I could write a great novel if my neighborhood weren't so upscale (book thread)

[mixed cats]

My personal teenage turning point was when I got permission to read my mom's entire Vonnegut collection. And maybe Ray Bradbury.

[Bernard]

Illuminatus tril. Sex and drugs and outdated rock & roll. Given to me by my social studies teacher who I'm guessing had forgotten about those parts.

[Ah_Pook]

i really enjoyed the illuminatus trilogy as a teenager as well, but i was a bit older than 15 when i got my hands on it. also i was heavily into psychedelic drugs by that point, which definitely helped that books cause.

[davy]

Yeah, Vonnegut is a pretty safe bet. While it's true that I already loved reading before I encountered his work, Welcome to the Monkeyhouse is probably the book most responsible for opening the doors to literary fiction for me.

[Maaik]

I'm sure there were books I loved as much or re-read as often back in high school as Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, but I can't think of any at the moment.

[mixed cats]

 I had to read "Harrison Bergeron" in seventh grade, but my recreational reading from then to 15 or 16 was almost exclusively those Lillian Jackson Braun Cat Who.. mysteries until I picked up Slaughterhouse-5. Hmm.

 

I started reading Infinite Jest a couple weeks back, but haven't been toting it around and haven't really talked about it at work. One of the summer hires at work specifically brought up Wallace in conversation today without a smooth segue, and I'm pretty sure that means he Facebook stalked me, since my goodreads account sends updates there. Why, kid. Why.

[coldforge]

Send him _A Canticle For Leibowitz_.

[Bernard]

I'm sure there were books I loved as much or re-read as often back in high school as Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, but I can't think of any at the moment.

Likewise! Given to me by the same teacher who gave me the other one, and who possibly now sounds like he was trying to get me into drugs, which is not true at all.

Finished Perdido Street Station and it was, for me, a lot like King Rat. I can see why other people like it, but it's just not to my taste.

[davy]

I got more pleasure out of that book in retrospect than I did while I was reading it. There's lots to think about, and for me, it made a little more sense once I had time to idly mull it over. Furthermore, there were several individual scenes that really stuck with me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, the book is a grower?

[reebty]

I haven't managed to find a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House, but I did snag Bagumbo Snuff Box off someone's bookshelf the other day (I asked for permission just for shits and giggles). Not much on the horizon other than that. I might try to read the little known second half of Crime and Punishment.

[clare]

I've been Ayn Randed
Nearly branded
                      a communist
'Cause I'm left-handed

 

You know, l hear this every time her name is mentioned.

I want to send a book to a really bright 15 year old to inspire him to get back into reading. Anything ass kickingly good?

Garth Nix?

Other than that, not sure. I was reading a lot of girly stuff then - well, not girlly in the traditional sense, but in the sense of having strong female characters, so may not necessarily appeal to the teenage boy crowd...

[Thermofusion]

Finished Perdido Street Station and it was, for me, a lot like King Rat. I can see why other people like it, but it's just not to my taste.

I liked The Scar more.

[davy]

I haven't managed to find a copy of Welcome to the Monkey House, but I did snag Bagumbo Snuff Box off someone's bookshelf the other day (I asked for permission just for shits and giggles). Not much on the horizon other than that. I might try to read the little known second half of Crime and Punishment.

I haven't read much of that one yet because the first few stories didn't grab me. Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, though, damn. I love that book so much.

[Bernard]

Finished Perdido Street Station and it was, for me, a lot like King Rat. I can see why other people like it, but it's just not to my taste.

I liked The Scar more.

Yeah, somebody else told me the same thing. Do you think it's worth checking out even if I wasn't super keen on the other two?

[Bernard]

It probably didn't help that I kept thinking of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the lambs whenever I read about the slake moths:

NSFW
http://www.horrorphile.net/images/the-silence-of-the-lambs-ted-levine12.jpg

[Aglaya]

I get to borrow a nook for a week, and I have to tell you guys, it makes me want one even more.  It's not as satisfying as reading an actual book, but it's really damn convenient. 

[davy]

It probably didn't help that I kept thinking of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the lambs whenever I read about the slake moths:

NSFW
http://www.horrorphile.net/images/the-silence-of-the-lambs-ted-levine12.jpg

I well remember what an eye-opening experience that google image search turned out to be.

[Greg Nog]

Oh, I'm a little over halfway through Iain M. Banks's "The Player of Games" right now, and it's a lot like hearing some guy describe his current game of Evony to you for about three hours.

So, finished this.  Pretty boring.  Not much in the way of character development, but some moderately interesting ideas about futuristic Utopias -- really, I'd probably recommend skipping this dude's writing and just reading the relevant Wikipedia page instead.

Anyway!  Just started The Hunger Games!

[peacocks]

So I read On Love this weekend as discussed over in the MHC and I enjoyed it.  It was like reading a detailed explanation of my recently ended long term relationship, only with me being Chloe, I guess.  There were parts that were word for word conversations and events that made me say "WHY ARE YOU IN MY HEAD BOTTON!?" but he wrote it when I was 9 years old so.  It also helped me neutralize feelings of rejection somewhat and gave me some perspective.  

