Now Reading

Just finished this, I had much fun with it and I never thought I would feel such cravings for reading the major Shakespeare plays at this point in my life (never had to in high school)

Starting with this, the opening is very cool

And struggling with this one, I might be too depressed to deal with so much gloom right now

Really not keen on these recent Cormac McCarthy cover designs... but the prose is as good as ever.

  On 7/11/2011 at 9:44 PM, baph said:

 

So far it's wonderfully exotic... an astonishing intellectual journey.

intriguing—i've only heard of foucault's pendulum (i am embarrassingly deficient in the literature category). has anybody here read that? worth checking out?

Foucault's is great - it's huge and not much happens for the most part, but I still devoured it in a matter of days a few years ago. It's a shame my copy is at my parents' house, cause I'd love to pick it up again.

You should at least read The Name of the Rose if you want to read other Eco. It's pretty much a classic.

  On 7/11/2011 at 11:39 PM, m u st co n t r ol t h o 4 said:

Just finished this, I had much fun with it and I never thought I would feel such cravings for reading the major Shakespeare plays at this point in my life (never had to in high school)

 

 

Starting with this, the opening is very cool

 

 

And struggling with this one, I might be too depressed to deal with so much gloom right now

 

Adorno is fantastic...hang in there..keep it around when you are in the mood.

Claude Levi-Strauss..im not so much of a fan, but hes certainly worth a read, ill say that much.

Im currently reading Bertrand Russell-History of Western Philosophy, and it is fucking fantastic. Im pretty new to Russell, especially since for so long after reading Wittgenstein and everyone telling me Russell is an outdated hack, this book is an excellent intro to anyone interested in western philosophy. im only about 150 or so pages in, so im still on the Greeks, but he mixes in a lot of real history, philosophy, and most importantly IMHO, humor....for an avowed atheist he gives most spiritualists more than a fair shake, which i can really respect.

alright, time for me to out myself:

i have never read a henry miller novel, nor have i ever read an ernest hemingway novel. there are several other classic authors i've been afraid to touch.

add't background: i love kafka, the trial being a personal favorite. really enjoyed the wind-up bird chronicle. the atrocity exhibition is very obtuse reading for me. the stranger was a good read, and i appreciated no exit as well. house of leaves was a lot of fun, though felt inarguably gimmicky. i was never in the right frame of mind to enjoy the great gatsby, i suppose.

i was thinking of picking up foucault's pendulum or a jorge luis borges anthology of short stories, or something suspenseful a la house of leaves (minus the gimmick), but i know i'm missing very important works by very important literary figures.

what do i read?

I only saw the Umberto Eco movie so I can't comment on him, I guess it was OK (?).

If you like Kafka and you are posting on an IDM forum I'm sure you are going to love Borges. I would go for Ficciones (or El Aleph) which are collections of his short stories. The stuff is very cool to daydream about because the guy made science fiction out of philosophy, theology and all kinds of wacky theories / literature. I would also recommend A Movable Feast from Hemingway, it's an autobiography about the time when he was young, poor and hanging out in Paris with all sorts of interesting people. It is a nice guide on how to live a good life.

There's like a thousand book you could start with.

I guess you could buy one of those "100 books you need to read before you die" kinda thing, or check out some online lists (TIME's 20th century 100 english list, etc...)

Yeah, and reading classics for the sake of it gets boring pretty quickly if you don't have a personal interest in them. I would approach it as if looking for new music to listen to, you probably need to find an equivalent Autechre or Basic Channel before finding your way into the forest.. Oh and get a survey from a reputed writer not the boring mainstream ones. I had good luck with an intro by Mario Vargas Llosa on novels and a book by a French guy I found by accident on the library which got me into Artaud, Michaux, Ionesco, Beckett and all sorts of cool modern stuff. It is too bad I can't remember the title! I should probably go back to the library to read it again.

  On 7/18/2011 at 9:25 PM, Philip Glass said:

There's like a thousand book you could start with.

