Author Topic: books to read  (Read 431668 times)

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ChronicBluntSlider

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3480 on: February 19, 2021, 07:03:14 AM »
^I read that a few months ago. I had preordered it from the local bookstore after hearing the author had become the youngest to win the Booker Prize for it.

The language/mood is pretty breathtaking throughout. I feel like I’m spacing on the literary term for it, but I remember being really taken by the visual analogies. The character lives on a Dutch dairy farm, and they’re always comparing these mundane objects around the farm to like violent and sexual imagery. Very haunting read.

Deputy Wendell

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3481 on: March 06, 2021, 09:40:16 AM »
“...While I was in Chicago last summer, the Honourable Elijah Muhammad invited me to have dinner at his home. This is a stately mansion on Chicago's South Side, and it is the headquarters of the Nation of Islam movement. I had not gone to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad--he was not in my thoughts at all--but the moment I received the invitation, it occurred to me that I ought to have expected it. In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions of their lives, or even their knowledge--revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man...Therefore, late on a hot Sunday afternoon, I presented myself at his door.

I was frightened, because I had, in effect, been summoned into a royal presence. I was frightened for another reason, too. I knew the tension in me between love and power, between pain and rage, and the curious, the grinding way I remained extended between these poles--perpetually attempting to choose the better rather than the worse. But this choice was a choice in terms of a personal, a private better (I was, after all, a writer); what was its relevance in terms of a social worse? Here was the South Side--a million in captivity-stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have been their help, didn't, as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn : in order to learn new attitudes. Also, I knew that once I had entered the house, I couldn't smoke or drink, and I felt guilty about the cigarettes in my pocket, as I had felt years ago when my friend first took me into his church. I was half an hour late, having got lost on the way here, and I felt as deserving of a scolding as a schoolboy...

...I felt that I was back in my father's house--as, indeed, in a way, I was--and I told Elijah that I did not care if white and black people married, and that I had many white friends. I would have no choice, if it came to it, but to perish with them, for (I said to myself, but not to Elijah), ‘I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than colour?’

Elijah looked at me with great kindness and affection, great pity, as though he were reading my heart, and indicated, sceptically, that I might have white friends, or think I did, and they might be trying to be decent--now--but their time was up. It was almost as though he were saying. ‘They had their chance, man, and they goofed!’...

...And I looked again at the young faces around the table, and looked back at Elijah, who was saying that no people in history had ever been respected who had not owned their land. And the table said, ‘Yes, that's right.’ I could not deny the truth of this statement. For everyone else has, is, a nation, with a specific location and a flag--even, these days, the Jew. It is only ‘the so-called American Negro’ who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being. And the Black Muslims, along with many people who are not Muslims, no longer wish for a recognition so grudging and (should it ever be achieved) so tardy. Again, it cannot be denied that this point of view is abundantly justified by American Negro history. It is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. On the other hand, how is the American Negro now to form himself into a separate nation? For this--and not only from the Muslim point of view--would seem to be his only hope of not perishing in the American backwater and being entirely and forever forgotten, as though he had never existed at all and his travail had been for nothing...

... It was time to leave, and we stood in the large living room, saying good night, with everything curiously and heavily unresolved. I could not help feeling that I had failed a test, in their eyes and in my own, or that I had failed to heed a warning. Elijah and I shook hands, and he asked me where I was going. Wherever it was, I would be driven there—'because, when we invite someone here,’ he said, ‘we take the responsibility of protecting him from the white devils until he gets wherever it is he's going.' I was, in fact, going to have a drink with several white devils on the other side of town. I confess that for a fraction of a second I hesitated to give the address--the kind of address that in Chicago, as in all American cities, identified itself as a white address by virtue of its location. But I did give it, and Elijah and I walked out onto the steps, and one of the young men vanished to get the car. It was very strange to stand with Elijah for those few moments, facing those vivid, violent, so problematical streets. I felt very close to him, and really wished to be able to love and honour him as a witness, an ally, and a father. I felt that I knew something of his pain and his fury, and, yes, even his beauty. Yet precisely because of the reality and the nature of those streets--because of what he conceived as his responsibility and what I took to be mine--we would always be strangers, and possibly, one day, enemies. The car arrived--a gleaming, metallic, grossly American blue--and Elijah and I shook hands and said good night once more. He walked into his mansion and shut the door...”


AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3482 on: March 15, 2021, 10:49:50 AM »
That excerpt from The Fire Next Time is powerful! I still have Go Tell it on the Mountain on my bookshelf. Ought to read this sometime soon! I've only read Giovanni's Room by Baldwin and really liked it. It's crazy how relevant Baldwin still is unfortunately.

The Discomfort of Evening is on my list now, too. Ever since my father passed away 18 months ago, I shy away from books/movies about death and grief, but maybe I'll pick this one up. What did y'all think of the novel? Wasn't she also involved in some controversy surrounding the translation of Amanda Gorman's poetry?

Just started reading Knausgaard's My Struggle 6 again. So far, it has all the benefits of reading a book for the second time. You make connections you overlooked the first time and everything he talks about in the first 200 pages seems clearer to me. When he gets to Celan, I'll make sure to give "The Death Fugue" a proper reading. Maybe that does the trick. If not, I'll just skim it until he gets to Hitler.

oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3483 on: March 15, 2021, 11:42:22 AM »
To be honest, I’m still making my way through it. It’s very intense and sad just as a warning so I’ve been reading it a few chapters at a time (and I haven’t felt much like reading overall) but I do like it and it is gorgeously done. And yeah, the author was originally commissioned to translate Gorman and Gorman’s reps agreed to it but the Netherlands press pointed out that they had a very different experience from Gorman and that no black Dutch translators or artists were considered so Rijneveld backed out when that came to light. I think it was a fairly cut-and-dry issue.

Good luck on book 6! I’ve talked about it before but that’s the first book I really had to work out a schedule to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s definitely made me realize the enormity of 1000+ page works. I’ve never had a problem with traditionally long books but once you get past like 750-800 pages, it really is a whole different ball game.

AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3484 on: March 15, 2021, 01:21:03 PM »
To be honest, I’m still making my way through it. It’s very intense and sad just as a warning so I’ve been reading it a few chapters at a time (and I haven’t felt much like reading overall) but I do like it and it is gorgeously done. And yeah, the author was originally commissioned to translate Gorman and Gorman’s reps agreed to it but the Netherlands press pointed out that they had a very different experience from Gorman and that no black Dutch translators or artists were considered so Rijneveld backed out when that came to light. I think it was a fairly cut-and-dry issue.

Good luck on book 6! I’ve talked about it before but that’s the first book I really had to work out a schedule to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s definitely made me realize the enormity of 1000+ page works. I’ve never had a problem with traditionally long books but once you get past like 750-800 pages, it really is a whole different ball game.

Thanks for the heads up. I really appreciate it. In that case, I'll back off for now. The author sounds intriguing, but I'm sure she'll publish a second novel some time soon, which might not be as intense.

Yeah, I just read up on the issue and all in all it sounds about right.

Knausgaard's books are usually a page-turner for me. A 600-page Knausgaard book feels like a regular 200-page novel. Mentally, I haven't really prepared for the long haul. But maybe that's what's coming.

I hear what you're saying about long novels though. A 1000-page monster of a book is something you have to be ready for, because of the time and dedication it takes. However, these are also sometimes the most rewarding reads. 2666, War and Peace, and, despite its shorter length, Crime and Punishment, these books have stayed with me even long after I put them down. I'm thinking about reading The Brothers Karamazov as my next longer book project. Any other long reads that are worth the effort?

oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3485 on: April 08, 2021, 09:51:42 AM »
Gave up on Rijneveld. The animal scenes were just too much for me. I got what they were doing and didn’t think they were crass or unnecessary - they just weren’t for me.

So I read some comics and am now reading Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler which is fun and easy to read. It has depth to it but it’s very much “of its time” so if it is of interest to you at all, I suggest reading it now. I feel like if you read it even 5 years from now, it’ll feel disconnected and less pressing.

childhood

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3486 on: April 08, 2021, 04:55:03 PM »
Started this book a couple days ago and I'm halfway through it already, really enjoying it:
https://1lib.us/book/1316754/abd06a
It's mostly a memoir by this journalist who gets really into collecting antique opium pipes, decides to start using them, and winds up developing a severe opiate addiction. Throughout the book he also goes into a good in-depth rundown of the history/evolution of the usage styles & laws surrounding opium too.