It was a really easy read, as Bernard said, able to complete on a 20 hour bus trip to Philadelphia.  The bus was filled with teenagers, a foul stench, and sounded like one of the alien vessels from War of the Worlds so a book that needed more attention would not have been nearly as enjoyable.

Anyway, back home and back to Gaddis' The Recognitions

[Captain]

Anyway, back home and back to Gaddis' The Recognitions

I was just reading this!  But I had to break off because school work was getting really heavy.  I didn't get too far, to be honest.  A bit hard for me to follow--I'm curious, what has your experience with it been?

[peacocks]

I've been taking my time with it since mid April and am about 750 pages in.  I really like it, his language is so over the top but it makes me drool.  Don't you hate his aunt?!  The book switches through several main character's worlds and back again through many years so it never gets too old for me although a lot of times it is just two people sitting in a room talking- and the dialogue can get detached and wander off.  I understand it being hard to follow, especially when he switches from description to someone talking, to a radio advertisement, to an overheard conversation, back to the main characters talking in one paragraph.  My favorite character is Esme although she was frustrating at first.  Otto was really annoying at first too, but he grows on you.  Have you met them yet?

I feel like I barely know Wyatt, which is very interesting.

[davy]

Anyway!  Just started The Hunger Games!

I'm listening to this audio book right now--started it during the drive down to the coast last weekend with my dad. I guess I like it--it's pretty brutal and suspenseful and all, but it's not particularly well-written, even for a YA novel. Or at least that's the way it comes off in the audio version. It's a peculiar listening experience because the prose is so elementary and yet kids are getting slaughtered and shit.

[Captain]

I've been taking my time with it since mid April and am about 750 pages in.  I really like it, his language is so over the top but it makes me drool.  Don't you hate his aunt?!  The book switches through several main character's worlds and back again through many years so it never gets too old for me although a lot of times it is just two people sitting in a room talking- and the dialogue can get detached and wander off.  I understand it being hard to follow, especially when he switches from description to someone talking, to a radio advertisement, to an overheard conversation, back to the main characters talking in one paragraph.  My favorite character is Esme although she was frustrating at first.  Otto was really annoying at first too, but he grows on you.  Have you met them yet?

I feel like I barely know Wyatt, which is very interesting.

Ah, okay--it's the jumping around that gets me.  I was just meeting this family and then all the sudden I'm in Paris with a painter.  I was all, "Did I blink?  What happened?"  But it sounds like that's how the book goes.  Cool.  But, like I said, I didn't get too far.  Like, around 140 pages.  So I haven't really gotten to know any of the characters too well, I don't think.  And I think I had just met Esther and was liking her... so I don't know.

I hope to get back to it when this Summer session is over.  A friend of mine called this his favorite book.  And I also liked the bit about the various religions and resurrection stories.  I hadn't read anything by Gaddis before, but I like his style.  My friend also told me that a book reviewer once accused Pynchon of being a pen name of Gaddis when Pynchon's first novel came out.  Pretty funny/insulting in a way.

[davy]

I'm reading Denis Johnson's post-apocalyptic novel, Fiskadoro, which is set in the Florida Keys and contains some of the most compelling dialogue (and dialect) I've ever seen on a page.

"If ever I need to come about only once, I not never gone make it. I need the luck of Allah with the wind, to sail one person alone to Twicetown in the Guerrilla. But I didn't know Allah then, I didn't have no information about who was Allah. The corriente took me out till the land she been far away on the edge of the world. And next thing, before I knew what, this land we live on and walk on she be gone, gone from outa my eyes, and I there on the Ocean of agua y nothing but agua."

[alex]

I finished Tranquility by Attila Bartis a couple of nights ago. I am still not entirely decided what I thought of it -- it was a fairly gripping read, that's for sure. The backcover compared him to Jelinek and Bernhard, and that seems about right, except the characters and relations described in books by these two authors come across as quite...untroubled, I guess, in comparison. I wasn't sure whether I was really in the mood for something as dark as that, but thought I'd give it a shot, and a few dozen pages in, I found myself enjoying the book much more than I would have thought, partly, I am sure, for some of the wonderfully entertaining misanthropic rants. But as the book went on, those were replaced by rants that were more about some of the main character's much more specific obsessions (mostly about his mother), and I guess I prefer generalised misanthropy over personal navel-gazing, in the end. Or prefer my navel-gazing to come with a bit of generalised misanthropy, at least. Or just didn't love or hate the characters enough to care enough about their navel-gazing. But now I'm sounding more negative than I meant to; it was definitely a worthwhile, though disturbing, read; it might have been even better if the setting, rather than just the personal relationships, had been worked out a little more (the story covers a few decades of rather turbulent Hungarian history, and I like the way in which some elements of it are reflected in the personal narratives, but it could have been fleshed out a little more).

I've also decided to read one of the (very short) stories in Calvino's Cosmicomics each night before going to sleep. One story, not more, not less. Seems like a good way of forcing myself to keep up the habit of reading some fiction, which I'm always in danger of neglecting otherwise.

I also started reading my boyfriend's copy of Through the Looking Glass while we were at his parents' place a few weeks ago, but didn't have time to finish it, nor space in the hand-luggage to take it with us. Now he bought me a volume of Lewis Carroll's complete, illustrated works! So I can pick up again where I left off.