books to read

[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.

[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 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...

[Banned from the room]

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.

[Skibb]

Halfway through Upton Sinclairs Jungle, think it was spoken about in this thread earlier? Anyway, writing is beautiful, but fuck if this book isn’t harshing my mellow in the worst of ways. Just the sheer bleakness of it all, sheesh. I’d had a rough day, but thought I’d top it off by chilling out and reading before bed - instead I got left in a limbo being even more bummed than before, while utterly incapable of feeling sorry for my non-starving, non-bedridden, non-covered-with-frozen-cows-blood, ass.

Then I came in here and subsequently glanced through the plot of Blood Meridian… that ending… double-sheesh.

Still thinking of finishing Jungle, but then I need to do myself a favour and take my mind to some happier places haha.

[S.]

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”

I am interested in the Graeber book. I think I will check it out next. I am reading Thomas Rid‘s Rise of the Machines: The Lost History of Cybernetics.

[/size]I have gotten fascinated with cybernetics as I am finding that ideas of cybernetic control are more and more at the center of social control in schools and companies. I am currently in training to become a public school teacher and the way they are training us and want us to teach and control children adheres closely to cybernetic principals. The history of cybernetics is fascinating. It basically was conceptualized for the British and American war machine in WW2 and has broadly influenced how we think about ourselves and the world. I am mostly interested in: what can‘t cybernetic thinking capture? How can you resist cybernetic social organization at work for example?[/color]

[/size]The book is pretty well written, but the subject is pretty technical and complicated. If you are interested in this sort of thing you may also check out the Curtis documentary:[/color]


[/size][/color]

[bigdave]

Right now reading Tibetan Book of the Dead. light reading.

[MichaelJacksonsGhost]

Right now reading Tibetan Book of the Dead. light reading.

I read the Timothy Leary adaptation a number of years ago when I was really into eating drugs. I can’t say I personally made it through all of the bardos, but it was still a wild concept to have in your head while you’re tripping sack. Looking back now, Learys book seems a little gimmicky, and I wish I would have picked up the actual Book of the Dead instead. Alas.

Mostly unrelated to drugs and dying, but I recently finished The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. I didn’t think it was as entertaining as The Brothers K., just because it mostly dealt with Russian society and social laws etc. (at least on the surface), stuff I’m just not all of that interested in when it comes to plot. But hell if Ippolit wasn’t just an awesome character. Its obviously one of those books you have to read a number of times to really wring out, but I’m not sure I’ll dive in again any time soon.

That being said, the beatific simpleton (“the idiot”) has to be one of the best tropes in literature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez plays with it in 100 Years of Solitude, and Faulkner has a number of sketches with characters who only smile and nod. Something about the incongruity between modern times and a Christ-like figure is just so much fun to me.

I’m now onto the Glass family stories by Salinger. I haven’t read anything about the Glass family before, but so far the stories are proving to be enjoyably different than Catcher and the Rye (at least the prose seems more mature and crafted). Nonetheless, the first story, a perfect day for banana fish, is pretty gross in its content. Knowing Salinger had a weird thing for young girls does not help the story in the least. That being said, it’s pretty insane to think the man was able to create two totally different and distinct literary worlds—the Caulfield world and the Glass world. Allegedly Salinger’s son has a handful of stories still unpublished that round out both of the families’ genealogies. We’ll see when they come out, I guess.


Ps… McCarthy is slated to release two new books in August. Not sure what they’re about, but any news McCarthy gets me excited.

[beatifk]

Halfway through Upton Sinclairs Jungle, think it was spoken about in this thread earlier? Anyway, writing is beautiful, but fuck if this book isn’t harshing my mellow in the worst of ways. Just the sheer bleakness of it all, sheesh. I’d had a rough day, but thought I’d top it off by chilling out and reading before bed - instead I got left in a limbo being even more bummed than before, while utterly incapable of feeling sorry for my non-starving, non-bedridden, non-covered-with-frozen-cows-blood, ass.

Then I came in here and subsequently glanced through the plot of Blood Meridian… that ending… double-sheesh.

Still thinking of finishing Jungle, but then I need to do myself a favour and take my mind to some happier places haha.

The Jungle just made me hate humans.

The book is incredible though.

[Peter Zagreus]

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Right now reading Tibetan Book of the Dead. light reading.

[close]

I read the Timothy Leary adaptation a number of years ago when I was really into eating drugs. I can’t say I personally made it through all of the bardos, but it was still a wild concept to have in your head while you’re tripping sack. Looking back now, Learys book seems a little gimmicky, and I wish I would have picked up the actual Book of the Dead instead. Alas.

