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simplicio
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 2:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dhex, you might look into Winsor McCay, who worked within a very formal structure (sunday newspapers c. 1904-20something) but originated a lot of the narrative visual flow everyone else is taking for granted here. Most notably he wrote Little Nemo In Slumberland (about a boy's epic adventure within dreams) and Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend (similar, but with adults and a little bit more openly hallucinogenic). And also some incredibly racist Kipling-esque African creation myths. Some really beautiful and giant (and unfortunately expensive too) collections of his stuff have been released in the last year; you might check the library.

He also made some early animations (skip to 8:20), handdrawing every single frame on his own, backgrounds and all.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

So I was restless in bed last night and decided to read from the book of Philip K. Dick short stories entitled Second Variety (of which the movie Screamers was based on). Anyways, the collection is all stories about either alien invasions or aliens taking humans. Awesome silly stuff. So like I came across the most brilliantly clever and humorous short story and have decided to track it down on the internet for you all to read:

The Eyes Have It

It's only three pages long, you really should read it.
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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I read the first bit of Dick's "The Golden Man" while waiting for a doctor today. Good stuff.
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seryogin
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 8:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
So I was restless in bed last night and decided to read from the book of Philip K. Dick short stories entitled Second Variety (of which the movie Screamers was based on). Anyways, the collection is all stories about either alien invasions or aliens taking humans. Awesome silly stuff. So like I came across the most brilliantly clever and humorous short story and have decided to track it down on the internet for you all to read:

The Eyes Have It

It's only three pages long, you really should read it.


I was actually quite blown away by this when I first came accross it. Proof that PKD was a lot more clever early in his career than most people give him credit.

Otherwise, though, the other stories that I have read so far in the collection don't fill me with as much confidence (other than Second Variety, which is one of my favorite short stories period). They all seem Twillight Zonish -- which isn't bad, though doesn't really differentiate Dick much from the rest of the SF writers of the period.

I'm recommending Now Wait for Last Year to you, Shapes.
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sarsamis
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I got all 6 of the original Dune books for my birthday a few weeks back. I've already read the first one though, so at some point I'll start reading them from the second.
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Shapermc
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

sarsamis wrote:
I got all 6 of the original Dune books for my birthday a few weeks back. I've already read the first one though, so at some point I'll start reading them from the second.

Honestly I only really liked the first book. After that it seemed like someone took the wind out of Franks sails. Now, diehard fans of the series will just say that I'm some kind of peace hating bastard, but honestly: the quality of writing drops after the first book.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

seryogin wrote:
Otherwise, though, the other stories that I have read so far in the collection don't fill me with as much confidence (other than Second Variety, which is one of my favorite short stories period). They all seem Twillight Zonish -- which isn't bad, though doesn't really differentiate Dick much from the rest of the SF writers of the period.

Yeah, like I said: silly stuff. It's a nice diversion from some of his very heady stuff (which I just finished up reading quite a bit of). And while it doesn't separate him much from the writers of his peroid, I do find his writing in the "generic alien invasion/twilight zone" much better written on average.
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sarsamis
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Shapermc wrote:
sarsamis wrote:
I got all 6 of the original Dune books for my birthday a few weeks back. I've already read the first one though, so at some point I'll start reading them from the second.

Honestly I only really liked the first book. After that it seemed like someone took the wind out of Franks sails. Now, diehard fans of the series will just say that I'm some kind of peace hating bastard, but honestly: the quality of writing drops after the first book.

Until I get the initiative to read them, I'm just going to have to assume you're right Sad
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rf
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm reading Perdido Street Station. It's a good, classy steampunk/fantasy/SF/whatever novel, although the plot gets amusingly much like a console RPG at times. I really like how the magic is treated, though--it differs in significant ways from any natural laws we've got in our universe, yet it's treated as an investigable topic by scientists and not just as a mysterious force. Which is what you'd want to do with magical forces, as they tend to be powerful, and the sort of thing you'd want to control.
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Harveyjames
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 3:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

sarsamis wrote:
Shapermc wrote:
sarsamis wrote:
I got all 6 of the original Dune books for my birthday a few weeks back. I've already read the first one though, so at some point I'll start reading them from the second.

