What's a noise dude reading?

how fun is it to read books with exclamation points in the title!

Picked up Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and I am excited.

bill c. malone - country music u.s.a.
glenn & henry comic
selected letters of john fante

xpost. my dad told me heinlein's 'stranger in a strange land' was his favorite book. i was gonna pick it up for my last vacation, but i wasn't really feeling it from scanning it in the store, and it was kinda too big to bring on vacay.

i ended up reading the Road, which i loved. is the movie terrible? charlize? ugh.

I loved Stranger in a Strange Land.
Huge influence on all that hippy shit, of course.
There's a reference to it in David Crosby's "Triad"

Suppose I should note that I mostly love classic sci-fi.

i'll eventually read it i think. i've never really done too much sci-fi

bill c. malone - country music u.s.a.

ian if you come across a copy of John Morthland's Best of Country Music, snap it up

will do.

how fun is it to read books with exclamation points in the title!

― peacocks, Thursday, May 27, 2010 9:55 AM (Yesterday)

otm, it's really good so far too

gonna try to see if the library has a circulating copy of this http://www.amazon.com/Monument-Good-Intentions-Maryland-Penitentiary/dp/0938420674?&camp=212361 because i love the title and it seems right up my alley

not that it has an exclamation point in the title but i will probably start reading it soon, for the record

let the great world spin

i'm really starting to think i need to schedule some sit down novel reading time.

i am a fugitive...! is great and only took me like 2 days to read. i am reading "the real eve: modern man's journey out of africa" now

mccarthy - suttree
journals of john cheever

Jim Thompson - The Killer Inside Me

fawwaz traboulsi - a history of modern lebanon

peter ackroyd's blake biography

shoot mama i just finished ben marcus' "the flame alphabet" oh, such a thing of giddy delight. he's bolted his dusty post-apoc quay bros jungian schtick onto the story of "chitty chitty bang bang". downright cheesy james patterson style in places, but he has such an exquisite turn of phrase, i'll forgive him that. i was down on the guy for a while cos i failed to reread "notable american women" ( sorta one trick pony of a book ), discovered stanley crawford's "some instructions.." which with a little (actually, a whole shitload of) added obfuscatory pseudo-symbology was effectively "the age of wire and string", and i heard an interview with him where he said "yeah i'd liken my work to kafka's" (a disappointingly naive, self regarding and coattailsy thing to say ), but he has now redeemed himself. the book is grand.

been on a binge recently. can't get enough & gf been away from home, so:
stanley crawford - gascoyne: ropey sub terry southern 60's "satire";
stanley crawford - travel notes - goofy monty python meets hunter thompson, still a disappointment compared to "unguentine"/ "some instructions..." which are divine.
stanley crawford - mayordomo - neat n sweet non fiction about stewarding an irrigation ditch.
jon ronson - the psychopath test - did this in 5 hours.
conan doyle - hound of the baskervilles. loved it.
thomas bernhard "the loser" (auf englisch, schande!)tiresome in that he always writes about self-appointed superior ponce so sympathetically, but being a self-appointed superior ponce, ich liebte das, natürlich.
re-read self's "quantity theory" o, for when he was on, he was on.
i think i shall attempt shatner's teklab next.

clark ashton smith - the book of hyperborea
george saunders - civilwarland in bad decline (re-reading some stories not all)
richard stark - the hunter
several brett halliday 'michael shayne mysteries'
jim thompson 'a hell of a woman' (preferred this to pop 1280 maybe.)
charles williams 'a touch of death'

hound of the baskervilles otm

recently finished:
julian barnes - the sense of an ending
dava sobel - a more perfect heaven
carl t bogus - buckley: william f buckley and the rise of amerikan conservatism
jo nesbo - headhunters
james ellroy - blood's a rover

just started:
derek raymond - how the dead live

on deck:
jennifer egan - visit from the goon squad
louis menand - the metaphysical club

j

carl t bogus - buckley: william f buckley and the rise of amerikan conservatism

never has an author's name been more appropriate - this book was half-assed in terms of content and execution. would still like to read a thorough takedown of mr. patrician smarty-pants

i am so slowly reading
eldridge cleaver - soul on ice
an anthology about baltimore riots in 1968 i started in december

but i'm not allowed to start another book until i finish both

Soul on ice is great

Currently reading John Calvin Batchelor's The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica which is excellent.

Preceded by:
Kate Wilhelm's Juniper Time which I didn't like as much Where Late The Sweet Birds Sing
Chester Brown's Paying For It which I found difficult to get through
Vladimir Sorokin's Ice which might be better in russian, but I found the translation tough to take
Christopher Priest's The Inverted World which I also really liked

Next will be Michael Bishop's No Enemy But Time as I slowly carve me way through some late 60s-early80s sci-fi on various lists that I'd previously never read.

about 200pgs into the Art of Fielding. it's aight

richard stark - the hunter

Everything I've read from the Parker books has been very entertaining. I'm not usually into the whole hard-boiled style but Luc Sante's blog sold me on this series. It was nice to see them published again with Sante doing the intros.

I actually slightly prefer the Dortmunder books, but I like pretty much everything that Stark/Westlake wrote.

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, keep getting images from the Peter O'Toole film which I wish i didn't would like it more if my mind created its own images.

Also Judge Dredd/Hammerstein.

finished:
osamu dazai - no longer human (very bleak!)
gene wolfe - book of the new sun
georges simenon - maigret and the death of a harbor master

reading:
charles williams - the wrong venus
robert b parker - the widening gyre (still digging these)
donald westlake - get real (the first dortmunder i am reading. i have a few others that i got at thrift stores i haven't checked out yet. but i love the parker & grofield stuff, and some of the other one-off novels of his i have read as well--361 was good, so was Somebody Owes Me Money.

Adam Winkler - Gunfight: The Battle Over The right to Bear Arms in America

I'm about 150 pages from the end of Bolano's 2666

reading now:
the jewel in the skull - michael moorcock (silly pulpy sword & sorcery but i like that stuff sometimes)
the wrong venus - charles williams (dirty-book themed crime caper, love williams.)

just finished:
the hot spot, also by charles williams. for fans of the usual suspects -- willeford, thompson, goodis et al. small town car salesman gets tied up with two women and several criminal activities ensue.

gave up on get real.

i'll get back to it.

Any Simenon recommendations, ian? I picked up a nice Maigret omnibus yesterday and started with Liberty Bar.

i am fairly new to simenon actually, but he is probably my wife's favorite writer after Raymond Chandler. She swears by all the Maigret mysteries. Of the non-Maigret stuff, I thought Dirty Snow was a-mazing.

the jewel in the skull - michael moorcock

could never get into anything outside the sci fi except elric. is that corum or hawkmoon or what?

i'm trying to read "the golden space" but it's pretty hard going (see sci fi thread, recently)

tempted to switch to babel 187 or engine summer

that is some hawkmoon action.
i never read anything outside the elric when i was a kid.

ditched "Vineland" to do 3 barthelmes on the trot.
on 4th & enjoying immensely. he clicks for me, unlike the pynch. an effortless read.
also 1/2way through "the ticket that exploded". not read any burroughs in abt 15yrs & i forgot just how fantastic he gets at the top of his game.

finished 2666. really blew me away unlike Savage Detectives which I thought was pretty overrated. not sure what I'm going to pick up next. someone left a book called "Hopeful Monsters" by Nicholas Moseley in a free pile on the sidewalk and I grabbed it but not sure if I want to read it now.

oh yeah also read Ragtime a while ago, that was good