The Book Club's Very Unofficial Pointless Announcements Thread

I just finished Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. It was real good other than the 3 page paragraphs. Continuing with my novellas, I've now started Pudd'nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain.

EDIT: oops, wrong thread. Oh well. At least nothing is off topic here.

Carrying on my love-affair with audiobooks, I've got Tess of the D'Urbervilles for my six hour drive tomorrow. I'm quite excited.

Jane, that book looks awesome.

James Ellroy is the man.

a recent recommendation of a band called Holly Golightly got me to thinking about, obviously, Truman Capote, which then got me to thiking about a short story of his i read quitesome time ago called Children On Their Birthdays. has anyone else read it? it knocked my socks off, and i read it again yesterday and loved it even more. Capote is such a lovely writer.

The movie is pretty good, but yeah, it can ruin the book. It's still worth reading even if you know the twist just to see how it's revealed. This book continues to amaze and haunt me. I've read it three times.

I'm pretty sure this is blasphemy around these parts, but I just cannot completely enjoy a Brett Easton Ellis book. I started with Glamorama, then read American Psycho, and just finished The Informers today. I want to like his novels. And I enjoy a lot of the language and parts of the storyline, but for the most part, I just feel disappointed in the end. I think most of it has to do with his shallow characters. Or at least they seem that way to me. Maybe there's more to it that I just don't understand yet, and maybe never will. Either way, I think I'll wait a while before I pick another one up.

I posted this in the tech area, but I think it fits here too. Amazon has released Kindle for Androids now. It's a free download here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_353408862_2?ie=UTF8&d...

Truman Capote:
"she was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. she was the things he was [afread] to show anyone else."

Lola, Hidden Gardens, A Lamp in the Window (my mother left one on for me:), A Day's Work, Self-Portrait.

I'm going to make a formal thread for this soon, but I thought a lot of people would be excited to know that we will have a Book Club book discussion coming soon.

Transubstantiate by Richard Thomas will be the book we will discuss. It looks like we will do this in September.

Richard is going to be involved. And as of right now - it looks like the discussion leader will Be Caleb Ross.

I hope everybody else is as excited about this as I am!

i am!

i just hope my book gets here before then. i'm thinking of buying a paperback to tide me over. just in case. and, obviously, to support Richard 'cause he's good people.

That's also why we're giving people until September. We want to make sure everybody has time to get their hands on a copy and read it.

looking forward to it, Pete!

Nice! I'll definitely be participating in this. Thanks, Pete, and anyone else responsible for bringing this back.

Bought deez.

Me too! Plus Operation Shylock and Patrimony. Have you read any other Roth?

Having just finished Roth's 'Kapesh' novels, I decided to make my way through his 'Zuckerman' novels and so bought...

i have the ghost writer, which will be my first Roth, but i have yet to read it. same cover that you have up there. beautiful covers. i like them a lot. and i love a nice cover.

Only a couple. I really liked The Dying Animal a lot so I grabbed those because B&N had them on clearance for like $4 each. They'll be my third and fourth Roth reads. Second one was The Breast which I didn't care for at all but I read at the library where they gas you up with nitrous-oxide so you fall asleep and they can tell you to either buy a library card or leave. Yeah, library cards cost money now. Fuckin' inflation, how does that work?

EDIT: Fixed.

Where do they charge for library cards? I don't have one any more, but you sent me straight to google! That's terrible.

I've only read four so far: The Human Stain, American Pastoral, Sabbath's Theater and Patrimony. (I have about 10 pages left of the last one.) I'll send them to you if you want to read them. PM me your address if you want any or all of those.

I'm trying to cull my bookshelves...well my home, I have books piled all over the place. I either need to buy another book shelf or get rid of enough so what I have fit on the shelves.

Library cards are still free in California. Whew.

