Thanks for the suggestions. I might want to read the version I have at some point, but I want to read the stories in the foreseeable future.

Oh and do you have any input on my Infinite Jest question above?

The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler

I'd love to read your thoughts on this once you're done. It's on my to-read list but I don't know all that much about it.

I didn't find infinite jest depressing. There are some serious spots, but especially the end is quite life affirming imo.

If you want to read Homer, definitely get the Robert Fagles translation. Far superior to any other.

He also does a great job with Virgil, Sophocles, and Aeschylus.

I agree with kokiri. However, it's not a book I'd take on a vacation with a girlfriend. It's a book I'd take if I were going to go somewhere by myself for a week ...

I'm glad you responded as well. I had a vague memory of you comparing Homer translations in some old thread.

Well, we're first going to a poker thing where my girlfriend will be working and I will only play a couple of events, so I'll probably have something like 3-5 days mostly to myself before we start the vacation.

Thanks for the input guys.

Yes. It's overwhelmingly sad. But as is the case with any transmission of art, its power to a significant extent depends on whether the recipient has the right kind of interior template to receive it. Some people read "White Noise" and think it's funny, which I would argue is actually offensive to the author.

Literature is a strange thing. Walking around a children's hospital is probably more depressing than any work of literature can be, in terms of it's sheer ability to instill the sense of hopelessness in you.

I think "A Confederacy of Dunces" is the saddest book I've read.

I think great fiction relies on (not maliciously) a skill to sort of trick the reader into accepting the fictional world as varying degrees of real.

The Echo Maker is a fine novel, and I read that Powers dictates his novels. I think he's too smart.

I've tried to read 3 different Richard Powers novels, and I do not feel him.

Have read Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, Cloud Atlas, the new LeCarre, and a collection of conversations that Henry Jaglom recorded with Orson Welles during the last two years of Welles's life in the past couple weeks. Finally, I can get some reading done.

Finished Tropic of Cancer. Cannot believe I have not come across it before, as a big Kerouac and Beats fan. Anyways, superb read, has really stayed with me last few days.

IJ is pretty hilarious and certainly more life-affirming than depressing. Gately's development is one of the best in modern fiction imo.

Read 5-Star Billionaire, which was fine, but not elite. If you want to hear a lot about Shanghai, this is your book.

Moving on to Skippy Dies by Paul Murray, finalist for the NBCC award. It has to be better than Art of Fielding, amirite?

Thanks for your input. We seem to have a pretty different take on things. I found both White Noise and A Confederacy of Dunces quite funny, though the former is clearly not a comedy as such.

Yeah, suspension of disbelief and all that. I don't think much tricking is needed; it's more a matter of the author not drawing unintentional attention to himself. That seems difficult enough, though.

Thanks. I'm pretty sure I have yet to dislike a book you've recommended ITT so that seems promising.

It's a great book. It's essentially business reading for me. I'm editing a novel and one of the things on my to do checklist is to re-read The Writer's Journey for ideas about changes, both thematically and structurally, in the novel and to think about how the novel fits into classical myth patterns.

Making very good progress through Under The Volcano, a longtime tenant on my lifetime To Read List

I think it blows The Sun Also Rises out of the water

Evan Dara's The Easy Chain

This guy is the nut high for contemporary literature. Nuff said. Though I'm fairly sure we'll find out someday Evan Dara is really Pynchon or... well... who else could he be... no one else really

The Monster (was also called The Resurrection).

Sci-fi short story (very short) by A.E. Van Vogt. Written back during the Golden Age sci-fi era but holds up pretty well.

Basic plot: Aliens come to a long-dead Earth to colonize, but want to resurrect a human to figure out what catastrophe caused the extinction. They start with some old Pharaoh from Ancient Egypt and he's useless, so they re-kill him and move forward to progressively more advanced and dangerous periods in human history, the subjects they awaken become more advanced and dangerous as well.

Short and sweet, solid A-.

Other recommendations for short stories if you can find them online: Second Variety and Imposter by Phillip K. Dick. Have been trying to read more since movies have been so bad, and there isn't that much on TV lately a couple of exceptions aside.

Anyone got And the mountains echoed?, I missed out on the 99p Kindle sale unfortunately and haven' heard much about whether it's worth my time or not.

Also, Phillip K. Dick is amazing, especially the short stories (best out there IMO) I've always wanted to read The Imposter since I saw that terrible Gary Sinise version but was curious about the concept, couldn't really find it though.

Have you checked out his new book Flee?

Anyone looking for some fantasy to read, just finished 'Blood song'. For the most part I loved it.

I've got it and will read next

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_04/2998

The Moon in the Gutter by David Goodis, a re-read.

I recently saw the Jean-Jacques Beineix film based on the novel.

I finished it today and I think I felt the same way in terms of enjoyment. Initially indeed, I didn't like this book nearly as much as I'd expected, given the praise it's almost universally received. I found it intelligent, very well-written, and at times quite witty, but it was hard for me to read with its nearly unrelenting focus on torture and general pain and suffering—as much as that is appropriate to depicting life inside the prison-state of North Korea. (The Texas interlude was a welcome break, for that reason, and made me think of Billy Lynn's, but it was very brief.) However, I found the last section deeply moving--a conclusion that gave the novel real claims on profundity.

My response to the depiction of North Korea's grim conditions may have to do with the fact that much of my recent reading has been depictions of painful events (my last three books were Linda Spaulding's The Purchase, a very fine, and award-winning, and painful novel of slavey in early 19c America; Tamas Dobozy,
Siege 13, a sequence of stories about the horrors of and subsequent traumas from the Russian-Nazi battle for Budapest at the end of WWII; and, for a break, a very lightweight if somewhat amusing comic zombie novel--Corey RedeKop's Husk, which provided a laugh or two but was filled with images of blood, guts, torture, feces, and vomit.)

I think I'll try Where Did You Go, Bernadette next. That seems safe.

And I am glad I read Adam Johnson's book.