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Literature!
    #2918525 -

Books Books Books!

I love getting into bed with a decent novel, list some of your favorites.

Mine currently are (it's really an ever changing list):

Breaking Open The Head
The Shaping of the Modern Middle East
The Walden - Thoreau

Speak of your love for the written word!


--------------------
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--all these are private and, ex- cept through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

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Re: Literature! [Re: daft]
    #2918635 -

Me too...

Books in english where I am are hard to get a hold of (unless I buy them) and I'm itching to read so many books...

some of my favourites are

Another Roadside Attraction
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues -both by Tom Robbins

I recently read 'Aura' by Carlos Fuentes...his first novella, an excellent ghost story.

Right now im reading another one by him called "change of skin"...its weird, but good, with some interesting ideas on Mexicos history..

I love reading historical books.

is "the Walden" about the authors experience living self suffiently?

other fav authors

Kurt Vonnegut
Hunter S Thompson (of course)
Roald Dahl
George Orwell (1984 is one of the most terrifying books I've ever read, and everyone who criticises the poor should read "Down and Out in Paris and London")

(from NZ)
Maurice Gee
Ronald Hugh Morrieson
Barry Crump


I'm forgetting so many..these are a few that come to mind


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2918712 -

Yes, The Walden is concerned with that, more or less. It's actually the walden and other writings that I'm reading (collection of all his short stories, prose and novels).

Thompson is a fave of mine, and I used to read Dahl all the time when I was younger. Perhaps I should give the BFG another read eh?


--------------------
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--all these are private and, ex- cept through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

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Re: Literature! [Re: daft]
    #2918821 -

Hehe, the BFG was my favourite when I was a kid. They should make a movie of it, what do you think? The other adaptions were pretty good.

Thompson Ive only read Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in LV...I started reading Rum Diary but never finished it...i got bored, and then I had to return it to the library. That was about 6 years ago, have you read it, if so, is it worth reading?


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2918827 -

damn!! how could I forget One flew over the cuckoo's nest!!

we had to read that in high school...ironic huh?

one of those wake the hell up and change your life type books.


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2919036 -

Elizabeth Knox is a great NZ writer
Do you come from NZ?

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Re: Literature! [Re: zeta]
    #2921436 -

Yeah I'm from NZ, but live in MExico, I've heard a lot of good things about Elizabeth Knox, but I haven't read anything by her...one more author to the evergrowing list that I want to read!!


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: daft]
    #2921836 -

I love to read. I just read this whole book last night. I found it at the library. It is like a comic book novel. Very sweet and beautiful story of a boy's first love. It's great. You guys would love it!


Sarah Waters is awesome too. I've read all her books and can't wait for the next. She's like a pornographic lesbian Jane Austen on a mystery kick. Her books were available at my library. You guys would love her too!






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Once in awhile you can get shown the light

In the strangest of places if you look at it right...

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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2921866 -

Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are teaming up again to make the Rum Diary movie. Depp will play Paul Kemp, who is basically meant to be Hunter Thompson, and Benicio is directing and playing another character, completely different than the lawyer in F&L. The book was written before Hunter got into drugs, and mostly involves them getting really drunk. Can't wait for this one to come out. As for good literature, On the Road has always been a particular favorite for me.

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Re: Literature! [Re: daft]
    #2922055 -

kurt vonnegut:

cats cradle
breakfast of champions
slaughterhouse 5

joseph heller:

catch 22

orson scott card:

ender's game, speaker for the dead, xenocide
call to earth series!
treason

Terrence Mckenna:

Food of the Gods

ken keyes:

handbook to higher consciousness
power of unconditional love

Halleday/Resnick

fundamentals of physics


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Annnnnnd I had a light saber and my friend was there and I said "you look like an indian" and he said "you look like satan" and he found a stick and a rock and he named the rock ooga booga and he named the stick Stick and we both thought that was pretty funny. We got eaten alive by mosquitos but didn't notice til the next day. I stepped on some glass while wading in the swamp and cut my foot open, didn't bother me til the next day either....yeah it was a good time, ended the night by buying some liquor for minors and drinking nips and going to he diner and eating chicken fingers, and then I went home and went to bed.

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Re: Literature! [Re: kaiowas]
    #2922088 -

I love Vonnegut! My fave is Cat's Cradle.

I'm reading the Dark Tower Series by Stephen King right now. It is amazing.

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Re: Literature! [Re: Redstorm]
    #2922092 -

isn;t he just finishing that series up? it's like 20 years in the making or something


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Annnnnnd I had a light saber and my friend was there and I said "you look like an indian" and he said "you look like satan" and he found a stick and a rock and he named the rock ooga booga and he named the stick Stick and we both thought that was pretty funny. We got eaten alive by mosquitos but didn't notice til the next day. I stepped on some glass while wading in the swamp and cut my foot open, didn't bother me til the next day either....yeah it was a good time, ended the night by buying some liquor for minors and drinking nips and going to he diner and eating chicken fingers, and then I went home and went to bed.

