I recently read this and I thought the same things. It was an OK read, and parts were very enjoyable, but it did seem disjointed. If you want a novel that takes place in the same era, discusses the Trujillo dictatorship within the context of a novel (but does it much better) try either "In the Time of the Butterflies" or "Yo!" by Julia Alvarez. I enjoyed those much more than Oscar.

Finished "Kitchen Confidential" a couple weeks ago. It was a very entertaining book. Makes watching his travel show a little bit more fun.

Last night I finished reading Walter Kirn's "Up in the Air." The movie trailer looked great. The book was a bore. I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, but reading the book makes me not want to see the movie. Anyone else read the book and come away disappointed?

Still reading 2666 and still loving it, but yeah, this Part About The Murders is disturbing and depressing. It's weird to think how light and funny the first two sections of the book are compared to what I'm reading now.

"Sometimes, after they'd done the shopping, they would stop, each with his or her cart, in front of a bookstore that carried the paperback edition of his book. His wife would point to it and say: you're still there. Invariably, he would nod and then they would continue browsing the mall stores. Did he know her or didn't he? He knew her, of course he did, it was just that sometimes reality, the same little reality that served to anchor reality, seemed to fade around the edges, as if the passage of time had a porous effect on things, and blurred and made more insubstantial what was itself already, by its very nature, insubstantial and satisfactory and real."

New signature addition?

Yeah, why not.

From one dandy to another.

Have read it in years, but I recall this book being awesome.

Fucking amazing book.

no doubt.

also just picked up another one with some collected works in it. really love his imagery. something about Lovecraft truly draws me right in.

Just finished Shakey and it is clearly the best music bio I've ever read. It was a great trip accompanied by nonstop A+ music. Plus, this weekend I'm going to try to make some Honey Slides while listening to On The Beach.


Next up...

^ I have to get that ASAP. Think that'll be the next thing I read.

been meaning to read that one for a while. love music bios, music writing on the whole really. the story behind shakey is also really awesome.


anyhow, reading josh ferris' new one right now. he's the dude who wrote and then we came to the end, which was a neat little american debut novel. the follow up is not nearly as strong, and it's a little vague overall in terms of characters and theme. maybe not vague, opaque. it reminds me of some of auster's stuff, where there's so little going on plot-wise, and the writing isn't ornate enough to be worth pouring over, that you wonder where the reader's focus is meant to be. not a bad book by any means, the ending (almost finished) definitely helps wrap it up satisfactorily, but it's too flawed to be worth mentioning otherwise. had this been the first novel, few people would be excitedly anticipating his second.

Just finished Wild Sheep Chase, I can see how it flung Murakami into national recognition, but it's not his best by any means; it's vague in less affecting way than his later novels.

The shine wore off quickly...what a frustrating story. At one point a page ended halfway through with a footnote, the footnote contintued for 2 more pages on its own, the other text suspended, with footnotes of its own at the bottom of the extended footnote. This is is getting really tiresome really quickly. Is there a story somewhere? Something in addition to the clever rearrangement of tradtional storytelling timeline?

I plan on rereading this in honor of Salinger's passing. Just requested both of them from the library.

I just reread Salinger’s great short story ‘For Esme - With Love and Squalor’. Anyone who reads it will understand that ‘Catcher’ was part of a much larger vision.

Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This lives up to the hype. Excellent sections on the black swan concept and assymetrical outcomes.

Juliet, Naked
by Nick Hornby

Finished this a few weeks ago. Naturally, I found the message boarding parts to be the most fun. Duncan was my favorite character, and Tucker Crowe's reclusiveness and crazed fan obsession around him reminds me to a smaller extent of the J.D. Salinger obsession. Overall found this book to be enjoyable.

I love Hornby. I'll add this to my library queue.

I started rereading Catcher in the Rye today. I'm only twenty or so pages in and its as great as I remember.

