James Hannon - Lost Boys of the Bronx

I became interested in (more like obsessed with) the Ducky Boys gang through the book/film The Wanderers and couldn't believe someone had actually a written a bio about them. I didn't even realise they were a real gang. I'm only a couple of chapters in and it's already one of my favourite books.

Talks about all the art that is not covered in the "standard" texts about the Middle Ages. Lots of bawdy stuff!

Foundation - Asimov

just started this, the first few pages are GOOD! ! !

I have been stopping and starting books for months and nothing's grabbed me by the balls yet. The few I have finished had zero impact.

I'd better find some existentially challenging fiction pretty goddamn quick or I think my soul is going to disappear.

I'm almost in "re-read Lord of the Rings" mode. That's how bad it is.

Shit I hate being in between books. I usually read two or three every couple weeks. It's my solace. But I'm coming up with fuckin nothing!

did i recommend a day in the life of ivan denisovich? hot damn, that book rules.

---


me, i'm reading a bunch of business books...




...



thrilling stuff!

Like what?

it's kind of funny to find someone here interested in this which is why i didn't post anything at first.

currently this:




someone recommended it to me recently. it's hilarious. also very good.

also looking again at this:





it's a bit "old" (2003!) but it was game changer i think. actually i think it informs the one above.

[












WILL ELABORATE ON THIS
(have to take off now)











]

shoot a PM alert if you do cuz i look at this thread rarely

Reading this again, seeing's it's free on kindle.

 

WATCH YOU BLEED by Stephen Davis (it's the GNR book)
please excuse my bad taste, but it was only $5 for a hardcover
and after reading Stephen Adler's autobiography last fall
i thought that this would be a good one as well
not like i give a fuck about GNR anymore

I too have been looting the free selection on Kindle. I've also been "sampling" books and had myself a nice little surprise when I realized that if you accidentally buy the book when trying to sample it, and then cancel the order, the thing will be in your carousel until you close it out. Yeah, that means reading a book in full in one sitting; of just leaving your kindle on and not doing any of the amazing other things it does (bullshit) but I don't mind for free books.

Anyway, the actually free books have given me A Tale of Two Cities to go over again, which I'm doing in small chunks, and Moby Dick.

I know- not supposed to read it until you're 40. Well, I fuckin feel forty, and I'll be forty sooner than I'd like to believe. So fuck it. Great goddamn book, so far.

What the fuck? That posted five times. Deleting now.

Sorry about that.

I've just read Survivors by Terry Nation. It laughably reads like a post-apocalyptic jolly for the middle and upper class nobs and snobs who live in the countryside of the Home Counties of England who were fortunate enough to have survived a plague that wiped out 99% of the worlds population.

I concluded after reading the book that the author has to either be a nob or snob of middle or upper class origin living in the countryside of one of the Home Counties who wishes a plague on everyone else on the planet who isn't like him. In other words, he's a wanker.

as the internet used to say a few ages ago, "i am disappoint" :(

Ha, sorry. Seth Godin I do follow closely, no clue about the other guy.

Will elaborate on this.

lies, sir lies!

but godin is alright.

Is that the first Murakami book you've read?

So far this year I've read "The Wind Through the Keyhole" by Stephen King, and I'm currently reading "Robopocalypse" by Daniel H. Wilson. I don't read much science fiction even though I like the genre generally. The book's good so far, but nothing mind-blowing, even though some of the quotes in the book have compared him to early Michael Crichton.

A Dance With Dragons from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

about my hero, Richard P. Feynman

and

Promethea

by my man Alan Moore

The new Keller book by Lawrence Block Hit Me.

but really, can you blame him?

Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

i have tried to read that a bunch of times but in the end i just up & quit. it's probably because that's just too close to where i live (and what to get away from). ha! but no, seriously, it's supposed to be this great fucking book and i never get much past the religion thing at the beginning. "this here man has had congress with a goat" etc. it's funny but soon after i drift away into sleep, then forgetfulness.

Good choice, if you like the literary western check out Deadwood by Pete Dexter, even better than the series and really not at all related.

Currrently Hand for A Hand by T Frank Muir.

Me too!

We should start a book club.


It's rare for me to thoroughly dislike a book, so way to go Cormac.

Blood Meridian is a brilliant book and to evollove and thingymajig it has one of my fav. endings in any book.

lolol srsly. i didn't "thoroughly dislike it" though, i just fell asleep-- repeatedly.



i know it's a great book and i should just persevere. when i move out of the fucking american southwest and don't feel like the book is happening just outside my window i probably will. it will be "exotic," and all. right now it's just like hearing my neighbors speak, just with a better vocabulary ha ha ha. oh...

The exact book I need right now.

What did you so thoroughly dislike about it?


Thanks! I've been considering whether to read that. Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is another good one and again far better than the TV series.


Blimey! Maybe your local authority should capitalise by opening a Blood Meridian theme park for all us Europeans to come and buy our souvenir scalps and have our photo taken with 'the Judge'.

SPOILER REQUEST: Seriously, could someone PM the ending? Or tell me if the wikipedia synopsis is good enough?

I am in the minority with CM. He's generally regarded as one of America's greatest living writer. Yes, critics can be wrong. But I mean a significant number of writers and thinkers on literature who I respect and share similar tastes with starkly diverge with me when it comes to McCarthy. So maybe I'm wrong for being unable to finish any of the six books I've tried without skimming, skipping or giving up.

My beef with him is his characters are non-existent, his stories are boilerplate, his style makes me think of a guy who can't figure out if he wants to be Faulkner or Hemingway so he tries to marry the two. Ultimately I'm turned off by the relentless pessimism, only enlivened now and then by quaint, folksy voices (sheriff in No Country, family at end of Road, etc.). I think I'm supposed to (mostly) despair for humanity after reading his books, but I only despair for him.

oh, snap! i don't know if you are correct or not, but that there is a great criticism regardless of its target.

Nothing much, just a little Warlord of the Air
And I'm in and out of the Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell

David Hickey is very interesting....


I have read a lot of Paglia foreverasskiss, and I find her very excellent reading. don;t agree with some of what she states, but who cares right? I like a well-stated opinion anyday.

I still need to read her latest stuff though....

i want a kindle. i want it bad. was gonna wait for the new generation ipad but now i have no books and i need to read somewhere.