Favorite books

[taku]

hhrmm...Henry Miller's works, particularly tropic of capricorn

Natsume Soseki's i am a cat..among others

Miyazawa Kenji for those times you want to return to your childhood

Walt Whitman's leaves of grass

oh and some Mishima Yukio and Kurt Vonnegut

plus some philosophers, Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky...

[Chicken]

hhrmm...Henry Miller's works particularly, tropic of capricorn

natsume soseki's i am a cat..among others

miyazawa kenji for those times you want to return to childhood

walt whitman's leaves of grass

oh and some mishima yukio and vonnegut

plus some philosophers...Camus, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky

good calls. i also think "botchan" is one of the classics.

[docnbhd]

"Fight Club", "Invisible Monsters" - Chuck Palahniuk

"Factotum" - Charles Bukowski

"Einsteins Dreams" - Alan Lightman

"Desolation Angels" - Jack Keroac

"Battle Royale" - Koushun Takami

"Middlesex" - Jeffry Eugenides

"The River" - Edward Hooper

"I am Legend", "English, August"

Coleridge, Whitman, Tolkien, Dahl, Burroughs, Rushdie (even though he's a pompous prick), Henry Rollins, Norman Mailer

Lot's of graphic novels...Bone, Crimson comic series, Cerebrus, Calvin and Hobbes

[swisloc]

Sometimes A Great Notion - Kesey

Currently trying to sink my teeth into Oil! by Upton Sinclair.

Ahh, i completely forgot... Sometimes A Great Notion is excellent. One of my favorite novels. I've never read Oil!, but i've read The Jungle. Has that been mentioned yet? It's pretty good if you stop before the socialist rant that spans the last 10 pages of the book...

not that i'm anti-socialist, it just makes the entire thing seem REALLY dated...

[airportlobbytx]

In Search of Lost Time

Portrait of a Lady (pretty much any later Henry James goes to the top of the list)

Mysteries (Knut Hamsun)

Marcovaldo (Calvino)

Moby Dick (cause it fucking rules)

Pnin/Speak, Memory (Nabokov)

Most anything by Natalia Ginzburg and Primo Levi

Kidnapped

Donald Barthelme (favorite fellow Texan)

As I Lay Dying

Magic Mountain

Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina becuase they are each wonderful

PG Wodehouse for a cheering up

Flaubert's Parrot

Lots!

[Yet Fung]

Fight Club & Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Kingdom Come (graphic novel) by Alex Ross and Mark Wade (I think)

Books I've recently read (good but not favorites):

The Game by Neil Strauss

Freakonomics by Steven J Levitt

The Tipping Point & Blink by Malcom Gladwell

The World Is Flat

Self by Yann Martel

The Long Tail

The Undercover Economist

[Calden]

Ham on Rye

100 Years of Solitude

Down and Out in Paris and London

The Sun Also Rises

Naked

edit:

if you include photography books, Sleeping by the Mississippi

[sycamore no more]

Haha, Yet Fung, The Game was a hilarious book.

Top 2 books I re-read every few months are:

The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac

Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami

[CAFC]

The Dharma Bums by Kerouac

Tristessa by Kerouac

Lights Out For The Territory by Iain Sinclair

1933 Was A Bad Year by John Fante

Ham On Rye by Charles Bukowski

Downriver by Iain Sinclair

[robideaux]

there's that other one...

A HAPPY DEATH

actually haven't read it, i don't think camus ever got to finish it, been on my shelf for 10 years or more...

damn

"A Happy Death" is alright, shares the same characters and setting as "the stranger." i read them in tandem during a literature binge a few years ago, and i often forget what happened to mersault in what book. there is definately a shift in narrative between the two, but they tell similar stories for the first half or so.

there is a quote i remember vaugely from the myth of sisyphus, i'de look it up if i still had the book but i gave it to my precocious nine year old cousin along with a spare copy of the stranger. the quote is in reference to the modernist conception of art, something to the effect of it being like "the facet of a diamond in which at every moment the inner luster is epitomized" or something. i really liked that one.

other lit favs include:

our lady of the flowers - jean genet

dead souls - nikolai gogol

crime & punishment - dostoyevski

ishmael - quinn (this one surprised me)

most things kafka

non-novels:

passion of the west by rick tarnas

structure of scientific revolutions by thomas kuhn

the turning point - fritjof kapra (a must read if you naively think you understand the significance of quantum physics, as i once did)

physics and philosophy by werner heisenberg

[poly800rock]

physics books are great.

i've been reading my biochemistry book though. good shit.

As much as I don't necessarily agree with your logic of things robideaux, if you have a great comprehension of physics AND philosophy (although your era is fairly mundane to me) your agruments will be monumental and unstoppable.

[airfrogusmc]

Just finishing an interesting book by John Dean "Conservatives Without Conscience." A conservatives look at the autoritarian right. Good read.

[dhalgren]

Dhalgren..

[viv1984viv]

Bumping this, such a better reading thread than the other one.

Has anybody out in the future read Jacques Ranciere? Ive read one about Aesthetics but im interested in his political stuff.

Flaubert - thoughts, opinions?

I just finished J.G.Ballards "Kingdom Come", its a pretty swrewd (sp?) comment on consumerism and fascism and in/out group dynamics blah bah, I love the content but occaisionally I feel the delivery is a bit cheesy, its the 3rd book of his ive read. Not his best, but certainly one with the most interesting thoughts explored.

