Wrong thread!
I always think I really like bell hooks when I read summaries, but then I donāt actually like bell hooks when I read bell hooks. I guess, really, I agree with her gists, I agree in brief, but somewhere along the cul de sacs and alleyways of thought between points on an outline, we part ways. I havenāt gotten around to reading We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, since itās perpetually checked out at the library, but I think the Brooks allusion is an interesting choice.
The only requirement for Nanowrimo is that you generate 50,000 unprepared words between November 1st and November 30th. The rules as I understand them allow for the 50,000 words to be added onto something youāve already begun.
I simply wish to ensure that you remain aware of how much I endearingly hate you. :tup:
Only started reading it but at this point, Iād say the translation is pretty good. I should correct myself and mention that the book is broken up into different sections and the first section, not just the first chapter, is dedicated to hide. Chapters are pretty short and make for a quick read, but Iām wondering if the chapters really are that short or if this is just an abridged translation.
Read As I Lay Dying for my English class last week. I hated it at first, but after finally finishing it, reading stuff on it, thinking about it, I started to appreciate it much more.
The Chocolate War is probably my favorite novel. Itās quite depressing but thatās the beauty of the story.
I started re-reading it today and whipped it out at every spare moment, even during class. Just finished it. Iām going to start on its sequel, Beyond the Chocolate War
Itās a classic young adult novel that everyone here MUST read. Shit Iād love to talk to you guys about this book.
Now if only Gaiman could write fiction as well as that
I read American Gods a few years back and found it was a re-tread of ideas Pratchett already covered more fluently
That was a beautiful speech.
Anyone ever read any Murakami? Iām thinking about picking up Norwegian Wood to read some time.
Iām also thinking about reading Pale Fire by Nabokov.
Pale Fire is really great. Have you read any other Nabokov? It might be worth reading something else by him, first, to see if you like his style. Of all his books, Pale Fire has a solid case for being the best, but itās indisputably the Nabokoviest.
Conversely, Norwegian Wood is maybe, of all the Murakami books Iāve read, the un-Murakamiest. Itās by far his least surreal, and features few moments of a sort of quotidian sublime, where he expresses in the most simple but beautiful language how, at a completely ordinary moment largely indistinguishable from any other, the world can seem to completely fall out from under your feet. I think what makes it one of his most popular books, though, is not just that the lack of weirdness makes it relatively accessible, but that when its one climactic moment of being utterly lost and unmoored in the everyday finally comes, itās one of the most affecting moments in Murakamiās career. Also, I canāt go through a conversation about Haruki Murakami without mentioning that Ryu Murakami, his bookshelf neighbor, is also certainly worth your time; accidentally picking up a Ryu Murakami book while looking through the Haruki Murakami books I hadnāt read is up there with discovering Tom Pynchon in my list of great bookstore fortune.
Speaking of Tom Pynchon, I just finished The Bleeding Edge. It runs a nice balance between the so-called ālightā and āheavyā sides of Pynchonās oevre, with the serious-bizness gravitas to its central conspiracy and the thoughts that explores reminiscent of the Gravityās Rainbow side of things, but the bizarre wackiness and fun plays on detective fiction conventions of stuff like Inherent Vice. It was also a really great experience to be able to catch many of his allusions from life experience, rather than the more academic knowledge I have of the pop-culture references from the past that permeate his other works.
He wrote The Sandman. He could spend the rest of his career writing episodes of Family Guy and heād still be legendary.
I think this was said in counter to Gaiman http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/18/noel-gallagher-fiction-waste-time
I think Iām going to do some non-fiction reading for a bit. Iām in the middle of Bailout, which is a great inside look into how TARP utterly failed written by the man who was SIGTARP for it. I didnāt care for Neilās early career but once he gets the ball rolling itās amazing.
I have a lot of Alice Munro to read, too. I read a short story she had put up in the New Yorker and thought it fascinating. I also have some Rachel Kushner and Virginia Woolf to plow through. I guess the non-fiction will be short lived.
god damnit noel 
just write a fuckin new album!
Iāve read about half of Lolita before and I would have finished it if my older sister hadnāt decided to take it to grad school with her. 
I pity this man.
I actually donāt want to think about all the essential tech we wouldnāt have if generations of geeks hadnāt fallen in love with speculative fiction and gone on to be engineers, physicists, doctorsā¦
I heard from some of my friends that Murakami is good. I watched the movie for Norwegian Wood and the plot is not something that would click with me personally, but I havenāt read it, so thereās always the chance that the words tell more.
I read through Murakamiās After Dark in one sitting. Itās a really easy read and I enjoyed his writing style, but I didnāt take anything from the plot that affected my life. It was kind of a pointless teenage energy type story.
Still, well written and a lot of people like his novels. You gotta at least check one of them out.
Not sure if this is worse than Morissey having his autobiography released on Penguin Classics
Anways, Lolita is fucking great, as is Pale Fire. Bleeding Edge so far has been a slog for me as Iām trying to read it while in the midst of college work (which includes re-reading Ulysses), and also is an uncomfortable read, as Pynchon is writing about the world I grew up in, rather than the distant past.