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    Post by techno raj Wed Jan 09, 2013 6:46 pm

    Book Thread Goodsoldier

    Halfway through this, it's amazing. study
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    Post by yancy Wed Jan 09, 2013 7:02 pm

    The cover alone is pretty great.
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    Post by techno raj Wed Jan 09, 2013 7:51 pm

    The whole book is filled with similar illustrations.

    Book Thread Svejk2

    Book Thread Lada_josef_schwejk
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    Post by Ned Braden Wed Jan 09, 2013 8:18 pm

    I'm sold. Been wanting to read something new / more often.

    Reuben and Spirit of Eden, did you guys read that as Jaroslav Halak too?
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    Post by jesus jones Wed Jan 09, 2013 8:46 pm

    Book Thread Eaarth-200
    finishing this and about to start

    Book Thread Tanizaki-some-prefer-nettles-cover
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    Post by reuben Wed Jan 09, 2013 8:49 pm

    I did!
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    Post by Guest Thu Jan 10, 2013 12:30 am

    Book Thread T100_novels_infinitejest

    This is my second try on this. It's going a lot smoother this time around, still only about 200 pages in right now. Also read the DFW biography by D.T. Max two weeks ago.

    I had the privilege of seeing George Saunders tonight and will probably pursue that sometime soon. Eggers, DeLillo, & Bolano are all list of things for this quarter as well.
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    Post by Bruegel Thu Jan 10, 2013 3:30 am

    raj 2 wrote:Book Thread Goodsoldier

    Halfway through this, it's amazing. study

    that's my favourite book.
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    Post by Gene Bootcut Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:25 am

    Book Thread Portnoys-complaint-cover-art

    Loving this book. I also read Herzog in 2012 and now I think I understand Jewish people.
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    Post by Duff... Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:35 am

    raj 2 wrote:The whole book is filled with similar illustrations.

    Book Thread Svejk2

    Book Thread Lada_josef_schwejk

    Uh, yeah, gonna need to find this.
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    Post by Duff... Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:39 am

    Over the holiday it was either suicide or Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and I guess I can't say I made the wrong choice.

    Reader put out its Pure Fiction issue and I'm looking forward to sitting down with it and a cup of coffee.
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    Post by Michael K. Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:26 pm

    wp64 wrote:Book Thread T100_novels_infinitejest

    This is my second try on this. It's going a lot smoother this time around, still only about 200 pages in right now. Also read the DFW biography by D.T. Max two weeks ago.

    I had the privilege of seeing George Saunders tonight and will probably pursue that sometime soon. Eggers, DeLillo, & Bolano are all list of things for this quarter as well.

    COLLEGE
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    Post by Michael K. Thu Jan 10, 2013 2:36 pm

    Eggers is good for one book, imo, he becomes shticky after that. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is his most emotional, funny, and tender work, and the highs are the highest. It'd be absolutely ruined for you if you read his other things first, so start with that. Read White Noise and Underworld. In that order. There are two things to read to get you in the mood and speed of DFW, and neither of them is Infinite Jest: read his Kenyon College Commencement Speech. It's probably the greatest instruction manual for how to live a good life in the 21st Century. It has been published under the title, "This Is Water," but it's quite easy to find online. Then read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and just get yourself destroyed by the intellectual gonzoism of the title essay. Then Consider the Lobster. Then, THEN, Infinite Jest. Apologies if you've already done these things, boss. As for Bolaño, fuck, I've had a copy of 2666 sitting on my shelf since release. I can't figure that dude out yet.

    And add some fucking Pynchon to that list. Inherent Vice is a great starting point, imo. Funny, dense, and only somewhat unapproachable. It doesn't hurt to use the Pynchon Wiki when spelunking his work.

    And then read some Nabokov - Pale Fire is my personal favorite, but Lolita is the classic and Ada is about as good as books get - to get a sense of the cracker all these white dudes have been nibbling on.

    After you've done all this, let's talk about Ulysses.
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    Post by quip Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:42 pm

    reading two books right now:

    Book Thread KingSusannah1

    I've been really enjoying the Dark Tower series but this book is getting so meta it's veering into pretentiousness. The plot is still keeping me going but if this had happened two or three books ago i might have dropped the series.

    Book Thread Children-the-challenge

    This is pretty awesome. Good advice overall intermixed with really outdated cultural references (smoking, corporal punishment, etc.)
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    Post by quip Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:43 pm

    I never had the patience for Pynchon or Eggers. Too much work.
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    Post by stphone Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:11 pm

    since xmas i've been making my way through junot diaz' short story collection drown which has been really good so far. i had read his novel the brief wondrous life of oscar wao last year, which i loved, and so far drown seems to be at least on par. just a very enjoyable read overall. i picked up his newest for xmas too, this is how you lose her. anyone here read that one yet? i've also been reading simone weil's grace & gravity though i'm having a tougher time of it, not sure if i'll finish it.

