What are you reading now? vers. "So I don't end up being a fucking waffle waitress"

[up all night]

Currently reading A Suitable Boy by Vikrem Seth and have been for about a month; this thing is massive. About 1400 pages of massive.

We've been a bit crazy for anything Indian over the past few decades, from religions to food to Bollywood and there are now masses of books written by Indians, or about Indian culture, available to us. As far as fiction goes, this is probably the most prolific I know of.

It's set in the early 50s, sometime after India gained independance from the British, and through the stories of a few prominent families, the reader is exposed in quite a lot of detail to social and political structures. I have to admit, a lot of the political debates and tangents I'm finding fairly dull, but not so dull that I want to skim through.

The title of the book suggests the main storyline is about one character's search (and her family's involvement) in finding her a husband - however I'm about halfway through and have found there are many, many other stories that are given just as much airplay. The writing is intelligent and subtle. Sometimes I find that author's are too over the top when they're trying to quietly poke fun at one of their characters, but I think Seth does this extremely well and without making any of them a caricature.

I'm really enjoying A Suitable Boy and I can already tell that it will be one of those books I get a bit sad when finishing because I'll feel like I know the characters.

 

[vanth]

I'm really enjoying A Suitable Boy and I can already tell that it will be one of those books I get a bit sad when finishing because I'll feel like I know the characters.

I get like that sometimes. My solution is to read science fiction and fantasy books which are generally extremely long and form multi-book series :D

 

[lostpunk5545]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I'm about 350 pages in so still have a thousand or so to go. For some reason I always think Russian literature is going to be hard to read but it never is. I'm enjoying it. Could be more graphic though for a book about war.

 

[Mary Poppins]

I just finished The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood. This book was recommended to me by several people whose opinions I place a lot of store by in terms of all things literary.

This may be the first time on BL I've ever done this, but I disagree with Up All Night.

This book sucked. I thought it was mediocre "ladies fiction" thinly disguised as high art by the overuse of words most commonly found in my 'word of the day' emails. I think she used ersatz about 3 times?

The most irritating part was the fact that there was a twist of sorts, that the whole way through the book you kind of know, but I felt sure there must be something more to it, so was skimming over all the boring bits (book is split into 3 or 4 strands) and actually kind of excited that there might be some redemption in the ending.

But NO! It was as you thought all along.

My conclusion: Margaret Atwood, fucking overrated. :D

 

[Benefit]

For some reason I always think Russian literature is going to be hard to read but it never is.

This sentence confirms a long-held suspicion that you are not normal.

The title of the book suggests the main storyline is about one character's search (and her family's involvement) in finding her a husband. That may sound trite, but I find the description of her husband hunting very moving and inspirational, as I too am in need of a good, strong man that can cure my wild tendencies and make me into the wife I was meant to be via arranged marriage.

I cannot tell you how happy I am to see you've figured out what you need in life.

 

[drug_wench]

i generally dont read except magazines (do they count) tho ive got a book im skimming thru atm called 'Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica'
last books i read before that were 'The History Of Heavy Metal' and 'Wheels Of Confusion: The Story Of Black Sabbath' (do u notice a pattern?)
again, i only skimmed them for interesting parts
i hav a toddlers attention span

 

[college_dropout]

I'm reading 'Philosophy - The Basics'.

Pretty accessible book.

 

[doofqueen]

Just finished reading "Not without my sister" by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones and Juliana Buhring which was a re telling on their story of growing up in a cult called "Children of God" Was interesting to read about what goes on in one of these cults but wasn't as fasinating as i thought it would be.

Just started Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis but i havn't gotten very far into it just yet.

 

[vurtomatic]

Done with Accelerando, highly recommended to sci-fi readers. Can't wait to get my hands on Matter.

Truth, Lies, and Advertising.

 

[college_dropout]

Just finished reading "Not without my sister" by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones and Juliana Buhring which was a re telling on their story of growing up in a cult called "Children of God" Was interesting to read about what goes on in one of these cults but wasn't as fasinating as i thought it would be.

That was a good book.

You can watch Davidito's (Ricky Rodriguez) murder/suicide video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKcO_nRZahI

 

[psycosynthesis]

Just finished the English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Fucking brilliant! Can't recommend it enough. Such lovely prose. I just had to sit and stare at some sentences. So pretty.

