What book are you reading?

vant0037 · January 2014

Who Princess said:

vant0037 said:
Finished Last of the Mohicans. Ultimately, a great read. Took a while to get used to his style and the narrative holes, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. The movie sucks though. Haha.
Which movie? It's been filmed about umpteen times. )
If you mean the one with Daniel Day-Lewis, yeah, except for the characters the story doesn't much resemble the book.

Yes, the Daniel Day-Lewis one. Really, really awful.

At risk of sounding like that guy, the novel's power comes from its use of metaphor (i.e. nature/frontier wilderness as "peace" and "Heaven"; the Mohicans/Natty Bumppo as "Man," war/savage tribes/French/British as "hell/evil" etc). For all it's narrative shortfalls and clumsy language, the story really seizes on those themes well and by the end, after reading three separate arcs about the Scout and the Mohicans trying to get to Cora and Alice, only to have Cora and Uncas (SPOILER!) - the purest of pure - die at the hands of a too-familiar foe, you are feeling as though Man truly is helpless in such a vicious world. You do almost feel like giving in. And then, there is the power of the burial scene for Cora and Uncas, where Chinkgachgook says something to the effect about how he is now the last of the Mohicans and therefore alone, and the Scout takes his hand and affirms that he is never alone (an affirmation of the true friendship between the two men that is the hallmark of the Leatherstocking series, but also a metaphor for man's only refuge in a brutal world - one another).

...for me, all that was lost in a crappy movie that utilized flimsy plot devices (stereotypical "white lead" romance, white-on-white emotional tension vs. white-on-nonwhite physical tension etc) and eliminated the novel's finest points. Apparently a platonic male friendship as the story's guiding force was too edgy in 1992?

For some, a response to that whole critique would be: "they have to make changes, otherwise it would be impossible to make that book into a movie."

My response: "exactly." Hollywood needs to write it's own screen plays and stop ruining classics.

Rant over!

F Me In The Brain · January 2014

Digital Twilight said:
Heart of Darkness was good (This book famously inspired the movie Apocalypse Now) but I think I prefered the short story 'Youth' tagged at the end of the book. Utopia was a quick an interesting read,

If you enjoyed the story and are a fan of the movie you need to watch this film....on a number of levels the film is amazing:

Digital Twilight · January 2014

I haven't seen that film but I loved Apocalypse Now. I may have to keep an eye out for that. Thanks.

kw18 · January 2014

Who Princess said:

Digital Twilight said:
I've just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Homes), Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Utopia by Thomas More. The Hound was a good read and my first from the Sherlock series but i'm not desperate to read anymore anytime soon. Heart of Darkness was good (This book famously inspired the movie Apocalypse Now) but I think I prefered the short story 'Youth' tagged at the end of the book.
When I first read Heart of Darkness, I thought it was a bit overdone. Later, I read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and got a completely new insight into the story. Conrad wrote about what he saw and he probably saw some pretty horrible things in Africa.

Heart of Darkness is on my list of books to read sometime this year ... off my embarrassing "books I should have read by now but haven't" list.

F Me In The Brain · January 2014

Digital Twilight said:
I haven't seen that film but I loved Apocalypse Now. I may have to keep an eye out for that. Thanks.

Life and Art mirror each other once again....you will not be disappointed if you loved the movie.

Reading 2 at the same time now....

Newch91 · January 2014

Giving this a quick read today before the heavy school reading begins. Semester started today, had one class - no homework in that one - and other class was cancelled because of the snow we're getting now. I figured I would this before I'm swamped with school reading.

Who Princess · January 2014

kw18 said:

Who Princess said:
When I first read Heart of Darkness, I thought it was a bit overdone. Later, I read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and got a completely new insight into the story. Conrad wrote about what he saw and he probably saw some pretty horrible things in Africa.
Heart of Darkness is on my list of books to read sometime this year ... off my embarrassing "books I should have read by now but haven't" list.

I'd really encourage you to read King Leopold's Ghost, or at least some of it, when you read Heart of Darkness. Since I was an English major I'd read Heart of Darkness more than once. But I never heard or read anything much about the circumstances behind it other than that it was inspired by a trip that Conrad made to Africa.

