I'm down for a book club. Why don't we make a list of options and then take a vote?

I'll attempt to read pretty much anything

I think that maybe one of the only ways I would venture into Moby Dick (during the school year, most likely) would be a book club setting. But yeah, I'd be down for anything.

Today I went to the bookstore looking for John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (seeing his new book as made me curious about his older stuff). I found neither, but I picked up:
The Intuitionist - Colson Whitehead
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Flying to Maui tomorrow, I hope to finish up Lolita and start on The Corrections.

Speaking of Franzen, isn't his new one, Freedom, due in a few days?

I just couldn't resist pointing out the supra-contextual meanings here.

just finished the the new mitchell yesterday (as well as the new bret easton ellis) and it was really wonderful. my first foray into his lit and i found it to be mostly irresistible. certain quirks grated, but it's far from boring and the characters are interesting and funny and engaging.

unlike franzen's characters, who come off as caricatures of already unappealing types. he's a good author, on a technical level, but i can't find many good things to say about that novel. curious about freedom, but i'll pass for now.

Yep. Good call, Tony.

Teehe. I give the library quite a lot in fines so I'm on the right side of this. But I admit a weakness for buying books. Library of America and Everyman's Library editions especially.

if you want to buy books, many libraries have sale sections where various donated and expunged materials are available at affordable prices. often more expensive than amazon, but the money goes to good causes, and it saves on the hidden costs of buying online, namely shipping, energy, etc.

Hell, about 1/8 of my book collection falls under this category. I think I bought only 3 books at retail price in my lifetime.

These days both Borders and B&N give cards which enable you to get coupons emailed for as much as 40% off items.

don't get emails from barnes and noble unless you want one twice a week.

Just redirect them to a dedicated folder.

when i said hidden costs of buying online, i didn't mean cost to the consumer, but rather the environment. shipping means gas, means damage. not saying i don't shop online, but buying books from library sales is a positive action in several ways. borders and b&n might have good sale offers, but when possible, shop local, support your local library. in case you hadn't heard, but they're shutting down at a frightening rate. you might be able to afford to buy books, but millions of americans cannot.

I'll reiterate my support for the book club. I am in the process of getting ready to move, though, so if we can push this for a month that'd be awesome.

i'm not much of a leader and don't want to moderate this. but i think for the time being, we should try and form a consensus about a book, and once it happens, maybe start an independent thread, with a poll choosing between the three or four top choices. after that, maybe give a month's worth of time to get the book, read and process it. depending on the length of the book. please, i beg, no doorstops for now.

agreeance with ste & Ogawa.

Do you mean libraries are closing at an alarming rate or Borders and B&N? The libraries around me have been open as long as I can recall. Are you in the Chicago area? I grew up in the Niles/Des Plaines/Park Ridge axis and all those are going strong plus astounding libraries at Northbrook and Evanston. As for gas costs, if you go out and buy a book you're using gas on your own. A book seller will ship mass quantities of books whether you order or not. There's a lot used book stores that sell on amazon and they are worthy of support as well.

i'm not from chicago, but i do work at a public library. and contrary to appearances, they're quickly becoming an endangered species. it's a nationwide trend. so while the chicago libraries might be safe, hundreds of others nationwide are not. barnes and noble are not doing so well themselves, but they're a less socially benevolent entity than public libraries. old sources of funding are drying up, new sources remain elusive. and many counties and cities are now forced between making cuts in police and emergency services, educational institutions and funding for libraries. guess which one gets cut. i can't say much for my gas usage, since i walk and bike pretty much everywhere, but i'm just saying that if you can support a library, do. and if you're going to drive, drive to a library, not a corporate book store.

i know you're a frequently contentious character, tony, but i don't know why you insist on being right here. you make good points, none of which will negate the fact that public libraries are free, free is cheaper than even a penny, and that libraries are more deserving of support than any large or small vendor, personal collections be damned.

I'm not trying to be right just discussing the issue. I support libraries constantly. Especially for CDs and DVDs and I frequently pay late fees.

fair enough. not trying to get on your case, but it just seemed like argument for argument's sake. which i typically enjoy, but this issue hit a little too close to home.