Mostly unrelated to drugs and dying, but I recently finished The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. I didn’t think it was as entertaining as The Brothers K., just because it mostly dealt with Russian society and social laws etc. (at least on the surface), stuff I’m just not all of that interested in when it comes to plot. But hell if Ippolit wasn’t just an awesome character. Its obviously one of those books you have to read a number of times to really wring out, but I’m not sure I’ll dive in again any time soon.

That being said, the beatific simpleton (“the idiot”) has to be one of the best tropes in literature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez plays with it in 100 Years of Solitude, and Faulkner has a number of sketches with characters who only smile and nod. Something about the incongruity between modern times and a Christ-like figure is just so much fun to me.

I’m now onto the Glass family stories by Salinger. I haven’t read anything about the Glass family before, but so far the stories are proving to be enjoyably different than Catcher and the Rye (at least the prose seems more mature and crafted). Nonetheless, the first story, a perfect day for banana fish, is pretty gross in its content. Knowing Salinger had a weird thing for young girls does not help the story in the least. That being said, it’s pretty insane to think the man was able to create two totally different and distinct literary worlds—the Caulfield world and the Glass world. Allegedly Salinger’s son has a handful of stories still unpublished that round out both of the families’ genealogies. We’ll see when they come out, I guess.


Ps… McCarthy is slated to release two new books in August. Not sure what they’re about, but any news McCarthy gets me excited.

Strongly vibing with your thoughts re: "the beatific simpleton" trope, and cannot wait to drop whatever I'm doing to read the new McCarthy.

[GauchoAmigo]

Finally reading Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, the version I have is the "Insider's Edition" where he went back through the book 12 years later and hand wrote annotations all over it. Probably the fastest I've ever read a book thus far, on page 130 in 2 days which is very unlike me. Easy breezy fun read.

[slappies]

Kitchen Confidential is a fun read. Digging the McCarthy talk too, Blood Meridian may be his magnum opus. Insanely beautiful and violent all at once. I found Child of God to be more depraved, harder to read at times. All The Pretty Horses is fantastic too, some of the most gorgeous descriptions of scenery I've read.


With summer and warm weather coming I'm gonna dig into some Steinbeck. Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row were good summer reads last year for me.

[oyolar]

Bourdain is always such a fast read. It’s not shallow either, just very fun and easy. I recommend his other books too - the profession of his life that they show is fascinating

[Jagr]

Kitchen Confidential is a fun read. Digging the McCarthy talk too, Blood Meridian may be his magnum opus. Insanely beautiful and violent all at once. I found Child of God to be more depraved, harder to read at times. All The Pretty Horses is fantastic too, some of the most gorgeous descriptions of scenery I've read.

All the Pretty Horses is my favorite McCarthy...

One of the best to do it in terms of describing scenery and other simple things (like eating beans) with such beautiful language...pages and pages of description that still holds your attention.

I definitely appreciate Blood Meridian, but had a harder time getting into it than his other stuff. It's obviously extremely gruesome, but it felt much less gruesome than I expected going in (aside from the raid at the Indian camp) from how violent people make it out to be.

Child of God - and also Outer Dark - both messed me up more after reading and still do.

The Road's another one I had a hard time getting into. Once again, maybe because it's built up so much that I was going in with extremely high expectations. Great book, but I didn't feel the bleakness/despair as much as I did in Child of God and Outer Dark.

Guess I need to read No Country next.

[Peter Zagreus]

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Kitchen Confidential is a fun read. Digging the McCarthy talk too, Blood Meridian may be his magnum opus. Insanely beautiful and violent all at once. I found Child of God to be more depraved, harder to read at times. All The Pretty Horses is fantastic too, some of the most gorgeous descriptions of scenery I've read.

[close]

All the Pretty Horses is my favorite McCarthy...

One of the best to do it in terms of describing scenery and other simple things (like eating beans) with such beautiful language...pages and pages of description that still holds your attention.

I definitely appreciate Blood Meridian, but had a harder time getting into it than his other stuff. It's obviously extremely gruesome, but it felt much less gruesome than I expected going in (aside from the raid at the Indian camp) from how violent people make it out to be.

Child of God - and also Outer Dark - both messed me up more after reading and still do.

