Media Books

Shrug

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I'm pretty sure this thread is explained by the title, but here goes: talk about em, which do you recommend, why you like the ones you do, etc. Maybe try for a couple sentences about whats good / bad about a book instead of "i read [blank]"? idk.

Personally, I just read No Country for Old Men and prolly will read it again because i whipped through the first time and perhaps missed some stuff. Was going to red The Open Society and Its Enemies but thats rlly bulky so im going to hold off a week until break.

Have fun!
 

Martin

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I finished reading The Snapper by Roddy Doyle the other day and I have to say it was very funny. It's definitely worth a read if you've not read it already. Also one that I've been recommending to literally everyone I know since reading it back last summer is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel for its high-quality storytelling, character building and general setting. I like a good dystopia and it is the perfect example of how to design them well, and I like the concept of people searching for clues about the world before a virus spread and how the clock basically reset on the world. Using a dead actor and a comic book as the key driving force in the plot is very creative story-writing and I absolutely love it.

Other good books include The Maze Runner trilogy+prequel (James Dashner), the His Dark Materials trilogy (Phillip Pullman), The Business (Iain Banks), pretty much any Ian Rankin book, Alone in Berlin (Hans Fallada), The Book Thief (Markus Zusak), Agatha Christie's Poirot/Marple series (my personal favorite is Murder on the Orient Express), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) and A Brief History of Seven Killings (Marlon James). There are a load of others that I could recommend too but I honestly can't remember their names on the spot because I've read too many books lol. If I remember any I will post them here if I remember.

If you are a gamer one that you might like is the Mortality Doctarine series by James Dashner. I think that it was definitely inconsistent in places but it kept me reading, so if you're interested in someone's interpretation of what a 100% immersive game world would be like and about its potential consequences (with regards to hacking) give it a read.

Edit: Michael Morpurgo's books are mostly aimed at children but they are entirely enjoyable for a more mature audience to read due to just how talented Michael Morpurgo is. Some of my favorites include Born to Run, Kensuke's Kingdom, War Horse, The Butterfly Lion and Adolphus Tips. In particular the last one is very good (I'd say that it is actually a must read alongside War Horse) so definitely read it if you've not.
 
I am not really into books, but right now there is one I like reading a lot: Console Wars by Blake J. Harris.
Though it feels more like a fictional story rather than a historic book which I actually expected.
 

brightobject

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The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson is a great book, it has some minor flaws but on the whole it's an epic, despairing, absurd, thoughtful adventure and I rlly fucking enjoyed it. Did I mention it's set in North Korea? And that it won the Pulitzer Prize? Read this shit, it's good. Reminds me a lot of Catch-22 / Slaughterhouse Five / etc with its magical realism and paradoxically optimistic cynicism

I'd say the same about Fortune Smiles, which is a short story collection by the same dude (won the EFG Short Story Prize). Has a lot of interesting ideas and while I must say I wasn't a fan of one of the stories (mostly bc I couldn't relate to any of the situations therein) the other 5 were great. Depressing, thoughtful, and introspective--most of Jonhson's stuff deals with the hypothetical and the near future (which is where most of his stories are set), and it always leave u feeling a little achy.

Shrug is no country worth reading if I've already seen the movie? or are they even remotely similar
 

Tokyo Tom

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I used to love reading as a kid but I feel like the internet's largely taken that away over the years, haha. There have been a few things that have stuck with me that I can remember off the top of my head, though!

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak would be my absolute favourite book. It's a coming-of-age story of sorts about a deadbeat 19 year old cab driver who's life is going nowhere. He is standing in line at the bank one day when a robbery takes place; he accidentally foils the robber's escape and is proclaimed a hero. He subsequently begins to receive playing cards in the mail from an unknown source, each with an address and a time, and he finds out that each of these cards corresponds to someone out there that he has to find a way to help. Basically as he goes around helping people and making a positive impact on the world around him, he begins to find his self-worth and his place in the world. It's a feel-good story, would really recommend it to anyone :toast:

I'd say my favourite author is Mitch Albom; he has written a handful of best-sellers (the ones I've read are Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and For One More Day). They are all relatively short, but v. heartfelt and moving - it sounds cliche, but they really teach you to appreciate life and what you have.


e: also, GGfan's book
 
First off, if anyone here has goodreads feel free to add me! http://goodreads.com/jumpluff my fav books are there also.

I had time to read while I was in hospital so I managed to power through the entirety of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro in one sitting. Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors but over the years the one book of his I've never read is The Unconsoled because I'd mostly heard negative stuff about it and my backlog is huge, so I just never got around to it.

