It's back to school time! What are you reading this September?

I just finished Kiss Me Judas by WCB and Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel, both books I discovered since joining this place, so thanks guys.
Next up for me is The Book Of Lost Things by John Connolly, he's Irish and im not sure how popular he is in the US, Im going to a book signing by him on Tuesday in Galway, Yipee!

"Perv - A Love Story" by Jerry Stahl
"Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami
"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami
"Cat's Cradle" by Vonnegut

[QUOTE=The_Mouseketeer]"Perv - A Love Story" by Jerry Stahl
"Norwegian Wood" by Haruki Murakami
"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Murakami
"Cat's Cradle" by Vonnegut[/QUOTE]

Whats Hard-boiled... like, ive been meaning to read it for ages!

Ahhh, the days of school..

I'm gonna finish ...Galapagos...
Then, i'll read my secret-santa selected book.

jmizair

[QUOTE=mikandrewz]I'm about a third of the way through JPod, Coupland's new one. It's quite cool, very similar to Microserfs. It has the same old dynamic with one main character in a group of five or six oddballs.[/QUOTE]

I'm a bit further through it now and I'm a bit annoyed at all this self-referential crap. You'd have to be pretty dumb to find it funny. I know he's subtly mocking the book itself for being so similar to his previous books but it still doesn't make it good. I stand by my position - a bad idea is still a bad idea, and a cliche is still a cliche. It doesn't matter how post-modern it is. I think this is why I still don't appreciate Adaptation as much as many people do.

Currently reading Get Shorty - which I've been meaning to read for years and kept putting off because I thought it was going to be crap. But I am loving it.

Going through these while I wait on my secret book rec. to come in the mail.

And The Ass Saw The Angel - Nick Cave
For Whom The Bells Toll - Hemingway

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Currently reading Get Shorty - which I've been meaning to read for years and kept putting off because I thought it was going to be crap. But I am loving it.[/QUOTE]

I kept skipping that particular Leonard too, but keep hearing it's great. Reading Richard Price's CLOCKERS and it's hell bent on being amazing.

It's back to school...I'm reading my Chemistry book. Ugh.

But does anybody have a copy of Clevenger's [U]Dermaphobia [/U]that they want to sell to me?

[QUOTE=Mr. Brown]I kept skipping that particular Leonard too, but keep hearing it's great. Reading Richard Price's CLOCKERS and it's hell bent on being amazing.[/QUOTE]
Nice! You recommended Richard Price to me a while ago. And I've held Clockers in my hand so many times contemplating it. Should I buy it? And then I set it back to buy something else.

Let me know how it is when you're done.

P.S. - Get Shorty is my first Leonard book. So I have nothing to compare it to.

[QUOTE=the midas touch]It's back to school...I'm reading my Chemistry book. Ugh.

But does anybody have a copy of Clevenger's [U]Dermaphobia [/U]that they want to sell to me?[/QUOTE]
Why aren't you just buying it off of Amazon?

Why do you want to buy it from somebody?

[QUOTE=PGoutis01]Nice! You recommended Richard Price to me a while ago. And I've held Clockers in my hand so many times contemplating it. Should I buy it? And then I set it back to buy something else.

Let me know how it is when you're done.

P.S. - Get Shorty is my first Leonard book. So I have nothing to compare it to.[/QUOTE]

Oh man, your first Leonard? I envy you, you got KILLSHOT, GLITZ, OUT OF SIGHT, RIDING THE RAP and so many other good ones ahead of you. I'll let you know about CLOCKERS.

Farewell, My Lovely - Chandler

Waiting for Secret book to get here from amazon, but i read some amy hempel this summer. it was good, but a little above me i think. i'll have to read it again when i'm like twenty. she's great.

[I]Casino[/I] Nicholas Pileggi
And as I'm going back to school, I'm going to drown under French "classic" books...

[QUOTE=Jeanne-Hélène][I]Casino[/I] Nicholas Pileggi
And as I'm going back to school, I'm going to drown under French "classic" books...[/QUOTE]

I read that in my first year of the Arts academy. I specifically remember reading it alot on the bus on my way to and from school. Pileggi has an amazing talent in constructing 'second hand' stories in a narrative. Also read WISEGUY, which has a similair pattern.