The Road's another one I had a hard time getting into. Once again, maybe because it's built up so much that I was going in with extremely high expectations. Great book, but I didn't feel the bleakness/despair as much as I did in Child of God and Outer Dark.

Guess I need to read No Country next.

I don't want to do anything to condition your expectations, but I had a hard time getting into No Country, not so much because I had high expectations, but because I saw the film first, and it's one of the few instances I can think of where the film outshines the book. I suppose knowing the plot and characters beforehand (from the film) might do something to diffuse the suspense, intrigue, and McCarthyisms.

I think Suttree is among the more underrated in McCarthy's body of work - certainly one of my favorites. It's a little more of a traditional, "realist" novel in the 19th century model - sprawling plot, true-to-life characters, not hyperbolically violent - but it's still got that McCarthy grit, and shows off his sense of humor more than any of the other novels, I'd wager.

Anyway, check it out if you haven't read it.

[MichaelJacksonsGhost]

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Kitchen Confidential is a fun read. Digging the McCarthy talk too, Blood Meridian may be his magnum opus. Insanely beautiful and violent all at once. I found Child of God to be more depraved, harder to read at times. All The Pretty Horses is fantastic too, some of the most gorgeous descriptions of scenery I've read.

[close]

All the Pretty Horses is my favorite McCarthy...

One of the best to do it in terms of describing scenery and other simple things (like eating beans) with such beautiful language...pages and pages of description that still holds your attention.

I definitely appreciate Blood Meridian, but had a harder time getting into it than his other stuff. It's obviously extremely gruesome, but it felt much less gruesome than I expected going in (aside from the raid at the Indian camp) from how violent people make it out to be.

Child of God - and also Outer Dark - both messed me up more after reading and still do.

The Road's another one I had a hard time getting into. Once again, maybe because it's built up so much that I was going in with extremely high expectations. Great book, but I didn't feel the bleakness/despair as much as I did in Child of God and Outer Dark.

Guess I need to read No Country next.

[close]

I don't want to do anything to condition your expectations, but I had a hard time getting into No Country, not so much because I had high expectations, but because I saw the film first, and it's one of the few instances I can think of where the film outshines the book. I suppose knowing the plot and characters beforehand (from the film) might do something to diffuse the suspense, intrigue, and McCarthyisms.

I think Suttree is among the more underrated in McCarthy's body of work - certainly one of my favorites. It's a little more of a traditional, "realist" novel in the 19th century model - sprawling plot, true-to-life characters, not hyperbolically violent - but it's still got that McCarthy grit, and shows off his sense of humor more than any of the other novels, I'd wager.

Anyway, check it out if you haven't read it.

IIRC, McCarthy wrote the screenplay for Old Men, couldn’t get anyone to pick it up, so he wrote it as a novel. Then the Cohen brothers read the book and wanted to make the movie. Hence why the book and film are so similar.

Also, WRT Boursin, I read Bone in the Throat last week, and like Oyolar said, his passion for the kitchen just radiates out of the book. It’s awesome. I don’t think his voice is as strong as in Kitchen Confidential, but it’s still a great book.

[Deputy Wendell]

just finished teaching the spring semester and i'm only teaching one online asynchronous class this summer, and although i do need to finish a dissertation chapter (i'm about 30 pages in) and get started on the next by the fall, i will have time to do some "pleasure" reading this summer i'm excited to say, and here it is. Child of God, Suttree, The Orchard Keeper, and Outer Dark are the latest additions to the stack, and the stories i have not read yet, so appreciate some of the comments above in this ongoing discussion...

[botefdunn]

that's a very satisfying looking stack @Deputy Wendell , enjoy the leisure reading.

[Peter Zagreus]

Hell yeah. Godspeed, Deputy!
Looking forward to your thoughts.

I'm eying up the prospect of a little summer reading myself, and I'm thinking about picking this one up:

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to contemporary fiction, but I like the vibe I'm getting from it. Anyone heard of the book/author?

The publisher's blurb:

Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity—a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings—she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity.

When she is nominated for “the most important literary award in Europe,” Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged—and mostly male—competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain.

As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won’t stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.

[PRISON IKE]

I read almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy. Right now I am reading a fairly old series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman call the Death Gate Cycle. I’m on the 3rd book called Fire Sea. It’s not earth shattering but it’s been very enjoyable so far and it’s written well enough. Pretty unique premise as well.

[somefucker]

Cherry

coming of age type story, i just like that the main protagonist skates (skated?) and mentions these very specific Vans Rowley's he wears. also just a good read-before-bed book.