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Currently rereading The Long Walk by Stephen King (originally published under "Richard Bachman".
This is probably one of his least known novels (King calls it a novella, but at 349 pages, it's a novel lol) but has always been one of my personal favourites. I read it 14 years ago, so enjoying it just as much the second time around as I only remember a few parts.
Plot-wise: The story is set in the near-future (no specifics are given, which is probably a good thing in terms of not dating the story as it was written in 1971 so the "near-future" is probably in the past now) where once a year there is a gruelling competition called The Long Walk. 100 boys in their late teens must walk 450 miles across America. The winner (if indeed anybody survives) is whomever passes the finish line first. The rules are:
1) The Long Walkers must walk at a pace of at least 4 miles per hour.
2) Dropping below 4 miles per hour gets you a warning. If you remain below 4 miles per hour you will get a second warning 30 seconds later, a third warning 30 seconds after that, and finally 30 seconds after the third warning you will be shot and killed.
3) Walking for one hour without getting any warnings earns you one warning taken away.
4) Trying to run away or refusing to continue gets you shot.

It sounds interesting enough and is actually cooler than it sounds.
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
Currently rereading The Long Walk by Stephen King (originally published under "Richard Bachman".
This is probably one of his least known novels (King calls it a novella, but at 349 pages, it's a novel lol) but has always been one of my personal favourites. I read it 14 years ago, so enjoying it just as much the second time around as I only remember a few parts.
Plot-wise: The story is set in the near-future (no specifics are given, which is probably a good thing in terms of not dating the story as it was written in 1971 so the "near-future" is probably in the past now) where once a year there is a gruelling competition called The Long Walk. 100 boys in their late teens must walk 450 miles across America. The winner (if indeed anybody survives) is whomever passes the finish line first. The rules are:
1) The Long Walkers must walk at a pace of at least 4 miles per hour.
2) Dropping below 4 miles per hour gets you a warning. If you remain below 4 miles per hour you will get a second warning 30 seconds later, a third warning 30 seconds after that, and finally 30 seconds after the third warning you will be shot and killed.
3) Walking for one hour without getting any warnings earns you one warning taken away.
4) Trying to run away or refusing to continue gets you shot.

It sounds interesting enough and is actually cooler than it sounds.
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One of the first "adult" books I remember toting around was The Bachman Books which contained Rage, The Long Walk, Road Work, and The Running Man.

I was in eighth grade at the time, about to be a freshman, so Rage had this indescribable almost existential effect on me. The Long Walk was super entertaining but not as personal as Rage.

My brother got me into his short stories. Reading anything much longer is very challenging for me. I get lost in my head and can't keep track. So the short stories and novellas are perfect for me.
 
mal3volent said:
One of the first "adult" books I remember toting around was The Bachman Books which contained Rage, The Long Walk, Road Work, and The Running Man.

I was in eighth grade at the time, about to be a freshman, so Rage had this indescribable almost existential effect on me. The Long Walk was super entertaining but not as personal as Rage.

My brother got me into his short stories. Reading anything much longer is very challenging for me. I get lost in my head and can't keep track. So the short stories and novellas are perfect for me.
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I liked Rage, too. Shame it's out of print now (it was in The Bachman Books when I first bought it in 2004ish, but I bought the book again last week as I had lost that and it is not in there). I remember King saying something about a school shooting happening where the shooter later admitted to have reading Rage "about twelve times".
 
Recently finished re-reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis - 5 Returned Video Tapes (out of 5)
Fuck, I love this book (the movie is amazing, tambien).
Funny, disturbing and brilliantly satirical of 80s culture.

I usually only do "top quotes" for movie reviews but this just has too many great ones to NOT do it:

“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.”

"Is evil something you are, or is it something you do?"

"I have to return some video tapes" (repeated)

"I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane?"

“There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine.”


"I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning”

"All it comes down to is this. I feel like shit but look great".

"It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….”
 
ChemicallyEnhanced said:
If you really wanna read his best, I'd reccommend:

It
Misery
Carrie
'Salems Lot
Pet Semetery
Needful Things
Desperation
Dreamcatcher
The Long Walk

Most of his books are really good, though.
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The Stand and the entire Gunslinger series are of two of my favorite reads over my life time and I read pretty variously.
 
I tried American Psycho but i found the narration to heavy in all the détails the author gives.

Otherwise, i currently reading Le Chinois du XIVème, written in french by Melvin Van Peebles and illustrated by Roland Topor :cool:
 
MydriHaze said:
I tried American Psycho but i found the narration to heavy in all the détails the author gives.
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good one.

finished The Queen’s Gambit last night. all annotation, no style. no anya.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is inferior to Written on the Body.

finished Geek Love. is gross. thanks again, @tubgirl.jpg. will hit up some others on your transgressive list soon.

started A Touch of Jen five minutes ago.
 
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a while ago i read a package insert for my medicaments. the first time i read any of these, no information about the mode of action not even a molecule formula...
 
I'm eagerly awiting the arrival of "We Live Inside You" by Jeremy Robert Johnson - anyone read this one yet?

Genre is transgressive/bizarro.

"The line between art and madness is vapor-thin, and the worms are always hungry…"

Also "Angel Dust Apocalypse" by the same author. Synopsis:

"Meth-heads, man-made monsters, and murderous Neo-Nazis. Blissed out club kids dying at the speed of sound. The un-dead and the very soon-to-be-dead. They're all here, trying to claw their way free. From the radioactive streets of a war-scarred future, where the nuclear bombs have become self-aware, to the fallow fields of Nebraska where the kids are mainlining lightning bugs, this is a world both alien and intensely human. This is a place where self-discovery involves scalpels and horse tranquilizers; where the doctors are more doped-up than the patients; where obsessive-compulsive acid-freaks have unlocked the gateway to God and can't close the door. This is not a safe place. You can turn back now, or you can head straight into the heart of. the Angel Dust Apocalypse."

I love finding new gems.
 
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