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  #21  
Old 08-20-2007, 12:27 AM
jjshabado jjshabado is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

I'm half way through Gore's Assault on Reason book. Its reminded me why I don't buy and read books by politicians. Even when I agree with the content/message I want to shoot myself in the face.

I'm also a bit into a book of Speech's from Martin Luther King Jr. Interesting stuff.
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  #22  
Old 08-20-2007, 01:25 AM
jfk jfk is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

Iris Chang's "Thread of the Silkworm". I've not previously read any Iris Chang and sadly, she won't be putting out any more books. Its a biography of a Chinese rocket scientist who was deported from the U.S. in the 50's following a McCarthy driven purge. He became the leading figure behind the Chinese development of a ballistic missle program and their space program.

Last week I finished "Bones of the Master" by George Crane. Oddly enough I stumbled upon this title while searching the (empty) shelves for Chang's book. It is an unusual book with an unusual subject matter it would appeal many of the readers of this forum (and it is a very fast, engaging read). The story is about a Ch'an (Buddhist) monk who returns to Inner Mongolia after a forty year absence to find and properly honor his teacher's remains.
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  #23  
Old 08-20-2007, 03:01 AM
smurfitup smurfitup is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

[ QUOTE ]
Wittgenstein's Mistress and The Last Novel by David Markson

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Wittgenstein

[/ QUOTE ]

i've been meaning to read wittgenstein's mistress. how is it?
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  #24  
Old 08-20-2007, 08:29 AM
Tigermoth Tigermoth is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

I also tend to read a lot of books at the same time. Lately, though, I can't seem to finish any of them.

Reading:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
No Limit Hold 'Em by Sklansky and Miller
PADI Divemaster Manual
My Silent War by Kim Philby

Tonight, I'll be reading Enriched Air Diving: PADI Specialty Series


I've just ordered a heap of books from England (they don't sell good books where I live), so my list will change considerably in the next couple of weeks.

To the guy reading Cryptonomicon: it's fantastic. May seem a bit slow at first, but keep going. It's well worth it.
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  #25  
Old 08-20-2007, 12:37 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

Crime and Punishment is one that's going to be hard to finish if you don't just submerge yourself in it and read it through as quick as you can. I loved the book, but the business with all the names and the different nicknames different people call the same guy is very cumbersome and can be discouraging. Plus it's just a deep book, not the type to hop in and out of.
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  #26  
Old 08-20-2007, 12:57 PM
katyseagull katyseagull is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

[ QUOTE ]
<u>On Writing</u>, by Stephen King


For instance, King hates plotting, he says. He likes to discover the work by writing it. This would go a long way toward explaining why he can do things like let his stories drift haplessly for very long stretches, filling them out with endless detail about cornball, often quite thin characters who aren't doing anything in particular. When he at length snaps to, he can finally march his story along, if anyone is still interested. This kind of writing is on full display in messes like The Stand, which rambles on over a thousand pages, much of which is essentially unfilled with anything particularly lively.

This may be how King likes to write, and it is often recommended as the way writing should be done -- it should be essentially "found." To King's credit, he elsewhere puts aside the culturally much-vaunted role of genius in writing and ascribes writing stuff worth reading primarily to hard work. But in denigrating the need to work on structure and plot even in the sort of workaday fiction he writes, he falls into the same trap he decries. Writing without plotting requires much more of lucky genius and visits from a muse than fully envisioning where you are going and why and how to get there from the start. King may be able to eventually tidy things up into a workable whole that feels somewhat unified and has gone in a direction worth pursuing without plotting, but how many of us are among the best-selling authors in the world, or have dozens of novels behind us that have trained us and honed our skills for decades? In effectively saying, "just do it blind," King is unconsciously promoting the spooky exceptionalism he insists good writing isn't really about.*




[/ QUOTE ]


I wanted to say that I really enjoyed reading your post on King. I haven't read any of his books (started The Stand but didn't get far) but I found your discussion to be really interesting. Is it obvious when reading his fiction that he is sort of discovering his story and plot as he goes? You mention his hapless rambling in The Stand, and you allude to his thin characters. Is this a typical King trait in his other novels as well?

Also, I am completely confused by how writers find their symbolism. I guess I suspect many find it after they are done writing. I remember back in high school having to write papers about symbolism, usually pertaining to some novel we had just read, and I remember hating it. I have a lot of trouble with symbolism. I find it to be either non-existent or forced.
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  #27  
Old 08-20-2007, 01:44 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

I think a lot of symbolism is crap too. Especially when it's the supposedly important and telling repetition of minor details that really doesn't amount to much more than tedious cleverness. But it's vital to some works in deeper ways, and can set up resonances in a story that make it much richer. Especially if you've read much of the bible or much Shakespeare, you may find a seemingly innocuous or even indecipherable story suddenly comes to life when you catch how it is playing off of a classic, maybe doing a little twist on it or exploring it in a different way.