 

[Benefit]

Recently read The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; Light in August; Sanctuary, etc. William Faulkner writes about only one thing and one place, the death of the American South. I like it very much. But I'm American. If you hate the US, you might not care about the legacy of our Southern landed gentry and the decline of slavery and the cotton kingdom. Who knows. Either way, good writing. Nonlinear narratives in the Joycean style give his works a distinctive modernist flavour.

I picked up Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. It was OK. Obvious Christian symbolism contrasted instructively with the transcendent universalism that ties the old man in mysteriously spiritual ways to the sea and the marlin and the sharks and the salt of the earth, etc. Hemingway's terse prose isn't for everybody. Reading it sometimes feels like having a conversation with a really reticent alcoholic or a smart guy with minor brain damage.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez; Hundred Years of Solitude: beautiful imagery, powerful characters, epic themes, complex narrative structure. Pushes magical realism to near perfection while mythologizing 100 years of Colombian and South American history in the kind of steamy organic language that makes everyday speech look like cat barf. Even better when read in the original Spanish, although the translation I had was excellent.

 

[Benefit]

I get like that sometimes. My solution is to read science fiction and fantasy books which are generally extremely long and form multi-book series :D

Oh shit, I did like the most hardcore version of this strategy which was to start reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I started reading them when I was 11. THEN, after 11 books (only 7 1/2 of them were good) 10,000 pages and 10 years of my life, Robert Jordan died of a rare blood disease before finishing the last book in the series! Not only am I crushed emotionally, spiritually and crippled financially from spending many thousands of dollars on Wheel of Time memorabilia, but his death forced me to come to terms with the fact that I am a 21 year old loser living in my parent's house penning Wheel of Time themed pornographic stories that NEVER get published in Penthouse.

 

[vurtomatic]

Too bad about WOT ... it was the longest running series from my childhood and it went pear shaped. So I'm not as gutted about his death, but damn a lot of writers are dropping like flies these days

 

[ClubbinGuido]

 

[Benefit]

Yeah but to be fair, Norman Mailer was living on borrowed time ever since Watergate.

 

[vurtomatic]

Recently read The Sound and the Fury; Absalom, Absalom!; Light in August; Sanctuary, etc. William Faulkner writes about only one thing and one place, the death of the American South. I like it very much. But I'm American. If you hate the US, you might not care about the legacy of our Southern landed gentry and the decline of slavery and the cotton kingdom. Who knows. Either way, good writing. Nonlinear narratives in the Joycean style give his works a distinctive modernist flavour.

Odd, I'm reading this right moment:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man but to my work- a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit not for glory and least of all for profit but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in this workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths, lacking which, any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal; not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Great speech. I've never heard of or read this guy before, but the diction and the flow, wow. No wonder he won the Nobel Prize.

 

[UnSquare]

It'd Be One O' Yo' Countries Mos' Fascinatin' Times... What' China Got Up Its Sleeve?

If you hate the US,
you might not care
about
the legacy
of our Southern landed gentry
and the decline of slavery
and the cotton kingdom.
Who knows.

Peep's wif smarts.

Seein'
assit has
alot todo
with
alot todo.

I've never read Faulkner.
I've read eno'Joyce.

Advice.
Worth'it?

Keep In Mind
I'M A BUSY MAN....


PEACE BRO
UnS

 

[UnSquare]

"The Sun Also Rises Here Before Where You Are..."

I picked up
Ernest Hemingway's
The Old Man and the Sea.

It was OK.

Obvious Christian symbolism
contrasted instructively
with the transcendent universalism
that ties
the old man in mysteriously spiritual ways to the sea
and the marlin
and the sharks
and the salt
of the earth,
etc.

Hemingway's terse prose isn't for everybody.

It was O.K.?
It was O.K.?!?

Reading it
sometimes
feels like having a conversation
with a really reticent alcoholic
or a smart guy with minor brain damage.

Minor...................................

Diff'rent.
Strokes.

PEACE
UnS

 

[Benefit]

You are some type of alcohol infused wizard yourself.

Of course I would recommend Faulkner, at least The Sound and the Fury. It's always good to read the classics, that way you can seem smarter at high school parties.