I definitely see why it was criticised at the time—it's a significant departure from Ishiguro's more elegant stuff and I imagine for people whose jobs or lives revolve around putting out takes on popular authors, the structural oddities and general tediousness of its (deliberately) incoherent plotline would've been a huge nuisance to read 600 pages of. I think it might be one of his best works though. I think it's his funniest, it absolutely nails the deadpan pathos-style humour that his works are filled with and the way it portrays its internal contradictions is surreally amusing to me, but I see why a lot of people would just find it infuriating. For me though it was really more subtly layered than anything else he's written and made me empathetically exhausted, I've never really read anything that quite evokes the frustration and inconclusiveness and repetition of obligation and overwhelming stress. The incoherence mostly comes from the book's depiction of the overlap of memories and dreams (so in a way I think this is the most advanced Ishiguro in that literally everything he writes deals with memory, and it had the usual stuff + a really interesting perspective on the malleability of both types of knowledge + how the unconscious informs both, but the literalness of that is what makes it hard to follow if you're not going with the flow). Personally what made it hard for me to read was that I genuinely got upset trying to keep track of all the people's problems and worrying about certain characters who were deliberately 'forgotten'; not many books manage to achieve that level of emotional harmony in the reader. So, it was hard and had the usual slow start that comes with that author, but by the second act I couldn't put the book down because it was breathless and I needed a resolution I knew was never coming.

I also liked pretty much all the parent-child dynamics in this book, those were super poignant and I think a really really important part of the book, especially when it comes to obligations. The 'ending' was super rewarding in that aspect.

I wouldn't really recommend The Unconsoled on a general level even though I adored it because I think it's a super niche book (edit: go read Never Let Me Go though, or if you're willing to put up with very slow rambly character pieces, The Remains of the Day is perfect)

I also got about halfway through The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata and at first I really hated it and thought it was the worst Kawabata book I've ever read (my favourite is Beauty and Sadness) but upon sticking with it and its vignettes I think it might end up being my favourite, we'll see though 'cause I need to finish it. It has all the best things about a Kawabata book (sparse, delicate, emotionally evocative prose; intricate, melancholy family dynamics; existential sorrow; emphasis on the episode over a massive plot; peaceful nature descriptions) and the worst (gross men). It's a nice book, although it requires some effort on your part to contemplate it, since it's very show-not-tell in some places.

Anyway at least one Kawabata book is unmissable if you want to read Japanese lit imo and if you enjoy it you should read The Sound of the Mountain. If you like slice of life anime you would probably also enjoy the feel of The Sound of the Mountain except keep in mind there are no schoolchildren and it's not very zany, it's about decaying old people and their problematic relationships with their adult children. If you like shit like Hemingway you can definitely appreciate The Sound of the Mountain but if you don't you can also appreciate it. I'd recommend Beauty and Sadness or Snow Country first though especially if your reading habits are 'award winners' (Kawabata got the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was a token award used to excuse the committee's general disregard for how good postwar Japanese literature, or anything outside of Europe, is, but idk who cares about it anymore it's been a joke for a long time)

Hopefully I can post more sometime about other books I like. I mostly read Japanese and Russian literature, particularly set in the 20th century because it's full of interesting time periods, but I enjoy magical realism and SFF (rarely read it anymore though) as well
 
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I used to read a lot more when i was 16-17 and after pretty much not reading for two years i finally got the time to get back into it and i can't say it hasn't been pleasant so far. This is mainly thanks to a friend of mine who "stimulated" me to get more so i have read a few books in the past few months.

The first one is Ragazzi di Vita by P. P. Pasolini which I have to say is an author i prefer much more as a director than as a writer but it was a pleasant read nonethless in its original language (Roman dialect, fuck that), no clue how that would translate to English but yeah.

The second read i had was probably the most pleasant, L'Étranger by Albert Camus. It tells the story of a man living his life in Algeri extremely passively and without many emotions for other people that, mostly by accident, shoots an arab man and gets put to trial. The story plays a lot on the absurdity of his conditions and the interactions he has with his mother, his girlfriend, and the jury at his trial. The story is way below 200 pages and definitely a reading i recommend.

I have also read L'identitè by Milan Kundera, an atypical love story to say the least that is told by two different points of view that are equally "wrong" about reality. Really interesting introspection on the nature of love and the identity of the lover that can also be equivocal. A pretty short read as well if you have the time.

I have also read Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk, a story i wouldn't really recommend (unlike many others of his work) but that has some interesting parts to it i guess.

