What are you reading?

oisee · Post by **oisee** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 3:55 am

I'm reading the comics about a popular online game. It's so funny and I can relax after a whole day's work.

rainier · Post by **rainier** » Tue Jan 21, 2014 5:11 am

Speaking of non-fiction, I love memoirs and I just picked up Elf Girl by the Rev Jen.

I just visited the troll doll museum she runs out of her lower east side apt in nyc and felt like she was a kindred spirit, just a really chill weirdo artist and all around cool person carving out a space for herself in the world. I'm really enjoying it.

Magrathea · Post by **Magrathea** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 3:52 am

I thoroughly enjoyed this: Space:1999 Aftershock and Awe

Amo Bishop Roden · Post by **Amo Bishop Roden** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 4:49 am

Finally started reading Kafka's Metamorphosis. I should have read it long ago, but hey, what's done is done.

Waterbagel · Post by **Waterbagel** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 12:35 am

Amo Bishop Roden wrote:Finally started reading Kafka's Metamorphosis. I should have read it long ago, but hey, what's done is done.

Loved it! A good short read, and it's pretty much the seminal work for existentialism IMHO.

observation · Post by **observation** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:26 pm

Peeling The Onion by Günter Grass

fujee · Post by **fujee** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:51 pm

Waterbagel wrote:
Amo Bishop Roden wrote:Finally started reading Kafka's Metamorphosis. I should have read it long ago, but hey, what's done is done.
Loved it! A good short read, and it's pretty much the seminal work for existentialism IMHO.

Camus takes the baton there imo. Kafka set the wheels in motion though. I kinda feel like Kafka is in a realm of his own in terms of philosophical traits and themes. He can't be categorised.

Beavercanoe · Post by **Beavercanoe** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 4:57 pm

How did this thread die?!

Just finished John Barth's 'The Floating Opera'. First books hmmmmm.

panic button · Post by **panic button** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 1:44 am

Light but thought-provoking story following a long-term North Korean spy and his oblivious South Korean family over the course of a day in Seoul. It'd be interesting to know how/if the authour did his research, or if he just based the content on hearsay/imagination.

Been reading this in preparation for teaching some of it next week. I'm not a writer, but it's got me hooked anyway. I love how American it is; almost to the point where I think he'd have to completely rewrite it in order to have a chance of it being successful in the UK or elsewhere.

bkillsb · Post by **bkillsb** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 8:36 pm

I don't read nearly as much as I used to or want to but I love...smut. The more wrong and/or taboo the better. If I'm going to read it'd better be worth my time

That said about the only other books I read besides the above mentioned are ones concerning how f**ked we all are and how civilization is over. The current one I'm reading is The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Brutal and mesmerizing. Another fave that I've read at least 10-15 times since I bought it in 2006 is Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. Light, easy reading eh?

Basically if someone's getting screwed, I'm reading about it

Cupz · Post by **Cupz** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 8:43 pm

^ Sounds like you'd enjoy naked lunch. People get screwed allot there. By giant heroin-using caterpillars for example. Also, that one scene with Steely Dan is really HOT.

Mexicola · Post by **Mexicola** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 9:40 pm

bkillsb wrote:I don't read nearly as much as I used to or want to but I love...smut. The more wrong and/or taboo the better. If I'm going to read it'd better be worth my time

That said about the only other books I read besides the above mentioned are ones concerning how f**ked we all are and how civilization is over. The current one I'm reading is The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Brutal and mesmerizing. Another fave that I've read at least 10-15 times since I bought it in 2006 is Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. Light, easy reading eh?

Basically if someone's getting screwed, I'm reading about it

Huh-huh-h-h-h-h-huh. You said 'oral'. Huh-huh-huh-huhh-hhhh-h-h.

bkillsb · Post by **bkillsb** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 10:02 pm

Mexicola wrote:
bkillsb wrote:I don't read nearly as much as I used to or want to but I love...smut. The more wrong and/or taboo the better. If I'm going to read it'd better be worth my time

That said about the only other books I read besides the above mentioned are ones concerning how f**ked we all are and how civilization is over. The current one I'm reading is The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Brutal and mesmerizing. Another fave that I've read at least 10-15 times since I bought it in 2006 is Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich. Light, easy reading eh?

