December: What Art Thou Reading?

Still reading [i]White Noise[/i] by DeLillo.

I think the letters are too small in my version; it's exhausting to stay focussed on those little words. I'm at p. 50 or so, the story is alright so far, but not amazing. I hope it will get better soon.

I'm reading Keith Waterhouse's [i]Billy Liar[/i] at the same time. This one is quite funny.

i was supposed to be reading tourture of the artist by joey goeble but nooo fucking holidays have my ordered books all fucked up and they still havent come in yet(2 weeks so far).

Oh shit, it's December already? Well, I'm still reading the same shit as last month:

"Survivor" - Chuck Palahniuk (2/3 done)

"Stranger Than Fiction" - Palahniuk (2/3 done)

"The Rules of Attraction" - Bret Easton Ellis (I dunno, 1/8 done? It's just started.)

"Reasons To Live" - Amy Hempel (should get back to it, been neglecting it for the ones above)

[QUOTE=Undertow]Oh shit, it's December already? Well, I'm still reading the same shit as last month:

"Survivor" - Chuck Palahniuk (2/3 done)

"Stranger Than Fiction" - Palahniuk (2/3 done)

"The Rules of Attraction" - Bret Easton Ellis (I dunno, 1/8 done? It's just started.)

"Reasons To Live" - Amy Hempel (should get back to it, been neglecting it for the ones above)[/QUOTE]

Undertow - don't you start to form a split personality by reading so many books at once? I've done it too - but it seems that I can't really get into any of them as much as if I read them serparetely.

I just picked up Amy Hempel's 'Reasons' and will probably start it next.

I also picked up Paul Auster's 'Auggie Wren's Christmas Story' - same stories as in the movie 'Smoke'.

I am reading 'The Sun Also Rises' Hemingway.

Has anyone suggested Amy Hempel's books as possible book club selections? That might work a little better (reading a few stories each week and commenting on them) rather than trying to get everyone to read an entire book and keep pace with one another. Just a thought.

[QUOTE=G Scott]
Has anyone suggested Amy Hempel's books as possible book club selections? That might work a little better (reading a few stories each week and commenting on them) rather than trying to get everyone to read an entire book and keep pace with one another. Just a thought.[/QUOTE]

Damn, that's a good idea! Moe-dot-ron, get on this shit and I'm participating! I have "Reasons To Live" and "Tumble Home" checked out from the library.

[QUOTE=G Scott]Has anyone suggested Amy Hempel's books as possible book club selections? That might work a little better (reading a few stories each week and commenting on them) rather than trying to get everyone to read an entire book and keep pace with one another. Just a thought.[/QUOTE]

An entire book!? With a whole month to read it?! Perish the thought!

I believe _Reasons to Live_ was once a book club selection, though.
j(ay)

I have a few books started:

Survivor - gotta have one chuck novel going at all times

Lilleth by george macDonald

The Countess of Monte cristo by Alexander Dumas (its the ssequel to the count)

God in the Dock by C S Lewis

[QUOTE=dzudzu]I have a few books started:

Survivor - gotta have one chuck novel going at all times

Lilleth by george macDonald

The Countess of Monte cristo by Alexander Dumas (its the ssequel to the count)

God in the Dock by C S Lewis[/QUOTE]

Hey Dzudzu! Haven't seen you around in a while! How you liking Survivor so far?

p j orourke rules. ever read vacations in hell? dee-lightful.

still reading gravity's rainbow, pynchon's magnum opus. 603/776 = 77.7% done

king jame's edition of the holy bible - i am stuck in genesis. somebody please tell me how cain was able to hook up with a woman after being banished from the garden of eden. wasn't adam and eve the only people god created?

effective phrases for performance appraisals by neal - great for writing resumes

patton on leadership by axelrod

Alright December...Well i was reading Einstein's Dreams but I left it at a friends house so i bought Good Omens and I left at a house wherte I was baby sitting but I got Einstein's Dreams back so I am finishing that. I don't think I am gonna get Good Omens back but that's okay cause it really wasn't for me. It was witty. I liked the parts with Crowley and the angel dude but it was moving kind of slow.
On deck, I just got the Informers by Ellis and I am dying to read Baer. i guess I should start with Kiss Me Judas. Does it matter which one I read first?

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Trilogy in Five Parts complete book)
I had been listening to the BBC series mp3s, and it made me want to re-read this. About halfway through.

