"Oxford Book of English Love Stories" by John Sutherland. Yeah, I know it sounds sissy, but it's an outstanding collection of short stories by writers like Hardy, DH Lawrence, Trollope, Thackery, Woolfe, Wells, Maugham etc.

The 2003 edition of the Norton Anthology of Modern/Contemporary Poetry is also pretty sweet if you're into that stuff.

And then you must do a hearty, deep in your chest Russian Laugh: "A-Hahahahahaha!"

I found images of the old Lovecraft covers that I used to find so freaky. I mixed up the different covers in my memory:





Artword was by John Holmes, the artist who also did this classic record cover:

wouldn't mind reading some short stories for a change. i'll need to see if my library has it.
thanks.

Yea, I ordered this book a month ago and haven't gotten around to it yet. Now I find out it's on Orca's book club. What is the appropriate response? Do I burn it?

Oprah has reccomended Faulkner and Tolstoy.

i decided to go back to Camus:



+

Understanding Albert Camus

Cormac McCarthy is a fantastic writer. I sat in Borders and read the first thirty pages of that novel. Can't wait to pick it up.

Just read it. Fuck Oprah and any stigma that you believe is attached to her club.

i wonder how many of those books (that were picked for oprah) ophra read herself?

I'm reading this for a class, that I actually just dropped, but I will most likely continue reading it. frightening stuff.

Just started this. Should be awhile before I finish it (school reading to be done and all).

Reverend Cherrycoke, talking dog, good stuff so far.

Oh I am reading it. about 200 pages in and I'm enjoying it more than any book I've read in the last five years.

this is so dense. i can't read it as a library copy. i really need to buy it and just sit down with a pen with that book. i tired copying things down, but at first, it's a sentence. then you got to copy the whole paragraph.

i'm gonna leave this book for now. put it on my to buy list, and just get something different i think.

and that "understanding camus" book wasn't what i thought it would be about. it's talks more about his writing style and certain images rather than the philosophy.

I'm finally reading this one. I'm only about 30 pages in, but it's pretty interesting so far. I'm sure I'm the last one here to read it.

would anyone recommend reading Bukowski? any particular books by him? i hear his name mentioned quite often.

edit:
argh! just checked my library and they have 4 books by him. one is borrowed, another is lost. the rest are poems collections. damn it.


i need to get something to read.

Charles Bukowski on the CPL web search. The CPL will deliver books to any Chicago or Suburban Library for free.

As for recommendations, check out Post Office, Women or Ham on Rye.

yeah, or factotum, hollywood, or just read a book of his poems

David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity

I read some of that in Borders the other day. It was interesting.





yeah, use your library to "fish" stuff haha

Ham on Rye or POffice is good.

have you read "ubik" by him, undo?

we finally finished this in my genocide class.
genocide is bad. america usually makes it worse. i get it.

No, read The Divine Invasion instead, then Exegesis, then UbiK. ubik'll seem almost normal then.

really?!

"ubik" is the only book i read by philip dick. and even though i'm not a big fan of science fiction, i did enjoy that one. he kind of takes the whole sci-fi genre to a different level. pretty cool stuff. maybe i'll read something else by him sometime.

Yes. I thought this was fantastic.

A really, quick fun read as well. Not what I expected at all.

Not yet. I'm going to finish the Valis trilogy before moving onto anything else. Already read most of his best-known stuff, mostly.

it's becoming my regular strategy these days: after watching >5 films by a single director i try to read some biography/criticism/reviews of his work. very helpful for understanding a lot of things and i feel like i learn new things, and it feels good.

Kind of difficult to finish the Valis Trilogy when PKD died before finishing "Owl in Daylight," and he didn't leave an outline to finish it?

im reading the wheel of time series. at first i thought it was better than LoTR, but by book 5 it is starting to drag.

Still working on Mystery Train by Greil Marcus, and I've started Love is a Mix tape by Rob Sheffield. Does anybody else find Marcus terribly boring? Even though he's informative, his book seems like a chore to read.

didn't like it that much. it was a good easy read, but i just can't get into vonnegut. his combination of humor and humanistic ideas is just not working for me, although the stories are usually very good.



borrowed this from the library but hasn't started on it yet.

I loved The Sun Also Rises and Hemingway is turning into one of my most enjoyable authors.

I started reading Norwegian Wood right after The Sun Also Rises and it was difficult to get into after Hemingway, seemed overly wordy, but once I got adjusted away from the Hemingway style and into the actual story I'm liking it quite a bit.

i love "norwegian wood". one of my favourite murakami's books. simple. perfect.

Just finished this. Highly recommend it. I'd put it up there with Twain and Salinger in terms of capturing the spirit of adolescence. One of the best new novels I've read in years.

Making Comics - Scott McCloud

Not that I'm going to make any comics, I just like reading Scott McCloud writing about them. And it gives me things to ride Duff's ass about.

(Holy Shit! 8:1 is back! Yay Duff! Something else good caused by the board being down)

The Last Romantic: A Life of Max Eastman by William L. O'Neill. Max is on the upper right in the photo above, with Eugune Debs on the left and Rose Pastor Stokes.

Wow, I'm just being blown away by this. Have I found a new favorite author?

what's it like?
i heard a lot about him, but for some reason i associate him with cohello, what makes me avoid houellbeck too.

In loving memeory of one of the great masters.

I've also increased efforts to find members of my Karass. Much more random travel.

dunno who cohello is.

It's about two half brothers and their life stories that the narrator weaves in and out of. Both are inept socially in different ways. I won't go into details. Houllebecq uses them as templates for emphasizing the decadence of modern society, especially how far down one can reach when one is not strong enough to forge a path in such a fast paced, overtly masculine and sexualized universe.

His writing is insightful, full of dark humor. It aches with a genuine sense of melancholy. I'm attracted to those writers who rail against modern society (Celine, Lautreamont, Voltaire) and he fits right in with the rabble rousers.

I use the concept of "ice nine" all the time when doing public speaking. I do it in a positive way, though, like how it just takes a small change in molecular structure for systemic change to occur across the universe.

I'm taking the train to work these days, so I have a lot more time to read...


The premise is not new to me-- but the case studies are interesting. I'll have to do some research to see how well they hold up, though.


Just started this. Heard it's good; hope it's good.


Dig it. But it's kind of chewy for me. I don't read poetry at all.


Dig this as well. But he's harder work than MacNiece.

Flickr Pool of people's Reading Stacks, the stack of the books you're planning on reading next.



Mine's not in there, yet, this is just a random Reading Stack, but anybodey's welcome to add their's.



The Kraken Wakes - John Wyndham

Sort of the sequel to The Day of the Triffids, in tone if not storyline, where seaborne space aliens take over our oceans' deeps and begin melting our polar ice caps to make things more to their liking. The tone of the story is very like H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, with it's Everyman narrator, unseen & unknowable alien terrors, and weak/pat ending.

that's kind of cool

i never have that many books (non-textbooks) lying around that i'm gonna read. i usually buy one book, two at most. fihish them, then buy a new one. i should try to buy a bunch of books at once sometime.


i'm still reading "go down, moses" and it's rather confusing. but good. i'm on the third story, and i haven't figured out whether it's a collection of short stories or a novel divided into short stories, cos they seem to have common characters and such. i read before that faulkner did something like that: introduced some characters breifly in his early works to be features in some of the bigger later ones.

Bongwater by Michael Hornburg

Great title, but I thought the story was meh.

i thought the ending was a little lame, other than that i enjoyed it.