what are you reading today?

[sawyer]

i'm looking for a stereotypical 80's or 90's book that shows more or less what was going on in culture (countach's, coke, raves, etc). anyone know of any?

 

[less than zero]

 

 

not sure i can give a proper rec for you, but im reading less than zero now and i'm enthralled. i'll share a few samples for anyone who hasn't read:

 

The psychiatrist I see during the four weeks I'm back is young and has a beard and drives a 450 SL and has a house in Malibu. I'll sit in his office in Westwood with the shades drawn and my sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, sometimes cloves, just to irritate him, sometimes crying. Sometimes I'll yell at him and he'll yell back. I tell him that I have these bizarre sexual fantasies and his interest will increase noticeably. I'll start to laugh for no reason and then feel sick. I lie to him sometimes. He'll tell me about his mistress and the repairs being done on the house in Tahoe and I'll shut my eyes and light another cigarette, gritting my teeth. Sometimes I just get up and leave.

 

...

 

It hadn't rained in the city for too long and Blair would keep calling me up and tell me that the two of us should get together and go to the beach club. I'd be too tired or stoned or wasted to get up in the afternoon to even go out and sit beneath the umbrellas in the hot sun at the beach club with Blair. So the two of us decided to go to Pajaro Dunes in Monterey where it was cool and where the sea was shimmering and green and my parents had a house on the beach. We drove up in my car and we slept in the master bedroom, and we drove into town and bought food and cigarettes and candles. There was nothing much to do in town; an old movie theater in need of paint and seagulls and crumbling docks and Mexican fishermen who whistled at Blair and an old church Blair took pictures of but didn't go in. We found a case of champagne in the garage and drank the whole case that week. We'd open a bottle usually in the late morning after we went walking along the beach. In the early morning we'd make love, either in the living room, or, if not in the living room, then on the floor in the master bedroom, and we'd close the blinds and light the candles we'd bought in town and we'd watch our shadows, illuminated against the white walls, move, shift.

[dimmak]

[seeldog47]

[jackg]

 

 

what do you think seeldog? dostoevsky has been on my list of people to read for ages but never seem to get around to it...

[seeldog47]

Dostoevsky took some getting used to. I had many false starts with him; I started and stopped both Crime and Punishment and The Idiot multiple times before finally finishing them. They are fine novels. As is The Brothers Karamazov and the novella Notes From the Underground. Consider making some time for him.

[historyofmyworld]

^ What did you think of The Plague? I've been wanting to read it for a while.

[joeyod007]

albert camus? its very good, definitely recommended. the stranger is also really good.

[historyofmyworld]

great. looking forward to both.

[seeldog47]

The Plague is good, The Stranger is great.

[jackg]

I thoroughly enjoyed both, and if you're really on that existential crisis vibe get into the "Myth of Sisyphus", Camus essay on suicide. 

[azif]

How long does it take for karamazov to get interesting. I really enjoyed crime and punishment but I've given up on the brothers

[-CMM-]

Read about a quarter of Swann's Way, the first part of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, before I gave up on it. I spend a lot of my time studying for exams, and I really don't have the patience for Proust right now. 

 

So now I'm reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

[memoryscreen]

Nice ^^

 

Reading a lot of very long sentences in Tao Lin's "Taipei". 

 

[King Tut]

[alexryb]

I've been into these two lately:





 

Edited July 3, 2013 by alexryb

[HAL 9000]

Finished reading the first two books of "Old Man's War" series: Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades.

 

Really good military sci-fi and pays homage to some of the classic sci fi novels.

[acerbicb]

bless me ultima

the secret life of a cell

love in the time of cholera

[seeldog47]

How long does it take for karamazov to get interesting. I really enjoyed crime and punishment but I've given up on the brothers

Book two is when it starts to get good.

[kH0yA Sw@Gp0o]

this is... quite unlike anything i've read in a while. 

[po_boy_fuuma_hatesbargerz]

Read about a quarter of Swann's Way, the first part of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, before I gave up on it. I spend a lot of my time studying for exams, and I really don't have the patience for Proust right now. 

 

So now I'm reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

 

 

lol i like this book

 but i jsut remember back in 2007 when this was posted 2x a page for months. 

[-CMM-]

lol i like this book

 but i jsut remember back in 2007 when this was posted 2x a page for months. 

 

Some things don't change around here. Didn't the title explicitly forbid Murakami for a while?

 

Anyway. Just finished a Balzac novel. Enjoyed it a lot.

 

[rab]

^ What did you think of The Plague? I've been wanting to read it for a while.

 

I would say the absurdist and existentialist themes are more emphasized in the plague than than the stranger. Both are great reads but have different tastes to them.

[joeyod007]

[spudeey]

going gonzo

[Grandseigneur]

Celine. Hilarious.

[Grandseigneur]

And of course Cioran. Almost as hilarious.

[seeldog47]

[hxa]

[Paris_hates_you]

[jok52]

Just finished the new Murakami novel and started reading Calvino today...so far, so good.