[QUOTE=Mr. Brown]I read that in my first year of the Arts academy. I specifically remember reading it alot on the bus on my way to and from school. Pileggi has an amazing talent in constructing 'second hand' stories in a narrative. Also read WISEGUY, which has a similair pattern.[/QUOTE]

Thank you, I will try to find it.
I've bought Casino in one of those savage bookshops on the street. It looks more like a stall actually. Even if it's very regulated. And there's always old editions ( 1996 for Casino). It was my lucky day apparently, I wasn't able to find anything by Pileggi in others big book shop. I will try.

[B]Wiseguy[/B] is the American title for the [B]Goodfellas[/B] book ([B]Les Affranchis[/B]).

Btw Baris, you still have my [B]Tough Jews[/B] !

As for me, I'm reading two WW2 books : one on the war in Europe, the other on the war in the Pacific.

trying the iliad again. tried to read a 70 pg intro the first time and got bored with it....this time i just went right to the story and am liking it a lot more.

[QUOTE=mikandrewz]I'm about a third of the way through JPod, Coupland's new one. It's quite cool, very similar to Microserfs. It has the same old dynamic with one main character in a group of five or six oddballs.[/QUOTE]

i havent' read microserfs.......but in couplands own words.."jpod is microserfs in the google age" or something.

[QUOTE=franc tireur][B]Wiseguy[/B] is the American title for the [B]Goodfellas[/B] book ([B]Les Affranchis[/B]).

Btw Baris, you still have my [B]Tough Jews[/B] !

As for me, I'm reading two WW2 books : one on the war in Europe, the other on the war in the Pacific.[/QUOTE]

I know, I still haven't read it. I'll start on it soon and add a book when I send it back.

[QUOTE=Jeanne-Hélène]
And as I'm going back to school, I'm going to drown under French "classic" books...[/QUOTE]

I was almost right.
[I]Metamorphosis[/I] Ovidius

And then Bonnefoy, Perrault and Diderot.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, EVERYONE should read. After that I'll finally get back to Che's biography.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

I'm Reading Alex Garland "The Beach"
Irvine Welsh"Trainspotting" both of them are awesome books and in school I have to read To Kill A Mockingbird and our teacher won't shut up about Shakespear

I read a bit of Hempel at the book store the other day. I liked it but didn't wanna pay the full price. I'll try to find it at the used book store or amazon.
I'm about half way through of the secret santa book. Now "Invisible Monsters" is screaming at me.

A book about Google, called The Google Story. I like it quite a bit actually. I think I might actually KEEP on reading business profiles.

After having read Flann O'Brien's (or Brian O'Nolan if you like) wonderful At Swim-Two-Birds, I picked up The Third Policeman, which I'm enjoying so far.

I'm reading Chucks "Choke" for the first time.

[QUOTE=Prophetess]I'm reading Chucks "Choke" for the first time.[/QUOTE]

Lucky you, thats my favourite Chuck book

I'm reading 1985 by Anthony "Clockwork Orange" Burgess. It's his two part "answer" to Orwell's 1984 (my favourite book EVER by the way). The first part is a literary analysis and the second part is a novella using the same concept but set in 1985, a year in which Burgess foresaw trade unions and Islam taking control of the UK.

Only just finishing the first part but I would definitley reccommend it if you have any interest in the original.

I finally finished Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard last night. Leonard is awesome. I'm definately going to be reading more of his stuff. I actually have Be Cool sitting on my shelf for a later date. I thought it would be cool to read the sequel as my next Leonard. It surprised me which parts of the book they changed for the movie. But they both worked well even with all the differences.

Next up is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safron Foer for St. Nick book club. I'm stoked because I've been meaning to read this for some time now. And it just came out in paperback recently - bonus.

I finally finished [U]11 Minutes[/U] by Paulo Coelho. Now I'm starting [U]Wiseguy[/U] by Nicholas Pileggi, thanks to franc tireur.

[b]Best books I've recently read cover-to-cover:[/b]

[b][i]After Theory[/i][/b] by Terry Eagleton. (If you don't read literary theory and cultural criticism just for fun, this won't be your cup of tea. But it's infused with good humour and trenchant analysis.)

[b][i]Chronicles Part 1[/i][/b] by Bob Dylan. An excellent memoir that's a must if you're any kind of musician, poet, or songwriter. Even if you're just a pop culture fiend. Dylan recreates the energy, urgency and uncertainty of his early career, with all the unnerving candor and lyrical grace that's always infused his song writing.

[b]For back to school:[/b]

Since I'm actually taking a graduate course in English Literature this semester, after a lengthy hiatus from organized classes, I'm deep into the 18th century novels of Richardson and Fielding, looking at the works that seemed to define the novel as a genre, distinct from earlier romances and epics. Richardson's [i]Pamela[/i], though [i]Clarissa[/i] isn't on the list. And Fielding's [i]Joseph Andrews[/i], though plenty of sidelong glances at [i]Tom Jones[/i], as well.