When it's read nowadays, we tend to think of it as an allegory about the nature of evil. For better or worse, Apocalypse Now (changing the setting from colonial Africa to the Vietnam War) just added to the allegorical view. At the time Heart of Darkness was published though, people would have regarded it as topical fiction describing contemporary events. I was very surprised to learn more about the background of the story. The details that I'd thought were so farfetched were probably accurate.

OTOH, you may not even like the book!

kw18 · January 2014

Who Princess said:

kw18 said:

Who Princess said:
When I first read Heart of Darkness, I thought it was a bit overdone. Later, I read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and got a completely new insight into the story. Conrad wrote about what he saw and he probably saw some pretty horrible things in Africa.
Heart of Darkness is on my list of books to read sometime this year ... off my embarrassing "books I should have read by now but haven't" list.
I'd really encourage you to read King Leopold's Ghost, or at least some of it, when you read Heart of Darkness. Since I was an English major I'd read Heart of Darkness more than once. But I never heard or read anything much about the circumstances behind it other than that it was inspired by a trip that Conrad made to Africa.

When it's read nowadays, we tend to think of it as an allegory about the nature of evil. For better or worse, Apocalypse Now (changing the setting from colonial Africa to the Vietnam War) just added to the allegorical view. At the time Heart of Darkness was published though, people would have regarded it as topical fiction describing contemporary events. I was very surprised to learn more about the background of the story. The details that I'd thought were so farfetched were probably accurate.

OTOH, you may not even like the book!

I'll have to read it first to decide! Funny ... I was an English major, too, but never read it. When it came to classic literature, I was not a particularly good English major ...

SD48277 · January 2014

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt.
With writing as good as this, I don't mind that the book is nearly 800 pages long (unlike Jonathan Franzen's, Freedom, which pissed me off halfway through).

backseatLover12 · January 2014

Joyland by Stephen King

Black Diamond · January 2014

kw18 · January 2014

backseatLover12 said:
Joyland by Stephen King

I really enjoyed that one. Quick, good read.

Enkidu · January 2014

Who Princess said:

Digital Twilight said:
I've just finished The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sherlock Homes), Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and Utopia by Thomas More. The Hound was a good read and my first from the Sherlock series but i'm not desperate to read anymore anytime soon. Heart of Darkness was good (This book famously inspired the movie Apocalypse Now) but I think I prefered the short story 'Youth' tagged at the end of the book.
When I first read Heart of Darkness, I thought it was a bit overdone. Later, I read King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild and got a completely new insight into the story. Conrad wrote about what he saw and he probably saw some pretty horrible things in Africa.

King Leopold's Ghost is really amazing, although you feel overwhelmed when you're done. I think I read about it on this site (the old site, the one you could actually read). Then I read The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham which is even more depressing.

I'm halfway through Johnny Bails Floatin and it's so much fun - a really good read. After that it's either The Goldfinch or the new Ian Rankin.

If anybody gives a damn, I thought I'd experiment with a blog about reading. About books I've read and liked. And it would be fun to have feedback from people and suggestions for other books. Check it out if you'd like. And I've never done a blog before so I'm pretty clueless. Right now it has the intro and tomorrow I'll post the first book.

http://mybookclubforone.blogspot.com/

JWPearl · January 2014

Sounds really hard to explain but interesting the way you put it, i kind of get your idea of the novel

RKCNDY · January 2014

never could get into 'chick-lit', so I'm giving this a try.

If I don't like it, I will get PistachioMan's book.

gunter1976 · January 2014

I picked up a bunch of books recently, can't seem to help it. And then there is the difficult choice of what to read next first. Usually it's a spur of the moment thing, and right now I decided to go with Dirt By David Vann.

Publisher’s description: The year is 1985, and twenty-two-year-old Galen lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded old house surrounded by a walnut orchard in a suburb of Sacramento. He doesn’t know who his father is, his abusive grandfather is dead, and his grandmother, losing her memory, has been shipped off to a nursing home. Galen and his mother survive on the family’s trust fund—old money that his aunt, Helen, and seventeen-year-old cousin, Jennifer, are determined to get their hands on.

