books to read

[MichaelJacksonsGhost]

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For March I'll be reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian wood. It's my girlfriend's favorite book. I got about halfway through another book by Murakami 'Kafka on the shore' a few years back because it was one of the only books in english i could find at the local bookstore while living overseas. I would love to start that one up again for this month but its over 500 pages and Barbarian days was around 450 which was a lot to get through on limited time for me

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Norwegian Wood might be my favorite from Murakami also, On the shore is great-but Norwegian Wood embodies that bittersweet feeling Murakami creates near perfectly.

I’d also advocate for Norwegian Wood as an exceptional novel. I found a copy at a bookstore when I was living in SE Asia. It had this weird, plastic-y cover, and on the inside page it read something like, “this e-book is not to be printed or reproduced in any way.” It got passed around a bunch amongst the group of people I was with; I think almost every one of us ended up reading it.

I’m actually about to dive into some Japanese literature myself, as somebody left a whole bunch of it at the thrift store by my house. I think Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen is going to be the first one. I read N.P. by her maybe a year ago and thought it was pretty good.

For like six weeks earlier this year I slugged through Harold Brodsky’s The Runaway Soul. It was dense as all hell, but it was pretty rewarding overall. A fictionalized Brodsky narrates the story of his life, but in a pretty disjointed, post-modern way. The push of the story is him trying to come to grips with his sister’s evil influence during their upbringing. He describes in really pretty, flowery prose how she almost suffocated him when he’s 3-4 and she’s 10-11 years old. I’d recommend it if you like being inside a pretty intelligent, analytic, and self-reflective mind for 800 pages.

To sort of simmer down after that, I read Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, as recommended by a handful of people in this thread. Then I read The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist, which was this meditation on evil or sociopathy through the ficitional diary entries of a 14th/15th century court dwarf. Really would recommend this one — it was dark and twistedly funny.

[svenfuck cowboy]

reading brothers karamazov. almost done the first book

nothing has happened yet but i love it. don't care if nothing happens next book either

[Skibb]

Ouff, loved Barbarian Days as well. The moments he described made me nostalgic for a time I was faaaaar from ever experiencing. And how much surfing had changed, as a culture.... Made me wonder what other sub-cultures around the world are experiencing their pure and golden days in this very moment, before exploding and becoming corrupted forever.

[thanksgiving]

i suppose this would belong in a poetry thread, but i dont feel it would get as many eyes there-

i recently read a book of poems by Han Shan/Cold Mountain(came across it through mount eerie), and quite enjoyed it. I know nothing about Buddhism, and I'm sure a moderate amount went over my head but if anyone has recommendations for similar poetry, or poetry books in general.

one of the standouts:

Sat on the cliff today,
sat so long the mist burned off.
Like a road the stream was, clear at its mouth,
a long time searching from a green crag top.
White clouds cast clear shadows in the silence,
light of the moon still floats, lingering.
No dust, no dirt on me,
how could this heart hold grief?

honestly, anything that you wish you read during formative years (im younger than most guys on here) im up for. really want to make an effort to educate myself.

[S.]

reading brothers karamazov. almost done the first book

nothing has happened yet but i love it. don't care if nothing happens next book either

I saw that as a play once. I couldn’t understand all that much because it was in Spanish. It seemed a bit like a soap opera tbh. Is it well written? What keeps you reading if nothing happens?

[RoaryMcTwang]

i suppose this would belong in a poetry thread, but i dont feel it would get as many eyes there-

i recently read a book of poems by Han Shan/Cold Mountain(came across it through mount eerie), and quite enjoyed it. I know nothing about Buddhism, and I'm sure a moderate amount went over my head but if anyone has recommendations for similar poetry, or poetry books in general.

one of the standouts:

Sat on the cliff today,
sat so long the mist burned off.
Like a road the stream was, clear at its mouth,
a long time searching from a green crag top.
White clouds cast clear shadows in the silence,
light of the moon still floats, lingering.
No dust, no dirt on me,
how could this heart hold grief?

honestly, anything that you wish you read during formative years (im younger than most guys on here) im up for. really want to make an effort to educate myself.

Good man! Here's some recommendations, based completely subjectively on what I would have loved when I was your age but didn't read until much later:

- Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh is a wonderful intro to Taoism that really kind of changed my life, in case you'd like to continue your exploration of Eastern modes of thinking, or if you like Winnie the Pooh, or both.
- Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain is an awesome book if you'd like to know more about modern China as is Red Dust by Ma Jian. 
- The various novels by Haruki Murakami people talk about higher up in this thread are magical, I'd start with Norwegian Wood.

Outside of the Eastern context:

- Anything by Henry Miller. I'd start with Tropic of Cancer and then go through his oeuvre in the order in which he wrote it if you like it.
- Dostoevsky. Anything really but Crime and Punishment is a good entry point.
- Albert Camus' books. The Stranger, if you're into novels, and/or The Myth of Sisyphus if you like philosophy.   

