2 is good.
3 is awesome
4 is okay
5 is poorly done throughout. Finally picks up after...500 pages?

I love the film. Great book, too.

I sure do love Gorky Park. His first 3 Renko books are hard to beat. I've read all his Renko books.

Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder books are also smart/good and a little literary.

Oh gorky park was so good. Long time since I read it tho.

Top five authors:
Twain
Faulkner
Wilde
Nabokov
Asimov

Oh I restarted freedom last night and I think I'm into it this time. But I'm pretty wasted tonight so I guess I'll restart tommorrow but tomorrow ill be wasted since football is on so Sunday.

Meh was a little harsh. It's fine viewing, just not remotely good as the book, although that probably wasn't possible.

I've re-read GP at least once, might have to read it again before year-end. Renko is such an exquisitely drawn character.

bret easton ellis meets don delillo... i want to read this piece, but don't wanna pay 8 bucks, ideas?!??!

http://www.believermag.com/issues/20..._delillo_ellis

I've never been much of a reader of novels, but lately I've decided that I'd like to get more into it. I'm finished school, and my major (industrial engineering) never really required me to read prose. So my main motivation is to spend more time exercising this neglected function of my brain, to expand my vocabulary and to improve my thinking and communication abilities.

I figured that I should start with some classics, so I began reading The Great Gatsby. The third paragraph took me by surprise, as I spent about half an hour reading it trying to comprehend the meaning of most sentences. After re-reading the paragraph a few times, I tried to convince myself that I understood it sufficiently enough to move on. However, it bugged me that I couldn't grasp it entirely, so I resorted to google to search for explanations. Let me just say that my reaction was more like, "Ooooooh, that's what it meant!" rather than just the reassurance I was expecting. So, I'm essentially conceding that my reading skills are not at an advanced enough level to really appreciate and fully enjoy the quality of this author's work. Hence, I think I'm going to need to read some other, less 'literary masterpiece', type books before I get back to this one. Any suggestions?

Read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. He is a big famous influential author that you can feel good about yourself reading, but his style is very simple and straightforward. You will always know exactly what he is saying. It's also very short and so you'll have a very attainable goal in sight even when you're just starting it.

the hunger games? jk. why not keep trucking through it and doing what you are doing?

don't judge yourself when reading. read what you like, you can always pick it up again someday, life is loooooooooooooooooong

I'm curious to know what you read that told you what it meant.

I was just recently recalling what an interesting novel I think A Good Day to Die is. It's an early book by Jim Harrison, who has written a number of good novels (and novellas and poems), and it's short and easy to read. It's an entertaining and poignant road narrative about a couple of messed-up guys and the woman they are both hung up on.

Franzen's very good and very accessible. An author that I think is very underrated is Andre Dubus III (House of Sand and Fog). If you're looking for something older, or a classic, maybe something like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina? Very straightforward.

Squamch,

Big fan of Andre Dubus III, particularly that book, and of Andre Dubus senior.

I've never been able to explain it, but I think I got more out of The Garden of Last Days than House of Sand and Fog. (me trying to explain it: ) I think it's because I was able to make more of a connection with the characters, or maybe because for some reason the more plotless a book is, the more I'm drawn to it. I loved House of Sand and Fog too, but I've always counted Garden as one of those sort of milestone books for me that changed the way I read/write. At the same time, I recognize it's the more flawed book (I think I said the same thing when comparing Freedom to The Corrections).

Dubus is one of those people that seems to just have an interesting gene, like being interesting is just built into him. I've heard him in a couple of interviews and it's as captivating as his books. (Side note: Vocally, he's as close to VP Joe Biden and The Rock is to Barack Obama).

I'm giving Don Delillo's Underworld another go. I was about halfway through it when for one reason or another I just stopped picking it up. I'm wondering if anyone else has as hard a time connecting with Delillo as I do. It's not that I don't enjoy his work. I find it interesting and obviously he's a master of the craft, but somehow as I read, the characters and situations always feel metallic, sterile, and distant. My first Delillo novel was Omega Point, which probably was a bad choice to dive in with. I've read excerpts from several other books and they've all had the same affect. Dave Wallace talked a lot about connecting with Delillo's work, and having had such good experiences with DFW's work, I find it odd that Delillo doesn't really do anything for me.

