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I love a Good "Good Book" thread

K

Kento

Duke status
Jan 11, 2002
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The Bar
Just finished reading Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. Picked it up for free at kids' school book swap.

Damn good read. Similarities to Gravity's Rainbow the way characters come and go, along with abject randomness. But different in the way that it flowed and it flowed hard. Serious stream-of-consciousness going on which completely immersed you as the pages turned - high compliment. But also, you're reading through it and thinking ok back up back up wtf did I just read? Just so goddamn weird. Took a longer time to read than I would have thought as I kept flipping back pages at certain points.

And I swear Tarantino took parts from this book for Kill Bill. Holy sh!t I don't even know where to begin. :roflmao:


Pynchon must be one weird dude to come up with this sh!t. I say that about Neal Stephenson too.
 
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Subway

Subway

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Staff member
Dec 31, 2008
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LBNY
I need to give him a try

im tear assing through all of the John Sandford novels. Lucas Davenport. That fuckin Flowers. Not exactly high literature but Sandford is one of the better detective writers of the last 30 years. Good escapist crime and shoot em up fiction
 
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sussle

sussle

Rabbitt Bartholomew status
Oct 11, 2009
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Subway said:
I need to give him a try

im tear assing through all of the John Sandford novels. Lucas Davenport. That fuckin Flowers. Not exactly high literature but Sandford is one of the better detective writers of the last 30 years. Good escapist crime and shoot em up fiction
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that fuckin' Flowers was a lot more interesting before he got married, imho :poke:
 
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tenover

tenover

Kelly Slater status
Jan 17, 2003
9,339
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Point Loma, CA
Just finished "Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas"(non-fiction) by John Burnett. Loved it. Not a heavy read, but super interesting, although it was written back in the early 2000's, so things have probably only gotten worse since then.

Now I'm going down the "modern piracy" rabbit hole on YouTube:oops:
 
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Aruka

Aruka

Tom Curren status
Feb 23, 2010
12,105
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PNW
I've never fully been able to get into Pynchon. I think I've started "The Crying of Lot 49" multiple times over the years and have yet to finish it.

Read a couple William Gay novels on my recent trip. The Long Home and Provinces of the Night. Both are great. They remind me of McCarthy but I found them to be a little less religious and a bit more lighthearted and funny. Very well written in the Southern Gothic style. I will likely read the rest of his books this year.

Astoria by Peter Stark. Nonfiction account of the expeditions to build a fur trading settlement at the mouth of the Columbia river. Takes place not long after Lewis and Clark did their thing. John Astor sent ships and an overland expedition. Things did not go well. If you like accounts of people freezing to death, eating their own horses, murdering and being murdered by natives, you will like this book. Well written and fairly easy for a nonfiction book.

Flannery O'Conner - Collected Works. Short stories, also in the Southern Gothic tradition. Some gems for sure.

Paul Theroux - The Last Train to Zona Verde, The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster. All great with Zona Verde probably being my favorite of the bunch. Paul Theroux in Africa is always a good time.

Cormac Mccarthy - Stella Maris. The companion novel to The Passenger. His final novel. Very different from anything else he's written. It is no doubt a well written and thought provoking book. After finishing it my first impression was that it was too short and maybe not up to the standards of his other works. A few months later and I still find myself thinking about it though. Will have to read both it and The Passenger again back to back without such a break in between to see if they make more sense as more of a single unit. RIP to one of the greats.
 
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enframed

enframed

Tom Curren status
Apr 11, 2006
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Del Boca Vista, Phase III
Aruka said:
I've never fully been able to get into Pynchon. I think I've started "The Crying of Lot 49" multiple times over the years and have yet to finish it.
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Not my favorite Pynchon, I still have a few to read but loved GR, Vineland, V, and Inherent Vice.

Recently read:

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather. Good book, short, read it on a plane from Denver to Burbank. My grandmother's favorite writer and I liked my grandmother, she was fucking rad.

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith. Was good, but the ending could have been better. I've liked Smith since White Teeth came out in the 90s(?). Hadn't read this one, her second I think.

Currently reading Emergency, a book of short stories by Kathleen Alcott. Helluva a fucking writer. Need a novel from her.

Picked up that above one and a bunch more: some PKD, Dostoyevsky, someone called Vladimir Sorokin, and a Henry James, whom I've never read, all from Chaucer's Book Shop in Santa Barbara. If you're ever up there, I highly recommend it. One of the great book shops.
 
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B

Bob Dobbalina

Miki Dora status
Feb 23, 2016
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I finished Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. THe ending fizzled for me, but holy moly. Another sci-fi/dystopian future that seems very close to our current trajectory.




Working on this right now. So far it's fast moving and really, really good.
Granted, it hits close to home as I've been involved in San Jose, in one way or another, for the last 10-15 years.
 
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enframed

enframed

Tom Curren status
Apr 11, 2006
11,717
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Del Boca Vista, Phase III
enframed said:
Currently reading Emergency, a book of short stories by Kathleen Alcott. Helluva a fucking writer. Need a novel from her.
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Finished this one, fantastic book. Her writing is beautiful and powerful and makes you think. She has a way with words. The above book is short stories about women, and they are altogether typical stories of women, but uniquely told. Just ordered her three novels, will report back after the first, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets.
 
B

Bob Dobbalina

Miki Dora status
Feb 23, 2016
4,309
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The stack next to my bed keeps growing taller.

There's Always This Year.
Hanif Abdurraquib

I've been on a binge of his work. The book he did on A Tribe Called Quest, Little Devil in America, and They Can't Kill Us Til They Kill Us were all great. I'm looking forward to this one.



Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange.
I really liked There, There. I feel like I should probably revisit it before reading this, but I probably wont.

 
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enframed

enframed

Tom Curren status
Apr 11, 2006
11,717
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Del Boca Vista, Phase III
Absence by Peter Handke. The second of his books I've read, the first being The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Very good, and interesting. Probably will have to revisit. Hard to explain.

Up next is Their Four Hearts by Vladimir Sorokin.
 
enframed

enframed

Tom Curren status
Apr 11, 2006
11,717
6,494
113
Del Boca Vista, Phase III
Buck_86 said:
Just scored this from thriftbooks.com awesome site to get books on the cheap. Stoked to get into this 1
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Oooh, nice. I've not read that but I just picked up a bunch of books on NYRB press, mainly because I like the continuity of the covers and they have some unusual stuff.

Their Four Hearts is a fucking insane book.

Up next is The Butt by Will Self. 30 pages in, highly recommended. Hilarious. Guy decides he's gonna quit smoking and flicks his last butt of a balcony. The butt lands on some dude's head on the balcony below. I won't say any more, but it's fucking funny.
 
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