The class is Eng 533: The English Novel, so it isn't restricted to the 18th century, it just starts there. Toward the end, we'll be reading authors as contemporary as Salman Rushdie.

[FONT="Book Antiqua"][SIZE=6][COLOR=Red]V.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
&
[COLOR=Orange]O[/COLOR]nly Rev[COLOR=Yellow]o[/COLOR]luti[COLOR=Lime]o[/COLOR]ns, no, really.

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy] Richardson's [i]Pamela[/i], [/QUOTE]
Oh man, I hated Pamela, not the book, but the character. She gets to be such a damn naive goody-goody that I started to wish hateful things on her. Plus I know the English novel wasn't so complex back then, but I think at one point, because she just seemed too nice to be real, I began to question whether she was really telling the truth, the whole unreliable narrator dealie. I'm pretty sure that wasn't Richardson's point though.

Me, I'm still reading Hugo's Les Miserables. About 1000 pages in, still another 500 to go. The crazy thing about this book is that maybe the first 700 or 800 pages seem more like a prologue and THEN the main plot actually starts.

I think I've set a personal record for most books I'm reading at one time
all at various pages...

Don Quixote
Tesla: Man Out of Time (again)
a biography on Paganini
Carl Sagan's Contact
In Cold Blood
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
and just picked up OR today and started in on that !

I don't know which one to grab when I head to the crapper and stand there trying to decide while doing the pee pee dance!

[QUOTE=Rents]Oh man, I hated Pamela, not the book, but the character. She gets to be such a damn naive goody-goody that I started to wish hateful things on her.[/Quote]
[i]O the unparalelled wickedness of such men as these who call themselves gentlemen! who pervert the bounty of Providence to them, to their own everlasting perdition, and to the ruin of oppressed innocence![/i]

Yeah, you could say she preaches a bit too much, or rather, Richardson preaches through her. He probably would be heavyhanded to the point of unbearable in the guise of a third person narrator. The only thing that saves [i]Pamela[/i], as a novel, is the epistolary mode. Only God can save Pamela, the character, as she keeps reminding us again and again. Her prattling on and on is tiresome, to be sure.

What I find most objectionable about the novel, as a whole, is that she should find her eventual reward in marriage to her former master, a man who has presided over her like a tyrant and gone as far as kidnapping her. The lesson seems to be that if a young woman of the lower classes will preserve her virtue (i.e., virginity) at any cost, and shun the advances of sleazy, intemperate and tyrannical men of the upper classes, then her virtue may eventually be rewarded by marriage to one such man, making her a "lady," and proving that God is good and just. Yikes.

This novel is radical enough for its day, in simply suggesting that noble qualities are an attribute of the individual, and not a gift granted at birth when you're born into the right social class, but I still have trouble abiding Richardson's vision of a felicitous ending.

[Quote]
Plus I know the English novel wasn't so complex back then, but I think at one point, because she just seemed too nice to be real, I began to question whether she was really telling the truth, the whole unreliable narrator dealie. I'm pretty sure that wasn't Richardson's point though.
[/Quote]
I'm pretty sure he wants us to take her at her word about everything. The unreliable narrator appears more in later fiction. However, I think many critics have contended that Pamela is too nice and too consistent to seem real. This is something that is neatly played upon and skewered in Fielding's parody called [i]Shamela[/i], a novella you can often find published in a combined volume with [i]Joseph Andrews[/i]. It was written and published the following year, when Pamela was still all the rage.

Hell, Pamela was so popular and caused such a stir, it spawned subsidiary marketing. Images of characters and motifs from Richardson's novel (arguably the first 'best seller' in history) appeared on china cups and ladies fans. I understand that Richardson even wrote an unremarkable sequel some years later, depicting Pamela in married life. The same marketing energy that spawns movie sequels and videogames based on films was working in the mid 1700's. It's astonishing, though perhaps it shouldn't be.

[Quote]
Me, I'm still reading Hugo's Les Miserables. About 1000 pages in, still another 500 to go. The crazy thing about this book is that maybe the first 700 or 800 pages seem more like a prologue and THEN the main plot actually starts.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like quite a task. I've never tried that one.

