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[Yoink]

I started reading East of Eden about a week ago. Bloody hell, what an excellent book. Plenty of sadness and other emotion mixed up in with the Happy, mind you, but that's the case with most any book worth getting excited about.

Oh, and I don't know if I mentioned it in here already, but the last book I finished was The Skating Rink. That was also a great read, but you'd be a fool to expect anything less from Bolaņo.

[WealthyRadish]

Finished Grapes of Wrath, Animal Farm, and The Conquest of Bread.

The most interesting thing about Grapes of Wrath to me was the way it demonstrated the homologous nature of land management under private ownership between relatively modern times in the US and the early development of European capitalism. We often don't think of America as having had a peasant class, with the word peasant itself being considered something of the old world, but there's hardly another term to describe the homesteaders-turned-sharecroppers, and their fate was precisely that which was met by European peasants in the 1400s onward under land consolidation and commercialization. The other interesting thing about GoW was the degree to which its oblique socialist themes seem to have been either minimized or grafted onto liberalism.

I enjoyed Animal Farm, but what niggled at the back of my head the whole time was the thought that the typical high school or college graduate American reading it would be totally lost without the basic historical familiarity that's necessary to understand its obvious allusions, and would come away from the book likely with nothing more than a vaguely anti-revolutionary sentiment. It actually makes me disappointed that the book has had such wide circulation, since of all Orwell's works this is probably the one giving him the most velocity as he spins in his grave.

The Conquest of Bread was a surprise to me. I didn't know what to expect, but I came away with finding that Kropotkin had concisely (more or less) expressed most the principles I find organizing my own thoughts on society. Its reputation as a "practical" handbook is totally undeserved however, as however greatly I identified with and admired his arguments, the absence of anything concrete was noticeable (but perhaps that comes with the territory).

[NJW2000]

W.G. Sebald's Austerlitz. I never thought I'd read a stream-of-consciousness style novel with each sentence flawlessly ordered and luminously clear.

Especially interesting as I'm in Prague right now, though I honestly prefer the book to the city.

[Yoink]

East of Eden keeps piling on the feels. What a fantastic book.
I'm getting near the end but I feel like there's still a lot of life left in it.
No idea what I'll read next, this is almost definitely one of those books that you need to meditate on for a while afterwards, rather than just diving into your next read.

[Enemy post]

I'm finally done reading Lovecraft. I was going to read Little Women next, but then I found out that the Dinosaur Lords series exists so I have to read that first.

[Starver]

I'm finally done reading Lovecraft. I was going to read Little Women next, but then I found out that the Dinosaur Lords series exists so I have to read that first.

/imagines Lovecraft/Little Women/Dinosaur Lords triple-crossover, fanfiction... They were made for each other!

[Yoink]

I'm reading Kafka on the Shore. A weird-ass book, to be sure, but it has certainly got me in. Didn't someone on here recommend it to me (or at least mention it), once?
I ended up finding a copy at my old job and kept it for free after a co-worker cannibalised it for the cat pictures on the cover.


Before that, I blitzed through Joyland, which I'm pretty sure is the first Stephen King novel I've read. Not entirely sure what I thought of it, I guess my general impression was more-or-less positive?
It was enjoyable enough, in any case.


And before that, I read a fairly mediocre book called Asking For Trouble by some Australian author and Reheated Cabbage by the ever-brilliant Irvine Welsh.
Although it must be said, despite making me cry on one or two occasions, cabbage seemed to be on the whole far more uplifting than usual. Normally his stories are anything but, with perhaps the occasional "happy ending" (or at least Phyrric victory) thrown in to mix it up. This time, though, I actually felt gladdened by the ending, as opposed to the usual emotional brutalisation.

Those last two were library books, though. Gotta get my own copy of Cabbage sometime, as well as Glue (I shall have to make a Welsh checklist, I'm actually starting to have trouble remembering which of his books I've read without looking at covers or synopses).

[Yoink]

The book I am reading has made me laugh on several occasions thus far, with varying levels of intensity. Considering it was just a last-minute grab at the library that I picked up more-or-less at random for the sole purpose of padding my selection of borrowed books up to an even number, I am quite pleasantly surprised.

The book is called Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray.
It's what the library classes as "adult fiction" but set in and around a "secondary school" and told largely from the perspective of its students, so the darkness and depths of its themes can catch one off-guard at times.
It also surprises with the quality and emotion of its prose, from time to time - for something that, probably, overall would be classed as comedic, the book has more than its fair share of feels.


If I were to offer comparisons to other, memorable books I've read set in schools, I'd say it barely approaches the comedic genius of Don't Call Me Ishmael by Michael Gerard Bauer, but - seeing as the latter is actually a young adult book (albeit the best such book I've ever encountered) - greatly surpasses it in terms of violence, sex, drugs and adult themes in general.
Y'know. If you need such things in a book.

I'd say it's far better than Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, which I read only recently but which has already faded largely from memory, though perhaps I should re-read that one at some point to be sure.

Another similarly-themed novel is Henry Tumour, which I haven't read in freaking years and yet still find myself thinking of from time to time as I read this book... I definitely need to dig up my copy of that one and refresh my memory.

Perhaps I can set this small sub-set of books against one another in gladiatorial combat until just one could be crowned as the best, something I would never be able to do with books in general, heh.


