Current Events > I've read 10 books this year. Not bad. List, and opinions.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth - really bad
The Cement Garden - Ian McEwan - good
The Beautiful Summer - Cesare Pavare - bad
The Train Was On Time - Heinrich Boll - meh
First Love, Last Rights - Ian McEwan - good
Catalina - W Somerset Maugham - good
Joyland - Stephen King - okay
The Sparsholt Affair - Alan Hollinghurst - bad
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - bad
Book - some guy - who knows

First Love, Last Rights was *probably* the best. A short story collection with plenty of good stories in it. Plus, it was fucked up...which is pleasing. Catalina was very funny and spiteful, which is exactly what I would expect from W Somerset Maugham. If The Train Was On Time is an example of German "genius"...people from that country aren't hard to impress. The Sparsholt Affair was kinda boring, but I'm still glad I read it, because I took a few things away from it. The Beautiful Summer was weak, but it's still nice to read some Italian literature, which is pretty rare for me. Joyland was okay, but like many Stephen King books, I feel a little embarassed for him. The bizarre believe that a 2-bit minimum wage job can be really good fun...worrying.

Thoughts on all this? Have you read any of the books, and if so, what did you think of them?

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I'm surprised nobody has complained about Book - it was definitely an enjoyable read.
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Shut the fuck up.
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Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - bad

Out with ya

Oh, the unnamed book was Hot Pink, by Adam Levin. It was pretty good. Reminded me of DFW.
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Has anyone on CE done any good reading recently? I know CE was never BIG on reading.
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Ive read your post, is that not enough... sheesh, readers are worse than vegans
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I use to read a lot of non fiction in high school but college and grad school had made it hard to keep up he pace. But I'm studying the same subjects I was reading so I'm still getting loads of information (I'm a political science student in grad school) so it doesn't matter.

Once I finish my masters I'd like to look a bit deeper into philosophy. I bought a few books to read once I'm done next year

Sunhawk posted...

Has anyone on CE done any good reading recently? I know CE was never BIG on reading.

My suspicion is a large number of people simply have you on ignore these days, so your topics don't get much footfall.

Sunhawk posted...

Has anyone on CE done any good reading recently? I know CE was never BIG on reading.

Hehe.... I was making my way through Haruki Murakami's stuff. His Rat trilogy was some good stuff. Way better than the 1Q84 books which probably get the most exposure. Dude has an ear fetish though. Got tired of reading books that offered me like 0 closure though so now I'm reading Oil!

Never read any Upton Sinclair. Remember having to read The Jungle in HS, but it was way too boring for high school me so I BS'd the report. However, Oil! is pretty good. Probably because I keep reading Dad's voice in the voice of Daniel Day Lewis.
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Heart of Darkness was great, you suck.
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I've read more this year than I have done since I was a teenager. Got heavily into comic books but also reading a lot of novels. It's mostly all been since August too.

The Tower of Babel - Jack Spicer - good but it's an unfinished novel from the 50s by a long dead writer so there's a sense of lost potential, it was intended to be a mystery novel but the mystery is only introduced in the last 20 or so pages

Blood and Guts in High School - Kathy Acker - Seriously fucked up but really quite brilliant and has a great ending section.

Arachnophile - Betty Rocksteady - Short book about a man falling for a spider, creepy and fun to read.

The Image - Jean de Berg / Catherine Robbe-Grillet - Nice bit of classic bdsm fiction, very good

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley - I hated most of it and found it a real chore to get through, but it improves towards the end

Xerox Over Manhattan - Shane Jesse Christmass - I kind of liked it, the imagery is great but it was mostly just short sentences of sexual activities with not much tying them together

Psycho Nymph Exile - Porpentine Charity Heartscape - My all time favourite book, so easy to reread and still just as great. Hyper sexual horrific bio mecha transgender love story.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman - Kids book but really fun and well written

Coraline - Neil Gaiman - Didn't enjoy this as much

Queen Valentine - Jason Louv - Shit story about a magical world under New York that clearly hasn't been proof read. Disappointing

Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones - Funny and gripping fantasy presumably aimed at younger readers but I enjoyed it a lot. Very different from the Ghibli film that I also adore

Book of Mercy - Leonard Cohen - Mixed bag of some good poems, some not so good. Very funny and dirty in places.

The Wild Boys - William S. Burroughs - Great book, exactly my kind of thing. Burroughs is a huge inspiration for me.

Closer - Dennis Cooper - Really messed up, I liked it a lot and I really should read his other books.

Also read the first two Harry Potter books, they're decent enough for what they are

proof that sunhawk doesn't really care about what others have to say about books

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Yeah Ive read a few. I usually read out loud to my wife and daughter

We did

The lost world
The Gideon crew series
And then there were none
Riptide
Deep storm

Maybe a few others this year. I reread dan browns books to them as well.

What can I say, Im a sucker for fast paced shallow fiction.

I'm currently reading Joe Abercrombies new book.
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awesome999 posted...

This sounds like it was written by someone who almost exclusively watches anime.