I admit it: I _like_ brain candy books. I enjoy sitting down to read something that twists and turns in the realms of different lands. Fantasy books are my favorite in the whole wide world. Don't get me wrong. I love poetry. Blake, Shelly, Wordsworth, Poe, Elliot... they all bring me a sense of satisfaction or complete confusion after reading which I enjoy. But when I have the chance to just sit and read whatever I want, I go for the paperbacks from Waldens. Professors, for the most part, are not understanding. Between the choice of Bronte and Agatha Christie, the only option is obvious. But every once in a while, I get into the mood to just walk into my literature classes with a book by Greg Bear, sit in the front row, and happily let it consume me for the minutes before class begins. There's something to be said for a book which makes you want to read it. |
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How do you define popular literature? Who is to say that books that do well on the charts are poorly written? Agatha Christie is a master in her genre. Margaret Atwood's last novel, "The Blind Assassin," sold very well and was marketed prominently, and she's a great writer. Among fantasy writers - are you familiar with Stephen R. Donaldson? I think he's a great writer. In fact, I was surprised at how good he is, when I read his "Mordant's Need" books. Not only does he craft his sentences very well (and I love his similes), but his characters (the important ones, anyway) are very complex and well-drawn, his stories are interesting and well-thought-out and lucid, and Mordant's Need had a lot of political strategizing that impressed me. Those books are *good*, whatever genre they're in. Don't start me on Tolkien. "Heart of Darkness," I think, is a poor excuse for literature. Why is it canon? |
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Ive made three attempts to read that god damn book and damn if I dont loose interest everytime. As far as that genre goes...give me a Raymond Chandler any day. i would say his is one of my more favorite "popular literature" writers. This week i've been reading the plays of Harold Pinter. Man i love theater of the absurd. The intro to this particular Volume of Works, taken from an essay Pinter wrote, he quotes Beckett...a quote taken from the beginning of Beckett's novel The Unnamable.... "The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which i cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter" thats hilarious. (there are no typos in that quote) |
i never really got into sci-fi/fantasy, for no special reason, but i did once read a memoir called "the motion of light in water" by a sci-fi writer named samuel r. delaney. it was about his life from 1960 to '65 when he was struggling to become a writer. at one point he gives some girl, a college student, one of his books to read. she doesn't read it for a long time, and when she finally does she's amazed that a sci-fi book could be "so good!" Delaney says something about "the undergraduates reading list" (something like that) that list of books that you have to narrowly adhere to and if you stray to non-sanctioned books, you've gone horribly wrong. this is why it took her so long to read it. the professors instill this fear of popular fiction, like it's a sin. it's just plain intellekshul fascism. i like mysteries and old crime fiction - christie, chandler, hammett, thompson. |
I also like Terry Brooks Shannara series. As well as Tolkien. But, I hate to admit it , I've found the Harry Potter books to be a better read. Now if your talking mysteries I love Baroness Orcy's Old Man in the Corner series. Then there's Rex Stout for Nero Wolfe. Or, Ellery Queen. John P. Marquand did a good job with Mr. Moto. I also like G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown. Earl Derr Biggers Charlie Chan series is good too. In modern writers I find Martha Grimes a good read. Though I don't particularly like her endings. They sort of leave me hanging. But, her characters are great. |
delaney is brutally intelligent. read dhalgren or stars in my pocket like grains of sand. iain m banks culture series is very good space opera. i hear his mainstream stuff, written under the name iain banks, like the wasp factory is also pretty good. i started it but never finished. i tend to like stuff that has a technical bent to it but not always. there is so much good lit in the sci-fi genre. mainstream lit rarely interests me. |
I really like the depth of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon but it takes too long between each book. David Brin is fantastic. um, Orson Scott Card, I was into him a few years back, Ender's Game and all that. When I was a kid/young teenager, David Eddings was my favorite - I loved the characters and the writing style. |
I read to escape. Thats why I like fiction. I always feel dumb when you guys talk about books because I don't read 'smart'. Although now that I get to do reviews I am trying different styles. I plowed through Atwood's The Blind Assassin... gave it an okay review, but actually hated it. |
