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Post by scoots on Feb 11, 2022 9:53:14 GMT -6
Just finished up 100 Years of Solitude and started Moby Dick. Decided to try to get through some classics I haven't read before.
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Post by zircona1 on Feb 11, 2022 10:01:02 GMT -6
Just finished up 100 Years of Solitude and started Moby Dick. Decided to try to get through some classics I haven't read before. I had trouble following who was who in 100 Years, several names sounded similar. Moby Dick is good because there are several tiny chapters, so it's easy to find a place to stop. It's part-encyclopedia on whaling, which I found fascinating. |
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Post by teekoh on Feb 11, 2022 10:10:22 GMT -6
Somehow I made it through way too many years studying Spanish without reading 100 Years of Solitude. I'd like to take a shot at reading it in Spanish.
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Post by ten15 on Feb 11, 2022 10:41:56 GMT -6
100 Years of Solitude is a favorite of mine. I should reread it - it has been more than 20 years.
Agree that it was challenging to keep characters straight, but really enjoy the prose. I also really like Love in the Time of Cholera.
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Post by scoots on Feb 11, 2022 11:07:36 GMT -6
Yeah at a certain point seemingly everyone is named Jose or Aureliano or both, but I loved it. Impressive to have the reader invested in so many characters - people die, and the focus moves on and it never missed a beat.
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Post by sthubbins on Feb 11, 2022 13:35:17 GMT -6
I'm still chipping away at Moby Dick -- I've been finding it hard to focus on it in the evenings, so have mostly made progress on the weekends. But really interested in its formal creativity so far, and some of the descriptions are total knockouts.
In the meantime I read Normal People which was pretty good. Enjoyed reading such an intimate story that's also really interested in playing with ideas about class and power. Maybe a little on the nose but also that does ring true for millennials.
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Post by monasterymonochrome on Feb 12, 2022 11:30:08 GMT -6
Took a trip to Open Books and got a fun haul:
-- Nelson Algren - The Man With The Golden Arm
-- James Baldwin - Go Tell Tell It On The Mountain
-- Raymond Chandler - The Long Goodbye
-- Yaa Gyasi - Homegoing
-- Joseph Heller - Catch 22 (an all-time fave that someone didn't return to me when 'borrowed')
-- Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
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Post by thebosma on Feb 12, 2022 11:45:10 GMT -6
I grabbed a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking when I was on vacation last month and absolutely loved it. Hard to think of many things I’ve read that are better than that. I picked up a Didion collection last week that includes all of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and a bunch of her other essays that I’m looking forward to digging into.
Still am unable to get much into fiction tbh but I’d really like to read some classics, considered how much I enjoyed most of those I read in high school.
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Post by monasterymonochrome on Feb 12, 2022 11:50:06 GMT -6
I grabbed a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking when I was on vacation last month and absolutely loved it. Hard to think of many things I’ve read that are better than that. I picked up a Didion collection last week that includes all of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and a bunch of her other essays that I’m looking forward to digging into. Still am unable to get much into fiction tbh but I’d really like to read some classics, considered how much I enjoyed most of those I read in high school. Really wanted to get something by Didion there but didn't see them (on display at the front, b/c I'm a dumbass) until after I'd checked out. On the shortlist tho! |
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Post by Tweet on Feb 12, 2022 18:23:29 GMT -6
I read Razorblade Tears in about the 6 hours it took me to fly to St. Maarten which is high praise for a 300 page novel. Highly recommend to anyone a fan of crime novels or tv shows.
I'm about 2/3's of the way thru Sapiens right now and am generally enjoying it.
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Post by Tweet on Mar 6, 2022 11:23:46 GMT -6
Finished Klosterman's The Nineties last night. Might be a top 3 book of his that I've read (Downtown Owl and Killing Yourself to Live are my other two). My memories of the 90s are a little scattershot having been born in 93, but I felt really conencted to it all the same and I imagine older folks on here might dig it, even if Klosterman is, well, him.
Started John Darnielle's Devil House last night after and get the feeling I'll move quickly thru that one.
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Post by munkivelli on Mar 6, 2022 15:35:35 GMT -6
Finished Klosterman's The Nineties last night. Might be a top 3 book of his that I've read ( Downtown Owl and Killing Yourself to Live are my other two). My memories of the 90s are a little scattershot having been born in 93, but I felt really conencted to it all the same and I imagine older folks on here might dig it, even if Klosterman is, well, him. Started John Darnielle's Devil House last night after and get the feeling I'll move quickly thru that one. The Nineties is the next book I'm reading. Looking forward to it. |
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Post by mookie on Mar 25, 2022 10:15:14 GMT -6
Just saw they are going to have a 33 1/3 book on Boxer by The National. I am very into that.
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Post by alady on Mar 25, 2022 10:46:54 GMT -6
Finished L'Appart recently. It was amusing but also stressful and David Leibovitz is a better at recipes than prose.
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Post by scoots on Mar 25, 2022 12:47:27 GMT -6
Finished How to be Perfect by Michael Schur earlier this month. Really annoying use of footnotes and it's basically Philosophy for Dummies, but it's occasionally entertaining.
Also about 120 pages into Phantom Plague, and it's genuinely interesting.
Amusingly:
-There was a spitting ban in a ton of cities in response to tuberculosis cases rising throughout the country
-Men got pissed that they were told they couldn't spit
-Pissed off men said that it should be women that change their ways, not men
-Long hemlines were then banned so they didn't collect spit from the ground and bring it back to the home/apartment
So there ya go.
