What Are You Reading V.3 At The Fourth Grade Level

[Ismene2]

I enjoyed reading Albert Goldman's "The Lives of John Lennon" many years ago although he did make Lennon out to be a completely monstrous person. I had to think to myself that he couldn't have been that bad surely.

And Walden, OMG have I tried with that book. Apparently Chris Mcandless / Alexander Super Tramp, the guy who the film Into The Wild was made about, was reading Walden before / during his trip IIRC, and that's how I first came to hear about it. The subject matter and the whole 'philosophy' is right up my street, but I find Therou's style incredibly dense and dry, and the phrasing so archaic that I just can't get into it, try as I might. Apparently you're only meant to tackle maybe one page at a time, and read it very slowly to digest it. It was written in that manner to be read in that manner. But sadly I just can't connect with it.

All my reading is now done via audio book, I just can't read more than a couple of sentences of a printed book without my mind wandering. I'm kind of alternating between easy reading relatively modern stuff like Stephen King and James Herbert etc and trying to alternate the easy reads with classics, or something more difficult and challenging.

I've loved The Dead Zone, and The Shining by Stephen King. Amazing books. Cujo was really very good as well. I also really enjoyed 'Rage' and 'The Long Walk' written by King's pseudonym, Richard Bachman. I'm listening to King's Firestarter at the moment, and it's OK, kind of a bit dated, but the subject matter feels very much like Stranger Things. The series that feels most like something Stephen King could have written but actually didn't. I had to DNF Salem's Lot. I hate vampire stories, they don't do anything for me, and that and Cell are the only Stephen King books that I've abandoned so far.

My more challenging read I've just finished was The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. It actually turned out not to be a difficult book but I expected it would be. I loved the first story of the trilogy so much. I can't remember connecting with a story so much and becoming so engrossed for quite some time. For some reason I just couldn't connect with the 2nd and 3rd parts, although that seems to be my issue, as most reviews seem to rank the whole work very highly.

Yeah I loved the Lennon book - at the time I'd just finished the Ray Coleman biog and it portrayed Lennon as this well-balanced, lovely bloke with a witty rejoinder for everything - it just sickened me off the man completely. Lennon to me is the last minute or so of Cold Turkey - about as far from a well-balanced bloke as you can get! As Bill Hicks said "I want my rock stars fucking dead". Goldman really got me back into Lennon. And Goldmans sense of humour is magic too - there's a bit where Lennon and Phil Spector are in a bar playing "Bet you cant do this" and it goes "Spector said "bet you can't do this" before throwing himself backwards in his chair and striking his head violently on the floor. "You win" quipped Lennon". Goldman ends the Lenny Bruce book with the photo of Lenny laying dead with the syringe still in his arm "You look at his face and notice Lenny looks serene. Maybe even happy". The Elvis book is beautiful too - all the stuff about Elvis like women in white panties.

I've only just started Walden - I got it because I saw a quote from it "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them". I'll let you know if I can make any headway with it.

I loved the Dead Zone film with Chris Walken but never read the book. I tend to stick to non-fiction but occasionaly dip my toe in a novel - I've been trying to get through Dostoevsky "Notes from underground"

 

[ĐmantuNJofra]

Dune- Croatian language version, part one or the first one