"Notes from the underground" by Dostoevsky arrived the other day, I plan to read that next. Also Boris Vian's "I spit on your graves" came, someone here recommended it. "The fourth sex" arrived, im slightly dissapointed, it feels slightly like its romantically glamourising teenism, but its a beautiful book with text from everyone and anyone and lots of photos of things ive already seen albeit film, adverts or artists practices.

Slipping away from fiction...... Litvinenkos book "Blowing up russia" is also on hand, im really looking forward to it, im kinda a bit pre-occupied with islam and its politicisation, so I down loaded excerpts from Al-Zawahiris ( Egyptian Al-jihad Organisation Leader ) book "Knights under the prophets banner". Then ill start to go through the countless books written by non islam people on the subject. This is kinda stemming from my interest in Adam Curtis's film "the trap".

Has anybody read any books on Islam? Afghanistan? - Im looking at "the fragmentation of Afghanistan" by Barnett Rubin.

Im still on Wildes "dorian Gray", its been at the bottom of the pile though, im not too impressed or engaged with it. Also my girl gave me a copy of "wild Swans".... another lengthy one, anyone read it???

[RobbertJan]

Bonfire of the Vanities

A Man In Full

Fight Club

On the Road

Junky

Naked Lunch

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Picture of Dorian Gray

Crime and Punishment

Trainspotting

1984

Animal Farm

Harry Potter

Hamlet

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

[asuzano]

current favorite:

phenomenology of spirit by g.w.f. hegel

[buffalocloud7]

white noise- don delillo

Kafka on the shore- murakami

survivor- palahniuk

to kill a mocking bird- lee

veronica decides to die- coelho

half asleep in frog pajamas- robbins

burning in water drowning in flame- bukowski

[tweeds]

stuff i revisit now and again

a passage to india

forster

short stories by hemingway and saki--bite-sized little quips for lifting a bad day.

under milk wood

dylan thomas

death of a salesman

arthur miller

for viv - it's not islam by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have a bit to do with it, and it's well-paced, sensationalist writing with a bit of an academic slant: occidentalism by ian buruma and avishai margalit

for the times when you've had enough edward said to fill a week.

[denimdestroyedmylife]

i just read "the road" by cormac mccarthy

nice little post-apocalyptic father and son story

[soepom's sl*t]

Everything by Douglas Coupland.

[polishmike]

i just read "the road" by cormac mccarthy

nice little post-apocalyptic father and son story

did you read any other of mccarthy's books? especially 'blood meridian' or 'no country for old men', i wonder how they compare to 'the road'

[fallen angels]

some more favorites:

Pinball 1973, by Haruki Murakami

To Live, by Yu Hua

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie

[denimdestroyedmylife]

i wonder, too. i only read "the road"

a coworker lent me "no country..." but i didn't get around to it

i have "all the pretty horses" at home, but i don't know if i would like anything else but post-apocalypic mccarthy

[polishmike]

read 'no country for old men' it's a great story and i really enjoyed it.

'blood meridian' is regarded as his best book so if you like his work so far i think you'll love it.

[Fuuma]

Bumping this, such a better reading thread than the other one.

Flaubert - thoughts, opinions?

My favourite is “L’éducation sentimentale†(no idea about the translated title), it’s an amazing book because it mixes the romantic themes of authors that preceded Flaubert (think Stendhal or Hugo) but treats them in a realistic way that inspired the crop of « realists » that succeeded Flaubert (think Zola or Balzac). So you’ve got your young bourgeois, hopelessly in love with a beautiful, married, older woman who’s above his station, however his tumultuous emotions definitely don’t reach the majestic level of Julien Sorel’s or the young Werther’s passion. The last few sentences are absolute genius.

Currently reading Système de la mode by Roland Barthes (translated title would be something like system of fashion).

[wild_whiskey]

Everything by Douglas Coupland.

YESSSSSSS!!!

Microserfs = the best fucking book

I'm a big fan of Murakami as well. I've read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (so beautiful), Norwegian Wood (so somber, so bittersweet), Dance Dance Dance (clever, upbeat and awesome), and Sputnik Sweetheart (surreal, painful, emotional)

[Fuuma]

Disparitions by Natsuo Kirino is a very compelling read, its atmosphere reminded me of the masterful Eureka, one of the best Japanese movies of recent years. The only relevant piece of information you need, as some viewers/readers are sometimes slow about this kind of work (think Caché by Michael Haneke), is that it is NOT a whodunit, meaning that issues of guilt are to be approached in the symbolic even almost metaphysical sense.

[denimdestroyedmylife]

Currently reading Système de la mode by Roland Barthes (translated title would be something like system of fashion).

i love barthes. fragments of a lovers discourse is a beautiful read. one of my favorite books...

[fallen angels]

I'm a big fan of Murakami as well. I've read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (so beautiful), Norwegian Wood (so somber, so bittersweet), Dance Dance Dance (clever, upbeat and awesome), and Sputnik Sweetheart (surreal, painful, emotional)

you gotta read "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World", the imagination and surrealism is incredible. i've read all the ones you've read too, and "HW & EOW" ranks near the top of my Murakami list. fucking awesome. also try "south of the border, west of the sun", thats more human and realistic (like Norwegian Wood).

[RobbertJan]

currently studying Vergils Aeneis for my exam next week. When reading it with all the notes, background info and everything, this is one of the highpoints of literature, ever.