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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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 Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:21 am Post subject: |
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| kprrok wrote: |
| I've just started two books, the Bible, and The Scarlet Letter |
Let us know how they turn out.  I hear they each are about sin and have a killer ending. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 3:58 pm Post subject: |
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You know, based on this recommendation from nearly two years ago I read almost all of the books you suggested. Thanks! I enjoyed all of them. It's too bad Richard Farina died so young. I think he could have made some great books.
Recently I read: "Positively 4th Street" by David Hajdu. It was a good look into the underground folk scene in the 1960s.
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Glad you enjoyed them.
Some others you might like:
Buried Alive: A biography of Janis Joplin by Myra Friedman
Siddhartha--Hesse
Journey to the East--ditto
I really enjoyed Positively 4th Street, too.
BTW:
MEGA-THANKS to whoever took 'The Portable American Realism Reader' (The Viking Portable Library) to Whatthebook? I picked it up yesterday and am thoroughly enjoying the first part...12 short stories in the Regionalism/Local Color genre. I LOVE that stuff. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 'The Minister's Housekeeper' is terrific. It also gave me an excuse to re-read Twain's 'The Story of the Old Ram', perhaps the greatest short story ever written.  |
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Pa Jan Jo A Hamnida
Joined: 27 Oct 2006
Location: Not Korea
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| Posted: Sun Jan 18, 2009 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson. |
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JBomb
Joined: 16 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:28 am Post subject: |
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| currently reading Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. Hilarious, venomous, and smart all in one nice little collection of pop culture essays. |
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GoldSoundz
Joined: 12 Jun 2008
Location: Pohang
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| Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:31 am Post subject: |
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I always read good books:
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (Eggers)
A good meta-biography about loss and coming-of-age. Overrated, but enjoyable.
"Blue Like Jazz" (Miller)
Essays on the relevance of Christianity in a post-modern world. Nice.
"Flight" (Alexie)
A fun read that is pretty fast paced. Deals with Native Americans.
"Perfumes the Guide" (Turin/Sanchez)
Fragrance reviews, extra snarky. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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| I read the first half of Somerset Maugham's 'The Painted Veil' this morning. Very good. Since it looks crappy outside, I'll probably finish it this afternoon. |
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meangradin
Joined: 10 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| ust finished two (translated from Spanish) by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and am about to finish a third. God I love him. Quasi-literary, high class suspense/mystery. A writer who remembers that plot and character are necessary to good fiction, who knows how to create for us the vivid and continuous dream that makes us forget that we are reading words on a page. |
Lately, I have been reading Perez-Reverte's Alatriste series and enjoy the historical fiction / poetic style he uses; much different than any other historical fiction writer I have read. The closest author in style I have read would be Edward Rutherfurd. Also, I finally read the latest in the Sharpe series, and will start "Azincourt" by Bernard Cornwell as soon as I finish Reverte's "The King's Gold." After that, hoping to read a Guy Gavriel Kay book or finally start "Don Quixote." |
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lawyertood
Joined: 17 Jan 2003
Location: Seoul, Incheon and the World--working undercover for the MOJ
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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Getting ready to read Neal Stephenson's Anathem--935 pages of brain enrichment
Review from Amazon
Anathem is another in a line of unique novels from Neal Stephenson. His earlier books like Snow Crash and the Diamond Age are excellent glimpses of the concept-driven novels that he has been writing for the last ten years. One weakness of his earlier books is that he didn't end stories particularly strongly (Snow Crash being a notable exception) but he has gotten progressively better at that, particularly with the System of the World, the last of the Baroque Cycle trilogy. Starting with Cryptonoicon, he started writing "long" fiction. One typical thing about these novels is that they have a slow build while you get introduced to the characters and situations. I know several very bright people who couldn't stomach the long lead-up in Quicksilver and never got to the fantastic 2nd and 3rd novels in the series, The Confusion and System of the World. Like the beginning of a rollercoaster where you need to climb to the crest of the first hill, the first sections of his novels pay off as the rest of the story becomes compulsive reading.
No spoilers to follow: Anathem finds him back in top form with a new cast of characters, a new world, and a new language. Not surprisingly, this means that the first chapters of the book are challenging and somewhat difficult, but as another review stated, nowhere near as convoluted and involved as The Lord of the Rings or (in my opinion), Dune. The more you know about history and ancient Greek thought the more you will be blown away by Anathem; and that is before the correlations to more recent philosophy and an extended meditation on zero-gravity navigation. A re-imagining of intellectual history, only Neal Stephenson can make the fine points of esoteric philosophical and intellectual minutia so much fun to read.
For me, one of the high points of the Baroque Cycle was how he made European history, the history of science, alchemy, and the history of banking and commerce so unbelievably enjoyable to read about. Anathem moves into more speculative areas by showing how the differnet ways in which we frame our thoughts have real and powerful impact on the world at large, even if it takes a long time for those speculative thoughts to produce concrete effects. I get the feeling that his novels are the product of his own intellectual curiousity about history, science, mathmatics, and now philosophy. Thankfully, he has a knack for packaging these ruminations into adventurous exciting novels |
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lisac1983
Joined: 14 Dec 2008
Location: sydney, australia
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:28 pm Post subject: |
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Recent reads --
A Thousand Splendid Suns (Khaled Hosseini)
Opium (Colin Falconer)
... both amazing reads!
Jamaica (Malcom Knox)
... not the best, but OK.
Currently reading --
No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam (Reza Aslan)
.... eye-opening |
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ZUL
Joined: 15 Jul 2004
Location: Cloud 9
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| Posted: Fri Feb 06, 2009 3:17 am Post subject: |
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| Buff wrote: |
| shifter2009 wrote: |
| Anyone read any Haruki Murakami? Never heard of him till I got here, picked up Hard Boild Wonderland and The End of the World at random and its pretty awesome. I was wondering if the rest of his work is like this and as good? |
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is excellent. Dream-like. |
I agree Wind-Up is great, as are the majority of his others; most notably:
- Norwegian Wood
- Wild Sheep Chase
- Dance, Dance, Dance
I went on a Murakami binge and read everything I could get my hands on from him. Just read his latest non-fiction: What I talk about when I talk about running. I was actually a bit disappointed with it, guess I was too used to his fiction and it didn�t live up to my expectations.
Has anyone read any Jeffrey Eugenides? He only has two novels; The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex. Both are fantastic. His use of language makes them a really nice read.
Currently I�m reading The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace. Not as easy-going as Murakami or Eugenides, but equally as interesting if not more. |
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fishy
Joined: 24 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 12:25 am Post subject: |
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| Ooh! I love David Foster Wallace. Right now I'm reading _Infinite Jest_. It's great but I don't think he needed 10 pages and diagrams to describe moving a bed. |
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GreenlightmeansGO
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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| fishy wrote: |
| Ooh! I love David Foster Wallace. Right now I'm reading _Infinite Jest_. It's great but I don't think he needed 10 pages and diagrams to describe moving a bed. |
When I get a lot of free time I will attempt to read it. |
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mole
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Act III
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| Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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I'm almost finished with Peter Schiff's Crash Proof.
Read it, learn it, believe it. At least watch his 3 minute sales pitch here on Amazon.
Just before, I read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Check Amazon's listing and pitch.
Some unique insights into Korea in there.
Before that, Dr. Ron Paul's Revolution: A Manifesto.
Read it before you miss out. The R3VOLUTION hath begun, children~! |
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