Author Topic: books to read  (Read 431132 times)

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Peter Zagreus

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3540 on: July 24, 2021, 02:58:07 PM »
I bought The Sympathizer a few years ago but still haven’t gotten to it. Is it as good as people have said?

I read it around the time it came out, and it was pretty damned good. Don't know that I'd pick it up again, though.
I'm sure the following book has come up several times in the thread already, but...

I'm about 450 pages in, and it's very good/a breeze to read, despite the brutality of the 4th book. I'm very impressed with the way Bolano renders the various nationalities of his characters, playing them off against each other for contrast. His vision of the Mexico/US border is tragically beautiful.
I'm not sure why all his characters need to make love for 3-6 hours, though. Are there really people out there who fuck like that? Maybe I'm not trying hard enough...

lazer69

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3541 on: July 24, 2021, 06:07:16 PM »
Been having trouble sleeping before 3:00am . Looking at a screen at screen aint helping, thus ordered myself a book with the title of "Animal Farm" as my bedtime story.

childhood

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3542 on: August 02, 2021, 07:27:39 AM »
Cairo Foster's top 3 books from 411vm Issue 46 (2001)

The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History

https://1lib.us/book/5255867/c8d45b
A book about "why people act the way they do"

Siddhartha

https://1lib.us/book/824872/a5b83f
"kinda tells about Buddha...gives good insight about life"

The Chomsky Reader

https://1lib.us/book/1653433/2ef520
"tells you how the government (inaudible) itself"

DaleSr

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3543 on: August 04, 2021, 10:52:49 AM »
Just finished Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer. Super terrifying how much power one man had and how many lives he's responsible for ruining and ending. Book is about Sidney Gottlieb who ran the CIA's chemical research program. He ran MK Ultra and MK Naomi

Kaiju Foster

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3544 on: August 04, 2021, 12:17:35 PM »
Revisited ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’ and ‘Grimescribe’ by Thomas Ligotti recently, fantastic reads. ‘Pale Fire’ by Nabokov, some really good Clark Ashton Smith compilations (The End Of The Story, The Door to Saturn, etc. named after some of his short stories), also revisiting all of the great old Clive Barker stuff I haven’t sat down with in awhile, like ‘Books of Blood’, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, ‘The Damnation Game’, ‘Scarlet Gospels’, all of that stuff.

Nothing too obscure, I suppose, but all highly suggested if you haven’t had a chance to read them.

oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3545 on: August 04, 2021, 03:15:43 PM »
Just finished Poisoner in Chief by Stephen Kinzer. Super terrifying how much power one man had and how many lives he's responsible for ruining and ending. Book is about Sidney Gottlieb who ran the CIA's chemical research program. He ran MK Ultra and MK Naomi

Sounds interesting - just added it to my audiobook wish list!

Alexandra Kleeman's new novel Something New Under the Sun was released yesterday so I've been diving into that. About 90 pages in and it's very fun. I love her other stuff, so I'm excited to see how this one develops. Although it is markedly different from You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine, there's still the core that feels distinctly like Kleeman so if like her other stuff, you'll like this too if you keep that it mind.

botefdunn

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3546 on: August 05, 2021, 10:49:56 AM »
been making my way through this series, it does not disappoint. I can't quite explain the writing style, it's kind of ethical and unethical at the same time, serious and gratuitous. The author seems like one of the realest. Unfortunately not available in translation.

« Last Edit: August 05, 2021, 10:58:11 AM by botefdunn »

DaleSr

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3547 on: August 09, 2021, 12:20:59 PM »
Shall we start a book recommendation list?
There are just the cream of the crop, books that blew my mind in one way or another.

Feminism
Bell Hooks: The Will To Change~ Written especially for dudes, and how feminism is also beneficial for them

I pulled this from the Leftist thread, but i just started this book at work and I'm gonna have to stop until i get home because it was extremely emotional for me to listen to and examine things going on inside myself and my relationship with my father. I'm only in the first chapter and it's incredibly powerful



smellsdead

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3548 on: August 17, 2021, 06:17:05 PM »
i love how when i pop in here like once every three months bola񯠩s brought up.




exactly the dose of sardonic comedy you need to understand how fucked consumerism truly is. bright, loud, vulgar, annoying in your face. funny and witty, and ultimately pulls back the veil on how we livin biggie smalls. can be a bit all over the place but hey we now have the attention span of a goldfish so who am i to talk?

fuhkin_powahfood_kid

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3549 on: August 17, 2021, 08:20:55 PM »
Haven't had much fiction in my life lately other than a David Sedaris collection I pulled from a free pile and don't remember what it was called. And still, I'm not sure if it was fiction or embellished telling of family stories. I didn't find it all that interesting but it had enjoyable moments.

