Now Reading in 2016

[The Inside of Outside]

Love Garp - is that in the classic pile, or the modern pile?

 

Now reading:

 

[a-me-with-a-you]

Love Garp - is that in the classic pile, or the modern pile?

 

Now reading:

 

 

a Modern classic   

 

Before that, I just read

:

Now that's a classic classic obviously. I wonder if I think the love story is in the way of the worthwhile anti-war stuff because of the way modern rom coms cram a mandatory love story into everything, and that Hemingway was partly responsible for that consequence, ironically. I like love stories when Marquez does them so I'm not jaded against any and all ones. It was "fine" in this but not the reason to read this book, though it made the ending more poignant (no spoilers in a reply please).

 

Wolf Hollow has the young adult tag on goodreads, what's it like? I've never even finished the Harry Potter series when I turned 15 because I felt too old for it so I have a kind of mental block for what I suppose are perfectly good young adult books.

[lost highway]

Are there by chance any fans of John Fante's Bandini series here btw?

I've read Ask the Dust, and Brotherhood of the Grape. I loved both, yet I'm not sure what else he's written.

[The Inside of Outside]

Wolf Hollow has the young adult tag on goodreads, what's it like? I've never even finished the Harry Potter series when I turned 15 because I felt too old for it so I have a kind of mental block for what I suppose are perfectly good young adult books.

Wolf Hollow is a solid YA book. Better than many I have read, not as good as some.

 

I work in a middle school now, so I'll be reading more YA titles. I understand the mental block on YA books; I find I am more critical of them than other books. My own bias, I guess.

[a-me-with-a-you]

I've read Ask the Dust, and Brotherhood of the Grape. I loved both, yet I'm not sure what else he's written.

 

There's no way you won't enjoy "Wait Until Spring, Bandini". The people I've spoken to about "Ask the Dust" and that one have the hardest time stating a personal preference. I'm rarely confident recommending a book, being not nearly as well read as I'd like to be, but it just so happens I just got a raving review of this book back from the most well read person I know (not even stating my jealousy for said person's intellect in all other areas). We're talking about someone who averages 2.5 books a month. Anyhoo, you won't enjoy it of course if you didn't think much of Ask The Dust.

 

Can you recommend me something besides Bukowski based on a great personal liking of Fante?

[Lammycat]

There's no way you won't enjoy "Wait Until Spring, Bandini". The people I've spoken to about "Ask the Dust" and that one have the hardest time stating a personal preference. I'm rarely confident recommending a book, being not nearly as well read as I'd like to be, but it just so happens I just got a raving review of this book back from the most well read person I know (not even stating my jealousy for said person's intellect in all other areas). We're talking about someone who averages 2.5 books a month. Anyhoo, you won't enjoy it of course if you didn't think much of Ask The Dust.

 

Can you recommend me something besides Bukowski based on a great personal liking of Fante?

I've read a few Fante books as well, including the Bandini saga. I'd recommend another great short story writer, Raymond Carver. Also, Hubert Selby (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, etc.), or one of my all-time favorites: Flannery O'Connor. 

[Boss_Tweedy]

 

I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom's Highway by Greg Kot.

[NoJ]

"The Girls" by E. Cline. Fifty pages in, its a slow start. She better start getting to some witchy stuff soon or I'm bailing.

[nalafej]

I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom's Highway by Greg Kot.

 

I wanted to like this and just didn't. Same with his Wilco book to tell you the truth. He comes at them a little too much like a reporter and not a story teller imo

[lost highway]

There's no way you won't enjoy "Wait Until Spring, Bandini". The people I've spoken to about "Ask the Dust" and that one have the hardest time stating a personal preference. I'm rarely confident recommending a book, being not nearly as well read as I'd like to be, but it just so happens I just got a raving review of this book back from the most well read person I know (not even stating my jealousy for said person's intellect in all other areas). We're talking about someone who averages 2.5 books a month. Anyhoo, you won't enjoy it of course if you didn't think much of Ask The Dust.

 

Can you recommend me something besides Bukowski based on a great personal liking of Fante?

Thanks for that. I was probably going to read it eventually anyway, but now I'll definitely read it sooner.

