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Post by sthubbins on Nov 19, 2021 9:50:08 GMT -6
did you like a little life? Mixed leaning negative. Didn't really care for the prose, and larges chunks of the story are just excruciating. Brutal stuff happens constantly and its gets laid on thick -- I said "oh, for fuck's sake" out loud so many times. I was sort of moved by the ending, so I guess it wore me down. |
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Post by goodson on Nov 19, 2021 12:06:05 GMT -6
yeah same i would say - it becomes misery porn at a certain point and that back third had me ready to put it down but ya, liked the ending
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Post by scoots on Dec 16, 2021 12:15:29 GMT -6
A little over halfway through A Little Life, and fully committed to seeing this through by the end of the year. Calling it a tough read would be an understatement. I'm just assuming the worst with every chapter at this point.
Also, not a great book to read on an airplane!
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Post by sthubbins on Dec 17, 2021 9:35:47 GMT -6
2021 so far The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell Oranges by John McPhee Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison just started My Mother Laughs by Chantal Akerman Since: Outline by Rachel Cusk The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara It Never Ends by Tom Scharpling The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson Citizen by Claudia Rankine Now: The Sellout by Paul Beatty Since: The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley Rabbit, Run by John Updike Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Now: My Ántonia by Willa Cather Slightly behind my very modest goal to read 20 books this year. Since: The Wilder Heart of Florida, edited by Jack E. Davis and Leslie K. Poole Now: The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang Should finish that one over the weekend and be able to knock out one more by the end of the year to hit 20. I am thinking The Known World by Edward P. Jones. |
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Post by scoots on Dec 17, 2021 9:39:50 GMT -6
I think I'll end up at 16 for the year. With a mild miracle maybe 17.
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Post by zircona1 on Dec 17, 2021 10:05:22 GMT -6
I'm reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth. The library didn't have what I wanted, so I saw this was a Pulitzer winner and by an author I had never read anything by, so I picked it up. It's pretty good, though there's a lot of internal dialogue at times that makes my mind wander.
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Post by alady on Dec 17, 2021 12:16:02 GMT -6
I read The Final Revival of Opal & Nev and it was not very good!
(eta I just saw it was on Pres. Obama's favorite books of the year...yikes...idk. Neither Opal nor Nev's voice rang true to me, both felt like stereotypes. The prose was clunky and didn't draw me in, and as a music nerd I just did not get the feeling that the protagonist really had that love & obsession running in her veins like most of us do. Also the author had SZA playing the pre-headliner spot at a festival in 2016. Idk.)
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Post by teekoh on Dec 17, 2021 13:11:43 GMT -6
I truly can't remember what books I read last year and what I read this year. Time is an illusion.
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Post by scoots on Dec 21, 2021 13:29:08 GMT -6
A little over halfway through A Little Life, and fully committed to seeing this through by the end of the year. Calling it a tough read would be an understatement. I'm just assuming the worst with every chapter at this point. Also, not a great book to read on an airplane! Just finished this - still gathering my thoughts, but that's the most emotionally spent I've been after reading a book. 800+ pages in less than a month is a new record for me. Immediate thoughts are I would have enjoyed it more had Willem survived, or had Jude not gone off a cliff after he died. It would have been more interesting to see the continued evolution of Jude rather than what he became in the last 100 or so pages. It almost made him an unlikeable character at the end even though his reactions were entirely understandable. |
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Post by sthubbins on Dec 21, 2021 13:33:24 GMT -6
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Post by scoots on Dec 21, 2021 13:49:30 GMT -6
I had not, and yeah, I will not be pursuing that one.
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Post by goodson on Dec 21, 2021 15:28:23 GMT -6
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Post by scoots on Dec 21, 2021 15:34:08 GMT -6
I went on a camping trip with some friends, and one of them brought his son along. At some point during the drive this kid starts telling these weird stories and every single one has me getting terribly injured somehow. It was, you know, unsettling, but I kept thinking to myself, "holy shit how the hell is he thinking of all of these ways to torture me?"
That was my first thought when I got to the back third of A Little Life.
Side note: if I'm murdered, it's probably that kid.
