What's a noise dude reading?

am i the only person who finds philip roth unreadable?

no! i hate philip roth. i read the dying animal and thought it was terrible. told to try american pastoral, couldn't get more than a hundred pages into it.

kinda want to read to the John Daly autobiography

also, just finished the magus. haven't picked up my next yet. maybe i'll finish the golden compass tonight, since i'm no more than 50 pages from the end anyway.

american pastoral is 100 pages too long, but it's really worth it. dying animal is considered "bad" roth too, i think?? anyway, AP is really cool but a bit of a slog.

dude, ian, don't start there. read portnoy's complaint. or better yet, read Our Gang. Our Gang is noize. Sabbath's Theater is total punk rock as well. and brilliant.

all the later stuff is just phil itching for a nobel.

anyway, i am reading:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c2/c12224.jpg

which is great.

i also own the hardcover, which has this cover:

http://archive.salon.com/special/1998/bookawards/src/19gaitskill.gif

newest trade paperback cover (and the worst):

http://a7.vox.com/6a00c2251c7d24604a00c22523031f604a-500pi

DON QUIXOTEEEE

Sabbath's Theater is my favourite Roth book (I have read two, so whatevs). Don Quixote is awes. I finished Part I a year or so ago and was kind of exhausted. I should go back and read II.

dude, ian, don't start there. read portnoy's complaint.

yea Roth's older stuff is less self-conscious, Goodbye Columbus was always my fave, see the movie too w/Rich Benjamin and Ali McGraw. But avoid The Ghost Writer and other Zuckerman novels like the plague.

American Pastoral gets too cerebral/weighty but I loved that character "The Swede"

g marcus made me want to like roth..but the fucker is so mannish and exhausting...based on i married a commie

im trudging through todd gitlins the 60's...
some book of original sources from the 60's.
berkowitz's something happened (cult/political overview of the 70's)
anderson's: revolution the reagan legacy
rosen's masks and mirrors:gen x and the chameleon personality
generation me: why todays young americans are more confident, assertiv, entitled -- and more miserable than ever
and some other bad book about the babyboomer generation that ic ant find on my desk right now

will also dig into my old friend xtian t3b0rd0's book called we go liquid...which is about a kid who gets spam emails from his mather after her death

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0345341848.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://www.outatime.it/ritornoalfuturo/materiale//bttf1(14)A_Match_Made_in_Space.jpg

I went ahead and read that Rolling Stones Exile on Main St. book, it was pretty awful

the dude does all this authorial dick-swinging like "my book rools, ur book sucks, I am god of all Stones lore, all your facts are rong"

then at least three times later on in the book he cites wikipedia as a source

there are a few good anecdotes but mostly it was pointless, he spends a whole page on a takedown of Liz Phair. "her record didn't even have anything to do w/ Exile and yet the critics nutted all over it wtf!!?!"

will probably read this next once shannon finishes it

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http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41MJR0DE62L._AA240_.jpg

i'm not all that noise, tho

I am reading Foundation for the first time since jr. high and I'm seeing a lot of acid in the ideas of psychohistory.

After this, I do not know what I'll read. Maybe a book I found on the street about how to get personal grants.

I had Asimov sign my copy of Foundation Trilogy at a Star Trek convention in the '70s, ian!

I'm reading I Am Legend.

cormac mccarthy - blood meridian

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http://www.booksamillion.com/bam/covers/0/06/092/909/006092909X_l.gifnow

No Country For Old Men

re-reading in the name of the rose

...in penn station

right now:

Rereading: The Europe of Trusts by Susan Howe
Reading: A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes
Recently Read: Crush by Richard Siken, Singularities by Susan Howe

cormac mccarthy - blood meridian

^^ my grandfather recommends this. i have never read mccarthy; do i read this one or no country for old men firsts?

blood meridian is bloody and gory. supposed to be the "best" mccarthy, i've never been able to click with it and i've tried 3x. i can't get past page 100. the road is awesome, no country for old men is just okay.

everyone seems to hate no country for old men

ive only ready all the pretty horses, the crossing and the road. i liked them all tho the 1st 2 might be a little cowboy-y for some.

ian I can lend you blood meridian if you want. I liked it a lot.

in fact I might bring it to Freddy's tomorrow and pretend it's a birthday present

i love blood meridian

has anyone read Tree of Smoke?

dave, i can bring you that yahowa DVD.

i read Tree of Smoke. i thought it was pretty blah. i liked the solider stuff but the CIA officer stuff was a real slog. the two stories merged, sorta. some longish books don't seem long, they fly right by and you want to read more. that was not the case with this one though, it was a drag. the guy is great with a short story but his long stuff i just don't enjoy.

it was also really choppy for a novel? i wanted him to get into certain scenes in real depth and length, but he would just cut scenes off at the knees and stuff. it may be worth looking into though, if you like him, it wasn't horrible or anything.

I've read almost everything by him so I'm sure I'll check it out at some point. maybe I'll wait for the paperback.

No Country for Old Men isn't as good as The Road. The accents seem more forced in print than they did on screen and there's far too much of the "back in the day, the world was..." narration.

everyone seems to hate no country for old men

I liked it well enough -- not at all my genre -- until the sheriff's "society's goin to hell cuz people don't say 'please'" chapter.

ha xpost

i never read denis johnson before - after seeing tree of smoke on every year end list i got already dead and am crazily enjoying it - tho only 50 pages in.

Already Dead is great but it lags a bit in the middle. it has some absolutely gorgeous passages though.

denis johnson for me is like Jesus' Son >>>>>> Already Dead >> Fiskadoro > Resuscitation of a Hanged Man but I liked parts of all of them. Jesus' Son is an all time fave

jesus son is super ace

movie is pretty good too

Strange Piece of Paradise, Terri Jentz (2006)

Two college girls participate in something called the "Bikecentennial", which involves bicycling across America in '76. A few days into their journey, they are camping out in the Oregon desert, and some guy drives his truck over the tent in which they are both sleeping, and then attacks them both with a hatchet. Miraculously, they survive and manage to go on with life. Over the years, the author becomes increasingly haunted by the psychological scars that she bears from the whole traumatic ordeal (the axe-dude was never caught), and she courageously ends up re-visiting the scene of the crime and begins to track down the psychopath. The greatest true crime book ever? And, unlike most entries in the genre, it's written in first-person...plus the author is just plain rad. A fucking great book.

That's my Reading Rainbow style review!

i started tree of smoke, read about 100 pages--there wasn't anything wrong with it, but it wasn't really grabbing me either.

i suck at reading fiction these days, though.

Me too, why is that? Someone broked my imagination?