Started High Rise (J. G. Ballard) just today, I'll tell you more when i have finished it :)
 
Vouching for The Stranger. Milan Kundera is a good author who has gotten progressively worse, I may just be sour because the last Kundera I read was his newest (The Festival of Insignificance) which was shockingly vapid and bad but expectedly well-written. iirc the way I described it was like 'an eloquent shitpost' because I couldn't get over the pointless vileness of what I'd read. As opposed to like The Unbearable Lightness of Being which is incredibly poignant and thoughtful

I went to Kinokuniya today and the first book I started was one I'd taken a chance on, Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan. It reads like a really disturbing version of The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende or One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (both fantastic books that shouldn't be missed, and disturbing both in their own ways). All three are books that use a family dynasty and the absurdities and warped perceptions of magical realism to blatantly illustrate the history of a country through both outside events and individual allegory (Chile, Colombia, Indonesia). I'd draw the parallel to One Hundred Years of Solitude in particular because it transcends supernatural to have a really epic, spiritual feel about it.

Except I got 45 pages in and I was so irritated by how every second metaphor for colonial Indonesia (a country with a really tragic history btw) was a darkly satirical mention of someone getting raped. Or bestiality. And so on. I don't even know if I'll go back to it, even though it's got one of the most interesting, compelling, hilarious set of female characters I've read in a long time, because what was described as 'bawdy' and 'beset by every monstrosity' so far appears to be nothing but rape, aside from being gratuitously presented the whole 'mundane pain and suffering of women (particularly sexual and reproductive) representing the greater and more metaphysical suffering of their country' metaphor is as stupid as it is ancient

But I got a great haul of books at Kinokuniya anyway

So basically I'd say that you should go read The House of the Spirits or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I actually feel like talking about something about The House of the Spirits so

The House of the Spirits was written by the cousin of Salvador Allende, the ill-fated socialist president of Chile who died in a coup which led to a really brutal military junta. It goes through three generations of history in the most dreamy, lyrical, tangential way; the storytelling voice is incredibly beautiful in its prescience and in its arrangement of thoughts and themes. Nonetheless the book is incredibly clear and coherent and each chapter is fairly discrete. Each major historical event gives the book a subtle tonal shift as it influences the characters themselves (or things like Clara's magical powers, which recede over the book) until you realise you're reading a description of modern history in Alba's time instead of the mystical, desperate times of Clara's. In that it's the most lovely segue I've ever read in a book, and it's perfectly aligned with the theme of change brought through mutual struggle, and how each character seeks to enact change (or not enact change) differently. But it's also a down-to-earth and pragmatic book for all its whimsy, filled with detail (usually with a 'legend'-like feel to it, similar to how a family and a country might present their own history) and the fact that the parallel stories of Chile's massive social changes throughout the 20th century and Clara's family stand alone is pretty impressive

It's also an incredibly inspiring and resilient book, I remember reading The House of the Spirits when I was severely suicidal a couple of years ago and feeling like maybe it was possible with enough time and change that I would heal and be able to move forward; its emotional scope is vast
 
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fleurdyleurse

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hello! brightobject sent me to this thread so i will be posting about my mission so far to read 52 books in 52 weeks (log can be located here: spo.ink/ahe). i've currently finished 33 books, the last being No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald.

i think that this was and still is a pretty fruitful endeavor to take on -- i definitely enjoyed picking up books from the library every other week and taking books i had been wanting to read for a long time from my bookshelf. i'll lightly touch on a few books i really liked that i read.

1) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams): the entire series of books by Adams is a superb and hilarious read that i definitely enjoyed. interspliced with its comedic themes are more serious ones, which still are pertinent today (the lizard democracy one has still stuck with me and is very relevant). it's not a very long read too, though i fell sick in the middle of Life, The Universe and Everything. would definitely encourage everyone to read it.

2) Frankenstein (Mary Shelley): this was a tremendously good read. the idea and image of frankenstein's creature -- a smart, philosophical "creature" is a stark constrast to the pop culture image that we have of a stupid and unthinking one, devoted only to killing. the prose was good, as was the way of bringing out the message. i especially enjoyed frankenstein's creature's monologues.

3) A Friend Like Henry (Nuala Gardner): my sister recommended this book to me (it's about an autistic boy and how his dog helped him overcome his condition). it was a good insight into the life of someone afflicted with autism and a parent of someone suffering it -- i felt that it was a very good representation of those with mental illnesses as a whole. it also makes me want to have a pet even though i'm scared of dogs, lol. it's a very relatable and accessible book.

overall this has been a very exciting project, and i am excited to read even more :)
 
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Shrug

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read Bright Lights Big City during some classes. The concept was interesting, it established the tone right away, the symbols were mainly fired up in the first couple chapters (Mary Obrien Mccann the missing person lol) so it was mostly just playing the whole thing out from there, which was nonetheless enjoyable because it was a funny and engaging book. I am a white New England heterosexual male with liberal arts college ambitions so it maybe resonanted more with me on a personal level than it might with some people, but i would recommend it on the basis of its brevity and wit even if you dont feel the existential aloneness in the same way I did.

