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Guest The Vidiot

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Guest Milkweg

I was reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 a few weeks back and was listening to the new Actress album on headphones and a beautiful thing happened.

 

 

 

It was the chapter when Billy is first abducted by aliens, wandering around his house at night drawing visual (imagined?) parallels to his memories of the war; Forgiven, the first track on Ghettoville was playing and it set the mood and atmosphere perfectly, really expanded upon the experience.

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Guest Milkweg

Hi watmm I'm currently now reading Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, a collection of cautionary tech tales / scifi short stories.

Just finished Solaris. What a coincidence, although I've never been a huge fan of short story collections.

 

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

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Lem's His Master's Voice was an amazing book for me, all the realism it felt like a documentary on first contact. I've got Fiasco somewhere in my bookshelves just waiting for the right moment.

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His Master's Voice is his most popular work after Solaris. It's like Sagan's Contact, but wrote in the most hard scientific way.

Edited by Philip Glass
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i hope you guys aren't starting with kafka on the shore when you read murakami. it's probably his worst novel...

 

Really ?

Well I've got a lot to look forward to then with Murakami.

I've just finished reading it as my first Murakami novel and I loved it.

Bizarre, funny, engrossing and utterly fascinating.

 

 

i don't think zaphod's is a majority view. i would say it's my second favourite after Wind-up Bird.

 

 

Really? I thought it was Murakami's usual fare, but with a bit of coming-of-age cringe material (albeit under a bizarre form, that's true.)

I think my favourite's probably Dance Dance Dance but I read it when I was like 17 so I guess I'd be disappointed if I read it again. I don't know, there are a couple of infuriating things about Murakami. Like when he talks about 68 in Norwegian Wood in the most patronising way possible ("they didn't want to shut the university down, they just wanted some freedom"), talking about what essentially amounts to Japan's descent into sentimental nationalism and the most stupid form of capitalism as if it was just some nostalgic tale. There's an air of postmodern cynicism to what he writes, which is somewhat offset by the extraordinary (or emotional, in his more realistic stuff) things that happen to his characters, but which still leaves a bad aftertaste. On the other hand I like his descriptions of bored men being amused, and I like his characters being bored men, so I guess Murakami just wouldn't work without the whiff of pomo hopelessness, because that's the world we live in. I don't know. It's like accidentally realistic, despite the surreal stuff, especially Wind Up.

 

How good is his latest? Or his last few books, actually. Kafka was the last one I read.

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Guest brendyman

I'm currently reading Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. The way this man emulates human speech is astonishing.

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Finished Stoner and By Night in Chile which are both nice brisk reads Stoner being a bit more dense. Stoner comes across as genuinely American with a display of beautiful honesty, I loved it. By Night in Chile is worth it through and through the ending is perfect.

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Reading The Map and The Territory by Houllebecq. Brilliant :) I really like this man

Alright, finished it last night. Gotta say, this one is 9/10 which is a miracle in my eyes. Perfectly executed message.

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Reading this. It came up somewhere in the AAA if I remember correctly. It's really interesting actually.

 

musiclanguagebrain.jpg

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Just finished Fahrenheit 451, didn't really care much for it. It had some simple ideas in it that never really engaged me, even the premise of the book was overly simple. The world and characters were flat. Although it was only 160 pages it felt long as hell

 

Just now starting American Psycho

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yo! Beerwolf in the bookworm thread :cerious: trying to get back into this wonderful pastime, of which sadly I let go for a long, long time. Hopefully some of you will inspire me to get back into something which should just be natural. Anyway..

 

I just read Perfume by P Siskind, first book I've read for a long time. Brilliant read, my minor criticism would be that it starts off at such a wonderful pace and stays at this pace steadily throughout. Which is fantastic, but it never put that hook into me over the last third and upped the tempo. Still a fantastic book.

 

Just started El Narco by Ioan Grillo, a history of the Mexican drug wars/cartels. And halfway through within a few days, so good reading. Though difficult to follow all the Latin American names. Just at the part when the Mexican cartels start employing Special Forces from the Mexican and Nicaraguan armies and creating their own private armies (Zeta's). Crazy shit.

Edited by beerwolf
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Read Kafka's The Trial and Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase while visiting Prague. Now reading Burrough's The Soft Machine.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

T.H. White - The Once and Future King. I once tried reading it a few years ago, but smoking weed + reading didn't pan out for me. It's a pretty funny book. I like it.

Eckhart Tolle - The Power of Now. I'm usually not too big on self-help books, but I caught a video of him on dmt-nexus.com and thought "Hey, he has some pretty radical ideas. I should look into it." It's a good book. Has some valuable advices in it. I don't agree with all, but he did made me aware of the enslaving capabilities of thoughts (or ego), and that your mind is just a tool, instead of your personality. Can't read any further because I lent it to my cousin (because I felt he could use it more at the moment than I do).

 

Still haven't finished Lolita though. I just finished part 1, and just started part 2. It's a very interesting book. Humbert Humbert is a manipulative bastard, but funny as hell as well. I can't help but feel for him.

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