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Author Topic: Reading this summer  (Read 69054 times)

MissAmbiguity

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #150 on: 01 Aug 2008, 10:07 »

What's wrong with Douglas Coupland? I think he's hilarious.
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Jackie Blue

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #151 on: 01 Aug 2008, 13:52 »

I just think Douglas Coupland is a horrible writer.  Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God, Microserfs and fucking Girlfriend in a Coma were an uninterrupted string of five abominations unto Nuggan.  Maybe he improved after the 90s, who knows, but I don't care.  He was so absolutely the epitome of horrid 90s pop culture (like the film Reality Bites) that I cannot ever imagine taking him seriously.
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Tom

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #152 on: 01 Aug 2008, 15:19 »

Um dude, almost everything was an abomination unto Nuggan.
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sean

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #153 on: 01 Aug 2008, 17:28 »

Guys.

I just read the first three books in the "Twilight" series within the last 27 hours.

Good fucking god, every female I work with and my sister are now rabbidly obsessed with this book. Why does it appear everyone is just discovering it now?
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Liz

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #154 on: 01 Aug 2008, 17:47 »

I've known about them for a long time, really, just never had the urge to read one. But lately I kept getting pages about them on StumbleUpon so I figured I would start reading one for the heck of it. I went into Barnes and Noble, grabbed the first one from the shelf, and read it straight through.
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Uber Ritter

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #155 on: 03 Aug 2008, 11:33 »

When I saw the trailer for the Twilight movie, I laughed out loud.  I mean, vampires -and- werewolves?  It's like a fricking white wolf LARP.

Vampires are too good as villains to go to waste as mopey protagonists.  Fuck Anne Rice.  (yes, there may be exceptions to this--I liked the vampire priest in Astro City, for instance, even though I never finished the comic and I was in 8th grade).
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Jackie Blue

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #156 on: 03 Aug 2008, 16:21 »

Underworld had vampires and werewolves.

Also, that White Wolf based TV show was remarkably good, too bad it only had like five episodes.
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Eris

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #157 on: 03 Aug 2008, 17:27 »

They are freakishly addicting. They're written well enough, but at the same time they're complete cheese and entirely too predictable. But I still cannot wait for the fourth one, it comes out tomorrow at midnight...

Certain people tease me about my love for cheesy predictable teenage trash novels. And my love for vampire stories. This series combines the two in such a way that I get excited over them, but at the same time feel a bit dirty for enjoying them. They are terribly predictable and clichéd, but for some reason I have to read them all. The movie looks like it's not going to be an excellent piece of cinematic genius, but the books aren't great literary works either, really.

I have to read :

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
New York Trilogy
The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
Guilty Pleasures - Laurell Hamilton (another cheesy vampire book)
Dead Girls' Dance - Rachel Cane (another teenage cheesy vampire book)

The first two are for uni and therefore I can't remember who they are by. I probably won't read any of those other books until the uni break in september, and even then I have assignments due that I will be working on. Stupid uni not letting me read.
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est

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #158 on: 03 Aug 2008, 20:20 »

I have just finished the first 9 books in the Dresden files.  They slump and get a bit samey in the middle, but then Butcher finds his legs again and starts coming up with interesting plot developments in the last couple.  I am looking forward to the 10th book (Small Favour) hitting paperback in the cover style I have the other 9 in :)

Currently reading Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I am only a few pages in, but it's pretty good so far.  It's supposed to be a big work on censorship, but at the moment I am reading it as an allegory to waking from ignorance.

At home I currently have awaiting my eye-lookin':
- The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (Aready half-read this.  It got a bit slow and I wanted something else at the time, ie: the much faster-paced Dresden series)
- Voltaire's Bastards - John Ralston Saul (Already half-read this.  It is a fairly thick philosophical essay.  While I like it I wanted a break)
- The Scar by China Mieville (heard good things about this)
- The Beach by Alex Garland (ditto, I think Han was reading it a while back)
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (bought during my "classics" period)
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (ditto)
- Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck (ditto ditto)

I also recently picked up Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and was turned off almost immediately by the encounter with the rube on the train.  To me it was basically Burroughs explaining that the reader was the rube and he was shining us on.  I didn't really appreciate it, so I put it down.  I may attempt to read it again at some point, but the style of writing was pretty shit in my opinion so I am not sure if it'll go any better than the first attempt.
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Wayfaring Stranger

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #159 on: 04 Aug 2008, 13:46 »

Actually, that would be Dan Motherfucking Brown, if one is to call his books literature.

I don't think you should call his books literature.  I think they're adventure stories.  They shouldn't be taken in the same vein, in my opinion.
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Jackie Blue

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #160 on: 04 Aug 2008, 14:02 »

Dan Brown doesn't even pretend to be literature.

Douglas Coupland does.

Coupland is like what would happen if you took Mark Leyner and made him stop doing drugs, removed his brain and replaced it with a "television tuned to a dead channel".

Let's just stop talking about him and talk about Mark Leyner instead because ET TU BABE IS THE GREATEST PIECE OF MODERN LITERATURE EVER.
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Lines

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #161 on: 04 Aug 2008, 16:55 »

Quote from: Misconception
Stuff about Twilight.

Yeah, I've been meaning to read these for a while, too. I snuck a look at a coworker's copy back when the third came out and even though it wasn't a challenging read, it did suck me in pretty quickly.

So yeah. I haven't done any of my planned summer reading, as I haven't been to a bookstore or library to get any of them, but I have been rereading just about every book I own.
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RallyMonkey

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #162 on: 05 Aug 2008, 00:46 »

I am right in the middle of reading Coupland's newest book, The Gum Thief. I thought jPod was a pretty great book. Off of that, I read Hey Nostradamus and Microserfs, neither of them were very good. The Gum Thief started out pretty good, I thought, but about halfway through, I'm starting to get very bored.

