ThunderPeel2001

Books, books, books...

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I finished Blood Meridian. I think it's he best book I have read, although that is not saying much (a close second is Mr Tickle).

 

It's relentlessly grim, tense and brutal. Yet the language is totally beautiful at times.  I found myself reading lengthy passages twice, three times just to get my head around them. It's about a lad who joins up with a load of bastards, led by a mad bastard and a big bastard. These said bastards cut about  Texas/Mexico killing folk and scalping them . It's super good. Would like to hear an Idle Book club on it. Do they still do those?

 

I feel like I've been beaten up, put through the wringer . I need something light and funny next I think... American Psycho it is. 

 

I've read it so many times that I've stopped noticing the violence, now it's just a beautiful piece of writing. If you ever feel like revisiting it I can recommend the audio version, excellent narration.

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I've read it so many times that I've stopped noticing the violence, now it's just a beautiful piece of writing. If you ever feel like revisiting it I can recommend the audio version, excellent narration.

I already feel like I want to read it again so I might try that thanks!

I have done nothing but read critiques and interpretations of it since i finished it. The ending!

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Colm Tóibín's Nora Webster is one of my favorite novels of this year. It's an exquisite character study and exploration of someone trying to re-building their life after a terrible loss.


Tóibín really shines when he's just writing about the plainness and rituals of everyday life: there's sublime, almost transformative quality to it; and he does it with such deftness and delicacy that I'm in fucking awe of it.


These moments, especially come out whenever we read about Nora changing her hair or buying new clothes or watching a movie with her children.


"In the days that followed, however, the weather did not change much. Sometimes in the morning the sun burned through the haze more quickly; other times, the day settled into a sort of windless greyness. It was always mild enough to stay on the strand and they never changed the spot they had found in the dunes on the first day. Sometimes Donal came to find them, and walked down along the strand with his camera. All their efforts to encourage him to get him into the water, however, failed."

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Fuck. How do you even start?

 

(I'd start with The Bees. Just because it was released in 2014 and looks like the quickest read of the bunch.)

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the Wolf in White Van was riveting, thanks sean!

 

I (apparently) really enjoy writers writing like people who aren't writers; John Darnielle did an amazing job constructing characters from the handful of Trace letters and spare story. The throughline of mundane patheticness pervading everything in the novel is goddamn bleak, though. It's like a nerdier Sense of an Ending.

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Fuck. How do you even start?

(I'd start with The Bees. Just because it was released in 2014 and looks like the quickest read of the bunch.)

I've already read Immunity, 10:40, The Bees and All the Birds--borrowed them from the library--I enjoyed them so much I wanted them in my library.

The rest I'm saving for my train ride to Cincinnati, during my stay in Cincinnati and on my way back to Sacramento. Chances are I'll add 2 or 3 more books to that pile.

When I read, I usually read 2-4 books at a time; my process of being able to juggle that many books is by feeling out where there's a narrative break in whatever I'm reading.

Right now I'm reading Three by Sarah Lotz, Acceptance by Jeff Vandermeer, Palace of Books by Roger Grenier--collection of essays on literature-- and Something Rich and Strange by Ron Rash--a collection of short stories.

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Crazy. I don't think I could manage so much as TV while reading a book. I'm immersed in one narrative or the other.

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When I just focus on one thing, I try to finish it as soon as possible because I get heavily immersed in it and want to know what happens next. So, when I read 2 or more, I can make that feeling last; I want to make that feeling last. I want things to be left unknown for a bit or for me to crave what will happen. 

 

So, that's why I read more than one book at a time. It also allows me to reflect a bit more on the narrative, themes and characters or ideas.

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I read Gabriel by Edward Hirsch tonight. It's a 100-ish page poem by a father who lost his son. It was phenomenal but utterly and completely soul crushing at times. It's easy to read as poems go since it's split into 3 line stanzas and has an easy to follow narrative so don't let the fact that it's a long poem turn you off if you're not the kind of person who's usually into poetry. I'm still digesting it so I don't have a whole lot to say yet, but I highly recommend it. Just don't try reading it while you're on lunch at work unless you really, really, really like embarrassing yourself by crying in front of people.

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I reread gatsby and

What was Gatsby's fault? I thought that he certainly had an idealized understanding of how Daisy would exist in his life that did not take into account their actual circumstances, and that this showed that this primitive, prescriptive romantic love is flawed. But what does that say about idealism in general? Should people revolve their lives around grand ideals? I can't reconcile the narrative's punishment of Gatsby with its criticism of accepting power structures.

