i'm a nerd so i love books

[joeysimms]

The Doctorow Denouement - E.E. Faux

A Trillion Warped Pansies - Vincent Lathebug

Stupendous Gimp - Sadie Thrushole

Go Forth and Stultify - Benedict Knypersley

Ferns and Bracken in North Staffordshire - Jon Ven

The Impeachement Imbroglio - Fillip Phincham

I'm surprised to see Phincham here. Didn't know anybody else read him..

Twelve Hungry Yen - Arthur D. Voigtpeg

The Ludlow Moratorium - Brent Tythe

Different Stokes - E.F. Gob and Billy Went

Modern Dancing for the Ballroom Kingdom - Marsha C. Potterkin

The Finbecks Erratum - Maud Fyshe

Good list Robert. I've read 80%.

[bobbydj]

To be totally honest for a moment, I am actually deeply ambivalent about Phincham's output of late. On the one hand we are offered finely sculpted prose, woven into filigree plot schemas. On the other, Phincham insists on prolonging the lives of characters that, frankly, should have been put out to pasture back in (say) the epilogue of Nine Steps to Moranda.

I think we can confidently expect the Lisbonnite Press to recruit a new cadre of editors for Phincham in the near future - if only because The Vignette Torpor was so coruscatingly dull. Which reminds me - I really must contact Delbert at the L-Press. He promised to get back to me on the Bistro contract last week. Hello oh! The world of publishing does not wait that long Mr. Delbert!!

[fuckface]

i was just trying to think of a book to start reading , i want one thats a 'classic' i guess

like you know a book you think EVERYONE should read at one point in their life...
any suggestions?

[joeysimms]

On the other, Phincham insists on prolonging the lives of characters that, frankly, should have been put out to pasture back in (say) the epilogue of Nine Steps to Moranda.

True true but I feel this is a comment on the readership of his novels as a whole, and numerous recent conversations with the author have indeed bolstered my feelings. He (Phincham) would like nothing more than to put his entire reading audience to pasture as it were, but realizes the financial implications of such a venture. So, he simply drags these miserable characters around from book to book, list to list, checks evrything twice and shuffles the next dungheap off to the publishers, who greeedily gobble up each and every offering from the master.

[comfortstarr]

Just finished:
"Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie. Highly, HIGHLY, recommended
"Mystic River," Dennis Lehhane (?). The book is really good, much better than the movie. I read another book by him, "Shelter Island." It was kind of stupid.

Just started:
"A Problem from Hell: America's response to Genocide." So far it's really good. One of those books that helps one become smarter.

Always recommended authors:
Walter Mosley
Cormac MaCarthy
Martin Amis (his book about Stalin is great for Stalin newbies, his memoir is also really fun, but his novels make my stomach hurt from laughing so much)
Jonathon Franzen, "The Corrections" I like the showy stuff--Amis, MaCarthy, et al--and this is showy, also funny as hell.

[inverseroom]

like you know a book you think EVERYONE should read at one point in their life...any suggestions?

Crime and Punishment, of course. It's the best ever. And funny. And scary. And sad.

[aurelialuz]

i read "house of leaves" after i had it heartily recomended to me, i was dissapointed in it in the end. i thought he really had something great going and then just couldn't pull it together for a great ending.

another one in the same veign that i enjoyed more was "infinite jest" by david foster wallace. it's amazing reading, the depth of subject matter he's ingested in his short number of years and the way he's able to sew it together. it doesn't so much conclude as just end. but lots of fun footnotes and such.

as for "great" works, i'd suggest conrad, "secret sharer", "heart of darkness," there's a pengiun collection that hits all his good ones. nabokov's "lolita" is a perrenial favorite, because his writing is just unsurpassed in linguistic beauty. i'd tried some of his earlier short stories and they lack the panache of that one.

and i fucking love hemingway. there, i said it.

alex

[bobbydj]

On the other, Phincham insists on prolonging the lives of characters that, frankly, should have been put out to pasture back in (say) the epilogue of Nine Steps to Moranda.

True true but I feel this is a comment on the readership of his novels as a whole, and numerous recent conversations with the author have indeed bolstered my feelings. He (Phincham) would like nothing more than to put his entire reading audience to pasture as it were, but realizes the financial implications of such a venture. So, he simply drags these miserable characters around from book to book, list to list, checks evrything twice and shuffles the next dungheap off to the publishers, who greeedily gobble up each and every offering from the master.

It has been said - on numerous occasions, as you (more than anyone, perhaps) will know only too well - that were Stephen King to publish his laundry list, it would surpass the first quarter's returns for both Carrie and Night Shift combined. Thus it is said, with regard to Phincham, that if he completed a rough draft of his Monday morning flatulence there would be locust-like swarm of agents surrounding his Duplex by noon on Friday.