Grind King Rims

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3487 on: April 10, 2021, 02:25:45 PM »
Started reading The Fire Next Time on recommendation from @Deputy Wendell on this very page. It's good. Short too, I'm almost finished. Makes me feel like a braniac. Also picked up Confederacy of Dunces but it's way longer than I expected. I'll give it an honest try. Picked up a compilation of Groucho Marx letters, that one I'm really looking forward to.

aliexpress

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3488 on: April 10, 2021, 03:03:11 PM »
Just finished this. Gut wrenching from start to finish, really colorfully and poetically written. Make sure to read the foreword...


Carrolls Chesthairs

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3489 on: April 10, 2021, 03:26:28 PM »
shout out to whomever recommended The Big Goodbye and You Can't Win.

Working through those two now

botefdunn

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3490 on: April 10, 2021, 07:33:26 PM »
Started this book a couple days ago and I'm halfway through it already, really enjoying it:
https://1lib.us/book/1316754/abd06a
It's mostly a memoir by this journalist who gets really into collecting antique opium pipes, decides to start using them, and winds up developing a severe opiate addiction. Throughout the book he also goes into a good in-depth rundown of the history/evolution of the usage styles & laws surrounding opium too.

The way you describe that made me laugh, I could just imagine the well-intentioned, "anthropological" interest this guy started out with. Kind of like when I've gotten roped into watching UFC and I tell myself I enjoy it for the technical, educational aspect of it (I really do tell myself this, not being snide).

igrindtwinkies

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3491 on: April 11, 2021, 05:29:41 AM »
Just got this in the mail.


cky enthusiast

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3492 on: April 11, 2021, 06:17:01 AM »


it has sparked a non-insignificant mental health heckride

Grind King Rims

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3493 on: April 11, 2021, 12:07:17 PM »
Oh shoot, I watched the Matrix with some friends recently and thought about getting that after. Let us know what you think.

childhood

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3494 on: April 12, 2021, 08:11:13 AM »
shout out to whomever recommended The Big Goodbye and You Can't Win.

Working through those two now

I just downloaded You Can't Win cause it was referenced a few times in that opium book I just read. I love books about crimes & drugs, and that sounds like a good one.


Started reading The Fire Next Time on recommendation from @Deputy Wendell on this very page. It's good. Short too, I'm almost finished. Makes me feel like a braniac. Also picked up Confederacy of Dunces but it's way longer than I expected. I'll give it an honest try. Picked up a compilation of Groucho Marx letters, that one I'm really looking forward to.

Confederacy of Dunces is funny cause if Ignatius was born in the 90s and skated, he would totally post on Slap.

Deputy Wendell

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3495 on: April 12, 2021, 08:58:43 AM »


it has sparked a non-insignificant mental health heckride

...oh no...even here in Slap...he's inescapable...

...i both love and hate Baudrillard--as a modernist, he has been the bane of my academic existence at times, although i'd be lying if i did not admit that this has been super important in a bunch of my work in cultural studies (for instance, on the engineered necessity of the automobile, ontologies and phenomenologies of the freeway in Didion's Play It as It Lays, and this country's suburban landscape as conveyed in The Crying of Lot 49) and i HIGHLY recommend it, if you feel up to it after tussling with Simulacra and Simulation...i have heard this called his "most accessible" work, as it were...


ChuckRamone

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3496 on: May 01, 2021, 10:06:29 PM »
Reading Crying in H Mart. Moving book that breezes by.

rock2fakie

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3497 on: May 04, 2021, 10:26:27 AM »
Expand Quote
To be honest, I’m still making my way through it. It’s very intense and sad just as a warning so I’ve been reading it a few chapters at a time (and I haven’t felt much like reading overall) but I do like it and it is gorgeously done. And yeah, the author was originally commissioned to translate Gorman and Gorman’s reps agreed to it but the Netherlands press pointed out that they had a very different experience from Gorman and that no black Dutch translators or artists were considered so Rijneveld backed out when that came to light. I think it was a fairly cut-and-dry issue.

Good luck on book 6! I’ve talked about it before but that’s the first book I really had to work out a schedule to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s definitely made me realize the enormity of 1000+ page works. I’ve never had a problem with traditionally long books but once you get past like 750-800 pages, it really is a whole different ball game.
[close]

Thanks for the heads up. I really appreciate it. In that case, I'll back off for now. The author sounds intriguing, but I'm sure she'll publish a second novel some time soon, which might not be as intense.

