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muffy:

--- Quote from: lepetitfromage on 27 Dec 2011, 19:11 ---That's pretty typical of Palahniuk in general...and sums up quite nicely why I like him so much. I love that all his stuff is so unpredictable and twisted. I'm dying to read Haunted....apparently, at a reading he did someone in the crowd actually puked when he read the first story.

--- End quote ---

Haunted is brilliant, and the short story that caused (multiple) faintings/vomittings is free to read on his website. It's not the most unsettling short in the book, mind.
http://chuckpalahniuk.net/features/shorts/guts

Survivor is probably my favourite one that he's done. Just finished a huge coursework project which involved trying to emulate his writing style/nihilism...not sure how well it worked in the end. 

lepetitfromage:
Oooooh...I'd be interested in reading that if you don't mind sharing.


As for that story from guts....wow. It didn't make me feel physically sick, but it's definitely one of the more fucked up things I've read by him. I gotta get that book! lol

Is it cold in here?:
"Bitterly Divided", a history of the South during the American Civil War.

High points: a majority opposed secession but had it rammed down their throats by vote fraud, crooked delegates, and outright coercion. Only a third of the Confederate Army was on the field at the end of the war, most of the rest AWOL. The planter class that wanted secession insisted on growing cash crops while the soldiers and public were starving. Some states were in virtual civil war within their borders.

EDIT: Barbara Demick, "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea". Individual stories of chaste romances and attempts at advantageous marriages that might have come out of Jane Austen, followed by societal collapse in the famine. Extensively researched. Image that stuck in my mind: a doctor Demick interviewed found, at the first building she saw after sneaking across the border to China, a luxury she could only have dreamed about at home -- a bowl of rice, with chunks of meat. She couldn't figure out why something so valuable was left unattended on the floor. She figured it out an instant before the dog barked to chase her away from its dinner.

DrPhibes:
Currently just LOTR but I still have about 5 unread books to read that i started and didnt finish like: Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk and more

Is it cold in here?:
"False Economy", by Alan Beattie: the choices which (in his opinion) make the difference between economic success and failure.

There's some interesting research, like the difference in trajectories between otherwise similar Botswana and Sierra Leone, but mostly things that have been said before.

The best chapter was the one about corruption. It turns out you can have high growth even with institutionalized bribery and theft, if you do it right.

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