 

I don't really click with the Selby Jr. recommendation above. He kind of cranks the cynicism and bleakness over the edge, beyond the charm of Fante.

 

It may be pointlessly obvious choice but I think the appeal of Kerouac is similarly in that lost American guy tries to find his way. Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels or Subterraneans seem like decent companions to Fante. Thr main difference is he's more of a wounded romantic and the prose is not nearly as tight or economical.

 

Another book of beautiful losers is Welsh's Trainspotting. As you might already know you have to crack the dialect which is initially incomprehensible for some, but most people get the hang of it and start to feel like they're reading in a hilarious and filthy second language.

[NoJ]

Recently reading "The Girls" put me in the mood for something witchy so I picked up "Helter Skelter".

[nalafej]

"Purity" by Jonathan Franzen. It's well written so far.

[a-me-with-a-you]

I've read a few Fante books as well, including the Bandini saga. I'd recommend another great short story writer, Raymond Carver. Also, Hubert Selby (Last Exit to Brooklyn, Requiem for a Dream, etc.), or one of my all-time favorites: Flannery O'Connor. 

 

I've got "What we talk about when we talk about love" on my shelf, collecting dust unfortunately. I'm more motivated to crack it open now, thanks. Flannery O' Connor is a recommendation I've had twice now, my hesitance is my cheap nature (I couldn't find it second-hand). I've had an anti-recommendation for Selby from a non-vc-member but I've got a vintage picture of Tom Waits reading "Last Exit To Brooklyn" so maybe that cancels each other out.

 

 

Thanks for that. I was probably going to read it eventually anyway, but now I'll definitely read it sooner.

 

I don't really click with the Selby Jr. recommendation above. He kind of cranks the cynicism and bleakness over the edge, beyond the charm of Fante.

 

It may be pointlessly obvious choice but I think the appeal of Kerouac is similarly in that lost American guy tries to find his way. Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels or Subterraneans seem like decent companions to Fante. Thr main difference is he's more of a wounded romantic and the prose is not nearly as tight or economical.

 

Another book of beautiful losers is Welsh's Trainspotting. As you might already know you have to crack the dialect which is initially incomprehensible for some, but most people get the hang of it and start to feel like they're reading in a hilarious and filthy second language.

 

I'm only a medium amount cynical myself and find some bleakness poignant but there's a point where it goes to far and I just judge it to be melodrama lacking healthy perspective. I can stomach it, but I find I'm more drawn to characters with unconventional romantic tendencies fighting misanthropy in dire surroundingss. Beautiful losers is a good genre name. I loved Tropic of Cancer too, partly for that reason. I still don't get what the parts philosophizing about the universe were about in that one.

 

I do have a language barrier that'll keep me from flipping open "Trainspotting" any time soon. So it's Glaswegian they try to emulate? David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" was sort of the limit of my language level I think, I have the hardest time with Nabokov's ''Pale Fire'' for instance. My progress in "Ulysses" is slow but steady, for instance, though I can't imagine it's a breeze for a native English speaker either. Or is "Trainspotting" more confusing than anything? I can handle the first third of "The Sound and the Fury" for instance. 

 

Man, I'm bound to end up reading Kerouac. I'm just one of those guys who gets an idea in his head about a book being too popular. I've got the same reaction to idea of reading Salinger. I'm reading Garp now so I'm a total hypocrite. Which Kerouac book is a nice starting point? 

 

I'm reading this simultaneously with the aforementioned Garp. I liked his short story book okay but I'm not sure how seriously I can take him with his GOT association (though I love that show):

[lost highway]

I do have a language barrier that'll keep me from flipping open "Trainspotting" any time soon. So it's Glaswegian they try to emulate? David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" was sort of the limit of my language level I think, I have the hardest time with Nabokov's ''Pale Fire'' for instance. My progress in "Ulysses" is slow but steady, for instance, though I can't imagine it's a breeze for a native English speaker either. Or is "Trainspotting" more confusing than anything? I can handle the first third of "The Sound and the Fury" for instance. 

 

Man, I'm bound to end up reading Kerouac. I'm just one of those guys who gets an idea in his head about a book being too popular. I've got the same reaction to idea of reading Salinger. I'm reading Garp now so I'm a total hypocrite. Which Kerouac book is a nice starting point? 