Yeah, I just read up on the issue and all in all it sounds about right.

Knausgaard's books are usually a page-turner for me. A 600-page Knausgaard book feels like a regular 200-page novel. Mentally, I haven't really prepared for the long haul. But maybe that's what's coming.

I hear what you're saying about long novels though. A 1000-page monster of a book is something you have to be ready for, because of the time and dedication it takes. However, these are also sometimes the most rewarding reads. 2666, War and Peace, and, despite its shorter length, Crime and Punishment, these books have stayed with me even long after I put them down. I'm thinking about reading The Brothers Karamazov as my next longer book project. Any other long reads that are worth the effort?

You posted this a while ago but the author did already publish a new novel, which I guess hasn't been translated to English yet. I haven't read it yet but from reading the synopsis and a couple pages in someone else's copy I know for a fact it's just as intense, if not more. (it's sort of a continuation of The Discomfort of Evening and delves into sexual abuse)

botefdunn

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3498 on: May 04, 2021, 11:54:51 AM »
@AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice on the subject of long reads, not the highest page count, but James Joyce Ulysses probably took me the longest. I read it over the course of 2 years, taking breaks and rereading parts. When I tried to move too fast I found I wasn't able to parse or retain much. Like you said about your long reads, it was nonetheless a gratifying experience.

Highonangeldust

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3499 on: May 04, 2021, 03:16:46 PM »
Solid, inspirational read right here.

rocklobster

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3500 on: May 04, 2021, 06:28:07 PM »
Looking for recommendations on non-fiction - preferably business books that aren't a collection of opinions and self-serving masturbation sessions by the author.

For reference the last book I enjoyed was The Lean Start Up. Autobiographies are good too, thinking of reading Shoe Dog next.
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oyolar

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3501 on: May 04, 2021, 06:52:47 PM »
Expand Quote
Expand Quote
To be honest, I’m still making my way through it. It’s very intense and sad just as a warning so I’ve been reading it a few chapters at a time (and I haven’t felt much like reading overall) but I do like it and it is gorgeously done. And yeah, the author was originally commissioned to translate Gorman and Gorman’s reps agreed to it but the Netherlands press pointed out that they had a very different experience from Gorman and that no black Dutch translators or artists were considered so Rijneveld backed out when that came to light. I think it was a fairly cut-and-dry issue.

Good luck on book 6! I’ve talked about it before but that’s the first book I really had to work out a schedule to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s definitely made me realize the enormity of 1000+ page works. I’ve never had a problem with traditionally long books but once you get past like 750-800 pages, it really is a whole different ball game.
[close]

Thanks for the heads up. I really appreciate it. In that case, I'll back off for now. The author sounds intriguing, but I'm sure she'll publish a second novel some time soon, which might not be as intense.

Yeah, I just read up on the issue and all in all it sounds about right.

Knausgaard's books are usually a page-turner for me. A 600-page Knausgaard book feels like a regular 200-page novel. Mentally, I haven't really prepared for the long haul. But maybe that's what's coming.

I hear what you're saying about long novels though. A 1000-page monster of a book is something you have to be ready for, because of the time and dedication it takes. However, these are also sometimes the most rewarding reads. 2666, War and Peace, and, despite its shorter length, Crime and Punishment, these books have stayed with me even long after I put them down. I'm thinking about reading The Brothers Karamazov as my next longer book project. Any other long reads that are worth the effort?
[close]

You posted this a while ago but the author did already publish a new novel, which I guess hasn't been translated to English yet. I haven't read it yet but from reading the synopsis and a couple pages in someone else's copy I know for a fact it's just as intense, if not more. (it's sort of a continuation of The Discomfort of Evening and delves into sexual abuse)

Ooof man. Ouch

ChuckRamone

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3502 on: May 04, 2021, 08:26:48 PM »
Finished Crying in H Mart and started on The Collected Schizophrenias. This book is excellent so far.

bigdave

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3503 on: May 05, 2021, 12:07:15 PM »
“...While I was in Chicago last summer, the Honourable Elijah Muhammad invited me to have dinner at his home. This is a stately mansion on Chicago's South Side, and it is the headquarters of the Nation of Islam movement. I had not gone to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad--he was not in my thoughts at all--but the moment I received the invitation, it occurred to me that I ought to have expected it. In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions of their lives, or even their knowledge--revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man...Therefore, late on a hot Sunday afternoon, I presented myself at his door.