 

I guess you could buy one of those "100 books you need to read before you die" kinda thing, or check out some online lists (TIME's 20th century 100 english list, etc...)

eh yeah, true. goddamn, i feel foolish having to turn to the 1001 Books To Read Before You Croak for answers. ficciones by borges has been on my to-do list. i'm intrigued by hemingway but unsure which of his works to start with—the autobio sound interesting though perhaps not quite what i'm looking for, as fiction is my focus at the moment.

i am so uncultured.

edit: i feel like the "Should I start collecting vinyl" guy, but infinitely more stupid.

Hemmingway is hemmingway overrated.

well it looks like, as of right now, my three books of choice are:

nabokov - pale fire (based on iain c's recommendation)

borges - ficciones

murray/brucker - trapped! the story of floyd collins (miner/caver who was trapped for ten days—apparently the biggest american news topic between WWI+WWII, next to charles lindbergh's flight and baby death.

i was thinking of heart of darkness as well.

anybody into calvino? i read if on a winter's night a traveler in...high school? really enjoyed it. any recommendations as far as that goes?

i read a book of short stories by Calvino a long, long time ago, and i remember enjoying what i had read

about 200 pgs into Russell now...and im still on the Greeks lol...seriously though, painting Plato as a totalitarian??? huh????

  On 7/18/2011 at 11:03 PM, KY said:

well it looks like, as of right now, my three books of choice are:

nabokov - pale fire (based on iain c's recommendation)

borges - ficciones

murray/brucker - trapped! the story of floyd collins (miner/caver who was trapped for ten days—apparently the biggest american news topic between WWI+WWII, next to charles lindbergh's flight and baby death.

i was thinking of heart of darkness as well.

 

anybody into calvino? i read if on a winter's night a traveler in...high school? really enjoyed it. any recommendations as far as that goes?

Calvino's incredible - one of my favourite authors. If you enjoy the kind of metafictional games you find in House of Leaves, Pale Fire, Borges etc. then you'll love him. Invisible Cities is my favourite of his novels. Mr. Palomar and the Cosmicomics stories are excellent as well.

At the moment, I'm getting reaccquainted with Poe's horror tales. Read "The Fall of the House of Usher" on the way to work this morning - superb!

Poe also had a notably assymmetrical head:

I am about to start with game of thrones

Don't let H.P Lovecraft's largely moronic fan base, and his sometimes racist sentiments deter you. Great stories...one of the few times I found my self actually frightened while reading a book.

  On 7/19/2011 at 1:31 PM, thanks robert moses said:

Don't let H.P Lovecraft's largely moronic fan base, and his sometimes racist sentiments deter you. Great stories...one of the few times I found my self actually frightened while reading a book.

What usually deterred me was what I thought was his gothic writing style...that being said though, I don't have any excuse not to give him a shot. What would you suggest? I wanna be scurred

Lovecraft is OK but he's vastly overrated by blokes with ponytails. Start with Poe (Lovecraft did).

  On 7/19/2011 at 3:56 PM, Iain C said:

Lovecraft is OK but he's vastly overrated by blokes with ponytails. Start with Poe (Lovecraft did).

Lovecraft is quite a bit more than OK, I think. Overrated, yes..if you mean put in to god like status (this directly relates to his doofus fans CTHULU OMG WOW THE SLEEPER HAS WOKEN stfu idiots). But his writing style is fantastic (and in my opinon) superceeds Poe in some ways. But yes, obviously Poe is the Don. The King. Badaboom bada bing. I never fully connected with his stories though.

Any how.. I would say avoid Cthulu Mythos at first. "The Dreams In The Witch House" is good. Any of the Penguin collections should be fine. One of my favorite stories of his is "The Colour Out of Space". Some old school sci-fi.

I don't know... I think it's quite telling that I've read three large Lovecraft omnibuses, and while I can remember some of the settings and creatures he (almost) described, almost nothing of the stories, characters or turns of phrase remain in my mind. That's not to say they're not powerful images and they've definitely been influential on horror down the years, but there are no really compelling stories there as far as I'm concerned. That's just my opinion of course and he's definitely worth reading.

H.P Lovecraft - The Original Forever Alone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_%28short_story%29

I like Lovecraft, but his need to explain that something is horrifying by explicitly calling it horrifying was a bit horrifying.

How I would lick his eldritch tears.