You ****in' people baffle me. You spend all your money on these ****in' fancy books. You surround yourselves with 'em. They're the wrong ****in' books.

Yeah why isn't he reading Atlas Shrugged instead? Damn hippy!

The Obama Diaries by Laura Ingraham.

http://www.lauraingraham.com/blog?ca...&categoryID=10

Good book, I'm enjoying it so far.

Nope, his other novels are crap.

I gave up on this around page 15. I think he's very funny in person, but I didn't care for that book at all.

i always get her confused with another rightwing lesbian commentator. who is that?

I am politically apathetic, but the Colbert thing re: the ribs/stereotypes cracked me up a lot. Almost made me want to read it to see if I could care enough to hate a republican or something, but nahhhhh.


I finally finished Lost Horizon by James Hilton. I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I particularly liked the narrative structure for some reason. I know it's not a unique narrative, but introducing a couple characters and then telling the bulk of the story through manuscript was fascinating for me. It helps you kind of dive into the novel better knowing that you're going to be coming out the other end like the "outside" characters do. Fun stuff.

Nice to finally know the origins of Shangri La and all that, too. There's some depth to this book, but again, I'm not sure it's something that is really novel ideas for anyone. I love how I went through high school and college without ever reading books like this, and then I find so many similarities in content between books like this and The Alchemist (ugh).

I gave it 4*/5, but almost a 5er.


Oh, and I learned a lot of new words from this book. I don't know if it's the British thing or what, but I found myself jotting down words to look up quite often.

I have started to read Don Quixote by Cervantes. So far I am just a little ways into it (100 pages) and kind of hope there is more substance to it because so far I don't really see where it's going. The language is pretty flowery as well. Despite both of those problems I have been enjoying most of it, but could do without the poetry and songs. I never like when authors throw these in (Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, etc.).

I'm trying to learn how to accept that. It often seems misguided, but I think the general intent is often to provide a generous work stuffed full of all good things and catering to many different impulses. I can get behind that, but it does get boring sometimes. Sometimes you want a four-hour feast and sometimes you just want an espresso blasting through you.

Maybe u guys can help me. I feel like I'm becoming some kind of book snob.

I like Pynchon McCarthy and delillo. Ellroy is good. Most other new stuff I feel is below these guys and I can't finish.

Is my play to go classics like Nabokov etc or is there any good new stuff to the aforementioned caliber.

I know this is stupid but I am getting tired of getting excited over glowing Ew and newspaper reviews to read 100 pages of some hack. I'd even consider Crichton or whatshisname who wrote the firm etc Cuzco o know they got brains.

Also know this thread is full of good recs but I'm just being a bitch and I know it

I enjoyed parts of Exley's other two books of the trilogy, especially his pursuit of Edmund Wilson; however, they are not nearly as good as the first.

Snot,

You can never go wrong reading Nabokov. You read any Jonathon Safran-Foer yet?

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check him out. I read his wiki entry, and besides the fact hes a vegetarian, he sounds like someone I'd like :-). I'm all about pretentious, gimmicky, strange writing.

An enjoyable read about overrated modern authors.

That article is pretty fun so far. Thanks for the link.

Edit: from the article:

Heh, can't help but love a guy taking a stab at ol' Steve.

i am reading the castle again. what an absolutely brilalnt book

Well said. I don't think the article itself is well written, though I find it amusing how acerbic the writer is. I get the feeling there are more than a handful of writers here who could pretty easily write a better piece, agree?

LOL: "Takes herself so seriously that her domestic travails are the subject of her own mythology (herself=Penelope)."

Bruiser, I have a disconnect. Are you making fun?

This bit would justify the article for me all by itself no matter what came before or after:

No... I am just constantly impressed by how people talking about literature, are not particularly good at writing.

Like this is her opening paragraph and it's just way too convulted IMO. It should read something more like;

And what is her third sentence even about? She says the question is hard to answer, but than absolutely blasts pulitzer prize winning writers with supreme confidence. Her article also has little content, notwithstanding Blarg's quote, but is mainly trash talking.

The funny thing is, a question is not an exercise, nor an exercise to be attempted. The ASKING of a question may be, though.

We might say that much is implied, but the sentence is still clumsy and a bit verbose.

Re her article having content, you may be giving her short shrift here. Certainly her specific examples in the picture/text section below have some meat to them.

jhumpa lahiri is in no way overrated. interpretor of maladies is one of the best books i've ever read

I am an absolutely awful English nerd. I'm really only familiar with three of those authors, and have read a Tan novel. Diaz and Collins I haven't read at all really. A few Collins poems, but that's it.

Oy.

Nabokov is classic? Anyway, you have no base. Which explains your post(s) very well.

Want to read some worthwhile, try Ovid or Euripides or Sophocles or Aeschylus, or plunge into history and take a stab at Tacitus or Suetonius or pray tell even Edward Gibbon. Then take on Seneca and Shakespeare and Menander and The Analects of Confucius. Or, horror of horrors, you could mount up and delve into some science and read Edward O Wilson or Stephen J. Gould or that popular science saint Carl Sagan. Or you could slip on the bohemian rainbow and read Bertrand Russell. And the philosopher Spinoza is always lurking in the closet if you fear David Hume or the poems of Li Bai. Or, to learn about history and two great thinkers, along with and the lost art of letter writing, read the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Then read The Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.

-Zeno