i saw the cover and i didn't at first get it was THE cookie mueller from the john waters movies!

how is it???

i love it. it's just like at work. (drunk) people telling me what's happened in their lives. except it's interesting

Exactly. Literature is not just mere story-telling in the fictional sense, but through how we construct our stories and the metaphors, language, imagery, and feeling which is used by authors to tell this story tells more than fiction, but reveals aspects of our realer selves and how we see our world. Even pulp and tabloid writing is very telling. "Americana" is such a diluted genre of national storytelling because much like our Olympic teams, America has freelanced all the best talent from across the world, including writers and storytellers. We use ourselves to tell fictional stories because its the only way we know how.

okay, i am finally starting this:

i want i want i want!

got this from a friend who's read it 13 times. Quite a nasty looking thing by now.

check out thug notes!
http://www.thug-notes.com

Paul Beatty: The White Boy Shuffle

this was nice! i cried in my lecture today while reading

later tonight I will start this:


does anyone have favorite books that take place in new york and can recommend me some? thank youuuu

Just finished "Another Country" by James Baldwin.. The narration and particular the use of sensory details and rich descriptive adjectives is uniquely fantastic. I also liked the deep character development and insights HOWEVER I felt some of the grittier aspects were a bit forced abruptly or even contrived. Now I realize this is biased on having read all the literature AFTER Baldwin where drugs, promiscuity, homosexuality are commonplace themes so the sheer groundbreaking aspect of his use of these themes should be applauded, however, strictly judging the art by its own merits, I think he either should have better developed how these themes fit into his otherwise well-developed characters OR just not bothered to include it. It makes the narrative become rather incoherent at times. Also, I really don't like how characters suddenly break into dialogue and conversation about deeply existential, political, and societal issues almost arbitrarily in the middle of otherwise trivial conversations with people they had barely met! Who does that in real life?

every time i read a semi autobiographical book and someone mentions kathy acker it always seems to me that she must have been the biggest c-word in the history of the world. even if the authors say nice stuff.

its non fiction but Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury is an alltime favorite - its nothing like the movie

Andrew Vacchs is a hardboiled writer, his Burke series takes place mostly in NY and shows a very ugly, gritty side of the City...excellent

Lawrence Block has a couple series set in NYC, I like the Matthew Scudder series best, like the Vacchs material it is very hard boiled.

The Alienist I just read and really dug, a mystery in gaslight NYC with Teddy Roosevelt as police commisioner

Jim Carroll - Catholic Diaries

William Burroughs - Junkie

Vachss is one of my faves. the dude is harsh and he will monkey-stomp pedophiles personally.

Usually they are also nazis, so when Wesley blows them up you can't help but cheer.

I need to read that early work that tells about the history of Wesley.

this is gud

Zero History.

I just finished Spook Country a few months ago, and funny thing, I know one of the pro(/an)tagonists personally.

true story... :confused:

going after cacciato



good shit. great start so far:

It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death in the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the nose. Bernie Lynn and lieutenand Sydney Martin had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Rudy Chassler was dead. Buff was dead. Ready Mix was dead. They were all among the dead. The rain fed fungus that grew in the men's boots and socks, and their socks rotted, and their feet turned white and soft so that the skin could be scraped off with a fingernail, and Stink Harris woke up screaming one night with a leech on his tongue.

Carl Jung's last.

The Rum Diary.

Soho in the 50s, Daniel Farson

Although mainly a photobook, the text gives a great account of the whole Francis Bacon/Colony Room set. After reading this, anyone who thinks the Factory in the 60s was a trial by fire should've tried to hold their own with this lot.

Even if you don't buy into Bacon's gutter-glamour thing, still some brilliant photographs to look at

My third attempt. I'm about 120 pages deep. I actually get the mistaken identity/mistaken clothing thing this time. It's all about how the people are the same and meaningless...or something.

and Huey Lewis.

I tried to read Vachss but couldn't deal with his ultra-self-righteousness. He's like a Noir-Henry Rollins.

there is a great fucking book inside that cover

For what is really an autobiographical
fantasy based on the author's previous
decades' experience with Hollywood really
doesn't seem like a great premise for a 691
page novel and yet, reading it again a few years
later it is still better than I remembered.
Obviously it was good if I managed to
finish it the first time around

again, cause sad:

before i forget: i read this one while i was in the states

was entertaining and a very easy read

for the 10th + time

this is killing me

I really want this book:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...t-9112523.html

The Top 10 Most Difficult Books

http://parade.condenast.com/266106/v...the-50-states/

"New York
The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee
Sarah Silverman"

HAHAHA
(loved that book though. sarah <3 )

Meh.. more like some kind of Echo Park pissing contest.






I know I'm like 20 years too late but I never got around to reading
this until I found it on the $0.50 book rack at the library across the
street from work (I think I've bought like 50 books from them now,
and spent what must be a grand total of $20, I have literally nowhere
to put them, I got unread books stacked in about every corner of my
room, closet, drawers, and nook and cranny of my MacArthur Park
district overcrowded book shelf)...

This novel is epic. Its like a shoe-gaze Gabriel Garcia-Marquez.. more emotive,
with more droning teeth saturated through its cutting, poetic insights. You can
literally feel this text bleeding through the almost arbitrariness of the words..

This reminds me of Cabinet portrait, a novel by Swiss author Jean-Luc Benoziglio.
The narrator's been asked to leave his place as he's divorcing. He finds a new apartment which is too small for him to stash every volume of his encyclopedia.
He uses the restroom that every tenant shares to pack them (apparently it has more space for that) and spends too much time there to be appreciated by the other folks.
That could have been an idea...
It's really well written, I really don't know if it's ever been translated to whatever language it could have.
The guy received an award for the book in France. And went on a 6 year drought after that (it ain't my favorite, though: Beno s'en va-t-en guerre pleased me even more: tourists wonder whether leaving the lovely island they're staying at as the premices of a war arise - the treatment of the story is brilliant, we're stuck with them and they really can't see much from their little port).

Currently ending Tough Guys Don't Dance.
I cut a picture in a tv programme years ago. It was from Norman Mailer's movie from his book. That picture was beautiful. But the movie is nowhere to be seen, and is apparently so-so.
I like the writing.

Ben Marcus - Leaving the Sea
Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge
Garry Kasparov - How Life Imitates Chess

Re-Make/Re-Model: Becoming Roxy Music - Michael Bracewell
Read & Burn: A Book About Wire - Wilson Neate
A Very Irregular Head: The Life Of Syd Barrett - Rob Chapman