Author Topic: books to read (Read 439137 times)

FROTHY · « **Reply #3060 on:** April 11, 2019, 11:21:31 AM »

I'm about to finish Butcher's Crossing by John Williams. The book is ok, very short, but I ordered it online without knowing that some middle-schooler wrote notes throughout the whole thing. Every page has "he's a jerk" or "IRONY" scribbled on it, and this kid has no clue what irony means. I think I'm gaining more insight into the mind of this stranger than the actual characters in the book... Terribly distracting.

oyolar · « **Reply #3061 on:** April 19, 2019, 03:08:42 PM »

Finished Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. A lot has been said about its criticism of American attitudes towards Vietnam but I’m surprised to see so little written about its portrayal of Brits. It was not super kind to them either. The main character (who is British) isn’t a great dude.

Reading Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel now, which is her debut short story collection. It’s fine. Weird, which I like, but I’m just not a short story person for most people so it’s not doing too much for me.

doublesteveburger · « **Reply #3062 on:** April 20, 2019, 11:43:17 AM »

Just finished up, “Tranny” by Laura Jane Grace. If you’re into Against Me!, it’s a really fun/heartbreaking read. Lyrics are sprinkled throughout the book for the lyric nerds out there. Loved it.

Joclo · « **Reply #3063 on:** April 20, 2019, 12:04:12 PM »

Just finished Shoe Dog - memoir by Phil Knight (creator of Nike). Good read

chris gentryfied · « **Reply #3064 on:** April 20, 2019, 05:48:57 PM »

Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus is a memoir/researched timeline of the riot grrrl movement in Olympia and also DC. i really dug on Heavens to Betsy [and later Sleater-Kinney] and Bratmobile/the Frumpies and to a lesser degree, Bikini Kill so neat behind the scenes.
not gonna go into a diatribe about the left but Kathleen Hanna was accused [by 'the scene'] of having 'microphone privilege' and 'pretty privilege' and in another chapter, 4 tough riot grrls, some 'of color' and otthers 'i yell so that means i'm working class, these polite grrls are middle class' storm riot grrls merch headquarters and tear down posters. one read 'fuck gentrification' and it's like 'fuck that, blacks don't need a reminder' as she burned it w/ a cig.
a lot of riot grrrls eating their own, not a ton about Carrie Brownstein or Corin Tucker but a decent read nonetheless.
a one legg-ed lesbian who i usedta know colloquially as 'pirate dyke' was apparently an Olympia riot grrrl gatekeeper. no wonder she hobbled w/ such swagger!
you had to ask her permission to start new chapters.
riot grrrl is silly in retrospect but i respect zines, DIY and anyone who can play an instrument, not to mention there were great songs [even if they weren't meant for me].

botefdunn · « **Reply #3065 on:** April 20, 2019, 10:30:57 PM »

chris g you prolly read it but hells angels by hst seems to cover a lot of ground you mention. just read it, good read

chris gentryfied · « **Reply #3066 on:** April 21, 2019, 06:04:22 AM »

Quote from: Joclo on April 21, 2019, 05:57:46 AM

Quote from: chris gentryfied on April 11, 2019, 09:14:42 AM
Expand Quote
Hillbilly Elegy was dece. i'm a fan of Appalachia and Kentucky in particular. book is back and forth from Kentucky/Ohio where a lot of hillbillies moved for work. then when outsourcing took the plants overseas, opiate addiction moved in.
the author went to college and then Ivy league school after that. pretty neat, broke the cycle and all that.
didn't really provide a roadmap for others but good for him.
one interesting stat 'the American dream is more alive in France and some European countries than in America'.
he also said it's not to blame Obama or Bush or faceless corporation or capitalism since all the destructive white trash shit, we do to ourselves.
[close]

This is somewhat off topic, but you would probably like the doc - "the true meaning of pictures" by Shelby lee. Controversial, but as someone who lives/grew up in what you're describing its accurate. Its backwoods wild down here.

hell yeah, i'll check that out! i hitched around KY for a few wks 10 yrs ago and it changed my life. coal miners, drinking on hollers, backwoods crime and cushaw. i'm wicked into the family agriculture style.
to botefdunn, thanks i did like that one. and Songs for the Doomed was my favorite HST.

