what are you reading right now?

by **warmhouse** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:04 am

internetfriend wrote:despite like 12 more uses of "pugnacious" and a pretty rickety climax perdido street sure managed to end with a couple gutpunches

steampunkery and doofy names aside the first half of that book had some of the most all-out imaginative substantial city-writing ive seen in sci-fi i think

which other of china's books are good?

i think i really really admired PERDIDO STREET STATION, but I still hated it. It was impressive, but I still rolled my eyes almost the entire way through?

by **Kenny** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 6:09 am

I'm trying to stop buying shit I don't need to buy and I went through my kindle wishlist and deleted everything that was available at my library and added it to my wishlist there. Deleting amazon wishlist stuff is surprisingly fun

I would mostly put them on there to remember I wanted to read them someday but that wouldn't stop me from impulse buying randomly

by **incoherent grunting** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:13 am

switching to heavy library usage was the best move I made last year, and while it sucks when something gets recalled in the middle of reading, it's pretty sick minimizing (what could be construed as) clutter, and not paying $$$ for stuff that isn't great. Plus, when you do buy a book it makes it that much more valuable to you.

by **Kenny** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:14 am

Luckily I had finished the book that day (coincidence) and was just waiting till the weekend to bring it back anyway :ugeek:

I was thinking about slipping in a piece of paper saying something like it's a trip two people are reading Framley Parsonage from this library, and maybe giving my e-mail to say hello

Is that creepy

by **incoherent grunting** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:33 am

at most I would probably think it was weird and post about it here

by **shacky** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 9:28 am

Riverchrist wrote:I finished Augie March. How is there so much STUFF in there? Marvelous.

yeah shit is dense, tried reading it on a 20 hour flight to chicago but it's not plane fare, gotta do it again properly

by **Mr Spaceship** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:14 am

by **reversemigraine** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:19 am

Kenny wrote:I'm trying to stop buying shit I don't need to buy and I went through my kindle wishlist and deleted everything that was available at my library and added it to my wishlist there. Deleting amazon wishlist stuff is surprisingly fun

I would mostly put them on there to remember I wanted to read them someday but that wouldn't stop me from impulse buying randomly

Librarians are the absolute worst w/r/t buying vs. lending, huh.

I have five different books checked out and I still have to make a conscious effort every single day not to walk to the bookstore downtown to buy a copy for myself (or worse, something entirely different).

by **sobieski** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:25 am

yeah my problem is not wanting to return library books until I've finished them and then checking out a bunch of books at once

I had like 40 books checked out from the school library and they wouldn't give me my diploma until I returned all of them

by **Kenny** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:34 am

Yeah my big problem with libraries is checking out like 4 or 5 and the only reading 1 or 2 in the check out period and having to lug them all back unread, or continually rechecking them out online

by **Kenny** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:03 am

So good to live near such a great library:

Code: Select all: Books to read Coming up for air / George Orwell. Orwell, George, 1903-1950. Publication Date 2000 Keep the aspidistra flying / George Orwell. Orwell, George, 1903-1950, author. Publication Date 2014 Production information London : Penguin Books, 2014. Lanny / Max Porter. Porter, Max, author. Publication Date 2019 Production information London : Faber & Faber, 2019. Selected writings / John Ruskin ; edited with an introduction and notes by Dinah Birch. Ruskin, John, 1819-1900. Publication Date 2004 Scenes of clerical life / George Eliot ; edited with an introduction and notes by Thomas A. Noble. Eliot, George, 1819-1880. Publication Date 2009 The sleepwalkers : how Europe went to war in 1914 / Christopher Clark. Clark, Christopher M., author. Publication Date 2013 Production information London : Penguin Books, 2013. The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman / Laurence Sterne ; edited with an introduction and notes by Ian Campbell Ross. Sterne, Laurence, 1713-1768. Publication Date 2009 Put out more flags / Evelyn Waugh ; with an introduction by Nigel Spivey. Waugh, Evelyn, 1903-1966. Publication Date 2000 The kingdom / Emmanuel Carrère ; translated from the French by John Lambert. Carrère, Emmanuel, 1957- author. Publication Date 2018 Production information London : Penguin Books, 2018. The green mile : a novel in six parts / Stephen King. King, Stephen, 1947- Publication Date 1999 Salem's lot / Stephen King. King, Stephen, 1947- Publication Date 2011 The temple of the golden pavilion / Yukio Mishima ; translated by Ivan Morris. Mishima, Yukio, 1925-1970. Publication Date 2001 The fountains of Paradise / by Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke, Arthur C. (Arthur Charles), 1917-2008 Publication Date 1979 Mary Ann Sate, imbecile / Alice Jolly. Jolly, Alice, author. Publication Date 2018 Production information London : Unbound, 2018. The lonely Londoners / Samuel Selvon. Selvon, Samuel Publication Date 1979 Interview with the vampire / Anne Rice. Rice, Anne, 1941- Publication Date 2008 Madame Bovary / Gustave Flaubert ; translated by Christopher Moncrieff. Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880, author. Publication Date 2013 Production information Richmond : Alma Classics, 2013. Things fall apart / Chinua Achebe. Achebe, Chinua. Publication Date 2001 The right stuff / (by) Tom Wolfe. Wolfe, Tom, 1930- Publication Date 1979 Hotel du Lac. Brookner, Anita. Publication Date 1993 And then there were none Christie, Agatha Publication Date 2015 Murder on the Orient Express / Agatha Christie. Christie, Agatha, 1890-1976. Publication Date 2001 The winter king : a novel of Arthur / Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell, Bernard. Publication Date 2011 The private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner / James Hogg. Hogg, James, 1770-1835. Publication Date 2012 Foundation / Isaac Asimov. Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992, Publication Date 2016 Notes of a native son. Baldwin, James, 1924-1987. Publication Date 1964 Around the world in 80 days. Verne, Jules, 1828-1905. Publication Date 1990 Northern lights / Philip Pullman. Pullman, Philip, 1946- Publication Date 2011 Midnight's children / Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, Salman. Publication Date 2008 To the lighthouse / Virginia Woolf. Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941. Publication Date 2012 As I lay dying / William Faulkner. Faulkner, William, 1897-1962. Publication Date 1996 Dune / Frank Herbert. Herbert, Frank. Publication Date 2015 Eyeless in Gaza / Aldous Huxley ; with an introduction by David Bradshaw. Huxley, Aldous, 1894-1963. Publication Date 2004 The Edwardians / Vita Sackville-West. Sackville-West, V. (Victoria), 1892-1962, author. Publication Date 2016 Production information London : Vintage Classic, 2016.

