Anx said:

Well, send me yours and I may swap you for others.
asstrader.com --that's me.

Imago said:

oh wow - i saw the commercial for asstrader.com with candace bergen. she looks so young talking about all that ass trading!

FICTION

1) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
2) Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
3) The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
4) In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust...although I must admit that Volume II Within a Budding Grove, is my favorite
5) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
6) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
7) Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
8) Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
9) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
10) The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

NON-FICTION

1) The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
2) The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan
3) The Autobiography of Malcom X as told by Alex Hailey
4) When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron
5) Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh
6) Zen and the Brain by James H. Austin
7) A Devil's Chaplain by Richard Dawkins
8) Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
9) The Know It All by A. J. Jacobs
10) Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan

TheResistor said:

love these two, but Zen and the Brain is kind of ...erm..clinical.

Non-Fiction/Memoir/Essays:

1. Shock Value by John Waters
2. Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
3. A Massive Swelling by Cintra Wilson
4. Weird Like Us by Ann Powers
5. The Tao of Pooh/Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff
6. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
7. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (screw Oprah, it's great writing)
8. A Different Kind of Intimacy by Karen Finley
9. Rotten by John Lydon
10. Songbook by Nick Hornby

Imago said:

Yeah...part III, the neurology part, is tough but I love the other parts...especially part II, the whole meditation section.

Anx said:

Oh my. I forgot about "Barrel Fever." I think it's definately funnier than "Me Talk Pretty One Day" and "Dress your Family in Cordorouy (sp?)"

IstenSzek said:

I'm a big fan of "House of Leaves." I cannot wait for his new book, "Only Revolutions," I think it's called.

The Island by Aldous Huxley is also good.

Guilty Pleasures



The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis
Glamourama by Bret Easton Ellis
Lunar Park by, again, Mr. Ellis.
The Witching Hour and The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
IT and The Stand by Stephen King
The Harry Potter books...love them

TheResistor said:

"Naked" made me laugh a LOT, but I think "Barrel Fever" is the funniest of all his books. The books after "Naked" have some good stuff, but I could do without the travelogues and the "Life in Paris" essays and the domestic blather. It's still good writing, but it's just not as pithy as it used to be. He needs to hang out with his sister more.

Okay, some of these are cliche choices, but they've been great to me. Oh, and they're in no particular order:

1984 - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Tight Shoes - Damon Runyon (short story but funny as hell!)
Tomorrow When The War Began - John Marsden
Animal Farm - George Orwell
My Uncle Oswald - Roald Dahl
The Essential Spike Milligan (collected works)
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The Novel - Andrew Donkin
Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams (but the original radio series was much better!)

TheResistor said:

i love all of those. i always want to include The Secret History in my
top 10 but there just isn't enough room.

it's still the best "thriller" out there. so many people jumped onto
the bandwagon after that but none ever matched the sheer beauty and
haunting of The Secret History.

i guess it was rediculous to hope for a repeat, but The Little Friend
did disappoint me tremendously. it just never got off the ground and
went absolutely nowhere.

but The Secret History is just

united1878 said:

good stuff - i love 'animal farm' and '1984'!

The trick to reading as much as I do is simple: get rid of your television.

I'm completely ignorant on new shows: I have NEVER seen, The Sopranos, Survivor, Lost, Sex and the City...and whatever else is popular.

I've been without a television for almost seven years...

I watch movies (both mainstrain and porn ) in DVD format on my mac...

Anx said:

i've started this about 3 times but am unable to break it.
so i went for "Junky" first and was able to finish it and
be able to understand most of it.

but with Naked Lunch i kinda feel that i keep reading and
reading and am not absorbing anything.

i guess it's just too difficult for a non-english speaker
or something.

altho i never have any problems with anything else in that
respect, no matter how incomprehensible it is.

If i can crack 'Gödel Escher Bach:The Eternal Golden Braid'
than why the hell not Naked Lunch?

