Siri Hustvedt's The Summer Without Men
(halfway through already, afterwards I will have to read The Enchantment of Lily Dahl)

^ Have it, never read it, despite its brief length. How many stars would you give it out of five? And did you read Sorrows of an American? Forgot I had it and saw it the other day.

some books about raising goats and chickens and green building and rain harvesting and shit like that

william gibson pattern redftoufuckyou.

tried to find a good john coltrane and thelonious monk bio.

frank herbert

One cool thing about my book blog is that I get to see where the viewers are, and over half of my views are from China! http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/ I hope this means that people in China are seeking books that cannot be read there, and not that the Chinese government is looking at my blog to check up on me.

this came up on a facebook post. A list of "best of 2014" from independent presses.

welll worth a look for sure!

http://bookriot.com/2014/12/05/large...indie-presses/

I'm still reading the Cheever stories book. About 1/4 of the way through. Fascinating. A brilliant short-story writer.

I can't stop reading the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr. The premise starts as he is a detective in Berlin under the 3rd Reich but the story over several novels takes place around the globe.

I will take a break to read the new Michael Connelley once I finish Field Gray.

New reviews up http://rxttbooks.blogspot.com/

Half of the "hits" to my review blog come from China. Is that chinese people trying to find books and stuff or is it the Chinese government tracking me and all the mad shit AI say about them? ha!

Finished this



and this

finished this yesterday:



and started this:

1Q84

just got this for Xmas, looking forward to it, pretty controversial


some review high(or low) lights include:

"mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism"
"depicts Israel as an utterly evil state "
"the 'I hate Israel' handbook"
“Hamas Book-of-the-Month” selection

I will eventually order this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/6054923048/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A3P5ROKL5 A1OLE

and be like, the 5th person outside of China to read it.

This book mainly reads the three works of early Baudrillard, and challenges the current research findings on his philosophical journey. Zhang Yibing also reads Baudrillard's other works to fully situate him theoretically. He asserts that Baudrillard's texts cannot be classified as postmodernist or neo-Marxist in any period. Zhang belongs to the third generation of Marxist philosophers in China and is renowned for his textological researches, having developed a unique reading methodology. Since the end of 1960s, Baudrillard wrote three important works: For a Critique of Political Economy of the Sign, The Mirror of Production and Symbolic Exchange and Death, which furiously attacked Marx, aiming to refute historical materialism and deconstruct Marx's theory of labour value. The Mirror of Production in particular was intended to demolish the logic of Marxist theories from within, by deconstructing and disordering them. This was ignored by many Marxist researchers. What was real thinking behind, and historical context of, the shift in his critique, and how was symbolic exchange combined with death? The author with his sharp insight shows that the Early Baudrillard's thought is trapped in the logic of symbolic exchange, based on the grassroots' romanticism (radicalism) of Mauss-Bataille. He then keenly follows the secret of Baudrillard's transformation process in his critical logic, his passage from the dissolution of the ideographic material to the symbolic value of coding structure, then to quasi-real existence without a model, until finally his symbolic miscoding of death becomes a hopeless waiting for Baudrillard's tentative salvation of the world. This is indeed a death trilogy, which occurs in Baudrillard's academic scenery and in which the real existence is murdered. The thinking of late Baudrillard is a discourse like virus and paranoia. This kind of logical violence of theoretical terrorism has become an absurd modern academic caricature of excessive rational interpretation. In this book the reader will also find Zhang's innovative interpretation and updating of Marx's historical materialism.

I am not really interested in an updated account of historical materialism, but Baudrillard fascinates me more than any other thinker.

INFINITE JEST

is the joke on me?????????

so you're not liking it?

i've never been interested in any of the mcsweeney's crowd. don't know why. i'd check their website and space out and not care.

but here "1088" reasons to read that book:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jameskicksa/...est#.au59JZVAB

i'm still not convinced

i mean i just opened the first page on the amazon "look inside" thing and my eyes went blurry :(

You guys are making me feel better. Frankly, I couldn't even finish Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, and short stories are my thing.

That article is pretty funny... I like how it starts of v jokey but then chucks in a few serious ones at the end.

I dunno if I'm enjoying it. I'm not hating it - I would have stopped reading it if I was. Some of the threads I am really enjoying, and I think David Foster Wallace must really have been some kind of genius. It's weird cause I'm about 75% through and I recently read a lot of the negative reviews of the book (critics & on amazon) and actually it seems like I actually like the stuff that other people don't (e.g. the non-linear storyline, lots of ridiculous detail, lack of focus etc).

I think some parts are really profound, but what I like best about it is all the minutiae of non-profound stuff that is in some way really human.

What I don't like about it is that I feel like it might be some kind of emperor's new clothes style trick :S like am I just such a navel gazey pseudo academic pretentious faux intellectual show off wanker that I like the book just because I think it makes me smart????

Anyway, not that I care really since it's just a book I'm reading.

It's taking a long time but I am definitely reading it (contrast Moby Dick which I have tried to read like a million times and feel like I am enjoying yet I never get past about page 200).

I dunno. It's making me think which is good!

i've always liked non-linear stories etc but i think i burned myself out on them many years ago with stuff like cortazar's "rayuela" and on the minutiae part it was james joyce. so the novelty aspect of that is lost on me at this point. i think i've read too much too soon and that has made me impatient or maybe a cynic.

damn, maybe i should try reading some fiction today. it's been ages.

yeah i've always liked non-linear stuff. tbh i've never seen it as such a big deal (like hello the ODYSSEY is non-linear, it's hardly a new thing).

but the minutiae thing is pretty new to me. i don't just think it's a gimmick either. having said that i haven't read any joyce who by all accounts is the master of minutiae so maybe i'm not qualified.

has anyone read my struggle? i'm kinda tempted.....