Fave Books / Currently Reading

[cavorting with nudists]

There's always this:

[Steve of Bloomington]

'Cartoon History of The Universe' actually does a pretty good job of delivering on its title, although it doesn't spend very much time on the first few billion years.

[dudep]

The Bible?

[Pidgeon]

Learn another language and find out how a foreign edition of Bryson's book compares.

[Keith Whitener]

I'm checking out a book called A Theory of Needs. Apparently there's argument over what we need, which is weird given that they take breaks from arguing to eat.

Also reading On Leadership by John Gardner. Imma be a leader!

[Joe Rogaine]

Just started reading V so far nobody has peeled their skin back to reveal that they are really a green alien.

[Rick in Salt Lake]

Just started reading V so far nobody has pealed there skin back to reveal that they are really a green alien.

Of course you're aware Pynchon really is an alien, right?

[buffcoat]

Back at Foucault's Pendulum after an extended absence.

[dave from knoxville]

Back at Foucault's Pendulum after an extended absence.

Oh oh oh! Maybe I should try it again! I will finish Ubik tomorrow, probably, and War and Peace next weekend, and I will need to start something new. Was thinking Infinite Jest again, but it might e fun to read Foucault with somebody.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I was bored to tears with Foucault's Pendulum, lost my copy, and never got another. I guess Umberto Eco is OK, but he sometimes strikes me as a middlebrow version of postmodernism -- I'd rather just read Pynchon, DeLillo, or DFW. I'm confused most of the time, but I'd rather be confused than bored.

And also:



Connection to last week's show: I've been spending a lot of time in airports lately, and browse in the crappy bookstores looking at all the business books. I'm too broke and already own too many unread books to buy any, but for some inexplicable reason I have this involuntary response to collections of identical books, like the 33 1/3 books or the BFI Film Classics series. I just want them all. So I flip through the Harvard Business School Pocket Mentor series, and part of me (mostly superstitiously) thinks, if I learn all this MBA crap, I can reboot my life and have a career in TV. So I get them from the library, and they're just about the dullest thing I've ever read, like reading a memo. They take about as long to read as memos, too.

[Steve of Bloomington]

They used to sell a service where you got a 3-page summary of all the major Business Bestsellers in airline magazines.

They probably have a similar thing on the web for free at this point.

I for one will never forget that valuable lesson that you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

[Matt]

I'm too broke and already own too many unread books to buy any, but for some inexplicable reason I have this involuntary response to collections of identical books, like the 33 1/3 books or the BFI Film Classics series. I just want them all.

YES. See also: NYRB Classics. I've bought about 30 of them, and have only read the first 50 pages of one, John Williams' STONER. They were really good pages though!

[cavorting with nudists]

YES. See also: NYRB Classics. I've bought about 30 of them, and have only read the first 50 pages of one, John Williams' STONER. They were really good pages though!

I can tell you a few that are worth reading, especially if you've already bought them:

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling
Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece
Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (Hangover Square is even better, but not in the series.)

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Damn, yeah, I love those NYRB books. Though they're more like actual books than those little mini-pamphlets, so I tend to think more about the content. That said, we own more of them than either the 33 1/3 or BFI books, but I think that's just because my wife has a master's in creative writing from The New School.

[Matt]

YES. See also: NYRB Classics. I've bought about 30 of them, and have only read the first 50 pages of one, John Williams' STONER. They were really good pages though!

I can tell you a few that are worth reading, especially if you've already bought them:

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling
Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece
Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (Hangover Square is even better, but not in the series.)

Thanks for the recommendations. I have the Don Carpenter and Patrick Hamilton ones. I tried to read HARD RAIN FALLING a few months ago, but the prologue was so bleak I had to set it aside for awhile. I think I'm ready for it now.