Basically if someone's getting screwed, I'm reading about it
Huh-huh-h-h-h-h-huh. You said 'oral'. Huh-huh-huh-huhh-hhhh-h-h.

I certainly did my dear Mexi

lol

2020k · Post by **2020k** » Thu Jul 17, 2014 4:00 am

The Shining.

Treefingers · Post by **Treefingers** » Thu Jul 17, 2014 8:50 pm

Haven't checked in with this thread in ages.

I've been updating my blog with little pieces on books I've been reading (probably haven't read much since I last posted here; cause I'm quite a slow reader for someone who digs literature so much). Anyway -- I'm currently reading Inherent Vice by Pynchon.

I wasn't planning to read it so soon; but I want it read before the film adaptation's out (which I'll hopefully get to see in cinema -- the idea of P.T. Anderson adapting Pynchon is like Christmas to the power of a billion). It's a great novel, though: I've seen a lot of people describing it (sometimes dismissively) as "Pynchon-lite", but I feel that - though it seems clearly to be his most accessible work - it doesn't feel overly diluted, and I still think there's a lot of detail there and it's a lot more than just a hippie noir story.

A_Northern_Soul · Post by **A_Northern_Soul** » Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:14 pm

Francis Wheen's "Strange Days Indeed"

All about political paranoia and social chaos in the 1970s -

MI5 plots to overthrow the UK government
Nixon and Watergate
IRA Terrorism
Mao
Baader Meinhof
Coups in Africa
The Oz obscenity trial

Absolutely fascinating.

Amo Bishop Roden · Post by **Amo Bishop Roden** » Sat Aug 30, 2014 1:54 pm

Jacques Lacan - On the Names of the Father
Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Jean Baudrillard - Symbolic Exchange and Death

Fascinating trying to take in all of these at once. The ideas meld in a strange way, especially Baudrillard and Lacan.

fujee · Post by **fujee** » Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:56 pm

Big fan of Baudrillard, his work is of the most interesting post modernist writing i've read.

Lacan is fascinating but a little more difficult to get on with. Slavoj Žižek helps me understand hiim better however.

jcnporter · Post by **jcnporter** » Sat Aug 30, 2014 3:34 pm

Just finished 'Ghosts of my Life' by Mark Fisher, now reading 'Militant Modernism' by Owen Hatherley, both which I recommend for anyone interested in hauntology and 'the lost future' - the post-war/ pre-Thatcher modernist culture, architecture and left-wing politics that combined to point a way to a future that never arrived and why we seem to be stuck retreading the past. I'll probably re-read 'Retrommania' by Simon Reynolds next, on the same subject.
Loads of good writing and commentary on this subject in the past few years, a subject I've become a bit obsessed with - joining the dots between Modernism, Brutalism, Socialism, electronic music, Ballard and so on.

Amo Bishop Roden · Post by **Amo Bishop Roden** » Sat Aug 30, 2014 4:04 pm

fujee wrote:Big fan of Baudrillard, his work is of the most interesting post modernist writing i've read.

Lacan is fascinating but a little more difficult to get on with. Slavoj Žižek helps me understand hiim better however.

Aye, Zizek got me into Lacan, so having a little background has made Lacan infinitely more accessible. Zizek is wonderful though. It disappoints me how polarized the popular opinion of his thought is, because most choose only to look at his politics and fail to grasp the greater implications of his social theory and application of Hegel. Instead, you get Fox News types on one side and 16-year-old dorm-room marxists on the other. It doesn't do much for his image, I'm afraid, and as a result a lot of people end up missing on some astounding and challenging ideas.