robert silverberg, brian aldiss, gregs bear and benford, larry niven, michael kube-mcdowell, a a attanasio, i could go on. . . sad thing is that i haven't read a book in a couple years. waaah. mostly for the same reasons i don't play long, drawn out computer games. i'm reluctant to commit the time. i always feel like i should be doing something else, even if it's nothing. i think it's just the level of attention required, watching the tv or surfing the net is more passive allowing me to be entertained without ignoring everything else (like cleo). plus, the last several times i tried to read, i was reading in bed and fell asleep after a few pages which meant it would be months before finishing a decent size novel. i used to do most of my reading when i was a bus commuter but i haven't had to take a bus in years. |
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bite me. |
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And I reiterate---after all these years I'm finally making it thru LOTR and really enjoying it.... My allegiance still goes to bent literature, though.....Bukowski. Himes. Selby. Burroughs. Cortazar. Kerouac. Early Durrell. Salinger. Etc. |
finish it, and 2. read his current series, Otherland, it's head and shoulders over all the other modern sci-fi I've read in the past three years. Pug, you should pick up that series too, I couldn't put it down and may have to break my ban on buying hardcover and get the newset installation which just came out. I'm reading Running with the Hunted now, a Bukowski reader set up to be roughly autobiographical. I've also been slumming and reading Terry Goodkind, who is somewhat ripping off Robert Jordan's Wheel of time series. |
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And, the gap series was good. Not Donaldson's best, though. For that, try "The Mirror of Her Dreams" and "Mordant's Need." |
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I think that the Academic world needs to loosen up a bit. |
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I loved them. |
I prescribe oral sex and a good laxative while listening to the entire audio edition of "The Stand." |
Give me a Bronte over Stephen King any day. So much more delicious darkness and passion. I always feel dissatisfied when I read "trash" novels. There's an emptiness to them, as if they just scratch the surface and never dive deep into the cold waters of the human condition. |
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it sounds so god damn pretensious when speaking of literature. who cares about the canon. nothing but personal passion should direct your eyes to the pages of a book. i spend as much time reading uppity playwrights and novelists as I do reading Maxim mag on the pot, Food and Wine in the kitchen, Wallpaper and Bazaar in the living room and the LA and NYC times here at work. put the canon in the canon and light the fuse. i think the academic world, in general feels threatened by mass pop consumerist culture. get your free stephen king novella with any happy meal and biggie fry purchase. limited supplies. |
Dante's Divine Comedy wasn't bad. One of the few classics I didn't have to be dragged kicking and screaming to read. I plan in the future to read Plato's Republic. But, most literature I was ever assigned to read I found boring. I don't even think the teachers/professors who assigned them liked them. They were just books on a list that somebody else thought we should read. The most horrifically boring book I ever tried to read (failed miserably) was Silas Marner. Can anyone please tell me why the world is still subjected to the torture of reading this piece of you know what? And, who in all of God's world decided it was great litterature? |
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The memories are to painful. |
I almost did it on books by Eliot, Dickens, and the like. I changed it at the last minute, and am much happier. |
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And SM has a place in history as a piece of literature that has bored the ass off many schoolkids... Academia annoys the fuck out of me---always has and it probably always will. I have a respect (but not blind acceptance) for the "Classics"---but there's the whole unveering myth of the canon---which I think ends with Sylvia Plath---and if you're not in The Canon, you're NOBODY. My ass... ALTHOUGH (just to play Devil's Advocate) I'm currently working on two essays for an anthology called THE WORST BOOK I'VE EVER READ---which is dedicated to writers one considers overrated and overcommercialized. My initial choices (the editor of the book could always tell me to fuck off) are John Grisham and Dean R. Koontz...... Such Academics, of course, malign writers like Bukowski as the Antichrist, because he wrote such rough-hewn populist writing with no bullshit---he opened the doors to Academia and showed everyone the dust and cobwebs therein and so he'll be maligned forever by the Canon-freaks. Much in the same way elitists in mysticism will always bag on Crowley for making their secrets public. The trouble with Academia is that as far as writers are concerned, all they do is churn out writers whose work is a pale mimmickry of the writers in The Canon....and there are many great writers in the Canon---but the shit's been done. It's over. Much like the way the Academia of the art establishment in France held art stagnant in the late 1800s/early 1900s, snubbing the impressionists and other art movements---their artists devoted their lives to imitating long-dead genres---and they failed. No one