I don't know if poker analogies are allowed in The Lounge, but people often make the mistake of sitting a LONG time at a poker table trying to book a win. In the long run, this means they spend more time at tougher/worse tables. I was thinking about this as I'm a bit stuck on the book I'm reading because I'm not super into it. I'm still not going to quit.

lol...that's a great analogy.

Re the Malazan series: I don't agree with this at all. In my opinion he doesn't veer off from the main story. Instead he broadens the scope and shows that other people in other parts of the world are also concerned by what is the main story. What he presents to the reader in the first few books is just part of what's going on.
That being said, I did like the first few books the best as well. But it's absolutely worth it reading all the books.

Strongly agree with this. I didn't feel he left the main story at all - note that I have only read 7 books so far though.

Based on what I've read so far, I thought book 1 was the weakest. I liked books 2 and 4 the most so far, and also really liked different parts of books 6 and 7.

Hello guys, I am going to try to post more in this thread. I have actually picked up some pretty good recommendations reading this thread so it would be nice if I contributed.

I read about 2-3 books a week. Lately, I have had the good fortune to go on an extreme hotstreak in quality literature. Some high marks:

1) The Recognitions by Gaddis. A big, meaty, masterpiece. This one actually took me about 4 weeks to read, with some intermittent trash reading in between. Gaddis is a monster; I honestly don't think a single sentence in the 956 pages falters. Broadly, the novel is about an art forger, but moreover it is about deceit and artifice in modern times. The enormous cast of characters includes a venal art critic, a counterfeiter/fake surgeon/fake romanian, a man who passes his time at hollow cocktail parties among New York's intellegentsia writing fake autographs among the bookshelves, and a ludicrous young man named Otto who is trying to sell a play that no one reads, but all agree sounds a bit "familiar." Her is a sneak peak into Otto's artistic process:

“...Then he took a slip of paper from his pocket.
--Chr-ah-st. Otto. I mean what are you doing standing in the middle of the street writing a note?
--Oh Ed, I...It’s just something I thought of for this play I’m working on.
--A play? Chrast how unnecessary. Who’s in it? Asked Ed, who, though he did not know it, was himself in the play, with the unlikely name Max.
--Well no one yet, Otto said, returning to his pocket the slip of paper on which he had just written: Gordon says nt mke thngs explict whch shd be implict ie frndshp--I haven’t finished it. The plot still needs a little tightening up. (By this Otto meant that a plot of some sort had yet to be supplied, to motivate the series of monologues in which Gordon, a figure who resembled Otto at his better momentsm and whom Otto admired greatly, said things which Otto had overheard, or thought of too late to say.)--The whole plot is laid. . .”

For some reason, this book has a reputation for being difficult and "inaccessible." Excepting some very dense passages, it is neither, only long. I blame Jonathan Franzen, or, as I call him, the Master of the MIddlebrow, and the horrid essay he wrote for the New Yorker in which he dubbed Gaddis “Mr. Difficult.” No doubt, this is the most pitiful author-to-author sobriquet in literary history, and Franzen ought to be ashamed of himself. That being said, I did make extensive use of a website called Gaddis Annotations, which has unbelievably meticulous explanations of the allusions in all of Gaddis’ works. I eagerly await my freshly ordered copy of J R to arrive.

The very next book I began to read was Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, which I unfortunately only made through the first twenty pages before I accidently left it behind in the cargo bin of a 757 to Orlando (I am a baggage handler). Too bad, it would have made for nice complementary reading.

Obviously, this post has gone on for far too long, so I will end here. I shall write up more books soon.

Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I by Henry Miller

Out of nowhere I am ass over ****ing teakettle in lust with Miller's writing. I've never read him before at all, for whatever reason he never clicked with me until just now. The obscene counterpoised to the sublime, and the lines blurred as to which is which. Some of my highlights from the first 50% or so:

-In the next life I will be a vulture feeding on rich carrion: I will perch on top of the tall buildings and dive like a shot the moment I smell death.

-“Choke on it, you bitch,” I thought to myself as I hung up. “At least I know that I don’t want you, any part of you, dead or alive.”

-You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me—I want to lick the flesh from her bones.

-No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.

-Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.

-Mara lay prone on the bed, panting and sweating; she had the appearance of a battered odalisque made of jagged pieces of mica.

-I had the expression of a Jack the Ripper looking for a straw hat in a pisspot.

-We stretched ourselves out in the hollow of a suppurating sand dune next to a bed of waving stinkweed on the lee side of a macadamized road over which the emissaries of progress and enlightenment were rolling along with that familiar and soothing clatter which accompanies the smooth locomotion of spitting and farting contraptions of tin woven together by steel knitting needles.

