The Books/Reading Thread

[Einherjar86]

Hamsun's Hunger is much shorter but is a great psychological novel. Growth of the Soil is very serene and I loved the idyllic atmosphere of that book. Generally, Hamsun is my favorite Norwegian writer after Ibsen.

Excellent, many thanks.

I slogged through Ulysses last summer. It's a pain in the ass, but one of the most rewarding novels I've ever read.

 

[EspaDa]

I'm going to read that this summer. Why is it a pain in the ass?

 

[unknown]

Have you looked at the text?

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm going to read that this summer. Why is it a pain in the ass?

I meant that in the most positive way possible. It's a pain in the ass that you enjoy working through (if you enjoy modernist fiction).

It's a really difficult novel, very unkind to the reader, and features Joyce's signature experimental prose - so you have very poetic passages, neologisms, portmanteaus, and segments without punctuation. The most famous is probably the Penelope section, which is Molly Bloom's chapter. Here's a sampling:

…I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying there’s no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they don’t know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow...

None of the other chapters are quite this difficult to parse, but Joyce plops you into various scenarios that make it difficult to follow along, sometimes. If you're really interested in reading and want to put in a little extra work, there's a helpful text called The Bloomsday Book, by Harry Blamires. It's basically a reader's guide to the novel, and very helpful.

 

[rms]

I have no idea what my first book was, we had a bunch of them and were read to etc prior to reading on our own. I do remember my favorite book at the library when I was young was "Benjy the Football Hero". Kind of like a "Little Giants" sort of story except nothing was organized and the "good kid" was a Cowboys fan lol. Read pretty much every Hardy Boys book the library had. Eventually I switched over to military history and Louis L'Amour probably around age 11.

Edit: We went to the local library every 1-2 weeks.

First one I remember actually really enjoying

 

[no country for old wainds]

What was the first book you read of your own will and interest, rather than school etc? Go.

no fucking idea. used to get eight books out of the library every week as a young kid and plough through them all. sometimes they used to let me get more than 8 even though it was the maximum, nobody wants to be the asshole that discourages a kid from reading i guess. shit like THE HUNGRY CATERPILLAR and THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR UNDER MY BED and WILLY THE WIMP were probably some of the first anyways.

some early favourites:
paul jennings/morris gleitzman - WICKED
bruce coville - ALIENS ATE MY HOMEWORK series
roald dahl - everything
enid blyton - FAMOUS FIVE/SECRET SEVEN series
r.l. stine - GOOSEBUMPS/GHOSTS OF FEAR STREET series
christopher pike - SPOOKSVILLE series
robert swindells - various
philip ridley - SCRIBBLEBOY
malorie blackman - THIEF
gillian cross - the DEMON HEADMASTER series
anthony horowitz - the DIAMOND BROTHERS series

 

[EspaDa]

I meant that in the most positive way possible. It's a pain in the ass that you enjoy working through (if you enjoy modernist fiction).

It's a really difficult novel, very unkind to the reader, and features Joyce's signature experimental prose - so you have very poetic passages, neologisms, portmanteaus, and segments without punctuation. The most famous is probably the Penelope section, which is Molly Bloom's chapter. Here's a sampling:



None of the other chapters are quite this difficult to parse, but Joyce plops you into various scenarios that make it difficult to follow along, sometimes. If you're really interested in reading and want to put in a little extra work, there's a helpful text called The Bloomsday Book, by Harry Blamires. It's basically a reader's guide to the novel, and very helpful.

It seems it will be a tougher read for me than all of Faulkner's stuff. I'm not fond of such long readings but I'll surely try.

 

[no country for old wainds]

at least it isn't finnegan's wake

 

[Einherjar86]

True, I've never braved that beast.

It seems it will be a tougher read for me than all of Faulkner's stuff. I'm not fond of such long readings but I'll surely try.

If you can tolerate Absalom, Absalom! and the Benjy sections of The Sound and the Fury, then you're well-poised to give Ulysses a try.

 

[unknown]

^^ I'd agree

 

[Caecius]

Anyone read this? If so, opinions? No spoilers please.

 

[unknown]

Tied for first place for my favorite novel (the other being Blood Meridian). Every couple of years I reread it, and it's still rewarding.

 

[Caecius]

I cracked the book open when I was young but never finished it. I'm looking to start reading it again but wasn't sure if it was worth the effort. It will probably be the most abstract book I have attempted.

I imagine there are similar books with a unique page layout or scheme.

 

[Caecius]

What was the first book you read of your own will and interest, rather than school etc? Go.

Choose Your Own Adventure or Goosebumps.

 

[Einherjar86]

Anyone read this? If so, opinions? No spoilers please.

This book is fucking fantastic. So impressively written, and also terrifying. I read it while in undergrad, and used to always sleep with the closet door in my apartment wide open. After starting this book, I started shutting that door. Couldn't sleep with it open. I realize that's ridiculous, but it's an unsettling book in certain ways.

All of Danielewski's books feature non-traditional layouts. Some literary scholars refer to it as ergodic literature, or texts that force the reader to really put in some effort to actually read the book.

 

[TageRyche]

I finished the Hank Phillippi Ryan mystery novel Face Time.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

Anyone read this? If so, opinions? No spoilers please.

Thought it was gimmicky garbage personally.

 

[Cronopio]

Very interesting that you guys mention HoL, as I've been taking it from the shelf the last couple of evenings to thumb through. It's been sitting on the shelf for about 10 years, and I never got into it. But maybe now is the time?

 

[Einherjar86]

I think it works as a hit across the board - for fans of (maybe supernatural...?) horror fiction, as well as for literature nerds. I wouldn't call it gimmicky because I think all the "gimmicks" stick the landing. The book takes on the appearance of the house it describes (or tries to describe).

 

[unknown]

The layout of House of Leaves is a big part of how the meaning in the novel is constructed. On the one hand, it's a synthesis of form and content., very much like the poetry of e.e. cummings or the cut-up method of William S. Burroughs. When Navidson is falling in the darkness, the text falls across the page. When the hallway is closing in on Navidson, the text closes in. As Ein mentions, it builds a "house" out of "leaves" (synonymous with "pages"). The other thing with the layout is it pokes fun at academia. A majority of the lists in the footnotes are totally made up bullshit. Some people with WAY more time than most actually found patterns within the footnote lists. Johnny Truant's paranoia of completing the project yet as it's consuming him is a metaphor for pretty much any writing/scholarly endeavor. It's kind of like how "Inception" is a metaphor for film-making. For what it's worth, I found House of Leaves to be MUCH more readable than Only Revolutions and The Fifty Year Sword. I might have to re-attempt those two this summer.