Yeah I feel about Blockbuster the way you feel about the bookstores. When they go under I'll kindly dance a jig.

okay, so.

now reading: the four fingers of death - rick moody
the imperfectionists - tom rachmann

both are wonderful, but the moody is not quite lucid. the rachmann, on the other hand, doesn't have a zero-gravity, mid-mission to mars, graphic (and hilarious) gay sex scene. it's dedicated to vonnegut, but feels little like anything he ever wrote. part of me thinks that borges would like it, even if it's a little crass and lightweight compared to his oeuvre. i'll finish the imperfectionists soon, seeing as how it's only 280 pages, and i'm a third of the way through. four fingers of death, as a metatextual gonzo sci-fi comedy, at 600 pages, will take me a while longer. i'm 200 pages into it, but that feels like a tiny dent.

can't wait to get to this:



my copy just arrived. it's the most excited i've been for a book in a long, long time.

I have slowly made the transition to mostly buying my music from itunes. I really could care less about owning physical copies. But when it comes to books, I just need to own it. Not for the actual fun of buying it, but me whole reading process is wrapped up in annotating pages that I really can't read library books.

So The Corrections is amazingly readable. It's just the easiest thing to sit down and lose an hour to its incredible narration.

STE, can't wait to hear your thoughts on the Shteyngart, I was planning on picking that up later this week for my final flights of summer vacation.

Sorry for the double post on this, but damn, this is good. These two diametrically opposed heroines, middle-aged and dumpy concierge and 12 year old genius rich girl tenant, muse and opine and just plain masturbate themselves about art and existentialism and beauty and truth and all that crap, and just when you realize they're both nigh-intolerable prats who only ever think and think to justify their own self-imposed limitations, they suddenly leap into glorious and tragic, foreshortened action. Suggesting some people should stay with their original instinct, no matter how self-negating? Somehow, no. Or, if yes and I missed it, doesn't matter - Barbery writes sophistry and self justification with such uncommon elegance, creating characters I can't help but forgive. Their cynical takes on "weighty" subjects are both LOL worthy because they seem so dead on and then the exact opposite. Absurdly affecting. Can't recommend enough.

This is great:



Also reading:

after several months of dabbling and a few weeks of concentrated reading, i finally gave up. the size of this book doesn't intimidate me in the least but his a.d.d. writing style is exhausting, frustrating, and at times, pointless.

I love DFW's style, but he (to me) was always best suited for short (or sometimes, rather lengthy) essays. I love his short stories too, but man, "Up Simba," is such a fantastic read.

I prefer to buy vs going to the library mostly because of due dates, I always feel rushed when there's a due date. Even though 99/100 times i'll finish the book long before the due date and I can get an extension if I need it, I still feel rushed when i'm reading from the library. Can't really explain it. Lately I've been hitting the second hand bookstores to save cash, they are usually more expensive then used book on amazon but the shipping costs on amazon make it even out. There's something satisfying about browsing a big shelf of books anyways.

yeah, most libraries allow 2 or so renewals before you have to bring it back though. Unless it's a new release with a wait list.

My library allows only one renewal. Damned inconvenient. Still, I'd rather not buy so it's an incentive to get stuff read.

Finished up The Corretions, which was just brilliant. One of the best modern things I have read in years.

Now I am debating what to start tomorrow morning (six hour flight)

The Intiutionist or the new David Mitchell. I think The Intuitionist might be more fun and therefore better suited to plain reading, although I am slightly more excited for the new Mitchell. Hmm... might just have to carry on both books.

This book. This fucking book. A goddamn masterpiece, truly. No one gets out unscathed. The senseless murders are utterly unavenged, even when the killers are executed. I was already a huge Capote fan. Other Voices, Other Rooms baffled me at first, but I've never forgotten it, and The Grass Harp and A Tree of Night are just as good. Knowing Capote's own tragic decline following this achievement enriches the experience, but goddamn if he wasn't, at one time, one of our finest. I love every fucking page of this book.

What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer

kind of dry so far and the connection between druhgz and compewter isnt as neatly tied as i was hoping =(

And what's also so incredible about the book is how he strenuously...and successfully...avoids allowing his very existence as the interviewer, and the possible bias he may have, intrude in the telling of the tale. There is no authorial "I" or "me", no call to judgment; Capote show empathy for all of the "characters" which I doubt any other non-fiction crime book ever does.

I'm surprised Capote hasn't been issued in a 'Library of America' edition.