One thing I didn't remember about his meeting with Mr. Spencer is the juxtaposition Salinger creates. Holden talks about how Spencer shakes his head a lot and then a few paragraphs later talks about how he nods himself quite a bit. Later he talks about how he says 'boy' all the time because his vocabulary isn't good, but moments later hates Spencer for calling him boy all the time. Not really sure what all that means, but I found it interesting nevertheless.

Finished this a few days ago. I loved it.

Just spit-balling now. Don't want to lock myself into any particular point of view. What is it about? About wanting to live forever? About greatness? About wanting to attach yourself to greatness? About obsession? About mortality, frailty of humanity? Poverty, hopelessness, helplessness, and despair? About longing? About disappointment? About sex and death, sex to forget about death, the closeness of sex and death? About Santa Teresa, a town in Mexico which may or may not be Purgatory, or the last stop before a Hell full of the bodies of dead women? About living with horror? About all the ways man is a sad, deranged species?

A murder mystery with no solution, no suspect, no motive. A puzzle without a correct configuration. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. "It's fucked up, that's the only explanation" as one character says. There must be something in the air. Brilliant book.

Everyone posting in this thread: The computer I work off of gives like a 70% chance that the image of the book you're reading won't show up. Please write the title and author underneath your image because I no idea what most of you guys are talking about in this thread.

Tom Robbins - Another Roadside Attraction
Wells Tower - Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
Junot Diaz - Drown

Ditto. I'm rereading it as well and it has dated very little. One has to remind one's self that it was written in the 1940s and the characters probably don't own T.V.s yet. The voice of the alienated (Sub)Urban Teenager that Salinger virtually introduced to American Lit is pitch perfect. You can draw a thematic straight line from this to everything from 'Oridnary People' to John Hughes films to 'Ghost World' and of course to all the literary descendants.

have you started this yet? i got a copy from the library yesterday and was almost immediately blown the fuck away. reminds me in some ways of this collection from about a decade ago called naked pueblos (mark jude poirier), which was similarly involved in post-suburban/exurban frustrations. lives of the peripheral americans, and such. everything ravaged is definitely the more accomplished collection so far. prose is riveting, not too contrived, but unexpectedly graceful. and the characters are all boilerplate white male angst figures, but fleshed out to the point that i recognize some of my own worse qualities in them. i dunno, been awhile since any book got to me like this one. i can't wait for my lunch break so i can read some more of it.

I've read three of the stories so far, and I have been very pleased. I've been on an overload with books, so I haven't been able to dive in yet, but from what I've read, it's been great. His voice is a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of the fiction I find myself reading. My professor recommended this collection to me, claiming Tower as one of the "new fabulists" (along with George Saunders). I'll have to check out Naked Pueblos.

What a disappointment. All my earlier enthusiasm rendered moot by: 1) the realization that celebrating King for doing well what he's always done well is pointless if he doesn't do more, and 2) an explanation/resolution which feels like a massive cop out, bringing in the sci-fi element which he's always worst at and a sudden bit of the supernatural which seems grafted on and makes no sense given the almost relentlessly secular nature of the narrative up 'til then. At a whopping 1,074 pages this one's for completists only.

Are there really any King completeists? I feel like reading all his novels would take more than a lifetime.

I'm one.

Jesus, for real? How many of his books have you read? Someone go through and add up all the pages his written. I'm usual a completesist of my favorite authors and musicians, but being a King completeist is just insane.

BTW, I felt super annoyed with King when I read Dreamcatcher which was long as hell and not good.

At this point I've read everything but Lissey's Story, Rose Madder, The Eyes of the Dragon and Duma Key. Of those, I've read half of Rose Madder and enough of Lissey's Story and ...Dragon to know they're not worth the effort. FWIW, I'm 42 and started reading King as a freshman in high school, so a huge chunk of his catalog I read as it was released.

Yeah, Dreamcatcher is him doing sci-fi, a genre he really needs to avoid. It's a big part of what drags Under the Dome down.

All that said, I have Lissey's Story sitting here and now I'm in a King mood again, so maybe I'll give it another chance.