remembers them today. Xyrea, as far as "literature" goes, I reccommend you check out Bukowski.....I prefer the short stories and I think THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN TOWN is a great place to start....I guarantee your professor would hate the stuff. I wonder if popular fiction has eroded our ability to enjoy literature of substance---I wonder sometimes if our attention spans have been so fucked up that we can no longer appreciate a challenging or substantial read... But I'm not gonna dwell on it. UNCLE PUG'S LITERARY HIT LIST OF THE NEXT 5 MINUTES: HERMAN MELVILLE-Bartleby the Scivener SHAKESPEARE-KING LEAR (badass play!!!!) J.D. SALINGER-Nine Stories. His best book, in my opinion.... LAURENCE DURRELL--THE BLACK BOOK. His underrated first novel--unlike anything you've ever read. JOSEPH HELLER-CATCH-22, SOMETHING HAPPENED. Heller's early, dark stuff was always the winner for me----check out SOMETHING HAPPENED---not an easy read---but twisted and brilliant and the ending will nail you cold. GAWD am I drunk! I probably SHOULD ADD, at this point, that I'm actually REACHING THE END of FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING...I finally am making it through the damn thing. And goddammit---I'm anxious to start devouring THE TWO TOWERS. |
I am making my way through my first Bukowski - Running with the Hunted. I really like it, it's a good introduction to him as far as I know. |
i just wrote those names down, as I've never heard of them. Im going to the library to return this Pinter book and get something to read during my travels starting next week. I like reading people I've never heard of but have been compared to authors I dig. |
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still . . . |
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after that, try to find "the futurological congress" and "memoirs found in a bathtub". after that, his webpage can give you insight (obviously biased) on his other works. http://www.lem.pl/english/main.htm and like i said above, this stuff was written in polish, which as a language, is nothing like english, but the translators did an amazing job of preserving all of the tricks of language in a way that the rhymes rhyme, the puns are punny and the prose is remarkable. how in the fuck could they accomplish all this in such a translation? |
it's like comparing "airplane" to "flight 93" |
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i do that a lot. i need to work on it. i'm not now, nor have i ever been in a position to presume that i have something unique to teach to anyone. and yet my writing style, when i'm not just being a smart aleck, tilts hard at that windmill. |
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i have read those reviews and they're interesting on a conceptual level. it's a really cool literary device but they're not exactly interesting in a recreational reading way. i enjoyed them when i read them 15-20 years ago. but that was at a time when i was reading a lot of non-traditional stuff anyway. http://www.lem.pl/english/dziela/microworlds/microworlds.htm i miss you, spider. hope everything's going well. |
is there a story thread that spans the reviews, or are they unconnected? i started thinking about calvino's "if on a winter's night a traveler" and nabokov's "pale fire". interesting devices. meta-novels. |
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or i might just be full of shit. |
I am wholly aligned with this way of thinking. I wanted to write a book within a book, as though I had found an old manuscript and had just edited it and published it. It would be in the style of George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell. And this is what gave me pause, because that meant I would have to study -- really study -- those authors to get a grip on their use of language, but I don't have the time or the talent to pull that off. And what really excited me about the project in the first place were the character arcs and the layers of meaning I could develop -- I too couldn't care less about the marchioness and 5 o'clock. So I thought if I could write the Cliff's Notes to this non-existent book, I could get in all the good stuff about plot and character without actually having to, ya know, write the book. Thanks for the link, dave! I'm still wracking my brains to think of something indigenous to this area I could send you in return for the mix I asked you to make me eons ago. I *could* send you a CD of powwow music, but...it's not...really something you can listen to for pleasure. I'll keep thinking. |
you know you don't need to send me a damn thing. in fact, i have too much stuff as it is. the last thing i need is more stuff. honestly, don't worry about it. |
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nate, did you start or already finish The Last Samauri by DeWitt? |
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I'm reading George R. R. Martin's A Feast For Crows right now, just started it. Kazu wants to find an audiobook version of his other books, since she doesn't have time for this sort of literature in her grad school reading, but the 9-hour one-way trip bewteen ATL and columbus is perfect for audiobooks, and I think this particular series is perfect for a long car trip. |
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