The newest Anthony Bourdain collection- World Travel was an ok collection of mostly quotes and what not. Worthwhile if you're a Bourdain fan and need some easy to digest and move through. Got it as a gift, but nothing compared to A Cooks Tour, which I pulled from a free pile and am just finishing. The tour of Cambodia in the early 00s hit fairly hard as my first bout with international travel was to Cambodia in 2010/11, and while things were certainly better than during the early 00s, things hadn't changed all that much. I'm not big on so-called travel writers but Bourdain was an astute social critic and reading him is comforting in this time of no travel.
https://b-ok.cc/book/12135596/11653c
https://b-ok.cc/book/1176122/ba1f18

My gal got me some fantastic reads for the birthday back in June. If you're anything at all interested in the 60s onward spiritual movement, Ram Dass' autobiography, Being Ram Dass, is a real good one. If nothing other than a final teaching, it's an enjoyable read and a rich self-exploration into the life(lives) of an incredibly gifted teacher, psychoanalyst, and fallible human being.
https://b-ok.cc/book/11199590/081ce7

The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, by Mark Arax lays bare the schemes of water rights and development in Calfornia since large scale, commercial agriculture and human habitation began taking place in the desert.
https://b-ok.cc/book/5818550/ea741b

Vijay Prashad's Washington Bullets was a good, if at time disjointed read on US Imperialism. Worthwhile read for the documents and connections made.
https://b-ok.cc/s/Washington%20bullets

(the links are to PDF copies on z library affiliates)

If you plant ice, you’re gonna harvest wind

childhood

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3550 on: August 18, 2021, 07:46:04 AM »
I used to love Sedaris' stuff when I was younger, but yeah pretty sure a lot of it is heavily embellished. I think that's why they don't run his stuff on NPR anymore.

Revisited ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’ and ‘Grimescribe’ by Thomas Ligotti recently, fantastic reads. ‘Pale Fire’ by Nabokov, some really good Clark Ashton Smith compilations (The End Of The Story, The Door to Saturn, etc. named after some of his short stories), also revisiting all of the great old Clive Barker stuff I haven’t sat down with in awhile, like ‘Books of Blood’, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, ‘The Damnation Game’, ‘Scarlet Gospels’, all of that stuff.

Nothing too obscure, I suppose, but all highly suggested if you haven’t had a chance to read them.

I finished Dead Dreamer... recently, you read his book Conspiracy Against the Human Race? I've been meaning to read that for awhile.


Recently got really into Daniel Ray Pollock, and read all of his books last month (he only has two novels and a short story collection). Netflix made an adaptation of one of them (it was the semi-recent movie where RPatz plays a sleazy preacher) that I thought was okay, but I loved the book. They kinda remind me of Cormac McCarthy's books about dark & fucked up rural characters, like Outer Dark & Child of God.

Blue Fescue

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3551 on: August 18, 2021, 07:47:55 AM »
If you like scifi I thought this was good


ChicoTheTorch

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3552 on: August 18, 2021, 09:06:50 PM »

oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3553 on: August 29, 2021, 09:40:30 PM »
Revisited ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’ and ‘Grimescribe’ by Thomas Ligotti recently, fantastic reads. ‘Pale Fire’ by Nabokov, some really good Clark Ashton Smith compilations (The End Of The Story, The Door to Saturn, etc. named after some of his short stories), also revisiting all of the great old Clive Barker stuff I haven’t sat down with in awhile, like ‘Books of Blood’, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, ‘The Damnation Game’, ‘Scarlet Gospels’, all of that stuff.

Nothing too obscure, I suppose, but all highly suggested if you haven’t had a chance to read them.

I don't know how I missed this but Pale Fire is insane. I love Nabokov - I've read all of his novels and he's probably my favorite author. I read it on my own in high school, then twice in college for two different classes (one focused on a range of Nabokov novels, one focused just on Pale Fire). It's not my favorite of his works but technically and artistically speaking, it is very, very hard to beat.

MichaelJacksonsGhost

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3554 on: September 07, 2021, 09:24:12 AM »
I’m a sucker for Japanese Lit. I moved In with this guy who’s been on like a six month murukami binge, and he recommended me a book called “N.P.” by banana Yoshimoto. I wouldn’t say the book itself is such a standout, but it definitely includes a bunch of Japanese literary elements, like suicide and the “I” narrator. All of the Japanese books I’ve read seem to really prioritize atmosphere over plot or characterization (a reductive generalization, but still), something I’ve really come to appreciate in a novel. N.P. Has an ending I thought emotionally worthwhile

