Its September 09 and I'm reading...

oh shit house.

that's another one. pygmy. it's been sitting on my fucking shelf ao long that i can't see the cover through the dust.

i should read it. arrgghhh!

a constant dilemma. isn't it? choosing books.

Nxt up for me is Generation A by Douglas Coupland.

Let me know how that works out, I'm enjoying Coupland at the moment.

Haunted. Still!
I can't seem to get into it anymore.

Have you read All Families Are Psychotic yet? Incredible book. Proud that Canada produced a writer as fine as him....

There are quite a few of his I havent read yet, All Families are Psycotic, Microserfs, JPod and The Gum Thief.

the first time i read it, i literally read all the short seperate and then went back and started from the beginning and read straight through. offensive?

Tonight I am going to start reading "He died with a felafel in his hand" it is non-fiction (apparently).
I read Microserfs by Coupland last week. I wish as much thought went into the first half as the second half. It went from something realistic and witty to painfully romantic and dumb.

I saw the movie "He died with a felafel in his hand". It was very interesting. I was left with mixed feeling on whether or not I enjoyed it though. I never really nailed down why it left me with such ambiguous feelings. Let me know how the book turns out... *smiles*

I'm thinking about buying one of the two books.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Blood Meridian by Cormac Mcarthy

Which one should I read first?

ok, i decided on "Pygmy."

and i have barely stopped reading it. i'm half way through already. i think it was the broken english that made me put it off. wish i didn't now, because it's actually fucking hilarious at times.

Ultimate Avengers, Spidy, Bats, and last issue of Oz.

agreed. although, i haven't read McCarthy. nope, not even The Road.

Im halfway through a collection of short stories called Flood Markers by Nic Brown. Its really enjoyable.

The Stranger....no doubt.

The book and the movie were very different. The book basically was (sort of) organized by telling different aspects of life in shared houses, think of it as a collection of short stories with little concurrency. The movie tried to create concurrency; multiple characters got smashed together into single characters. Think of the movie as the book but with plot and a story that really never happened surrounding the narrator. It was a funny book (I especially liked the parts about the bucket bong) filled with hilarious stories, but unlike the movie it was more the narrator criticizing the people around him rather than himself. There is no plot in this book, but I like it.

What I liked about the movie, I hated about the book. What I hated about the book I liked in the movie. Watching the movie after reading the book really confused me. The movie was an attempt to present the many strange stories told in the book through six or seven characters (from possibly 100's).

finishing Pygmy. about to begin Out Of Touch by our very own Brandon Tietz

Just finished 1984 last night and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. I really don't think I like the ending at all. I won't put why incase there is a soul here that hasn't read that book.

But I'm starting on Kiss me Judas tonight. We'll see how that goes!

kiss me judas is one of those love it or hate it books. most of my friends have loved it but there are one or two who swear it sucks.

Have to say I'm a lover. It's been a few days since I finished it and it's been stewing around in my mind constantly. That's a good thing. I've got PD & HHA on order.

Have to say that I didn't think it was anything special, I didn't hate it but I didn't see what all the fuss was about. That was a long time ago though and since then I've gotten a lot more into hard-boiled fiction and noir-type stuff, so I might appreciate it more if I read it again now.

I just finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi... and have started The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway

As some people here already know too well, I fucking hate Kiss Me Judas.

let me ow what you think of Gone Away World. I have a copy but Im not sure if its my kind of thing.

Will do. It's slow-going though. It's probably going to take me a while to get through it.

I'd be interested to hear about this. I have dillios with Orwell's endings, I think it has to do with his political frustrations, more on that later.

Sorry to hear that Phil hates your book so passionately.

I had a look around and I couldn't find it, I guess I must have left it my parents house. Hopefully they haven't sold it. I did find Hell Half Acre and I read the first chapter before I went to bed last night. Much better than I remember, although the constant similes and metaphores can be a bit too much at times.

The Death of Bunny Monro by Nick Cave, its sooooo good so far.

I just bought:

Locke's Two Treatises of Güberment.
Zizek's Violence
Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty
Ron Paul's End the Fed (New Release!)
and some discount bin at Border's '50 philosophy concepts you really oughtta know'

And I finished Pygmy. I'm still contemplating whether it was worth reading.

