They Cage the Animals at Night
Cosmos, Carl Sagan
The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan
Robot Chronicles, Isaac Asimov
Animal Farm, Orwell
The Most Beautiful House in the World, Ribkowski
Bridgett Jones Diary
Invisible Cities, Calavino
currently reading- Night Jasmine, Mary Lou Widmere, Takes place in 1900's New Orleans, love story and a peasant girls life.
if you are a history nut it's(DaVinci Code) pretty interesting, but i have to warn you(as a history buff) that the little "facts" are true(about Da Vinci & others) but the STORYLINE is false. At one point i even had to go and look some of the stuff up, he merges the storyline with historical references SEAMLESSLY. All in all good story, especially if you like logic games and puzzles. My only deal with it is in certain places it gets a little predictable.
Apparently most of Dan Brown's books revolve around either code breaking, logic games, or other fun mental puzzles. I also read Angels and Demons(Prequel to DaVinci Code??)and it was not as good, consistently predictable.
PS. If you do end up looking up some of the historical stuff BEWARE: conspiracy theories abound
oh, and i'm going to have to check into that invisible cities, looked it up and read a couple pages... should be here in a couple of days(amazon). thanks lexi
neal stephenson...Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash...both good reads.
Arthur C. Clarke...Tales from the White Hart...great short stories
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Hobbit
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Complete AutoCAD Users Manual...great for rainy days and hot cocoa.
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance- Robert M. Pirsig
architorture - it's not so much the Zen as the general philosophy that surrounds the story. Interesting if you like philosophy, a bit dull as a pure narative. I take it for what it is and enjoy the journey (every time I re-read it).
i have no read fight club, although i did read choke. I also flipped through some of the pages from his other books. I agree, palahniuk is a very good writer. Im just waiting to see if he can catch the general public off guard and surprise us again with an even better novel. I'm just afraid that his work is becoming too similar and that the shock value and dark humor (obsession with drugs, multiple complex disorder, sex, robbery, etc.) has begun to wear alittle thin on me.
If you missed it in 2003, I'd suggest Wings of Madness. A biography of aeronaut Alberto Santos-Dumont.
"Although little known in the United States, Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) was the toast of Europe at the time, called by some "The Napoleon of the Air."" -NPR review
Decosterd & Rahm's Physiological Architecture - it has a great glow in the dark cover, and is part works, part manifesto. The opening pages are an examination of Nietzsche's physiological aesthetics typed in white ink. None of their work has been built yet though.
Also, I second the recommendation of Borges - absolutely beautiful. You can obtain an mp3 narration of the Library of Babel from http://www.akirarabelais.com/index_folder/38.html (find the link). I listened to it over and over whilst completing my thesis...
I am still battling with Pynchon's Mason & Dixon after a number of years.
Last Year: The Devil in the White City was good. It's about Burnham, the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893, and a serial killer.
Other recent notabale books have been:
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Chambon
Baudolino by Eco
Da Vinci Code was full of fascinating "facts" (like the Lourve pyramid for example has 666 panes of glass, something Mitterenad requested)
but the writing is amateurish and the characters are shallow.
I don't know about last year as all I read were the latest Harry Potter, The Fountainhead and Graphics Standards. Your choice. All time: Cats Cradle by Vonnegut.
The only book published last year that I read was "The Seductor" by Jan Kjaerstad, and it was a slight disappointment.
Favourite books of all times:
Dostojevskij "The Karamazov Brothers"
Balzac "La peau de chagrin"
Mann "Doctor Faustus"
Beckett "Molloy"
Borges "Labyrinths"
"Elizabeth Costello" by Coetzee last year sent me into an incredible Coetzee spiral -- "Disgrace" being the best of his stuff.
"Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann is probably my all-time favorite ("Zauberberg" for a-f, and yes, I did read it in German); Faustus is of course fantastic as well. As is Karamazov -- and anything by Chekov, and you should try short stories by Tagore.
