Re-reading No Country For Old Men, which was my first McCarthy book and which I haven’t read since reading Suttree and Blood Meridian. The prose is… significantly more sparse.
Not really literature, but I’ve been going through a history book describing Commodore Perry opening up the trade deals with Japan. Has some good enough detail about everything prior to his trip as well as the actual expedition.
Recently read Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell.
Parnell was a Lieutenant in the infantry that fought in Afghanistan from 2006 to early 2007. He was eventually released because of some severe concussions and neurological damage he sustained in combat that eventually broke him down to the point where he needed extensive rehab.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book; it could have been a classic, but ended up only being good. Still, it is highly enlightening and very depressing. The political bullshit and utter lack of efficiency the soldiers face overseas is as dangerous as the actual Afghan terrorists themselves. I recommend checking it out if you want a better idea of what the military is really like (a lot of soldiers suck), how insane and idiotic our government is, how barbaric the Taliban is, how barbaric the Afghani villagers are, etc.
Two quick examples;
The Afghani terrorists receive training and medical care from Pakistani hospitals. At one point, Pakistani soldiers even serve as human shields for the Afghans.
Keep in mind that the US sends tens of millions of dollars a year in foreign aid to Pakistan. This money is going to the very hospitals that are aiding the Afghani terrorists in killing more US troops! In a very prescient analogy, Parnell compares this to Nazi soldiers during WW2 hanging out in a London hospital when combat gets too tough.
The first time Parnell’s infantry platoon visited a village, they came along bringing medical supplies, and gave the children of the village candy. They didn’t separate the boys and girls. Big mistake.
As soon as the US soldiers were going back, the boys of the village beat the absolute shit out of the girls and took all their candy. Beat them absolutely senseless. Meanwhile, their parents calmly looked on, seeing nothing wrong with this state of affairs.
I finished this book about a week and a half back. It’s a short read and quite out there. I enjoyed it, I guess, but I wouldn’t read it again. I can see why some people worship the hell out of this book, though. Holden Caufield is being super rebellious for the time and going to follow his dreams instead of conforming, but in the end he conforms anyway. Sure, we don’t get much of his future but we know where the events from those two days led him to.
This is the only Cormac McCarthy book I’ve ever read, but it was damn good. If you’re looking for the strict discipline of the written English language this one definitely isn’t it, but it’s a better read than it is a movie. Especially since in the movie they change the ending.
The last Wheel of Time book comes out today. Finish the fight.
The book is excellent, but the movie is excellent in its own right. The Coen Brothers dispatched with much of the book, but they captured the feeling of the prose if not every letter of it. It’s one of the best things they’ve done. If anybody was meant to adapt it, it’s them.
On the language, one thing I never really understood until McCarthy is that once you’re past a certain level, sentence construction stops being purely functional and starts being a matter of aesthetics. I always got that language has its own flavor, but McCarthy pursues that idea right down to the appearance of the words on the page. It’s a weird idea.
The first time I read No Country, it was an older hardcover edition. There was a brief note at the beginning explaining McCarthy’s rationale for choosing the typeface that the book was printed in.
I just read Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and am finishing up the Iron Council. The writing is a little too flowery at times when the author is painting a picture of the setting (reads like snobby poetry) but otherwise pretty entertaining. He is super pro communist, but the stories take place in a dystopian city state during its industrial revolution, so I get it. Its fantasy in a steampunk setting. Quite refreshing, although the author doesn’t believe in happy endings. Perdido Stree Station, his first one, is the most awkward of them all, since he’s still learning to write. It reads like a D&D campaign setting where he describes lots of areas in the city and describes events that don’t really drive the main plot forward but are in there just cause “hey look at this cool shit I can come up with”. But as someone who reads D&D campaign settings for fun, I didn’t mind that.
I finished Freakonomics last week and man, that book is awesome! The chapter on the economics of drug dealing(chapter 3) and the KKK(chapter 2) was the best imo. Economics is definitely about incentive. Currently reading the follow-up book, Super Freakonomics. I’m 2 chapters in and I have to admit, its not as good as the original so far.
had you not read any faulkner? same deal.
im outi
Roberth
Not prior to McCarthy. 
Yesterday I finished reading Jerome K Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat. Despite being written in the late 1800s, the book is still very funny and incisive to this very day. Required reading for anyone that considers themselves a fan of comedy writing, or even sharp social observation.
I think Moby Dick is a great book and truly an American classic, however, IMO the book would have been much stronger had it not spent such a long time on whale taxonomy. Granted I have a bio degree and found that somewhat interesting, but after a while it really seemed to distract from the story and seemed a little out of place. This weekend I am starting the wheel of time since the last book finally came out. I got the entire book series in kindle format for Christmas. No spoilers please!
I really liked it as well, but you’re right- maybe putting all that stuff in appendices would have been better. Still, considering some popular books here, I’d rather read technical information about a real thing than learn 1,000 years of detailed history of some guy’s fantasy world. “And after the Well of Darkness overflowed in the reign of Korzibun the Complicit, the sub-worlders began their ascent with the aid of the Cock Ring of Fear…” oh god please stop lol
Yet I like a lot of “hard sci-fi” like Rendezvous With Rama that might not be everyone’s cup of tea, so to each their own.
Just chiming in to commend the title-dropping of Rendezvous With Rama.
Just read Flyboys over Christmas break, while not fiction like a lot of the books in the thread so far. It was really eye-opening as a history lesson about the War over the Pacific. It mainly focused on the way Japanese draftees were more or less slaves, a group of American pilots that went down over an island North of Iow Jima (James Bradley’s first book was “Flags of our Fathers”, about the flag raising on Iwo), and how America firebombed Japan to embers. Literally, the firebombing we did dwarfed the 2 nuclear strikes. Its really disturbing the way the Japanese troops were treated by their superiors, also I’m sure it still goes on in areas today but DAMN it was really ugly. Also cannibalism… Honestly some of the parts were difficult to read because of how gruesome some of the stories of torture, decapitation and cannibalism were described.
Thinking about checking out some Ernest Hemingway pretty soon, any recommendations?
For school I was given the book “Room” by Emma Donoghue which is about a 5 year old boy who has lived his whole life in a small 11 by 11 room with his mum. I really liked it despite a few people saying it was too boring but because it is from the 5 year olds point of view its interesting to see how a person so young and new tries to make sense of things. Or at least how the writer thinks someone in his position would do so.
I like his short stories. The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macamber is great. You will have to read Old Man and the Sea since it’s a given. For Whom the Bell Tolls is another solid book.
picked up Hitchens’ “god is not great” for a plane ride. required reading for any budding secular humanist. and if you’re inclined to argue about religion on the internet, this book provides ample ammo.