what are you reading today?

[theLorax]

reading the musicians friend catalog

[electronic cheetah]

On the road by Jack Kerouac

[tweeds]

tripping back into the past

straddling between

brideshead revisited

evelyn waugh

romeo and juliet

shakespeare

the latter because i'm supposed to help a friend with his text. the former came highly recommended and i'm barely through the first chapter at the moment but waugh's touch is poetic and good-natured: not unlike forster, who is one of my heroes.

[feather]

I just finished Eriskon's The Bonehunters. Its plot is probably the hardest to follow in the Malazan series, but otherwise, Erikson continues to awe me.

Reading Alain de Botton's On Love. He also wrote How Proust can change your life. In On Love, Botton created a fictional love story and uses that as a premise to dissect the process of falling in, being in, and falling out of, love. My ex recommended it to me, so yeah.

Gonna pick up Rudy Rucker's Mathematicians in Love tomorrow. Err totally unrelated to the former, this is about two mathematicians in love with the same woman, at the same time the two mathematicians discover a set of theories or something that re-write reality (?), and inter-dimensional aliens come knocking on the door. Sounds like a fun read like Nylund's Signal to Noise and Stross' The Atrocity Archives.

[heretic_shae]

I've been reading Rant since it dropped...idk, i cant get into it like i can other Chuck Palahniuk's books

[soundbomber]

The Sicilian by Mario Puzo.

[ordo]

Just finished Hardboiled Wonderland and am now on to A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami is a genius.

[tweeds]

a bit of a thread derail but is there anyone who doesn't like murakami?

i would be quite interested in hearing why. i have read only one murakami short story so my opinions are yet unformed. but everyone seems to love the man's work, does he have his detractors?

[feather]

Have you read Norwegian Wood? It's semi-autobiographical and not as metaphysical/convoluted as his other stories, but I enjoyed it.

Just finished Hardboiled Wonderland and am now on to A Wild Sheep Chase. Murakami is a genius.

[feather]

a bit of a thread derail but is there anyone who doesn't like murakami?

i would be quite interested in hearing why. i have read only one murakami short story so my opinions are yet unformed. but everyone seems to love the man's work, does he have his detractors?

I've wondered that myself. Honestly I checked out Murakami because he was one of the "it" writers then, when I was looking for stuff to read outside of my usual sci-fi/fantasy genres.

While I enjoy some of his books, I'm also skeptical about all this hype around him, especially among non-Japanese readers. After all, how many Japanese writers reach a critical mass of readership in Japan so they get translated into English for the Western market? Besides Haruhi, I've only read Banana Yoshimoto and Ryu Murakami myself, but surely there are more Japanese writers who remained native (and are conceivably as good or better?), and people like Haruhi Murakami and et al just happen to be the ones who're translated. I'm saying this because I think a lot of Murakami's (as one of the few translated Japanese writers) popularity is just hype.

Personally I don't think Murakami is palatable all the time, or for everyone. Most of his stories give me a sense of surreality, dream sequences seagued together and interspersed with day-to-day normality. That's what I enjoy about reading him. He makes the unreal and dream-like feel matter-of-fact. There's always a feeling of stillness and suspension. But that's how I read Murakami: I don't think too much into his stories or look for hidden meanings between the lines. If and when they come, they come, otherwise it's like a dream, I don't ask.

Well my friend hates Murakami because his characters are paper-cut and two dimensional, they don't respond (emotionally) enough to what goes on around them. The same dream-like feeling I get from reading Murakami, ensnares his characters--they appear detached and going along with whatever Murakami plans for them. Oh but she loves Hemingway, who is a far different writer from Murakami. So that might give you some sorta reference.

This characteristic shows up especially on the film version of Tony Takitani. Beautifully shot with a poignant score from Ryuchi Sakamoto, the short film is somewhat sedated and pastel and its protagonist hardly ever shows enough of anything. It was an enjoyable film but there the feeling of detachment is always present and somehow just stopped me short of throwing myself into the film. I'd still recommend the film for any Murakami fan or film buff though.

[Jux]

Goat by Brad Land. Its a memoir of a guy who was beat mugged pretty much emotionally screwed, that goes to Clemson and pledges a frat. He tries to deal with the brutality of joining the frat while still dealing with the mugging/beating.

[tweeds]

well put, feather.

i remember looking at the short story with the tools of analysis i had been accustomed to using when reading other short stories (saki, forster, updike) and feeling very disoriented... :confused:

[st_]

Celine - Journey to the End of the Night

[guffer]

i like murakami, but he is a bit samey sometimes. i couldnt read two of his books back to back...

[tweeds]

picked up my complete saki short stories again yesterday, to take a break from waugh and shakespeare...good fun. i love short stories.

[chrisj]

new to this thread

just finished a few books over my week get away at cebu (philippines) awe some place.

alchemist

brave new world

5 people you meet in heaven

strangely enough i am reading the windup bird chronicles.

liking it very much.

[feather]

alchemist

brave new world

5 people you meet in heaven

That's an interesting mix.

[chrisj]

That's an interesting mix.

it is isnt it... alchemist and 5 people have religious tones while brave new world's society rejects it.

i dont know what to say. i use to be a pretty devout catholic (church every sunday) till around 17. stop going to church / practicing completely.

opiate for the masses.

[justinbaily21]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Awesome book so far.

[buffalocloud7]

[phoenix]

Just finished In the Lake of the Woods by O'Brien.

I picked up Rant by Palaniuk and will either read that or reread Island by Huxley.

[Corbin Law]

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Awesome book so far.

someone gave me that as a gift and i havent really touched it yet. glad to hear its good.

[polishmike]

I just got:

-The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next

-Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

[eleven]

Freakonomics

[asuzano]

gravity's rainbow by thomas pynchon

prisoner of love by jean genet

[sean_]

just finished rant, it kinda sucked

now i dont know what to read

[pwnzj00]

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

[acey]

Just finished jPod.

I'm between books right now.

[ordo]

Just finished jPod.

I'm between books right now.

That's a good Vancouver book to read - lots of local references.

[broneck]

soooo i'm reading communist daughter ... i mean, i know reading a book because there's a song written after it is stupid and lame, but i dont give a shit...that being said, how's the book? i'm like 2 pages in cuz i read it at work and there's distractions like....work.