The Books/Reading Thread
- Thread starter Matt
- Start date
Einherjar86
Active Member
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.
rms
Active Member
First one I remember actually really enjoying
no country for old wainds
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,822
- 9,681
- 113
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
Damage Case
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
Active Member
- Nov 23, 2002
- 26,822
- 9,681
- 113
Einherjar86
Active Member
True, I've never braved that beast.
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.
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
fuck ftagn
unknown
fuck ftagn
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.
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.
I imagine there are similar books with a unique page layout or scheme.
Choose Your Own Adventure or Goosebumps.
Einherjar86
Active Member
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.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
Anyone read this? If so, opinions? No spoilers please.
Thought it was gimmicky garbage personally.
Cronopio
Glorious Imperator
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
Active Member
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
fuck ftagn
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.
Vegard Pompey
ALLY TO GOOD, NIGHTMARE TO YOU
It's well-realized for what it is, purposeful and thematically cohesive and all that. But it's all just an exercise, a showcase of literary acrobatics. At best I can admire the cleverness of it and that's it. I think of it as the literary equivalent of "Inception" although I suppose most people wouldn't interpret that as criticism. The experimental formatting is honestly not something I think has a place in literature, at least not the way it is utilized in HoL. The formatting is not supposed to draw attention to itself because it's not supposed to be part of the text because formatting is not something that is going to have any emotional impact on me as a reader. The fact that the book itself is implied to be a labyrinth is also an issue I have with it because it implies that it is something for the reader to literally lose oneself in. To break the fourth wall in such a way and imply that degree of reader involvement to me is a gimmick that kills all suspension of disbelief. I don't understand how someone could ever feel unnerved to the point of having to shut their closet door before sleeping by a book that constantly calls attention to itself being a book.
@unknown I actually started writing this before I saw your post and it's funny that we both should mention Inception.
@unknown I actually started writing this before I saw your post and it's funny that we both should mention Inception.
Einherjar86
Active Member
The Fifty-Year Sword was a really difficult book, which is ironic considering how quickly it reads. I need to give that another go too...
Part of it has to do with being able to appreciate different facets of the same text. On one hand, House of Leaves is a horror story, and a successful one; on the other hand, it's a self-reflexive commentary on literary form, participating in a tradition that goes back to Tristram Shandy.
But ultimately, my feeling is that when the distinction between text and world begins to dissolve, that generates its own sense of anxiety, of the uncanny. And I didn't lose sleep over House of Leaves, and I don't think it would have been debilitating had I decided to leave my closet door open. But it did occupy my thoughts so much after reading it that I felt more comfortable shutting the door. There's a certain jouissance to playing along with the magic show.