Honestly I only really liked the first book. After that it seemed like someone took the wind out of Franks sails. Now, diehard fans of the series will just say that I'm some kind of peace hating bastard, but honestly: the quality of writing drops after the first book.

Until I get the initiative to read them, I'm just going to have to assume you're right Sad


Shaper, you just ruined his birthday present, you mook
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 10:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anton Chekhov has a killer sense of humor, but he steals it from Gogol and Pushkin.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 8:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I re-read Rushkoff's Playing the Future.

What seemed awesome when I was a raver who wore an oversized bright orange deer hunter jacket with my adidas track pants now just seems like pathetic libertarian nonsense. Maybe it's just because I know who Katie Roiphe is now when I didn't back then. It's still mildly entertaining but not the mind expanding thing i thought it was when I did up a lot of e. See also Donkey Kong country.
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

See also his current ongoing comic Testament.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i'm finishing up empires of the word (which is quite neat and gets a thumbs up) and will go back to evola.

he's so fucking weird.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 10:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm going through Founders at Work. Damn the early-mid '90s. Hotmail went from nothing to being purchased for $400 million after 18 months. I did like the story about the Paypal founders not considering fraud to be serious enough to worry about, and then promptly being hit with massive chargebacks to the tune of 10 million a month.
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Were any of you aware that Dmitri Nabokov had a blog?
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, but he writes astoundingly like his father. Makes a good case for him as his father's frequent (co-)translator.

I've always wondered how good an opera singer he is.
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

He's spot-on about the French, incidentally.

I'm somewhat surprised he never got any comments. From some of his posts, though, laybe he's a forum browser? This merits an investigation!
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bleak
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm about to start reading World War Z. I'm kind of mentally building up to it though, because I haven't actually picked up and read a book in a very long time. I hear it's very good, and I am a pretty huge fan of zombie apocalypse,, so it's a win-win situation, right?
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

so i finished up my evola (he'd be fun to drop on whole ranges of people, really, since his bugnuttery is very coherent) and i'm reading the city and man by leo strauss. fairly straightforward analysis of the politics, the republic and peloponnesian wars.
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i finished up strauss (straightforward and quite readable, though i do wonder when he - or anyone - talks about social cohesion and "understanding where we are headed" like that isn't some kind of fever dream) and moved onto a delightfully cute book on the end of the cathars called "the yellow cross." it's a bit too literary in parts but very readable.
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boojiboy7
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

bleak wrote:
I'm about to start reading World War Z. I'm kind of mentally building up to it though, because I haven't actually picked up and read a book in a very long time. I hear it's very good, and I am a pretty huge fan of zombie apocalypse,, so it's a win-win situation, right?


Redeker might be the most interesting part of that book, but I enjoyed the whole thing.
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
Experience and Education by John Dewey
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want to get round to reading Don Quixote. Which translation should I go for? The Edith Grossman seems to be the easier to get these days. Is it any good?

Also, I fucking adore Blog of a Bookslut:

Quote:
Has there ever before been a fictional character like Fatima? At the age of 12 she flies a kite, reads Pnin, menstruates, and bears witness to the murder of her parents by the Taliban. Soon after she is sent to live with American Christians, and spends a fragile adolescence acclimatizing to the poisonous indifference and callousness of the West before attending an Ivy-league college where she majors in economics and sleeps with a professor (an adjunct but still). We thrill as she casts off her grim past to join a Wall Street investment firm, finds love, and indulges in fine sweaters.