Similarly, I recently read “repetition” by Peter Handke. I know he’s got a lot of issues around his Nobel Prize and general sociological ideology, but this book did a good job of sketching a concrete atmosphere or feel and does a good job of carrying it through the whole novel. I’ve not read any of his other works, but if you like a postmodern, character based, more-or-less plotless novels (with some seemingly deep linguistic discourse present), I’d recommend.

superleftswipebby

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3555 on: September 07, 2021, 06:28:07 PM »

GauchoAmigo

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3556 on: September 07, 2021, 08:31:00 PM »
Thoughts on Paul Auster? Recently read Leviathan, The New York Trilogy, and The Music of Chance. Fiction, with an emphasis on the power of chance and coincidence. All pretty good but Leviathan was my favourite of the bunch:


« Last Edit: September 08, 2021, 11:47:29 AM by GauchoAmigo »

AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3557 on: September 13, 2021, 05:56:02 AM »
Expand Quote
I bought The Sympathizer a few years ago but still haven’t gotten to it. Is it as good as people have said?
[close]

I read it around the time it came out, and it was pretty damned good. Don't know that I'd pick it up again, though.
I'm sure the following book has come up several times in the thread already, but...

I'm about 450 pages in, and it's very good/a breeze to read, despite the brutality of the 4th book. I'm very impressed with the way Bolano renders the various nationalities of his characters, playing them off against each other for contrast. His vision of the Mexico/US border is tragically beautiful.
I'm not sure why all his characters need to make love for 3-6 hours, though. Are there really people out there who fuck like that? Maybe I'm not trying hard enough...

A little late to the party, but I can concur with everything you've said about 2666. I love Bolano, but I've always found his machismo around sex a little strange. Don't worry, man... 3-6 hours? How does that even work?

I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but the last book is about Archimbaldi, right? I liked the gloominess of that last stretch.

I'll have to read a contemporary drama with my senior high school English class (in Germany) and I've decided to venture off the beaten track and assign Angels in America by Tony Kushner. Homosexuality, AIDS and the Reagan era will be interesting topics for in-class discussions. Can you recommend any other contemporary American theatre plays? I've also considered Twilight Los Angeles 1992 by Anna Deavere Smith, but have decided against it, because its style looks too experimental.



I've become interested in climate change and other environmental issues lately and just started Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction, which is a breeze to read, considering the topic.


ChronicBluntSlider

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3558 on: September 13, 2021, 07:10:30 AM »
Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So was the best short story collection I’ve read in a while. He’s a gay Cambodian dude from Stockton who died from an overdose at 28 before the book came out. The stories are mostly about Cambodian American teenagers and twenty somethings sort of navigating the dual worlds of their ancestors who survived Polpot and then American commercialism and the kind of ambition and economic possibilities that come with it. Strangely as a white guy from Southern California the way characters spoke to each other reminded me more of me and my friends growing up then almost anything I’ve seen depicted in literature. A favorite quote that I underlined was: “it evoked for me the lee shore in Moby Dick, these supposed safe spaces in which we’d be forever bound, or even the white whale himself, that failed promise of closure. Ben wanted technology to offer people a sense of fulfillment, to rush them to shore, secure everyone to land, and I wanted to be indefinite, free to fuck off and be lost.”

Also reread Moby Dick which is one of my all time faves because I want to allude to it in something that I am writing and wanted to revisit the lee shore chapter. I love Melville’s language and the whole treatment of Ahab.

And I would highly recommend Empire of Pain. It’s about the Sackler family who owned Purdue Pharmacy and unleashed OxyContin on America. It kind of tells the history of the corruption of the American medical industry. One of the original Sackler’s heavily marketed sedatives for a cure all solution back in the 60s and made it a practice to hire former FDA officials, put doctors on payroll to write reviews in medical journals, owned his own medical journal in which he promoted the product, etc. Then when Oxy came out there was a pretty rightful taboo against opiates because how addictive they are and the likelihood for abuse. But through corporate lobbying, an insane legal team, etc. they largely dismantled the taboo among mainstream doctors, where previously they only prescribed opiates for things like cancer pain, Purdue encouraged Oxy’s perpetual usage for all sorts of chronic pain. But they also found plenty of crooked doctors who became pill mills. They were perfectly aware of becoming the largest drug dealer in the country and encouraged their sales staff to milk the pill mills.
It was the time release coating on Oxy that made it easy to abuse where you could just suck off the coating or crunch it up and snort it or melt it down and shoot it up and it hit you all at once. So finally in 2010 under mounting pressure they reformulated the pill so that basically you couldn’t get around the time release, and that’s when the heroin epidemic began. These people created millions of opiate addicts who when these people were finally forced to do the right thing had no other option than to switch to heroin or fentanyl. They’ve paid hundreds of millions in fines, but only a small fraction of Oxy’s profits. And no Sackler’s have served prison time even though the board was full of them. I’m pretty sure I know of three dudes I grew up with who have OD’d during the pandemic alone not to mention my new favorite short story writer. Meanwhile some states are still imprisoning poor people for weed. It’s fucking pathetic.