In other readings, in the passed two weeks or so I have read:

Doubt: A parable - John Patrick Shanley
I Am My Own Wife - Doug Wright
Copenhagen - Michael Frayn
The Laramie Project - Moises Kaufman
The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? - Edward Albee

I guess that I really like plays? Plays are actually really great reads. They are always really smooth reads, and playwrights are able to use great economy in their writing due to the medium, so they're often really well paced.

I'd like to read some more contemporary plays, but I have basically dried the supplies of plays at my library.
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Inlander

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #163 on: 05 Aug 2008, 07:27 »

Right now I'm reading the Koran. After that I'll be onto the Tanakh. I recently finished reading the Bible, so frankly I'm looking forward to leaving the Old Testament and related texts behind and moving onto some eastern religions.

In case anyone's wondering, a while ago I decided I ought to educate myself a bit about the major religions of the world, seeing as how I was raised in a completely secular household. For down-time I've been giving my brain a break by reading Iain M. Banks's Culture novels.

Also, reading and re-reading and re-re-reading a manuscript I'm working on. But that probably doesn't really count.
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Wayfaring Stranger

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #164 on: 05 Aug 2008, 13:14 »

I'd love to hear some opinions on how you feel the different scriptures relate to each other and differ from one another.  That's an admirable goal you've set. 
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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #165 on: 05 Aug 2008, 15:19 »

Right now I'm reading the Koran.

Techinquly you're not, unless you can actually read Arabic.
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Inlander

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #166 on: 05 Aug 2008, 16:56 »

Oh, shush.
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #167 on: 05 Aug 2008, 17:26 »

Dan Brown doesn't even pretend to be literature.

Douglas Coupland does.

Coupland is like what would happen if you took Mark Leyner and made him stop doing drugs, removed his brain and replaced it with a "television tuned to a dead channel".

Let's just stop talking about him and talk about Mark Leyner instead because ET TU BABE IS THE GREATEST PIECE OF MODERN LITERATURE EVER.


And this folks is what happens when someone who just started college reads David Foster Wallace.  This post here.  Scientists are working on a vaccine, but they're not hopeful.

I'm reading Rilke right now and I think I'm going to start McCarthy's The Road.  I hear Oprah has really good things to say about it.  Weren't we discussing a book club at some point?  We should try to do that again, that would be fun.
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Jackie Blue

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #168 on: 05 Aug 2008, 17:28 »

In point of fact, I fucking hate David Foster Wallace, and if you've actually read Et Tu, Babe you'd know I was making a joke.
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #169 on: 05 Aug 2008, 17:39 »

In point of fact, I fucking hate David Foster Wallace, and if you've actually read Et Tu, Babe you'd know I was making a joke.


Yes and it sounded like a joke that DFW made in 1993.  But I'm with you in the Wallace dislike.
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Jackie Blue

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #170 on: 05 Aug 2008, 17:42 »

Quote from: David Foster Wallace
One reason fiction writers seem creepy in person is that by vocation they really are voyeurs.

SIG'D SO HARD
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #171 on: 05 Aug 2008, 17:44 »

What I done?  I've created a monster.  A Monster.
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Phaedra

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #172 on: 05 Aug 2008, 18:30 »

Guys I just read the first few pages of Titus Groan before I left for work tonight.

Summer reading is looking up.

Along with Gormenghast, these are my favourite books ever. I've never been brave enough to re-read them, though.
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #173 on: 05 Aug 2008, 23:53 »

The Road is excellent, well worth your money/time.

I don't know if I'd say it was excellent but it was definitely worth reading.  The only way I could conceive of a movie based on this book working is if zombie Ingmar Bergman directed and one of the optional popcorn toppings was the Sweet Embrace of Death.  However I see that instead, zombie Yul Brenner is directing, and his two projects involved Nick Cave.

Which means that Nick Cave will have a cameo in the movie, perhaps as "Desperate Man in Cannibals' Cellar With Legs Burnt Off" or "Roasted Baby on Spit".  Oh, I just can't wait.
« Last Edit: 05 Aug 2008, 23:56 by pilsner »
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #174 on: 06 Aug 2008, 00:01 »

Uh-huh.  I finished, then spent the last hour clutching a bottle of scotch and looking for sleeping pills.

EDIT:  Chabon writes in the New York Review of Books that the book hews much closer to the gothic horror of Lovecraft than it does to the typical post-apocalypse novel.  It's a literary haunted house for parents.  Which leads me to believe that this all started as an elaborate revenge plot when McCarthy didn't get a scone at a PTA meeting.
« Last Edit: 06 Aug 2008, 00:39 by pilsner »
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Inlander

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #175 on: 06 Aug 2008, 00:51 »

Which means that Nick Cave will have a cameo in the movie

Also it probably means that Nick Cave and Warren Ellis will do the soundtrack.
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Tom

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #176 on: 06 Aug 2008, 01:26 »

I'm reading Money by Martin Amis.
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Wayfaring Stranger

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #177 on: 07 Aug 2008, 20:00 »

I'm also reading The Watchmen.  I've always meant to and now I'm getting around to it.
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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #178 on: 08 Aug 2008, 19:20 »

maaaaan you are gonna look so internet-silly if he means this one

Currently reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy and Blindness by Jose Saramago. Both: good so far.
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pilsner

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #179 on: 08 Aug 2008, 23:32 »

Currently reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy and Blindness by Jose Saramago. Both: good so far.

Speaking of dark, dark, dark apocalypse minded books with movies coming out....
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Tom

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Re: Reading this summer
« Reply #180 on: 09 Aug 2008, 00:25 »

oh man if he means that one I am soooo fucked

Dude, I highly doubt it's that, so just chill.
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