are the best, and they went downhill, but that one was first.

He has some I've loved, some I've liked, and a few I haven't finished, but I really like Invisible Monsters and Lullabye. and even diary.

Great cover, at least.

Is it really hip? Or is it just true? I'm pretty sure I read them in order of pulication (not when they were written) and I liked the each one less than the previous one. Maybe that has something to do with my changing taste as I got older, but I felt like he hasn't written a book as good as Survivor or Fight Club.

Oh, but this is not including his Portland travel book, which I loved.