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

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Earlier this year I read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm pretty sure it was the first Vonnegut I'd read since Slaugherhouse-Five, which I read in college. I really dug it.

This week I read Breakfast of Champions and kind of hated it. I didn't get it at all.
 
Man, now I get why the dude in Silver Linings Playbook was so pissed off about the ending of A Farewell To Arms. Fuck that shit.

Real good book though. Some awe-inspiring quotes ("a brave man dies at least two thousand deaths if he's intelligent but just doesn't mention them" :love: ) and killer dialogue throughout. I did not find it as tonally consistent as The Sun Also Rises, but I found most of the characters very likable and the descriptions were good, though not as vivid as For Whom The Bell Tolls (which I haven't finished yet but intend to pick back up shortly). Not his best but there were many aspects about it that I admired.
 
Finished World War Z recently. I really enjoyed it and I'm absolutely horrified at the movie promo of it which looks like it has absolutely nothing to do with the book at all. I'm not sure I've ever come across such an incredible disconnect.

Now reading "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. It came highly recommended, but I think it's just okay. I can't help feeling like the whole point of the hike was to write this book. Not sure what gives me that impression except that it just feels very gimmicky.
 
Interesting. I really liked the Strayed book. I remember reviewing it in one of the past book threads. I'll have to do a search because I can't remember now what I said, although I know it was pretty positive.

She spoke at one of our libraries recently but I wasn't able to go, unfortunately.
 
Books? I like books. I can talk books.

I last read A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams (yes, I know it's actually a play, but I read it...). It made no impact on me whatsoever. I think I would have liked it more if I'd seen it performed, like seeing The Glass Menagerie (another Williams play) performed last week brought a story I already loved to life. Streetcar just didn't do much for me. I didn't particularly like any of the characters, and I didn't get a good feel for the setting/social background, which was important for me. Also, I'm pretty sure all the symbolism was lost on me.

Currently reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston for school, which is good. I appreciate her use of African American dialect and the internal narration of the main character- often in the book's prose, it reads more as the third-person narrator speaking directly to the reader, even if she isn't narrating at the time, which reinforces the idea that she's telling her story to a friend in real time. I only wish Hurston would spend more time on certain parts of the story- for example, she completely glossed over Janie's first marriage, which wasn't very important to the character or really to the story, but I would have still liked her to develop it a bit more.
 
Earlier this year I read Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm pretty sure it was the first Vonnegut I'd read since Slaugherhouse-Five, which I read in college. I really dug it.

This week I read Breakfast of Champions and kind of hated it. I didn't get it at all.
Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author, and Cat's Cradle was the first book I read by him. It's amazing. So is Slaughterhouse-Five. But I totally understand your hatred of Breakfast of Champions... it had no real plot, and I didn't get Vonnegut's insertion of himself into the story (I think that's what bugged me most of all). It's as if he had a story summary in his head, but couldn't think of a way to flesh it out and just filled in the blanks with ramblings and drawings (which I have to say, I love his doodles...). Come to think of it, that's what his book Timequake is like too... I haven't read much Vonnegut, but his writing style seems to decline in quality after Breakfast of Champions.

If you're still interested in him, I'd reccommend reading The Sirens of Titan (his second novel). It's my favorite of his novels (though the ending can be underwhelming).

Okay, sorry for taking over this thread.
 
Finished World War Z recently. I really enjoyed it and I'm absolutely horrified at the movie promo of it which looks like it has absolutely nothing to do with the book at all. I'm not sure I've ever come across such an incredible disconnect.

Now reading "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. It came highly recommended, but I think it's just okay. I can't help feeling like the whole point of the hike was to write this book. Not sure what gives me that impression except that it just feels very gimmicky.

I am not a huge zombie book/film fan but the structure of World War Z interested me and I wound up enjoying it greatly. The film looks to have just about nothing in common with the book outside of the fact that there are zombies. I'll pass. But yeah, enjoyable book and from the son of Mel Brooks to boot.
 
Currently reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston for school, which is good. I appreciate her use of African American dialect and the internal narration of the main character- often in the book's prose, it reads more as the third-person narrator speaking directly to the reader, even if she isn't narrating at the time, which reinforces the idea that she's telling her story to a friend in real time. I only wish Hurston would spend more time on certain parts of the story- for example, she completely glossed over Janie's first marriage, which wasn't very important to the character or really to the story, but I would have still liked her to develop it a bit more.


Loathed that book (stick that in your search bar, nsw). But then, I can't think of many books I've liked where the dialog relied heavily on dialects. Trainspotting, maybe? But there was a lot I did not enjoy about that book, and it became probably the first book I ever had to read in school that I wrote a paper on without actually finishing it.

Slaughterhouse 5 and cats cradle were two books I read while avoiding reading school books (probably when I was trying to avoid reading Tolstoy). I can't remember a single thing about either of them.
 
it became probably the first book I ever had to read in school that I wrote a paper on without actually finishing it.
Was it the first of many? :wink:

My teacher says that girls might get more out of it than guys, so that might be part of the problem... but I can understand disliking the dialect. I liked Trainspotting personally too...
 
Was it the first of many? :wink:

My teacher says that girls might get more out of it than guys, so that might be part of the problem... but I can understand disliking the dialect. I liked Trainspotting personally too...

No, mainly just Tolstoy.


And that hardly explains anything at all. But you're hardly the first person to think I was a guy on the Internet.
 
I am not a huge zombie book/film fan but the structure of World War Z interested me and I wound up enjoying it greatly.

Same for me. I am not into that genre at all but I liked the almost documentary/quasi-journalist storytelling in the book. There were some really interesting stories that played important roles aside from just advancing the narrative. And in a lot of ways you could almost forget or ignore the zombie aspect of it as it could very easily have been a tale of a major viral outbreak or nuclear fallout, etc. Really well done.

No idea what Brad Pitt was thinking when he got involved in the movie. I understand that it might be hard to stick to the book exactly because you'd need a really large cast and most people who would want to see a post-apocalyptic zombie movie probably aren't ones to patiently stick it out with 30 different storylines/points of view, but still. Very disappointing.
 
I hated The Glass Menagerie because the girl in the story reminded me of myself in high school. I was going through really bad anxiety problems when we read that story in class.
 
No, mainly just Tolstoy.


And that hardly explains anything at all. But you're hardly the first person to think I was a guy on the Internet.
Oops, sorry for the mistake!

I hated The Glass Menagerie because the girl in the story reminded me of myself in high school. I was going through really bad anxiety problems when we read that story in class.
Funny, that's one of the main reasons I liked it. I relate to it.
 
Currently reading Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston for school, which is good. I appreciate her use of African American dialect and the internal narration of the main character- often in the book's prose, it reads more as the third-person narrator speaking directly to the reader, even if she isn't narrating at the time, which reinforces the idea that she's telling her story to a friend in real time. I only wish Hurston would spend more time on certain parts of the story- for example, she completely glossed over Janie's first marriage, which wasn't very important to the character or really to the story, but I would have still liked her to develop it a bit more.

That was a great book. I got the hang of the dialects by kind of switching a part of my brain on that made me read them easier, sort of like when learning or reading another language.

I was going to point out my favorite lines, but they come at the end so I won't spoil it for you.
 
Nothing will ever give me the headache that trying to read a clockwork orange did in terms of non-standard language things. Despised that book and could not finish it. I couldn't separate its pseudo-Russian form of English from either actual English or Russian. I can read and think in both languages (English obviously being my native language), but can't do a made-up combination of both without it really hurting my brain.
 
So as someone who hates Zombies, but really randomly loved the book Cell, do you think I will enjoy World War Z?
 
Nothing will ever give me the headache that trying to read a clockwork orange did in terms of non-standard language things. Despised that book and could not finish it. I couldn't separate its pseudo-Russian form of English from either actual English or Russian. I can read and think in both languages (English obviously being my native language), but can't do a made-up combination of both without it really hurting my brain.
That's one of my favorite books... I guess I really like this unusual use of the English language thing. (or in Burgess's case, a made up language)
 
It's called Nadsat, just to be the dork that I always am.

Ashley, WWZ is not a typical zombie book so you might like it. As Martina said, a lot of the time the book could have easily been about any number of catastrophic events.
 
Nothing will ever give me the headache that trying to read a clockwork orange did in terms of non-standard language things. Despised that book and could not finish it. I couldn't separate its pseudo-Russian form of English from either actual English or Russian. I can read and think in both languages (English obviously being my native language), but can't do a made-up combination of both without it really hurting my brain.

Yeah, I found it easier to watch the movie - to understand the storyline, not the content.
 
I was going to say something about not even being a fan of cock sparrrer's song "droogs don't run," but I wasn't sure that I could do that without getting an edited quote that took half the band's name out...riot squad, where are they now, watch your back, take em all-- all classics. Droogs don't run, not so great. Way too many bands overused clockwork range imagery.
 
A friend lent me Book 6 of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN collection. "Fables and Recollections". I've never read any Gaiman, and I wasn't particularly excited about just jumping in on Book 6, but fuck it. I started reading it and it's brilliant. The writing, the themes, and the imagery are all right up my alley.

Has anybody read this?
 
I recently read Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man. It was pretty interesting, exciting, and short. I still have an assortment of his books on the shelf that I'll be reading in the near future.
 
A friend lent me Book 6 of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN collection. "Fables and Recollections". I've never read any Gaiman, and I wasn't particularly excited about just jumping in on Book 6, but fuck it. I started reading it and it's brilliant. The writing, the themes, and the imagery are all right up my alley.

Has anybody read this?

I have, and they are brilliant. It's what made me a Gaiman fan and I've enjoyed his work ever since.
 
Haven't read any Sandman stuff (despite NSW telling me to), but Gaiman's books are awesome.
 
A friend lent me Book 6 of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN collection. "Fables and Recollections". I've never read any Gaiman, and I wasn't particularly excited about just jumping in on Book 6, but fuck it. I started reading it and it's brilliant. The writing, the themes, and the imagery are all right up my alley.

Has anybody read this?

Way to Cobbler that shit.

Season Of Mists and A Game Of You are two of the best collections for sure, and both take right before Fables. But you should just start from the beginning.

I recently read Gaiman's first novel Neverwhere and liked it a lot.


I recently read Michael Crichton's The Terminal Man. It was pretty interesting, exciting, and short. I still have an assortment of his books on the shelf that I'll be reading in the near future.

I've read all of his books except for the posthumous pirate one, and The Terminal Man was the weakest. So you should really enjoy the others.

Congo, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain are my favorites. And his autobiography Travels is mind-blowing.
 
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