What are you reading?

[no_foam_cappuccino]

Lattes and cappuccinos are a difference of degree, not kind. Technically "no foam" - as in, none at all - wouldn't be even a latte.  It would be naked espresso awaiting its milk. A latte done right (what the Kiwis call a "strong flat white") has a very silky textured foam to it, it just doesn't dome over. This is assuming, of course, that when you steam your milk, you then call it "foam." Of course, you could simply call it something else - "steamed milk" / "less foamy foam" - in which case you have a semantic case to be made that "a no-foam cappuccino is just a latte." Except that it's not. Because to make the latte into a cappa, you just keep pouring the same steamed substance on top until it's bigger and whiter. And, of course, therefore inferior.

 

For a fantastic read involving a hilarious anti-coffee character, I recommend Mark Helprin's Memoir from Antproof Case.

 

Oh man, my worlds are really starting to collide. This is confusing. ::retreats into Harry Potter world::

[chaucerettescs]

Oh man, my worlds are really starting to collide. This is confusing. ::retreats into Harry Potter world::

 

I never emerge from Harry Potter world. I live here full time.

 

One of my favorite tumblr posts ever was a simple text post explaining how the poster doesn't reblog Harry Potter stuff much because "blogging about Harry Potter is like blogging about having feet" </truth>

[Stingermania]

I'm on a schedule to read all novels by Roth and McCarthy, the novel I finished today was The Road. But I'm taking a little time off and reading Beloved by Morrison. I'll read All the Pretty Horses after Beloved, and then I have to choose between The Crossing or The American Pastoral or The Great American Novel.

 

I'm also writing my MA thesis, and I have reached the third chapter which deals with reader response theories. I'm reading Luoise Rosenblatt's Literature as Exploration and Jauss's Toward an Aesthetic of Reception now.

Edited February 17, 2013 by Stingermania

[Stingermania]

Let me also add that I'm a rabid fan of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's the only book that I'm a member of a fan forum of. I just love it.

[thestage]

proclaimed by Faulkner himself the greatest American novel since Moby-Dick, and whether that's true or not, what's amazing is that it's not crazy to say or consider...definitely in the conversation).

 

he did indeed proclaim it, and he was right to do so.

 

I don't have any of the energy required to defend or explicate Gravity's Rainbow.  it is in many obvious ways a profoundly different experience from Moby Dick or Absalom, Absalom!, which are novels that appear to me to have a great affinity for one another, but I would still feel comfortable placing it in that continuum.  if nothing else, the colossal weight of its prose demands that you ask the question.  the scope of its history certainly shares something with Faulkner, and I think maybe it's all-encompassing nature calls to Moby Dick, even if this is very much a book of an era which had rebuked all metaphysics.  and, of course of course, this book is to rocketry and polymers (as well as countless other things, in what passes in this book for moderation) what Moby Dick is to whaling, though it will dare you, mockingly and pointedly, to find a trace of the former's holistic circular force in its titular parabola.

 

it has become a bit of a trend to declare otherwise, given our shifting literary tastes and values, but it must also be said that Gravity's Rainbow is a phenomenally difficult read.  it would be pointless to go into it without a good sense of that fact.

Edited February 17, 2013 by thestage

[Strong Flat White]

he did indeed proclaim it, and he was right to do so.

 

I don't have any of the energy required to defend or explicate Gravity's Rainbow.  it is in many obvious ways a profoundly different experience from Moby Dick or Absalom, Absalom!, which are novels that appear to me to have a great affinity for one another, but I would still feel comfortable placing it in that continuum.  if nothing else, the colossal weight of its prose demands that you ask the question.  the scope of its history certainly shares something with Faulkner, and I think maybe it's all-encompassing nature calls to Moby Dick, even if this is very much a book of an era which had rebuked all metaphysics.  and, of course of course, this book is to rocketry and polymers (as well as countless other things, in what passes in this book for moderation) what Moby Dick is to whaling, though it will dare you, mockingly and pointedly, to find a trace of the former's holistic circular force in its titular parabola.

 

it has become a bit of a trend to declare otherwise, given our shifting literary tastes and values, but it must also be said that Gravity's Rainbow is a phenomenally difficult read.  it would be pointless to go into it without a good sense of that fact.

 

Well you certainly have my attention!  Like so many recommended books, I'll have to earmark this one for summer. I don't see a "phenomenally difficult" and unrequired read fitting into this already packed and too-tight semester, but I always enjoy seeing what shoots to the top of the list, and how. And this is a cool way for it to happen.

[chaucerettescs]

Let me also add that I'm a rabid fan of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's the only book that I'm a member of a fan forum of. I just love it.

 

Haha, well, hello there! I'm hoping to reread A Storm of Swords before Season 3 of Game of Thrones starts up.

[Stingermania]

Haha, well, hello there! I'm hoping to reread A Storm of Swords before Season 3 of Game of Thrones starts up.

 

You only have to rearead half of it.... I wonder where the season break is going to be.

[chaucerettescs]

You only have to rearead half of it.... I wonder where the season break is going to be.

 

Haha, true. I have some idea where the break might be because Weiss and Benioff have dropped hints about certain events (~one event in particular~) occurring this season.

[bfat]

My attention span is at 0%, so Harry Potter and Stephen King...at the same time. 

 

And in the worst crossover of the century, they converge in DT7... now I'm depressed because I just reminded myself of that atrocity.

[Lucke1984]

my standard: venti black iced coffee, no sweetener, no room please. Just a big black coffee. That's all, thanks.

