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My friend gave me a copy of The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Isles, I just finished it and immediately picked up the the Natchez Burning trilogy. I'm only on the first book, but if it's anything like the twists in Devil's Punchbowl, I'm excited. Usually I can peg whats gonna happen in mysteries, but this reminds me of Leonard or Westlake, not in humor, but the twists are definitely left field. After that, I'm finally gonna get around to reading White Trash by Isenberg at a friend's urging.

Achtane wrote:I remember seeing ads in video game magazines in the 90s about a Scud game for like, ps1 or sega saturn.

Yep, Sega Saturn. I had no idea!

New Stormlight Archive book comes out on Tuesday. First fantasy book I'm going to buy and read on release, up til now I've just been catching up on recommended books and series.

Ducking finally. Finished that stupid Too Like the Lightning. Might be one of my least liked books ever. Imagine an entire book that is as mind bendingly annoying as the last part of Cloud Atlas.

Have already eaten up 200 pages of Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged and I feel so liberated. I can enjoy reading again! I understand what the fuck is going on! The words are not written to intentionally cause me stylistic pain.

Life is awesome.

goroth wrote:Ducking finally. Finished that stupid Too Like the Lightning. Might be one of my least liked books ever. Imagine an entire book that is as mind bendingly annoying as the last part of Cloud Atlas.

Have already eaten up 200 pages of Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged and I feel so liberated. I can enjoy reading again! I understand what the fuck is going on! The words are not written to intentionally cause me stylistic pain.

Life is awesome.

Why wouldn't you bail on it? There was only one book that was so bad that I wanted to bail but couldn't because I was reading it for a class a million years ago and that was Catch 22. Just hated it. The humor was not funny to me and I found it in general hard to follow. A bunch of those beat generation authors were books I just couldn't get through and bailed after investing too many pages. I like to give something at least 100 pages but if I am struggling to pick it up as opposed to not being able to put it down, then I let it go.

I always finish everything. Only book I've quit on is Ulysses and I fully intend to get into it and finish one day. IDK why just hate the idea of not "finishing" something I guess. Interesting about Catch 22 I read it last year for the first time and loved it, extremely dated sexism aside I found the rest of it hilarious.

I couldn’t bail. I was waiting for the language to stop bothering me (like it did in Anathem). I was waiting for the penny to drop like in The Usual Suspects. But neither happened. It was like David Lynch directing moby dick, only without any redeeming qualities of either the book or the director.

Took me damned near half a year to read.

I recommend it.

cosmicevan wrote:A bunch of those beat generation authors were books I just couldn't get through and bailed after investing too many pages.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac comes to mind. I really liked it for a while, but eventually it started feeling pointless and then just boring. I had to force myself to finish it.

I had a coworker who had read Moby Dick like seven times and that is a superhuman feat to me. I had to force myself to barely get anywhere in that book.

Achtane wrote:I had a coworker who had read Moby Dick like [url]seven times[/url] and that is a superhuman feat to me. I had to force myself to barely get anywhere in that book.

Whoa...how many decades of his/her life did that take? I started it and put it down. It's on my bucket list to finish someday, along with Don Quixote.

My most reread work of literature is La Morte D'Arthur, which I read three times. Dumas is fun too, I read The Three Musketeers in 7th grade and loved it.

I like that wild fiction though. Got really into Tom Robbins for a while. Read his entire catalog and then stopped paying attention. Apparently he's dropped a book or a few since I stopped watching...gotta check em out. Tim Sandlin is another massive favorite.

goroth wrote: Imagine an entire book that is as mind bendingly annoying as the last part of Cloud Atlas.

I haven't read Cloud Atlas. I have read (and loved) Moby Dick.
I found the writing of Moby Dick to possess a resonant sense of humor.
The historical nonficion parts of Moby Dick about whaling also reminded me of
some of my absolute favorite books in which a single subject becomes the lens
through which the entirety of life is examined:

Folklore of the Teeth (1928) by Leo Kanner (the guy who first studied Autism)
The Magic of Walking (1967) by Aaron Sussman and Ruth Goode.
The Chicken Book (1975) by Page Smith and Charles Daniels.
Cod: A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World (1997) by Mark Kurlansky.
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (2003) by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

ANYHOW... in terms of writing where you are inside the author's brain, that can either
be incredible and amazing or tedious and torturous depending on the brain and how
the wavelength of the author's thinking/writing resonates or becomes discordant with
your own thought patterns and taste.

I love Umberto Eco and Enrique Vila-Matas and Jorge Luis Borge and Raymond Roussel.
But I acknowledge that that kind of writing might not appeal to everyone.

or Javier Marias or Nicholson Baker

Jonathan Gould - Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America

Wanted more insight into how the Beatles of 1962 became the Beatles of 1964/6/8/etc. and the internal politics of the band. Didn't really choose wisely - I'm skimming every third chapter dedicated to a rundown of songs on each album.

To be clear, I thought Moby Dick was brilliant, and more than anything I found it a good fun read (regardless of its place in the literary canon). It doesn't take too long to get into the language and as long as you can smash through a few pages in one sitting the story has a pretty decent pace.