I was frightened, because I had, in effect, been summoned into a royal presence. I was frightened for another reason, too. I knew the tension in me between love and power, between pain and rage, and the curious, the grinding way I remained extended between these poles--perpetually attempting to choose the better rather than the worse. But this choice was a choice in terms of a personal, a private better (I was, after all, a writer); what was its relevance in terms of a social worse? Here was the South Side--a million in captivity-stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have been their help, didn't, as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn : in order to learn new attitudes. Also, I knew that once I had entered the house, I couldn't smoke or drink, and I felt guilty about the cigarettes in my pocket, as I had felt years ago when my friend first took me into his church. I was half an hour late, having got lost on the way here, and I felt as deserving of a scolding as a schoolboy...

...I felt that I was back in my father's house--as, indeed, in a way, I was--and I told Elijah that I did not care if white and black people married, and that I had many white friends. I would have no choice, if it came to it, but to perish with them, for (I said to myself, but not to Elijah), ‘I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than colour?’

Elijah looked at me with great kindness and affection, great pity, as though he were reading my heart, and indicated, sceptically, that I might have white friends, or think I did, and they might be trying to be decent--now--but their time was up. It was almost as though he were saying. ‘They had their chance, man, and they goofed!’...

...And I looked again at the young faces around the table, and looked back at Elijah, who was saying that no people in history had ever been respected who had not owned their land. And the table said, ‘Yes, that's right.’ I could not deny the truth of this statement. For everyone else has, is, a nation, with a specific location and a flag--even, these days, the Jew. It is only ‘the so-called American Negro’ who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being. And the Black Muslims, along with many people who are not Muslims, no longer wish for a recognition so grudging and (should it ever be achieved) so tardy. Again, it cannot be denied that this point of view is abundantly justified by American Negro history. It is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. On the other hand, how is the American Negro now to form himself into a separate nation? For this--and not only from the Muslim point of view--would seem to be his only hope of not perishing in the American backwater and being entirely and forever forgotten, as though he had never existed at all and his travail had been for nothing...

... It was time to leave, and we stood in the large living room, saying good night, with everything curiously and heavily unresolved. I could not help feeling that I had failed a test, in their eyes and in my own, or that I had failed to heed a warning. Elijah and I shook hands, and he asked me where I was going. Wherever it was, I would be driven there—'because, when we invite someone here,’ he said, ‘we take the responsibility of protecting him from the white devils until he gets wherever it is he's going.' I was, in fact, going to have a drink with several white devils on the other side of town. I confess that for a fraction of a second I hesitated to give the address--the kind of address that in Chicago, as in all American cities, identified itself as a white address by virtue of its location. But I did give it, and Elijah and I walked out onto the steps, and one of the young men vanished to get the car. It was very strange to stand with Elijah for those few moments, facing those vivid, violent, so problematical streets. I felt very close to him, and really wished to be able to love and honour him as a witness, an ally, and a father. I felt that I knew something of his pain and his fury, and, yes, even his beauty. Yet precisely because of the reality and the nature of those streets--because of what he conceived as his responsibility and what I took to be mine--we would always be strangers, and possibly, one day, enemies. The car arrived--a gleaming, metallic, grossly American blue--and Elijah and I shook hands and said good night once more. He walked into his mansion and shut the door...”




One of the best books I've ever read. That whole portion with THEM is just fucking incredible.
ok thanks

bigdave

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3504 on: May 05, 2021, 12:12:38 PM »
Reading some Kundera right now. This might actually the last book of his left for me to read.

ok thanks

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3505 on: May 05, 2021, 12:20:41 PM »
Finished Crying in H Mart and started on The Collected Schizophrenias. This book is excellent so far.

Nice. Good to hear. I have TCS on my to read list but forgot about it to be honest. I’ll revisit bumping it up now.

AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3506 on: May 06, 2021, 02:28:12 AM »
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To be honest, I’m still making my way through it. It’s very intense and sad just as a warning so I’ve been reading it a few chapters at a time (and I haven’t felt much like reading overall) but I do like it and it is gorgeously done. And yeah, the author was originally commissioned to translate Gorman and Gorman’s reps agreed to it but the Netherlands press pointed out that they had a very different experience from Gorman and that no black Dutch translators or artists were considered so Rijneveld backed out when that came to light. I think it was a fairly cut-and-dry issue.

