Fave Books / Currently Reading

[Emily]

no need to apologize.

i should have included this emoticon :-O to help make light of the situation in my post.
it was just unexpected, was like "woah! what happened!?! where am i?"

then i laughed a lot.
overall, it was funny.
:-)

[Rainer]

no need to apologize.

Wheew!  Thanks. I'm rather sensitive about slips like this.

[Rainer]

I'm obsessed with the website www.goodreads.com.

This looks to be an awesome eBay-less redistribution service.  Have you ever used it? I've got tons of books that need love.

[Sarah]

Since the local library doesn't want all the Godine books I have sitting in boxes upstairs (some of them sadly mildewed, having spent years in my parents' garage), someday I'll post a list of titles here to see if any of you want them.  All I ask is that you pay the postage (there will be no handling charge). 

[jed]

Currently Reading:
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Ecco
Collected Short Stories by Ernest Hemmingway
Genealogy of Nihilism by Connor Cunningham

Favorite Books:
The Brothers Karamazov
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
The Violent Bear it Away, Flannery O'Connor
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
Confessions, St. Augustine

Want to Read Soon:
I should finally read some Vonnegut. Any suggestions on the best place to start? Breakfast of Champions? Also, I have wondered if Confederacy of Dunces is worth reading (I'm skeptical) and anything by Tom Wolfe. What's "your take" on them?

[Rainer]

I have wondered if Confederacy of Dunces is worth reading

Absolutely.  Read it now.

I should finally read some Vonnegut.

Me too.  I haven't read anything by Vonnegut.  For some bizarro reason, I am always confusing him with Tom Robbins.  You can blame the art directors for that.

[Emerson]

I've never gotten through Life: A User's Manual, but Species of Spaces floors me. Methinks it'd be easier on the non-initiate.

I'm also fond of Tosches in general.

Other recommendations:
Terry Southern - Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes
Snell & Gail Putney - The Adjusted American
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Jim Thompson - Bad Boy
Todd Dills - Sons of the Rapture

~EmD

[Rainer]

Jim Thompson - Bad Boy

I had more tops than slots!  Love that  book.

[Jason]

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien is still my favorite book. The only reason I ever read Flannery O'Connor was that her books are nearly always next to O'Brien's and it piqued my interest.

[Susannah]

Re: Terry Southern--I didn't know he'd written much other than the screenplay for "Dr. Strangelove" and "Candy," which I love.  I'll definitely have to check out his other books.

Both my mom and dad had separate copies of "Candy," which I read when I was 12 and got so embarrassed for both of them that I stole both books and hid them (though I read the novel on the sly, obviously.)  Evidence of parental sexuality was too painful for my pre-adolescent self to bear...anyone else ever do something like that?

[Sarah]

I didn't hide the book, but I remember scouring Beauvoir's The Second Sex for salacious material when I was wee.

[Rainer]

Evidence of parental sexuality was too painful for my pre-adolescent self to bear...anyone else ever do something like that?

I found a copy of Rod McKuen's "Listen to the Warm" in my Dad's desk. Not sure if the volume contained Rod's "kitten" poems or something bluer, but I shut the drawer and decided to play with my Dr. Lizard action figure instead. 

BTW my father's favorite book was and is "On War" - by Carl von Clausewitz.  Strange bedfellows.

[Emerson]

Re: Terry Southern--I didn't know he'd written much other than the screenplay for "Dr. Strangelove" and "Candy," which I love.  I'll definitely have to check out his other books.

Both my mom and dad had separate copies of "Candy," which I read when I was 12 and got so embarrassed for both of them that I stole both books and hid them (though I read the novel on the sly, obviously.)  Evidence of parental sexuality was too painful for my pre-adolescent self to bear...anyone else ever do something like that?

Southern was rather prolific during his day. He had weaknesses for speed-driven overwriting and cutesy-poo namedropping. But there's a lot of great comedy in there, some of which is powerfully dark, even now. Compared to any of the Beats, he's wildly underrated.

During the warm, vivid dawn of my sexuality, I caught mad shit for stashing my mom's copy of Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which is, unfortunately, a terrible book.

~EmD

[Omar]

Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford.  Best food-related book since Steve Almond's Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.  These books would make for a nice doublebill -- Grindhouse non-fiction -- as they manage to touch on some similar themes.  George Saunders on Candyfreak:

"This book will, yes, make you hungry, but it will also make you grateful-for wit, for self-effacing humor, for joyful obsessiveness, for the precise and loving use of language to crack open and celebrate our oddness-in short, for a writer as funny and big-hearted as Steve Almond. It's about candy, yes, but also it's about America, which seems to be Bigging itself towards mediocrity as it flees from the quirky virtuosic individuality on which it was founded, and of which this book is such a wonderful example."

[Laurie]

If you give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of the package, he will measure his dick

Okay, now I have to read this book. Thanks for the tip, Omar.