Reading List Thread

[TheFourthHorseman]

Reading The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe, good and interesting fantasy. Starts slow. Anyone else read it?

[GONE Ridin' Hood]

Originally Posted by marduk1507

Sons and Lovers is a very good book, although in some places really tiresome. Take your time.

Alrighty, I will .

[hyena]

Originally Posted by Kathleen23

If anybody can put their hands on Amelie Nothomb's books... please read these. It's dark but so funny and sarcastic. They are small books, not even 200 pages each I think, but the stories are amazing... and they are not expensive books.
I don't know if there are english versions... but if anyone can read french here, you have to check this out!

well - i read one of her books. i don't know the original title because i read it in a translation in italian, but the italian title sounded like "metaphysics of plumbing systems" or similar. it was an auto-biographical story of sorts, meant to represent the first years of the writer's life in japan. i don't want to dispute your preferences, but let me say that personally i hated it. completely self-centered, sponsoring a life focused on idiotic pleasures such as the consumption of white chocolate (if it had been sex, at least, there would have been some connection to other people), and devoid of any inspirational or redeeming value. i went through the whole book because it was a gift and i had no intention of offending the person who gave it to me, but really, it's a watermark of the crisis of western civilization.

eco and foucault's pendulum - i loved the book when i first read it, about 13 years ago. of course i read the original version, and that's a plus because he really knows how to use the italian language and probably some subtleties are lost in translation. i keep on thinking that i have to re-read it when time allows, probably will. i don't like eco as a public figure, he's built a remunerative media career on the left-leaning know-it-all image, but i must admit that he's a fine fiction writer.

more books - i am 100 pages into the little drummer girl and i'm loving it, but i have no time to devote to it properly, alas.

[Dark_Silence]

@ hyena: the original title of the book is "Métaphysique des tubes"
What I like in her books, is the funny and crazy way she describes things. She also always sounds crazy in interviews...
A lot of her books are based on her biography, though not all.
I can remember 3 of those i read that werent related to her life, but i can only give you the French title:

"Hygiène de l'assasin"
"Robert des noms propres"
"Antéchrista"

I havent read all her books, though I really would like to...

[King Chaos]

At the moment I'm reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski...

It's absolutely fantastic. Pure genius in the way its presented. The idea is so nightmarish and fucked up... It doesn't surprise me that people have been hospitalised and needed therapy after reading it.

It's frighteningly intelligent too. Because it's laid out like an essay in parts and like a journal in others it has a referencing system... and there's moments where you've just got to wonder how this american author could collect and reference so many academic sources. It serves as a literary device too... like the influence the book is having on my life is extening outside the 800 pages and onto the pages and images described in each sighted reference.

There's a whole new wit to it aswell. To explain, the book is a guy named Johnny Truant's submission of a found document, with his own notes and life unfolding within the published element and his commentary along side. It's written almost schizophrenically by Danielewski... for instance, 5 pages of a description about echos (straight from the zampano document), massively in detail (really well researched information), and then Johnny Truant interjects and says "If I were you I'd have just skipped over all that part. It's really not important." A brilliantly original twist on post modernism.

I recommend it very highly... although not if you're too over imaginative and have lots of nightmares. I heard about the book from a friend whose friend read it and had to go for psychoanalysis and therapy and for a year and half was totally agrophobic. The mate who "introduced" it to me wouldnt tell me the title of the book. He just told me someone measures their house and it's an inch wider on the inside than on the outside... which totally sells it for me. One scene made me feel really ill... or maybe it was the plane food.

[Impudent]

^I'll look into it.

[marduk1507]

Sounds interesting, although Im not sure I can handle it. But I think I could handle a book, a movie would be worse.

[6 Stringed Fingers]

KC: I've read some descriptions about the book, it looks like it has something to do with quantum physics on a humanly scale. The house itself became absurd. And what absurdity does best to people is to drive them insane.

From what I've gathered, the book is definitely worth looking into. And I find it somehow similar to Cube (a movie of 1997), so if you have the time or resource, please give me a comparaison of the two. I would be very interested.

[King Chaos]

Well Cube is more sci-fi based... like explicitly set in a world where the absurd is obliged. This book transcends that in many ways by being about what feels like truly real people (written in places academically instead of as a "story" gives it that extra edge). The one thing I'd agree on is how the two tales psychologically play on the characters within (and audiences) fear of the unknown. Nobody knows what to expect of the next room in the cube and "The five and a half minute hallway" in house of leaves is just pure impossibility, the fact that dailey the walls inside this hallway shift with an eerie "growl" just adds to that unkown paranoia that haunts for days and days. It's quite difficult to comprehend the way the story of Navidson's haunted house is being told too... But it's not spoiling anything to let you know, so I shall...

An old man named Zampano who lived in the same apartment block as a young whippersnapping party goer named Johnny Truant (insignificantly, where the band johnny truant took their name) dies by mysterious causes. He leaves behind a trunk of notebooks full of this academic work which Johnny truant finds with a note requesting the pages be published and the "author" can take full proceedings. The work is an analysis of a movie called "The Navidson Project" (this is a documentary about an ex-explorer who moves unknowingly into the dangerous house of leaves, and finds the truly absurd unfolding around him and his family... not helping that the marriage is on the rocks and the wife is extremely claustrophobic). What is really wierd is, Zampano, the man who is writing this monstrously intelligent analysis, is completely blind, and is using scribes to do it for him... what's even wierder is that (Johnny Truant clears this up early in the book) no film/documentary by the name of "The Navidson Project" has ever existed. But Zampano makes it come to life... an insane semi senile man... sighting reviews by famous american reviewers of the navidson film... sighting the weinsteins involvement in the distribution of the production... Johnny Truant being the gnarly dude he is does his research and finds that none of this has ever happened... not in his idealised reality anyway. And then the truly nightmarish tale unfolds.