I've been thinking about starting a Cult bookmooch thread. Bookmooch is a book swapping site where you can hold a book for a specific person. So we could list books we want to give up on that thread and a cultie could request that it be listed for them on bookmooch.

The reason I'd like to do it like that instead of organizing it all here is that you get a point for sending a book that you can use to get a book from anyone on bookmooch, so you don't have to rely on a cultist listing a book you want.

Bookmooch is also international, you get two points for sending internationally to offset the shipping costs. You can also opt out of international shipping or set your account to "ask me."

You did start a bookmooch thread a long time ago I thought.

(And I really don't know if I could part with my books...)

I started a bookswap thread about the different sites, but not one organizing a cult swap using a specific service.

Ah, my bad.

I still don't think I can handle getting rid of books. There's maybe one or two I could get rid of. It would be hard.

Jan. 2011

Cult/Velvet reading

nice way to be vague as a motherfucker.

That's exactly what I was thinking...

I'm halfway House of Leaves and it's great, I love it.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! i really really really should read that tome.

Good news for all the people dying to get their hands on a copy of The Contortionist's Handbook. Craig just tweeted this a little bit ago (and got back with me on a message I sent him regarding the matter):

New print run of "The Contortionist's Handbook" at the warehouse pending arrangements with new MacAdam/Cage distributor.

so that means soonish, right?

wonder if it's going to be the same covers. hardcover, or paperback? i would mind a hardcover of the first edition cover. i've got some lame uk release cover artwork. it's shite, but when it comes down to it, it's he pages within that really matter. but damn it! y'all know i love a good cover.

i might have to repost this in the Talking Heads essay thread. a guy there was interested in picking up a copy.

Oh Matt, at the book store yesterday I saw that Penguin is doing something awesome with their covers right now. They are called Penguin Ink. They have tattoo artist design the covers. Here's the article and the first 6 books done like this. I don't know if they are going to do more - I hope so!

http://www.penguinbooks75.com/penguinink.html

ahh, shit yes. i hope they do more. the first six look fucking great. Money and Briget Jones' were great and the Bond one was just too badass for my eyes. but they're all incredible. i hope they heaps more. they'll make great presents, too!

nice find, mate.

Some Faulkner tapes from lectures have been digitized and posted online. Here's the article from NPR.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128513514&sc=fb&cc=...

Just found out my first text for uni this semester is Everything is Illuminated. I haven't read it yet, but all I hear is great things about it so I'm pretty excited.

I was setting up my reading at Barnes & Noble a few days ago, and I'm thinking that it's going to be totally white collar and stiff up in that place, so I asked the lady (Jessie) what the deal was on cursing, and she said, "Oh, that's cool. Just make sure there's not a kid or an elderly person around."

That surprised me.

So then you looked in her eyes and said, "FUCK YEAH BITCHES!"

my other two texts are Beloved by Toni Morrison and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

and in other news: i made a new thread for the Clevenger Top Ten list. have at it.

I just LOVED this book! So funny and so sad at the same time.

Oh, goodie. i am looking forward to reading it. and i havent seen the film, so that's good. i'm going to go an buy it on monday and get it all read, even though i don't think i have to rad it until around week 3.

Do it! It's always better to read things beforehand anyway.

They'll probably refer to it even before you officially study it.

I thought the film was good too.

ahhh, i just realised, coming to this page to talk about my new texts for uni, that this is one of them; Heart of Darkness.

so, you liked it, Razor?

I got another bookshelf today and my apartment looks very tidy! There are no books stacked everywhere and I have TWO empty shelves...

oh, damn. we need another book shelf too. we have books piled up everywhere! it's absurd!

I have 4 book shelves. And I still have books everywhere. I need another one!

we have that friggin' massive cubed thing that everyone has seen in photo's. it used to hold dvd's and records too, but now it's just books. plus we have both of our bedside tables with two or three ten-book-high piles. it's sick.

I just sold 40 books and left 30 more at a thrift store. I'm feeling freed!