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EmmyOk posted:The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. A friend recommended I start with it as my first Pynchon. This was a relatively recent read that really makes me feel like a big dumb. I practically dragged myself through it after hearing about some of the ideas in the book that I figured would be right up my alley. I admittedly don’t even remember much outside of feeling lost but I always like reading a post by someone who appreciates a book I could not because I feel like I can pick up a shard of meaning out of noise. Relevant to my literary inabilities, I recently finished The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I love the kind of book that feels like the perfect adventure. I got a lot of the same vibe when I finally read The Neverending Story or, more recently, The Vorrh. Also, the parallels between the story’s idealism and interspersed metatext raining-on-the-parade from Goldman are awfully cute. I’m trapped in rural Ontario for the holidays so the only recognizable book I could find at the local store was The Dead Astronauts by VanderMeer. I enjoyed reading Annihilation in the past so fingies crossed!
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Dec 30, 2019 15:34
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Franchescanado posted:The good news is, if you dislike The Crying of Lot 49, you could still very much try any other Pynchon novels and enjoy them. The Crying of Lot 49 is an outlier for reasons other than it's length, it has a certain tone and feel that's different than his other books. Pynchon repeats themes and ideas, but every book has it's own unique tone and voice. Mason & Dixon is no Inherent Vice, is no V., is no Gravity's Rainbow, etc. I like absurdity! I have a close friend who hated Crying but swears by plenty more of Pynchon. I’ll definitely try another of his from all the positive posts about it here.
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Dec 31, 2019 22:05
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chernobyl kinsman posted:"id read a lot more books for grownups if someone simplified and spoonfed them to me so i didnt have to put in any effort or encounter any kind of ambiguity" I get the hate but I think the poster intends to read the book. I’ve read some books that had forewords that would sometimes mention the cultural impact of a story and sometimes it’s interesting to know going in, though I’ll admit I usually dip past forewords.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:17
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Well I should’ve said the bigger impacts of the book on society/lit/whatever, not only cultural impact
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Jan 1, 2020 23:43
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PsychedelicWarlord posted:And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Pretty ridiculous plot but it's the best-selling mystery novel of all time for a reason. It's extremely gripping, though I'm not sure how I felt about the solution. I remember reading this and feeling wildly cheated by the reveal
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Apr 17, 2020 20:44
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ulvir posted:going by the summary it seems like he is literally recycling everything he has written for the past 20 years I remember reading wild sheep, wind up, and Kafka back to back to back and when I think back I just vaguely remember one long story about feeling lazy and chill and lists of old rock albums
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May 20, 2020 01:10
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The Auctioneer by Joan Samson. I picked this up on a recommendation for horror fiction from a friend. I thought it was relatively solid, but where the scariest moments were conceptually good, I feel like the writing failed to communicate the horror to me. A fun idea for a scary story and a pretty easy read, though.
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May 20, 2020 20:37
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The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches by Gaétan Soucy. A pretty disturbing but evocative read. By the end I was floored for how poetic the entire book was being not only an English translation but also written by a quasi-literate character.
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May 23, 2020 15:20
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Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides. I was getting pretty bored of this book by the halfway point despite the neat history of Detroit baked in, but the third quarter took a nice turn and I actually really enjoyed the last quarter. A pretty emotional ending to a nice multigenerational story about incestuous grecians.
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Jun 17, 2020 00:53
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Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephen Kinzer. I eat non-fiction about this stuff up. It's a very well researched and modern biography on Sidney Gottlieb and his hiring and involvement in several secret CIA schemes including (Operation Bluebird/Artichoke/MK-ULTRA etc...) trying to take control of human behaviour through drugs and interrogation techniques as well as his subsequent roles as poison and gadget maker for assassination attempts. Probably the only parts I didn't like were in Kinzer's reflections that these approaches to mind control were stimulated by fictional media and, in turn, have influenced fictional media, which just feel out of place.
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Jul 7, 2020 12:23
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Bilirubin posted:Just finished House of Leaves. Pretty good and unique book. Everything after the navidson record sucks caacaa (as they say), but the navidson record is so good that it doesn’t matter
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Jul 18, 2020 22:51
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I bailed on Universal Harvester halfway through I remember it was during the characters eating dinner and I think I was suspecting it was not going to be fun anymore
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Aug 1, 2020 13:25
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