I never really got into Borges (or Calvino, for that matter); nice mechanical workings, but not enough soul.
Zen is good if you can stand long winded explanations and descriptions. to be honest the last 50 pages or so are hard to get through and quite gratuitous...I like it personally because it offers good insights to aspects in life which I tend to question regularly...I would read it again. Along the same lines is a much shorter book called "Illusions: The adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" That one you can get through n an hour or so. I can't remember the authors name right now.
I'll add another book to my last just coz it's an interessting read...
"Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television"
written in the 1970's by Jerry Mander (obviously a pseudonym, i don't know the guy's real name) an insiders take on using television as widespread communication/cultural and societal manipulating machine. Interesting stuff.
slapdash:
Yes, I read "Zauberberg" as well, and of course it should be on the list as well, but my fascination with serialism forced me to choose "Doctor Faustus". I'm diving into "The Idiot" at the moment - very promising - Dostojevskij is always brilliant.
The Calvino-phenomenon is a good point. Somehow the "best of" lists at archinect always seem to include "Invisible Cities". Doesn't anyone dare to drop some literary heavy-weighters: Ibsen, Goethe, Kafka or Alighieri? I'm sure Harold Bloom would disapprove with this thread. ;)
:-) let's hope that Bloom doesn't read archinect in his spare time. (but when i was choosing schools, i was really tempted to go to yale over where i'm going now just for the chance to take a seminar w/Bloom, actually...)
i love all four of the big guys you mentioned; and as far as architecture's concerned, i think kafka has an incredible imagination -- i'm thinking of some of the weird scenes in "amerika", where the narrator is on a high floor in a strange apartment building, watching a weird election campaign parade below; or the penal colony, or the architecture of the city in the Castle -- the shape and disposition of buildings establishes a powerful psychological "feeling".
actually, architecture recently led me to some great literature -- i read about steven holl's museum for the novelist knut hamsun, and it led me to read his most famous work, "Hunger" -- if you like Dostoevsky, I bet you would love this, as well!
and finally, as far as heavy-weights goes -- i noticed this in the music thread as well; seems like hardly anyone listens to "classical" music. (or at least the set of architects/students who listen to it doesn't seem to intersect with the set of people who read archinect.)
Jun 4, 04 10:49 pm ·
·
Mann's JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS is much better than THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Liked THE HOLY SINNER too.
The short stories of Heinrich von Kleist are likewise worthwhile, e.g., MICHAEL KOHLHAAS.
Am I the only architect to have read Merrill's THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER?
BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS is much more entertaining than the mediocre DA VINCI CODE.
recently:
Summerland by Michael Chabon
(it's sort of a kid's book but amazing how much stuff is in it--baseball, llorando, structure of the universe, loneliness/difference. also great: Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh)
other good relatively recent ones:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
older good ones:
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (also his short stories)
Howard's End by E.M.Forster
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (completely post-modern--reads like Joyce's Ulysses long before Joyce)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche (Truffant's movie was based on this book--some of the dialogue/narration is straight from the text)
want to read:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Yo! Enough with the lists. We're all impressed by the literary name dropping, now get over it. Try to say something about the book, so the rest of us who may have missed a great novel or author can understand why it's so gr- gr- fk'n great!
the most epic and rewarding book I have ever read. I finished it over a christmas holiday two years ago and it when i put it down i felt like i had been slogged with a king hit in the chest. It took me a couple of days to recoved from that really nice fuzzy feeling where your walking around doing normal things but your head is in another completely different place - it made me a more humble person - the beauty of just being alive - trajic and sad but uplifting but not in an inspirational way - kind of the opposite to inspiration - ive been saving it up for a nice long holiday where i can enjoy it all over agin
Read Choke.