I'd very strongly suggest reading Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces to anyone with an interest in literature, or just stories in general, whether religious ones, high-falutin' great classics, or good ole yarns told around the campfire while eating beans and lifting a leg to let a fart out sideways. That book gets at the mythic structural underpinning of even very simple stories, and does a very interesting job of showing how even greatly differing religious traditions have many key themes in common, because they are the key themes to human existence. It's enlightening and for me at least served as a wonderful skeleton key to understanding a lot of symbolism and seeing how and why it can actually work when done right. I wished I had it when I was a kid writing essays in high school and not really understanding what that symbolism crap was about either.

Regarding King specifically, his short stories tend to be pretty tight and great fun. His novels are kind of all over the place in how well they are written, quite apart from how scary they are and somewhat apart from how fun they are, but I admit to only reading like the first ten. Salem's Lot was easily his best among the ones I read. The Shining was wonderful in many places, but the first 50 or 60 pages were dull and rambling, and I've met many people who have put the book down early because of that. I've encouraged them to pick it up again because I felt the same way and still loved the rest of the book, and have found anyone who did so to agree with me and say thanks, I'd never have bothered otherwise.

King might as well have invented the sprawling book. Others, like Clive Barker, have stated that they noted King's success with sprawl and that the public often likes it, and so began writing novels the size of refrigerators after being known for quick, tight, imaginatively vicious little short stories. It's a style that is almost everywhere in light fiction these days, a welcome exception being mysteries. In King, a good indication that he doesn't know where he is going is when he starts yakking up very cornpone characters endlessly, as if they had something to say worth listening to, and following them around on their non-adventures. He gives a sense of place doing this, but it is not necessarily an interesting place, one with interesting people, or one where anything is going to happen that couldn't have happened 25 pages -- or 250 pages -- earlier. I'd recommend his early short stories to everyone, but am not too confident in recommending his long stuff to people.
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  #28  
Old 08-20-2007, 02:48 PM
daveT daveT is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

To continue with your thinking on style. Different writers have different aptitudes. A screenwriter is generally good with quick, snappy dialogue, and a linear story line. An essayists is good at getting to the point. A novelist is better at telling a complex, many times, non-linear story.

Different forms for the writer to work out of his or her comfort level. Unfortunately the results aren't always good. Garrison Keilor, for example is great at telling a story on the radio. He is good at spoken-word writing. His novels are terrible. Stephen King was probably better in his early years than his middle years. I think that his later stuff is better, but I'm not a huge fan, either. Didn't he put out an unabridged version of The Stand? I remember reading the intro and he said that the original was terrible because it was edited. I think that he is best when he is writing essays. These are engrossing, thoughtful, and funny. His conversational style fits well.

As for poetry. I was never a large fan of poetry. In my opinion, it is at it's best when it is written from deep emotions. In school, we are given the shallower poetry, that has no deep meaning. Just at face value, there is nothing to explore. e. e. cummings was crammed down out throats the most. He was part of the impressionistic art movement, which means that there is not meaning beyond the face of what you see. Poe opitomizes the pain part of poetry. Songwriters are great poets in my opinion. Check out Henry Rollins, for example.

I only read three books this year:
Collapse -- about the end of civilizations
Portrait of Myself -- Auto-biography of Sandra Burke-White
Meeting the Shadow -- A Jungian psycho-analyst book. Very thick with material and hard to get through.

There is one book that I am searching for. It is written by a Chinese interviewer. He interviews all sorts of criminals, and Barbara Walters he is not. He ends up telling some of the criminals what pigs and evil people they are, while empathizing with others.

I read an excerpt of this book in a Paris Review. This was shocking by any standards. The interview featured was one of the most disturbing things I ever read in my life, but I found there were parts that I was laughing at the befuddlement of the interviewer, as he is cursing the very being of the criminal. Sadly, part of the agreement was that he would not turn anyone in. I don't know he could keep that promise. The book is banned in China.
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  #29  
Old 08-20-2007, 03:13 PM
KilgoreTrout KilgoreTrout is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

I should finish Chris Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends tonight. It's okay, not his best. It's a vampire story.

I'm also almost done with Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone - the first full-length detective novel in the English language. It's written from three perspectives in a victorian style and since the three perspectives share facts it's a little slow in parts. Numerous red herrings keep the reader on his/her toes though. Collins rips off Poe, but references to EAP are dropped throughout. Collins uses books that the characters are reading to provide backstory and insight, which is a pretty cool device.

Been trying to get into DK Goodwin's Lincoln book, but it's tedious and very, very long.

Next up is a bio on Stonewall Jackson.
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  #30  
Old 08-20-2007, 03:14 PM
nick604 nick604 is offline
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Default Re: Books: What are you reading tonight?

[ QUOTE ]
I also tend to read a lot of books at the same time. Lately, though, I can't seem to finish any of them.

Reading:
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
No Limit Hold 'Em by Sklansky and Miller
PADI Divemaster Manual
My Silent War by Kim Philby

Tonight, I'll be reading Enriched Air Diving: PADI Specialty Series


I've just ordered a heap of books from England (they don't sell good books where I live), so my list will change considerably in the next couple of weeks.

To the guy reading Cryptonomicon: it's fantastic. May seem a bit slow at first, but keep going. It's well worth it.

[/ QUOTE ]

How are you finding Master and Margarita? I think that's probably my favourite book ever.
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