books to read

[nicotinewheel]

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Currently reading, "The Bandini Quartet."  I'ts Fante's four Bandini books put in to one 700 page monstor.  Very good.

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I'm going through the Quartet as well (individually). Mostly because of Bukowski always quoting him as the author that inspired him. I do enjoy these post-depression American era books. Does anyone have any other authors of a similar nature?

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Different in tone than Fante, but I'd recommend Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust, both of which are set in LA around the depression era. Really, really good.

Also, Steinbeck, of course (who I mentioned above). I'm a low-key evangelist for Cannery Row, which is "set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist; and Mack, the leader of a group of derelict people" (Wiki). It's a charming, sad, and beautiful book.

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Not necessarily related to the depression, but Raymond Carver’s stories have a similar style to bukowski and Fante. I’d also seriously recommend Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Really just an astounding cast of characters. Bukowski talks about her a lot, too. He’s got a poem about her alcoholism, IIRC.

Also, Iron Weed by William Kennedy for a straightforward depiction of a bum wino at the turn of the 19th century.

I’ll add Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, and Murakami to the list of Fante/Bukowski like writers. Murakami might seem strange, but every one of his books I’ve read I’ve thought to myself, this is like a Japanese bukowski.

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Carson McCullers is one of my favorite writers. And I agree The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a wonderful book. Seemed like an amazing woman as well.

Funny I just re-read The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, should revisit The Heart too. One of my favorite authors.

Not sure how similar they are but I somehow group Ballad of the Sad Cafe with Leonard Gardner's Fat City. Maybe a similar economy of language, or possibly I just read them around the same time. Highly recommend that one as well.

[Jagr]

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Currently reading, "The Bandini Quartet."  I'ts Fante's four Bandini books put in to one 700 page monstor.  Very good.

[close]

I'm going through the Quartet as well (individually). Mostly because of Bukowski always quoting him as the author that inspired him. I do enjoy these post-depression American era books. Does anyone have any other authors of a similar nature?

[close]

Different in tone than Fante, but I'd recommend Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust, both of which are set in LA around the depression era. Really, really good.

Also, Steinbeck, of course (who I mentioned above). I'm a low-key evangelist for Cannery Row, which is "set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there: Lee Chong, the local grocer; Doc, a marine biologist; and Mack, the leader of a group of derelict people" (Wiki). It's a charming, sad, and beautiful book.

[close]

Not necessarily related to the depression, but Raymond Carver’s stories have a similar style to bukowski and Fante. I’d also seriously recommend Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Really just an astounding cast of characters. Bukowski talks about her a lot, too. He’s got a poem about her alcoholism, IIRC.

Also, Iron Weed by William Kennedy for a straightforward depiction of a bum wino at the turn of the 19th century.

I’ll add Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, and Murakami to the list of Fante/Bukowski like writers. Murakami might seem strange, but every one of his books I’ve read I’ve thought to myself, this is like a Japanese bukowski.

[close]

Carson McCullers is one of my favorite writers. And I agree The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a wonderful book. Seemed like an amazing woman as well.

[close]

Funny I just re-read The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, should revisit The Heart too. One of my favorite authors.

Not sure how similar they are but I somehow group Ballad of the Sad Cafe with Leonard Gardner's Fat City. Maybe a similar economy of language, or possibly I just read them around the same time. Highly recommend that one as well.

Fat City is great. The best boxing novel? Have you seen the film? Staring young Jeff Bridges, directed by John Huston.

[Frank and Fred]

Just finished Dave Eggars' "The Circle' and moving straight on to 'The Every.' Highly recommended Dystopian satires of Social media, tech giants, the Metaverse and so on.

[Huell Howser]

Just finished Brave New World for the first time.  Really impressive that he could write that in the early 1930’s, and how accurately his predictions seems to be unfolding.. but god damn things didn’t really pick up much until the end did they?

I just picked this up from the library to essentially 're-read' it because it was assigned reading in one of my highschool english classes but of course at the time I didn't give it the real attention it probably deserves. hoping to get into it

it's also one of my goals to read more this year. I have been slacking the last few years. Trying to get in at least a book a month

For January I just read slaughterhouse five for the first time(basic, I know). Enjoyed it and finished it super quick

My friend gave me this book to read(a memoir about traveling and surfing in the 60s/70s):


only about 10 pages in so far but I am digging it

also another random thought(can't remember if I got the idea from slap or not) but I decided I am not going to force myself to read a book if I don't get into it in the first 30 pages. I think this a huge point of failure for me in not actively reading

[Frank and Fred]

That's a good read @Huell Howser The dude experienced surfing like none of us ever will. The days of feral surf exploration and discovering new waves are long gone. I really liked his accounts of surfing OB SF the best though.

[Alan]

I've just picked up Stefan Zweig's collected works again. Reading The Love of Erika Ewald atm. It's alright, but I don't remember his writing being this flowery.

[Huell Howser]

That's a good read @Huell Howser The dude experienced surfing like none of us ever will. The days of feral surf exploration and discovering new waves are long gone. I really liked his accounts of surfing OB SF the best though.

sweet, glad to hear you dug it. I am already excited to dive deeper into it. My friend said a similar thing about the ocean beach stuff from the book

[oyolar]

Did the audiobook for Barbarian Days and it felt long as an audiobook, but it’s really cool.

That’s a good goal. Giving up on reading books when you’re not feeling a book is a good strategy. I’ve just recently started trying to get into that mindset last year and dropped out of like five books completely because I wasn’t feeling them (I eventually went back and finished one even though my opinion didn’t change after I finished it) and it was way better than tryin to force my way through them. 30-50 pages worked for me but if it’s a longer book, I’d recommend even giving 75-100 unless you absolutely can’t stand it.

[nicotinewheel]

Fat City is great. The best boxing novel? Have you seen the film? Staring young Jeff Bridges, directed by John Huston.

Yes & yes, the movie is so good, absolutely of the rare ones where both the book and movie are excellent.

[Huell Howser]

Did the audiobook for Barbarian Days and it felt long as an audiobook, but it’s really cool.

That’s a good goal. Giving up on reading books when you’re not feeling a book is a good strategy. I’ve just recently started trying to get into that mindset last year and dropped out of like five books completely because I wasn’t feeling them (I eventually went back and finished one even though my opinion didn’t change after I finished it) and it was way better than tryin to force my way through them. 30-50 pages worked for me but if it’s a longer book, I’d recommend even giving 75-100 unless you absolutely can’t stand it.

just finished Barbarian Days yesterday(sticking to my goal of reading a book a month this year. finished on last day of Feb haha). That was the best book I have read in a long time, I loved it all the way through and didn't want it to end. I would recommend this book to anyone whether they surf or not. I might have to listen to the audio book in the future just for the hell of it!

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

[nicotinewheel]

Recently finished The Prankster and The Conspiracy:The Story of Kerry Thornley by Adam Gorightly.
Lots to digest if you have any interest in 60s counterculture and JFK assassination lore.

[nicotinewheel]

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

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.

[in love w/ fs shuvs]

autobiographies/biographies. recently read the kurt cobain one and this one on this guy who helped figure out the helical structure of DNA.

[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

[Sloppy Krooks]

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”