Whatcha reading?

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Kory
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Kory »

Wolter wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 7:15pm
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 4:26pm
I was going to read Infinite Jest, and then I decided not to.
I started it last year for the third time. It was fine reading at the outset but I moved on to other things yet again.
I have a hard time getting into books that are really descriptive. I don't need to know all these details, my brain can fill them in. It's what forced me to give up on Dune, too.
"Suck our Earth dick, Martians!" —Doc

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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Silent Majority »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 4:28pm
Silent Majority wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 3:45pm
9) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? - Mark Fisher. 2009. Audiobook read by Russell Brand. A short but invigorating book where the writer uses movies and his gripes about his own job as a way in to criticise the managerial and neoliberal approach to the economy. Clever writing, passionate, and a pleasantly off kilter approach made this work. The title came from Thatcher's acronym TINA: there is no alternative. The self fulfilling prophecy.
Excellent book—read it a few years ago. Unfortunately, he suffered from mental illness and killed himself several years ago. His collected writings were published a year or so back, called K-Punk.
Will definitely be checking his other stuff out in time.
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Low Down Low »

Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 11:29pm
Wolter wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 7:15pm
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 4:26pm
I was going to read Infinite Jest, and then I decided not to.
I started it last year for the third time. It was fine reading at the outset but I moved on to other things yet again.
I have a hard time getting into books that are really descriptive. I don't need to know all these details, my brain can fill them in. It's what forced me to give up on Dune, too.
Have tried Infinite Jest in the past too without success, and i have a fondness for wordy epic tomes, but i'm not sure there have been many technically better writers than Foster Wallace in the last 30-40 years. De Lillo at his best, perhaps. The guy just writes incredibly beautiful sentences. His stories and essays are a lot more readable, but i do intend to give Infinite another rattle very soon. The Pale King is lurking somewhere on my dusty bookshelf too, but one gargantuan challenge at a time.

Kory
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Kory »

Low Down Low wrote:
19 Mar 2021, 8:18am
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 11:29pm
Wolter wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 7:15pm
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 4:26pm
I was going to read Infinite Jest, and then I decided not to.
I started it last year for the third time. It was fine reading at the outset but I moved on to other things yet again.
I have a hard time getting into books that are really descriptive. I don't need to know all these details, my brain can fill them in. It's what forced me to give up on Dune, too.
Have tried Infinite Jest in the past too without success, and i have a fondness for wordy epic tomes, but i'm not sure there have been many technically better writers than Foster Wallace in the last 30-40 years. De Lillo at his best, perhaps. The guy just writes incredibly beautiful sentences. His stories and essays are a lot more readable, but i do intend to give Infinite another rattle very soon. The Pale King is lurking somewhere on my dusty bookshelf too, but one gargantuan challenge at a time.
I read White Noise by De Lillo a few years ago and liked it ok. Where should one go from there?
"Suck our Earth dick, Martians!" —Doc

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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Low Down Low »

Kory wrote:
19 Mar 2021, 6:58pm
Low Down Low wrote:
19 Mar 2021, 8:18am
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 11:29pm
Wolter wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 7:15pm
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 4:26pm
I was going to read Infinite Jest, and then I decided not to.
I started it last year for the third time. It was fine reading at the outset but I moved on to other things yet again.
I have a hard time getting into books that are really descriptive. I don't need to know all these details, my brain can fill them in. It's what forced me to give up on Dune, too.
Have tried Infinite Jest in the past too without success, and i have a fondness for wordy epic tomes, but i'm not sure there have been many technically better writers than Foster Wallace in the last 30-40 years. De Lillo at his best, perhaps. The guy just writes incredibly beautiful sentences. His stories and essays are a lot more readable, but i do intend to give Infinite another rattle very soon. The Pale King is lurking somewhere on my dusty bookshelf too, but one gargantuan challenge at a time.
I read White Noise by De Lillo a few years ago and liked it ok. Where should one go from there?
White Noise is good, Libra is probably closest along similar lines, about Lee Harvey Oswald. It's very well done, i think. If feeling a bit more ambitious, I'd say Underworld which is his masterpiece, just it is on the long side. Even if you just read the first 70 or 80 pages, all about baseball, I'd say it would be worth it. I dont know much at all about baseball, but loved it.

Weird, but De Lillo done nothing much since then, like he just emptied himself in that one project. Finished his latest effort a while back and thought, shit, this cat is phoning it in now.

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Audio:
Image
Just finished listening to this. Short novel, the kind of thing King could bang out in a couple weeks as exercise while considering something more adventurous. All the usual King beats are here—traumatized kid with supernatural ability, betrayal by adults, triumph over evil. King's good at what he does, and if you like him you'll like this just fine, but this could just as much be one of those unpublished works that pop up after a writer dies (we'll be getting a decade of "new" publications from him after he's gone, won't we?).