I am reading Porno by Irvine Welsh. Some parts are hilarious and other parts are boring. I guess we'll see what I think at the end. After this it's on to the book club book - Gen X.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I am reading Porno by Irvine Welsh. Some parts are hilarious and other parts are boring. I guess we'll see what I think at the end. After this it's on to the book club book - Gen X.[/QUOTE]
damn you and your ability to read welsh's dialouge structure

[I]Lullaby[/I] - Chuck Palahniuk
[I]Girl in Landscape[/I] - Jonathan Lethem
[I]Body of Secrets[/I] - James Bamford (non-fiction on National Security Agency)

I just discovered Lethem a few months ago and I've devoured his work. He's quickly become one of my favorite authors.

i'm reading lullaby . ya know this is the 5th book of chucks i've read, (i still have to read diary, haunted, fugitives) and his always there common thread is his insights of the fucked upedness of modern society. i love the guy.

[QUOTE=phlegmatics]damn you and your ability to read welsh's dialouge structure[/QUOTE]
Dude, yam aboot tae gie up oon thes shite.

This fucking dialect gives me a fucking head ache everytime I try to read this book. I am 150 pages into it (only some of the chapters have bad dielect) and there are almost 500 pages in the book.

[QUOTE=jay]
Just finished P.J. O’Rourke’s newest collection of essays, _Peace Kills_.
Pretty good if you like his Wall Street Journal (etc) articles.
j(ay)[/QUOTE]

I love P.J. for the simple reason that he's one of the few writers who is both entertaining and in the vicinity of my own political worldview. Not an across the board agreement, by any stretch. A lot of people who know what a reactionary anarchist I am find it puzzling that I treasure writers like Max Barry, David Sedaris, Chuck, Clive Barker, Orwell, Huxley, Sinclair, Ken Kesey and a raft of other writers who often either do lean radical left or appear to be the sort who does. Of course, my answer is that if I screened artists based on their politics rather than their art, what would I do? Sit around and read Robert Nozick over and over? And who the hell would I listen to for music? Should I walk the the museum and avoid paintings and sculptures by Socialists, Democrats, Republicans or Monarchists?

[QUOTE=jay]An entire book!? With a whole month to read it?! Perish the thought!
j(ay)[/QUOTE]

Now Jay, some of us have families, mandatory overtime, and (not me of course) addictions to posting on Cult threads.

Seriously, by American standards, a book a month is fucking literate. For that matter there are times when it takes me a month to get through one, I spent two on 'Mason & Dixon,' and probably upwards of a month on 'Kavalier & Clay.' Those are long books, and in the case of Mason & Dixon I was constantly consulting the OED Online I'd subscribed to to decipher the period language. I was also workng a lot when I read those.

I probably end up averaging a book a week, though that doesn't include at least two literary magazine subscriptions I generally have going at a given time, and I make it a point to try and get to all the short fiction in those and in Playboy.

My Dad had a friend when he was an English major back in the late 50's who read three to five Victorian novels a night. But the guy was re-reading them, having already long exhausted all the Victorian writers, and I suspect there may have been some amphetamine abuse involved as well.

[QUOTE=framstedt]
still reading gravity's rainbow, pynchon's magnum opus. 603/776 = 77.7% done.[/QUOTE]

That's one I keep putting off because it might take me two months!

[QUOTE=DrFunk97]
I just discovered Lethem a few months ago and I've devoured his work. He's quickly become one of my favorite authors.[/QUOTE]

I've only read 'Amnesia Moon' and later, keep meaning to get to the earlier stuff. At least in the three I've read (two of which were nominated for December to compete for the ten or so votes with my own nomination) are excellent. 'Motherless Brooklyn' is both a masterful piece of writing, and the best audio book I've ever encountered (and I listen to a lot of those at work). It may be even better as an audiobook: I enjoyed reading it, but Muller does such a perfect job of fluently inserting Lionel's ticks. I worked for five years for a Tourette's sufferer, and Muller absolutely nailed it. When reading it in print, anyone who hasn't had prolongued contact with someone that ticky, they don't get how fast the interruptions and echolalia can come. And how the close associates learn to tune out the static, while a stranger is thrown completely off guard.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

For my own part, I'm reading 'How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,' 'The Ice at the Bottom of the World,' 'The Stories of John Cheever,' and trying to catch up on the shorts in the aforementioned periodicals.

Just finished listening to the audio book of 'Being Dead' by Jim Crace, my first exposure to him. I have the book, need to read it now. While hardly anything that would qualify as 'Palahniuk-esque,' it did put me in mind of the brutal honesty of Amy Hempel and Tom Spanbauer. Anyone else been to 'Craceland?'