    i think i'm going to have to check out the good soldier svejk next too, looks promising
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    Post by petey Thu Jan 10, 2013 5:24 pm

    i've been reading "master of the senate," an LBJ biography.
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    Post by Nick Thu Jan 10, 2013 8:05 pm

    I'm reading Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.
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    Post by Guest Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:14 pm

    Michael K. wrote:Eggers is good for one book, imo, he becomes shticky after that. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is his most emotional, funny, and tender work, and the highs are the highest. It'd be absolutely ruined for you if you read his other things first, so start with that. Read White Noise and Underworld. In that order. There are two things to read to get you in the mood and speed of DFW, and neither of them is Infinite Jest: read his Kenyon College Commencement Speech. It's probably the greatest instruction manual for how to live a good life in the 21st Century. It has been published under the title, "This Is Water," but it's quite easy to find online. Then read A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and just get yourself destroyed by the intellectual gonzoism of the title essay. Then Consider the Lobster. Then, THEN, Infinite Jest. Apologies if you've already done these things, boss. As for Bolaño, fuck, I've had a copy of 2666 sitting on my shelf since release. I can't figure that dude out yet.

    And add some fucking Pynchon to that list. Inherent Vice is a great starting point, imo. Funny, dense, and only somewhat unapproachable. It doesn't hurt to use the Pynchon Wiki when spelunking his work.

    And then read some Nabokov - Pale Fire is my personal favorite, but Lolita is the classic and Ada is about as good as books get - to get a sense of the cracker all these white dudes have been nibbling on.

    After you've done all this, let's talk about Ulysses.


    I have been dabbling with DFW in different ways for like two years now. I have a pretty good grasp of everything that dude is about at this point. Read some of his non-fiction pieces, watched a lot of interviews, D.T. Max bio, etc etc. Pynchon is another person I am interested in of course, I have Gravity's Rainbow already but will probably start with Crying Lot.

    I read Lolita when I was 16. His mastery of the English language is certainly incredible. I didn't get a lot out of it beyond that. Worth a re-read.

    But yeah, thanks for all the recommendations and commentary. I still need to add a second major and it looks like it is going to be either literature or anthropology. I can't really write for shit. It's a very intimidating thing because whatever comes naturally to me does not, in my mind, have any literary value. And then to explore areas that are not natural/familiar to me poses the problem that I can't effectively convey that through prose.
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    Post by ClosetOfExhaustion Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:34 pm

    finishing david byrne's "how music works" soon, reading Nate Silver's book after that. also partially through a collection of potentially fabricated stories that were originally newspaper columns/tall tales in the Mountain Gazette newspaper. this:
    Book Thread Smoke-signals
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    Post by techno raj Thu Jan 10, 2013 9:40 pm

    Bruegel wrote:that's my favourite book.

    I was wondering if I had gotten the rec here or somewhere else. Thanks button engaged.
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    Post by yancy Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:10 pm

    Fiancée left Nate Silver's book on my coffee table for a week. I never got around to picking it up. And I knew there was a chapter on semi-pro poker player and massively successful NBA bettor Haralabos Voulgaris. Wish I wasn't such an intellectually lazy, television watching slug.
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    Post by Bruegel Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:26 pm

    raj 2 wrote:
    Bruegel wrote:that's my favourite book.

    I was wondering if I had gotten the rec here or somewhere else. Thanks button engaged.
    threads cant get off to a more auspicious start than that (in my book).

    i was just thinking the other day that Švejk had a pretty profound influence on my life. i first read it when i was struggling to decide what to study ant uni. obviously id always had an interest in that part of the world because of my grandmother but the book blew my mind. the way Hašek employs humour to expose the futility of war and the rotten heart of empire. Švejk is my favourite literary creation; like a synthesis of the most salient traits of Quixote and Panza. that persistent ambiguity - the farcical collisions of an endearing dunderhead and a brutal world, or an idiot savant carrying out the orders of a broken system as the surest means of undermining it.


    sometimes you read stuff when your young and it makes a massive impression but you go back years later, with more literary and life experience, and its somehow diminished. Švejk just seems to get richer - enhanced by the echoes of Rabelais, Cervantes and Sterne and the lessons learnt from my own booze-sodden adventures.

    it sort of ruined Catch 22 for me - i just kept asking myself 'have the people who rate this as the greatest novel of the 20th Century read Švejk?'


    another thing that amazes me is that its pretty much the funniest thing i've ever read despite the fact the whole layer of wordplay is lost in the translation (my czechs not sophisticated enough for triple entendres and the linguistic intricacies of pig shit puns)


    Last edited by Bruegel on Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:17 am; edited 1 time in total
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    Post by Bruegel Thu Jan 10, 2013 11:27 pm

    my first ever somb av was this, iirc:

    Book Thread Svejk
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    Post by techno raj Fri Jan 11, 2013 12:57 am

    Yeah, I was actually a bit hesitant to read it because the introduction makes all these warnings about the limitations of the translation.

    Holy shit, the gendarme who is convinced Svejk is a spy... Book Thread Rofl

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