IstenSzek said:

You know I've gone back to The Little Friend and it just does not hold up...it has all these great ideas but in the end it was just OK. Plus, I was shocked to find chronological mistakes my second time around.

But, the Secret History is just one of those books that made quite the impression when I first read it over 10 years ago. And it was because of this book that I graduated from the "light" reading of say, Anne Rice and Stephen King, to loftier things like The Magic Mountain and In Search of Lost Time.



Donna Tartt

united1878 said:

love Animal Farm. re-read it just about every year.
but I truly disliked 1984. read it once in english
and once in dutch but liked neither. don't know if
it's something to do with having seen the movie as
it's a good enough story.

altho i had the same thing with Huxley's Brave new
World. i so much wanted to like it but it ended up
being just one long bore to me.



anyway, for Animal Farm

IstenSzek said:

Naked Lunch has a weird kind of flow to it...I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a book of unrelated thoughts, because it's not (though he's done that too in other books...I can barely get past the first page of "Nova Express") - but it's a very non-linear book, kinda like "Slaughterhouse Five" only Burroughs isn't as generous as Vonnegut about letting you know when and where you are in the story...so you kind of have to take the action as it comes. If you can accept Burroughs' reality with this book, it's kind of like a big fever dream.

Have you seen the movie by Cronenberg? It kind of puts the book - and his style of writing - into perspective.

TheResistor said:

i still have a tv but it's hardly ever on. and if i turn it on it's
usually after 23:00 just to catch the late news or something. but i
am, just like you, oblivious of most new shows.

sometimes i do latch on to a new show (in reruns lol) and then i'll
be following it. but i will sit down just to watch that and then it
is bye bye tv again.

i hate how tv sucks up your entire evening without you noticing it.

Anx said:

IstenSzek said:

my tv is basically just for when i have a DVD i want to watch. i don't have cable, and i only let myself watch one or two shows faithfully each week at any given time.

even when i was sick for the past few weeks, i would let myself watch the morning news, and when 9am hit, i turned off the tv and either read or wasted time here.

TheResistor said:

Trust me, if you liked 1984, you'll LOVE Animal Farm! That's the book I did in High School.

united1878 said:

SUCH a fast read, too.

1-6) The Thomas Lymond series by Dorothy Dunnett-6 books..Scottish Historical Fiction
7) King Hereafter-dorothy Dunnett-the truth fictional story of King Macbeth
8) The Count of Monte Cristo-Alexandre Dumas
9) Fortunate Son-Walter Mosley
10) Cinnamon Skin-Walter Mosley

Anx said:

Fast, but more importantly EASY to read. Even kids can understand it. That's what makes it a better story I think.

Anx said:

I was house sitting a couple of weeks ago and my friends have one of those huge flat screen numbers and tivo and all that stuff. I was like, you know what, I'm going to treat myself and rent a bunch of movies I've been meaning to watch, and enjoy this big ass TV. But, alas, I could not figure out how the various remotes for the tivo ( how the fuck does this thing work, magic?) and the dvd and the cable.

I found a fresh copy (unread it seemed) copy of The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle and read that all night, until I finally fell asleep. So much for enjoying the luxuries of house sitting in Beverly Hills.

united1878 said:

In that case...I'm buying myself a copy today. I'm house sitting again.

This thread reminds me of how much shit I've read in the past. I'm going to try to catch up with y'all.

I'm reading THE COMMITTMENT by Dan Savage, thanks to CBORGMAN. It's wonderful!!!!!



M

Great thread!! I love reading and couldn't live without great books.

My top 10 favs are (in no particular order)

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
Roots - Alex Hailey
Sophie's Choice - William Styron
Love in the Time of Cholera - G.G. Marquez
The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Imperial Woman - Pearl S. Buck
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

I could name many more. I've read loads of books over the years that I've really loved!

MIGUELGOMEZ said:

I've always been curious about Dan Savage. Isn't he like a gay Republican or something like that?