Books Part V, featuring Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew

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A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

I'm not sure how this book ended up on my list. The title had been stuck in my head for many years after seeing brief bits of it on Masterpiece Theater while growing up. I must have read a recommendation for the book somewhere along the way

Was not expecting to love it as much as I did.
 
So, Ulysses.

I thought Gravity's Rainbow was difficult. I've just read the Sirens chapter and I let it wash over me without any care of understanding what the hell was going on. It's an interesting feeling. Of course, I've read the summary afterwards and got pissed how I didn't manage to get what exactly was going on at a particular moment.

This is a strange masochistic trip I'm taking with this novel. But I like it. Bloom is a fascinating character and you do get a feel of the place, of the smell, of the people, which is what Joyce had in mind when writing the book, being in exile from Dublin. Since I'm planning to visit Dublin soon, this is my attempt at an ingenious preparation for the trip. And it is funny in a charming sort of way. The experiments with prose and language (I love The Wandering Rocks, and I've recently seen Linklater's Slacker and I was wondering if Linklater was influenced by it in any way) are fascinating and I can only imagine how revolutionary it all seemed in 1922.

I'll keep trudging on.
 
There was something about reading it in Ireland that felt right, and I was more or less kind of enjoying it.

But I only got about halfway through, and when I got back to the US, I pretty much skimmed the whole second half. Oh well.
 
Finished Hunger Games (7.5/10) and Catching Fire (6/10) and returning to Under the Volcano is like reading a different language entirely. Suzanne Collins really is one of the laziest authors ever as far as description goes. Catching Fire must have been written in a weekend.
 
I'm reading Ender's Game. Not bad so far, but the main character doesn't act like a six-year-old at all. I suppose it's because he's a genius, but still.
 
I loved that book a lot. It is weird to picture him as a small child, but, yeah, he's not exactly normal.
 
Anyone ever read anything by Indian/Trinidadian writer V.S. Naipaul? Always was curious upon seeing his work in bookstores, and finally picked up one that appears to be highly regarded: Bend In The River.

Also, recently I finished one of the best books I've read in a while. John Crowley's Engine Summer, which reads a bit like fantasy but is in reality post-apocalyptic sci-fi, where the culture has gone back to forms of paganism and something resembling Native American. Comparisons have been made to Tolkien and Bradbury, though this novel is far more oblique than the works of either. He throws you headfirst into the world and only slowly do you understand it. The ending is quietly devastating but beautiful like everything that precedes it. I've now moved on to Crowley's more famous work Little, Big.
 
Ask the Dust by John Fante seemed to be the perfect book for me at this point in my life and, yes, I thought it was great. While set in a very different time period and economic situation, it still resonated with me. It did a wonderful job of describing the emotional rollercoaster of an artist while providing a very realistic (and exhausting) romance.
 
Mo' Meta Blues: The World According To Questlove, by Questlove (duh).

Cori had recommended this on her FB (thank you!) and I fetched it from the library. I loved it. It's all about music and creativity and the music industry and hip hop. It's really good and anyone who loves music would enjoy it. Those of you who are hip hop fans would find it especially interesting.




One caveat: it really suffers from a lack of proofreading. It's full of usage errors that anyone should have caught and circled in red pen. Many of these mistakes are the kind that even show up on word processing applications. That shit drives me nuts.
 
Is there anything near as good as that story in the book? Cause if there is, I really need to pick it up.
 
I dug the whole book. He talks about all kinds of popular music, and he really had thoughtful things to say about hip hop. He's ten years younger than me, so the mysic he remembers from his childhood is music I remember from junior high. There's a great KISS story from his childhood. Get a library card and check it out.
 
Yeah, that was a great book! I have a Spotify playlist now full of music/artists he mentioned. I'm not expecting to fall in love with anything because I'm not a big hip-hop fan, but I just want to hear what he was talking/raving about.
 
I dug the whole book. He talks about all kinds of popular music, and he really had thoughtful things to say about hip hop. He's ten years younger than me, so the mysic he remembers from his childhood is music I remember from junior high. There's a great KISS story from his childhood. Get a library card and check it out.

I got a library card a few weeks ago. A temp one, so I can only check out one book at a time. Since they had none of the books I was currently reading at my branch, I checked out The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoey on NSW's recommendation. Been loving it ever since.

It's due back in a few days, so I need to finish it. Then maybe some ?love.
 
You read Cloud Atlas already, right? I have four David Mitchell novels but still need to get Jacob de Zoey.

I just started Number9dream recently, and really enjoyed Black Swan Green, one of the better youth-centered novels I've ever read.

Ghostwritten is gimmicky like Cloud Atlas (and not as good) but for a debut novel it's extremely impressive.
 
I never did read the last chapter of Cloud Atlas. Travis and I had planned to go to the midnight showing of the movie, and so I saw how it ended and have been lazy about finishing the book. But I love it.

De Zoet is weird, because if you explained to someone what the book was about, it would sound like just about the most boring thing you could ever read, but the way it's written, I just find myself getting sucked in.
 
Well, damn. I'm in the mood to start a novel tonight and the novels in my library are slim pickins.

I think I unloaded them, thinking I could always get them at the public library. Maybe I'll read a Perry Mason and get something tomorrow when I return the two I checked out last week.
 
i've been not agood library patyron twice in my life. I owe a book back to the brooklyn library that bc i took it out in dec 2007? renewed it once , then the winterc was bad i never ot back there. usually only headed in that direction in better weather months.

Worse was a book i borrowed back in ?98 that traveled wityh me to brooklyn from manhattan, got mixed up (it was an art book) into my collection of art & related books, then i don't think it made it to my current home in the bronx.

i reccently got more credit for my credit card... i made a deal with my libreary to pay half of what the book cost but didn't get there in the winter i'm gonbna pay that on my credit card!

i'll be able to borrow DVD's and books again! :yippie: Art & craft supplies usually come before recored music, movies.

i'll look for flanagen's ?UTEOTW.

but something here reminded me of Tom Robbins! read Jitterbug Perfume and (one vof my fav novels) Skinny Legs and All.
want to read village incognito and half asleep in frog pajamas. Plus take a look through his for kids book on why adults love beer and why children can't have it. B is for Beer

and i'll finally be able to see ? play it loud . ignore page and watch jack w and edge
also from the sky down! :hyper: only seen bits of it.
 
I'm terribly disappointed that the U2 concert section of American Psycho didn't make it into the movie.

I wanted to see Christian Bale judge Bono's muscle tone and cowboy hat.
 
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Did you finish V., laz?

I started reading The Crying of Lot 49 and it's a much easier read than Gravity's Rainbow. It share some of its themes but it is far more accessible and the writing seems more upbeat, lacking the suffocating density of GR, if that makes sense.
 
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