August, Damn Summer is nearly over and I am reading...

Im starting Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Stehngart (or something like that).

i still need to buy this one for the discussion. it'll have to be an online order i think because i checked a couple of the local bookstores and none of them have it. it's all good though. i've been due for a mammoth online order anyway.

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann.

I read Marlowe's Faustus (the play) earlier this year for university. i loved it. such a great story. i'm wondering if this is some sort of re-telling of that sell-your-soul-to-zee-devil story.

The Faustian archetype is pretty common in literature. Goethe, Oscar Wilde, Charles Gonoud, Stephen Vincent Benet have all produced works based upon the legend of Faust.

sure. you didn't have to get all 'The faustian archetype is blahblah' on me. I was just wondering if it was the same Faustus.

No, it's different.

thought you said that the faustian archetype was common, meaning, "yes, of course it's the same Faustus you dumb-dumb".

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Im not feeling it right now. I might just leave till later in the year. Bah, I need a book that reels me in.

i have a feeling i'm not going to like it. I've read a little bit about it, and watched that video thing, and it just seems like i won't like it at all. we'll see. even if i start reading it and don't like it at least i'll still be able to discuss why i didn't dig it. i think i remember mirka saying she wasn't into it at first but then it started getting good at some point. maybe it's one of those types of books.

It took me about five pages before I started to dig it. In fact, I really didn't like it at first.

Press on...it'll pick up.

Ha, that sounds like me on page 2 of this thread!

I've just started Lucky by Alice Sebold.

About 160 pages into Kiss Me, Judas.

and, and, and...?

I love that book. Not sure if you'll love it or not though, Brandon. doesn't seem like your style, but feel free to prove me wrong, won't you?

Out of the trinity, I'm gravitating towards Baer the most.

nice. suprising. i would have thought you would have got a mad-boner over Clevenger. It's a hard choice, chossing between Baer and Clevenger, for me, anyway. I have yet to read SGJ but i have both ATBS and Demon Theory waiting to be read. sometimes i wish that books only took as long as films to read, but then i realise that that's exactly what i love about reading.

I just finished Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti last night and liked it. Very quick read. Pretty good place to start honestly. Not hard to read like All the Beautiful Sinners.

Baer seems to be the most accessible to me so far, and has the perfect amount of description to action to dialogue ratio out of the three IMFO.

Clevenger was a little too heavy on description and setting for my tastes, and I can see how others greatly appreciate this aspect, but I'm an impatient reader. I like my stories to move and get to the point. That's probably why I'm so pace-oriented with my own writing.

yeah, well when you put it like that it makes perfect sense. Clevenger is pretty heavy in description and setting, which is part of what gives his writing that beautifully dark tone, and that is definitely something i appreciate in his voice. Baer also has a very strong tonal quality to his writing, but he seems to naturally give off that stench. he does it so effortlessly.

I finished this. It was a quick read. Pretty depressing, it's all about Alice Sebold getting raped, and how she coped (or didn't) after.

I think I'm going to start on Derailed by James Siegel.

There should be a rule. If you post in the what you're reading thread then you MUST come back and post what you thought of the book afterwards. Instant ban if you don't!

^ You = second person plurals there, by the way.

I didnt like it. I dint know there was a twilight zone episode either. I loved the Twilight Zone!

I don't know if I posted this or not and I'm too lazy to check.

I started Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets by Cadillac Man a couple days ago. So far it's pretty good.

The title alone sounds really interesting. Let me know when you are done Pete and I will add it to my Wishlist.

The guys name is "Cadillac Man??"

All street people have nicknames. They don't want to think about their "before" life. Or give you a way to find out who they were.

The book was sort of a let down. I read this great piece a while back about him in Esquire. That's what got me interested. And then Esquire reviewed his book a little later and I thought it was going to be really interesting.

The stories felt like stories. I didn't get drawn in. I didn't feel like I was hearing something "true." They just didn't ring right. I really felt like he was embellishing.

So you would think that the stories must be over the top then right? Like, Holy shit! he did that? But not really. The book was just blah.

And the writing was pretty immature. He addresses the reader a lot (which I usually don't mind). But he says stuff like:

(And this isn't a direct quote, I'm just making this up.)

So we laid down together and held each other close. No, I know what you're thinking we didn't have sex or anything. We just held each other for warmth and she didn't even mind or say anything about my farts. On the street you expect these things.

(No shit. That's how most of the book is written.)

There were a few things in the book that were pretty good. But it was a long book just to have a few pages that were just good.