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy]The only thing that saves [i]Pamela[/i], as a novel, is the epistolary mode. Only God can save Pamela, the character, as she keeps reminding us again and again. Her prattling on and on is tiresome, to be sure.[/QUOTE]
Wholeheartedly agreed on all above comments. The class I studied this novel in was an epistolary class, focussing completely on the progression of the epistolary novel through time. There are some decent ones and some really crappy ones.

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy]What I find most objectionable about the novel, as a whole, is that she should find her eventual reward in marriage to her former master, a man who has presided over her like a tyrant and gone as far as kidnapping her. The lesson seems to be that if a young woman of the lower classes will preserve her virtue (i.e., virginity) at any cost, and shun the advances of sleazy, intemperate and tyrannical men of the upper classes, then her virtue may eventually be rewarded by marriage to one such man, making her a "lady," and proving that God is good and just. Yikes.[/QUOTE]
Indeed. Everyone in my class was like "Oh, there's a lesson for the young'uns. Play your cards right and you can marry one of these sleazeballs."

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy]...neatly played upon and skewered in Fielding's parody called [i]Shamela[/i]...[/QUOTE]
Actually read a small portion of that after we finished Pamela in class. Considering the day and age, it was pretty funny.

[QUOTE=vigorous puppy, re: Les Miserables]Sounds like quite a task. I've never tried that one.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, and amazingly enough he's managed to keep my attention through 90% of it. There are a few historical parts where he lost me (I'd recommend brushing up on your French history, about 1789-1835, if you're interested in soaking in all of those parts), but all in all it's been a great read. Highly recommended.

P.S. And Voltaire!! I'm a little ashamed that I haven't read any Voltaire (currently here with me in Japan and one of my next reads), but Hugo talks about him loads in the novel and I don't have an effing clue what it's all about. So yeah, get a wee taste of Voltaire before you pick up this bad boy too.

[QUOTE=Renton]I'm Reading Alex Garland "The Beach"
Irvine Welsh"Trainspotting" both of them are awesome books and in school I have to read To Kill A Mockingbird and our teacher won't shut up about Shakespear[/QUOTE]
Eegads! I smell an imposter! Get 'im, boys!

P.S. You don't HAVE to read To Kill a Mockingbird, you GET to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Soak that sucker in, it'll be one of the best reads you'll get in school.

i just finished my second vonnegut novel (players piano). Its slightly preachy, but its done in a way that is interesting and doesnt take you out of the story. Over all probably like #10 out of my top 10

10- players piano
09- The Beach
08- slaughterhouse 5
07- house of leaves
06- Survivor
05- The Wanting Seed
04- Choke
03- As I Lay Dying
02- The Time Machine/War of the Worlds
01-A Clockwork Orange

[QUOTE=nathaniel parker;878508]I don't know which one to grab when I head to the crapper and stand there trying to decide while doing the pee pee dance![/QUOTE]

It sounds like such a fictional dilema, but I've had that problem too. I'll grab a book and start running to the office and then I'm like, "No, I want to read the other one..."

Running With Scissors.

[QUOTE=Chixulub;878678]Running With Scissors.[/QUOTE]
movie is coming out soon, they cranked up augusteens age to somewere around 16-17 to tone down the pedophilia though

[QUOTE=Unhygenix;878683]movie is coming out soon, they cranked up augusteens age to somewere around 16-17 to tone down the pedophilia though[/QUOTE]

That's too bad. It's part of the poignancy of it. At 12 or 13, I thought I wanted to be the straight version of this kid, sexually active with adult women, living with no rules, etc. And I knew a family that was pretty damn close to being the Finches, complete with the tendency to take in teenaged outcasts from other families, and the most unspeakably unhygenic housekeeping, the crazy religious notions, etc.

That house seemed like Neverland at first, but in time it was just squalor, chaos, and heartbreak all round.

Still working my way through [I]Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs[/I] and [I][COLOR=Olive]O[/COLOR]nly Rev[COLOR=olive]o[/COLOR]luti[COLOR=olive]o[/COLOR]ns[/I]. I also have [I]101 Reykjavik [/I]in progress, but pretty much pushed aside until I finish the other two.

I am still reading Why I Am Not A Christian? By Bertrand Russell, tough book. I feel like I am back in a college philosophy class, but an incredible read.

In between I have been reading Top Dog: Marmaduke at 50. I love that crazy dog.

David Sedaris 'Naked'

I started A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion today.

I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last night.

I'm reading a Short Story Collection while I wait for my book club book. It's really great. Jeffrey Ford is the author, and it's called the Empire of Ice Cream. that man can do anything. very good.