This (kinda off topic but dealing with the same themes) reminds me heavily of a manga I read recently called Oyasumi Punpun in which

a girl, faced with the realization that her romantic love held no actual empathy and was simply a holdover from her childhood, commits suicide. The two main characters revolve their lives around absolute truths, standards, and romantic love but end up having completely incorrect perceptions of reality. The dissonance leads to depression and suicide.

Both stories deal with how romantic love and absolute ideals can end up crushing people, but also simultaneously lament accepting things that could be changed. My reading is incredibly shallow though, so I'd appreciate if someone with more knowledge could advise me.

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I reread gatsby and

What was Gatsby's fault? I thought that he certainly had an idealized understanding of how Daisy would exist in his life that did not take into account their actual circumstances, and that this showed that this primitive, prescriptive romantic love is flawed. But what does that say about idealism in general? Should people revolve their lives around grand ideals? I can't reconcile the narrative's punishment of Gatsby with its criticism of accepting power structures.

This (kinda off topic but dealing with the same themes) reminds me heavily of a manga I read recently called Oyasumi Punpun in which

a girl, faced with the realization that her romantic love held no actual empathy and was simply a holdover from her childhood, commits suicide. The two main characters revolve their lives around absolute truths, standards, and romantic love but end up having completely incorrect perceptions of reality. The dissonance leads to depression and suicide.

Both stories deal with how romantic love and absolute ideals can end up crushing people, but also simultaneously lament accepting things that could be changed. My reading is incredibly shallow though, so I'd appreciate if someone with more knowledge could advise me.

 

I find new things in The Great Gatsby every time I read it, but from my most recent venture, the criticism is squarely of the American Dream, which Gatsby is punished for believing so blindly (although, does a poor boy from a nowhere state have a choice but to believe in it?). No matter how much money you have, you're never going to be "rich" like the Buchanans are rich, not even if you throw parties every night and are famous among the famous. Wealth is more than money, and if you have to ask what else, you'll never be wealthy your whole life. Likewise, no matter how much you love a girl, she's never going to love you like she loves her husband/daughter/wealth/position in society, not even if you have the most torrid and decadent affair with her. Daisy was never going to leave Tom, not for a second, because she has a child and a life with him. It's callous, but love is meaningless at some point without any of that. Gatsby, who has borrowed and stolen his life in order to feel like he deserves Daisy, cannot understand that, just like he doesn't try to understand her beyond the understanding he already has as a onetime teenager on a weekend tryst, but still he tries to make her his own. He dies for it, whereas the acceptance of the status quo, however brutal, allows for the convenient disposal of affairs by both Tom and Daisy. Nick's unreliable narration aside, the events of the book hardly touch the Buchanans, while we see the best-case scenario with Nick and the worst-case with Gatsby, when someone pretends to be a part of society that they're not.

 

There's also a strong critique of living in the past, which I'm not sure has a historical or societal dimension to it. Nick tells Gatsby right out that he can't repeat the past and Gatsby treats him like an idiot for it, failing to the end to understand that in passing up on Daisy once in favor of wealth and fame to have her later, he's actually passed her by forever. Trying to recapture it at best wastes his time, money, and feelings, and at worst gets him killed. That's part of why Nick explicitly says that he found him such a disappointment at the end. Gatsby seemed to be so great, but he was really some nobody living in a past that he shared with no one.

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Just finished Wolf in White Van - man, what a trip. Fascinating, though I feel I missed a bunch because I was a bit tired, but I couldn't put it down.

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I find new things in The Great Gatsby every time I read it, but from my most recent venture, the criticism is squarely of the American Dream, which Gatsby is punished for believing so blindly (although, does a poor boy from a nowhere state have a choice but to believe in it?). No matter how much money you have, you're never going to be "rich" like the Buchanans are rich, not even if you throw parties every night and are famous among the famous. Wealth is more than money, and if you have to ask what else, you'll never be wealthy your whole life. Likewise, no matter how much you love a girl, she's never going to love you like she loves her husband/daughter/wealth/position in society, not even if you have the most torrid and decadent affair with her. Daisy was never going to leave Tom, not for a second, because she has a child and a life with him. It's callous, but love is meaningless at some point without any of that. Gatsby, who has borrowed and stolen his life in order to feel like he deserves Daisy, cannot understand that, just like he doesn't try to understand her beyond the understanding he already has as a onetime teenager on a weekend tryst, but still he tries to make her his own. He dies for it, whereas the acceptance of the status quo, however brutal, allows for the convenient disposal of affairs by both Tom and Daisy. Nick's unreliable narration aside, the events of the book hardly touch the Buchanans, while we see the best-case scenario with Nick and the worst-case with Gatsby, when someone pretends to be a part of society that they're not.