Which leads me to ask, are there any authors that you guys feel like you should like (for whatever reason) but simply don't (also for whatever reason)?

I think a lot of people had similar reactions to Updike. I also have a kind of love-hate relationship going on with Philip Roth.

Just started Shogun

Dubus's recent memoir Townie is a good read too.

A big part of it is his prose style, which is simultaneously awesome and at odds with substance. This covers much of it.

Flannery O'Connor; John Updike.

Yeah, that pretty much hit my nail on its head.

i thought the end of underworld was meh. i was expecting much more after investing that much time in the book. the first chapter is clearly the nuts in that book

I just bought Underworld. I haven't read any of DeLillo's other work so I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. I also just purchased Beloved by Toni Morrison--another new author for me (brag--$1 each at a used book fundraiser). Any feedback on either of these books would be appreciated.

I'm about three quarters of the way done with Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. This style of prose was more what I was expecting when I read No Country For Old Men. So I'm guessing that nihilism is pretty much McCarthy's bag. But just reading this stuff raises your testosterone. I'm thinking I may have to follow this up with the Toni Morrison just to get back in balance.

I also bought The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Science fiction. So I should be set up on books for a while. Though if I can lay my hands on a copy of The Rhetoric of Fiction by Booth I'll definitely slip it into the rotation. It has been spoken of highly here and by my local buds.

Blood Meridian was the best thing I ever read until I read Beloved. Meridian is a chore to read, undoubtedly, but it burrows into you and has an affect on you. The Judge's character alone makes you think about human nature differently. Or at least that's the affect it had on me.

Beloved is much more a page-turner. That's something that shocked me, since all my prior experience with "important" books had me ready for a chore (McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, but I'll never claim he's an easy read). I found myself staying up way too late reading Beloved, reading it when I should have been doing other things, etc.

Morrison and McCarthy are such polar opposites in so many ways. Both are pretty heavily stylized writers, for instance, but where McCarthy simply beats you over the head with his style with a "if you don't like it you can go F--- yourself" attitude, Morrison seduces you with simple and elegant prose and only starts unloading her prowess on you when you're ready for it. By the end of Beloved, you'll be blown away by her ability, which you may not be in the beginning.

I really can't rave enough about these particular books. Arguably the two best things I've ever read. I read Beloved on the heels of my second read of Blood Meridian (and right before I read Freedom - a very good reading period for me). Here's what you can prepare yourself for: Meridian will disgust you with humanity and then Beloved will restore your faith (after a long and winding road through more disgust).

A final note: If you do a lot of writing, be careful with McCarthy. It's hard not to be influenced by him and it's not always a good thing.

Thanks for that link. James Wood can be very tough on writers but I think he's also the most judicious and best-read reviewer writing today.

I liked White Noise and End Game -- an early DeLillo which I read back in the day (don't know how it would stack up now) -- and enjoyed Running Dog (which a friend of mine recently read and disliked, probably not the place to start with DeLillo). I found the mysteriousness of The Names interesting but frustrating though I felt that if I'd have had the patience to reread it I might have gotten more out of it. (Lovely writing.) I disliked Great Jones Street. I keep meaning to get to Underworld, having read the opening when it was published in Esquire, but the mixed response that so many register has inhibited me. Another of my friends tells me that I must read Mao II.

I thought Cosmopolis one of his weaker novels. A tour-de-force of sorts, I guess, but ultimately unsatisfying for exactly the reasons Wood enumerates. Filled with great aphoristic lines, it felt as if DeLillo was emptying his notebook to get down thoughts he hadn't worked in elsewhere about how our world is affected by being so highly mediated and technologized (at times while channeling William Gibson).

Agreed. Read almost all his work, love many of them, Underworld is in the middle - not nearly as good as The Names or White Noise or maybe even Libra - but that opening is the nuts.

Cosmopolis was disappointing at best. Can't all be winners.