I have read all of Palaniuks books, and Choke is the best. I could definately relate to the supporting character, Denny. He becomes distraught with his ever passing life, and begins to collect rocks. One for every day. He's broke, confused, skinny and determined.
anyone else like dave eggers? i read "you shall know our velocity" last year and was floored. just finished "heartbreaking work of staggering genius" last week. also exceptional i thought...
haruki murakami's "wind-up bird chronicle" v good.
all you ppl into pahlaniuk's stuff should maybe check out irvine welsh. "filth" was rockin. also a british writer, david peace, writes very dark gritty mystery/serial murderer books based on the rampage of the yorkshire ripper back in 70s leeds.
otherwise i'm reading koolhaas or football books.
Dave Eggers is fantastic, read A.H.W.O.S.G. when it first came out and was beyond impressed. It's almost upsetting that the freshman work was so amazing, because the sophomore follow up was a little bit disappointing in comparison. Don't get me wrong, I liked Y.S.K.O.V. a lot (especially the reference to "here I am! rock you like a hurricane"), but comparing it to the former tarnished the penny for me a little bit.
If you ever want a "mess-yerself" funny and quick read check out "Toy Collector" by James Gunn.
Pomposity and far-reaching views (albeit a bit in the "blood & soil" -nazi kinda way) can be found in Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Oswald Spengler. I can recommend it for a good read (also insightful for understanding the way cultures, civilisations and their history has been understood at a given time, eventhough Spenglers and his followers view was fashionable only for a limited time.)
Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
An all time favourite. Funny and very thorough.
Just finished Einstein's Dreams: enjoyed it, but don't think it is as great as some reviews maintain. I also recently read 1421, an interesting book chronicling Chinese exploration. River Teeth is also a nice collection of short stories, the author's name escapes me at the moment.
Jun 10, 04 7:04 pm ·
·
I was reading 1421 at the very beginning of 2004. I didn't finish it, but I might now. I particularly like how the author was a retired British(?) Admiral, thus through unwitting and indeed uncanny reenactment on his part, he was completely familiar with the ancient Chinese sea routes, and thus was able to verify (via his own experiences) how the Chinese sea voyages of almost 600 years ago were much more factual than folklore. The Chinese discovered America in 1421! Who knew?
quondam: I found his writing to be rather repetitious at times, telling the reader a few things over and over again, but overall, I enjoyed learning of those Chinese expeditions, and of all the evidence around the world for their exploration. And the author is old enough to know a lot about celestial navigation, and was able to interpret a lot of those old maps in ways that those without that knowledge could do. Not a literary masterpiece, but an intriguing window into some history that has long been overlooked.
im reading Y.S.K.O.V. now, and while it is definitely worth the time, A Heartbreaking Work was an instant classic. some compilations eggers has done for Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern are pretty good too.
i don't know where this is on anybody's list but a few years ago, House of Leaves was all the talk.
y.s.k.o.v. kicked my ass because it really hammered home something i'd been mulling over a lot recently -- the fact that no matter where you go in the world these days, it's pretty much all the same shit. that might be a gross oversimplification, but it strikes a chord in me (one who has been highly displaced by a military upbringing, with all of its itinerant lifestyle, who craves a return to the one cozy place he grew up in, which just happens to be in europe and not where he currently is in the usa, who constantly plans the escape back to europe and defends said decision to friends, family, acquaintances (who are disturbed by the idea on various levels), and who on the eve of his return to said continent is afraid (after reflection on recent moves in his life) that leaving the country ultimately won't solve his problem... oh sure it'll be better than living where he lives now he thinks, but he can't shake that gnawing feeling that it'll be pretty much the same shit all over again... oh yeah. overlay the obvious psychological aspect of the protaganist's argument (he's clearly got some mental shit to work on) with the objective geo-political/socio-cultural reality of the situation, throw in a handful of memoir and a touch of travelogue and you've got the workings of 1) a book which i'd love to read, 2) certain portions of my life as it was, is and will be in the near future, 3) i book i should probably write myself (this idea is copyright 2004, me) and 4) the reason i liked y.s.k.o.v so much...