About a fourth of the way through the audio-book of 'A Man in Full.' Tom Wolfe, God bless him, most guys who write such lengthy tomes these days irritate me. I was skeptical going into 'Underworld,' but DeLillo has it, and so does Wolfe. Not that I've read him through. Read 'Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' years ago, and 'Bonfire' around the same time. I think the thing that Wolfe nails so perfectly is that Dickensian detail and irony. So far, 'A Man in Full' is the Y2K rendition of 'A Tale of Two Cities.' He can actually make you sympathetic with a leveraged tycoon who isn't actually 'wealthy' or 'successful,' but only a slick salesman and good at politics, then turn around and paint a perfectly sympathetic portrait of his most conspicuous victims, and still come back and keep you from hating the guy. That's skill, bringing out the universality, much as early the early chaos theorist who noticed that clouds look the same close up as far away, before computers could reveal non-linear equation graphs that look like paisley ties and fern fronds. Everyone has their battle, their nemesis, their dream, and every one of them manages to appeal to something in little ol' me.

I think that's what I've been trying to get at in my own novel, albeit with a radically different approach prose-wise. The idea that regardless of your rung on the ladder, there is an infinite number of rungs above and below you, and that infinity implies no middle ground. Likewise, the moral relativism that rules our society for good or ill (I tend to favor the latter), means that no matter how good you are, someone is saintlier, and no matter how wicked you are, you can always point to someone worse.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Dude, yam aboot tae gie up oon thes shite.

This fucking dialect gives me a fucking head ache everytime I try to read this book. I am 150 pages into it (only some of the chapters have bad dielect) and there are almost 500 pages in the book.[/QUOTE]
And isn't it a huge relief when you get to one of the chapters that's written normally? But, seriously, you get used to it.

[QUOTE=Ballerina]And isn't it a huge relief when you get to one of the chapters that's written normally? But, seriously, you get used to it.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the chapters that are written normally - I fly through. And then comes one of those chapters I hate and it takes me a couple sittings to read three pages...

I hope it gets better, because this is the closest I've come to ditching a book in a long time. It's not bad, just difficult and I want to finish it so I can get to the book club book and other things.

Halfway through Good Omens

getting ready to start A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole.
I haven't read it in years, it's hilarious

Fight Club will be next

I keep reading that the dialect in Welsh's books are a nightmare, but that was one of the things I liked about A Clockwork Orange. I suppose I'll be cussing Welsh out when I read Trainspotting though.

[QUOTE=jay]An entire book!? With a whole month to read it?! Perish the thought!

I believe _Reasons to Live_ was once a book club selection, though.
j(ay)[/QUOTE]

I don't have a problem reading a novel in a month - but I thought it might be easier for everyone to keep pace if we read one story each week. Or just pick out random short stories that people can read over a weekend or in one or two nights.

Just a thought.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]I am reading Porno by Irvine Welsh. Some parts are hilarious and other parts are boring. I guess we'll see what I think at the end. After this it's on to the book club book - Gen X.[/QUOTE]

The sequel does not compare to its predecessor, although I still liked it.

Re-reading [I]Hell's Half Acre[/I]. Have not been reading much lately, for it seems I cannot get into any new reccomedations. Oh well.

"The Satanic Nurses" - J B miller
quite possibly the funniest thing i have ever read in mine or anyone else's lifetime
if groucho marx and oscar wilde had a baby, i think everyone would be more then a little surprised seeing as how their both dead and male, but this is something that their unholy conception would have wrought on us all

Almost done with Survivor. I am debating between Palahniuk's "Diary" or "Lullaby." What's the preference from you guys, without spoilers?

[QUOTE=Undertow]Almost done with Survivor. I am debating between Palahniuk's "Diary" or "Lullaby." What's the preference from you guys, without spoilers?[/QUOTE]

lullaby is generally not everyones most favorite. i agree.

i am reading one flew over the cukoos nest by ken kesey

[QUOTE=snuffy]lullaby is generally not everyones most favorite. i agree.
[/QUOTE]

And I thought "Diary" had more shit given to it from peoples' posts on here. Looks like I'm going to consult a quarter on this one.

