April 2011 and I am reading...

twss

Reheated Cabbage - Irvine Welsh.

Moravagine - Blaise Cendrars

Dry Season by Dan Smith. A debut novel that looks promising.

Akashic Books' San Franscisco Noir, featuring Baer's Deception of the Thrush, which features a very broken, very badass 17 year-old Jude. Possibly my favourite of Baer's shorts.

I read Dublin Noir by them and it was cringeworthy.

Oh, really?

It's such a great idea, the series. I'd love to hear if they were doing an Aussie one. I'd be all sorts of up in submitting to that.

This one is pretty good. Baer, obviously, is killer. There's been a couple of stories that have been okay. Not fantastic.

Finished Naked by David Sedaris. When You Are Engulfed In Flames is still by far my favorite Sedaris book.

Don't really have other new books to read right now, hm.

Well I finally finished this. Unfortunately I can't say I thought it was that good. It's not that the story is awful, and neither is the main character, it's just that none of the ingredients ever add up to anything great.

The whole abuse cycle thing is kinda overplayed and he didn't bring anything new to that particular table.

I probably won't bother with Horns. I might give the collection a go at some point.

And now... I'm reading Filth by Irvine Welsh. Everything I have read by the man is gold and so far this is shaping up nicely.

I fucking hate Irvine Welsh.

I fucking love that you say that every time his name comes up.

HOUSE MADE OF DAWN -- scott momaday

I'm almost done with The Dry Season by Sam Smith and it's great. It's hard to believe it's a first book. I had a sneaky peek at the end and there is the first chapter of his latest novel that's Coming Soon. Awesome!

Big Sur - Jack Kerouac

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky

I'm about halfway through with Everyone Loves You When You're Dead by Neil Strauss.

I love Neil's writing. So I ordered The Dirt, The Marilyn Manson one, and the Dave Navarro book all when I ordered this month's book club selection (Victoria by Knut Hamsun plug plug).

Oh, and I'm obviously not judging Neil's writing from this book since it's mostly just straight interviews. I've read a lot of his magazine articles and The Game.

You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer

Morbo: a history of Spanish football by Phil Ball.

The Game is one of my favorite books ever. Loved it.

I feel bad admitting this, Alecia, but I never read it when you sent it to me. I thought it was gonna be this big book talking about how women love manly men and that that's the only way to get women and if you aren't that way, you're f'ed. So I didn't read it. And then I sort of forgot about it. I'm sorry! You went through all that trouble. I'm sure I have it around here somewhere.

What's so good about it?

It's really nothing like that all (but I had no idea until I read it). Neil Strauss is just a great writer, and his writing style just drew me into the "story". I just couldn't put it down. I do think a lot of dumb guys read it and totally miss the point, though. I suck at book reviews, but I agree with this one: http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/memoir/fr/theGame.htm

jumping in with my own opinions about "the game", it's not a bad book.

take it for what it's worth, it's a book telling the story of how one man became this 'pick-up artist' from being a regular guy that's written in a way as to give 'advice' to other aspiring 'pick-up artists' out there. i put quotes around those terms because i find the premise of being an artist when it comes to picking up women silly.

the story is interesting. it's not a manual on how to pick up women but a book on how a man underwent a fascinating transformation. hardly original when you take out all the crap around the core theme of the book, i know, but it's the crap all around out that makes it engrossing. the writing is light but don't expect too much out of it.

I'm done with Super Sad True Love Story...what's next?

I'm glad you guys told me that, because I'll be more likely to read it at some point in the future. It'll be easier to do if I approach it as a story, rather than a manual, which I thought it was, but isn't.

Thanks!

Still working on Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Definitely enjoying it.

If anyone needs to read The Game, it's you Fano.

I have the book he did with Marilyn Manson. That is a very interesting read, however as with any musician and their reveries and tour stories, I found myself wondering whether there was a certain level of exaggeration going on.