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Post by ferro_man on Apr 30, 2022 9:53:32 GMT -6
Happy Independent Bookstore Day
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Post by Tweet on Apr 30, 2022 11:40:44 GMT -6
Thought John Darinelle's Devil House was just ok and then the last 50 pages happened and it might be my favorite novel I've read in a long long time? I also read a biography of Ruppert Jones which was a good quick read. Brain injuries are nothing to mess around with. I finished Three Girls From Bronzeville which should be mandatory reading for every Chicagoan. Stunningly written. |
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Post by zircona1 on Apr 30, 2022 12:57:47 GMT -6
Reading The Sympathizer by Viet Thahn Nguyen. It's good so far. Got it at a bookstore in downtown Knoxville.
I went to the library originally to look for it, they had 3 copies checked out with 20-some holds on it. Turns out the author was the keynote speaker at a book festival our town hosts every year, which happened last weekend (I didn't go).
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Post by irvred on Apr 30, 2022 14:28:06 GMT -6
The Sympathizer is very good. He released the sequel last year and it is…. less so, just fyi.
His short story collection ‘The Refugees’ is a solid read, too, though.
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Post by monasterymonochrome on May 2, 2022 9:31:30 GMT -6
I've been in a real reading rut lately. Tried reading Shirley Hazzard's Transit of Venus but just couldn't get myself past the first hundred pages or so. Idk why, I don't usually have this problem but I couldn't connect with her style at all and eventually threw in the towel. Finally went with something completely tonally opposite and read Chandler's The Big Sleep.
Reading Hanif Abdurraqib's The Little Devil in America - which is excellent, as usual for him.
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Post by scoots on May 5, 2022 15:13:20 GMT -6
Gave up on Moby Dick - started to feel like more of a chore or an assignment. I did enjoy the details about how whaling worked in that era, just not enough to keep me interested, I guess.
Just started The Sun Also Rises and I'm loving it so far.
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Post by doso on May 5, 2022 17:11:03 GMT -6
I read We Own This City a couple weekends ago just before the first episode of the David Simon miniseries debuted on HBO. It's pretty dense and depressing, but also well-reported and attention-grabbing. It's also making the show easier to absorb.
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Post by ferro_man on May 11, 2022 17:19:20 GMT -6
Currently doing an author signing at La Grange Park Public Library and they have fliers up for a virtual book discussion next week with Michelle Zauner for Crying in H Mart
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Post by sthubbins on May 23, 2022 8:13:22 GMT -6
2022 so far:
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Aggamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Quarry by Susan Howe
The Selfishness of Others by Kristin Dombek
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
Now:
Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
Also started listening to the audiobook of Transit by Rachel Cusk earlier this year. Been a while but would like to get back to it.
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Post by scoots on May 23, 2022 8:52:52 GMT -6
Just finished up The Grapes of Wrath, which was a much quicker read than I had anticipated. Started up Under the Banner of Heaven yesterday and after about 60 pages I really need some more light-hearted reading for my next book.
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Post by goodson on May 23, 2022 11:09:21 GMT -6
2022 so far: Normal People by Sally Rooney Aggamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare Moby Dick by Herman Melville The Quarry by Susan Howe The Selfishness of Others by Kristin Dombek Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett Now: Long Division by Kiese Laymon Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett Also started listening to the audiobook of Transit by Rachel Cusk earlier this year. Been a while but would like to get back to it. the sun also rises , hemingway among the thugs, buford how forests think, kohn the alternative : communal life in new america, hedgepeth right now, digging into swanns way, proust and clockers by richard price |
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Post by dij22 on Jul 13, 2022 13:44:16 GMT -6
Saw The Martian in one of those Little Free Libraries yesterday morning. Had nothing to do so I just finished it last night.
Really entertaining read but I like the movie more tbh. The movie does a better job of at least dipping its toes into thoughts of loneliness and dread. Way more emotional gravity. And I am very stupid so I couldn't understand the long passages that were very science/math heavy. The movie dumbed that down for me.
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Post by scoots on Aug 8, 2022 11:46:53 GMT -6
Finished up For Whom the Bell Tolls yesterday - third Hemmingway novel I've read this year, and probably my least favorite of the 3. Still great, and it picked up a lot of momentum in the last 50 or so pages. Just started this up, too - 60 pages in, and it's wonderful:  |
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Post by Tweet on Sept 25, 2022 19:10:21 GMT -6
One of my goals for 2022 was to read a book a month. Happy to report that I hit that goal 2 months and some change ahead of schedule. Hoping to tackle 2-3 more before the end of the year, but here’s what I’ve got so far:
The Night the Lights Went Out- drew Margary
Razorblade Tears- S.A Cosby
Sapiens: a Brief history of human kind- Yuval Noah Harari
Mr. Burns- Anne Washburn (play)
The Nineties- Chuck Klosterman
Devil House- John Darinelle
#nevergiveup- Ruppert Jones
Three Girls From Bronzeville- Dawn Turner
Sons of Wichita- Daniel Schulman
The Elevated Communicator- Maryanne O’Brien
Crying in H Mart- Michelle Zauner
Mox- Jon Moxley
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Post by sthubbins on Oct 10, 2022 10:04:57 GMT -6
2022 so far:
Normal People by Sally Rooney
Aggamemnon's Daughter by Ismail Kadare
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Quarry by Susan Howe
The Selfishness of Others by Kristin Dombek
Pond by Claire-Louise Bennett
Long Division by Kiese Laymon
Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh
Transit by Rachel Cusk
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (warning: probably the most racist book I've ever read!)
Lapvona by Otessa Moshfegh
How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti
Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Now:
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
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