books books books: the new reading thread

[Greg Nog]

That's exactly the story my friend recommended!  She said it was her favorite!

And plainenglish, if I dislike a book for any reason, it just makes me all the more determined to finish it, so that I earn the right to complain about it afterwards.

[Bannister]

I'm not surprised.  I'll give you a hint: double zombies

[plainenglish]

That's exactly the story my friend recommended!  She said it was her favorite!

And plainenglish, if I dislike a book for any reason, it just makes me all the more determined to finish it, so that I earn the right to complain about it afterwards.

Meh, I just complain anyway.

[Animal Planet]

I scored today at a family cookout where my great uncle had a pickup truck full of books he was about to get rid of. The whole family went nuts and I walked away with a book on human cloning, a history of Russia, The James Dickey Reader, some Kate Chopin book (never read her but the name is familiar), some Eric Fromm, the Upishands, and Al Gore Earth in The Balance. Really looking forward to putting these on my bookshelf for some imaginary time in the future when I'll be able to read them.

[Andrew_TSKS]

kate chopin wrote "the awakening" if i remember correctly. really early feminist literature, and really really good, though i was bummed by the ending.

[davy]

[ellaguru]

I'm reading Flatland by Edwin Abbott. First came out in the 1880's, I guess. Anyways, if the narrator is to be trusted, he comes from a two-dimensional universe, and somehow ended up in a three-dimensional universe (must be ours, since the book got published here). It's not really a novel, it's an essay in which he describes what life is like in a two-dimensional universe. For instance, evidently the people there are geometrical shapes, but flipped onto their sides, so nobody can tell by looking what geometrical shapes the other people are. This can be very dangerous, especially if the other person is a line segment, because if the line-segment-person is facing directly away from you, then (a) they are almost impossible to see, due to looking like a single point, and (b) their ass is very sharp, due to  single point being, essentially, a spear hear, so you can accidentally get stabbed to death on their ass.

Sowanayways, the book basically just gives an account of life amongst the squares and hexagons in a two-dimensional world.

[davy]

and people actually read it? 

[C of heartbreak]

I'm kind of annoyed because I've really been wanting to read some Didion, but the copy of Play It As It Lays that I bought is sitting in a box and I don't want to dig it out. So instead I'm reading The Sound and the Fury, which I somehow managed to get through both high school and an English degree without reading.

Also, after losing the book while moving, I finally finished The Satanic Verses, so if anyone would like to discuss that I'm all for it. 

[auto-da-fey]

and people actually read it? 

Flatland rocks! I remember ordering the $1 version back in my days of pre-internet geekitude, when I'd scour the latest Dover catalog and buy books about the history of Greek mathematics. Those days seem so distant now.

[davy]

whoever is responsible for dover publishing is one of the greatest cultural heroes of our time.

[elpollodiablo]

About to start Native Son and give Mao II a rereading, both in pursuit of the ol' honors thesis project.

[auto-da-fey]

One of my favorite college memories is of being in a Black American Lit class where no one but me wanted to discuss that scene in Native Son where the two boys jerk off together in the movie theater.

Okay, that's not really a favorite memory, but it was sort of fun.

[davy]

One of my favorite college memories is of being in a Black American Lit class where no one but me wanted to discuss that scene in Native Son where the two boys jerk off together in the movie theater.

Okay, that's not really a favorite memory, but it was sort of fun.

so what was the analytical concensus?

[auto-da-fey]

Well, it was a consensus of one, since not even the teacher (this generally awesome guy who was locally famous for giving a "how to kill a white man" lecture each semester) wanted to discuss it, so I got to hold court for a few minutes and ramble about the social organization of sexuality in communities without access to privacy, as well as the queer streak in young boys (if I'm not mistaken, there's also a boys-room circle jerk in Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, isn't there?). There was also the matter of this scene historically being cut from the novel while Bigger's relatively graphic murders of women was not--the whole Clinton/Lewinsky inquisition was underway when I was an undergrad, so I think I started making some tenuous connection to that when the teacher cut me off and we went back to talking about communists or something.

[FreddyKnuckles]

Reading case after case after case after case X100000

not that bad though, if you're amused by other people's misfortunes, which I am.

[das kranke Tier]

Reading case after case after case after case X100000

I feel you on that shit.

Say goodbye to fiction.

Though I've finally got it to the point that I can sneak some comics in here and there.

[cool banana]

A recommendation and a wander round the corner to the library has left me with two Thomas Lynch books. They're fucking great.

[Salkin Red]

Just finished reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and I wish someone had made me read that years ago. Guy was a genius.

[FreddyKnuckles]

I don't know kranke, some of its kinda better than fiction.  Leonard v. Pepsico? etc.

[auto-da-fey]

You guys want entertaining legal reading, Sunshine Book Co. v. Summerfield, 128 F. Supp. 564 (1955), from the D.C. federal district court is a real gem. It's this judge trying to decide if a nudist magazine is obscene--in the years before the Supreme Court formally codified obscenity--and he gets obsessively descriptive in his evaluation. A naked 7 year old girl is not obscene because "while the labia major are shown, they are diminutive and juvenile." But a naked man! "The corona of the penis is clearly discernable; in fact even a casual observation of it indicates the man is circumcised." That's obscene.

Crazy shit, these dry legal documents. This one perhaps a bit more wet.

[elpollodiablo]

Hey knucks where'd you land for law school?

[das kranke Tier]

I don't know kranke, some of its kinda better than fiction.  Leonard v. Pepsico? etc.

"Better than fiction" is a strong assertion.  Stranger, and more twisted at times, yes, but better?

edit: and how are you liking it thus far, FK?

[FreddyKnuckles]

I'm in DC pollo

It's not so bad.  It's just a lot of work, but most of the concepts themselves aren't hard at all.  Just constant reading, and not in the fun way. 

[das kranke Tier]

Word