There's also a strong critique of living in the past, which I'm not sure has a historical or societal dimension to it. Nick tells Gatsby right out that he can't repeat the past and Gatsby treats him like an idiot for it, failing to the end to understand that in passing up on Daisy once in favor of wealth and fame to have her later, he's actually passed her by forever. Trying to recapture it at best wastes his time, money, and feelings, and at worst gets him killed. That's part of why Nick explicitly says that he found him such a disappointment at the end. Gatsby seemed to be so great, but he was really some nobody living in a past that he shared with no one.

Ah so Gatsby's downfall was in assuming his guaranteed success based on a delusion, either thay wealth means acceptance into this society or that flashing his feathers and appealing to a long gone connection will win over Daisy. He thinks that the only thing keeping Daisy from him is this wealth, when it could simply be that she no longer feels empathy or love for him or is held back by another life. His unnuanced idea of how things work thwart him. He can't move on because he assumes that love and social status are inert and always within his reach rather than chaotically shifting and passing.

Though when I read it, I felt that much of the last few parts of the book seem to exhalt or at least pity the naïve, optimistic mindset that Gatsby held, especially the last paragraph and line:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

I read it as a lamentation of the death of naïve optimism. I dunno. I really don't know what to think of this last bit

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I didn't read that as a lamentation, it's more clinical than that to me - a description of his flaw. A description of foolishness.

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I fininshed reading Explaining Hitler : the search for the origins of his evil and it is the best/most enlightening book I read this year.

 

Its is as much a study of the various theories and people who try to explain them as the theories themselves. Also  the sometiems bitter disputes between people over the different theories and the ethics of suggesting certain ones eg. it was the Jews ( specificily Jesus, Marx and a third person whose name I cant remember) fault for creating consciousness which Europe couldn't deal with which lead to Hilters rise to power.

 

This is a new afterword to the book that lead to me getting my hands an a copy of it as soon as possible

 

https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/hitler-continued-afterword-updated-edition-explaining-hitler-search-origins-evil

 

Re-reading Friday night lights and I had forgotten messed up Odessa Texas (and other parts of Texas) with regards to high-school football being second only to God in the 80's. Reading the afterword Bissinger talks about how he originally came to follow the Panthers but after seeing the racism and the madness of the town with regards to football he felt he had to write about it (he says that the town had lost the ability to judge itself which it had indeed). He does mention that after the book the city realised to a certain extent the madness and put more money into actual education. 

 

In the midst of an economy boom people spending millions on multiple jets (Midland a sister city and bitter rival had the the 3rd highest rolls royce sales in the country at the height of the boom) and then the price of oil drops and you had the second largest bank bankcrupty in US history at that time.

 

Also the book really nails how insane it is to treat a group of 17,18 years olds as the best thing since slice pan for a year and then just forget about them (and the injuries they suffered) once football season is over which leads to alot of them seeing it as the best time of their life while resenting that fact. 

 

Also to quote Bissinger "the ugliest racism he had ever encountered". One of the players says that he knew they lost the state champioship when he saw " a bunch of cocky niggers jumping up and down" and nigger a word that is thrown around pretty freely by the white people in this book.

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I haven't dug into Argobot's complaints yet, but so far, I am loving The Bone Clocks. Mitchell has such a fantastic knack for nailing a character's voice. I'm in Hugo's section right now and he and Holly feel completely different from each other, yet equally engaging. So far the supernatural stuff is pleasantly intriguing too.