Galen, a New Age believer who considers himself an old soul, yearns for transformation: to free himself from the corporeal, to be as weightless as air, to walk on water. But he’s powerless to stop the manic binges that overtake him, leading him to fixate on forbidden desires. A prisoner of his body, he is obsessed with thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer and dreams of shedding himself of the clinging mother whose fears and needs weigh him down.

When the family takes a trip to an old cabin in the Sierras, near South Lake Tahoe, tensions crescendo. Caught in a compromising position, Galen will discover the shocking truth of just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.

An exhilarating portrayal of a legacy of violence and madness, Dirt is an entirely feverish read.

gunter1976 · January 2014

gunter1976 said:
I picked up a bunch of books recently, can't seem to help it. And then there is the difficult choice of what to read next first. Usually it's a spur of the moment thing, and right now I decided to go with Dirt By David Vann

A slightly disturbing, dark yet very compelling read by an upcoming author I can only recommend. It only took me two sittings to finish this, with another novel already in the mail.

My next read is a book I have been considering for a long long time, but for some reason I just did not get around to picking up a copy. It is generally considered a classic: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

Amazon review

It took Vonnegut more than 20 years to put his Dresden experiences into words. He explained, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again." Slaughterhouse Five is a powerful novel incorporating a number of genres. Only those who have fought in wars can say whether it represents the experience well. However, what the novel does do is invite the reader to look at the absurdity of war. Human versus human, hedonist politicians pressing buttons and ordering millions to their deaths all for ideologies many cannot even comprehend. Flicking between the US, 1940's Germany and Tralfamadore, Vonnegut's semi- autobiographical protagonist Billy Pilgrim finds himself very lost. One minute he is being viewed as a specimen in a Tralfamadorian Zoo, the next he is wandering a post-apocalyptic city looking for corpses. Slaughterhouse Five-Or The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death is a remarkable blend of black humour, irony, the truth and the absurd. The author regards his work a "failure", millions of readers do not. Released the same time bombs were falling on South East Asia, this title caused controversy and awakening. Essential reading for all. So it goes. --Jon Smith

Newch91 · January 2014

gunter1976 said:

gunter1976 said:
I picked up a bunch of books recently, can't seem to help it. And then there is the difficult choice of what to read next first. Usually it's a spur of the moment thing, and right now I decided to go with Dirt By David Vann
A slightly disturbing, dark yet very compelling read by an upcoming author I can only recommend. It only took me two sittings to finish this, with another novel already in the mail.

My next read is a book I have been considering for a long long time, but for some reason I just did not get around to picking up a copy. It is generally considered a classic: Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut.

Amazon review

It took Vonnegut more than 20 years to put his Dresden experiences into words. He explained, "there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again." Slaughterhouse Five is a powerful novel incorporating a number of genres. Only those who have fought in wars can say whether it represents the experience well. However, what the novel does do is invite the reader to look at the absurdity of war. Human versus human, hedonist politicians pressing buttons and ordering millions to their deaths all for ideologies many cannot even comprehend. Flicking between the US, 1940's Germany and Tralfamadore, Vonnegut's semi- autobiographical protagonist Billy Pilgrim finds himself very lost. One minute he is being viewed as a specimen in a Tralfamadorian Zoo, the next he is wandering a post-apocalyptic city looking for corpses. Slaughterhouse Five-Or The Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death is a remarkable blend of black humour, irony, the truth and the absurd. The author regards his work a "failure", millions of readers do not. Released the same time bombs were falling on South East Asia, this title caused controversy and awakening. Essential reading for all. So it goes. --Jon Smith

Great book. Read that for the first time, along with "Breakfast of Champions," last summer. Fun reads into the mind and world of Vonnegut.

kw18 · January 2014

Black Diamond said:

I loved The Amazing Adventures of Caviler and Clay, and it's the only book of Chabon's I've read.

How is Telegraph Avenue?

kw18 · January 2014

kw18 said:

Now I'm reading the 10th book in the series of 11 ... almost done!

I finished this book this past weekend, and the final book in the series:

For the most part, the entire series was pretty good. I definitely finished wanting more (and the ending of the last book doesn't help that!).

Now I'm going to dive into this:

What book are you reading?

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