Edit: oh wow, this book is getting more and more twisted. Gloriously so.
My planned recommendation of it on Facebook might have to come with a disclaimer at this rate, haha!

[Enemy post]

Has anyone heard of the Left/Right Game?

[Yoink]

I think I read the start of a book involving something called the "left/right game", but it definitely wasn't a Nosleep story, haha.


In other news, I recently finished reading A Flag For Sunrise by Robert Stone (helluva book, that) and am now re-reading The City of Marvels by Eduardo Mendoza for the first time in years after finally getting a new copy. It's pretty great, especially if you have an interest in Catalan history...

[heydude6]

Has anyone heard of the Left/Right Game?

Hah! A fellow Redditor too I see. I just read the last part today. Great story. Honestly one of the best I've ever read.

If any of you guys are hesitant, just read a bit of the first post. The writing should draw you in almost immediately and unlike some other stories, it stays good all the way to the end.

I'll probably be spending the rest of my week trying to convince my friends to read it. Good fiction does that to me I guess.

[Yoink]

Been reading Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano, about the Neapolitan "Camorra" crime families.
It's non-fiction, but with just the right mix of novel-like prose, crunchy facts and personal digressions that give you a sense of who your narrator is without derailing things and going off on some masturbatory tangent. It's pretty good, not the sort of thing I'd normally read but I am gripped.

Before that I read Sean and David's Long Drive, which was... solidly mediocre. I don't know, I feel like I might be being a bit hard on the book. The reviewer quote on the front cover claiming that Sean Condon "comes off like Hunter S. Thompson on prescription drugs" certainly doesn't help by setting such ridiculously grand expectations. Maybe in the '90s prescription medication was seen to be far less exciting? I don't know.
It made me chuckle at least twice, so it certainly had its moments even if for the most part it felt like it was trying too hard.


Also been reading a few comics/graphic novels (technically the latter I guess, since I'm just reading collected volumes).
I re-read The Last Days of American Crime (like reading a friggin' movie - in a good way. Remender and Tocchini are a mother-lovin' dream team, another collaboration of theirs, Low, has to be one of my all-time favourite comics) and a volume of Stray Bullets, the most recent one I possess. I really need to track down the other recent collected volumes to get myself back up to date... apparently the Sunshine and Roses arc is finally coming to an end, so I could potentially start keeping up with the single issues in the not-too-distant future!
I'll probably be too broke to do any of that, though. Plus there's that beautiful, $70 hardcover collection of Low starting at me every time I wander into yon comic shoppe... ehh, what's money for if not comic books? *shrug*

Oh yeah! Before I forget, my current graphic novel is a volume of Criminal, which is apparently a gritty crime anthology series, borrowed from the library just before. I've seen various editions of Criminal before but never really looked into it, for some reasons I can't quite remember.
So far it's good, I don't know if the primary art style is entirely my "thing" but it has definitely got me in.
Not sure if the other entries in the series are particularly similar, if the regurgitated media gushing on the back cover is anything to go by this book was something of a departure, but... I shall definitely have to check them out and see.   



Awright, that's what I'm reading.
I re-borrowed Shardik again too, need to figure out where I was up to and try to get back into it.
It's such a long book that I would probably be better off buying my own damn copy and taking my time with it, though.   

[Enemy post]

I have completed Little Women. I had list of three "classic" books that I've abandoned for one reason or another over the years that I wanted to return to and finish. With Little Women and War and Peace done that leaves only Moby Dick. About to start it, stalled it to reread Superman:Red Son first.

[heydude6]

Were they worth the effort in the end? Classics don't always age well.

[Enemy post]

Little Women...Eh, that one was a deal with someone else that I would read it if they read The Hobbit. It seems to me like its a very good book written for a target audience I'm not really in. Jo was entertaining.

War and Peace though, that one really stuck with me after I finished it. It took major effort to get through, but the Shmoop study guide I read was very helpful. I really wouldn't recommend anyone try reading it purely on their own. Along with the need to remember how the characters various family trees and alternate names work, Tolstoy and his target audience are Russian nobles from 150 years ago. A guide helps to understand various cultural concepts that Tolstoy considered too obvious to explain but are confusing now, such as why everyone freely speaks untranslated French in the early parts.

However, after you get through the difficult parts, there's some serious depth to that book. It's an account of the various lives of these nobles in all their tediously realistic detail. Hearing about all the mundane things in their lives makes it feel you're getting to know these characters like actual people. I probably remember the Christmas sledding scene about as well as I remember some actual Christmas celebrations I've been to. With this degree of buildup, the stakes feel significantly higher whenever Tolstoy decides to raise them.

And then Napoleon gets dropped on their collective heads.

There's also a good deal of interesting philosophy on Determinism and the Great Man theory of history. Tolstoy champions the former and is critical of the latter.

Also a policeman gets tied to a bear and thrown in a river by drunks. And if you get through it, at least you can brag to people about having read War and Peace.

*Just noticed the question is also technically asking about Red Son. It's one of the best Superman stories. It's set in a world where Superman's rocket lands 12 hours later and ends up in Soviet-era Ukraine. Superman thus grows up a Communist. The best part is that he never really breaks character. Superman is the same fundamentally benevolent person he usually is, but in this world he's far more authoritarian and willing to interfere with people's lives if he feels it's for the greater good.