Skibb

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3559 on: November 04, 2021, 04:17:30 AM »
Not sure if it was recommended here or somewhere else, but just finished The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch. Loved it – some good ol' existential horror combined with crime and with a sprinkle of hard sci-fi on top. Shit was good.

brycickle

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3560 on: November 10, 2021, 07:05:23 PM »






Hoping to get these three books read over might winter break. I suppose I should probably re-read Slaughterhouse Five too.

 You and the D00D have turned this thread into a horrible head-on-collision between a short bus full of regular kids and a van full of paraplegics.



oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3561 on: November 10, 2021, 08:05:10 PM »
Yeah there is that book about Bourdain and another one that I’m thinking about getting since I read all of the stuff he put out. I hope these are similarly interesting. Let us know what you think!

brycickle

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3562 on: November 11, 2021, 02:37:41 PM »
I'm sure I'll cry big sloppy man tears.

 You and the D00D have turned this thread into a horrible head-on-collision between a short bus full of regular kids and a van full of paraplegics.



oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3563 on: November 11, 2021, 06:35:14 PM »
Oh 100% sure I will too.

Urtripping

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3564 on: November 23, 2021, 05:42:37 AM »
"How To Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan traces the history of psychedelic use across cultures and addresses questions abouttheir spiritual and medical significance. I'm listening to it on Audible just about all hours of the day since I have this week off, Pollan is a funny guy who approaches it with an open mind (he has experimented with psylocibes) but a healthy skepticism I find very relatable. Planning a trip of my own to confront some harsh realities and come out feeling grounded and assured, that's how my experiences usually go.

If you are even somewhat interested in this type of thing, I really recommend this book.
I saw your mommy and your mommy's dead


Rusty Shackleford

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3565 on: December 03, 2021, 02:19:05 PM »
A glimpse into the shitshow that was the trump presidency, 'I alone can fix it' is a great read. he just didnt give a fuck, it's crazy

oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3566 on: December 03, 2021, 03:06:06 PM »
A glimpse into the shitshow that was the trump presidency, 'I alone can fix it' is a great read. he just didnt give a fuck, it's crazy

I have that on my to-buy list, I'm just hesitant to relive any part of that shitshow

TheLurper

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3567 on: December 03, 2021, 09:32:45 PM »
Just finished this one.

Better than I expected. Certainly explains the rise of the conservative right.


Also, found Koston's favorite book:

Quote from: ChuckRamone
I love when people bring up world hunger. It makes everything meaningless.
"That guy is double parked."
"Who cares? There are people starving to death! Besides, how does that affect you? Does it lessen the joy of parking?

cucktard

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3568 on: December 03, 2021, 11:44:15 PM »
Expand Quote
Shall we start a book recommendation list?
There are just the cream of the crop, books that blew my mind in one way or another.

Feminism
Bell Hooks: The Will To Change~ Written especially for dudes, and how feminism is also beneficial for them
[close]

I pulled this from the Leftist thread, but i just started this book at work and I'm gonna have to stop until i get home because it was extremely emotional for me to listen to and examine things going on inside myself and my relationship with my father. I'm only in the first chapter and it's incredibly powerful

I’m glad to hear that it’s touching you.

I read it, and her very gentle yet powerful way of explaining patriarchy, what it means for women and how it also affects men negatively reminded of how Thich Naht Han writes so sensitively about emotional issues as well.

I later found out the Bell Hooks studies Buddhism and it made sense.

As for me, if I can muster up the fucking willpower to put down this phone, I need to finish ‘The Bookchin Reader’, snd start on Graeber and Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”, which I’m looking forward to.

Despite being a fucking brick of a book.
I’m trying to be every mom’s favorite skater’-&&

Duane's the type of guy to ask to see your junk then go to school and tell everyone you're gay. - Uncle Flea


MichaelJacksonsGhost

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3569 on: December 18, 2021, 09:15:14 PM »
Bump.

Read a couple Japanese books (Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicles, Yukio Mishima’s The Sound of Waves), then cranked out The Grapes of Wrath. It wasn’t East Of Eden, but it was still pretty damn good. I’m just a sucker for mid 1900s American Lit, I think. Anyone who’s read it, what’d you think of the ending? I’m sure it was symbolic, but damn if it wasn’t weird. Still would recommend any and all of Steinbeck.

On to Falconer by John Cheever. Very Freudian. Not quite sure what I think of it yet, but I find it pretty impressive the way Cheever weaves memories into the narrative. About a hundred pages left. We’ll see how it builds, assuming it builds at all.