But with that guy (Manson) you can certainly get behind it, whether you like his music or not (I like the early stuff, used to do so even more when I was like 14) you can appreciate that the guy put the blood and sweat into his act. He has some rather strange tales to tell.

It's been a few years since I read it but as far as I remember it did flow pretty well, there's a lot of miscellanea towards the end though, letters and list and a few interviews and the like.

The Dirt is the fucking shit.

Phil's Klondike: A Game of Ears.

Nice.

I started reading Morbo: a history of Spanish football. I said I would read one chapter before sleeping at 11pm. I ended up reading till 3 am and was late for work this morning.

It's punny!

http://www.indigorisingmagazine.com/2011/04/that-lombardi-thing-by-phil-...
THIS IS WHAT I'M READING. THIS. I WROTE IT, BUT I'M READING IT AGAIN!

Found myself a few chapters into Stay God again. So, I'm reading that.

About to hook into Stranger Will, too.

Me too. Spaced out that I'm leading discussion until just the other day.

Told ya!

Paula - Isabel Allende

Splinter by Sebastian Fitzek.

I'm a fan (and I've met him in person), but I have mixed feelings about Satan Burger. I thought the content and his imagination were great, but the writing was amateurish. He wrote it when he was very young. His writing is much better these days. Sea of the Patchwork Cats is probably my favorite of his books. I really like about 75% of his books and he has a lot. Most of them are very short.

I just put together a quick list on Amazon of my favorites (damn there's a lot): http://www.amazon.com/lm/R3ULBMIFJ2JK0A/ref=cm_lm_pthnk_view?ie=UTF8&lm_...

I've read all of his books except for his new one (Crab Town).

Oh, and nearly everything I've read in the last eight months or so has been a children's book (or a young adult book). Because I'm working on a children's novel (and it's taking entirely too long) and I want to be so used to reading children's books that writing simplistically comes naturally.

I've become a big fan of Daniel Pinkwater.

Right now I'm reading M.T. Anderson's Agent Q (or The Smell of Danger!). It's pretty great. It satirizes series of children's books like Goosebumps and Tom Swift. I'm not very far into it, but right now the three main characters are trying to escape from an imaginary version of Delaware, which seems to be inspired by North Korea, although it has a lot of fantastical qualities to it, along with cannibals and dinosaurs.

M.T. Anderson also wrote a YA book called Feed that was pretty popular and a decent read.

Okay...

I took a break from Charles Fort's The Damned to start The Three Musketeers.

I took a break from that to read The Island of Dr. Moreau.

I took a break from that to read Out of Touch.

And I took a break from that to read Rico Slade Will Smurfing Kill You.

I love my Kindle, but wonder if I'll ever read linearally again.

As soon as I finish Rico - today; it's a fast read - I will work my way backwards and try to get un-nested.

I like how the thread title has become the book title.

Could somebody stop editing their posts?

I changed the thread title to Rico Slade Will Give You a Big Sloppy Kiss, which is how I will be listing the book on my resume when I try to get a teaching job.

"Linearly"?

Dang, spelling is hard.

I downloaded the new version of Out of Touch onto my Kindle so I will soon be reading that, but at the moment my reading consists of various academic things for class and The Possessed, the only Dostoevsky I haven't read.

Rock on. Very cool, man.

I'd be interested one day to see how the original differs from the one I have.

Might have to not read Stranger Will right now because I'm reading the kindle edition on my iPhone (getting a Kindle for my birthday next month---woooooo!), but, my phone fell from my grip on Saturday night and I inadvertently downloaded what is known, possibly only in my circle of friends, as the Spiderman App (a cracked glass screen). So, basically, as well as being too small to read off, you've also got to try and dodge the cracks and splits. Not good.

Wanted to download Out of Touch to my Nook but turns out there isn't a Nook version (sigh), so I'm going to have to order it and have it shipped. In the mean time, was sent a copy of Stay God by Nik Korpon that I'm now blitzing through. Next up is I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

Any of these formats work?

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36547