God, how I laughed.
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Have begun Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. I adore the following quote from its opening few pages:

Percy wrote:
I am a model tenant and a model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me. My wallet is full of identity cards, library cards, credit cards. Last year I purchased a flat olive-drab strongbox, very smooth and heavily built with double walls for fire protection, in which I placd my birth certificate, college diploma, honorable discharge, G.I. insurance, a few stock certificates, and my inheritance: a deed to ten acres of a defunct duck club down in St Bernard Parish, the only relic of my father's many enthusiasms. It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name on it certifying, so to speak, one's right to exist. What satisfaction I take in appearing the first day to get my auto tag and brake sticker! I subscribe to Consumer Reports and as a consequence I own a first-class television set, an all but silent air conditioner and a very long lasting deodorant. My armpits never stink.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well I finished World War Z. It was very good! A bit slow at first, but that could probably be attributed to the fact that I didn't know what I was in for. After about a chapter or so it started picking up though, which was excellent. Now, I'm no book critic or anything, but I'm pretty sure that it was a very well written book. Anyone else have any experiences to share with this book?
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simplicio
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 2:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dracko wrote:
I want to get round to reading Don Quixote. Which translation should I go for? The Edith Grossman seems to be the easier to get these days. Is it any good?


Yes, the best in fact. It aims for the (wild, hilarious) spirit of the thing, rather than attempting to give us a translation in period english or something. What you end up with is remarkably readable and actually fun.

From what I'm hearing she's the Pevear/Volokhonsky of Spanish->English translation. I picked up one of her Gabriel Garcia Marquez translations the other day but I haven't started it yet.

I started the new Peter Carey, His Illegal Self, because just about everything he's written this decade becomes my new favorite book ever. Like the remedy to all things hip-lit and its yoda-esque child prodigies, he writes believably from the point of view of a seven year old, a mind that has no establishment in the wider world. He casts this against a telling by the more knowing but equally adrift woman who's forced to kidnap him. I heard a kid on the street yesterday trying to explain to his dad how pipes from toilets ran under the ocean; that's the sort of truth he gets at here, none of that Jonathan Safran Foer mystery solving bullshit.
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

simplicio wrote:
that Jonathan Safran Foer mystery solving bullshit.



I'd be interested to know more about this. A lot of my hip friends say this guy is the cat's meow, but I tend to be skeptical of the kinds of things they read.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

give your friends julius evola and they'll never speak to you again. problem solved!
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simplicio
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 08, 2008 9:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Look, if you've got to read a child prodigy book, absolutely make it Helen DeWitt's Last Samurai, and not the Foer (and certainly not Special Topics In Calamity Physics; fuck the New York times for endorsing that shit [along with Hillary Clinton]), because that one's actually interesting, as Helen's actually batty enough to pull off altered states of mind convincingly, and not just some precious Princeton boy who clearly never received a drop of criticism in all his undergrad writing workshops.

What Carey's writing though is more of a normal child, brought up under bizarre isolation, and not attempting to hold some wisdom of the world.
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:58 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

simplicio wrote:
Look, if you've got to read a child prodigy book



I gave them up for Lent.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Read R.A.W.'s "Natural Law Or: Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy" cover to cover last night.

It's pretty much burns Natural Law so bad that it covered itself in Bactine and hasn't come outside since.
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Paradise Lost is delightful and laughable. It's married to so many conventions.

But Hyperbole + Religion = A good time any ol' day.
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 8:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cross-posting from the video thread because this is neat:

Waxwing is a music video with commentary based on Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. It's got Cedar Waxwings!

Also, Hey, Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!
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dhex
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i'm reading doug rushkoff's "get back in the box." it's doug doing business schtick. not bad at all.
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dostoevsky's The Idiot. I like it. A lot.
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 8:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

my wife made me read mrs. dalloway, since i am often of the opinion that i cannot read fiction written by women. i also haven't really tried, since i read so little fiction anyway. seeing as fiction by women is basically 50% of her career and 90% of her dissertation, my obstinate stance no doubt sticks in her craw.

the thing about british fiction, though...it's all "blast damn damn blast damn!" and maybe some tears in the cupboard - where no one can see - while kindly mrs. sorensen (who has a club foot and a child with severe conjunctivitis) makes tea and wonders why mr. richardson never properly married.

never properly married at all.

it was a lot better than sons and lovers, though. damn (blast damn damn blast) that book made me angry.
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Dracko
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What didn't you like about it?
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

it was ok, but hard to follow. it reminds me of being in a meeting at work. the end was pretty tight, but i generally don't get the wailing and gnashing of teeth social drama stuff that clearly.

the weird thing being i like joyce, i like burroughs, i like miller - three guys who were never accused of laser-like focus.
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I follow you. Never was big on Lawrence either.