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Re: Literature! [Re: kaiowas]
    #2922346 -

Yeah, I think the last one comes out this fall. I've been a big fan of his for years, but this blows almost everything he's ever written out of the water. It's really amazing stuff, but many people think it's cheesy literature before ever reading it, just because it was written by Stephen King.

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Re: Literature! [Re: kaiowas]
    #2922508 -

Quote:
 
kurt vonnegut:

cats cradle
breakfast of champions
slaughterhouse 5


:thumbup: :thumbup:

I've read Slaughterhouse 5, bluebeard and timequake, i'm hanging out to read some more of his novels



Quote:
joseph heller:

catch 22




:grin: that's one of the funniest books I ever read! I first read it when i was 15, and I didn't get most of it, but then I read it again when I was about 17 and it blew my mind.  How can anyone like war after reading that book??


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: phalloidin]
    #2922525 -

MrTryptastic said:
Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro are teaming up again to make the Rum Diary movie.  Depp will play Paul Kemp, who is basically meant to be Hunter Thompson, and Benicio is directing and playing another character, completely different than the lawyer in F&L.  The book was written before Hunter got into drugs, and mostly involves them getting really drunk.  Can't wait for this one to come out.  As for good literature, On the Road has always been a particular favorite for me.



Sounds good, I think I'm going to give the book another go when I get the chance. 
Hell's Angels for me was really interesting, I love the part where they all take acid for the first time..hahaha, and Thompson doesn't do any drugs in the whole book! :shocked:

On the Road and Big Sur are the only Kerouac novels I've read.  Big Sur  depressed me, where as On the Road made me want to drop evertything and travel round the world, (i guess it does that to everyone who reads it!)

Last year my girl and I had a drink at the famous "cucaracha" bar in San Miguel de Allende, where Kerouac and co used to drink hard.  strongest margarita I ever had!  for 2 bucks.  We were a bit let down though, as we were the only ones there except for some kids blasting eminem from the juke box...blasphemy! :sun:


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2923326 -

Quote:
JPZ said:
On the Road and Big Sur are the only Kerouac novels I've read. Big Sur depressed me, where as On the Road made me want to drop evertything and travel round the world, (i guess it does that to everyone who reads it!)



Yeah, those two are really the symbolic alpha and the omega in the Kerouac canon.

"One the Road" having been written early in his career, when he was still young and idealistic, and "Big Sur" having been penned at a time of post-success, when his alcoholism was in full-rage, and he was suffering the sort of disconnect between his real-self, and the mediated-persona which gets created as a byproduct of fame: that sort of media ghost-world image that gets trotted onto the talk shows and misquoted in the magazines.

The arc of Kerouac's life is really tragic. He started out as such a happy spirit, and ended up getting crushed under the weight of his own daemons, which were let loose by his own fame and success. I think fame can be really tough on a person -- especially, if you get tagged as the "spokesperson for a generation."

Some people can deal with it well -- either by mastering it, or being smart enough to hide from it -- but for others it's a level of horrid abstraction, a parade of daemons, which has very little to do with what they truly want to accomplish in life. Fame has been the ruin of a fair number of artists' lives.

I don't know...

As for books, I used to read a lot, ten or twenty years ago, especially during my college years -- when I wasn't out getting drunk, or painting, I lived in the library stacks -- but I've had the blessing of a literature-free period for a while, and have just taken up reading again, this past year, which has been a joy: absence making the heart grow fonder.

My library, some 1,000+ (now smoke- and fire-damaged) books, is in storage in another state, which is useful, as it's forced me to explore some new territories. I'm two books shy of completing the William Gibson canon. I've also been venturing into Ballard and Borges, and I'm looking to start reading some Jack Womack, as he is credited with having the same interest in language, and keen observational eye to certain aspects of postmodern culture, that Gibson has. I will probably have to order his stuff online though, as he seems to be very hard to find in town.

As for favorite authors, that really runs the gamut. There are so many, from so many great movements -- lots of divergent directions in style and content: each serving different purposes in different histories. I could just start listing authors, but it would almost be a meaningless list -- A bizarre Calderian mobile held together by conceptual threads, even I don't understand...

Or maybe a more apt analogy would be a demented Cornell-box, assembled by an insane child, as part of therapy. Where behind the glass you can find a little plastic Evelyn Waugh dressed up as a soldier; next to a compartment with the severed head of William S. Burroughs resting in a spoon balanced on a wooden spool of thread; below a recreation of a spanish bullfight, with Hemingway as the matador serving up a severed bull's ear for the approval of the crowd in the stands made up of people from Shakespeare and Melville to Robert Stone and Terry Southern...