Finshed Healing Our World. Definitely the best political book I've ever read from a humanitarian perspective (rather than economic or philosophical).

Let me know what you think of Violence, dude.

KMJ has grown on me. the implausible plot turns, i guess, is meant to be all a part of Poe being a completly unreliable narrator - and you've gotta love an unreliable narrator. makes it all fun! for me, the ending was a fucking crock. but, in saying that, i think it's meant to be a bit of a dead note, so that it leads off into PD. why i wasn't sure if i liked it, or if i wanted to continue on through PD and HHA was due to the language. sometimes, while reading it, it just felt like a bit of a drag. and speaking of drag, when the fast parts of the story where in effect, it flew by. and when it was a slower bit, not much happening, it really seemed to drag on. but i think my opinion isn't anything to go by, i shouldn't even publish, because i think my opinion could very well change on a second read.

i never hated it. i still read it in about three sittings. but i guess, it wasn't what i expected - from all the hype on here. hmmm.

i also, just finished pygmy. and i never once had that thought flow through my brain. i thought the story was fucking great. and even though, he could very welll have written it in normal english, i don't have any regrets. at times, it was difficult to read. but i never stopped reading - or wanting to read it for that matter. it was probably and exercise/experiement for him. having us slow down, he probably wanted us to. so we soak up every detail by reading it slower than normal, making us think.

not last night, but the night before, i woke up and all i could think about was fucking pygmy and his narration. it was fucked. i thought i was going to start speaking like him when i had read it for a few hours straight.

i think we should give a nod to how well this man develops characters. shit.

I am now reading the Plague by Camus. So far, so good!

ust read.......

Einsteins Dreams- by Alan Lightman
the actual- by saul bellow

now reading.....

the unbearable lightness of being-by milan kundera

sooooo good!

I just finished reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult.

And I've just started Q and A by Viskas Swarup.

Jodi Picoult. is she good? i thought she was just one of those mainstream, boring, predictable writers that pump out shitty best-selling book after shitty best-selling book.

i'm pretty sure my girlfriend has read a couple of her books, and enjoyed them. but girls, not meaning to be rude, kinda fall for gooey, sentimental shit.

ps. rosie - i love your location. haha.

Yes that's exactly what Jodi Picoult is. But I like a quick mainstream sentimental read sometimes. It probably is a chick thing. The book did make me cry though.

Yay for New Zealand!

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

that was the only story in my critical writing class that i enjoyed. there was an uptown sinclair story too i think. but 'the things they carried' was my favorite. i hated critical writing.

what exactly is critical writing? is it like, just taking the fucking piss out of yourself while you write something? i don't get it?

Yay for New Zealand!

New Zealand is okay i guess...i've actually never been there. but i really want to go and do that massive bungy. fucking ayyyyyeee! Australia is pretty rippping though. nice to know someone a bit closer to home is lurking on here though.

oooh. let me know how this is. I bought it about a week ago. DAMN! Never eat waffles while tying... syrup all over the keyboard.

in most schools (i think), you start with composition and rhetoric 1 and then you move on to comp 2, which is critical writing. meaning you don't really write any creative papers, you only read boring and long "classics" and write critical essays on them. it's pretty technical and it doesn't allow for much creativity. well, my critical writing class didn't. and our story collection was atrocious and now i hate 'hamlet'. i got a C in that class and i love writing. i only took it so i could have enough credits for a creative writing class.

fuck. i'm going to university next semester. doing a bachelor of arts in creative writing. i seriously hope i do not have to do shit like that. most of the "classics" drive me fucking wild. and it pisses me off how fucking teachers want to dwell on this horrid crap. for fucks sake, it's over. get over it. there is a whole fucking pile of great writing that is contemporary at hand. have some respect for the writers and use it. aahhh.

well, i'm sure i will have to do this shit. but it's such a fucking kill joy doing this boring shit. and having alll your creativity sucked from you. if i get any signs of them wanting to pull my creativity i'll blow. i think, even in structured formats such as essays, you should still be able to be creative and have a voice that is exciting and engaging and interesting for both the reader and writer.

bahhh. anyway. thanks, S

Im 60 pages in and I love it! The plan was to read half the book until I get my copy of Leather Maiden later but I will probably just finish it. I will let you know more when I finish the lot.