I agree that Dave Eggers is great and the introduction to A.H.W.O.S.G. is one of the best pages of literature. However, after the introduction, I was a little disappointed. Y.S.K.O.V. was good, but not great.
But speaking of contemporary literature and the name Dave, I can't believe the lack of support for David Sedaris. I think he's one of the most amusing writers. I have not yet picked up his new book, but I've loved just about everything else he's written.
Best book of last year and best book of all time.
Just wondering, what's your favorite book published last year, and your favorite book of all time?
hey you like 1984? Cool, I love reading George Orwell.
last year: Life of Pi
They Cage the Animals at Night
Cosmos, Carl Sagan
The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan
Robot Chronicles, Isaac Asimov
Animal Farm, Orwell
The Most Beautiful House in the World, Ribkowski
Bridgett Jones Diary
Invisible Cities, Calavino
currently reading- Night Jasmine, Mary Lou Widmere, Takes place in 1900's New Orleans, love story and a peasant girls life.
also one of my favorites:
*East of Eden - Steinbeck*
Choke by chuck palaniuk
One flew over the cuckoo's nest by ken kesey
DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
Walden(Henry David Thoreu)
Illiad
Odessey
Aneid
Pride and Prejudice
House of Leaves(written by POE(the band)'s brother)
I've been on the fence about getting davinci code.. everyone says it's good.
I loved Pride and Prejudice as well as Emma
Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities" is one of the most interesting books I've ever read....Also:
"The Inmates are running the asylum" - Alan Cooper
"The Lord of the Rings" - Tolkien
"Catch 22"- Heller
"Making Movies" - Sidney Lumet
Book of last year -- no idea. Maybe the South Beach Diet book.
All time - maybe :
Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
Walden - Thoreau
Breakfast of Champions - Vonnegut
if you are a history nut it's(DaVinci Code) pretty interesting, but i have to warn you(as a history buff) that the little "facts" are true(about Da Vinci & others) but the STORYLINE is false. At one point i even had to go and look some of the stuff up, he merges the storyline with historical references SEAMLESSLY. All in all good story, especially if you like logic games and puzzles. My only deal with it is in certain places it gets a little predictable.
Apparently most of Dan Brown's books revolve around either code breaking, logic games, or other fun mental puzzles. I also read Angels and Demons(Prequel to DaVinci Code??)and it was not as good, consistently predictable.
PS. If you do end up looking up some of the historical stuff BEWARE: conspiracy theories abound
oh, and i'm going to have to check into that invisible cities, looked it up and read a couple pages... should be here in a couple of days(amazon). thanks lexi
platform by m. houellebecq
tristram shandy
vineland
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world
antigone (by j. anouilh)
la place (by a. ernoux)
ya invisible cities is a must read. Also anything by jorge luis borges. Good shiat.
"I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere" by Anna Gavalda for last year.
"City" by Alessandro Barrico also for last year.
"Ignorance" by Milan Kundera, also for last year.
Can't narrow down the "all times" list...
my favorite fiction book of all time is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. it's a personal obsession of mine to see that a film version of it is made.
I just found a free copy of Invisible Cities so I'lm looking forward to reading that.
I recently got into science fiction. I highly recommend novels by neal stephenson. His latest novel is The Confusion.
im gonna check out that riddley walker book, thanks for the tip
neal stephenson...Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash...both good reads.
Arthur C. Clarke...Tales from the White Hart...great short stories
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Hobbit
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
The Complete AutoCAD Users Manual...great for rainy days and hot cocoa.
