books to read

[skateordie]

Another Bullshit Night In Suck City by Nick Flynn.

super good. don't check out flynn's wiki page if you're going to read the book- there's a huge spoiler in there.

[Joust Ostrich]

Anyone know about either of these?

[kilgore.]

[sven thorkel]

lately i've been really into reading history through cartoon adaptations. if you want to learn history but don't want to be bored, i highly suggest the "Introducing _____" or the "______ for Beginners" series.



i wouldn't call myself a marxist (there's too many pretentious twits out there who claim that [yet still have brand new macs etc.]) but i think it's important to understand where he was coming from and what he was getting at. i knew about his contributions to economics, but i wasn't aware of his contributions to philosophy and journalism.



written over 100 years ago, this still holds true in the world of today:

What is Monopoly Capitalism?

-Essentially, it is a link-up between high finance, big industry and the national gov't.
-More and more, the national economy is directed by the monopoly system which controls large holdings of shares.
-Stocks, shares and state loans increase the amount of power of surplus-capital.
-This surplus-capital is exported beyond the national borders as investments and loans to 'backward' countries.
-A struggle develops between the supra- or multi-national monopolies to control the world-market.
-But since the world has already been divided up by imperial Great Powers, the rival monopolists struggle to re-partition the world - to muscle in.
-Therefore, the economic disparity between rival monopolists - and the uneven development of rival capitalist nations - make imperial wars inevitable...

also, "war is the ultimate and deadliest contest between competitive 'brand names.'" this was written years before eisenhower warned us of the 'developing' industrial-military complex

   

[Mark Renton]

I'm starting getting really psyched on Franz Kafka stuff.
Used to study it in my German Language Class back in HighSchool, need to find the time to read more of it
Not a book, but I really like Das Urteil (the Judgement), a short story

[Generik]

[Ripped Laces]

Just picked up these three.





I likes the funny's.

[sleepypancakes]

[NCSB]

[steve]

I'm starting getting really psyched on Franz Kafka stuff.
Used to study it in my German Language Class back in HighSchool, need to find the time to read more of it
Not a book, but I really like Das Urteil (the Judgement), a short story

kafka is a blast. wrote a nasty 12 page essay on kafka, zizek, and marx last semester. I questioned if Kafka is hostile to thought. goddamn thing could've been so much fucking longer but time was not on my side. I'd taken a bunch of amphetamine one night so that i could stay up working on the damn thing, but i took too much and the screen went blank. I sat up, smoking cigarettes, trying to get the sentences formulated in a tape recorder. I had the nerve to tell my prof. the truth and got a 2 day extension.

anyways, if you're reading Kafka, check out some zizek, they work well together.

[escapistfool]

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. I'm reading it for a class, and damn... this book.

[oyolar]

Here's my current list of books I plan on reading once I have the time.

Finish Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
The History of Bestiality trilogy (Moment of Freedom, Powderhouse, The Silence) by Jens Bj?rneboe
Guilty by Georges Bataille
James Joyce by Richard Ellman
Georges Bataille by Michel Surya
Just One of the Guys? by Kristen Schilt (this is my BA/MA adviser's first book)
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov (once I finish this, I?ll have read all of Nabokov?s English novels.)
Juliette by the Marquis de Sade

And I need to finally finish Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

[escapistfool]

James Joyce by Ellman is an amazing book. I really liked Juliette too.

Do you happen to like Dystopian novels?

[cringe.]

re-reading this at the moment, really interesting


this quote made me think of the Josh Swindell thread:

'In addition to the unwarranted assumptions that all gay men may plausibly be accused of making sexual advances to strangers and, worse, that violence, often to the point of homicide, is a legitimate response to any sexual advance wether welcome or not, the "homosexual panic" defense rests on the falsesly individualizing and pathologizing assumption that hatred of homosexuals is so private and atypical a phenomenon in this culture as to be classifiable as an accountability-reducing illness.'

[sleepypancakes]

I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

[friendly dave]

Started this last night. I read Sonny Barger's autobiography a couple years ago. So it'll be interesting so read some of the stories from a different perspective.

[Eschaton]

I've always wanted to read that. I've heard it's really different in style from everything else he wrote after that.

I just finished this

Really good, I recommend it if you like Chomsky or want a different perspective on the whole notion of terrorism.

I am going to try to start this tonight

[oyolar]

I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

Buy the annotation book. It'll help with the old Irish slang, history, and Dublin's layout which makes it way more intelligible.

Here's the Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0520067452

I love the book, it's probably my favorite (I read it three times in four years, two were for two different classes), so I'm always down to discuss it if you want. Just PM me.

[steve]

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I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

[close]

Buy the annotation book. It'll help with the old Irish slang, history, and Dublin's layout which makes it way more intelligible.

Here's the Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0520067452

I love the book, it's probably my favorite (I read it three times in four years, two were for two different classes), so I'm always down to discuss it if you want. Just PM me.

when you've got a good prof. it makes it all the better. had an irish lit II seminar last semester and we fucked with this on and off throughout. the instructor was so hyped on all of it that it made me, and most of the class, want to do more work with it.