Incidentally, if you're unwilling to believe someone was raised by wolves during the Holocaust, you're a Holocaust denier.
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elvis.shrugged
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm on page sixty of Neuromancer.

I don't know, guys. Like I want to like this book but something is stopping me. I like cyberpunk, but I think I have problems reading it. It's always been more of a visually-formed genre for me. Gibson also overwrites a lot. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just me.

I think I might just skip it and read Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. Or finish reading The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Opinions, TGQ?


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Scratchmonkey
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I really like Gibson, mainly because I really like the way he writes. There's entertainment for me in just how he constructs his sentences.

Then again, I feel the same way about Tolkien and people hate on his ass pretty hard.

Nueromancer is probably the second-best thing Gibson's ever done, the best being Burning Chrome, a collection of his short stories.
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PostPosted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i am not a gibson fan, so i'd say go read something else.

sometimes ur-texts are heavy on the ur and not so much the text bit.
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, I shelved it and picked up my copy of It Can't Happen Here, which is fucking excellent.

Ripped from my LJ because I am lazy:

This should be required reading in every high school across the country. Written by Sinclair Lewis and published in 1935 (disclosure: the copy I'm reading is a musty, mold-ridden first edition and literally gave me a headache last night), it's about the rise of a fascist American President, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip. Reading this novel has reinvigorated my already piping-hot hatred for politicians. In Windrip I see not only the 1930's evangelists who inspired him, but the worst tendencies of every 2008 Presidential candidate. I see the vapid "charisma" and hollow "change" of Barack Obama (Lewis refers to Winthorp's "orgasms of oratory" and not being able to remember what he said on the way home); the creepy anti-banking populism of Ron Paul; the militaristic jingoism of Rudy Giuliani and John McCain; the regulatory fervor of Hillary Clinton, who once vowed to "take" the oil industry's profits; the sleaziness of Mitt Romney, who bought votes in early straw polls; the disgusting class warfare of John Edwards. Lewis (a slightly left-of-center moderate in his own time) has no allegiance to either the left-wing or the right, preferring to take potshots at both the utopian socialist tendencies of the former and the zealousness of the latter. Brilliant.
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simplicio
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PostPosted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Reading Peter Carey's Bliss, his debut novel from the '80s, and it holds up remarkably. Taking place in a small Australian town and living in the shadow of America (but acknowledging the cold war and all its forces), it follows a lackadaisical but successful advertising man and his distressed family after he dies, is resuscitated and comes back believing he's actually in hell.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

it can't happen here is probably the most compelling thing lewis ever wrote.

it's interesting that it was written against the backdrop of a huge change in the industrialized world towards larger governments - fascist and othewise - which is a real-world phenomena he basically ignored.

i'm not reading anything these days. i think i ran out of books for the time being.
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Harveyjames
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

May I recommend a rather fine novel called 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'?
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elvis.shrugged
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Right on, dhex. The fact that it was written when fascism was not exactly a four-letter word make it that much more interesting. Movements like the German American Bund, etc. were actually in existence while he was writing it. Chilling.
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dhex
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

there was a good book review over at reason last month on this very topic.

harvey, i can't read genre fiction. it just don't click for me.
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helicopterp
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2008 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Simplicio, I started Suttree yesterday. I love it.



and now for some unkind words: I don't know who Jonathan Lethem is other than the author of the short story collection Men and Cartoons, but he isn't a very good writer, at least not in this collection. Actually, he is occasionally a good writer, but the bad in the collection outnumber the good and enrage more than repel. He writes in a hideous, casual, i'm-too-cool-to-be-writing-this style that pegs him as a culture snob. He sneers at his characters and his sentences. But, you know, he'll mention this or that hip pop album from the sixties or lesser-known Marvel Comics character so that the reader always knows how cool he is. It's trash. (Except for the pieces "Vivian Relf," and "The Spray," two understated nuggets.)



Re-reading it while I teach it: How does To Kill A Mockingbird's moral veneer never manage to fade into hokey caricature? People should not forget what a good (and, for me, delightful) novel it really is.
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