For the next few weeks I'll be immersed in the history of Soviet Russia. After that... I think I'll read The Better of McSweeney's or one of my numerous other literary journals.

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On a McSweeney's note.

liar's poker should be at the top of your list. it remains the best thing he's ever written.

best book i read in '06. i thought it was excellent.

salvador casually mentioned in an interview his next work might be about 4 undiscovered oceans. WTF? i have no idea if he's being truthful or not.

i'll put it at the top, thanks for the heads up

Just picked up these three for two at Border's.

just finished

just started

loved cocoa and i'm lovin' iv even more

The Dickens/Faulkner romp continues....



i'm 100 pages away from finishing Bleak House, and it is easily one of the best novels I have ever read.
I'm on my second reading of Absalom, and it is the best novel I have ever read.

Sounds like bully days for you then.

Just finished this. It's been a while since I've read a play. Pretty good. It deals with a historical mystery between two scientists (Bohr happens to be one of my favorite scientists) over a meeting during WWII. Once I started reading this I realized I had seen a TV adaptation of this on Master Piece Theater a few years back.

Just Amazing

Anybody else absolutely in love with this guy?

first book that i have read in quite some time. hopefully i can make this a trend. (the reading more often part).

Am halfway through right now... so imbued with sadness. Love the introduction of Salvador as Saturn; really picked up for me right there. Funny about the 4 undiscovered oceans... I can see him making it work.





YES. I've read both "forty" and "sixty," along with "snow white." One of my primary influences in my Writing Fiction Days. Him and Italo Calvino.

Yeah, Barthelme, Pynchon, and Borges are probably my biggest influences. Calvino is great too. Hooray for post-modernist literature!!

I am so not in the mood to read this.
Dostoevsky

Images from Gravity's Rainbow Illustrated by Zak Smith



some pretty good stuff.

That blurb on the front makes it looks like it's a new book!

I love his story about the classroom pet.

just got this in the mail.

Finished yesterday:



Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

I enjoyed it. I don't like the way he portrays his young characters, though, in both this book and Everything is Illuminated (which I've yet to get through). Seems like the kids are so smart that they're socially inept and that just reminds me of the autistic kid in A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. I enjoy reading about quirky characters, but I don't like feeling like i should feel sorry for them. I don't know how the author wants me to feel about these characters.

Started this morning:



Love is a Mixtape - Rob Sheffield

So far, so good.

SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

This book totally makes me lol. Good read.

yEAH, I'm the one who told you to read it. I think I agree with that statement. I liked how he wrote it, either way.

this was totally mindblowing. i'm like

i was gonna read some more camus, but i received "a love supreme" book this morning, so i wanna read it now instead camus.



i rather enjoyed "kind of blue" book, so i'm sure this one is gonna be good too.

Currently reading:

1001 Songs by Toby Creswell
Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003
and just started Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman

Hooray for History of Russia Since 1917!!!

I cried on the el, I cried on my couch, this story is just sad. Poor Rob Sheffield. I'm sorry I called you a gayrod every time I saw you on VH1.

Slackmo and I have talked in the past about "taking back" songs that remind you of bad times. Sheffield had to do that with the 90s. So sad.

Easy book to get through, took like two days to finish. Highly recommend it as a quick read.

A Nice Accurate Survey of the 20th Century written in the 19th.

Just picked up based on the recommendation, I think, of BobLaw.

Currently reading and

Also in my queue is

read this a couple nights ago

not bad, I chuckled a bit. lent to me by a friend.


fascinating read.


don't know yet what to make of him. interesting stories, but don't quite like his writing style as much.
I've only read a couple so far, yet.

Just started this the other night, looking forward to digging in.

Does this have "Cathedral" in it? That story is killer. Gets me every time.

trying to read all the major works by camus. had been feeling him lately. good stuff.
"the outsider" was good, but definitely not his best. i'm not a very religious person myslef, but him ranting about the religion vs individual...not too big on that.

The Stranger is my personal favorite.

really?
so far mine is "the fall". it's like a flood of thought there.

"the outsider" is probably the one i disagree with the most.

Yeah, the Fall is really good.

There's that one part in The Stranger, though, where he describes the sun and the light and the heat and the sounds and then he shoots the guy... I don't know why, but that part really gets me, not so much the shooting, but the description. It makes me feel very strange. I guess that's why it's my favorite.

just finished:

just started:

reading it for the second time

I take it it's good then?

At times that hit a little too close to home, but it's one of my favorite books of all time.

The one good story my wife and I have.

Shortly after we started dating, I had three people tell me to read High Fidelity, because the character was just like me (and not just because I worked at a record store and made lists). I saw it was going to be a movie with John Cusack, from the director of the Grifters, so I wrote my wife (then girlfriend) and said I'm thinking about picking it up.

A couple hours later, she shows up with her copy of the book. A year or so earlier, someone had given her the book and said that the person in the book was her perfect mate.

I'd like to say we were engaged a couple days later, but that might have happened after we were engaged. We only dated for like a week.

Great story!

Inspired a great song too.

I take an immense disliking to many great figures in literature. Cmaus is fantastic at describing a scene and at pulling you in, but his writing style is so abrupt that it is a massive turn off for me.

I know I'm drowning in unread books, but I just bought Simon Reynolds - Rip It Up And Start Again.

I've seen many of you talk about it and hopefully it will teach me about some obscure Post-punk bands that I've missed, or perhaps increase my understanding of musicology.

i rather like camus's style. he's one of the very few exsistentialist authors (even if he didn't consider himself one, at least of that period) that i can read, understand and enjoy. "plague" is a thoroughly enjoing book.

as i've said before, i'm continuing my "camus's studies". got another one from the library- "exile and the kingdon". i want to read a few more of his short novels and them maybe get a good book that explains his stuff. anybody has anything in mind that they could recommend?

I think Camus fits directly in between being a great existentialist and being a great writer. There are a lot of great writers who use very existentialist themes but they don't focus as much as Camus. And most existentialists who write in the narrative form, just aren't very good story tellers (at least not as good as Camus).

I was going to suggest reading any short story collection with "The Guest" ("L'Hôte") in it, but I guess you're already on top of that.

Phonogram:Rue Britannia

So fucking good...

should i read some hemingway?

always

for whome the bell tolls? good start?