What are you reading?

[Hicks]

I'm not ashamed to say that the RS article on DFW that came out shortly after he died made me cry a bit. 

So sad, such a loss.

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

one page back on this thread you were asking what DFW was like and had to read up about him on amazon to find out. you must read fast.

for those interested in DFW, there was a really good and long article about him in the New Yorker in march, which you can dig up on their site. he was working for years on a new novel he never finished, but some chunk of it is going to be published next year.

Huh?

No, I was asking about Stephenson, because of the comparison to David Foster Wallace.  Stephenson was who I looked up on amazon, not DFW.

I read Infinite Jest in the summer of 1996 for the first time, because of an article in Time magazine.  I was getting started on that when the rest of my senior high english class was reading _Rebecca_.

I've read Infinite Jest at least twice more times completely through since then.  I've read his other novel, Broom of the System as well (I thought it was tedious and not very well scripted) and I'd say probably 70 percent of his short stories, essays and articles.

While I'm sure I'm not the most versed "scholar" of his work, when it comes to David Foster Wallace, more often than not I know what I'm talking about.

I have been known to use Ms. Incandenza's phrase "the howling fantods" in casual conversation to the befuddled amusement of my peers.

...

Hicks do you really think that you should be suggesting to try and read the book without reading the footnotes?

I think that would seriously diminish anyones reading of the material. 

The footnotes are (in my opinion) integral to the plotline and fundemental to you knowing what in the hell is going on.

...

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

I'm not ashamed to say that the RS article on DFW that came out shortly after he died made me cry a bit. 

So sad, such a loss.

Double post for me!

I agree 110 percent.  He's actually the first celebrity who's death saddened me.  What's crazy is that he committed suicide on my birthday. 

There was an awesome article in the New York Times Book Review the sunday after his death if you missed it...and also McSweeney's did an issue of tributes from other authors who counted themselves among his peers.

Both of which were really cool to read.

[Hicks]

one page back on this thread you were asking what DFW was like and had to read up about him on amazon to find out. you must read fast.

for those interested in DFW, there was a really good and long article about him in the New Yorker in march, which you can dig up on their site. he was working for years on a new novel he never finished, but some chunk of it is going to be published next year.

Huh?

No, I was asking about Stephenson, because of the comparison to David Foster Wallace.  Stephenson was who I looked up on amazon, not DFW.

I read Infinite Jest in the summer of 1996 for the first time, because of an article in Time magazine.  I was getting started on that when the rest of my senior high english class was reading _Rebecca_.

I've read Infinite Jest at least twice more times completely through since then.  I've read his other novel, Broom of the System as well (I thought it was tedious and not very well scripted) and I'd say probably 70 percent of his short stories, essays and articles.

While I'm sure I'm not the most versed "scholar" of his work, when it comes to David Foster Wallace, more often than not I know what I'm talking about.

I have been known to use Ms. Incandenza's phrase "the howling fantods" in casual conversation to the befuddled amusement of my peers.

...

Hicks do you really think that you should be suggesting to try and read the book without reading the footnotes?

I think that would seriously diminish anyones reading of the material. 

The footnotes are (in my opinion) integral to the plotline and fundemental to you knowing what in the hell is going on.

...

They were interesting and all, but some of them are so long you forget what was going on in the main narrative once you are done with the footnote. 

I felt like there wasn't any real crucial info back there, but I've only read the book once.

I really like Broom of the System myself, especially the "waste product" brother character.

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

I thought that some of the background info on the characters was very helpful and insightful.

Especially when it came to characters such as Pemulis, Les Assasins de les fautils roulents, Orin Incandenza and Helen Steeply.

I can see how you might get bogged down in a 30 page footnote and forget where you were in the story, but I saw that challenge as part of the fun of reading it. 

My favorite footnote, btw, is the one concerning the game of Eschaton.

[fauxpaxfauxreal]

I just finished up these three Neil Gaiman graphic novels







The sandman's are a repeat (probably my sixth or seventh time for each of them), Miss Finch is a new one for me, and I thought it was pretty awesome.

[Mr Minor]

Just starting Rant by Palahniuk.

[sprobeck]

I'm on Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill.  It's great so far!

[Ri©h]

[sprobeck]

The World in Six Songs by Daniel J. Levitin.  He writes too much about Evolution, which I find boring, but other than that it's pretty good.

[postjack]

"The Stress of Her Regard" by Tim Powers

Only a short ways in but already it's fantastic.

[Mr Minor]

Just starting Rant by Palahniuk.

Finished this, moving on to Fight Club.

On a Palahniuk kick apparently.

[sprobeck]

queer by William S. Burroughs. I love it so far. Burroughs is great. He's like an older, homosexual, Hunter S. Thompson! I just had to start reading him after I watched the Naked Lunch Movie. 

[kellerb]

"An Underground Education" by Richard Zacks
Bits and pieces of history that were/are too lewd, gross, or shameful to make it into the history books.

http://www.amazon.com/Underground-Education-Unauthorized-Outrageous-Supplement/dp/0385483767

Astonishing facts!

Bizarre photographs!

Fascinating & sometimes deeply weird true stories!

Just a small taste of the intellectual smorgasbord contained in this volume.

Did you know:

that in the original story of Goldilocks the bears torture and kill their impolite visitor?
that Pope Leo XIII appeared in an advertisement for cocaine-laced wine in the 1880s?
that people didn't eat with forks until the 1700s?
that Sir Isaac Newton's famous humble-pie quote "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" was actually written to a dwarf scientist named Robert Hooke and clearly meant as an insult?
that Thomas Edison secretly helped develop the electric chair in a scheme to have the lethal machine named after his arch-rival, George Westinghouse?
that the first pediatric guide written in the United States recommended that expectant mothers breastfeed puppies?
that for two centuries French scientists obsessively experimented on freshly decapitated heads in an effort to discover whether the bodiless brain still functioned?
that Cleopatra was ugly as sin?

[Lifeboy]

HST- Hells Angels