I second "East of Eden" (my personal favorite)
I would also include "Lolita" - Nabokov
some interesting reads:
"Chelsea Horror Hotel" - Dee Dee Ramone
"I Need More" - Iggy Pop
"Killing Pablo" - Mark Bowden
captain,
had a good friend that read the zen. what was your take on it?
last year: Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance- Robert M. Pirsig
architorture - it's not so much the Zen as the general philosophy that surrounds the story. Interesting if you like philosophy, a bit dull as a pure narative. I take it for what it is and enjoy the journey (every time I re-read it).
i have no read fight club, although i did read choke. I also flipped through some of the pages from his other books. I agree, palahniuk is a very good writer. Im just waiting to see if he can catch the general public off guard and surprise us again with an even better novel. I'm just afraid that his work is becoming too similar and that the shock value and dark humor (obsession with drugs, multiple complex disorder, sex, robbery, etc.) has begun to wear alittle thin on me.
If you missed it in 2003, I'd suggest Wings of Madness. A biography of aeronaut Alberto Santos-Dumont.
"Although little known in the United States, Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873-1932) was the toast of Europe at the time, called by some "The Napoleon of the Air.""
-NPR review
Decosterd & Rahm's Physiological Architecture - it has a great glow in the dark cover, and is part works, part manifesto. The opening pages are an examination of Nietzsche's physiological aesthetics typed in white ink. None of their work has been built yet though.
Also, I second the recommendation of Borges - absolutely beautiful. You can obtain an mp3 narration of the Library of Babel from http://www.akirarabelais.com/index_folder/38.html (find the link). I listened to it over and over whilst completing my thesis...
I am still battling with Pynchon's Mason & Dixon after a number of years.
last year: life of pi
all time: ask the dust by john fante
Last Year: The Devil in the White City was good. It's about Burnham, the Chicago Worlds Fair of 1893, and a serial killer.
Other recent notabale books have been:
The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Chambon
Baudolino by Eco
Da Vinci Code was full of fascinating "facts" (like the Lourve pyramid for example has 666 panes of glass, something Mitterenad requested)
but the writing is amateurish and the characters are shallow.
all-time: the crying of lot 49, thomas pynchon.
I don't know about last year as all I read were the latest Harry Potter, The Fountainhead and Graphics Standards. Your choice. All time: Cats Cradle by Vonnegut.
The only book published last year that I read was "The Seductor" by Jan Kjaerstad, and it was a slight disappointment.
Favourite books of all times:
Dostojevskij "The Karamazov Brothers"
Balzac "La peau de chagrin"
Mann "Doctor Faustus"
Beckett "Molloy"
Borges "Labyrinths"
"Elizabeth Costello" by Coetzee last year sent me into an incredible Coetzee spiral -- "Disgrace" being the best of his stuff.
"Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann is probably my all-time favorite ("Zauberberg" for a-f, and yes, I did read it in German); Faustus is of course fantastic as well. As is Karamazov -- and anything by Chekov, and you should try short stories by Tagore.
I never really got into Borges (or Calvino, for that matter); nice mechanical workings, but not enough soul.
architorture-
Zen is good if you can stand long winded explanations and descriptions. to be honest the last 50 pages or so are hard to get through and quite gratuitous...I like it personally because it offers good insights to aspects in life which I tend to question regularly...I would read it again. Along the same lines is a much shorter book called "Illusions: The adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" That one you can get through n an hour or so. I can't remember the authors name right now.
I'll add another book to my last just coz it's an interessting read...
"Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television"
written in the 1970's by Jerry Mander (obviously a pseudonym, i don't know the guy's real name) an insiders take on using television as widespread communication/cultural and societal manipulating machine. Interesting stuff.
just some titles I've come across that made and impact on me and my work....
Autobiography of Malcolm X
Blank_______Architecture, Apartheid and After
by Hilton Judin (Editor), Ivan Vladislavic (Editor)
Ethical Ambition : Living a Life of Meaning and Worth
by Derrick Bell
slapdash:
Yes, I read "Zauberberg" as well, and of course it should be on the list as well, but my fascination with serialism forced me to choose "Doctor Faustus". I'm diving into "The Idiot" at the moment - very promising - Dostojevskij is always brilliant.