The ones it didn't have:
Robert Hugh Benson - Light Invisible & Lord of the World
George Orwell - I Have Tried To Tell The Truth
Robert Holdstock - Mythago Wood

by **shizaam** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:37 am

just started

first time!

by **incoherent grunting** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 11:41 am

I check out one novel at a time and I think the 2-week turnaround is helping me read more than ever this year!

by **Dirty Penny** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:47 pm

Wishlists make me anxious - they are like a constant reminder of what I need to read but then the prospect of not having what I want to read listed is bananapants to me.

by **cooly** » Fri Apr 26, 2019 9:01 pm

liked this a lot. it's relatively confined for its length and i felt like i really understood and connected with the characters.

by **Kenny** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 4:53 am

Is there any good histories of Old Hollywood of like the first half of the 20th century? I read Chaplin's biography last year and I've read Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon but would be really cool for a more historical one.

Inspiried by watching Sunset Blvd. for the hundreth time

by **deep blue meanies** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 10:20 am

just finished

now

by **criss elliott** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 11:10 am

recent reads:

agota kristof's trilogy
so fucking good

the story of my teeth by valeria luiselli

read before i went to mxcd, i went to the jumex museum after reading it. they didnt have any exhibits but they said i could still walk around and i did i dont know why.

red shift by alan garner

really loved it and have been thinking about it a lot since

how to stop time by matt haig

the opposite of red shift. the protagonist is a man who ages slower than everyone else and has existed since the 1500s. the book becomes a kind of british forrest gump where he survivez the plague, hangs out with shakespeare (winds up playing lute in his band), knows omai and claims to be the first white person to ever surf, meets f scott and zelda and they teach him about bloody marys and f scott says something like "the only thing im afraid of is Ernest". truly atrocious. i cannot even believe how bad. and now theyre making a benedict cumberbatch movie.

now reading:

angela davis's autobiography

great

how to do nothing by jenny odell

pretty cool so far. less self-help than the title suggests, more like smart essays about our relationships to smart technology, capitalism, and our environment. riyl if you like rebecca solnit maybe

by **adam sampler** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:06 pm

adam sampler wrote:

Just finished this. It was great -- imo less so because of the structure that's been getting all of the press love but for the terrific description of American high school arts programs outside of major cities

Getting started on these today

by **alaska** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:11 pm

hell yeah

by **internetfriend** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:19 pm

hell yeah i just got that in the mail. gonna read it after The City & the City (which i’m 25% of the way through and holy smokes it’s a slog so far)

by **furrowed brow** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:27 pm

Yeah, I had to put down TC&tC about 60 pages in cuz I was just zoning out so much while reading it. The writing was super dry.

by **Kenny** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 4:07 pm

Finished Brighton Rock just now which was really great if wholly depressing! THe ending is KILLERRRR

I'm sort of glad to be out of that world tho, very oppresive and close and feeling sort of sad for everybody involved

by **landspeedrecord** » Sun Apr 28, 2019 4:15 pm

the mushroom at the end of the world is amazing!!

read that awhile back on junebug’s rec and actually just sent a copy to my uncle for him to read as he recuperates from surgery

by **shacky** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:13 am

i just got my first library card since childhood! mostly just because i saw what a decent selection of graphic novels they have -- that's one hobby i can't afford right now

but it'll be a cold day in hell before i stop relieving depression with 4am additions to bookdepository wishlists

by **mystery meat** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 12:43 pm

adam sampler wrote:

reading the collected essays now and she's fucking killer

by **blab** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:06 pm

enjoying both 8-)

much of joan murray's poetry slips over my head. there's a reality bending use of language that i'm not totally equipped to take on. it's okay, it still feels good to read it!

by **Seamus** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:09 pm

I've got Barbarian Days on my shelf, I think someone on the board recommended it a couple of years back. Maybe it should be my holiday read.

by **Mr Spaceship** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:22 pm

Barbarian Days was a great summer read

by **incoherent grunting** » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:25 pm

Yeah good summer read for sure, if a little drawn out by the end

what are you reading right now?

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