Good luck on book 6! I’ve talked about it before but that’s the first book I really had to work out a schedule to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. It’s definitely made me realize the enormity of 1000+ page works. I’ve never had a problem with traditionally long books but once you get past like 750-800 pages, it really is a whole different ball game.
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Thanks for the heads up. I really appreciate it. In that case, I'll back off for now. The author sounds intriguing, but I'm sure she'll publish a second novel some time soon, which might not be as intense.

Yeah, I just read up on the issue and all in all it sounds about right.

Knausgaard's books are usually a page-turner for me. A 600-page Knausgaard book feels like a regular 200-page novel. Mentally, I haven't really prepared for the long haul. But maybe that's what's coming.

I hear what you're saying about long novels though. A 1000-page monster of a book is something you have to be ready for, because of the time and dedication it takes. However, these are also sometimes the most rewarding reads. 2666, War and Peace, and, despite its shorter length, Crime and Punishment, these books have stayed with me even long after I put them down. I'm thinking about reading The Brothers Karamazov as my next longer book project. Any other long reads that are worth the effort?
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You posted this a while ago but the author did already publish a new novel, which I guess hasn't been translated to English yet. I haven't read it yet but from reading the synopsis and a couple pages in someone else's copy I know for a fact it's just as intense, if not more. (it's sort of a continuation of The Discomfort of Evening and delves into sexual abuse)

Oh man. Well, looks like she's found her niche. Honestly though, I might look into that second novel once it's translated into English or German. Sexual abuse is a brutal topic, but speaking for me personally, it doesn't quite hit as close to home as grief and loss of family members.

AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3507 on: May 06, 2021, 02:36:57 AM »
@AnotherHardDayAtTheOffice on the subject of long reads, not the highest page count, but James Joyce Ulysses probably took me the longest. I read it over the course of 2 years, taking breaks and rereading parts. When I tried to move too fast I found I wasn't able to parse or retain much. Like you said about your long reads, it was nonetheless a gratifying experience.

Wow, 2 years is a long period of time, but I see where you're coming from. I tried to read Ulysses after attending a Joyce seminar at university (where we delved into Dubliners Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man), but I just read it like a regular novel, which I guess, isn't really the way to do it. I love Joyce though, and maybe close reading Ulysses a piece at a time makes sense. Did you use any secondary literature?

Speaking of long reads, I'm almost done with My Struggle 6. I enjoyed it much more than when I first tried reading it and stopped somewhere in the Celan essay. Now, I read the Celan poem he talks about beforehand and took away more from that part. The Hitler essay was really interesting, even though I'm not exactly sure how it relates to the rest of the book. I understand that Knausgaard felt like he had to address the topic due to the similarity of the title and he connects his own background to Hitler's and the theme of authenticity, but it still feels like a bit of a stretch. Still, I just thought it was interesting to learn so much I didn't know about Hitler's youth and the Weimar era. I'm in the middle of the last part and reading about his relationship to his (now ex-)wife is heartbreaking. This is where Knausgaard is strongest as a writer IMO: Touching readers on an emotional level, being brutally honest, talking about everyday experiences. It's all there.

Deputy Wendell

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3508 on: May 06, 2021, 06:16:55 AM »
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“...While I was in Chicago last summer, the Honourable Elijah Muhammad invited me to have dinner at his home. This is a stately mansion on Chicago's South Side, and it is the headquarters of the Nation of Islam movement. I had not gone to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad--he was not in my thoughts at all--but the moment I received the invitation, it occurred to me that I ought to have expected it. In a way, I owe the invitation to the incredible, abysmal, and really cowardly obtuseness of white liberals. Whether in private debate or in public, any attempt I made to explain how the Black Muslim movement came about, and how it has achieved such force, was met with a blankness that revealed the little connection that the liberals' attitudes have with their perceptions of their lives, or even their knowledge--revealed, in fact, that they could deal with the Negro as a symbol or a victim but had no sense of him as a man...Therefore, late on a hot Sunday afternoon, I presented myself at his door.