ChuckRamone · « **Reply #3067 on:** April 21, 2019, 06:55:06 AM »

Quote from: oyolar on April 19, 2019, 03:08:42 PM

Finished Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. A lot has been said about its criticism of American attitudes towards Vietnam but I’m surprised to see so little written about its portrayal of Brits. It was not super kind to them either. The main character (who is British) isn’t a great dude.

Reading Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel now, which is her debut short story collection. It’s fine. Weird, which I like, but I’m just not a short story person for most people so it’s not doing too much for me.

I love Graham Greene. one of my favorite fiction writers.

reading Gaddis’ The Recognitions now. I was worried it was going to be one of those insanely dense and difficult postmodern books but his writing style is not that crazy.

Peter Zagreus · « **Reply #3068 on:** April 21, 2019, 06:12:21 PM »

Diderot was a G. I'm into picaresque stuff, and "philosophical novels," and this is up there with the best of both. Like a hyper-modern (i.e. metafictional moves) Don Quixote, but much shorter and more fun to read.

honey island · « **Reply #3069 on:** April 22, 2019, 03:13:25 PM »

i buy books all too frequently, but find myself barely reading, having said that, committed to getting through this -

currently at 235/668

after this, i want to try and read a book a week

Carrolls Chesthairs · « **Reply #3070 on:** April 22, 2019, 06:11:04 PM »

Burned through this in 6 days.
Seeing the movie on Wednesday.

tortfeasor · « **Reply #3071 on:** April 23, 2019, 07:04:43 AM »

not sure if comic talk is allowed here but holy shit this might be the best series ive read since chew....

really outstanding stuff.

botefdunn · « **Reply #3072 on:** April 25, 2019, 10:52:05 AM »

tried to get into lemire before but didnt like the art on that antler boy series. will check this out.

tortfeasor · « **Reply #3073 on:** April 25, 2019, 01:16:06 PM »

if you are kind of picky about art-- check this one out a shop first. the art is different than that other comic but its also different. its water color and charcoal on canvas in a style similar to that of "the incal." to me it looks pretty amazing on the page.

chris gentryfied · « **Reply #3074 on:** April 26, 2019, 08:39:14 AM »

i'm traipsing through one now called 'The Eastside Of Addiction' about Shrewsbury St junkies and drunks coming up in the 60s-70s. when i was a kid, Shrewsbury St and my neighborhood were like cousins. mine is a little more mixed though it was called French Hill 120 yrs ago, Shrewsbury St was [and still is] mostly Italian.
during/after high school, we'd go to their parties at East Park and they'd go to ours at Holmes Field. i've always been a lurker/skater so i was involved in brawls w/ my neighbors but never really friendly w/ the cool Italian kids but i knew who they were. then a few yrs ago when i was on the clinic, i'd see a lot of them in line for methadone.
so if you ain't from where i live, idk if this book will resonate but it's wicked relatable to me and also, the whole troubled youth-jail pipeline that a lot of us were on.

chris gentryfied · « **Reply #3075 on:** April 30, 2019, 03:31:05 PM »

^finished that one, now i'm onto one about 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland. it's called Say Nothing. so far, the IRA have done some really fucked up shit, kidnapped a mother of 10 and tortured her to make her talk then killed her. killed their own traitors, blown up Protestant property.
the British government tortured IRA prisoners, threw them out of helicopters near ground [mock execution] just some Abu Ghraib type shit and the Irish thought that war was outdated, they would do peaceful MLK type civil rights protests. the British met them w/ rocks and sticks.
that peaceful shit only works if the news likes your side and promotes your agenda.
dope quote tagged on a Belfast wall 'god made the catholics but the armalite made us equal.'

