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Thyroid

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I listened to the New York Times Book Review Podcast, Bookworm, and the Slate Audio Book Club. I still listen to the NYTBR podcast every week; Bookworm I probably listen to half the episodes, and the Slate Audio Book Club seems to go away for months at a time (cough). I also read the New York Times Book Review fairly regularly.

 

Oh man, I've been listening to Bookworm recently and every time I can barely get past the opening song.  The podcast itself is really good but that intro just clashes with tone of the show.

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Oh man, I've been listening to Bookworm recently and every time I can barely get past the opening song. The podcast itself is really good but that intro just clashes with tone of the show.

Yes. It is the worst piece of music I voluntarily subject myself to. I despise it.

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Yes. It is the worst piece of music I voluntarily subject myself to. I despise it.

 

Do you have any inkling what the story is with that? All the commentary I can find about it on Google is neutral to bad. Is it from the favorite band or little brother of someone on the show?

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It's from a band that the host, Michael Silverblatt, really likes—and they composed it specifically for the show. It is putrid.

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Do you have any inkling what the story is with that? All the commentary I can find about it on Google is neutral to bad. Is it from the favorite band or little brother of someone on the show?

 

Sparks are like an nth level record store owner band. Hundreds of deeply odd records from the late 60s to now. If Devo was Queen? 

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Three books that are coming out relatively soon that I've been waiting on are:

 

1- The new Steven Erikson book, The Fall of Light. The book is part two of a trilogy that sheds some light on the divinities of his 10 book epic and will surely end up raising more questions that it answers. For those who haven't read Forge of Darkness, the first of the trilogy, but have read TMBotF and are planning to.... prepare to have your entire perspective violently shifted.

 

2- Republic of Thieves, I'm really interested in the quality of this book. I really enjoyed the first two. The series is called The Gentleman Bastards and it is a baroque renaissance romp filled with con-men, alchemy and a mysterious elder race. The first book is The Lies of Locke Lamora. I say I'm interested in the quality because it has gone through several rewrites and the release date has been constantly pushed back. Scott Lynch, the author, has been very open on his blog about his battles with severe depression. I completely empathize with having those sorts of issues mess up your life, but I have to wonder if the effect on his 3rd book will be positive or negative.

 

3- Words of Radience by Brandon Sanderson. The sequel to The Way of Kings which is an excellent fantasy book set in a VERY refreshing setting. Sanderson has dodged so many tropes (while embracing others) and created such a detailed and vibrant universe that the first book is worth reading for the worldbuilding alone.

 

Yeah they're all fantasy :P 

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I rarely follow upcoming or recently released books. My to-read list is enormous already and I prefer to wait for the hype dust to settle before I make my decision. That said, I'm really looking forward to Thomas Pynchon's Bleeding Edge. The rather embarrassing reason for this is that, while I enjoyed both The Crying of Lot 49 and Inherent Vice a lot, I'm still intimidated by his 1000 page monsters.

 

I'm about halfway through Infinite Jest, though, so maybe one day I will find the courage to tackle Gravity's Rainbow.

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My primary source for new books is the New York Times Book Review podcast (and the actual review itself, if I get around to reading it). It's the perfect length for a long Saturday or Sunday morning walk with my dog, and then I get home with one or two suggestions of things to read. Of course, it takes me longer than a week to get through most books these days (being old and married and all), so I inevitably fall behind. Still, it's great to listen to the authors and reviewers talk about their books, even if I don't get to read them eventually.

 

Count me among those lucky enough to live near a great independent bookstore/cafe, although the cafe is technically separate, Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo. (Yeah, their website is horrid.) I do most of my reading on my Kindle, but I always stop in there to buy a physical copy of something and browse around. They also have a membership for $10 a year which I always buy on principal.

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I'm roughly 100 pages into Gravity's Rainbow. This was chosen because I really like Lot 49 and Infinite Jest, which I read last summer. So far I'm actually finding GR to be a lot smoother of a read than I expected. Go for it, Nappi!

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Good to hear! I think I will go with something lighter (both physically and mentally) once I'm done with Infinite Jest, but I definitely want to read Gravity's Rainbow at some point.

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I'm about halfway through Infinite Jest, though, so maybe one day I will find the courage to tackle Gravity's Rainbow.

