What book are you reading?

Ive got two going simultaneously...Also reading Roger's The bIg Hoot...and I started this too:

just finished PFR and have moved on to MM. I'm on a LeHane kick

Just started reading the Hunger Games Trilogy. Only about 100 pages into the first one, but so far I think it's a fairly poorly written book. Actually, it's really the editing that is poor. A lot of misplaced commas and shit like that, which bothers me. I like the movie better at this point, despite the fact that there is of course more detail in the book .... I will read them all though. Maybe I'll change my mind by the end of it.

JonnyPistachio said:

Ive got two going simultaneously...Also reading Roger's The bIg Hoot...and I started this too:

Fantastic book. I'm a big comic book nerd, so that helped things, too.

It's the only book of his I've ever read ... I really should look into getting some of his others, too ...

''Right as rain'' by George P. Pelecanos..old one,but always enjoy reading my brother >-

imalive said:

Who Princess said:

When I read Moby Dick as an undergrad I thought it was pretty rough going. I later read it again in a graduate course, along with a lot of other Melville works. I enjoyed it that time.

But even for all us English majors out there, I'm not sure it's must-read. It was written for a different time and different readership. Parts of it are brilliant and parts of it are tedious. And it takes forever for that damn whale to show up.

If you feel like you have to read some Melville, I'd go with Billy Budd. I think it's his best novel. Many of his short stories are good, too.

A friend from this forum blogged this:

I tried, Moby-Dick

I will read anything. In the olden days I'd grab a volume from the World Book Encyclopedia and read J-K. Nancy Drew, War and Peace (not at the same time). Every MAD magazine I could get my hands on. Thomas Hardy novels in high school that were so brooding and gloomy they felt like, well, high school.

The point is - give me anything. And one day I thought, hey, I've never read Moby-Dick. Adventure, danger, obsession with revenge, life at sea on the whaling ship Pequod. I'd read and enjoyed the Patrick O'Brian books (Master and Commander, etc.). Moby-Dick would be exactly the same.

Except it wasn't. The language was difficult - it was like the Emperor saying to Mozart, "Too many notes." Moby-Dick had too many words. Sloggable words (okay, sloggable isn't really a word, but that's what Moby-Dick felt like). And oh so much description of whaling.

Now, while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works. First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons- a wad of muscle- but still contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.

It never quite clicked. But I didn't give up. Like Ishmael I clung to the Queequeg coffin of a book until I was rescued. And then I walked down to Pequod (what the founders of Starbucks originally wanted to call their coffee shop) and had a chai latte.

she's a funny girl....and her blog is great....but I'm going to protect her anonymity

I've read Moby-Dick at least three times.



It's been a few years now. I might have to pick up that beast again.

imalive said:

A friend from this forum blogged this:

I tried, Moby-Dick

I will read anything. In the olden days I'd grab a volume from the World Book Encyclopedia and read J-K. Nancy Drew, War and Peace (not at the same time). Every MAD magazine I could get my hands on. Thomas Hardy novels in high school that were so brooding and gloomy they felt like, well, high school.

The point is - give me anything. And one day I thought, hey, I've never read Moby-Dick. Adventure, danger, obsession with revenge, life at sea on the whaling ship Pequod. I'd read and enjoyed the Patrick O'Brian books (Master and Commander, etc.). Moby-Dick would be exactly the same.

Except it wasn't. The language was difficult - it was like the Emperor saying to Mozart, "Too many notes." Moby-Dick had too many words. Sloggable words (okay, sloggable isn't really a word, but that's what Moby-Dick felt like). And oh so much description of whaling.

Now, while discoursing of sperm it behooves to speak of other things akin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the try-works. First comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering part of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It is tough with congealed tendons- a wad of muscle- but still contains some oil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut into portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like blocks of Berkshire marble.

It never quite clicked. But I didn't give up. Like Ishmael I clung to the Queequeg coffin of a book until I was rescued. And then I walked down to Pequod (what the founders of Starbucks originally wanted to call their coffee shop) and had a chai latte.

she's a funny girl....and her blog is great....but I'm going to protect her anonymity

)

Like I said, parts of it are brilliant, parts of it are REALLY tedious. I'd love to say that when you get to those last 40 or so pages, the action almost makes you want to forgive Melville. As long as you can forget that it took about 650 pages to get there!

(I think Pequod might have been a better name for a coffee shop but it has about as much to do with drinking coffee as Starbucks does.)

I was really looking forward to reading this but I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it. Anybody read it?

Who Princess said:

I was really looking forward to reading this but I'm having a lot of trouble getting into it. Anybody read it?

Nope, it is in the pile to read though. I loved her bio of Sandy Koufax, I thought it was one of the best sports bios I have ever read.

23scidoo said:

''Right as rain'' by George P. Pelecanos..old one,but always enjoy reading my brother >-

George Pelecanos is your brother?? Very cool! Tell him I forgive him for killing off Wallace and all my other favorite Wire characters...