 

The fact that you're even willing to try with Ulysses shows some serious tenacity.  I think there's a pretty big difference between the language challenges presented by post Dubliners Joyce and Trainspotting.  Joyce seems to endeavor to make his prose inscrutable and difficult to reach, where I feel like Welch is just initiating you enough to feel like a local. Much of the dialog can be figured out simply by reading it aloud in your best Scottish brogue, which will often force audible laughter.  There's a small handbag of vocabulary that I imagine a UK resident would be familiar with, that you can infer. Kin=know, fanny=vagina (which makes some sexual scenes read much differently), sick=vomit (noun) and so on.  There are lots of di'nae and ca'nae in place of didn't and cannot.

 

As for Kerouac you could just go with the typical starting point, On the Road, but if you have an aversion to universally popular things (like how I only considered U2's Joshua Tree in 2007 as a used cassette from the thrift store) you can be hipper and say you got into one of the others.  Desolation Angels is a wicked case of the blues, whereas Dharma Bums has a little more joy and a lot more Americanized Buddhism. The appeal is always riding with Jack on one of his manic moments and seeing America as a gorgeous kick, and then tumbling into boredom, isolation and sorrow after the latest place he stopped didn't keep feeding his high. For a totally different spin, I read Maggie Cassidy of his during one of my only legitimate stretches of depression and it was a warm blanket of nostalgia about his first love as a kid and scenes of Lowell, Mass his home town.

 

I'll second the Raymond Carver recommendation. It's easy to see if he resonates as you can read two short stories in one long sitting and get a taste for his M.O. I would argue that all of his stories function basically the same, and the only argument is which are more successful to you. He is probably the most economical writer I've ever read. I'll never forget a story of his that featured a typically Carverish pair of drunk parents fighting over their baby, they begin pulling harder and harder from each direction and the story ends "So it was decided".  Fucking awesome- that's some Lady or the Tiger level "no tell".

 

[calvino]

With regards to Kerouac, I always enjoyed Big Sur and the Subterraneans. I have re-read Big Sur a few times and it holds up a bit, haven't read the Subterraneans in a long while - 25 years or so. It does seem like Kerouac is a young person's game...which is fine.

 

Carver is great.

[dagwave]

"Purity" by Jonathan Franzen. It's well written so far.

I loved it, but I dig all his books. Enjoy!

[Fritz]

 

 

Are there by chance any fans of John Fante's Bandini series here btw?

 

I loved the Bandini series and there are other great Fante books out there as well which I accumulated after reading Ask The Dust. I went through a phase where I just couldn't get enough of him - Dreams From Bunker Hill was great, probably similar in theme to Ask The Dust from memory. 1933 Was A Bad Year is also wonderful, though shorter. There's a short story collection titled The Big Hunger which I found a little slow going at first but with each subsequent story I found myself devouring it faster and faster - "The rest was a cruise on smooth water" as Bandini himself would say.

 

Anyway, I'm coming to the end of this:

 

 

I love Steinbeck and I've enjoyed this as a change of pace (not normally a reader of non-fiction except for music bios) but I need to dive back into a story again. All the talk in here around Fante, Irving and Carver has got me eager for something but I don't know what yet.

[lost highway]

I loved the Bandini series and there are other great Fante books out there as well which I accumulated after reading Ask The Dust. I went through a phase where I just couldn't get enough of him - Dreams From Bunker Hill was great, probably similar in theme to Ask The Dust from memory. 1933 Was A Bad Year is also wonderful, though shorter. There's a short story collection titled The Big Hunger which I found a little slow going at first but with each subsequent story I found myself devouring it faster and faster - "The rest was a cruise on smooth water" as Bandini himself would say.

What's crazy is how few bookstores stock any of these. I almost went through life thinking Ask the Dust was his only work until I stumbled upon a used copy of Brotherhood of the Grape.

[TCP]

Has anyone read The Dark Tower series by Stephen King? My wife has been trying to get me to read it for years. She knows I love westerns, fantasy, time travel, and alternate world stories. I'm 6 books in now, turns out she was right. I'm not a big Stephen King fan but this has been good. He's done a good job at taking what would sound like a silly idea, like say, a secret society of women who throw plates as weapons, but when you read it within the story, it doesn't seem that stupid. The first four books were written over the course of 15 years, the last three came out over two years, but so far I haven't noticed anything feeling rushed. 