Do you like 'The Green Mile'? I've always thought it was King at his best and certainly better than that interminable film. I'm told The Gunslinger series is him at his best.

The Green Mile was good. I don't know if The Dark Tower (The Gun Slinger is the first book and the central character) series is him at his best or not, though for fans of all he'd written up 'til then it's essential, as he manages to thematically link all those books and their characters without it seeming hopelessly contrived. The final book, The Dark Tower, certainly has he best ending of all his work.

What'd you think of Bag of Bones? One of only a handful of King books I've read. It was a while back, but I thought it was pretty damn good.

Probably the best, most heartfelt and sincere thing he's done in the last couple decades. Bag of Bones and Firestarter are, for my money, the closest he's come to perfection within the novel form. I think he's really at his best with short stories and novellas.

i used to be a king completist, also starting sometime in middle school and giving up sometime around when he tried serializing that plant story online. just don't have the time or energy to go through all his new ones, finish off dark tower, or track down the remaining ephemera. for my money though, i always thought it and desperation were two of his most effective. desperation is a little overcooked, but entertaining as fuck. and it is, i think, one of his strongest novels from a conceptual standpoint.

Interesting. I'd say Desperation is godawful. Its companion, The Regulators, is even worse.

What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality- Daniel A. Helminiak

A fantastic book that debunks the popular (and prejudice) view that the Bible claims homosexuality is a sin. As a very progressive and inclusive Christian, it confirms what I already believe. I'd be interested in what open minded conservative Christians would have to say about it.

Been enjoying the hell out of the poetry that is Thoreau. I've been swimming in Walden Pond for the last week or so. Sure is a great way to start the day, before work.

I was a King completest up until Insomnia, which I think I never finished. That was not too far out of high school. After that I read:

The Regulators (cause I loved the Bachman stuff)
The Colorado Kid
Cell

I feel like I should finish the Dark Tower, but I also need to go back to the beginning again.
Also, was thinking about short stories, and this new book looks like it might be cool

I've also been reading the stand comic book. Oh, and the Gunslinger prequel comics.

What of the last 2 decades is good?

The Dark Tower series is great, but I also went back to the beginning and played catch-up. It really kicks into gear at Wizard and Glass. They're all big long books but they move.

Since Insomnia, I liked:

The Green Mile
Bag of Bones
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (not incredible, but short - a quick read)
From a Buick 8 (ties in to Dark Tower series)
The Colorado Kid (not much more than a novella in length, but I really liked this.)
Cell (assuming you're willing to go with the ludicrous premise, it's a good story)
Hearts in Atlantis(also ties in to Dark Tower)
Everything's Eventual
On Writing (the memoir portions are great - the writing instruction less so, but it's never boring)

Under the Dome is giving me problems. It's almost relentless in its bleakness and brutality, but the sci-fi element doesn't work very well and the ending is hopeless even by King's standards. Still, it was damn effective; one of King's best bad guys ever. Great for about 1000 pages, then kinda falls apart a little in the last 74.

The sequel to The Talisman, Black House, which also also ties in to Dark Tower, was a disappointment. You don't have to read the tie-ins to understand the progress in the series, but you may want to reread 'Salem's Lot - the whiskey priest, Callahan, ends up a major player starting with Wolves of the Calla.

I read the Colorado Kid and Cell, which I thought were great. If there any reason to read Green Mile if I saw the movie?


I got some books for xmas. I read the new Paul Auster, which I liked a lot, now I'm reading the new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, taken over by some new author.

I still have the Hornsby and the new Andrew Vachss book here.

Well, the book's always different/better than the movie, but Darabont's adaptation is ridiculously faithful.

I've read most of the Burke novels - let me know how the new Vachss is.

Are Carrie and Salem's Lot as poor as King claims they are?

I haven't read Carrie in ages - I liked it back in high school, but no idea how I'd react now. 'Salem's Lot is a rewrite of Dracula - it scared the hell out of me, but it isn't startlingly original.

Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs