Reading Is Sexy: Books Part III

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I'm trying to finish In Cold Blood for a lame book club I started (we read all the classics that we didn't read in school.) Unfortunately I haven't picked it up in about 5 days and I was supposed to finish it last Thursday.

I'm a horrible founder. :sad:
 
NSW said:
I need to get to Infinite Jest, been staring at it for months now when I choose what to read next.

corianderstem said:
I need to keep an eye out for a used copy of IJ; I'd definitely like to give it a try one of these days.

:yes: Both of you do. Cori, if you don't happen upon a used copy, I think the 10th anniversary edition is only $10. Your av is fantastic, btw. :lol:

I mentioned it briefly earlier, but I'm getting through it with the push of Infinite Summer behind me. 10 pages per day over the course of 3 months (of course, more than that to get ahead is fine, and what I'm doing) and you're finished with it. Pretty easy, and probably one of the only ways I'd have motivation to do this.

Here's the schedule: Infinite Summer ? Blog Archive ? The Schedule
 
"The Kite Runner"

Excellent! I felt every emotion possible while reading this book. Sadness, hate, anger, excitement, yearning, you name it. The character Assef is the most evil character I ever came across in a story, I totally hate him.

Now, I am onto "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd.

Agree absolutely Pearl . . . .Beautiful writing, gorgeously drawn characters and ultimately a book of incredible hope - loved it


I loved that book! It´s fantastic. If you haven´t read it yet, you should read "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by the same author.

Ditto Niamh . . . with sparkly bits on top - he really is a fantastic author . . . able to find the humanity in even the most horrendous of circumstances :yes:



(apologies for hatchet quote job . .. still haven't wrapped my head around quoting from one thread to another :der: )
 
I've always been meaning to hop into this thread, but never really did for various reasons.

Now that it's a new thread, on the other hand...

So, what do we do here? I'm currently reading A Kierkegaard Anthology and also just purchased two (yay!) new books: Neil Gaiman's American Gods and a book called The Bible Unearthed, which I mainly bought as a resource for my uni work.
 
What do we do here? We talk about books we like, books we are currently reading, books we want to read. :)
 
We do exactly what you just did. :) Tell each other what we're reading, and what we think of the books we have read. Ask for suggestions, sometimes.

I just picked up Wuthering Heights, as I hadn't read it in a long time. I bought a copy a month ago, but yesterday when I was going through my books that are in boxes and not on shelves, I saw a very old copy of the book. Whoops. :lol: If anyone's looking for a copy, I'm happy to send it to you. Otherwise I'll keep it in the pile of stuff I'm planning to sell, once I get around to having a garage sale.
 
I've read about 600 pages of Pillars of the Earth and I really want to give up but I'm only about 400 pages from the end. It's just way too soap opera-ish for my liking.

Has anyone here read "A Happy Marriage" by Rafael Yglesias? I've read some awesome reviews of it, so I'd like to give it a try.
 
I've read about 600 pages of Pillars of the Earth and I really want to give up but I'm only about 400 pages from the end. It's just way too soap opera-ish for my liking.

So help me, I went through the same thing a few months ago with that book....I might have even posted about it in the last thread of this variety. I kept wanting to stop after about 350 pages but I rarely do that, so I kept going....and going....and going....and it never got any better.
 
So help me, I went through the same thing a few months ago with that book....I might have even posted about it in the last thread of this variety. I kept wanting to stop after about 350 pages but I rarely do that, so I kept going....and going....and going....and it never got any better.

I know, right?? And now I feel stupid quitting having read more than half of it. I should have known better as soon as I saw that Oprah sticker on the front.
 
I know, right?? And now I feel stupid quitting having read more than half of it. I should have known better as soon as I saw that Oprah sticker on the front.

Oprah liked The Road, though, so I try to keep that in mind before dismissing her stamp of approval.

I had it lying around for years, a few people I know seemed to like it....I like books from that time period, churches fascinate me, etc......I had read another title by him that I kinda liked.......but, yeah, 1/3 of the way in and I knew it was going to not get any better, but, like an idiot, I kept going.

Though, since then, just about every book I've read has been good to excellent.
 
Oprah liked The Road, though, so I try to keep that in mind before dismissing her stamp of approval.

I can't stand Cormac McCarthy. :lol:

It's his style, it bothers me to the point where his work is unreadable. A lot of my friends loved The Road, and I have it a good go, but just didn't enjoy it at all.
 
I can't stand Cormac McCarthy. :lol:

It's his style, it bothers me to the point where his work is unreadable. A lot of my friends loved The Road, and I have it a good go, but just didn't enjoy it at all.

I know a few people who are inveterate readers who cannot stand him either.
 
I'm guessing that Howard Roark is going to be the most successful architect ever. This is my prediction from page 41 out of 727 from The Fountainhead.
 
Oprah liked The Road, though, so I try to keep that in mind before dismissing her stamp of approval.

She also put that infernal stamp on White Oleander and Million Little Pieces which are a couple of my favorites.

The first time I tried reading The Road I couldn't get into it. I picked it up a couple years later and for the first time in all my years of reading, I read an entire book in one sitting.
 
I'm guessing that Howard Roark is going to be the most successful architect ever. This is my prediction from page 41 out of 727 from The Fountainhead.

One of my favorite books ever. Only read it once, but it had a profound effect on me.

Speaking of long books, I'm in the middle of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Shit is FUCKED UP. Don't even know if I could begin to describe it.

Also, Stephen King's The Dark Tower: worth the commitment? I'm curious.
 
One more thing: forgot because I read it so fast. I've been a huge fan of Douglas Coupland since Generation X, his first novel, and while I never get anything right when it comes out, I usually catch up with his new releases somewhere down the line.

In a couple sittings (I've been on a roll lately, back to my old ways!) I polished off his most recent, The Gum Thief. Pretty funny idea for a novel. A 40 year-old self-described loser who works at Staples keeps a diary where he works on a soap opera parody (which seems primarily influenced by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), and also has an entry where he writes from the perspective of one of his co-worker--a Goth girl in her mid-20's. The girl finds and reads the diary, and instead of being insulted, begins a back-and-forth communication that leads to some very interesting changes in both of their lives.

Like many Coupland novels, it's about directionless people and the small and large tragedies of life and how we get through them, often with help from the strangest places. While not as profound as Hey Nostradamus! from a few years back, and not as funny as some of his more notable novels, it's very touching.
 
One of my favorite books ever. Only read it once, but it had a profound effect on me.

Speaking of long books, I'm in the middle of Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. Shit is FUCKED UP. Don't even know if I could begin to describe it.

Also, Stephen King's The Dark Tower: worth the commitment? I'm curious.

I really enjoyed the first few installments of the Dark Tower, and then it slowly got worse for me....but, that's just me.

YLB knows that I'm a huge Fountainhead fan. Anitram, if memory serves, hates that book....it's fairly polarizing.

Beegee, glad you decided to revisit The Road.
 
I think a few of us talked about it in the original book thread.

Excellent book, I'm really looking forward to the film.

I have a very bad feeling that the film is not going to come even close to the greatness of the book, and that they fucked with the story too much. I hope to be wrong.

We definitely talked about it in one of the book threads.
 
I really enjoyed the first few installments of the Dark Tower, and then it slowly got worse for me....but, that's just me.

YLB knows that I'm a huge Fountainhead fan. Anitram, if memory serves, hates that book....it's fairly polarizing.

Beegee, glad you decided to revisit The Road.

I'm certainly enjoyed it so far, but I don't think I'll be able to finish it before I have to send it back to the library. I can reserve another copy but can't renew the one I have right now.
 
YLB knows that I'm a huge Fountainhead fan. Anitram, if memory serves, hates that book....it's fairly polarizing.

Hehe, good memory.

Actually I hate Ayn Rand in general, I found her works to essentially be an overblown masturbatory exercise. :sexywink:
 
In a couple sittings (I've been on a roll lately, back to my old ways!) I polished off his most recent, The Gum Thief.

I've been meaning to check out more Coupland. I enjoyed the heck out of Microserfs, have J-Pod on my shelf (although I've heard very mixed things about it. I read a few of his earlier books back in the 90s, although I don't know that I could even tell you which ones.
 
She also put that infernal stamp on White Oleander and Million Little Pieces which are a couple of my favorites.

"White Oleander" used to be one of my favorites. I adored the writing style. But a few months ago, I picked it up again. For some reason, I saw the book in a different light. None of the characters are likable, and the drama is overblown to the point of being unrealistic. While I still appreciate the writing style, I sold the book to Strand a few weeks ago.
 
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