The Calvino-phenomenon is a good point. Somehow the "best of" lists at archinect always seem to include "Invisible Cities". Doesn't anyone dare to drop some literary heavy-weighters: Ibsen, Goethe, Kafka or Alighieri? I'm sure Harold Bloom would disapprove with this thread. ;)
:-) let's hope that Bloom doesn't read archinect in his spare time. (but when i was choosing schools, i was really tempted to go to yale over where i'm going now just for the chance to take a seminar w/Bloom, actually...)
i love all four of the big guys you mentioned; and as far as architecture's concerned, i think kafka has an incredible imagination -- i'm thinking of some of the weird scenes in "amerika", where the narrator is on a high floor in a strange apartment building, watching a weird election campaign parade below; or the penal colony, or the architecture of the city in the Castle -- the shape and disposition of buildings establishes a powerful psychological "feeling".
actually, architecture recently led me to some great literature -- i read about steven holl's museum for the novelist knut hamsun, and it led me to read his most famous work, "Hunger" -- if you like Dostoevsky, I bet you would love this, as well!
and finally, as far as heavy-weights goes -- i noticed this in the music thread as well; seems like hardly anyone listens to "classical" music. (or at least the set of architects/students who listen to it doesn't seem to intersect with the set of people who read archinect.)
Mann's JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS is much better than THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN. Liked THE HOLY SINNER too.
The short stories of Heinrich von Kleist are likewise worthwhile, e.g., MICHAEL KOHLHAAS.
Am I the only architect to have read Merrill's THE CHANGING LIGHT AT SANDOVER?
BUTLER'S LIVES OF THE SAINTS is much more entertaining than the mediocre DA VINCI CODE.
Anybody read THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE?
recently:
Summerland by Michael Chabon
(it's sort of a kid's book but amazing how much stuff is in it--baseball, llorando, structure of the universe, loneliness/difference. also great: Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh)
other good relatively recent ones:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
older good ones:
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (also his short stories)
Howard's End by E.M.Forster
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (completely post-modern--reads like Joyce's Ulysses long before Joyce)
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog by Dylan Thomas
Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roche (Truffant's movie was based on this book--some of the dialogue/narration is straight from the text)
want to read:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Yo! Enough with the lists. We're all impressed by the literary name dropping, now get over it. Try to say something about the book, so the rest of us who may have missed a great novel or author can understand why it's so gr- gr- fk'n great!
'A Fine Balance' - by Rohinton Mistry
the most epic and rewarding book I have ever read. I finished it over a christmas holiday two years ago and it when i put it down i felt like i had been slogged with a king hit in the chest. It took me a couple of days to recoved from that really nice fuzzy feeling where your walking around doing normal things but your head is in another completely different place - it made me a more humble person - the beauty of just being alive - trajic and sad but uplifting but not in an inspirational way - kind of the opposite to inspiration - ive been saving it up for a nice long holiday where i can enjoy it all over agin
Read Choke.
I have read all of Palaniuks books, and Choke is the best. I could definately relate to the supporting character, Denny. He becomes distraught with his ever passing life, and begins to collect rocks. One for every day. He's broke, confused, skinny and determined.
great book
anyone else like dave eggers? i read "you shall know our velocity" last year and was floored. just finished "heartbreaking work of staggering genius" last week. also exceptional i thought...
haruki murakami's "wind-up bird chronicle" v good.
all you ppl into pahlaniuk's stuff should maybe check out irvine welsh. "filth" was rockin. also a british writer, david peace, writes very dark gritty mystery/serial murderer books based on the rampage of the yorkshire ripper back in 70s leeds.
otherwise i'm reading koolhaas or football books.
Dave Eggers is fantastic, read A.H.W.O.S.G. when it first came out and was beyond impressed. It's almost upsetting that the freshman work was so amazing, because the sophomore follow up was a little bit disappointing in comparison. Don't get me wrong, I liked Y.S.K.O.V. a lot (especially the reference to "here I am! rock you like a hurricane"), but comparing it to the former tarnished the penny for me a little bit.