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Post by goodson on Dec 24, 2021 21:01:20 GMT -6
reading moshfeghs "death in her hands" now
p sick
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Post by scoots on Dec 24, 2021 21:04:40 GMT -6
My wife got me this as part of our Christmas Eve book exchange - pretty psyched to read it:  |
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Post by scoots on Dec 24, 2021 21:05:53 GMT -6
Ended up reading 16 books this year - there's a chance I'll get to 17, but as of right now, here are my favorite first reads of the year:
-Go Ahead In The Rain
-Crying In H-Mart
-Slaughterhouse-Five
-Dune
-If Beale Street Could Talk
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Post by sthubbins on Dec 31, 2021 16:22:05 GMT -6
The Known World by Edward P. Jones. ^this was incredible |
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Post by Tweet on Jan 12, 2022 10:28:33 GMT -6
I think I'm finally going to read Our Band Could Be Your Life finally next. Finally got this one done over the weekend. 500 pages is a lot but it's definitely required reading for anyone who likes punk/indie music. I started Drew Magary's book on brain damage for my first "new read" of 2021. claypoolfan let me know if you'd like to borrow it after I'm done I know you're a fan of him |
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Post by sthubbins on Jan 12, 2022 11:29:10 GMT -6
Giving Moby Dick a go
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Post by clouddead on Jan 12, 2022 11:30:58 GMT -6
I think I'm finally going to read Our Band Could Be Your Life finally next. Finally got this one done over the weekend. 500 pages is a lot but it's definitely required reading for anyone who likes punk/indie music. I started Drew Magary's book on brain damage for my first "new read" of 2021. claypoolfan let me know if you'd like to borrow it after I'm done I know you're a fan of him How is it so far? I bought it a couple weeks ago. I figure I’ll relate to it some level. |
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Post by Tweet on Jan 12, 2022 11:35:32 GMT -6
I’m about 60 pages in and it’s an easy read in the sense that it’s easy to read. The nonchalance of the surgeon is….pretty incredible tbh
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Post by chvrchbarrel on Jan 12, 2022 11:37:24 GMT -6
I think I'm finally going to read Our Band Could Be Your Life finally next. Finally got this one done over the weekend. 500 pages is a lot but it's definitely required reading for anyone who likes punk/indie music. I started Drew Magary's book on brain damage for my first "new read" of 2021. claypoolfan let me know if you'd like to borrow it after I'm done I know you're a fan of him i will add this to my list, i have been reading more lately recently finished Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan and it blew me away. Really great / devastating story about a relationship. |
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Post by monasterymonochrome on Jan 12, 2022 11:50:23 GMT -6
My favorite book of all time - hope you like it, it's worth it! |
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Post by monasterymonochrome on Jan 12, 2022 12:05:03 GMT -6
Here's the list of books I read in 2021 - 46 this year, hoping for another 40 in 2022, but we'll see. As always, I like to alternate between fiction and non-fiction.
* = deeply enjoyed, ** = top tier favorite *** = absolute fave of the genre this year
Fiction
- Virginia Woolf - Mrs. Dalloway
- Ovid - Metamorphoses
- Toni Morrison - Jazz
- Franz Kafka - The Complete Stories
- Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea*
- Dante Alighieri - Inferno
- John Steinbeck - Cannery Row***
- Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad
- John Darnielle - Master of Reality
- Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- Clarice Lispector - Near to the Wild Heart
- Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
- Celeste Ng - Little Fires Everywhere
- Ling Ma - Severance*
- James Baldwin - Giovanni’s Room**
- George Saunders - Tenth of December**
- Octavia Butler - Kindred
- Italo Calvino - If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
- Anthony Veasna So - Afterparties*
- Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment*
- Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
- Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
- Toni Morrison - Sula
- Herman Melville - Billy Budd and Other Tales*
Non-Fiction
- Bill Kreutzman - Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead
- Ted Gioia - The History of Jazz*
- Neal Karlen - This Thing Called Life: Prince’s Odyssey, On and Off the Record
- John Szwed - Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra**
- Joshua Goldstein - A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solves Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow
- Reinhard Kleist - Nick Cave: Mercy On Me
- Walt Frazier - Rockin’ Steady: A Guide to Basketball and Cool*
- Michelle Zauner - Crying in H Mart**
- Liz Phair - Horror Stories
- Blair Jackson - This Is All A Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead*
- Clover Hope - The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop*
- Grier Marcus - When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison
- John Fogerty - Fortunate Son
- James Baldwin - Notes of a Native Son
- Mark Houghton - I’ve Always Kept A Unicorn: The Biography of Sandy Denny*
- Willie Nelson - Willie: An Autobiography
- Arthur Taylor - Notes and Tones: Musician-to-Musician Interviews***
- Jesse Jarnow - Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock**
- Nat Shapiro - Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya
- Chris DeVito - Coltrane on Coltrane: The John Coltrane Interviews
- Michael C. Heller - Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s
- Steve Krakow - My Kind of Sound: The Secret History of Chicago Music*
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Post by nanatod on Jan 12, 2022 15:38:30 GMT -6
krakow is an acquaintance. he has his own psychedelic band, plastic crimewave syndicate, that I saw open for acid mothers temple at the beat kitchen.
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Post by scoots on Jan 12, 2022 15:43:30 GMT -6
My wife got me this as part of our Christmas Eve book exchange - pretty psyched to read it: This was wonderful. |
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Post by monasterymonochrome on Jan 12, 2022 16:55:40 GMT -6
krakow is an acquaintance. he has his own psychedelic band, plastic crimewave syndicate, that I saw open for acid mothers temple at the beat kitchen. Oh sick! If you see him, tell him I really enjoyed his book. Bought it like 4 years ago from a book shop next to Shuga Records but finally got around to it. Made this playlist of my favorites I found while reading: |
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Post by nanatod on Jan 12, 2022 16:57:22 GMT -6
send him a facebook friend request, monastery.
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Post by thebosma on Jan 18, 2022 8:40:19 GMT -6
I picked this up yesterday afternoon and finished it this morning. Really enjoyed how it makes distinctions between work/labor/service and how those things are internalized when it relates to money and how we earn it. Highly recommend.  |
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Post by jazzpolice on Jan 18, 2022 14:43:39 GMT -6
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