(on a perhaps-abstractly-similar note, I've been nicknamed Lady Hemingway by 2 different friends unbeknownst to one another)

Haven't read Absolom, but I'll def get on it.

Current: Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things by George Lakoff

Also: writing thesis on In Parenthesis, by David Jones - a poet who TS Eliot counted as one of only 4 important modern poets, along with Joyce, Pound, and himself. (maybe this says more about Eliot than it does of Jones, but Jones still should and *will* be in the canon eventually)

Cheers.

I'm reading Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things at the moment too!

[Stately Plump]

I used to have time to read before I started graduate school 

[The Whistler]

Reading Sense and Sensibility, I somehow avoided it all this time. And, risking rage from any romanticists out there, Marianne is an extremely annoying character.

 

I'll need to re-read Lewis' The Monk or Stevenson's  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde after this, I need to recuperate.

[davidipse]

Let's bump this? Taking a "gap" year between undergrad and grad, I'll die of boredom if I have to read for another year without talking about it (if I don't get into any schools this round). I'll kill if one more critic suggests that reading is its own "conversation." It's not.

 

Anyway, I'm trying very hard to like Whitman nowadays, and there are some hits, but more misses. I usually like taut, structured (though not necessarily formally) poetry (like Elizabeth Bishop, Dickinson, etc.), so Whitman just seems to go on and on. I'm sure this isn't the case (probably). Nevertheless, I can see the structure of thought in the shorter poems (e.g. Dalliance of the Eagles, A Noiseless Patient Spider) much better than in the more famous, longer ones. 

 

I just checked out Madam Bovary (Lydia Davis trans.) from the library and will usually also read a bunch of contemporary poems every day—most recently, James Cummins, whom I strongly recommend, who will crack you up and open, whose loveliness increases etc. 

 

I don't really recommend David Mikics's Slow Reading in a Hurried Age. Read about 3/4 of it in Barnes and Nobles but decided against buying. I agree with most of what he says, but he says it so mediocrely. 

[toasterazzi]

YA is my drug of choice, and my Kindle has made it much easier for me to keep up with reading. I'm on Insurgent right now, but I right now and I've also read The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent in the last couple weeks.

[Ozymandias Melancholia]

Recently, I've been furthering my knowledge of my sub-fields of interests, which include history of science and affect theory/philosophy of emotions. I just finished Charles Altieri's The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetic of the Affects, and now I'm reading Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. I'm also re-reading Lyrical Ballads.

[Tweedledumb]

I just read Less than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis, which was weird, but all of his stuff his weird. 

[ProfLorax]

YA is my drug of choice, and my Kindle has made it much easier for me to keep up with reading. I'm on Insurgent right now, but I right now and I've also read The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent in the last couple weeks.

I didn't love Divergent, though I thought I would. I just couldn't buy into the world enough, though I liked the protagonist. FIOS I liked infinitely more. Have you seen the trailer for the film adaptation yet?

 

I finally got to Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which I read within a day and haven't been able to pick up a (recreational) book since. Honestly, it was one of the best books I've ever read. 

[dazedandbemused]

I didn't love Divergent, though I thought I would. I just couldn't buy into the world enough, though I liked the protagonist. FIOS I liked infinitely more. Have you seen the trailer for the film adaptation yet?

I finally got to Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which I read within a day and haven't been able to pick up a (recreational) book since. Honestly, it was one of the best books I've ever read.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson was one of the best books I've ever read. I actually just finished rereading TFIOS yesterday; still amazing. The Divergent series was a HUGE waste of my life and I'm still really pissed that I read the whole trilogy. The best newish book that I read recently was Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Do y'all have any new YA to recommend?

[ProfLorax]

YAY YA! I'll have to get my hands on Eleanor and Park. Is Code Name Verity considered new? I read that last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler isn't exactly YA or new, but it's amazing. Last year, someone recommended it to me as a good book to assign to my basic reading class. I read it over last Winter break, fell in love with it, and promptly assigned it to my students that semester, who also loved it. Best teen dystopian novel I've read. 

[davidipse]

Recently, I've been furthering my knowledge of my sub-fields of interests, which include history of science and affect theory/philosophy of emotions. I just finished Charles Altieri's The Particulars of Rapture: An Aesthetic of the Affects, and now I'm reading Brian Massumi's Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. I'm also re-reading Lyrical Ballads.

 

Dear owner of the best username around here, how'd you like Particulars of Rapture? I read it (with some skipping) and found it rather painful to get through... 

[Ozymandias Melancholia]

Dear owner of the best username around here, how'd you like Particulars of Rapture? I read it (with some skipping) and found it rather painful to get through... 

You've accurately summed-up my experience as well. It was difficult to get through due to the content and prose. While I thought certain chapters (or sections of chapters) were brilliant, I sometimes thought the application of his arguments to texts were lackluster, and didn't always deliver what his theoretical exposition sought to reveal. Plus, his prose was unbearable.

I enjoyed his critique of cognitivism, though. 

Edited January 30, 2014 by Ozymandias Melancholia

[scribnera]

Just started Teju Cole's Open City. Any opinions to offer, folks? I've not read too much about it. I liked Cole's "small fates" on the Twitter, etc, so I decided to give this novel a shot.

Open City is next on my list, too! I'm struggling through The Corrections right now because as a rabid DFW fangirl I want to be able to back up my knee-jerk reaction to hate Jonathan Franzen with actual experience.

[champagne]

Just finished Crying of Lot 49, about halfway through Go Down, Moses. 

[emily.rose]

Anyone else read poetry for fun? Currently reading Anne Sexton's Love Poems and Eavan Boland's In a Time of Violence.