What are you reading?

[laika]

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart

Picked this up on a whim at a used bookstore--i had never heard of it before. It's a novel of prose poetry. So unbelievably over the top. Sometimes the language is so raw that it pulls my heart into to my throat. Sometimes it's so freaking purple that I want to start laughing.

[swami]

Shantaram By Gregory David Roberts...
IAm consumed by this book Cant imagine how they can ever make a succesfull movie, the best thing about the book are the small nuances, debates and departures into the characters psyche that make it amazing...

[skecr8r_l8r]

which one?!

Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, of course! ;-) And Kafka's "Amerika" ... I have no explanation for why I didn't get around to this comedy earlier.

I hate Wallace's writing, it hurts my little brain to read him. But at the same time I also want to read IJ. Cerebral drama.

Still more Mishima to finish. Next up is a long overdue read of Jeffrey Sach's The End of Poverty.

[Fade to Black]

Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí, of course! ;-) .

i don't understand the language, but im guessing unbearable lightness of being?

[Faust]

i don't understand the language, but im guessing unbearable lightness of being?

correct

[qnc.hst]

2066 by Bolano

Sorry to pull this up so far after the fact, but how are you liking this? Hoping to get it for xmas. I've heard some mixed things, but it sounds like something I'll enjoy (hopefully, for the kind of commitment required).

Just finished Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear by Javier Marias. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him thus far, for more or less similar reasons each time around...

Now I'm back to some more Borges, currently the Aleph and Other Stories... really loving this stuff.

Next year is gonna be crazy-stacked with massive tomes. Not gonna finish these, but aside from Bolaño I'm still gunning for Anathem and now I've been tipped to Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler... and I'm sure plenty more shall invade the radar as well... need a blinder/filter...

[Fade to Black]

correct

I bought this book today. The introductory 5 or so pages are breathtaking in their clarity...immersing in the text has an oddly calming effect on me, and it's been a while since I've felt this tranquil (Self and Roth, while both still very good, seemed to appeal to me i realize now as they enabled the rage and urgency that has troubled me pretty much my whole life...had to stop 2/3rds through Sabbath's Theater; after the sequence of letters from Roseanna's dad to her I just couldn't go on). And after that last poem I wrote and started reading this book, don't really feel the urge to write at the moment

I wonder how much of the original text is lost in translation between languages. Kundera (or the translator, or both) really nailed it.

[destroyed]

I ought to read ULoB, it has been some time; I remember loving it.

I am starting on Bob Dylan Chronicles Vol 1. Really good so far. Very lucid prose.

[Faust]

I ought to read ULoB, it has been some time; I remember loving it.

I am starting on Bob Dylan Chronicles Vol 1. Really good so far. Very lucid prose.

Yes. And then immediately follow up by Immortality, which is my favorite Kundera novel.

[Fade to Black]

that was the one i was gonna check out next...had a hard time pickin which book to read after ULOB because this guy has the best book titles in the world, if I am trying to familiarize myself with an author whose work or genre is pretty foreign to my reading experience, I will generally go by the best title and work my way through from there. Very hard with Kundera.

[Faust]

I bought this book today. The introductory 5 or so pages are breathtaking in their clarity...immersing in the text has an oddly calming effect on me, and it's been a while since I've felt this tranquil (Self and Roth, while both still very good, seemed to appeal to me i realize now as they enabled the rage and urgency that has troubled me pretty much my whole life...had to stop 2/3rds through Sabbath's Theater; after the sequence of letters from Roseanna's dad to her I just couldn't go on). And after that last poem I wrote and started reading this book, don't really feel the urge to write at the moment

I wonder how much of the original text is lost in translation between languages. Kundera (or the translator, or both) really nailed it.

My favorite professor (and intellectual) calls Roth the indigenous berserk. I don't know how much is lost in translation, but I have been tempted to read it in Russian, which is much closer to Czech. Maybe I'll do that one day.

[destroyed]

errr. i meant to write REread ULoB. i love that central european paranoiac atmosphere, generally speaking.

i will definitely get around to immortality.

[Fade to Black]

yeah i dunno if it's a region/culture-specific thing...it is refreshing to see someone like Kundera, who can meditate on equally weighty and troubling, even tragic issues concerning mankind as a Roth, but do so in a manner that is more calm and personable rather than goad the reader to revel in the nihilistic excess that the author has set the tone for.

[Faust]

/\ your answer is on one of the first pages - Kundera thinks life is light, Roth thinks life is heavy.

[destroyed]

Hence the title...

:P

I have so many books "on deck": Cyclonopedia, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, Dictionary of the Khazars...

My wallet moves faster than my eyeballs!