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Book thread #4,687 (Help me choose one/What are you reading)
You know when you've loads of books to read but you can't choose one or you've tried and failed to read some, or you just don't seem to have anything you want to read despite having a pile of books on the shelf still unread?
Well here's a list of books I've ignored for a long time, or read a few chapters or. Which should I start on first?
I want something that draws me in quickly to help me get back into reading.
Bullet Park - Cheever
The Rest Is Noise - Ross
The Reader - Schlink
Blood Meridian - McCarthy
Mansfield Park - Austen
Renegade (Mark E Smith)
My Name Is Red - Pamuk
The Gambler - Dostoevsky
Frida - Herrera
Manhattan Loverboy - Nersesian
The Leopard - De Lampedusa
Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Marquez
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
Catch 22 - Heller
Tender Is the Night - Fitzgerald
An Ocean In Iowa - Hedges
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - Barris
The Master and Margarita - Bulgakov
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
Death & The Penguin - Kurkov
Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Marquez
Vernon God Little - Pierre
The French Lieutenant's Woman - Fowles
And WHAT ARE YOU READING?
oooh
I'd go Master & Margarita or Death and the Penguin. But tbh I don't know much of that list apart from the obvious.
I'm reading the autobiography of a guy called John French who played drums on the classic Beefheart albums. I'm enjoying it, but it could have been edited down a lot, I had to skip to the point at which he joins the magic band because the start was just so boring.
If anyone has suggestions of great biography/autobiography, I'd be interested to hear it.
Roberto Bolano.
Anything will do, except 2666 - a bit intense to dive straight into.
He makes a lot of those writers you list appear mortal by comparison.
Not read too much on your list,
but if you were thinking of reading Dostoevsky I'd suggest The Idiot before The Gambler (if you've not already read it, of course!)
I've only read Crime and Punishment, which I love
These are the books on my shelf waiting to be read so I want to work through these, I'll add The Idiot to my ever expanding wishlist though, thanks!
Catch 22 or The Great Gatsby
I've had my copy of Catch 22 since I was about 16
I can't seem to get into it. I've started it and given up several times and then it's been forgotten about. I did the same with Geek Love, for a couple of years at least, and I ended up loving that so I'll definitely attempt it soon!
It's laugh out loud funny but also really sad (in parts)
in fact, I might just go and read it again.
I don't know what you should read...
but i'm reading 'Read Hard' - A collection of writings from The Believer magazine, and it's really bloody lovely.
Catch-22.
It's rapid reading, cause it's so great. Just get past the first three chapters and you'll be in love. I always forget that I didn't like it immediately, but my sister's just started reading it and reminded me.
It's supposed to be what I'm reading right now, for a book club, but I still have to get a new copy. Also supposed to be reading World War Z for DiS book club. Am actually reading "Gourmet Rhapsody" by Muriel Barbery, which I'm excited about but am not yet finding super amazing, but I'm guessing the amazement builds as in her other novel. Also reading "The Log from the Sea of Cortez" by Steinbeck, which is thus far nice non-fiction. Not very far into it yet.
Oh, and "Vagabonding"!
By Rolf Potts. I've encountered it at exactly the right time. It's always nice when you can hear in detail about some risky dream you've had before acting on it.
Right...
I'm going to do it; I'm finally going to read Catch 22!
oh
Gourmet Rhapsody does get much better as it goes along.
the great gatsby or the reader.
the reader is one of favourite german novels. i read it in the original german and it's got one of my favourite descriptions of the beginning of the end of a relationship.
i just finished reading maus tonight (i do read more than just stuff about the holocaust). it was brilliant.
ordered this yesterday, against my bank accounts better judgement:
http://www.reprodukt.com/product_info.php?products_id=222
so am going to get cracking on that when it arrives.
Hmmm, i need a book to read too, week off of classes next week.
Honestly, despite recognizing titles and stuff haven't really read many of those. I didn't particularly like the The Great Gatsby when I read it but it was for class and I was 16. The teacher was very very excitable over it. But looking back, my favorite part of the book is the cover: http://bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/~mbg/dom/fun3/great-gatsby/im.jpg. (Is this the cover you have on yours?) It's incredible all the symbolism and foreshadowing in it. I've actually been contemplating re-reading it to see if I have more of an appreciation for it, especially since I have a kind of interest in prohibition-era roaring 20s type stuff. Or, I might read To Kill a Mockingbird again since I haven't read that in a couple of years if I don't pick up something new...
that cover is cool. i had this one:
http://idesweb.bc.edu/baden/files/images/large/Hoynengen-Heune-Fitzgerald7.jpg
Oh I really like that one :D.
I think the one we used was the original cover and I get kinda carried away when I go into the meanings behind what looks like the fairgrounds and stuff but it gives too much away for people who haven't read. We had to analyze it when we were reading and I still think it's one of the most brilliant parts of the book looking back.
