What are you reading?

[sprobeck]

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

good luck!

That's an incredible novel. I really enjoyed it.  Didn't always know what was going on but you just have to go with the flow...

[gainesvillegreen]

In the middle of this one. Not the place to start if you haven't read this writer, but I would encourage all paugers to start somewhere:

Book Description:

A young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father-a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. Never having met the man himself, the biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee well, including a married woman with whom he had an affair, his cousin Margot, and a Brazilian dancer whose daughter took English lessons with him. These accounts add up to an image of an awkward, reserved, and bookish young man who finds it hard to make meaningful connections with the people around him.

Summertime is an inventive and inspired work of fiction that allows J.M. Coetzee to imagine his own life with a critical and unsparing eye, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being. Incisive, elegant, and often surprisingly funny, Summertime is a compelling work by one of today's most esteemed writers.

Brief author bio:

J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Foe, and Slow Man, among others. He has been awarded many prizes, including the Booker Prize (twice). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Review in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Dee-t.html?_r=1&ref=review

[whyweigh5.0]

I got the new Phish bio for Christmas so I set down Killing Youself To Live and started this.  I should really just finish one before starting another but once I started flipping through it I couldn't put it down

[cactusfan]

In the middle of this one. Not the place to start if you haven't read this writer, but I would encourage all paugers to start somewhere:

Book Description:

A young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father-a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. Never having met the man himself, the biographer interviews five people who knew Coetzee well, including a married woman with whom he had an affair, his cousin Margot, and a Brazilian dancer whose daughter took English lessons with him. These accounts add up to an image of an awkward, reserved, and bookish young man who finds it hard to make meaningful connections with the people around him.

Summertime is an inventive and inspired work of fiction that allows J.M. Coetzee to imagine his own life with a critical and unsparing eye, revealing painful moral struggles and attempts to come to grips with what it means to care for another human being. Incisive, elegant, and often surprisingly funny, Summertime is a compelling work by one of today's most esteemed writers.

Brief author bio:

J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Foe, and Slow Man, among others. He has been awarded many prizes, including the Booker Prize (twice). In 2003, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Review in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Dee-t.html?_r=1&ref=review

i read Waiting for The Barbarians a while ago and liked it a lot. i'll have to check out some other books by him at some point.

[Hicks]

Just finished this and re-affirmed that I never want to go to jail.  Powerful stuff.

http://www.descottenterprises.com/~alex/ptstory_cont.html

[flow00]

I love Denis Johnson's work. I'm reading this one now:

[Hicks]

I love Denis Johnson's work. I'm reading this one now:

He was damn good with the Celts in the 80s too.   :wink:

[gainesvillegreen]

I love Denis Johnson's work. I'm reading this one now:

Ditto. Good writer.

[sls.stormyrider]

just finished Omnivore's Dilemna.

makes me even happier about our garden..

Starting Paul McCartney, A Life


read John Lennon, A life earlier this year. should be an interesting comparison

[cactusfan]

I love Denis Johnson's work. I'm reading this one now:

Ditto. Good writer.

i liked Tree of Smoke a lot. he wrote Jesus' Son, right? is that the best one to read next? i've never read any of his other stuff.

just read The Left Hand of Darkness, a '69 sci fi novel by Ursula Le Guin. very good. dreamy and strange.

now reading The Atrocity Exhibition by Ballard. extremely odd in a William S. Burroughs kind of way...

[gainesvillegreen]

Tree of Smoke is a bit like a Rosetta Stone of his output. Many different characters from many of his novels make their way in and out of it. Which is pretty cool given it took him twenty years to write (during which time he, obviously, was publishing those other novels).

I am reading Jesus' Son at the moment, and not a bad next step to take with Johnson at all. I've read The Name Of The World and Nobody Move as well as one other I think. Nobody Move is a great quick read, kind of in the same vein as Pynchon's recent Inherent Vice.

[gainesvillegreen]

Finished up Bolano's The Skating Rink tonight. Thought it fun as Bolano always is, but you can tell it is one of his earlier efforts (boxes are 'secreted' into rooms? - might be the translation, but I'm guessing not).

Bolano's Monsieur Pain comes out on 1/12 I think, FYI. 2-3 other works of his, a lot of short stories included - his finest medium imo - are coming out this year. April and June and one later I believe.

Time to finish up Johnson's Jesus' Son, and then move on to something else. The Spring semester is only a couple of weeks away, and there will be no time for all this good stuff  :cry:

Anyone read Norman Rush? I've read his story collection Whites, but not his novels. They are on the to be read pile, but not sure if I can get to one of them before Psych and Pharm start...

[mbw]

impacting me in a big way......

[Mr Minor]

Kurt Vonnegut

Slapstick

Great stuff.  Love Vonnegut!

[Gol D. Roger]

The Books of Albion - Peter Doherty