Finished winesburg Ohio. Thought some of the stories were very poignant and moving and that others were incoherent and disappointing. Despite the unconventional form of storytelling it is the form of the stories that aids their effectiveness, it's as if the unrefined prose and form lead to verisimilitude.

Starting king Lear and william t vollmanns the rifles now

...and done.

Took me a long damn time, but I was busy, plus I'm glad I went so slow.

It's pretty amazing, especially Tolstoy's commentaries that he intersperses with the plot. It's a big commitment, but I'm not sorry I did it.

Going on vacation for the next few days. Taking 3 wildly different books with me (World According to Garp, Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh, and Worlds of Exile and Illusion). Probably will read the first chapters of each and see what hooks me in.

eyebooger, Garp is one of my favorite novels and Irving is one of my favorite novelists. I've read almost all of his books.

Best book about west Memphis 3?

Finished The Beetle Leg by John Hawkes. The book must rank among the strangest and most impenetrable as any I've ever read, and I'm rather partial to the strange and the impenetrable. Ostensibly a western, it is more or less about a town that can't get over a man that was buried in its dam. I think. Unbelivably strange sentences, and it seemed like every word evinced a tone that I'd describe as "punched-in-the-gut menace." I was interested enough to order Hawkes' The Lime Twig, which I look forward to reading.

Also read Barthelme's forty stories and John Ashbery's Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Both were far more accesible cases of surrealism. Barthelme's uberhigh-minded silliness is great fun. Ashbery's poems are terrific, with the title poem being the high point of the collection.

thanks for the Africa book recs guys.
keep em coming.

Started and finished a re-read of B.R. Myers' A Reader's Manifesto. Provocative and controversial, it raises questions the literary establishment wishes would just go away.

Bernhard's The Woodcutters was great. A man sits at a party surrounded by people he hasn't seen in 20-30 years. He thinks about the past and makes hilarious, sometimes philosophical, evaluations of those around him. It's a quick read: a single 180-page paragraph makes up the text. This is a bit misleading, though. With some suspension of disbelief the first half can be argued to be one paragraph, but the second certainly "shouldn't" be. I would compare Bernhard's lack of paragraphs to be similar to McCarthy's refusal to use quotes for dialogue, a very interesting use of style to inform theme.

Next up: Franzen's Freedom.

I can't recommend this book (books?) strongly enough. I'm on chapter 22 listening to the podcasts for the first time and it's doing things to my mind.

Can you speak a bit more about what makes the HP fanfic so interesting?

It's like when you laugh at a woman running upstairs in a horror movie and fantasize about how you would handle the situation better. The author gives Harry Potter a huge intellect and rewrites the story. It's great.

I read (it's been a while) The Lime Twig and Second Skin; both seemed worthwhile (but "strange" is definitely a good word for them). The second of these really impressed me, a novel that succeeded in making me feel like I was in a dream.

I am moved to relate a Hawkes story. When he came to read at the Harbourfront series in Toronto some years ago to promote Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade, a friend of mine got invited to the pre-reading dinner. He said that conversation turned to a story that had appeared in the newspaper about a new designer drug, one that had proved popular among the club scene. Hawkes immediately expressed interest. At which point his wife said, loudly: "John! You don't need another drug."

I just read the first two chapters of Methods of Rationality and enjoyed them. The following excerpt shows quite well how it differs from the originals. Spoiler tags due to minor spoiler:

What's the best translation of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius?

This year I read the Penguin edition of Meditations.

It has an ~ 20 page Introduction.
It has about 100 pages of notations and indexing.

I think the actual translation of text is probably going to be alot less of an issue with this text given it is from Latin to Modern English. Whereas texts that have greater problems like the Bible or Homer - may go through 3 or more languages before reaching Modern English: as a consequence the particular translation you choose may be more important.

I really gotta get to Thucydides one of these days.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations?

Oops, just read the post above the one I quoted and got my answer

Also read the Penguin edition earlier this year

Just found this thread, glad I did.

I'm currently reading The Charm School by DeMille. So far it's great, little ways into part 2.

Dig! On wattpad app, loving it currently only 4 chapters released though :L

Awesome. I'm so happy that I got someone to read Bernhard, even if it was just a stranger on the so called internet. I've been trying to push him on all my friends, but except for one who read a few pages of Woodcutters before saying she needed to put him down until she had a chance to breath, he just won't take.

Regarding the lack of paragraphs, part of the reason the novel fascinated me so was that I felt like it was an exploration of conciousness in addition to a social diatribe. I think the single paragraph style is a fitting form for a hateful neurotic. Neither him nor the narrator can escape the lava flow of thoughts.

If you liked it, I recommend The Loser as well.



Ha, cool story. Hawkes strikes me as the type who, like David Lynch, one would expect to be a bit psychotic but is in fact quite "normal" and affable in person. I received the Lime Twig today...I'll start when I finish my reread of my Keats collection in a day or so.

In other news, The Sound in the Fury, the book which I can singularly credit as the one which cracked my brain open and showed me the true power and potential of great literature, is to be adapted into a movie by the incomparable American auteur, James Franco. O Faulkner! O Franco! What soaring hopes for ye have I!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...701-story.html

Finished King Lear. Not sure what to say about it because of how much time has passed and language has evolved so much.

I picked up the Lime Twig for a few dollars at a used book store recently, so excited to read that.

Reading William T Vollmann's The Rifles now, and I'm 50 pages in and I think it is excellent, and the gems are world-class gems.

Jcarson, would you mind giving a brief reason to give The Sound and the Fury another shot, I read the first section completely and about 20 pages of Quentin and then quit it because aside from one phenomenal representation of time I completely did not get it.

I'm doubling up on Vanessa Place right now

La Medusa (fiction)
The Guilt Project (non fiction)

Has anyone read The Dictionary Of The Khazars(sp?)? It's a Serbian book, a fictionalized account of a real life event in which the Khazars converted to Judaism, written in the form of a dictionary, and published in two different forms - male and female - which differ by only seventeen lines. Sounds awesome.

I just tried it poolside. Not sure about the location making any difference, but I am admitting defeat and giving up, for now. Struggling to get what is going on, I am not very interested in tennis, should I be? Is it anything to do with it? Just can't get invested in it, but want to love it.

Blasted through The Postman Always Rings Twice,loved that. and now Think, philosophy primer type thing. Quite good so far, starts with Descartes, but doesn't understand Marx, usual early out of context quote, that I find common in these types of texts.