What are you reading?

[sebastiansteddy]

Nope! Thanks for the suggestion, lisajay. I'll check it out.

[dazedandbemused]

Wow, ya'll are reading some hardcore stuff in your down time. I mean, I've been reading material on Gibson Girls in preparation for a project that I haven't decided whether to begin yet, but I wouldn't call that fun reading. The most serious my free time stuff gets is non-academic, fun non-fiction.

[The Whistler]

H. G. Wells - The Time Machine.

 

Never read it before, it's pretty lovely, actually. Too bad my concentration is currently crappy.

[slvitale]

H. G. Wells - The Time Machine.

 

Never read it before, it's pretty lovely, actually. Too bad my concentration is currently crappy.

 

This is what I wrote my WS on ) Great choice.

[ohgoodness]

I just started re-reading Didions "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights" and regain alot of my focus. Nothing captures my own feelings/memories of sorrow/as the first book whereas blue nights captures the rebounding.

[The Whistler]

This is what I wrote my WS on ) Great choice.

 

It's pretty awesome. I found a nice, old, used version this Summer. It has that great old book smell. It even has coffee stains.

 

I love old books.

[1Q84]

McCarthy's Child of God. Nice and "uplifting"... in the sense that things could be worse. A lot worse.

[apotheosis]

I just started re-reading Didions "The Year of Magical Thinking" and "Blue Nights" and regain alot of my focus. Nothing captures my own feelings/memories of sorrow/as the first book whereas blue nights captures the rebounding.

 

Ah I love Didion too! I just finished "Blue Nights" and am now re-reading Virginia Woolf's "The Waves"--probably my favorite pieces by these two authors.

[nhswrestle]

Since I've finished grad apps I've read:

 

Be Here Now by Ram Das

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

"The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley

 

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.

Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo

 

Currently reading Choke by Chuck Palahniuk.

[nhswrestle]

McCarthy's Child of God. Nice and "uplifting"... in the sense that things could be worse. A lot worse.

 

Just googled this and it looks pretty awesome. Is the narrative first-person stream of conscious?

[lisajay]

Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.

.

have you read waiting period??

[nhswrestle]

have you read waiting period??

 

I have not.

[beet-nik]

It's pretty awesome. I found a nice, old, used version this Summer. It has that great old book smell. It even has coffee stains.

 

I love old books.

 

I second the old books comment! I'm currently reading a used and abused, but obviously well-loved copy of The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi. I'm 14 pages in and have already used 1/3 of a package of Post-It flags 

[1Q84]

Just googled this and it looks pretty awesome. Is the narrative first-person stream of conscious?

 

Not really. It's really hard to put a pin on McCarthy's style (especially since it shifts so much in this one) but stream of consciousness is not part of the palette!

[courtc8891]

Beckett's first "trilogy" is amazing.  Some of the best literature I've ever read.

 

I second this.

I'm still a wee little undergrad, but I'm doing a directed study on Beckett this semester to gear me up for an MA next year. So far I've only read his older novels (Murphy and Watt), the trilogy, and a handful of his shorter plays. All have been fantastic and I cannot wait to read more.

Also on my plate: some Paul Auster fiction (The New York Trilogy) and Foucault's The History of Sexuality.

[lisajay]

I have not.

i think you'd most likely enjoy it. your avatar & the earlier reference to choke makes me think you'd appreciate the humor.

[nhswrestle]

i think you'd most likely enjoy it. your avatar & the earlier reference to choke makes me think you'd appreciate the humor.

 

Excellent. I'll definitely check it out. Thanks!

Edited January 27, 2013 by nhswrestle

[masack118]

Also on my plate: some Paul Auster fiction (The New York Trilogy) 

 

I read this for the first time last year and while I figured it'd be good, I was actually shocked by how much I loved it.

 

I read Invisible right after and it was also pretty good, but definitely not as good.

[DontHate]

In Praise of Athletic Beauty by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. He is the shit!

[courtc8891]

I read this for the first time last year and while I figured it'd be good, I was actually shocked by how much I loved it.

 

I read Invisible right after and it was also pretty good, but definitely not as good.

 

Yea, Auster is an interesting guy-- the trilogy was his fiction at its best. He has remarkable ideas, but in his later work he tends to fall apart. 

If you're interested in reading more of him, I recommend his non-fiction. Hand to Mouth is a fantastic autobiography, The Art of Hunger is a collection of essays (he's a wonderful essayist), and his newest memoir Winter Journal is also worth a read. You can tell he's influenced heavily by other writers. There were moments in City of Glass that were almost taken straight out of Beckett's Watt.

Edited January 30, 2013 by courtc8891

[masack118]

Thanks for the recommendations! I'll definitely look into those.

[Imogene]

Definitely a Paul Auster fan.  And I find it really interesting that he's been much more popular abroad than here in the U.S. (the French love him).

[BookGeek]

Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. First time with Calvino- I spend way too much time on Flavorwire and they did a piece on the best books for book lovers. Pretty fun so far, if a little aggravating at times. 

 

http://www.flavorwire.com/335372/10-essential-books-for-book-nerds

 

Side note: super impressed by some of your motivation to read. 

[OctaviaButlerfan]

Let's see.. I just finished Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong. I think I'm reading Persepolis next. I'm considering reading Devil's Wake or Joplin's Ghost by Tananarive Due. I need to read something that isn't for school.

[Mercyhurst2010]

I'm in a "gap year" right now, post M.A., waiting on PhD applications, and working full time, so I don't quite have the time for all the reading that I have had in the past (and, hopefully, will have in the near future). Still, I've tried to keep up. I recently finished Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Paul Harding's Tinkers. Currently wrapping up Delilo's White Noise (because how can I dare claim to be specializing in 20th Cent. American and contemporary fiction without having read that!?) and looking at picking up Camus' The Stranger once I finish. Also, I've been making efforts at starting On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction by Brian Boyd, but so far I'm only a couple chapters in. With sparse opportunities for reading, I seem to get less theoretical reading done.