BuckyFellini · « **Reply #3076 on:** April 30, 2019, 05:59:57 PM »

Finally have a Fugazi addition to this book series.

topblagger · « **Reply #3077 on:** May 01, 2019, 10:57:04 AM »

Just got "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" in the mail today.

I'm hoping it'll get me back into reading, I used to read quite a bit and after an epileptic fit I've had trouble concentrating on reading for more than about 5-10 minutes.

WastedHippy · « **Reply #3078 on:** May 09, 2019, 02:55:12 AM »

I've just started reading this, always been interested in this time period/legend yet find it odd it's written by Gene Simmons

Alan · « **Reply #3079 on:** May 09, 2019, 07:04:22 AM »

Reading this collection of essays at the moment. I'm a 100 pages in, and for now it's mostly biography and memoir reviews, but the guy's a historian and he gives a lot of context on the author, and the history of the time. It's slightly academic, so maybe not for everyone, but probably interesting for anyone into 20th century European intellectual scene. Looking at the table of contents he also touches on broad historical topics.

Carrolls Chesthairs · « **Reply #3080 on:** May 19, 2019, 06:19:50 PM »

Only 1,000 more pages to go!

gaunt · « **Reply #3081 on:** May 19, 2019, 11:51:09 PM »

Quote

Dedicated to the oppressed and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.

In the book Freire calls traditional pedagogy the "banking model of education" because it treats the student as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. He argues that pedagogy should instead treat the learner as a co-creator of knowledge.

awesome book which does a good job exploring the relation between various instances of dominant-dominated oppositions such as the dichotomy between the colonizers and the colonized. ultimately revealing a cyclical process of regeneration in which the oppressed become the oppressors when assuming a position of power (after a successful revolution, for instance).

ultimately relating this to the teacher-student relation in the classroom as an instance of dominant-dominated dichotomy, he identifies the faults at which lend way to the same feedback loop outlined above and then suggests an alternative approach to education to the current one. worth reading

full PDF here:
https://learn.mesaprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/freire-pedagogy-oppressed.pdf

Kumiko · « **Reply #3082 on:** June 08, 2019, 03:09:30 PM »

Right now I'm in the middle of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Ted Kaczynski, and Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. I'm also 4/5 on The Hitchhiker's trilogy by Douglas Adams.

Dirk Gently is okay. It has all the likable aspects of Adams, but doesn't have the same allure of any of the Hitchhiker's books and is a bit longer than it needs to be.

Uncle Ted has some good stuff say and a lot of assertions that don't amount to much. If he wasn't the unabomber I doubt anyone would care what he has to say at all. There are better authors out there with similar viewpoints.

Journey to the End of the Night is alright. The faster and more attitude you have while reading it the better it comes across. It's decent enough, but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

botefdunn · « **Reply #3083 on:** June 08, 2019, 04:36:52 PM »

Quote from: Kumiko on June 08, 2019, 03:09:30 PM

Uncle Ted has some good stuff say and a lot of assertions that don't amount to much. If he wasn't the unabomber I doubt anyone would care what he has to say at all. There are better authors out there with similar viewpoints.

Curious who you are referring to in saying there are others doing it better. I red that collected works when it came out and was aware of people like zerzan and derek jensen, but I didn't find them to be better. Lots I don't know obviously but genuinely curious who you might be thinking of.

Kumiko · « **Reply #3084 on:** June 08, 2019, 05:58:24 PM »

Quote from: botefdunn on June 08, 2019, 04:36:52 PM

Quote from: Kumiko on June 08, 2019, 03:09:30 PM
Expand Quote

Uncle Ted has some good stuff say and a lot of assertions that don't amount to much. If he wasn't the unabomber I doubt anyone would care what he has to say at all. There are better authors out there with similar viewpoints.

