It's September and I'm Septembreading...

Come on over and talk about TRANSUBSTANTIATE, my neo-noir thriller.

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000029/transubstantiate-book-club-septe...

It's the Book Club for September.

i'd say it's more sci-fi-ish than neo-noir. maybe sci-noir?

I like Sci-Noir.

Or Neo-Fi.

But neo-fi simply means 'new fiction', and that doesn't really work out now, does it?

PS I Love You by Cecilia Ahern.

*Out now! Ask for it by name!

neo-fi sci-noir by Richard Thomas. Check.

It's out?

dude, it came out on the first of august. or was it the first of july? yeah, july, i think.

I needed a distraction, so I'm breezing through Klosterman's Fargo Rock City. There aren't many critical hair-metal advocates out there, so it's refreshing to read an articulate person's experience growing up with the exact same stuff I did and not apologizing for liking it.

Gordon, I haven't read it, but John Darinelle of The Mountain Goats wrote a book about Black Sabbath.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Sabbaths-Master-Reality-33/dp/0826428991

Turns out there's a whole series of those, Jane; thanks! And I love the adjective "unfuckwithable."

I like Klosterman's writing style and hope to get a crack at Fargo before too long.

I just finished Derailed by James Siegel. Another good quick read with some nice twists to it.

I've just started The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I've been meaning read it for years.

I read that earlier this year, Sarah. I, too, had been meaning to read it for years. I liked it. It wasn't as depressing or anything as everyone has made it out to be. I guess at some point reputation takes over. It was a lovely book though. Great, great, great characterization. I really liked the language too. It was probably my favourite part of the book, really.

I'm reading Blankets by Craig Thompson and it's so great!

The Bell Jar is the most powerful book I've read this year.

Currently reading The Ages of Lulu, by Almudena Grandes.

Yea, haven't seen it yet, but I'm almost halfway into the book so I can only assume it is indeed "quite saucy" .

I just finished The Bell Jar. I absolutely loved it.
The language was beautiful. I only knew of it by reputation too, and thought it would be depressing, but I didn't really find it depressing. Powerful is the word for it.
For years I lived with my friend, who is bipolar, and there would be times where all she would read was trashy women's magazines and psychology books. It kind of amused and amazed me that Esther did the same.

I've been meaning to read that for years. I almost bought it last night. Instead I bought Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom.

I'm gonna move Bell Jar up higher on my list now.

How much is a pocket book where you live? How about a hardback? Or a paperback?

Hardcovers are $25-30
Paperback are $10-20
Mass market are $4-8

That's sort of what they cost here. a little more expensive here though. Especially books in English are extra not for poor people.

A Hundred Love Sonnets by Pablo Neruda.

Where are you?

I'm live in Sweden, so all English (same goes for languages probably) are imported. Hence the expensiveness, I'd guess. (I don't know any other languages than Swedish (first language) and English)

Im currently reading dearly devoted dexter by jeff lindsay and Johannes cabal the necromancer, which is about some dude that works in a traveling curious stealing peoples souls.

Finished Kiss Me, Judas and will be moving on to Penny Dreadful in a few days.

It's September and I'm Septem-breading cornbread at the moment with cheese baked into it. It's quite good.

endless mike:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBsOHkApmU

no headphones again, so i'm just hoping that's the song i was looking for.

ROSIE & MATT O
yous made me so happy when i read what yous had to say about The Bell Jar.
"When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at."

Contagious by Scott Sigler. I need to finish it off. Im hating it but I have only 100 pages to go and I enjoyed his first book.

his first book infected you, but his second has like innotulated you.

Some of the essays were really great, but I spilled a glass of wine on the book before I finished and pretty much ruined it.

I reread 'The Tipping Point' and this time I loved it. I think I'll give 'Blink' another shot.

I'm going to try 'Everything is Illuminated' again. I read about 50 pages and it didn't hook me.

it's a chore, isn't it? I could barely get past page 10 the first three times i tried reading it. Unfortunately, i HAD to read it for a course at uni. and now i am using it, and Conrad's Heart of Darkness to discuss the juxtaposed use of light and darkness within the text to show a number of contrasting ideals.

I just did not enjoy reading it at all. and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, nor would I have finished reading it if it wasn't imperative to my studies. It's good for what i need it to be good for though, so that's a plus.

He just has such a wanky "look at me, look at me, i'm doing the writing!" feel about him. or something. i don't know. sucked though. and i'm standing by that.

it's the same here. it's easier and cheaper for me to buy books online, from either amazon or even mroe cheap from ABE books, than it is for me to go to the store. But i still love going to my local independent bookstore and buying overpriced books in the name of literature.

I can basically get books online for around half as much as i would in the store. and it gets brought to my freakin' door. it's ridiculous really.

That's it, exactly! "Look at me, like at me, aren't I clever and look I'm WRITING!"

But, I've only read the first 56 pages, I'm hoping it gets better. I really want to like it because Jane loves it and I really like the author's non-fiction book: 'Eating Animals'.

I, too, was not a huge fan of Everything is Illuminated. There's a particular type of author that seems to be in vogue, one capable of writing these really interesting moments, the occasional great image, but cannot string together an interesting narrative to save their lives.

so far, Foer, Franzen, and Lethem are on that list for me. Really, Eggers should be on that list for me too, but I like him for some reason.

You should try Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Foer. It's much much better than Everything is Illuminated.

Why must you people hate on everything I love!

I'm trying to love it! Or at least read it.

Mike, I thought Motherless Brooklyn was outstanding.  Have you read that one by Lethem? I'll read more of his work. I have Chronic City laying around somewhere.

Chronic city is the only one I've tried, and he's mesmerizing in some passages, just amazing, especially the stuff with the wife. But after 300 pages, I was just ready to throttle everyone in the book and tell them to go DO something. There was no problem, no major dramatic question, just entropy.

Hmm, I should look for it because some amazing writing sounds good to me, though I don't want to end up pissed off because nothing happens.

Lots happens in 'Motherless' and the writing is spectacular, so you night give that one a try if you like his style.

'Motherless Brooklyn' is really excellent. I've read one or two of Lethem's books after that and agree with Mike's general asssesment: breaktaking passages, not much of a story. That's the same way I felt about "You Don't Love Me Yet." Wikipedia claims it is a comic novel. I suppose comic in the sense that I found everyone's lives to be sad and pathetic and it made me feel better about myself.

Ask the Dust by John Fante

Aw, I liked Everything is illuminated. I like the movie too.