Thyroid

Yes, that's why I mentioned it. You and gregbrown recommended it to me.

Hurrah. I knew you'd like it. Now I just have to read The Known World and everyone can dance happily about the maypole. (Regarding the discussion of the book earlier: I'm sorry I haven't joined in. I'll try and input my two cents. I just have not had any time for myself.)

David Simon (yes, that one) praises the late Elmore Leonard. The opening paragraph espouses about genre categorizations which I think many, including some on this board, should give a read.

Warning: 45 images. I thought I'd post this, since the podcast lamented the lack of good Gatsby covers.

I made friends with those guys when I visited and they showed me around town, at one point attempting to bring me into this medieval inn thing. Good store. I bought A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords from there.

!يا للهول ...ايدل ثمز"...ألعاب ألعاب الفيديو ألعاب ألعاب الفيديو ألعاب ألعاب الفيديو ألعاب ألعاب الفيديو" !انظر على ا الساحر...الساحر

I'm Arab, Karimi.

It's kind of cute (and I do mean that in the most non-patronizing, sincere way possible) how Jake always says useful things, but peppers it with self-doubt. That is solid advice, man. No need to say it's dumb. Rad drawings in this thread. I'll contribute something when I've finished moving house. It will not be rad.

Dubliners' stories were mostly pointless. As much as I enjoyed "Sister Act", for example, there's little I got out of it. The last one was good, however. I'll give it that much.

You can safely skip Joyce, especially Finnegans Wake.

I don't think not allowing your kids to play with a prized possession is indication you're an asshole. I haven't seen Nemo in the better part of a decade, but I loved it then and I think I would still love it now.

I'm saying that the language itself informed the literature; because Arabic is so majestic but blunt, the stories were the same way. There's no room for the mundane. Arabic is about hammering words in; English is carefully chiseling them out. Ask a person which band is their favourite, and they'll answer "Van fucking Halen". They need to emphasize with the fucking. Well, in Arabic, you don't need to do that. The stories, in other words, were a reflection of the language itself. As for Mahfouz: 20th century literature was different. Novelists finally adapted modern Arabic, which is far less grandiose, and the stories themselves were a bit of a push-back against the fantastical realm that the work had been set in - hence why Ahmed Shawqi and Naguib Mahfouz's books are more familiar to modern readers than the weird, philosophical, fantastical ones that preceded them. This is mostly my theory, I should hasten to add, but it's one I find makes a lot of sense. Either way, Arabic literature has traditionally been the polar opposite of English/American in this regard, and therefore so has the criticism.

I'm amused by how much criticism on this board is rooted in traditional Western criticism without questioning several assumptions, such as the three-act structure. Western literature is all about exploring the state of the family in post-millennial America. It is subtle. The stuff most people admire is rooted in everyday existence. The world greatly varies on how literature is viewed, and reading a book by a Pakistani novelist or a classical Arab poet - say Al Mutanabbi - with certain assumptions is an exercise in frustration. Take Arabic. It's a grandiose language, but allows for a lot of curve; the letters are quite blunt, but the way they are distributed allows for incessant flow. This results in the language being musical and magnificent, but completely blocks it from any sort of subtlety. This also meant that most great Arabic literature was capital R Romantic or at least partially of the fantasy genre. If authors like Naguib Mahfouz write more commonly-accepted "literary" novels, it's because they switched from classical to modern, guttural Arabic, which allows for a bit more subtlety, especially in the dialogue. So approaching international literature can be tricky business if you do it with your set of assumptions unquestioned. I'd actually be interested in seeing the Thumbs Cast tackle something like that. Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima and (I'm struggling to think of something suitable minus context, so let's go with 20th century literature) The Thief and the Dogs by Naguib Mahfouz come to mind.

You have not seen bad film until you have seen Samurai Cop. I saw it on YouTube after an all-nighter once and was out of breath from laughing fifteen minutes in. It's better than The Room. (NSFW) This is how they caught the guy in the previous clip. And this is just more, because why not:

That's three people, now. Come on, Thumbs. This book is for you.

Everything I've read in the last three months, I've quit. Nothing is holding my attention and I fall asleep on the third paragraph. Chalk it up to actual, thorough exhaustion. The books are: Catch-22 (Joseph Heller), Candide (Voltaire. It's 110 pages, and still a struggle), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce), Mrs. Dalloway (Virginia Woolf), The Inheritors (William Golding), The Dragonbone Chair (Tad Williams), and The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett). There's a few more, actually, but these are the more recent failures. Maybe I'll snap out of this state soon and read something. I'd say pick it up again once The Winds of Winter hits. I suspect it'll be worth it.

I'm not talking about joke books; I'm talking about stories that want to make you laugh, and succeed at doing so. Do you know any? Recommend away. As a personal request, please try and include what kind of role humour plays in the book. This thread is meant for anyone looking to laugh, and whether your suggestion is generally funny all around or meant to be a parody of a serious subject, please write that out. It's best not to give the impression a certain book is light-hearted joking all around when it's some biting satire of the War on Iraq or something, and vice versa. I'll get the ball rolling: Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens, is actually pretty funny. It does a lot of the quirky character thing Dickens is known for - and there are quite a lot of minor characters who just make you laugh and then bow out - but also parodies the hypocrisies of early 19th century England, while also squeezing in a lot of (funny) criticism at workhouses. Some of the humour is dark, but lots of it is silly. It's very British. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy O'Toole, is the funniest book I've read. It's about a guy named Ignatius J. Reilly, a prat of a man who causes misfortune to others by simply existing. The humour is satirical, dry, and delivered by a cast of, well, dunces. It's hard to find a favourite character or scene. The way everything comes together at the end is something that would later become a hallmark of shows like Seinfeld. To be honest, I'm not sure how this won the Pulitzer (I suspect it's for its characters and a certain subtle aspect to Ignatius), as that prize usually implies some "literary" book (by reputation) or even dry one, which this wasn't.

I gave-up on Catch-22 three chapters in. The first chapter is funny, and with a point. The second chapter reads like an experimental draft in dire need of editing. The third chapter continued this trend, and I realized I'm too tired these days to put in the required mental effort to figure-out why there's a dead man in blah's tent. I'm setting it aside for now.

I beat the first world in Rayman Origins. It was fun. (This is what I've been reduced to.)

Has Torchlight II gone on the daily sale yet? I can't have missed it, can I?

If you needed another reason to include Stoner, by John Williams, in the podcast, read this.

Anyone get serious Tony Soprano vibes off the first character? Anyway, I've been waiting for them to revolutionize the GTA formula for years. Very exciting.

The Winds of Winter is coming-out in 2014, if we - and recently GRRM - are being optimistic. I'm not stirring that craving until we're a day away, although I just felt the itch. Don't feel too bad. There are so many great books out there - classic, new, contemporary, genre, literary - that keeping-up with all the new releases is an exercise in fruitlessness. If you spent the rest of your life reading only great contemporary novels, you'd hardly put a dent in. This is why this thread was created: to throw the spotlight on stuff and see if we can shine some gold.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Yeah, I'm pretty excited for The Winds of Winter myself. And The Doors of Stone. The Wise Man's Fear was, despite its flaws, very satisfying in the sense that it hit the notes I wanted it to: the overall tragedy's seeds are watered, but meantime it's rollicking fun. But, I don't think we're getting a resolution on at least a couple of plots, which Rothfuss probably wants to do in an another trilogy. I wish he wouldn't, but he's the one telling a story, not me. I check websites like The Millions and Full Stop! I don't usually know what's coming-up either, mind you, which is why I thought this thread would be useful.