Reading The Crying of Lot 49 next, seems pretty dense thematically lol should be fun
 

shaian

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I am perhaps not the best person to be giving book recommendations as my main interests lie in academics, specifically economics and political science, which skews my preferences, but I recently finished both A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth which is a romance story set in the 1950's Indian city of Brahmapur, and I highly recommend it. The story manages to capture the confusion and economic disparity between social groups in the newly-independent India and it touches upon the various tragedies that fester in the country, from land reforms, religious tension, caste systems, gender inequalities, but at the same time it doesn't come across as forced and overbearing. At its core it possesses a very simple story, four families are helping find a suitable husband for the main character, but the story develops each character to a degree that very few other books I've read have managed to do, and the world was truly brought to life by the amount of detail that was invested in to each element.

Also, if anyone is interested in poetry from South Asia, I really recommend The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore, Those Days by Gangopadhyay, and anything by Rumi or Gitanjali. Not actually sure if poetry books are allowed but yeah.
 

Shrug

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The Crying of Lot 49 was reaaaaaallly good imo. Layers upon layers of symbolism, incredible writing, likeable protagonist and writing style, mmmm. It felt advanced for 2016 thematically and prose-wise and was published 50 yrs ago. I would only confuse ppl with some of the weird involved symbols and shit if i tried to talk about them and u hadnt read it but if u have and want to talk about it hit me up here or in pm!

fleurdyleurse , ive read a bunch of books on your list! if u have the time, i was wondering what you thought of A Clockwork Orange. Which version did u read? i read the one w/o the last happy chapter (which was the one the author intended i think) and that kinda shifts interpretation. Personally, I thought the meanings (on both the dangers of conditioning / control and the presence of malice in human nature) were delivered a little overtly, but their juxtaposition raised an interesting dilemma: would you rather have a free world with Alexes running rampant or a society made docile by govt control? I was oddly wrenched emotionally as Alex snapped back at the end, and I think that might be the book's triumph - the language barrier and societal differences and Alex's particular quirks (classical music etc) turn what should be instinctive repulsion into a more head-dislike - you root for him despite knowing you should hate him, especially as it comes out more and more he's (in part) a product and victim of a sick society. Which makes it all the more frightening: in the end you're maybe on the side of a very fucked-up twisted dude and know it acutely as he talks about his bloody fantasies, etc. An ominous view of the future indeed. idk, i liked it
 

shaian

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For what it's worth, the British ending to A Clockwork Orange is a very divisive one and I think there are excellent arguments to which ending is "stronger". I think, perhaps, viewing the book as an examination on the role of the state in the subjugation and moderation of behaviour is not giving enough credence to its insight in to the nature of morality and peer-to-peer influence, though the latter can definitely fall under the greater definition of "state" depending on who you ask.

The British ending was originally rejected in the initial American print because it was assumed that American audiences would react better to a sociopathic protagonist who actually stayed one than the British audiences would, though Anthony Burgess insisted that the final chapter was a necessary inclusion his position was ultimately overridden. However, the omission of that chapter actually detracted from the original intent of the book as it removes the point in which the protagonist reaches maturation. Burgess' usage of chapters and section division (3 sections of 7 chapters each) as a form of symbolism for the development of the characters was actually a key point in the writing and structure of the book, and there are actually merits to the omission of this last stage in Alex's development, but I'll touch on that later. In the course of the 21st chapter, the maturation of Alex takes shape in his rejection of his violent, sociopathic past and this transformation is fulfilled by his desire to start a family. Though previously these same tendencies were subdued through the Ludovico Technique in this instance the repression of his sociopathic nature is organic without external factors being imposed on the decision. Prior to this Alex was in a perpetual juvenile state, forever trapped in the subconscious desire to reject and rebel against the system and an imposition of disorder, but in Burgess' interpretation of maturation, such a thing can only happen when one realizes that disorder and violence are not tools for self-fulfillment. Alex in this chapter realizes that staying evil was not a fulfilling life and that he could only progress if he changed himself, a cathartic moment to be sure.

