How is it so far?
Yes. Had never really been interested in the movies, so I guess it makes sense though. Unless of course you’re not talking about James Bond and I’m just talking out of my ass.
Nope. Talking indeed about James Bond. I’m a gigantic fan so I started at Ian Flemming’s first in 1953 and just went down the chronology.
With the exception of a few I pretty much read the entire list. Just finished The Man in the red Tatoo a few days ago but I’m not reading the young Bond ones.
That shit looks interesting. I’ll have to read one of them. Are they pretty good?
It’s so weird that Moonraker was one of the earlier novels. You’re making me want to check these out now too
Moonraker has absolutely NOTHING AT ALL to do with the movie besides the name of the bad guy.
Personally I really enjoyed them but Ian Flemming is not that great an author although he did break some boundaries of violence and sex at the time for the audience he was reaching. Some are fantastic, some not so much.
Harlan Ellison. Good stuff, not even his best work though. Check out Mephisto in Onyx, or ‘Repent Harlequin’ said the Tick-tock Man.
Anybody read any Umberto Eco? Foucault’s Pendulum is basically the masterpiece every Dan Brown novel is trying to be the retarded knock-off of.
…and I don’t even know what to compare Baudolino or The Island of the Day Before to, but that is some mother-fucking amazing shit right there.
Also, my gift to this thread, here’s a very short work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
well only have read the first one and just now getting into comics besides the sonic comics, its ok. decent enough for me to go check the 2nd one out.
I’m a big fan of Twain. Everyone knows Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, but his later writings are mostly ignored. He got much more bitter and depressed once his wife and then favorite daughter died and his writing shows it. *Letters From The Earth *and The Mysterious Stranger are pretty hilarious/brutal. Everyone should read The War Prayer, as it applies as much today as it did in 1900, or 1900 BC for that matter. His earlier travel writings are also good- they’re funny and full of historical information.
I also highly recommend *The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, which I think is free online. *A description of slavery and his escape, followed by a pretty detailed and readable recounting of the lead up to the Civil War and then Reconstruction. Much better than any high school history book now.
Ian Fleming is like Mario Puzo. He’s not going to change your life with his prose, but it’s good potboiler reading. Bond is cool enough that you don’t care about the stylistically inert writing.
Currently reading Blood Meridian, which would be my third McCarthy novel. The god damn little bastard who owned the book before me marked up the pages with his insipid notes.
^Mccarthy’s best you’ll want to see a film adaptation ASAP when you’re done.
Dune is my favorite book, I haven’t read anything quite like it. For the past 2 years I haven’t read any novels just lots of film making books.
Catch-22 is a fantastic book. Can’t help rereading it multiple times, shit is too good.
I almost buy Catch-22 last weekend. Would you synthesize it in a complex metaphor for me please?
Right now I’m finishing G. Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of mind, a compilation of his essays on systems theory and schizophrenia, pretty interesting!
I’m not sure what will follow though, I’m between The Great Gatsby and Johnny Dies at the End (yes, the David Wong one), and maybe Catch-22 if INH can convince me.
I enjoy Manly P. Hall and his ilk.
not really reading anything at the moment… need to go to a library and/or a bookstore look around.
Still not sure whether or not to read the new H2G2 book.
‘Atlas Shrugged’ would be a great addition to your reading list.
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Taking a break from fiction after reading the Malazan series straight through.
what’s the other 2 mccarthy novels? personally, blood meridian is his best so far. but i hear that suttree is his true masterpiece. i finished his border trilogy which was very good.
right now ready the yiddish policeman’s unit.
im outi
Roberth
I’ve read NCFOM, Suttree, and (partially) Blood Meridian. Suttree is much different from Blood Meridian. It’s a very dense character study. I don’t know that I’d say one or the other is the “true” masterpiece, because they both are.
NCFOM is a much lighter read, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Hitchcock was allowed to direct both North By Northwest and Vertigo, so I don’t see why McCarthy shouldn’t also have that license to play with different ratios of genre conventions to personal investment.
Just bought off of Amazon:
[SIZE=4]Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia[/SIZE]
[SIZE=4]Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japan’s Underworld[/SIZE]
I also recommend:
[SIZE=4]Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande[/SIZE]
Those titles remind me of The Enigma of Japanese Power, which one of my colleagues recommended. I haven’t read it and it’s 22 years old, but it sounds like it might be right up your alley.
While I’m posting, I might as well recommend something that hardly anyone would think to read…Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Surprisingly, it’s quite readable* and doesn’t require advanced math, although some knowledge of basic geometry might help.
*Except for parts of Day 1 (it’s broken up into four days of dialogue) where they discuss at length the Aristotelian view, which is so strange I can’t wrap my head around it. I have a feeling that Galileo does this intentionally to further discredit it; the Aristotelian speaker is named Simplicio, after all. Still, most of Day 1 is pretty understandable.