[6 Stringed Fingers]

House of Leaves does seem to have an approach where it is almost real. And that adds to the impact its absurdity has on the readers. I've read online the first chapter and it almost convinced me of the existence of such a fascinating house. (not that its quantum-like paradox disturbed me in any way because I live in absurdity of my own mind )

One other thing I noticed is the cultish hidden messages in the book. Those include taking the first letter of each page or each line and form a sentence, etc. Are those really necessary to the understanding of the story? Or is it another technique to drive the reader insane by showing them the corner of an inexistent iceberg?

And one more detail I'd like to know is in what way did it affect Johnny Truant's life that Zampano's seemingly true record didn't check out with his own seemingly ture reality?

[Dark_Silence]

I don't think I would like that book at all. Many times when I read books or watched movies with really absurd things or concepts, I didn't like it at all.

[King Chaos]

@Dark Silence... It's about how real people deal with absurd concepts... and the concept isn't totally unrealistic anyway... it's the type of thing you could imagine happening in your own home if you had the idea to measure the inside and outside of your house. Six stringed is very right by bringing the quatum physics into it, because the book does the same. And quatum physics as we know has some basic principles to do with the minds recognition of only what we can comprehend... Which this book explores. The moment people go crazy is the moment they except the nightmarish possibilities that drown in the reality most of us create. Talking bollocks? Yep.

@6 stringed: Your questions a good one, I asked the same thing and a friend of mine informed me they got the entire story without doing their own research (which is asked in the later half of the book). Just knowing that element of the book exists and there are so many hidden messages adds so much to the mystery of the unknown. You'll enjoy the book more if you take the time to explore these insane literary devices, as the book is about someone exploring an insane phenomenon that is scary enough to shave the eyelids of a nuns tush... And by reading deep into the book, you are also exploring a truly nightmarish phenomenon.

And about johnny truants reaction, really it comes down to his own psychological deficiancies... which are slowly explained (although unwillingly at first by the tortured narrator) and are many. But other than that, him being a seemingly brilliant mind lends us to share his reaction, maybe subconsciously... and in his commentary he doesn't refrain from reminding us (and perhaps warning us) that we all have his fragile and damaged mind state to look forward to as a result of lending ourselves to Zampanos work. although Im not suggesting for a second this book will cause me night terrors etc, it's just the actual authors way of completely submerging the reader in the purest of terror.

Edit: Anyone spot the absolutely demented turn of phrase? I actually wrote that thinking it made sense.

[La Rocque]

'Opus Dei' by John L Allen Jr
Conspiracy theories, dark uninformed speculation maybe a little self- flagellation thrown in, plus 'the work of God', my kind of book -

[La Rocque]

'Doing Nothing' by Tom Lutz, a history of loafers, loungers, slackers, and bums in america
"Every man is, or hopes to be, an idler" Samuel Johnson (1758)
or
"They say I'm lazy, but it takes all my time" Joe Walsh (1978)
Read about 75 pages, so far my name has not come up -

[KitKat]

I'm reading :

Henning Mankell - Danslärarens återkomst (The return of the Dancing Master)

[Tritonus]

I'm reading:

Marc Sylvester - Henrik Larsson, (about the record season...)

[La Rocque]

'Unspeak' by Steven Poole, how words became weapons, how weapons became a message, and how that message becomes reality -

Book starts with the UK, Anti-Social Behavior Orders aka Asbos, its a laugh riot on a serious subject 'what is anti-social behavior according to the law'?

[RampageSword]

"Steppenwolf" (in french)

[Nitronium Blood]

The best book in the world. The Lord asked me to tell you about it.

Ze Bible.

LOL OWNED!

[KitKat]

I have read somewhere that the Ikea catalogue was more read than the Bible... hahahahaha!

[La Rocque]

'Single Woman of a Certain Age' edited by Jane Ganahl
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries -

[La Rocque]

'Fake, forgery, lies & eBay' by Kenneth Walton
How one man's con game created an international scandal and triggered a nationwide FBI manhunt.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive -

[Kovenant84]

Just finished the Dark Tower series by S. King. I was surprised at how good it was, but then, I'm a fan of his writing.

So, I'm about to start the newest Wheel of Time book, that I found out existed a week and a half ago. I hear his writing has stopped sucking since he found out he's on a countdown timer. We'll see. We'll also see if I remember a goddamn thing/character from this damn series.

~kov. (tired and bored)

[VultureCulture]

i finished reading "übermorgen" (probably the day after tomorrow in english) by allan folsom, and it was really dense and well written, but the last 100 or so pages beat the shit out of me. it was just so hilarious that it drowned the overall experience. i would recommend to read it, but when you think it can't get any more tense, throw away the book and let your own mind think of an ending. it will be better in any case. even if you are seriously retarded.

[Kovenant84]

Originally Posted by VultureCulture

(probably the day after tomorrow in english)

Anything like the movie?

Originally Posted by VultureCulture

...even if you are seriously retarded.

Oh, phew. Thought I'd be screwed there.

Seriously, though, what was it about?

~kov.