I absolutely adored IJ and Lot 49, and hated GR, so I wouldn't say the one needs to lead to the other.

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I'm roughly 100 pages into Gravity's Rainbow. This was chosen because I really like Lot 49 and Infinite Jest, which I read last summer. So far I'm actually finding GR to be a lot smoother of a read than I expected. Go for it, Nappi!

If you're enjoying the first 100 pages, the rest of the book should be a super-easy read. The narrative becomes infinitely more coherent after that first section.

And yeah, I found GR to be way harder than IJ. The hardest book I've ever read, in fact, though I haven't read any Joyce, Gaddis, Cormac's Blood Meridian & Suttree, Melville, etc.

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This is all very surprising to me. Maybe it's the smaller cast or less flipping back to footnotes throwing me off or something else, but I'm finding GR way easier than IJ. I'm also laughing at it way more. Maybe it's just more in tune with my sense of humour. I found IJ, even during it's "funniest" moments, to be more intriguing than funny. GR has moments of poignancy and also moments that are having me chuckling out loud to myself fairly consistently. One more option: maybe it's that I read IJ as my first book back into recreational reading after a long period of only reading academic stuff for my degrees, while with GR I have an extra year of reading for fun under my belt and thus am more used to it.

 

I'm kind of wondering about that last one now. I should re-read IJ next summer or sometime soon after to see if all this reading for entertainment is actually changing the way that I read books. I still probably remember too much of it now to put it back on my "to read" pile, but there's only two scenes that still REALLY vividly stick out in my head IJ SPOILERS:

Joelle's suicide attempt, which it seems like people tend to hold onto no matter how long it's been since they read it, and the fight that hospitalizes Gately for whatever reason

so I need a bit more time. Still, it'll be a re-read sooner or later, I can feel it.

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Man, I could not resist diving right back into IJ once I finished it. It is by far the book that most rewards a second read-through of any that I know.

Greg, I had the exact opposite reaction to GR: I enjoyed it less and less as I read more one it became clear that things were only going to be come weirder, more transgressive and less, well, funny (to me). The opening bits I found great fun.

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I loved GR, but after learning that the "Kenosha Kid" chapter is about Slothrop meeting a young Malcolm X I realized I was probably taking in about 40% of the book at best. The intellect that could hold all that in one brain is just daunting.

 

Sidebar: Has any fan of Infinite Jest and Gravity's Rainbow read William Vollman's You Bright and Risen Angels? If not, I recommend it! 

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I find Vollman really hard for some reason. I started Europe Centrale but never finished it, despite liking the parts of it I read. I think I may take another run at it.

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I've only read YBaRA & The Atlas, but I'd agree they're both hard, sometimes harder than things I regard as actually hard? hah. Vollmann is somebody I feel like I should read more of. He's seen everything.

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Na, everyone should read at least Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and especially Dubliners. Both are short and easy and free and awesome. 

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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.

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I loved GR, but after learning that the "Kenosha Kid" chapter is about Slothrop meeting a young Malcolm X I realized I was probably taking in about 40% of the book at best. The intellect that could hold all that in one brain is just daunting.

 

Wait, what? Man, I did not get that AT ALL. Damn.

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Well The Bleeding Edge was released yesterday. I'm only 60 pages in, but already I'm loving this book. It's more like Inherent Vice than Crying of Lot 49, but it's so fascinating to see the evolution in Pynchon's writing and humor. His book is steeped in pre-9/11, early 2000s culture, which is when I was a teenager. It's weird to revisit that time period now, but so far Pynchon is doing a really masterful job at describing the atmosphere after the dot com bust and right before all hell broke loose in America.

 

I've been looking forward to this book for awhile, and so far it is more than living up to my expectations. Definitely worth checking out.

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The Bleeding Edge is the only book that I have ever pre-ordered. Looks like I'll be finishing Infinite Jest just in time for its arrival too. Glad to hear it's good (so far)!

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I am jealous that you're coming right off of Infinite Jest and going into Pynchon. Earlier Pynchon novels obviously influenced David Foster Wallace, but Bleeding Edge (and Inherent Vice) feels like Pynchon mimicking David Foster Wallace mimicking Pynchon. It's completely bizarre but also amazing to read.

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