[QUOTE=Undertow]And I thought "Diary" had more shit given to it from peoples' posts on here. Looks like I'm going to consult a quarter on this one.[/QUOTE]

did you read fugitves and refugees yet? i read that two weeks ago. it is wonderful.

yeah, refugees is really good
both diary and lullaby are shit

[QUOTE=Balthazar]yeah, refugees is really good
both diary and lullaby are shit[/QUOTE]

I need to get Fugitives and Refugees. I'm planning on buying that along with The Contortionist's Handbook, I'm curious about it.

yeah, definitely pick up the contortionist's handbook
it seems like everyone hated it, but i really dug it
its a really quick read too

oh, this week im reading mother night by kurt vonnegut

[QUOTE=Balthazar]yeah, definitely pick up the contortionist's handbook
it seems like everyone hated it, but i really dug it
its a really quick read too

oh, this week im reading mother night by kurt vonnegut[/QUOTE]

Man, if there's one author that I really should get started on reading, it's Vonnegut. An english professor of mine is an author and is friends with the guy. He told my class once about the two having lunch years ago, when my teacher smoked, and Vonnegut tells him, *raspy voice, sorta like Jerry Stiller* "Ya wanna quit smokin'?! HERE'S how ya quit smokin'!" *grabs pack of cigarettes, crumples them and throws them over his shoulder onto someone else's table*

The Little Engine That Could. Yep that's right. It was a birthday gift from a friend who knew I needed some encouragement foer the end of one more semester.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Dude, yam aboot tae gie up oon thes shite.

This fucking dialect gives me a fucking head ache everytime I try to read this book. I am 150 pages into it (only some of the chapters have bad dielect) and there are almost 500 pages in the book.[/QUOTE]

christ i own a copy of glue and i got through 2 peoples introductions and my head felt like it was going to explode so i threw the book behind my tv

[QUOTE=snuffy]
i am reading one flew over the cukoos nest by ken kesey[/QUOTE]

I just read that for school. I have to write a critial analysis on it. It's not going so well. I'm kinda mad I had to read that for school though. When forced to read things like that, for an assignment, I tend not to like it even if it is good. But writing an analysis on it is hard. It's not the easiest thing to do. Oh well...I just picked up Democracy in America by Tocqueville...yeah, not the most exciting thing, but hey, I'm sure it'll be kinda intresting. When I get bored of that I really need to finish American Psycho, I got about halfway and then put it down and forgot about it.

[QUOTE=snuffy]lullaby is generally not everyones most favorite. i agree.[/QUOTE]

I thought 'Lullaby' was the best Chuck had produced. Second was 'Choke,' third was 'Fight Club.' I struggled with 'Invisible Monsters,' and 'Diary' kind of had to grow on me.

[QUOTE=snuffy]i am reading one flew over the cukoos nest by ken kesey[/QUOTE]

That's one of the first books I read when I 'returned' to the classics. It's one of the books teachers had tried to push me to that I resisted. Then at 27 or 28, I read it on my own and thought, 'everyone should read this!!!' Which is what those teachers were saying, huh?

[QUOTE=jimmer116]I just read that for school. I have to write a critial analysis on it. It's not going so well. I'm kinda mad I had to read that for school though. When forced to read things like that, for an assignment, I tend not to like it even if it is good. But writing an analysis on it is hard. It's not the easiest thing to do. Oh well...I just picked up Democracy in America by Tocqueville...yeah, not the most exciting thing, but hey, I'm sure it'll be kinda intresting. When I get bored of that I really need to finish American Psycho, I got about halfway and then put it down and forgot about it.[/QUOTE]

Don't underestimate Tochqueville.

As far as Kesey goes: Nurse Ratchet is the State, whether you want to think of it in Orwellian terms, Stalinistic terms or Clinton/Gore terms (as Kesey seemd to mean it).

[QUOTE=Balthazar]yeah, definitely pick up the contortionist's handbook
it seems like everyone hated it, but i really dug it
its a really quick read too
[/QUOTE]

the ending is lack luster but the book its self is really REALLY good

[QUOTE=Balthazar]yeah, definitely pick up the contortionist's handbook
it seems like everyone hated it, but i really dug it
its a really quick read too

oh, this week im reading mother night by kurt vonnegut[/QUOTE]
who hated it?? you obviously haven't visited the OCBC discussion thread!

plugplugplug...