[RoaryMcTwang]

reading brothers karamazov. almost done the first book

nothing has happened yet but i love it. don't care if nothing happens next book either

Awesome. Wish I could read that again for the first time, savour it.

[botefdunn]

I just read my first Spicy Book. I swear it made me a better person. I also really enjoyed it.

[GauchoAmigo]

Reading Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse right now. The man was a damn good writer.

[Deputy Wendell]

we're in the middle of our "Postcolonial Modernism" section of the semester, so i'm teaching Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea right now, and i love returning to it--i get something new from it every time. and i especially appreciate what Rhys does by creating a life for Charlotte Bronte's otherwise peripheral "madwoman in the attic" from Jane Eyre.

students always seem to dig it too, they definitely are this semester, which is always a bonus...

[Peter Zagreus]

Picked this up a while back after hearing a podcast which featured the editor. Book of weird tales, some late 19th century French, some more contemporary American. Finally got around to reading some of them over spring break when I was in an industrial/beach town visiting my mom. Definitely got some neurons firing in my head (or whatever)!

At any rate, the book's been put out by a cool little independent press. They don't have too many titles, but their site might be worth a glance: https://firsttoknock.com

[Kumiko]

I started reading Aline and Valcour or, the Philosophical Novel by The Marquis de Sade earlier this week and it's marvelous. It's far less shocking (so far) than The 120 Days of Sodom, but it has a real plot to it. It's just really great drama propelled by depraved shit instead of just depraved shit cover-to-cover. There are also passages where you can see Sade presenting some of his social and political views so it really shows the depth of Sade's thought beyond just the sexual stuff he's infamous for.

[oyolar]

I still need to pick that up. Have you read anything else by de Sade other than The 120 Days of Sodom? I read Justine and it seems much more like Aline...

[Kumiko]

No, this is the only Sade I've read beyond 120. But I've been enjoying it so much that I'm definitely going to step to his other works going forward.

[TheLurper]

Finally, reading Unequal Childhood.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family

great read, I learned alot. most interesting to me was elaine chao, wife of moscow mitch. through her office at transportation dept, she boosted her family's and chinas shipping industries while depleting America's.

the amount of self dealing he got away with is truly scary stuff

[cucktard]

I finished Graeber’s ‘Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology’ which is a great little book exploring the ideas of Anarchism and how a statist critique in Anthropology could help further our understanding of societies without governments.

Those ideas were expanded by him and another author in The Dawn of Everything, which is fucking huge, and I think I will put it on hold until I finish the Bookchin book I’m trying to get through and then Kim Stanley Ronbindin’s “The Ministry of the Future”

[oyolar]

The Dawn of Everything is interesting but so dense. I’m listening to it on audiobook and it’s taking me literally months to get through. I’ve found that to be true with Graeber’s work when listening to them though so I’m not sure if reading them is different.

[Yu Dum]

Been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Finished "No Country For Old Men" a few weeks back. Wonderful read with brilliant characters and dialogue. Highly recommend reading, or even watching the movie as it pretty accurately depicts the events of the novel with a few changes to build more suspense.

Started another of his titled "The Road" over the weekend. Still great dialogue and characters, but so much darker and more bleak than No Country. Only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm loving it so far.

[botefdunn]

Been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Finished "No Country For Old Men" a few weeks back. Wonderful read with brilliant characters and dialogue. Highly recommend reading, or even watching the movie as it pretty accurately depicts the events of the novel with a few changes to build more suspense.

Started another of his titled "The Road" over the weekend. Still great dialogue and characters, but so much darker and more bleak than No Country. Only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm loving it so far.

If you haven't read Blood Meridian, it's maybe the bloodiest book I've read. It has other things to recommend it, but that's the main thing I've retained, which was enough to get me to pick up a used copy for my bookshelf even though I've already read it.

Which raises the question of what people like to have on their shelves? Some books I want to own and others I don't care. I like owning books I really enjoyed or have a personal connection to, but also eccentric or unusual books that make good conversation pieces. Okay, I very rarely have a conversation with someone about what's on my bookshelf, but I imagine maybe someone will have a little internal dialogue as a result of spotting a title such as this one:

[Frank and Fred]

It is amazing to me that 'Blood Meridian" and "The Road" are written by the same author, with such different styles and language. McCarthy is one of the greats.

I also recommend "Suttree" and "Child of God."

[Yu Dum]

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Been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Finished "No Country For Old Men" a few weeks back. Wonderful read with brilliant characters and dialogue. Highly recommend reading, or even watching the movie as it pretty accurately depicts the events of the novel with a few changes to build more suspense.

Started another of his titled "The Road" over the weekend. Still great dialogue and characters, but so much darker and more bleak than No Country. Only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm loving it so far.

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If you haven't read Blood Meridian, it's maybe the bloodiest book I've read. It has other things to recommend it, but that's the main thing I've retained, which was enough to get me to pick up a used copy for my bookshelf even though I've already read it.