At this juncture, I need only remind you of the avaricious feeding frenzy that surrounded the rights to the now much criticised publication of Hit the Ground Meandering. Not to mention the protracted and disgraceful bidding war created by the first news of Phincham's contractual shenanigans prior to the emergence of the Lisbonnite negotiations.

At any rate, his protagonists are rapidly becoming nothing more than vapid cyphers adrift in the malaise that characterises so much of contemporary literature. I can but pray that the drones at Lisbonnite will attempt to communicate some measure of the disgust felt by you, I and other esteemed members of the literati.

[lukakis]

The Brothers Karamazov - it's 800 pages with tiny print, but every syllable is interesting. Of course, it helps that I'm reading it in my honors seminar so I have the opportunity to rip it apart and break it down and gain insight through some great discussion.

Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength - C.S. Lewis. This is Lewis' space trilogy, and it's some of the best science fiction i've ever read. The first two books are great, and the third one is absolutely mind-blowing.

Joshua- yes, I mean the old testament book. If you like stories of ruthless conquest, this one's for you.

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. LeGuin, sci-fi plus some great social commentary

A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. LeGuin, one of the best fantasy/philosophy trilogies available. It ranks right up with Lord of the RIngs in my book. There was a fourth, Tehanu, written later, that wasn't as good.

Miles - Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe. The great trumpeter's autobiography. Funny, interesting, crazy- a must for any jazz nut.

Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller. This is an interesting book about the author's experience with Christianity that isn't some evangelical spewing of religion. The writing is captivating, and you don't feel like the guy is preaching at you.

The Republic - Plato. I would recommend only reading this if you have some sort of group to discuss it with, 'cause holy shit man..

[kcrusher]

I've got Oryx and Crake on my shelf, but was ambivalent because I couldn't make it through A Handmaidens Tale. Is it similar in writing style?

I second all of these mentioned:

The DaVinci Code
Across the Nightingale Floor
American Gods (a good read, but not terribly inventive)
Still Life with Woodpecker
Phillip Pullmans 'Subtle Knife, Golden Compass, etc'.
Ursula K. LeGuin 'Wizard of Earthsea' series

I don't like Ayn Rand - Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are just so much tripe, IMHO.

I would also highly recommend:

Amber Chronicles - Roger Zelazny (fantasy fiction)
Underground Education - (can't remember the author) (Historical non-fiction)
The Devil Soldier - (??) (historical non-fiction)
Shadow and Claw (and others in this series) - Gene Wolfe (fantasy fiction)
Anything by Terry Pratchett - (fantasy fiction/humor)
Anything by Paulo Coelho - (fiction)
Quag Keep - Andre Norton (fantasy fiction)
Camber of Culdi series - Katherine Kurtz (fantasy fiction)
Life of Pi - Yan Martel (fiction)
Anything by P.J. O'Rourke (political/social commentary, travel)
Anything by Tim Cahill (adventure/travel)
Anything by Richard Feynman - (stories, physics)
Anything by Ray Kurzweil - (technology)
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson (environmental commentary)
Isaac Newton - James Gleick (biography)

That should be enough to go on.

Thanks to everyone else for the great book recommendations!

[bobbydj]

The Republic - Plato. I would recommend only reading this if you have some sort of group to discuss it with, 'cause holy shit man..

Excuse me. I can expound at great length on this...this...meritricious and tawdry apology for a classical onto/epistemo/logical exposition. And I emphatically do not require an audience. The metaphor of the cave is a piece of pleonastic verbiage which, with the elegance of an injured sloth, attempts to seduce the reader with so many allegorical baubles. Meanwhile, the character of Thrasymachus is a poor excuse for a dissentient dime-store ventriloquist's dummy through which the thinly disguised rhetoric of Socrates is inverted, and presented as verisimilitude. Scratch its surface and you will discover a palimpsest that, since its inception, has lead Western Metaphysics on one of the most arduous and fruitless goose chases since the birth of Christ.

[VeronicaSawyer]

i was just trying to think of a book to start reading , i want one thats a 'classic' i guess

like you know a book you think EVERYONE should read at one point in their life...
any suggestions?

Catcher in the Rye is cool.

I just read Tim O'Brien's "In the Lake of the Woods" and a bunch of Pynchon/Carver/Barthelme post-modern hoohah. All excellent stuff.

[bobbydj]

I quite like the pastiche of Sallinger's opus too - Catheter in the Why?, by Tony Mannish. It tells the tale of a small girl too young to ask why, too old to wonder when. I hope others will notice the qualities of this timely commentary.

[VeronicaSawyer]

hey, Foucault's "The History of Sexuality" wotsit is good.

[lukakis]

Ugh. I thought Cather in the Rye was infuriating. It's supposed to be this great classic, and J.D. Salinger is so shrouded in mystery, etc., but really, I found the book to have no real merit whatsoever. Holden Caulfield is just a stupid brat who runs away, makes a lot of mistakes, and learns nothing from them. I thought it was a depressing waste of time.