what do you read?

ChrisG said:
Oh yeah, the application of superlatives is always a shaky thing, hence my "probably". I had this same discussion with a few friends the other day and we agreed that there's no way a definitive answer can be arrived at. But Vonnegut certainly would be on the "short list" of important American fiction writers recently alive. Whether or not he's been awesome for his entire career is another issue altogether, I agree.

A certain Mr. McCarthy who has been discussed quite a bit here is also on that short list, as far as I'm concerned.
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ok, mr. ChrisG, who's the short list?? i'll probably be though all the pretty horse by the end of next week.
 
I was never a fiction reader, but based on the hype here and in the media, I picked up The Road on wednesday and finished it last night. I have to say I was really digging it, and I think I will give some of the other books mentioned a shot.
 
i liked cats cradle as well...unfortunately i can't really say the same for 'all the pretty horses'. it was a good book but in more than a few parts it really, REALLY dragged. the word painful comes to mind. that said, i did find more than a few parts of the book just brilliant.

one of the things i have found that i really dislike about mccarthy is his tendency to write one paragraph sentences. it is, IMHO, annoying. it works at times, but mostly i felt like i was on a train ever increasing in speed to get to its' destination that upon arrival turned out to be nowhere in particular. i thought maybe it was the way he wrote 'the road' but itseems that it's his style. i'm pretty sure i'm done with good 'ole cormac. no offense chrisG.

so, having finished all the pretty horses, i've moved on to the "life of Pi". i have to admit, i was more than skeptical about this book. i mean a canadian author? who's ever heard of such a thing! 😀 and the lady at the book store was like 'ohhh, this is not an easy read' followed in suit by a guy who said 'i just finished it...it was tough'. children. they changed their collective tunes when i pulled 'all the pretty horses' outta my bag.

so far it's been pretty entertaining. i've got two more plane rides coming up in the next 30 days and i'm sure a few trips to NYC so hopefully i'll have my thoughts on Pi in pretty short order. this recco was yours norm, i hope you didn't steer me wrong.
 
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Well I hope you like it, but I can't say it was remotely tough. Salman Rushdie can be tough at times. I just finished Bluebeard by Vonnegut and it's much better than I remember it being. For McCarthy you broke one of my main rules which is not to read the same author in a span of 5 books, or so. I tend to agree that there were parts of Horses that were indeed painful.

Have to admit that I dropped 100 Years of Solitude after about 70 pages. It wasn't working for me. This occasionally happens with a book. I'll throw it back into the pile and pick it up again in a year or so. Sometimes the time is not right to read this or that, and I think that was the case here. Then again there are some books that never work, I gave up on Gravity's Rainbow like 3 times now. To me it's total jibberish.
 
normZurawski said:
Have to admit that I dropped 100 Years of Solitude after about 70 pages. It wasn't working for me. This occasionally happens with a book. I'll throw it back into the pile and pick it up again in a year or so. Sometimes the time is not right to read this or that, and I think that was the case here. Then again there are some books that never work, I gave up on Gravity's Rainbow like 3 times now. To me it's total jibberish.
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You should have given it at least until 76. I did the same with Infinite Jest after about 1600 pages - it just didn't do it for me.
 
Yeah, Infinite Jest lasted 200 then couldn't take it. Man that was tough. DFW was being touted as the next Generation Writer for a while. It's not that 100 Years was bad, it just doesn't fit me right now.
 
i am very stubborn when it comes to finishing a book that i invested even the smallest amount of time. However, I didn't have the fortitude to plow through IJ. I think I gave up at the point where the canadian paraplegic special forces were putting mirrors on dangerous curves along roads with steep cliffs, to fool american drivers into driving off the cliff. if the the fountainhead and we were the mulvaneyswere any longer, they would have been put down, too.
 
Shaggz said:
.... putting mirrors on dangerous curves along roads with steep cliffs, to fool american drivers into driving off the cliff.....
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that wouldn't work. the drivers would stop for the 'oncoming car' that was really just them, or swerve into the other lane to try to avoid it. either way, it would end at or before the mirror with a stopped car.
 
I can totally understand Cormac's lengthy descriptive passages getting on people's nerves, believe me. There are times in which economy goes right out the window with him. This really has been more the case in his later work, beginning with Sutree, the last of his Southern novels, and really beginning to crank with Blood Meridian. If ATPH isn't your cup of tea, you'll really be put off by his next, The Crossing, which goes quite a bit deeper into the realms you're likely referring to.

Some context for my Cormac fanboy-ism: My primary area of academic focus has been American literature, and I'm a huge devotee of people like Emerson, Melville, Whitman, and Faulkner, all of whom are clearly present in McCarthy's work. At the same time, though, I'm about to start teaching The Great Gatsby this week, and one of the astounding features of that novel is how much Fitzgerald does with so few words, so not all of my favorites are blabbermouths.

Speaking of blabbermouths: Infinite Jest has been sitting on a pile on books in our house for years, but neither my wife or I have worked up the gumption to attack it yet. DFW can clearly write, but that is one big scary book.
 
It may just be me, but I enjoyed the way The Road was written. As I was reading, in regards to the short paragraphs, I was seeing it as a movie in my mind, with the camera focusing on the different speaker for each line.

Again I stress, I was never a fiction reader, and while the music selections here didnt really do it for me, you guys have been spot on with the reads. Do any of you suggest any other dark, gloomy stuff like The Road?
 
ChrisG said:
Speaking of blabbermouths: Infinite Jest has been sitting on a pile on books in our house for years, but neither my wife or I have worked up the gumption to attack it yet. DFW can clearly write, but that is one big scary book.
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I have not yet tackled Infinite Jest either. I only read one book by DFW, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. DFW is a difficult read because as much is occurring in the footnotes and digressions from the main text as in the main text that you almost have two different stories to read and intertwine in your head.

When reading Brief Interviews I had to frequently mark the spot in a paragraph where I left off to read the footnote (which went on for pages and pages in some instances) so I could return to the main vein of the story, only to have to backtrack a paragraph or two just to refresh my memory.

It's really an interesting stylistic device. The employment of it makes reading DFW frustrating, and frustration with internal struggles against our impulses and what we see when the mirror turns inward are just a few of the many, many themes DFW addresses in BIWHM. It’s a physical manifestation of a theme that is at times painful to endure
 
Merle's Door

I got a copy of Merle's Door: Lessons From a Free Thinking Dog for Father's Day:

http://www.harcourtbooks.com/MerlesDoor/interview.asp

It truly captures the essence and spirit of these amazing animals we call “our” dogs. I do find it somewhat emotionally draining, because it brings back the spirit of my Golden, Sam, who passed on in 2001, as if he were in the room with me. However, it also makes me grateful for having spent time with him, and for the lessons he taught me. This is the first time in about 6 years that I have wanted another dog.

After this, The Road is next. Another Father's Day gift...
 
Shaggz said:
After this, The Road is next. Another Father's Day gift...
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Oprah was pushing this as a Fathers Day gift. I'm not a father, but I'm not sure how I feel about it as such. I got my dad a bottle of Knob Creek and a book about golf...
 
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ChrisG said:
Oprah was pushing this as a Fathers Day gift. I'm not a father, but I'm not sure how I feel about as such.
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are you freaking kidding me?! when i think about that book i still get the chills. i guess that means he did a good job.

i'm reading life of pi now which i know is one of norm's greatest hits. so far, for me, it's a winner. i like it a lot.
 
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