Which raises the question of what people like to have on their shelves? Some books I want to own and others I don't care. I like owning books I really enjoyed or have a personal connection to, but also eccentric or unusual books that make good conversation pieces. Okay, I very rarely have a conversation with someone about what's on my bookshelf, but I imagine maybe someone will have a little internal dialogue as a result of spotting a title such as this one:

I would lose my shit if I saw that on someone's bookshelf.lmfao truly a great conversation starter.
Personally, I have a small collection of books from my childhood and teenage years. Some Jack London, some I can't recall the names of right now. Most I've never read and probably never will, but they're there if someone I know wants to crack 'em open.

[Bunk Moreland]

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Been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Finished "No Country For Old Men" a few weeks back. Wonderful read with brilliant characters and dialogue. Highly recommend reading, or even watching the movie as it pretty accurately depicts the events of the novel with a few changes to build more suspense.

Started another of his titled "The Road" over the weekend. Still great dialogue and characters, but so much darker and more bleak than No Country. Only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm loving it so far.

[close]

If you haven't read Blood Meridian, it's maybe the bloodiest book I've read. It has other things to recommend it, but that's the main thing I've retained, which was enough to get me to pick up a used copy for my bookshelf even though I've already read it.

Which raises the question of what people like to have on their shelves? Some books I want to own and others I don't care. I like owning books I really enjoyed or have a personal connection to, but also eccentric or unusual books that make good conversation pieces. Okay, I very rarely have a conversation with someone about what's on my bookshelf, but I imagine maybe someone will have a little internal dialogue as a result of spotting a title such as this one:

I did some work in college around extremist groups, white nationalism, and domestic terror. This lead me to owning a copy of the Turner Diaries. I read it years ago, but now I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t have it out on the bookcase. I can’t donate it. It’s just in my garage, way up on a shelf. I’m afraid if I die someone will find it up there hidden and think I was a horrible person.

[doctorkickflip]

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Been on a Cormac McCarthy kick lately. Finished "No Country For Old Men" a few weeks back. Wonderful read with brilliant characters and dialogue. Highly recommend reading, or even watching the movie as it pretty accurately depicts the events of the novel with a few changes to build more suspense.

Started another of his titled "The Road" over the weekend. Still great dialogue and characters, but so much darker and more bleak than No Country. Only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm loving it so far.

[close]

If you haven't read Blood Meridian, it's maybe the bloodiest book I've read. It has other things to recommend it, but that's the main thing I've retained, which was enough to get me to pick up a used copy for my bookshelf even though I've already read it.

Which raises the question of what people like to have on their shelves? Some books I want to own and others I don't care. I like owning books I really enjoyed or have a personal connection to, but also eccentric or unusual books that make good conversation pieces. Okay, I very rarely have a conversation with someone about what's on my bookshelf, but I imagine maybe someone will have a little internal dialogue as a result of spotting a title such as this one:

[close]

I did some work in college around extremist groups, white nationalism, and domestic terror. This lead me to owning a copy of the Turner Diaries. I read it years ago, but now I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t have it out on the bookcase. I can’t donate it. It’s just in my garage, way up on a shelf. I’m afraid if I die someone will find it up there hidden and think I was a horrible person.

Blood Meridian is so gnarly. To this day, the only book that almost made me throw up while reading it. There are certain images from that book that will stick with me probably for the rest of my life. Great book, though if I reread it I think I might skip past a certain scene involving a raid on an Native American camp.

[botefdunn]

I did some work in college around extremist groups, white nationalism, and domestic terror. This lead me to owning a copy of the Turner Diaries. I read it years ago, but now I don’t know what to do with it. I can’t have it out on the bookcase. I can’t donate it. It’s just in my garage, way up on a shelf. I’m afraid if I die someone will find it up there hidden and think I was a horrible person.

yikes, I hadn't heard of that one. Reminds me somewhat of my copy of the complete works of Ted Kaczynski, not trying to board any plans with it in my carry on...

[Uncle Flea]

I usually wouldn’t suggest a violent war book aside from a few real good selections.

This is a really good book.

Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills
by Charles W. Henderson

[oyolar]

Blood Meridian is like traumatizing for how stark it is (and this is coming from someone a few posts ago mentioned having read a decent amount of de Sade), but the only scene that really stuck with me is the end. It’s just so eerie and off-putting it wipes away the blood and guts for me. The Road is similar except that final scene is more hopeful.

Honestly, Bunk, if you’re not using that book for your job, just fucking burn it. The Unabomber stuff one is at least a historical curiosity, but unless you’re actively publishing on extremist groups or archiving their propaganda for future research into how to deal with fascist movements, shit like TTD or James Mason’s writing should be destroyed.

Maybe see if there is an academic archive that needs a copy if you don’t want to burn it?

[Nosferatu]

Skate it somehow

[brycickle]

Honestly, Bunk, if you’re not using that book for your job, just fucking burn it.

The ironic part is, that Hitler would probably be totally cool with this.

[Bunk Moreland]

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Honestly, Bunk, if you’re not using that book for your job, just fucking burn it.

[close]

The ironic part is, that Hitler would probably be totally cool with this.

That’s the rub.