This ending actually plays well in to the meaning of the title as well, as the meaning of A Clockwork Orange refers to an individual that has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact a clockwork toy to be wound up by god or the devil or the state. From the experiences of Alex we can see that he has his own quirks, he is quite intelligent and well-spoken and prior to the 21st chapter, he used those qualities as an agent of disorder. However, even in that state he maintained his own agency (at least in theory), and after being forcibly conformed those quirks, most notably his passion for classical music, were now being used a mechanism of the state to control him. He was no longer in control of his own "colour and juice". Though examined through Burgess' view, even before the Ludovico Technique Alex was never truly in control of those quirks and instead they were being subconsciously manipulated by the social conditions around him and adheres mechanically to the sociopathic persona he developed. When the final chapter is factored in though, Alex now develops that organic presence as it adds that depth of flexibility and innate ability to change that is fundamental to human nature.

As for the other side of the argument, the British ending is often seen as too much of an idealistic ending. The change in Alex is not one that was developed out of some greater understanding of his role in society or the acceptance and desire to change himself for the greater benefit of society. Rather, he grew bored of his past ways. This isn't the product of maturation but rather an extension of the juvenile self and the desire to seek amusement at the cost of betterment. The original ending also relies quite heavily on the underlying assumption that human nature seeks change and a moral ends, which is an assumption I am okay with, however Burgess' does a remarkably unconvincing attempt at proving this assumption to be true. His quest to prove this assumption instead created a much more insightful examination of the role the state plays on social conditioning. The role of the prison chaplain, the division of subversive individuals away from larger society, and how overt the influence of social pressures on the behaviour of individuals is (perhaps too obvious in my opinion).

Now if we reexamine the title of the book, A Clockwork Orange, and once again compare the contents of the book but also omit the 21st chapter, I think the symbolism and meaning of the story becomes much more compelling. In Burgess' original composition the characters storyline was intended to work as a clockwork mechanism, the development of a juvenile individual that reaches maturation at 21. But as can be seen consistently through Alex's character, he is a product of rejection: the rejection of the state and of his own morality. Growing up in the ultraviolent community he adopted the sociopathic tendencies of his peers, but in doing so he rejected his own underlying nature that was that of a moral individual. Though he displays very little in the way of morality, he maintains a self-awareness of that which is not seen by others, notably saying that society can not function with individuals like him. He understands what he's doing is not right, but he rejects it for the sake of social conformity and eventually becomes the poster boy of that environment. When he rejects the state, he does so by refusing to conform willingly to the established norms of the state proper, adopting instead the mannerisms of the fringe and outcasted but still maintains the qualities that would function within it -- his intellect and eloquence, and even his interest in classical music are deviations away from the norms of his community. So, if we look at the principles of a clockwork orange with this ending, we see that he has rejected the role of a mechanical entity that remains the plaything of the state. He did not ultimately end up becoming a model citizen, but rather he and the individuals in his community become the defective products of the state and are thus shipped outward to isolation amongst themselves.

Lastly, to go back to my point about the role of chapters and section divisions being key symbols as intended by Burgess? Under Burgess' view on maturation and the morality of growth as an individual we see that he believes that individuals do eventually mature as they grow and that is a natural progression of human morality. When that chapter is removed it once again reinforces Alex's rejection of the established norms of society at large, and to extend further, that is something that is a staple of the fringe ultraviolent community. Alexander, the author deemed to subversive to be kept in the state proper, was originally not a violent individual but later develops in to a sadistic person as can be seen when he drugs and tortures Alex. He, presumably had "matured" at some point within Burgess' definition, but the social settings surrounding him and the experiences he had seen had left him to reject that. Burgess' did not prove that human nature seeks a moral ends or that there is some definitive human desire to be "good", which is the argument he puts forth in the 21st chapter. If anything, examining the behaviours of the characters, Burgess' perhaps did a good job of showing morality and mannerisms as a product of social conditions (which is the common interpretation of the book anyway). The only characters that even had a compelling case for Burgess' view were perhaps Pete, though he could easily be said to have matured due to changes in his lifestyle, and the Chaplain, but that ignores the deeper role of religion in human behaviour in favour.

So all of that said, I personally prefer the version without chapter 21 as it has a greater depth of complexity and layering to it in its examination of social criticism and inner morality but I still do think that it's worth reading the original ending. And sorry for the essay.
 
Hallo people. Name is Cynthia, but you can call me well Cynth. I am a medical student who is also a huge addict of Ya fantasy, thriller, Sci Fi and romances or maybe just a blend of them all. Well reading the various suggestions all over the thread I wanted to come up with a few well liked books of mine and since there weren't many YA suggestions or maybe I am just blind. So anyway I just stumbled upon this book Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch. This book mainly focuses on fight for freedom in an ancient partial dystopic setting (similar to Game Of Thrones which is also another great series I will be talking about later probably). It has a strong female lead (ha so predictable), fantasy, magic, twists and turns at every points and well love triangle ( sigh, really!?). Anyway it's a good book to read especially if you like dystopia novels with fight against oppression and power etc. Plus it even has a sequel Ice Like Fire (currently reading it). So yeah if you like yourself a good YA thriller go ahead for this one.
 

brightobject

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I used to love reading as a kid but I feel like the internet's largely taken that away over the years, haha. There have been a few things that have stuck with me that I can remember off the top of my head, though!