Tub book:
Image
Alice Bag, Violence Girl. Memoir from one of the original LA punks. Only 50 pp or so in, but it's quite relaxed in tone.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Kory
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Kory »

Low Down Low wrote:
20 Mar 2021, 2:00pm
Kory wrote:
19 Mar 2021, 6:58pm
Low Down Low wrote:
19 Mar 2021, 8:18am
Kory wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 11:29pm
Wolter wrote:
15 Mar 2021, 7:15pm


I started it last year for the third time. It was fine reading at the outset but I moved on to other things yet again.
I have a hard time getting into books that are really descriptive. I don't need to know all these details, my brain can fill them in. It's what forced me to give up on Dune, too.
Have tried Infinite Jest in the past too without success, and i have a fondness for wordy epic tomes, but i'm not sure there have been many technically better writers than Foster Wallace in the last 30-40 years. De Lillo at his best, perhaps. The guy just writes incredibly beautiful sentences. His stories and essays are a lot more readable, but i do intend to give Infinite another rattle very soon. The Pale King is lurking somewhere on my dusty bookshelf too, but one gargantuan challenge at a time.
I read White Noise by De Lillo a few years ago and liked it ok. Where should one go from there?
White Noise is good, Libra is probably closest along similar lines, about Lee Harvey Oswald. It's very well done, i think. If feeling a bit more ambitious, I'd say Underworld which is his masterpiece, just it is on the long side. Even if you just read the first 70 or 80 pages, all about baseball, I'd say it would be worth it. I dont know much at all about baseball, but loved it.

Weird, but De Lillo done nothing much since then, like he just emptied himself in that one project. Finished his latest effort a while back and thought, shit, this cat is phoning it in now.
Hey if I can know next to nothing about baseball and get through Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, I think I can handle just about any baseball writing.
"Suck our Earth dick, Martians!" —Doc

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Dr. Medulla »

Audiobook:
Image
I don't think it purports that Hitler escaped to South America, but it plays around with holes in conventional accounts. Once upon a time I had planned on doing research on the topic, but from a popular cultural view, so I still have some interest in the subject.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

JennyB
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by JennyB »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2021, 9:47am
Audiobook:
Image
I don't think it purports that Hitler escaped to South America, but it plays around with holes in conventional accounts. Once upon a time I had planned on doing research on the topic, but from a popular cultural view, so I still have some interest in the subject.
Sort of like a Boys From Brazil scenario but not cloning, he actually lived?
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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Dr. Medulla »

JennyB wrote:
29 Mar 2021, 10:49am
Dr. Medulla wrote:
29 Mar 2021, 9:47am
Audiobook:
Image
I don't think it purports that Hitler escaped to South America, but it plays around with holes in conventional accounts. Once upon a time I had planned on doing research on the topic, but from a popular cultural view, so I still have some interest in the subject.
Sort of like a Boys From Brazil scenario but not cloning, he actually lived?
Yeah, the usual story is that the bodies found were doubles—right down to engineered dental work—and that Hitler and Braun escaped to South America, where they lived into the 1960s or 70s. It became a staple of exploitation cinema and literature, but also of pulps and true crime in the 40s and 50s (curiously, it was a journalist for the New Yorker who really popularized the theory back in the late 40s). Back when I thought about researching/writing on this, the idea was to try to figure out why the Hitler survival myth has had such resonance in popular culture. Clearly, it's some kind of wound or itch, but why? (I have no real working theory, which is part of the reason I set that stuff aside.)
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

revbob
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by revbob »

Wasn't there a documentary series of sort about "Finding Hitler" or some such a few years ago?

Dr. Medulla
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Dr. Medulla »

revbob wrote:
29 Mar 2021, 8:14pm
Wasn't there a documentary series of sort about "Finding Hitler" or some such a few years ago?
Yeah, the History Channel. Several seasons, I believe. I watched a few (very dumb) episodes, but a friend who's a Holocaust scholar has watched the whole thing. As much as anything, he's annoyed at how historical work is so dramatized.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

Silent Majority
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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10) Frederick the Great - Charles Booth Brackenbury. 1884. Audiobook. I got to stop reading biographies of guys who were mostly concerned with warring. Fucking battles, who cares? This is history of its older variety, in the Gibbon moralistic mode, where nations have characteristics which are imprinted on their citizens, like a bad fantasy novel.
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Silent Majority
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Re: Whatcha reading?

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11) Help - Simon Amstell. Audiobook read by the author. 2017. Amstell is a British comedian, best known for hosting the British pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks after Mark Lamarr. Amstell is a funny guy and shares a name with my current favourite brand of lager. He's a super neurotic, anxious, depressive who bleeds the pain of being treated poorly by his middle class orthodox Jewish family for being gay. The book talks about all of that in detail, with the audiobook pulling out sections of his actual stand up when appropriate. He works to get out of his inhibited personality and live in the moment via therapy (he's hyper self aware in the interesting way people who have spent years in psycho analysis are), very thin, vulnerable young men (as he describes them) and a trip to the Peruvian rain forest, where he tripped on a life changing hallucinogenic. I actually saw him working on the stand up show about the latter in a small room in Camden where he wasn't certain something so profound could be made into comedy. He asked what people thought and one of the audience said 'it was a bit Sting' and he immediately snapped back into TV pop host and slagged the guys' trainers. Anyway, I liked the book which is by turns funny, enlightening and short.
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Silent Majority
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Re: Whatcha reading?

Post by Silent Majority »

12) Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic - Terry Jones. Audiobook, read by Terry Jones. 1997. Like a Hitchhiker's Guide book with no laugh out loud moments, good characters or interesting concepts. The earth people in the book are as two dimensional as a bad 1930s song and dance film. As an adaptation of a computer game that Adams was supposed to write, then someone else, that was taken on as a favour by Terry Jones and then written in three weeks, it's actually remarkable that anything remotely readable was published. Inessential.
a lifetime serving one machine
Is ten times worse than prison


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