ya the movie was great.
directed by sam rami.

had a coen bros feel to it.

Yeah I was really glad to read your review when you read it! It's also one of my favorite, if not my favorite books. My mother gave it to me for Christmas one year and unfortunately I didn't read it right away. When I was in China I finished reading all of the books I had brought and found that I'd also brought that book but had completely forgotten about it. It was easily the best I read and wish I'd read it immediately. Can't wait to read the rest of the Welsh series too.

+1 for Vernon God Little, right up there in the favourite books that I read last year, definitely has a Catcher In The Rye tinge which is most certainly a compliment.

I think Catch-22 would be particularly hilarious on a second read. It was funny first time through, but it almost took me the length of the novel to become accustomed to Heller's style. It's one of those where I was chuckling at several points, but only when I finished did I think 'man, that was absolutely hilarious and brilliant', and I think the second read would really be where the appreciation is.

Totally agree, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland is wonderfully funny and a genuine fictional masterpiece imo.

I finished The Four Agreements earlier. As mentioned earlier in the thread, picked it up based on glowing reviews from Bill Perkins and Fedor Holz. Whilst the core 'agreements' and some of the explanations are definitely valuable, I felt that there was an awful lot of spiritual, tautological bluster that really didn't mean a great deal to the fairly ordinary reader. There was a lot of telling and not a great deal of showing, for me - I realise these are good principles to build your outlook on, but I'm none the wiser on actually how to do that pragmatically.

Overall, probably wouldn't recommend. Would be surprised if there weren't better books on very similar subjects available.

Next up: we're going gritty with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

blood meridian is ****ing amazing.
mccarthy is probably my favorite author ever.

It's Moby Dick without the water.

After reading all the Ian Rankin novels (Edinburgh based crime fiction) over the summer/autumn, and exhausting the best of the Celtic noir (Irish crime fiction), I've picked up some novels by Eva Dolan. She claims to be a part time poker player, as an aside, but her three novels about hate crimes in East anglia are actually pretty good for the genre.

Peter Pan made me lol a few times (stuff with the dad and the dog). I didn't think A Confederacy of Dunces was that funny, not my style at all. Lots of fat jokes. It's closer to a Hangover movie; I prefer Spinal Tap.

finished dostoevsky's the brothers karamazov last week and am now rereading the idiot for the second time. i like the overall feeling i get from reading the idiot much more than TBK.

Great suggestions people; always devastating when something sounds really good but my local library doesn't carry it. Checked out The Stench of Honolulu because I need something funny after finishing The Doomsday Book and Station Eleven. Both were really good and coincidentally deal with similar subject matter, namely pandemic diseases, though Station Eleven was more about how society responds in the aftermath whereas DDB takes place during one. I think DDB is the better written and far-better researched book (deals with some historical matter as well as light time-travel sci fi) of the two but I don't know that I loved it; I remember Willis' other book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, being much funnier and an overall more enjoyable experience to read. Station Eleven was a really easy read, not terribly deep or philosophical but worth it if you're interested.

Really, really enjoyed Dark Matter, and I'm not generally a sci-fi guy. Guy with the comfortable middle-class family-oriented life happens into an incident and then basically gets thrust into an alternate world where he is still himself but his circumstances have changed drastically; trying to err on the side of vagueness to avoid spoiling. Anyway, great storytelling, a likable protagonist, and the concept was enjoyably mind-bending throughout.

One of the funniest books I've read was a Lovejoy novel by Jonathan Gash. I've read 3 or 4 of the earlier ones and they were all pretty nice, I also started on a later one but didn't like it as much.

I like almost all Eric Ambler books but The Light Of Day and Dirty Story are both pretty funny.

Graham Greene called Ambler "unquestionably our best thriller writer" and John le Carré once called him "the source on which we all draw".

Read this over the holidays. Enjoyed it and would recommend, but thought the author could have executed better. In other words, the premise is brilliant but I felt like it didn't live up to its full potential. In any case, it is being made into a movie

awesome ty.

which lovejoy novel do you suggest?

I've read several of Gash's Lovejoy novels...and enjoyed them...but the king of comic crime is Elmore Leonard

well ya duh elmore is the king.

A writer/director/animator I greatly respect (creator of Aeon Flux) wrote that if you read everything by Dashiell Hammett (which isn't much), you'll "know everything you need to know about telling stories economically" or something like that. Agree, disagree?

Well, the first I read was Firefly Gadroon (1982) and I loved it, so maybe that? I felt while reading it that you could prolly pick it up and open any page almost and it would make you smile (I don't know if it's true, but you get my point). I have read the first one, and I think one more of the early ones and they were equally good. So I think anyone from the 70s or 80s are pretty safe.

Evelyn Waugh's Scoop (1938) is often mentioned as classic comedic novel I think. I liked his Sword of Honour trilogy (Men at Arms, 1952; Officers and Gentlemen, 1955, Unconditional Surrender, 1961). Maybe not super funny but some humour mixed with serious

Is that Lovejoy the same one as the early 90s BBC TV show of dubious quality? Rougish antiques dealer gets up to hijinks?

As Greene and Le Carre wrote some of my favourite books, I'll have to check out Ambler.

Recently finished station 11. Wasn't that impressed. Seems like they had a good base for a story, but nothing happened.


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Anyone have good nonfiction recommendations?

I've read very few nonfiction books but pretty much enjoyed all of the ones I have read. I'm not particularly interested in autobiographies, am more looking for something with a narrative of some sort. Any topic is cool.

Really enjoyed In Cold Blood, Moneyball, The Big Short.

About 80% of what I read is non-fiction but I always seek out subjects that interest me personally. I also avoid autobiographies but love actual biographies. It's hard to recommend without knowing your tastes and interests. Obviously you like Michael Lewis so maybe something else by him (Liars Poker is awesome). My favorite non-fiction author is David McCullough and everything he writes is spectacular which is a variety of biographies (Truman, John Adams, T. Roosevelt) and cool historical events (Panama Canal, Brooklyn Bridge, Jonestown Flood) to name a few. Everything he writes becomes compelling.

My favorite historical subjects are the American Revolution, The Robber Barrons and the pacific theater of WWII so if those interest you I would have many recs for you.

Honestly, anything potentially interests me. I had zero interest in the financial crisis but I found The Big Short fascinating. I have read Liar's Poker. I enjoyed it. I've got a few more Lewis books tee'd up but would also be interested in branching out to different authors.

The American revolution definitely interests me. Pretty much any significant historical event interests me in that I haven't spent much of my life being interested in history, but am becoming much more interested as I grow older, so I'm pretty much a blank slate. I've been listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast and loving it.

Then you should definitely give McCullough a shot as all of his work is truly fascinating and in my opinion are can't miss.

Thanks! I will check him out

Well damn that was next up in my queue but now im wondering if I should just skip it