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READING LIST


erik

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quote:

Originally posted by Dru:

fast food concept: if its fast, the fact its shit wont matter cause my time is too precious to waste enjoying eating.

 

that said there are times when its nice to grab n go.
[Roll Eyes]

True, there are times when it's nice to grab 'n' go. Like when you're in Hawthorne, Nevada, and the only place that's open is McDonald's.

 

But knowing what DFA knows now about those monsters, it will be difficult to support in good conscience their quest to reduce workers to dispensable, minimum-wage automatons.

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I'll second the vote for "Ham on Rye" as the best Bukowski.

 

Last night I started re-reading "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner. You either love him or hate him - and I'm in the first camp.

 

Kazuo Ishiguro has written some compelling works - "An Artist of the Floating World" and "The Remains of the Day" are pretty approachable. Let me know if anyone else has read "The Unconsoled," the strangest novel I've read this side of the afore-mentioned "Dead Souls."

 

Can't support the unabashed slamming of TV, however. If you don't know a few Schoolhouse Rock tunes or are unable to pick up on Gilligan references... Actually, maybe I'll skip the reference to social maladjustment...

 

Hey Dru, you ought to put a plug in for "Sources of the River" by Jack Nisbit. It's an account of David Thompson's (no, not the former hot-shooting guard for the Denver Nuggets)explorations of the West in the late 1700's. He's kind of a forgotton "Canadian Lewis and Clark."

 

-t

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You guys may have forgotten David Thompson but we haven't. What the hell we named a highway and a river after him.

 

If you read Thompson's journals he reports that large hairy creatures, much bigger than men, threw rocks at his canoe as his expedition canoed down the upper Thompson River - near Squilax, I guess. Sorta like the Thomas Pynchon Mason and Dixon book but real life weirdness!

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quote:

Originally posted by Dru:

If you read Thompson's journals he reports that large hairy creatures, much bigger than men, threw rocks at his canoe as his expedition canoed down the upper Thompson River - near Squilax, I guess. Sorta like the Thomas Pynchon Mason and Dixon book but real life weirdness!

Just an early example of cold-induced semi-coherent Canadian sprayin'... [big Grin]

 

See any large hairy creatures up on Slesse?? [Wink]

 

-t

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quote:

Originally posted by terrible ted:

quote:

Originally posted by Dru:

If you read Thompson's journals he reports that large hairy creatures, much bigger than men, threw rocks at his canoe as his expedition canoed down the upper Thompson River - near Squilax, I guess. Sorta like the Thomas Pynchon Mason and Dixon book but real life weirdness!

Just an early example of cold-induced semi-coherent Canadian sprayin'...
[big Grin]

 

See any large hairy creatures up on Slesse??
[Wink]

 

-t

Just the "trophy sized" [sNAFFLEHOUND] looking for [HORSECOCK]
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quote:

Originally posted by allison:

I would like to weigh in that Tom Robbins blows goats. Pluse he doesn't write good female characters, and the only guy who can get away with that is that genius pig, David Mamet.


Just goes to show HOW diffrent people are. I STRONGLY related to Robins female characters... when I was younger and now too. I Love that the most about him. He writes about women LIKE ME. I even asked Jk to read his books in the beginning so that he could better understand me... He learned to enjoy the books for his own reasons.

 

"there are no wierd people, just some people need more understanding than others"

-Another Roadside Attraction

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An interesting tidbit (from my brother who runs a used bookstore, check it out www.pulpfictionbooks.com )

 

Bukowski and WS Burroughs are the most stolen authors in Vancouver.

 

Oy! How am I gonna keep up my romantic image if I keep forgettin' to put Pablo neruda on th list? Since the whole "point" of this intellectual chestbeating is to tell Erik what books he should check out, I will say:

 

Erik, chicks dig Neruda. Being able to recite'em a Neruda love ode = instant booty. [big Grin]

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Three fiction authors for you:

 

Dru listed Last Call by Tim Powers. Most anything he has written is brilliantly warped, often structured around historical fact, and features the hidden machineries of the world that might be revealed if only you were strange enough to percieve it.

 

James Blaylock is Powers' good buddy and another premier American Fabulist. The Last Coin and The Paper Grail were particularly good, but most of his work is great. While not as dark as Powers, Blaylock also revels in the implausibly possible.

 

Douglas Coupland has written several great novels, and he's my token Canadian for the day. Girlfriend in a Coma, Miss Wyoming, and All Families are Dysfunctional are all quirky and highly recommended.

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Parables and Paradoxes - Franz Kafka

 

Where the fuck did you get that one? Way out of print. Amerika, though, was just re-releaesed under a new translation, "the Man Who Disappeared". The best, funniest, most picaresque Kafka. Statue of Liberty with a sword!

 

[ 09-26-2002, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: jordop ]

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quote:

Originally posted by Dru:

quote:

Originally posted by jordop:

Parables and Paradoxes - Franz Kafka

 

Where the fuck did you get that one? Way out of print.

$8.00 CDN

 

its nice to be related to a bookstore owner

[Wink]
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.

 

[Wazzup]

 

[ 09-26-2002, 01:38 PM: Message edited by: jordop ]

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quote:

Originally posted by jordop:

Houellebecq, "Elementary particles". Had to go to the Ham to get it when it first came out.

I can't say that I'm a big fan of Houellebecq ... he's a bit too French for me. Frederic Tuten (Tintin in the New World) ia about as far as I can tread down that path.

 

Dru - Ambrose Bierce is excellent! and all of Trevanian's books are worthwhile as light reading(Eiger Sanction probably would appeal most here).

 

Dead Souls (Gogol) is excellent - but Gogol was a better short story writer (the Overcoat is excellent), Isaac Babel also excelled at the Russian short story, an excellent but little known short story writer is Vasily Shukshin (hard to find an affordable edition around aside from Amazon).

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Dru's recommended reading list part II. I had to go home and look at the bookshelf to jog my memory on these.

 

Circus of Dr. Lao - Charles G. Finney

The Mothman Prophecies - John Keel

Cannery Row - John Steinbeck

Moby Dick - Herman Melville (learn what the whalers do with the whale's foreskin!!) [Eek!]

Soldiers of Paradise - Paul Park

Shibumi - Trevanian

Tales From The Flat Earth - Tanith Lee

Tapping The Source/The Dogs of Winter - Kem Nunn

The Hustler/The Color of Money/Queen's Gambit - Walter Tevis

Ravens' End - Ben Gadd (Will's dad!)

Sensory Exotica -Howard C Hughes

The Rebel - Albert Camus

Revolution of the Mind - Mark Polizzotti

Girl In Landscape - Jonathan Lethem

Whatever Happened to the Class of 65 - David Wallechinsky and Mike Medved

Jack in the Box - William Kotzwinkle

Parables and Paradoxes - Franz Kafka

Giving Birth To Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America - Barry Lopez

Among the Thugs - Bill Buford

Heraclitus (in whatever translation you can find)

Bears Discover Fire - Terry Bisson

Engine Summer - John Crowley

Looking For Mo - Daniel Duane

Smith and Other Events - Paul St. Pierre

Alan Mendelssohn, The Boy From Mars - Daniel Pinkwater

The Super Cops; The True Story of the Men They Called Batman and Robin - LH Whittemore

A Soldier of the Great War - Mark Helprin

The Devils' Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce

Three Men In A Boat - Jerome K Jerome

Three Californias - Kim Stanley Robinson

How To Catch Crabs - Saltaire Publishing

 

[ 09-27-2002, 01:02 PM: Message edited by: Dru ]

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