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak would be my absolute favourite book. It's a coming-of-age story of sorts about a deadbeat 19 year old cab driver who's life is going nowhere. He is standing in line at the bank one day when a robbery takes place; he accidentally foils the robber's escape and is proclaimed a hero. He subsequently begins to receive playing cards in the mail from an unknown source, each with an address and a time, and he finds out that each of these cards corresponds to someone out there that he has to find a way to help. Basically as he goes around helping people and making a positive impact on the world around him, he begins to find his self-worth and his place in the world. It's a feel-good story, would really recommend it to anyone :toast:

I'd say my favourite author is Mitch Albom; he has written a handful of best-sellers (the ones I've read are Tuesdays with Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, and For One More Day). They are all relatively short, but v. heartfelt and moving - it sounds cliche, but they really teach you to appreciate life and what you have.


e: also, GGfan's book
if u like action pls read jack reacher series by lee child. they are very well paced and tersely written. the story can get a bit samey with the newer books (in the general sense), but split urself up between the early and newer works and u have urself a really really solid mix of hardcore mystery and modern westerns (badass walks into town, gets mixed up in something nasty, kicks everyone's asses)
 

vonFiedler

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Just finished reading Wuthering Heights.

Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels, so I was excited to read something by another one of the Bronte sisters. That may have been foolish, as even Charlotte Bronte infamously hated her sister Emily's novel, writing in its foreword after Emily was dead "I scarcely believe it should have been written." And she may have been right.

It wasn't poorly written like Pride & Prejudice or boring like Moby Dick, but I would have to say that Wuthering Heights was the worst classic novel I've read yet because it simply amounts to nothing at all. It has no message, doesn't try to convey anything, and bears no relevance on my life (and plenty of books of the same age do, so that is no excuse). Wuthering Heights is a whole bunch of drama. Petty drama that you would see on a midday soap opera. Featuring one of the most unlikable characters ever. Heathcliffe is supposed to be sympathized with, and maybe you can at first, but the righteous part of his revenge happens largely off-screen. Then he just continues to be a colossal douche for the rest of his life. There are few times when I feel that the book wouldn't have been bettered if some character didn't just murder Heathcliffe, ending things immediately. Instead he dies literally because revenge becomes boring. Oh woe the fuck is you.

If anyone wants to experience a multi-generational story where a street urchin is abruptly adopted into a high-class English family only to angrily try to take control of the estate from its rightful owners, they are better off with the superior adaptation, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Sure, there's a few important differences, but Dio is so Heathcliffe that it's hard to imagine it wasn't a direct source of inspiration. And frankly, this character works much better as an unsympathetic villainous vampire who can stop time and eventually gets punched to death (I assume, not done with Stardust Crusaders).
 

Myzozoa

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today im working through an intersectional history of Los Angeles area transportation, Imagining Transit by Sikivu Hutchinson.

my favorite book ive read recently was Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie and my favorite books 'of all time' are Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut, closely followed by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

excerpts and additions:

"The metaphorical nature of race and transit is compellingly illustrated in both cities. In using the notion of metaphor to support my argument, I examine how the history of transportation in L.A is informed by the writing of racial subjectivity as a space of transit. To this end, I make two major claims. First, I argue that the way race is figured in the United States assumes the "transit-like" valences of metaphor. Second, I argue that whiteness, in its invisibility as a subject position/racial identity, mimics the drive of metaphor and is essentially symptomatic, unable to be truly revealed, always constituted as an anxiety of origin."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon
This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast. One of them was a science-fiction writer named Kilgore Trout. He was a nobody at the time, and he supposed his life was over. He was mistaken. As a consequence of the meeting, he became one of the most beloved and respected human beings in history. The man he met was an automobile dealer, a Pontiac dealer named Dwayne Hoover. Dwayne Hoover was on the brink of going insane.

It shook up Trout to realize that even he could bring evil into the world—in the form of bad ideas. And, after Dwayne was carted off to a lunatic asylum in a canvas camisole, Trout became a fanatic on the importance of ideas as causes and cures for diseases. But nobody would listen to him. He was a dirty old man in the wilderness, crying out among the trees and underbrush, "Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease!" | Kilgore Trout became a pioneer in the field of mental health. He advanced his theories disguised as science-fiction. He died in 1981, almost twenty years after he made Dwayne Hoover so sick.


