Book Thread

Lakitu64
Last book ive read was roadside picnic so ill recommend it.

Lumeinshin
I'm not sure if it is a writing style, but I'm russian, and therefore I read Dostoevsky on russian, and I do not see anything particular about his style which would've make him anyhow grindy to read.
Translation problem, I think.

Lumeinshin Yahtzee is the zero punctuation guy

He's Fully Ramblomatic guy now, since he parted his ways with Escapist and Zero Punctuation is their thing.
Interesting stuff, otherwise. I was thinking about giving his book a try.

Lumeinshin I've always wanted to dip into Yahtzee's books as, like you say, he was a big figure in my teen years. Would this beook be a good introduction?

I am currently reading The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. James's style is often beautiful but he lays it on so thick that it makes me feel ill. I'm no commie, but it all feels sickeningly Bourgeois and perhaps most damningly, boring. I need some Hemingway or something like that as a palate cleanser but, alas, I am not letting myself buy any new books until I have read all of the ones I own.

Here is an extract from The Cambridge Companion to Literature And The Posthuman that I liked:

“So, postmodernist literature, criticism, and theory - one of the main characteristics of the "postmodern" is that these three discourses can no longer be distinguished - often give the impression that it is a kind of waiting for an impossible event (the "new" or unexpected other), while writing goes on and endlessly produces fiction, which writes about the (im)possibility of writing the event. There is a kind of performativity and circularity, sometimes even an apocalypticism that seeks to invoke, con- jure up and somehow express the ineffable. This is also the reason why intertextuality, or the notion of the intertext, can be seen as one of the central presuppositions of many postmodernist theories and practices. Every text is not only an open system but is also never identical to itself. It is part of a system of textual relations, a form of generalized textuality which alone guarantees the readability of our cultural universe. Thus intertextuality is the very condition of perceiving social reality and there- fore has quasi-ontological status. This also explains the proliferation of narratives about narratives, the fragmentation and loss, the dissemination of identities and the critique of the "unified self" in postmodernist writing. In a textual world where every fiction is only another text, metafictionality becomes virtually interchangeable with intertextuality. As Patricia Waugh explains, metafiction is "a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality."
In postmodernist fiction, both metafictionality and intertextuality are employed to demonstrate the constructed (or fictional) nature of human reality. In so doing, postmodernist metafiction serves an important "pedagogical" purpose in helping to understand contemporary ideas about reality, which can take a variety of negative and positive reactions: from experiencing the idea of general textuality as a "prisonhouse of language" to the "new forms of the fantastic, fabulatory extravaganzas” in magic realism (Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, Clive Sinclair, Graham Swift, D. M. Thomas, John Irving). The generalized notion of textuality thus often leads to a celebration of the power of fiction and fictionalization seen as equivalent to a reality- or world-building process. Some of the most frequent framing devices to be found in postmodernist metafiction thus include "stories within stories, characters reading about their own fictional lives, self-consuming worlds or mutually contradictory situations, Chinese-box structures," thus reaching the conclusion that there "is ultimately no distinction between 'framed' and 'unframed.' There are only levels of form. There is ultimately only content perhaps, but it will never be discovered in a 'natural' unframed state."

I have been reading "Vistas of Infinity" by Jurgen Ziewe, after I enjoyed his book Multidimensional Man. They are about "astral projection" but you could just as well take them as books on meditation, awareness, and a very detailed dream journal. I read by the books by Robert Monroe as well on the same topics and enjoyed them a lot. If nothing else they engage the imagination about potential and possibilities of reality, regardless of how much they can actually be verified or confirmed. This quote about how he believes life after death is, from his own hyper aware "dream experiences" are is definitely a very good concept to consider at least.

I recently finished "Children of Men" about a year after I watched the movie. It is a very well written book that kept me hooked on it and coming back to it every day till it was finished. P.D. James' did a great job of making the reader feel for the protagonist and experience the book through their eyes, something that I always appreciate in a book. It was a bit of a cold shock coming from the movie since they are different enough from one another that it was no surprise to me to learn that the movie's director had only read a summary of the book.

I'm looking into reading a Kafka next but not sure which one, since they all seem very interesting. Any suggestions?

I am currently reading the Great Gatsby for school, and Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli for my own enjoyment.

music liker Stargirl is fun or cute. I read it when i was really young but i remember enjoying it. Please update when you finish the book

I'm currently reading some of Kahlil Gibran's collected prose and poems-- specifically the ones regarding love. Some of the passages are difficult to understand, maybe because the book is translated from Arabic, maybe because I'm just not expressive enough to understand. Overall it's an enjoyable read; the works are short and have some twist to the telling, waves a lot of the repetition. His writing is "beautiful" if you get enjoyment like that out of text.

sanner
This isn't actually the first time I'm reading it, so I'll write a short bit of my thoughts here.

I think it's a neat subversion of the manic pixie dream girl trope. Sure, she might be one, but Star is clearly a way deeper person than just an object. It kind of annoys me how, in the end, after all of the character development she underwent, she just goes back to the same old quirky, lonely girl. Maybe that's about being true to yourself, but I found it kind of stupid. It's a great book, though. I wish I could go on Hot Seat.

I am currently reading Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost. I'm trying to read as much literature as "the greats" did to improve my style. I think I have clunky command of it now but hopefully with time and practice I can develop a unique voice as an author.

I'm trying to listen to Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian". I'm learning it is one of those books I need to actually read and not just listen to. I'm lost as to what is happening. From what I can tell it seems like the main character is wandering around Mexico killing Indians with a group and nothing else. I know I am missing something huge since it's a famous and well respected book. I can't see what everyone else sees just by listening to it.
The last two books I listened to on audio were Gene Wolfe's "The Shadow of the Torturer" and "The Claw of the Conciliator". I didn't get why people love them either. They get better on rereads is what I am told. I want to put it to the test after finishing some other books on my backlog. These will also be read and not listened to the second time around to help ensure I understand what is happening. Judging by my reaction to these last three books I am feeling like a pleb for not appreciating them.
The last book I actually read is Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park". I would heavily recommend this book. The suspense is wonderfully done since the start of the book and I read it all in almost two weeks. I think it's a great book if you are looking for a sci-fi thriller without too much science talk.

Doc I adore the Book of the New Sun, so I'm interested in why the first two books in it didn't catch you as much as say me or the countless others who've read and loved them.