[Smell Good]

Just bought a copy of this. I'm almost finished with Quicksilver. Love Neal Stephenson and love the humor and breadth of these books.

Cryptonomicon was my introduction to Neal Stephenson, after which I read Reamde and now I'm just about to wrap up Quicksilver and dive into The Confusion.

[sleepypancakes]

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I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

[close]

Buy the annotation book. It'll help with the old Irish slang, history, and Dublin's layout which makes it way more intelligible.

Here's the Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0520067452

I love the book, it's probably my favorite (I read it three times in four years, two were for two different classes), so I'm always down to discuss it if you want. Just PM me.

[close]

when you've got a good prof. it makes it all the better. had an irish lit II seminar last semester and we fucked with this on and off throughout. the instructor was so hyped on all of it that it made me, and most of the class, want to do more work with it.

Just ordered the annotation book, and I may be pm'ing you because I don't have a class or a professor to talk about it with anymore so I'm gonna chill on starting til i get the annotations and then go at this fucker research paper style.

[alcol]

one of my favorite novels:

Julio Cortazar - Rayuela (Hopscotch in english)

[oyolar]

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I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

[close]

Buy the annotation book. It'll help with the old Irish slang, history, and Dublin's layout which makes it way more intelligible.

Here's the Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0520067452

I love the book, it's probably my favorite (I read it three times in four years, two were for two different classes), so I'm always down to discuss it if you want. Just PM me.

[close]

when you've got a good prof. it makes it all the better. had an irish lit II seminar last semester and we fucked with this on and off throughout. the instructor was so hyped on all of it that it made me, and most of the class, want to do more work with it.

[close]

Just ordered the annotation book, and I may be pm'ing you because I don't have a class or a professor to talk about it with anymore so I'm gonna chill on starting til i get the annotations and then go at this fucker research paper style.

Sick man. That's definitely a good way to go at it. I have a notebook almost full of notes/points I took from my class, so I'll have more than enough to talk about.

I went on a kick of buying a bunch of stuff on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake for a little bit there.  Stay away from the Stuart Gilbert's Ulysses book. A lot of it was just Joyce fucking around with Gilbert, who didn't realize it.

[David]

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I just bought Ulysses by James Joyce. Let the torment commence.

[close]

Buy the annotation book. It'll help with the old Irish slang, history, and Dublin's layout which makes it way more intelligible.

Here's the Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Revised-Expanded-Edition/dp/0520067452

I love the book, it's probably my favorite (I read it three times in four years, two were for two different classes), so I'm always down to discuss it if you want. Just PM me.

[close]

when you've got a good prof. it makes it all the better. had an irish lit II seminar last semester and we fucked with this on and off throughout. the instructor was so hyped on all of it that it made me, and most of the class, want to do more work with it.

[close]

Just ordered the annotation book, and I may be pm'ing you because I don't have a class or a professor to talk about it with anymore so I'm gonna chill on starting til i get the annotations and then go at this fucker research paper style.

[close]

Sick man. That's definitely a good way to go at it. I have a notebook almost full of notes/points I took from my class, so I'll have more than enough to talk about.

I went on a kick of buying a bunch of stuff on Ulysses and Finnegans Wake for a little bit there.  Stay away from the Stuart Gilbert's Ulysses book. A lot of it was just Joyce fucking around with Gilbert, who didn't realize it.

That's funny. The Stuart Gilbert book was the one I was going to get.

So Don Gifford is the best way to go?

[oyolar]

Yeah, Gifford's is the best. It's not a walk through, which is what Glibert is closer to. Instead, it's more background/source info book that gives you the tools to get a better understanding of details in Ulysses so you can do more conductive analysis. (For a plot summary by episode and some analysis you can get this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415138582/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0520067452&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1A6HMM0Z7DECK54X34KR).  

Gilbert's is famous for this chart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_schema_for_Ulysses which a lot of people mistakenly believe to be the "be all end all" schema for Ulysses, while others veer closer to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linati_schema_for_Ulysses which Joyce wrote for Carlo Linati in private, not meant for print. Not that the schemata are super important. I usually don't think of them while reading/analyzing the book (except for certain aspects, like episode name and Gilbert's technic which describes each episode's style, but I'm weird like that). But yeah, if you even skim through Gilbert's, you can kind of realize that Joyce was fucking with him while he was helping him write it.

[oneshovel]

I pretty much haven't read shit in the past decade, but my roomie is leaving me a pretty decent collection.  Some really old classics that I can barely read, as well as newer stuff.

Today I blasted through "The Church & The Man" by Donald Hankey.  It's from 1917 and pretty interesting.  He actually questions how the average person should go about faith and stuff. 

Next up is "Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini.  I'm excited to get into a good story again.

[VictoriousOG]

Been reading Oil! by Upton Sinclair, very rich quality in my mind when I read it.

[oyolar]

Just because no one has mentioned The Illiad doesn't mean that no one has read it.

[cringe.]

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[close]

Just because no one has mentioned The Illiad doesn't mean that no one has read it.

[David]

Miler Lagos' book dome