If you ever want a "mess-yerself" funny and quick read check out "Toy Collector" by James Gunn.
Natural Histories. It is very pompous. I like that.
Pomposity and far-reaching views (albeit a bit in the "blood & soil" -nazi kinda way) can be found in Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Oswald Spengler. I can recommend it for a good read (also insightful for understanding the way cultures, civilisations and their history has been understood at a given time, eventhough Spenglers and his followers view was fashionable only for a limited time.)
Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
An all time favourite. Funny and very thorough.
coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians is an interesting read (esp. now, considering the current state of world affairs).
also: Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids - Kenzaburo Oe
all time:
The Moviegoer - walker percy
The Pushcart War - jean merrill
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman is a good choice
Just finished Einstein's Dreams: enjoyed it, but don't think it is as great as some reviews maintain. I also recently read 1421, an interesting book chronicling Chinese exploration. River Teeth is also a nice collection of short stories, the author's name escapes me at the moment.
I was reading 1421 at the very beginning of 2004. I didn't finish it, but I might now. I particularly like how the author was a retired British(?) Admiral, thus through unwitting and indeed uncanny reenactment on his part, he was completely familiar with the ancient Chinese sea routes, and thus was able to verify (via his own experiences) how the Chinese sea voyages of almost 600 years ago were much more factual than folklore. The Chinese discovered America in 1421! Who knew?
http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=design-l&P=R194&I=-3
http://lists1.cac.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0401&L=design-l&P=R658&I=-3
quondam: I found his writing to be rather repetitious at times, telling the reader a few things over and over again, but overall, I enjoyed learning of those Chinese expeditions, and of all the evidence around the world for their exploration. And the author is old enough to know a lot about celestial navigation, and was able to interpret a lot of those old maps in ways that those without that knowledge could do. Not a literary masterpiece, but an intriguing window into some history that has long been overlooked.
im reading Y.S.K.O.V. now, and while it is definitely worth the time, A Heartbreaking Work was an instant classic. some compilations eggers has done for Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern are pretty good too.
i don't know where this is on anybody's list but a few years ago, House of Leaves was all the talk.
y.s.k.o.v. kicked my ass because it really hammered home something i'd been mulling over a lot recently -- the fact that no matter where you go in the world these days, it's pretty much all the same shit. that might be a gross oversimplification, but it strikes a chord in me (one who has been highly displaced by a military upbringing, with all of its itinerant lifestyle, who craves a return to the one cozy place he grew up in, which just happens to be in europe and not where he currently is in the usa, who constantly plans the escape back to europe and defends said decision to friends, family, acquaintances (who are disturbed by the idea on various levels), and who on the eve of his return to said continent is afraid (after reflection on recent moves in his life) that leaving the country ultimately won't solve his problem... oh sure it'll be better than living where he lives now he thinks, but he can't shake that gnawing feeling that it'll be pretty much the same shit all over again... oh yeah. overlay the obvious psychological aspect of the protaganist's argument (he's clearly got some mental shit to work on) with the objective geo-political/socio-cultural reality of the situation, throw in a handful of memoir and a touch of travelogue and you've got the workings of 1) a book which i'd love to read, 2) certain portions of my life as it was, is and will be in the near future, 3) i book i should probably write myself (this idea is copyright 2004, me) and 4) the reason i liked y.s.k.o.v so much...
I agree that Dave Eggers is great and the introduction to A.H.W.O.S.G. is one of the best pages of literature. However, after the introduction, I was a little disappointed. Y.S.K.O.V. was good, but not great.
But speaking of contemporary literature and the name Dave, I can't believe the lack of support for David Sedaris. I think he's one of the most amusing writers. I have not yet picked up his new book, but I've loved just about everything else he's written.
anyone who is in and around L.A. would probally enjoy some John Fante bittersweetness. two of which i would put forth are:
Ask the Dusk
West of Rome
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