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I kickstarted City of Darkness Revisited a while back and got my copy of the book this weekend. I was flipping through it earlier in the week just looking at the photos, and they were just phenomenal snapshots of Kowloon Walled City, an architectural/sociological curiosity that's really captured my interest off and on for the last few years. It was just a few city blocks that grew together and became a self-contained society/slum, controlled by the Triads for part of its life. The book has some truly breathtaking photos in it, but tonight was the first chance I got to really dive into some of the writing. I only managed to read 2 of the essays, but they were surprisingly good for what you find in what I imagined to be a mostly design-driven book -- the kind of quality I only really expect out of a publisher like Phaidon. If you're interested in this kind of thing and can afford it, I highly recommend the book. From what I've seen so far, it's a really impressive accomplishment.

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I kickstarted City of Darkness Revisited a while back and got my copy of the book this weekend. I was flipping through it earlier in the week just looking at the photos, and they were just phenomenal snapshots of Kowloon Walled City, an architectural/sociological curiosity that's really captured my interest off and on for the last few years. It was just a few city blocks that grew together and became a self-contained society/slum, controlled by the Triads for part of its life. The book has some truly breathtaking photos in it, but tonight was the first chance I got to really dive into some of the writing. I only managed to read 2 of the essays, but they were surprisingly good for what you find in what I imagined to be a mostly design-driven book -- the kind of quality I only really expect out of a publisher like Phaidon. If you're interested in this kind of thing and can afford it, I highly recommend the book. From what I've seen so far, it's a really impressive accomplishment.

Love that book! LOVE IT!

 

When I first discovered Kowloon Walled City, I became hooked on it, fascinated. The idea that people lived there, "thrived" there, lived full lives, being born there in such a compact, claustrophobic area... ALl the pictures I've seen and how the city was structured, I'm in awe of it.

 

It also helped that I was a huge cyberpunk fan growing up, and when I discovered Kowloon Walled City, it was something that I only saw in the literature, films and games in real life.

 

kowloon_one.jpg

 

Kowloon-Cross-section-low.jpg

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I haven't dug into Argobot's complaints yet, but so far, I am loving The Bone Clocks. Mitchell has such a fantastic knack for nailing a character's voice. I'm in Hugo's section right now and he and Holly feel completely different from each other, yet equally engaging. So far the supernatural stuff is pleasantly intriguing too.

 

I'm glad that my negativity hasn't stopped you from enjoying the book! My criticisms kind of soured my partner from reading it, so I've felt a tad guilty about disliking this book in the first place. You're completely correct that Mitchell's strong suit is writing convincing characters (although I think the way Holly ended up at the end is anything but convincing).

Please share your thoughts after you finish!

 

After being in a kind of reading slump, I finally finished Marilynne Robinson's Lila. Now I have the time to start rereading Inherent Vice before the movie comes out. Pynchon writing a hardboiled detective novel set in a foreboding late 1960s LA is truly a fun reading experience. Anyone who has an interest in seeing the PT Anderson movie really should consider reading this book first.

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I'm glad that my negativity hasn't stopped you from enjoying the book! My criticisms kind of soured my partner from reading it, so I've felt a tad guilty about disliking this book in the first place. You're completely correct that Mitchell's strong suit is writing convincing characters (although I think the way Holly ended up at the end is anything but convincing).

Please share your thoughts after you finish!

 

Having finished the book, I understand your complaints. I definitely think the book lacks the sublety of something like Cloud Atlas or Thousand Autumns.

 

I think Marinus' section is the real offender here. I enjoyed the section, but there's too much exposition, especiallythe section where Xi Lo and Marinus just recount the finale of Thousand Autumns. That just felt like a dumb wink to the reader. I actually enjoyed the Horology vs. Anchorites plotline, but don't think we should have been given such a central perspective into the conflict. Had the perspective character in that section instead been one of the "normal" helpers of Horology, or even one of the younger Horologist's, I think the story would have been better served. I'm interested to know why you were disappointed by Holly's character arc. The final section wasn't my favourite, but her arc didn't seem particularly unbelievable.

 

That said, I think it's a fantastic book and I really recommend it to anyone, although if supernatural stuff isn't your bag you should probably stay away.

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I'm beginning to think that House of Leaves is just one of the peaks of a writing style I've learnt to loathe. I'd say elements are similar to Infinite Jest only DFW made them actually entertaining for me.

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I find it fascinating that Kowloon is such a singular place and yet it's kind of a touchstone for slums in fantasy and science fiction. Anywhere where you see slums, you see something that's taking cues from Kowloon, despite the unique circumstances that birthed it and the sheer unlikeliness of it happening elsewhere.

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