[a-me-with-a-you]

Has anyone read The Dark Tower series by Stephen King? My wife has been trying to get me to read it for years. She knows I love westerns, fantasy, time travel, and alternate world stories. I'm 6 books in now, turns out she was right. I'm not a big Stephen King fan but this has been good. He's done a good job at taking what would sound like a silly idea, like say, a secret society of women who throw plates as weapons, but when you read it within the story, it doesn't seem that stupid. The first four books were written over the course of 15 years, the last three came out over two years, but so far I haven't noticed anything feeling rushed. 

 

I love these books, my brother turned me onto them and is furious with me I stopped six books in. Incomprehensible, I know. I'll get to it someday, it's just that book six was kind of weak compared to book 4 and 5 which were the best ones in the series in my opinion.  

 

I'm usually a little pretentious about literature but these are great fun none the less, and I think Stephen King sometimes gets too little credit. He'll never win a nobel prize for literature but he always engages a reader and he genuinely loves telling a story and it shows. I also think The Stand holds up but the rest of the books of his I've read I've sort of disavowed. Not the Dark Tower, just to be clear.

 

There's an article or Rotten Tomatoes about the adaptation that will soon come out, starring Idris Elba as Roland, Mcconaughey as the man in black, and Ron Howard at the the helm (but not in the director's chair). I think that director has done mediocre things as well as great things. Rush was great, for instance.It'll be a trilogy and a tv-show, from what I understand.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_tower_2017/

 

 

 The feature film will be followed by two sequels, each of which will be bridged by two television series. Akiva Goldsman (Da Vinci Code, Batman & Robin) provides the screenplay.

 

[Fritz]

All the Fante talk has taken me to one of his I haven't yet read:

 

 

But I'm also in the need for some noir. It's been many years so I think I'll re-read this:

 

[a-me-with-a-you]

All the Fante talk has taken me to one of his I haven't yet read:

 

 

But I'm also in the need for some noir. It's been many years so I think I'll re-read this:

 

 

I could never get into noir books as much as I love the movie genre. I tried a Jim Thompson once, an Elmore Leonard, they didn't take. Granted, I've never tried Ellroy (is he considered a guilty pleasure read?) , or Raymond Chandler which would be my best bet if I ever want to try noir. Right?

 

This Fante talk has stirred up a renewed desire to read Dreams from Bunker Hill, alas I lent out my Bandini quartet. I did find the beginning of the Road to Los Angeles weak compared to the preceding two, but I'm intrigued by the romance behind the writing process of the last one.

 

I'll probably end up reading 500 years of solitude before I get the quartet back. But first The World According to Garp of course, I love it already and I've barely scratched the surface. I've never had this many books burning a hole in my book case, if you will, and this topic is not helping (that want-to-read list on goodreads is getting intimidating).

[Fritz]

I could never get into noir books as much as I love the movie genre. I tried a Jim Thompson once, an Elmore Leonard, they didn't take. Granted, I've never tried Ellroy (is he considered a guilty pleasure read?) , or Raymond Chandler which would be my best bet if I ever want to try noir. Right?

 

 

I love both Ellroy and Chandler. I went on a Chandler bender last year during summer holidays and just loved it. I think I read everything except for The Big Sleep. They're all really good but I would argue that The Long Goodbye is his masterpiece.

 

Ellroy is Chandler taken to a whole other level - the seedy underbelly of corruption in police forces, crooked politicians and hoodlums. Amongst actual historical figures Ellroy's fictional characters dwell. There's a whole bunch of early novels where he's honing his craft but he really hit his stride with the series of books referred to as the L.A. Quartet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. They're dense, heavy going, and thick with plot and characters. I'd start with those four books.

[Boss_Tweedy]

I wanted to like this and just didn't. Same with his Wilco book to tell you the truth. He comes at them a little too much like a reporter and not a story teller imo

 

Having just finished "I'll Take You There" today, I'm inclined to agree with your assessment. I didn't hate it, but it just didn't make me feel many of the feels. 

[Boss_Tweedy]