I've got that Shteyngart coming to me from the library as well, possible selection for the Somb book group?

maybe, but it's a little too weird and specific to make for good discussion. very innovative, in terms of intertextuality, formatting. and the satire is really sharp and accurate. but i dunno how much mileage we'd get out of this one.
what about waugh's a handful of dust? been meaning to read it for a while. classic, but not one that gets mentioned all that often.

never read it, and the library has it, so I'm game.

my favorite book of all time.

I just purchased a copy of it in its first press, first edition. Gorgeously written. Absolutely fuckin' fluid line-to-line.

I've also read a handful of Capote's other books, but after setting ICB as the standard, they all leave a bad taste in my mouth. I just tried doing Unanswered Prayers. Got about half-way through and decided that I can't push myself to keep going simply for the sake of my infatuation with Capote. It just sucked big balls.

All of them? ...Prayers is from that tragic decline of which I spoke. Everything up to ICB, though, I think of as first rate writing. Especially Grass Harp and Tree of Night. But everything he tried after ICB failed.

Started Rob Sheffield's newest Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut last night in bed - I've already laughed out loud a few times. He makes me laugh.

Trivia: William H. Avery, the Governor of Kansas at the time of the executions, just died last November.

Taking a break from Celine and novels in general to read more comics. Just finished Alan Moore's terrific run on Supreme. Now reading David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp. If nothing else, this is a beautifully drawn book.

Finished this yesterday. Mixed thoughts. It's a simple story beautifully told, but perhaps the story is a bit too simple and unworthy of the artistic acrobatics. Seeming at times like a cross between Craig Thompson's wonderful Blankets (or a Will Eisner book) and Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, Asterios Polyp is, alas, not as achingly honest as the former nor as intellectually engaging as the latter.

A light, breezy read despite the page count and always glorious to look at, it is, unfortunately, riddled top to bottom with the most tiresome cliches. What happens here is a man who loves himself a bit too much loses his wife and then his house burns down and he learns some valuable things from living with salt of the earth types in the heartland. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of stories and David Mazzucchelli does little beyond the gorgeous design to make the narrative seem fresh. Elements like the dead twin and the video tapes seem like relics from an earlier conception of the story that struggle to find relevance in the finished piece. Details and discussions that initially seem like they might build on each other and add up to something greater fizzle out halfway through, making one wonder why they were brought up in the first place. Instead of a serious exploration of these ideas we get digressions that lead nowhere and seem to have little impact on the character's overall arc.

The art certainly elevates the book higher than anything merited by the characters and story alone and as a piece of comic illustration and design this is one of the best-looking books I've seen in a long time. It's unconventional in the layout and storytelling and impeccable in its craftsmanship, and for that alone I highly recommend picking it up.

But is the style enough to make this a great book? I don't know. I like it a lot. And there are times, especially late in the story, where the art is so beautiful and, combined with the point in the narrative when it arrives, so powerful, that I felt like, yes, this is something special. But when I read the last page, my first thought wasn't "Wow, what a book" but rather "Wow, that's all Mazzucchelli had in mind?"

Disappointed as I was with where things ended up, I'm excited to see Mazzucchelli work in this way and very much look forward to where he goes from here.

Most important decision in any mans life, what book to take on a camping trip? Last time I went camping I read "Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates" and loved the hell out of it. There is something special about books read in a tent.

Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

This was just a really delightful series

I didn't love the books so much as a narrative, but I love the little glances, the beats, the over-the-top expressions, the large watery eyes, the awkwardness, the embarrassment, and all the other bits and pieces that make up the moments in between the evil ex battles. Those fights are the selling point, but it seems even O'Malley was tired of them by the time he got to the later books, especially the 5th one where the twins are non-entities and Scott fighting robots is merely a distraction from more interesting and entertaining things going on with the other characters. Not that I don't like the fights. They're fine. It's the mixture of reality (or as real as this book gets) and unreality that makes this book so special. And the books are at their best when they don't let the unreality dominate too much, when it's just an accent on the more mundane bullshit, when the plot takes a back seat and the characters just hang out or go through their day-to-day business.

Which is maybe why the finale didn't kick my ass like I really wanted it to. Which is not to say it didn't really kick ass. It did. Just not my ass. But that's OK! Love those last ten pages. Sublime.

Um, what a heartbreaking story. Yet another example of parents effing up their kids lives so bad and the kids just looking for family in any shape or form.


If you are into dark and disturbing comedies, then you should probably check out the latest from Tony O'Neil.

Top Ten, by Alan Moore (and co). Plowing through this series. So good.