Do re-read it!
I liked it a lot more when I was just a bit older. I think they spring it on you too young in high school. Most of the American Lit stuff is perfectly fine for that age, and they squash that in there with it of course, but I think it's better to read after you're 18/19.
Tek War
If you are after quick and easy then it's Death & the Penguin
That's just a couple of hours of (slightly bleak) fun.
Master and the Magherita is one the best books you will ever read.
Fact.
I am currently reading The Immoralist by Andre Gide. I have never read him before and this is the 3rd of his in a row. I like him.
ahhh Scout,
don't give up on Catch 22! One of my favourite books ever, so I think you should definitely pick that up again.
I'm reading 'The Brooklyn Follies' by Auster. It's really good :D
i used to have a copy of catch 22 where the printer had messed up
and so pages (something like) 102-140 were repeated. For ages I couldn't work out why I had that feeling that I'd already read that bit - I just assumed it to be some clever literary device. It was only when I looked at the page numbers that I realised.
I've not read any of the books on your list other than catch-22. I've just finished The God Of Small Things, which I'd thoroughly recommend - lovely poetic writing and a slow-burning story.
Finished an absolute stunner of a book last week
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. It was written and first published in the 50's so uses first-hand accounts from some of the crew as well as the journals which some had written as source material. Some amazing characters in there. Wild (short, wiry hardnut), Worsley (navigator extraordinaire), Orde-Lees (not sure how to describe him really. He is brilliant though) and of course The Shack himself - complete hero of a man.
Incredible people in an incredible situation. Great book.
I remember Theo was after some non-fiction recommendations a while back. Could do a lot worse than this.
Now, halfway through Wuthering Heights (I'd not appreciated just how amazing Lockwood was when I first read it at school) then on to World War Z for bookclub.
From that list I would also pick Catch-22 as it's the greatest book I've ever read but you seem to have that one sorted now.
Reading 'A prayer for Owen Meany' by John Irving,
after seeing a lot of people recommend it on here. And the fact that our flat owners had it on the bookshelf.
I've said this a couple of times but everybody should read 'True tales of American life' edited by Paul Auster. Amazing collection of real life stories, probably better than any fiction you will ever read.
I bought moby dick today
was the cover of this edition inspired by any seminal concept albums?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0142437247/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
That's the edition I have
and it makes me want to listen to Mastodon a lot
I'm reading '1982, Janine' by Alasdair Gray
I haven't had a lot of time to read it, so I haven't got very far, but it's gearing up to be as filthy as I heard it is.
I just finished The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters and I'd highly recommend it.
Well readable, spooky, fascinating, amazingly sketched characters... double thumbs up from me.
I'm reading
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk. Loving it so far - reads like interwoven short stories/musings told by the main character. It also has sporadic recipes in it. I'm tempted to try them, but the translators note at the beginning says "Readers are advised that some of the recipes in this book should carry the health warning, 'Don't try this at home!'"! Hmmm. Makes me even more tempted to try them.
.
Reading: Great Expectations by Dickens, The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale by Chaucer, Middlemarch by George Eliot and The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers, plus critical essays on Percy Shelley's The Triumph of Life by Derrida and Paul deMan and Becoming Posthumous by Jeremy Tambling. Oh man, I love being a literature student.
As for your dilemma darling Scout:
Catch-22 is good but if you really can't get into it, don't bother and read a different novel about war instead. Catch-22 is just a massive rip-off of The Goold Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek anyway, which is much funnier and I think more enjoyable because it doesn't have that self-concious tragicomic ineptitude in it. Not that Catch-22 isn't a good novel, it's just one which is only considered great by people who haven't read any other derranged or humorous literature about war. </booksnob>
I heard on the radio that Harold Bloom things Blood Meridian is THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL but it's also almost unreadably violent so maybe that's not the best way to ease back into reading.
As everyone always says, The Master and Margarita is PURE GENIUS so you should read that ASAP. The same goes for The Great Gatsby.
Tender is the Night is my favourite Fitzgerald novel so that's that. It's a lot more effort than Gatsby, but even more beautiful and profound and emotionally intriguing.
Mansfield Park is great but very atypical Austen and a bit moral and not particularly funny.
I have some other stuff to say about some of the others, and conclude by saying you should read Vernon God Little first because it's pure genius.
you say rip-off
but Heller said he'd never heard of the other book and when he did years later he said he'd probably not have written Catch 22
then again Huxley claimed not to have known about We when Orwell says he did (and that both Brave New World and 1984 are 'inspired' by it)
um....
"Czech writer Arnošt Lustig recounts in his book 3x18 that Joseph Heller personally told him that he would never have written Catch-22 had he not first read The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek."
Admittedly from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_22#Influences
but the source seems reliable enough, especially given the overwhelming similarities