Never mind, just the standard morning coffee babble...

Babble, babble, babble... Like the babbling brook, that drove poor Jack mad outside of Ferlinghetti's cabin down in Big Sur...

Speaking of Big Sur, how can I forget old Henry Miller. There's just too many great ones to name them all...

PS: JPZ, you live in Mexico. Do you read Spanish? If so, I'm envious. You can read the untranslated works of J. L. Borges, and the other Magic Realists. I understand that translation is a real problem, especially with Borges: much subtle meaning is lost, in complex narrative structures, especially culture-specific concepts and paradigms...


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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2923360 -

i have yet to read timequake or bluebeard!!! time to go to the store!


btw I totally forgot

john steinbeck:

of mice and men
east of eden
cannary row
grapes of wrath


--------------------
Annnnnnd I had a light saber and my friend was there and I said "you look like an indian" and he said "you look like satan" and he found a stick and a rock and he named the rock ooga booga and he named the stick Stick and we both thought that was pretty funny. We got eaten alive by mosquitos but didn't notice til the next day. I stepped on some glass while wading in the swamp and cut my foot open, didn't bother me til the next day either....yeah it was a good time, ended the night by buying some liquor for minors and drinking nips and going to he diner and eating chicken fingers, and then I went home and went to bed.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Literature! [Re: Papaver]
    #2925090 -

Papaver said:
Quote:
My library, some 1,000+ (now smoke- and fire-damaged) books, is in storage in another state, which is useful, as it's forced me to explore some new territories.



What happened, a suspicious fire in the storage lot?  Well, it adds to the character of your books. :grin:

Quote:
As for favorite authors, that really runs the gamut. There are so many, from so many great movements -- lots of divergent directions in style and content: each serving different purposes in different histories. I could just start listing authors, but it would almost be a meaningless list -- A bizarre Calderian mobile held together by conceptual threads, even I don't understand...
 



True.  This is more of a "books that you have fond memories of" thread, for me.



Quote:
Never mind, just the standard morning coffee babble...

Babble, babble, babble... Like the babbling brook, that drove poor Jack mad outside of Ferlinghetti's cabin down in Big Sur...




  :crazy: I know, he so badly wanted to get away from it all, even a river started to drive him crazy. 


Quote:
  PS: JPZ, you live in Mexico. Do you read Spanish? If so, I'm envious. You can read the untranslated works of J. L. Borges, and the other Magic Realists. I understand that translation is a real problem, especially with Borges: much subtle meaning is lost, in complex narrative structures, especially culture-specific concepts and paradigms...


Yeah I read Spanish...every week I walk past Borges' novels in the supermarket, (how many supermarkets have an anthology of Borge novels  :tongue2:) but I'm such a stingy bastard I don't buy them.  Sadly, I'd rather blow 20 bucks on a bottle of Don Julio's finest tequila.  I haven't read nearly as much as I should have of the "latin renaissance" writers, (Octavio Paz, Borges etc)

I really recommend Carlos Fuentes, if only for his amazing take on the relationship between the US and Mexico, and also for anyone interested in Mexico in general.  He just whacks the nail on the head in so many areas.  His novel "Cristobal Nonato" (Christopher Unborn) uncannily predicted the decline of Mexico City (crime, pollution etc)  I'm slowly but steadily working my way through his novels. 

I think it's true that subtle concepts/ideas can become "lost in translation" especially with these writers...but it is the overall picture that counts, right?


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: kaiowas]
    #2925100 -

kaiowas said:
i have yet to read timequake or bluebeard!!!  time to go to the store!


btw I totally forgot

john steinbeck:

of mice and men
east of eden
cannary row
grapes of wrath


:thumbup:  "of mice and men" another they "forced" us to read at school.  Thank god for english teachers.  I swear to god if I ever see any of them again, I'm gonna thank them profusely and shake their hand. :grin: (and apologise for being such a noisy bastard in class)


--------------------
I do declare, I can float in the air.

"If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up."

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Re: Literature! [Re: JPZ]
    #2925696 -

JPZ said:
Yeah I read Spanish...every week I walk past Borges' novels in the supermarket, (how many supermarkets have an anthology of Borge novels  :tongue2:)


None, around here... :frown:

Quote:
but I'm such a stingy bastard I don't buy them.  Sadly, I'd rather blow 20 bucks on a bottle of Don Julio's finest tequila.


Well, a man must have his priorities in order... :wink:

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

--Charles Bukowski, from "Betting on the Muse"


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