I was frightened, because I had, in effect, been summoned into a royal presence. I was frightened for another reason, too. I knew the tension in me between love and power, between pain and rage, and the curious, the grinding way I remained extended between these poles--perpetually attempting to choose the better rather than the worse. But this choice was a choice in terms of a personal, a private better (I was, after all, a writer); what was its relevance in terms of a social worse? Here was the South Side--a million in captivity-stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have been their help, didn't, as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn : in order to learn new attitudes. Also, I knew that once I had entered the house, I couldn't smoke or drink, and I felt guilty about the cigarettes in my pocket, as I had felt years ago when my friend first took me into his church. I was half an hour late, having got lost on the way here, and I felt as deserving of a scolding as a schoolboy...

...I felt that I was back in my father's house--as, indeed, in a way, I was--and I told Elijah that I did not care if white and black people married, and that I had many white friends. I would have no choice, if it came to it, but to perish with them, for (I said to myself, but not to Elijah), ‘I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn't love more important than colour?’

Elijah looked at me with great kindness and affection, great pity, as though he were reading my heart, and indicated, sceptically, that I might have white friends, or think I did, and they might be trying to be decent--now--but their time was up. It was almost as though he were saying. ‘They had their chance, man, and they goofed!’...

...And I looked again at the young faces around the table, and looked back at Elijah, who was saying that no people in history had ever been respected who had not owned their land. And the table said, ‘Yes, that's right.’ I could not deny the truth of this statement. For everyone else has, is, a nation, with a specific location and a flag--even, these days, the Jew. It is only ‘the so-called American Negro’ who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised, in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being. And the Black Muslims, along with many people who are not Muslims, no longer wish for a recognition so grudging and (should it ever be achieved) so tardy. Again, it cannot be denied that this point of view is abundantly justified by American Negro history. It is galling indeed to have stood so long, hat in hand, waiting for Americans to grow up enough to realize that you do not threaten them. On the other hand, how is the American Negro now to form himself into a separate nation? For this--and not only from the Muslim point of view--would seem to be his only hope of not perishing in the American backwater and being entirely and forever forgotten, as though he had never existed at all and his travail had been for nothing...

... It was time to leave, and we stood in the large living room, saying good night, with everything curiously and heavily unresolved. I could not help feeling that I had failed a test, in their eyes and in my own, or that I had failed to heed a warning. Elijah and I shook hands, and he asked me where I was going. Wherever it was, I would be driven there—'because, when we invite someone here,’ he said, ‘we take the responsibility of protecting him from the white devils until he gets wherever it is he's going.' I was, in fact, going to have a drink with several white devils on the other side of town. I confess that for a fraction of a second I hesitated to give the address--the kind of address that in Chicago, as in all American cities, identified itself as a white address by virtue of its location. But I did give it, and Elijah and I walked out onto the steps, and one of the young men vanished to get the car. It was very strange to stand with Elijah for those few moments, facing those vivid, violent, so problematical streets. I felt very close to him, and really wished to be able to love and honour him as a witness, an ally, and a father. I felt that I knew something of his pain and his fury, and, yes, even his beauty. Yet precisely because of the reality and the nature of those streets--because of what he conceived as his responsibility and what I took to be mine--we would always be strangers, and possibly, one day, enemies. The car arrived--a gleaming, metallic, grossly American blue--and Elijah and I shook hands and said good night once more. He walked into his mansion and shut the door...”


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One of the best books I've ever read. That whole portion with THEM is just fucking incredible.

Chavo

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Re: books to read
« Reply #3509 on: May 06, 2021, 12:20:11 PM »
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shout out to whomever recommended The Big Goodbye and You Can't Win.

Working through those two now
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I just downloaded You Can't Win cause it was referenced a few times in that opium book I just read. I love books about crimes & drugs, and that sounds like a good one.


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Started reading The Fire Next Time on recommendation from @Deputy Wendell on this very page. It's good. Short too, I'm almost finished. Makes me feel like a braniac. Also picked up Confederacy of Dunces but it's way longer than I expected. I'll give it an honest try. Picked up a compilation of Groucho Marx letters, that one I'm really looking forward to.
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Confederacy of Dunces is funny cause if Ignatius was born in the 90s and skated, he would totally post on Slap.

I thought the same about Confederacy of Dunces, not necessarily about being a Slap Pal, but he reminded me of disillusioned skaters from my generation.