I've been rereading Jean Toomer's Cane. It's worth the price for "Box Seat" alone:

This is from the first page of the short story where the (black) protagonist is walking up to a girl's house for a visit (the girl lives in a mid-class neighborhood which makes the protagonist uncomfortable).

Excerpt

Dan: Break in. Get an ax and smash in. Smash in their faces. I'll show em. Break into an engine-house, steal a thousand horsepower fire truck. Smash in with the truck. I'll show em. Grab an ax and brain em. Cut em up. Jack the Ripper. Baboon from the zoo. And then the Cops come. "No, I aint a baboon. I aint Jack the Ripper. I'm a poor man out of work. Take your hands off me, you bull-necked bears. Look into my eyes. I am Dan Moore. I was born in a canefield. The hands of Jesus touched me. I am come to a sick world to heal it. Only the other day, a dope fiend brushed against me-- Don't Laugh, you mighty, juicy, meat-hook men. Give me your fingers and I will peel them as if they were ripe bananas."

I finished Blindness by Jose Saramago. I'd like to read the original poruguese, but the english version was great. Very macabre but not annoyingly symbolic. It's about "white blindness" that is very contagious and badness happens.

Saramago uses unconventional punctuation and dialogues are not really "quoted" in the proper manner with everything being strung together. It's neat. It gives you the literary equivalent of being blind as well because it's hard to tell who is saying what. Fast read, too.

I'm almost finished with American Psycho. I borrowed it to read on a train ride back from Milwaukee last weekend and it's actually really good. Disturbing, but very good.

Faiz

i don't know if anybody noticed, but this is a thread that made it over 100 replies without a single one of them being from me. just wanted to chime in and say that i fucking hate books, and reading, and that i think reading books is for suckers. that being said, the only book i really ever gave two shits about is catch 22. other than that, they can all go screw.

aight, peace yo!

toomanyhelicopters wrote:i don't know if anybody noticed, but this is a thread that made it over 100 replies without a single one of them being from me. just wanted to chime in and say that i fucking hate books, and reading, and that i think reading books is for suckers. that being said, the only book i really ever gave two shits about is catch 22. other than that, they can all go screw.

aight, peace yo!

Ha ha! Yeah.

i read "blood meridian" by cormac mccarthy about once every two months.
it's the most phenomenal piece of writing i've ever read and then reread a whole bunch of times.

I am reading the Fall (clever title huh?) by Mick Middles and Mark E Smith, tho I have a feeling that Middles did a little bit more of the work. It's okay...

kerble wrote:I'm almost finished with American Psycho. I borrowed it to read on a train ride back from Milwaukee last weekend and it's actually really good. Disturbing, but very good.

Faiz

I didn't hate this as much as I was led to believe I would. I thought it was ultimately flawed, but I like the idea of this guy who basically doesn't hide the fact that he's a killer but no one believes him because it would be too horrible to admit.


I'm in the middle of Delillo's Cosmopolis, which is okay so far, but not his best. It may get better, but I'm not liking the writing style. It's more clipped and slangy than his usual.

I have just completed Porno by Irvine Welsh which was very good, rife with phonetic headaches, but ultimately enjoyable.

China Mieville's The Scar, which was a little thick, yet richly detailed.

Also Lethem's Fortress of Solitude (halfway through). And a series of Frank Miller's Sin City graphic-novel-comic-collections.

Dylan wrote:
I'm in the middle of Delillo's Cosmopolis, which is okay so far, but not his best. It may get better, but I'm not liking the writing style. It's more clipped and slangy than his usual.

lord help me how I hated this book!

Great! I'm glad to see that a few folks are enthusiastic about Cryptonomicon. That may be my favorite book of all time. It's the only book I've ever completely re-read immediately upon completion.

I finished Quicksilver last month and was a little overwhelmed. The Confusion is sitting next to my bed, but I feel like I need to re-read the first half of Quicksilver first to figure out who is who and in what year, etc, etc. Maybe I should just dive in, though?

Reading the Keith Moon biography, Moon, at Todd Trainer's suggestion right now.

On deck: Moneyball.

Bob