"A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless education, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well. But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492.

The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them. Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of an ice-cream cone on fire.

Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.

The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black. Color was everything.

Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world, and they were meaner than anybody else, and they had gunpowder, which was a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur. They touched this seemingly listless powder with fire, and it turned violently into gas. This gas blew projectiles out of metal tubes at terrific velocities. The projectiles cut through meat and bone very easily, so the pirates could wreck the wiring or the bellows or the plumbing of a stubborn human being, even when he was far, far away. The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.

When Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout met each other, their country was by far the richest and most powerful country on the planet. It had most of the food and minerals and machinery, and it disciplined other countries by threatening to shoot big rockets at them or to drop things on them from airplanes. Most other countries didn't have doodley-squat. Many of them weren't even inhabitable anymore. They had too many people and not enough space. They had sold everything that was any good, and there wasn't anything to eat anymore, and still the people went on fucking all the time. Fucking was how babies were made.

A lot of the people on the wrecked planet were Communists. They had a theory that what was left of the planet should be shared more or less equally among all the people, who hadn't asked to come to a wrecked planet in the first place. Meanwhile, more babies were arriving all the time—kicking and screaming, yelling for milk. In some places people would actually try to eat mud or suck on gravel while babies were being born just a few feet away. And so on.

Dwayne Hoover's and Kilgore Trout's country, where there was still plenty of everything, was opposed to Communism. It didn't think that Earthlings who had a lot should share it with others unless they really wanted to, and most of them didn't want to. So they didn't have to."


"Like her, I believe in something that I think my dying, denying, backward-looking people need. I don't have all of it yet. I don't even know how to pass on what I do have. I've got to learn to do that. It scares me how many things I've got to learn. How will I learn them? Is any of this real? Dangerous question. Sometimes I don't know the answer. I doubt myself. I doubt what I think I know. I try to forget about it. After all, if it's real, why doesn't
anyone else know about it. Everyone knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism's insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions of permanence to the third chapter of Ecclesiastes ("To everything there is a season. . . . "), change is part of life, of existence, of the common wisdom. But I don't believe we're dealing with all that that means. We haven't even begun to deal with it. We give lip service to acceptance, as though acceptance were enough. Then we go on to create super-people-- super-parents, super-kings and queens, super-cops-- to be our gods and to lookafter us-- to stand between us and God. Yet God has been here all along, shaping us and being shaped by us in no particular way or in too many ways at once like an amoeba-- or like a cancer.
Chaos.

Even so, why can't I do what others have done--ignore the obvious. Live a normal life. It's hard
enough just to do that in this world. But this thing (This idea? Philosophy? New religion?) won't let me alone, won't let me forget it, won't let me go. Maybe. . . . Maybe it's like my sharing: One more
weirdness; one more crazy, deep-rooted delusion that I'm stuck with. I am stuck with it. And in time, I'll have to do something about it. In spite of what my father will say or do to me, in spite of the poisonous rottenness outside the wall where I might be exiled,I'll have to do something about it. That reality scares me to death."
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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Wn8MXGpYNFZ0pBMWNTc0h3MVE/view
 
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I recently read two terrific books: The Alchemist and An Ember in the Ashes. Pretty cool thatthis thread exists, I am actually looking for a new book to get into. I recently picked up one called we are the ants, but I am still kinda meh about it. Another one I picked up was Flamecaster, but apparently that is a sequel series... Meh

Tokyo Tom I actually read a book by Mark Zusak myself that I thought was very good, and very interesting as well. The Book Thief
 
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my favorite book ive read recently was Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie and my favorite books 'of all time' are Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut, closely followed by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.
Cat's Cradle is probably my favorite Vonnegut novel, followed by Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5. I tried reading Breakfast of Champions after that but I just feel like I can't truly understand it without reading more than just those 3 books of his so I just never really finished it. Maybe someday I'll have the time to finish the rest though.

Recently I've been reading a short story collection called A Model World by Michael Chabon. The stories give glimpses into a wide manner of relationships, romantic and nonromantic, a lot of divorce, and everything in between. Chabon's prose is just fantastic though; this is the first work of his I've read and his prose is just such a pleasure to read that I feel like I could just lap up anything he writes (there's a reason this guy has won a Pullitzer). The stories themselves are all rather unique but very deep and relatable views into the relationships they cover. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who thinks this sounds interesting; I don't normally read this type of thing but I've been in a rut of not being able to find an interest in anything I've tried reading in the last year and this definitely has broken it.
 

