ConDunce is like IJ, it takes a while to get going and seems utterly random, and about 75% of the way through you start to sense the brilliance of the writing, and at the end you're crying there's no more book. [esp DFW's works which are generally not 'finished' with an Act V].

The Sun Also Rises for the first time. Good book.

I just started re-reading this because I read it too fast for school and don't really remember it. Really liking it so far. Loved this passage:

[Cohn] had married on the rebound from the rotten time he had in college, and Frances took him on the rebound from his discovery that he had not been everything to his first wife. He was not in love yet but he realized he was an attractive quantity to women and the fact of a woman caring for him and wanting to live with him was not simply a divine miracle.

Random bump after searching the forum for Infinite Jest.

This book is awesome, and while I get the hate for it, I can't agree with any of it. Yeah the language, prose, and narrative can be challenging. No, things are not always explained or wrapped up neatly. But I have never had a book stick with me more than Infinite Jest, to the point where I would ask anyone I came across - be they friends, acquaintances, strangers, whatever - if they'd read the book (and invariably being disappointed when they hadn't). It's challenging, moving, hilarious, and profoundly sad, which is the formula for the perfect book imo. I was legitimately depressed for a couple days after I finished it, partially because of the subject matter, but more so because it felt like I was missing a big part of my life when I didn't have Infinite Jest waiting for me every day.

As TTI says, the language isn't anywhere near incomprehensible, and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as that dog's breakfast Ulysses.

And I'm saying all this as someone who needed two attempts to get through the book. DFW may have been weird, self-indulgent, and irredeemably ****ing bats, but the man knew how to write something that would stick with you for the rest of your life.

Edit: just saw this

Sums up my feelings almost perfectly, though I'd say it took way less than 75% to sense the brilliance of the writing. May have to check out Confederacy of Dunces now though.

I have a very high bar for 'brilliance.' It is significantly above 'very good' and 'great.'

Probably about ~25-30% of the way in you can tell IJ has a chance to be great. Coming down the homestretch is where you know it will likely go in the canon.

No excuse for not having read CofD, possibly the funniest book ever. Definitely the favorite to be, anyway.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Rising-Sun...apanese+empire

I know almost everything you wanna know about WWII in Europe but little in Asia, and even less about the politics that led them to the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor - I am actually getting up to the DOW chapter now but got several hundred pages to go

My uncle just gave me 34,000 books for Kindle. I'm kinda eager to get into it. Many awesome books in there.

Loved A Walk in the Woods and agree about Neither Here Nor There, has anyone read Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid? It's a memoir Bryson's childhood, been on my list for awhile but haven't gotten around to it yet.

How are you going to read 34k books?

One at a time?

I am actually very interested in a well-written book that explains how MacArthur let the Japs destroy our fleet in the Philippines days *after* Pearl Harbor was attacked.

any recs?

Obv I'm not. But it opens up my options drastically.

How generous. Must have cost him a fortune.

Infinite jest - really doing it this time, full commitment

Stick it out, it really is worth it. It can definitely feel like a slog at times, and especially at the beginning, but I've never read anything like it.

One thing I loved about IJ is how it made me realize just how truly terrible my attention span had become. It was really hard for me to sit down and actually focus enough to appreciate the book at first, but I think it helped break me of the need to jump around from task to task (or webpage to webpage) constantly. ****ing internet.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis

Was a bit skeptical to pick this up with Travel in the title as I had just read, and not enjoyed all that much, Neither Here Nor There, a European travel book by Bill Bryson. From the first paragraph ( and I suppose if I had bothered to read the synopsis ) it was obvious this had almost nothing to do with Travel at all, and instead focused on the recent Global Financial Meltdown.

This book was amazing. Much, much better than The Big Short, also by Michael Lewis and also about the GFM but almost solely focused on the US. Boomerang will enable you to conversationally speak about the GFM as it pertained to the following countries:

1) Iceland
2) Greece
3) Ireland
4) Germany
5) United States

Lewis reads to me like a more-Modern Day Michael Chricton but obviously with much more business minded interests. I highly recommend Boomerang. It's a light read on a boondoggle of a topic that becomes crystal clear by the last chapter.

+1000

Just finished Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie. My god what a fantastic trilogy. It takes the old wise wizard leading the band of heroes cliche and turns it upside down. The Bloody Nine and Glokta may be tied for my favorite characters ever. So much depth to these books even though they are written in more of a pulp swords and sorcery style.

I can't wait for Red Country.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

This is supposed to be like a classic go-to guide for getting along with people in day-to-day life.
What. The. ****.

I tend to avoid books that start with 'how to', the rule seems to be correct in most cases.

In a row?

On a dvd no doubt, probably purchased from eBay for 10dorrarz

Yeah but it was written like 80 years ago. Still an interesting read.

I'm enjoying the 1930's diction and phrasing more than anything, as so much of it consists of thank you letters from seminar attendees. The contents of those letters are...well if I didn't know better I'd swear these were made up by internet trolls mock-astroturfing with a time machine.

Quick tip: since it takes a couple hundred pages for the characters/conflicts to be truly "introduced," one thing to focus on is how the prose style and selection of details depict consciousness. That's one of IJ's main subjects—the modernist technique of filtering details through unique perspectives, making mundane details very interesting.

(I don't want to give away any spoilers, so I'll use the first few paragraphs.)

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies. [The unconventional separation of heads and bodies isn't accidental.] My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard chair. [Focus on posture and body position. Why? We'll find out.] This is a cold room in University Administration, wood-walled, Remington-hung, double-windowed against the November heat, insulated from Administrative sounds by the reception area outside, at which Uncle Charles, Mr. deLint and I were lately received.

I am in here. [The rest of this scene will reveal this to be a sort of double entendre.]

Three faces have resolved into place above summer-weight sportcoats and half-Windsors across a polished pine conference table shiny with the spidered light of an Arizona noon. These are three Deans — of Admissions, Academic Affairs, Athletic Affairs. I do not know which face belongs to whom. [Once again, separation of head and body, which will turn out to be a double entendre, in a way. Note the curious phrasing, "resolved into place" (resolved also has film connotations, and film is an important subject in IJ), and the synecdochical reduction of people to their clothing. "[W]hich face belongs to whom," almost as if faces are interchangeable, like masks.]

That's not an exhaustive exploration of that passage—there are many, many different interpretations. You don't have to do this, but if you're reading and it's a slog and you don't have a good idea of who the characters are yet and you're not sure why you're reading other than to finish it, it could be a fun exercise. Nothing on a diction or syntactic level is chosen purposelessly in IJ. Chaotically, sometimes, but not purposelessly.

Also, you probably already know that IJ's plot won't ever resolve in the text itself, but one good approach, I think, is to treat IJ, on a plot level, like a mish-mash collection of interlinked short stories and novellas. The content is varied enough for it to be treated as that. Viewed that way, the way plot is shunned isn't a bad thing, at all, here.