[QUOTE=jimmer116]I just read that for school. I have to write a critial analysis on it. It's not going so well. I'm kinda mad I had to read that for school though. When forced to read things like that, for an assignment, I tend not to like it even if it is good. But writing an analysis on it is hard. It's not the easiest thing to do. Oh well...I just picked up Democracy in America by Tocqueville...yeah, not the most exciting thing, but hey, I'm sure it'll be kinda intresting. When I get bored of that I really need to finish American Psycho, I got about halfway and then put it down and forgot about it.[/QUOTE]

those are three pretty diverse titles. democracy in america is one book i have always wanted to read.

btw, you avatar. i'm so high right now, i don;t know what's goin on!

Gravity's Rainbow.

Ham on Rye by Bukowski. I'm only about a 1/4 of the way through it, but really loving it so far.

[QUOTE=snuffy]those are three pretty diverse titles. democracy in america is one book i have always wanted to read.

btw, you avatar. i'm so high right now, i don;t know what's goin on![/QUOTE]

Go to a library and get it even if you just flip through it. I've looked at 2 translations and I like the most recent one. It's translated by Mansfield and Winthrop. They have like a 100 page intro before the actual text. I only read the first quarter of it and then started in on the book but what I read was kinda helpful, I guess.

"You guysss waaannnaaa get hiiiiiigh???"

I'm two stories into [I]Drinking Coffee Elsewhere[/I] and I'm liking it, especially because it's from a much different perspective than mine or what I'm used to reading. Just starting to reread [I]A Confederacy of Dunces[/I], I love this book. Just finished [I]Ladies Man[/I] by Richard Price (thumbs down) and [I]Among the Thugs[/I] by Bill Buford.

OK, I'm reading the book club book right now - Generation X. Some of the parts feel like I'm reading my own diary and other parts just seem a little cliche - like it's just stating what everybody knows to be the view points of the 80's and early 90's... maybe I just think that way because I lived through it though.

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]OK, I'm reading the book club book right now - Generation X. Some of the parts feel like I'm reading my own diary and other parts just seem a little cliche - like it's just stating what everybody knows to be the view points of the 80's and early 90's... maybe I just think that way because I lived through it though.[/QUOTE]

I got the feeling that this book would have hit me harder if I read it when it was fresh in 1991. Now, like you say, some of it seems cliche.

I've begged off, giving Mike Magnusson's 'Lumox' a shot. Very funny at points, depressing at others, though he nails the 70's suburban childhood.

I just finished 'A Man in Full' as an audiobook, and am re-listening to 'Dress Your Family...' at work. The latter is both unabridged and read by the author. After I read 'Me Talk Pretty One Day,' I listened to the read-by-the-author audio and it was ABRIDGED. I hate abridgements. To me, 'This abridgement was approved by the author,' means one of two things:

1) The author was not even close to finished editing, but the publishing house was afraid to sick real editors on him for fear he'd take his crapola to one of the other five majors and be told, again, that his shit don't stink.' He didn't read or listen to the abridged version, he signed off on it for a greasy buck at the advice of his agent.

2) The author is afraid the publisher will drop him, but can't bear to see the carnage, so he signs off on the abridgement and prays people won't judge him for it. Probably again at the advice of an agent.

Remember in Amadeus when the Emperor confronts Mozart with the criticicism that there are 'to many notes?' A good book, whether it's 120 pages or 1800 pages should be able to claim there are exactly the number of notes required, no more and no less. And the emperor, even if he's a bright guy, with a literary inclination, should be able to read the book and say, 'Yeah, it's long. But I cant think of anything I'd cut.'

December is a month I actually plan on getting some reading done. I've been pissing about these last 3 months and have read next to nothing. Time to jumpstart my brain again. I believe Everything is Illuminated is on the menu, as is Middlesex, Fortress of Solitude, perhaps Old School, Kav & Clay, House of Leaves, and pretty much anything else on my bookshelf. I'm in the mood to do a lot of reading.

[QUOTE=Rents]December is a month I actually plan on getting some reading done. I've been pissing about these last 3 months and have read next to nothing. Time to jumpstart my brain again. I believe Everything is Illuminated is on the menu, as is Middlesex, Fortress of Solitude, perhaps Old School, Kav & Clay, House of Leaves, and pretty much anything else on my bookshelf. I'm in the mood to do a lot of reading.[/QUOTE]
i love a man with lofty ambitions if you get through one of those (besides old school) i'll be impressed...but hurry up and do it so we can discuss!!

just finished A million little pieces by James Frey and absolutely loved it. i actually picked it up cause someone suggested it on here, thank you!

Finishing up Elmore Leonard's LA BRAVA and ready to devour Paul Auster's ORACLE NIGHT.