Myzozoa

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Cat's Cradle is probably my favorite Vonnegut novel, followed by Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse 5. I tried reading Breakfast of Champions after that but I just feel like I can't truly understand it without reading more than just those 3 books of his so I just never really finished it. Maybe someday I'll have the time to finish the rest though.
I think it's more likely that one 'cant understand' the other books without reading breakfast of champions. that is where he perfumes himself as an author, the narrator adopts a persona and becomes a character: Kurt Vonnegut the author is a character written into the book, interacting/intervening in the plot, sometimes in parallel with Kilgore Trout. In the narrator's self-descriptions, and historical commentaries, Vonnegut gives his most complicated contextualizations to the major themes in his works: mental illness, addiction, what it means to write novels after the most recent apocalypse (WW1 and WW2), the discursively narrowing effects of a 'cold' war, racism/alienation/nationalism.

" I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there—the assholes, the flags, the underpants. Yes—there is a picture in this book of underpants. I'm throwing out characters from my other books, too. I'm not going to put on any more puppet shows. I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago. I suspect that this is something most white Americans, and nonwhite Americans who imitate white Americans, should do. The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head. I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.

So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind."

Still, if you feel that you ought not yet read breakfast of champions (i read it 2nd) after finishing the other most prominent vonnegut novels (sirens, slaughterhouse, cat's cradle), the next to read is player piano imo. like his other works it will address the intersection of technology and political psychology, which makes it a decent introduction to the plot devices used in breakfast of champions (mental illness and racism).
 
I think it's more likely that one 'cant understand' the other books without reading breakfast of champions. that is where he perfumes himself as an author, the narrator adopts a persona and becomes a character: Kurt Vonnegut the author is a character written into the book, interacting/intervening in the plot, sometimes in parallel with Kilgore Trout. In the narrator's self-descriptions, and historical commentaries, Vonnegut gives his most complicated contextualizations to the major themes in his works: mental illness, addiction, what it means to write novels after the most recent apocalypse (WW1 and WW2), the discursively narrowing effects of a 'cold' war, racism/alienation/nationalism.

" I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there—the assholes, the flags, the underpants. Yes—there is a picture in this book of underpants. I'm throwing out characters from my other books, too. I'm not going to put on any more puppet shows. I think I am trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago. I suspect that this is something most white Americans, and nonwhite Americans who imitate white Americans, should do. The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head. I have no culture, no humane harmony in my brains. I can't live without a culture anymore.

So this book is a sidewalk strewn with junk, trash which I throw over my shoulders as I travel in time back to November eleventh, nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind."

Still, if you feel that you ought not yet read breakfast of champions (i read it 2nd) after finishing the other most prominent vonnegut novels (sirens, slaughterhouse, cat's cradle), the next to read is player piano imo. like his other works it will address the intersection of technology and political psychology, which makes it a decent introduction to the plot devices used in breakfast of champions (mental illness and racism).
Thanks for the perspective!! I remember during my first read-through I was just too distracted by all of the character cameos from previous books that I thought I would be better off saving the book for a time when I understood these characters more (ex Mr Rosewater makes a very early appearance iirc, it's been a couple years since I've attempted reading it though). I'll give it another chance sometime this summer.
 

shaian

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Bumping this thread with 2 of the books I read during my ban:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, which was one of the more interesting books I've read this summer. The story itself is a beautiful, chaotic combination of romance, politics, and Japanese involvement in World War II all loosely held together by small searches that the protagonist-narrator undertakes in Tokyo.

A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf, an essay I had been planning on reading for a few years and finally got around to. Not a long read at all, the copy I have is only 112 pages, but the language and narrative structure are nothing short of impeccable and the subject matter, while at times a bit dated, is still very much relevant today.

Also read a lot of South Asian poetry, specifically Kabir, Ramprasad Sen, and Bharatchandra. If anyone has any Asian poetry to recommend, please do.
 

Shrug

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I didn't treat my 8th semester of hs w requisite seriousness and thus am having my college admission postponed for a year. I'm trying to make reading gains during this period. Req me some books
 
I didn't treat my 8th semester of hs w requisite seriousness and thus am having my college admission postponed for a year. I'm trying to make reading gains during this period. Req me some books
If you liked No Country For Old Men, give Blood Meridian a try. It's widely regarded as McCarthy's masterpiece, and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The prose is much lusher than in his later works, has the tone of an epic (think the Iliad or the KJV Bible), and describes some of the most revolting scenes of violence you'll ever read with sublime beauty.

Have you read Virginia Woolf before? Her To The Lighthouse is my favorite book. She describes daily sensations I thought were ineffable--the wordless flutterings of mood that shape our conceptions of others and ourselves. This novel transfigured my notion of what language can achieve.
 

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