[close]

Curious who you are referring to in saying there are others doing it better. I red that collected works when it came out and was aware of people like zerzan and derek jensen, but I didn't find them to be better. Lots I don't know obviously but genuinely curious who you might be thinking of.

I should clarify that I'm unconvinced by his conclusions of doing away with technology/a revolution against technology and that I think other authors' concerns with technology and its effects I find more agreeable such as Annie Le Brun or Guy Debord. Kaczynski is the most blatant anti-tech author I've read, so I don't mean to make any claims about that particular field of thought and the people who compose it - just authors who also address concerns of how technology impacts life.

martha dumptruck · « **Reply #3085 on:** June 08, 2019, 06:15:12 PM »

john zerzan is awful to read and he mostly rides ted k's nutsack. not quite the same genre but edward abbey was against a lot of trappings of the modern world w/out being a luddite. he sabotaged for sport and was a great writer.
unabomber wrote a great short story called 'ship of fools' you can find online. kind of sums up what's going on today w/ every tiny special interest group hooting and hollering meanwhile we're destroying our habitat.

botefdunn · « **Reply #3086 on:** June 08, 2019, 07:21:38 PM »

Quote from: martha dumptruck on June 08, 2019, 06:15:12 PM

john zerzan is awful to read and he mostly rides ted k's nutsack. not quite the same genre but edward abbey was against a lot of trappings of the modern world w/out being a luddite. he sabotaged for sport and was a great writer.
unabomber wrote a great short story called 'ship of fools' you can find online. kind of sums up what's going on today w/ every tiny special interest group hooting and hollering meanwhile we're destroying our habitat.

Yeah ship of fools does a much better job of summing up his position than his manifesto. I like Abbey a lot but tend to put him in a different category because fiction. I can see disagreeing with TK's conclusions about putting people in the sky, but I do think he writes as compellingly as anyone on the subject.

MichaelJacksonsGhost · « **Reply #3087 on:** June 09, 2019, 12:01:12 AM »

Quote from: Kumiko on June 08, 2019, 03:09:30 PM

Journey to the End of the Night is alright. The faster and more attitude you have while reading it the better it comes across. It's decent enough, but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

I read this a while ago because Bulowski always hyped him up so much, but I found it to be a bit of a drag. Struggled to finish the last 60 pages or so. Bukowski’s minathropy is just way more overt and makes me laugh a lot more.

Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov and I’m really liking it. I’m not sure the book is meant to be all that comical, but I can’t help but relate Fyodor to Ignacious Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces. The guy really is a funny character. All around good shit, IMO.

Mark Renton · « **Reply #3088 on:** June 12, 2019, 03:47:59 AM »

Bought these three books.
First two for coffee table reading.
Last one is my lifetime mission before I bite the dust.

AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice · « **Reply #3089 on:** June 12, 2019, 08:29:10 AM »

@Mark Renton: I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on Proust once you get started. I'm currently thinking about reading another longer work of fiction. Right now, I'm torn between Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest, but Proust has been on my list ever since I started reading Knausgaard.

I just got back into reading a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why, but I just wasn't into reading this winter / spring. It took me months to finish Harari's Sapiens, even though it's such a pageturner.

The other day, I finished Faserland by Christian Kracht, which is considered German "pop-literature". I'm not sure a translation is available in English, but I liked it.

I'm about to read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian with my 8th grade English class, which will be pretty exciting. I just heard about the accusations of sexual harassment against Alexie and Junot Díaz. It's really disappointing how some famous writers act behind the scenes. I'll definitely discuss this with my students.

Just put together my summer reading list. I'll definitely have to finish Knausgaard's My Struggle 6, because I just had to take a break about halfway through. Too much to digest at once. Ordered these books and I'm excited about each one:

Author Topic: books to read (Read 439137 times)

FROTHY

doublesteveburger

topblagger

Kumiko

Kumiko