-A visitor from the Renaissance, coming upon us unexpectedly, might well have assumed that we had become dislodged from a painting depicting the violent end of the mangy retinue of a Sybaritic doge.

-When a ship founders it settles slowly; the spars, the masts, the rigging float away. On the ocean floor of death the bleeding hull bedecks itself with jewels; remorselessly the anatomic life begins. What was ship becomes the nameless indestructible.

-Why do lovely faces haunt us so? Do extraordinary flowers have evil roots?

-Night after night, from words to dreams, to flesh, to phantoms. Possession and depossession. The flowers of the moon, the broad-backed palms of jungle growth, the baying of bloodhounds, the frail white body of a child, the lava bubbles, the rallentando of the snowflakes, the floorless bottom where smoke blooms into flesh.

-No woman can **** as savagely as the hysterical woman who has made her mind frigid.

-The irresistible creature of the other sex is a monster in process of becoming a flower.

I've been back on my Colin Thubron marathon. He's still awesome. Latest up was To A Mountain In Tibet, about a hike to mt Kailas, not his best trip, but still fantastic.

New favorite author alert: Richard Flanagan
The best book I've read of his so far (which prompted me to go immediately out and buy two others of his): Gould's Book of Fish: A Novel in Twelve Fish

Don't let the bland title fool you - this book is good good good. It reminds me of House of Leaves for some odd reason (although it's only real resemblance to that novel is the fact that the narrator of the book found a mysterious book that becomes the basis of the novel itself). This narrator - who sells fake antique furniture to tourists in modern day Tasmania - finds a mysterious book titled "The Book of Fish" by William Buelow Gould in a dusty old chest and becomes completely entranced with it. Unfortunately, he promptly loses said book and goes about trying to recreate the Gould's book from memory. The book itself is a memoir of Billy Gould's life, centering on his time spent as a convict in Van Diemen's land in 1828. From the back of my book: "Silly Billy Gould, invader of Australia, liar, murderer, forger, fantasist, condemned to live in the most penal colony in the British Empire, and there ordered to paint a book a fish."

The writing is completely fantastic, so unexpectedly poetic at times ('hungry dust'). Its humor is pitch black. Highly recommend.

The flamethrowers had high highs and many less lows but the fact they exist keeps it at 4*/5* imo

I got The Luminaries for my birthday. It's 800+ pages. See you all in April.

The Orenda arrived. Had to buy it via Amazon-Canada. Took about 3 weeks to get here. I don't know why it isn't being released in the USA until sometime in 2014, but I will let you guys know how it is.

I'm about 500 pages in now. It rewards persistence.

And I'm about 200 pages into Trollope's 1000-page long The Way We Live Now, so I'm balancing a long pseudo-19th century novel against a real one. (Though I realize that to really balance the two, I should have chosen Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, since it's the Victorian "sensation" novel that Catton is playing off against.)

I've only read one other Trollope, Barchester Towers, back when I was as a student. It seemed solid to me at the time not as interesting as some of the other novels in the 19c-fiction course. But The Way We Live Now is a lot of fun: satire about popular publishing and book reviewing; degenerate gambling; and stock speculation--mixed in with a very cynical courtship plot.

My father in law is rereading Trollope, he may even just have finished. I'll probe him tonight, but I think he's enjoying it quite a lot.

Kokiri - I remembering somewhere reading somewhere that you were doing a Ph.D. Do you mind me asking you what discipline it is in?

Warning: Shameless plug.

I am writing a 2014 2+2 reading blog and I am looking for literary, philosophical and historical reading suggestions for my reading list. All are welcome to throw some names up for my education via a post or three...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/22.../#post41596275

I've finished, but modern Japanese history.

What period was your focus?

Early twentieth century, most particularly the twenties, but I'd like to get into the post war a bit, too.

So post Meiji transition?
I did abit of Japanese economic history.

Man, that sounds fascinating, actually. I really need to do more historical reading.

Finished, very good read, the author, Gregory David Roberts has led about the most interesting life I've heard of.

Just started The Interestings.

Read Sudhir Venkatesh's newest book. Very disappointed. Loved the first one.

I just got "Shattered Sword" for Christmas which is the Japanese perspective of the battle of Midway which I am really looking forward to reading.

Reading the River Phoenix bio. Dom, or anyone, what movies of His are must sees besides Stand By Me?

Running on Empty....coming of age/family drama... Phoenix plays a musically talented teenager whose parents are long-time fugitives.
Not sure its a "must-see" but he received nominations for the role.

Ha, I'm at that part in the book exactly, the filiming of Running on Empty. In some ways, that role kinda resembled his real life.