Reading Tab

Nice. I have a copy, but know I won't get around to it this year. I finished Crime and Punishment something like five months ago and decided I needed a little break before diving into another one of Fyodor's many tomes.

Me too! Not five months ago though. I wanted to do The Idiot next because that's supposed to be a companion piece of C&P, but, yeah, I went for something shorter like NftU. Pretty good so far. The guy just rants about life and other existential fodder.

__________________
"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

AM no expert in Japanese... but if you plan to learn the language it's fine. of not.. you should read his books... they seem like something of your interest, I could be wrong too.

Just the title Kafka on the shore (I'm aware it has nothing to do with Franz) entices me. Also, I've heard many great things.

I guess I'll just have to get over it...

Definitely read Murakami if you have the chance. I'm sure some of it is lost in translation, but I'd still encourage anyone to read him.

Okay, Justin. Since I've had great success in the past with literary recommendations from you and you seem to know Murakami, which should I start with? I'm thinking Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World looks pretty good. Any others?

__________________
"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Norwegian Wood is another more popular title, which is also great. I'd say start with that one. But, I can't say I wouldn't recommend Hard-Boiled Wonderland, because it's probably one of my favorites by him.

You wouldn't recommend After Dark?..
Sadly, that's the only one I read..

War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres

Bookended by his experiences as an embedded journo in 2003, there's a certain degree of fluff in the middle of this account (all be it fluff that includes his proximity to 9-11). The kudos-chasing side of his rise through the journalistic ranks to Los Angeles glamour reporter doesn't exactly paint him in a favourable light, even if it is all honestly and wittily portrayed. The real meat is in the pink mist and adrenalin-fuelled perspectives of the invasion. The banter of his Humvee-bound protectors made me think of the early sections of Three Kings, as 'Fighting Irish' blithely admits his malaria pill will probably knock him unconscious at the wheel, and everyone presses him on his Press kevlar. Probably not much in the way of new news here, but plenty of insider perspective, of soldiers on the ground, and the politics and pant-soiling of being a journalist alongside them.

+(+)

__________________
Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

A Wild Sheep Chase - Haruki Murakami


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll


The Pact: a Love Story - Jodi Picoult

uh, my cousin begged me to read it. it made me want to gauge my eyes out.

It - Stephen King


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo


The Girl Who Played with Fire


The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
reading now

Pretty interesting so far.

5/5




4/5


cuurently reading:

__________________
If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

Just finished The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Brilliant stuff. I think Waters is now my favourite author, there hasn't been a single one of her books I haven't enjoyed reading. I wasn't sure a possibly-haunted house story would appeal to me but it's so well written because you get swept up in the story. There is a creeping sense of dread that makes it quite scary in places.

Just a heads up that the English translation of Murakami's Hardboiled Wonderland is heavily abridged.

Just finished the final Dark Tower book. Stephen King's masterpiece, I know a few were disappointed with the ending but I thought it was perfect

__________________
If at his council I should turn aside, Into that ominous tract which all agree, Hides the Dark Tower. Yet aquiescingly I did turn as he pointed, neither pride nor hope at the end descried, so much as gladness that some end might be.

Robert Browning 'Childe Roland to The Dark Tower Came'

The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton

Delirious, giddy, turn-of-the-Century hijinks. The story of a detective infiltrating an anarchist ring has a certain predictability to its loops but it's still a joy to stay on its trail as it circumscribes balloon chases, intangible terrors and punctured pontifications. Lotsa fun



(--)

How did you like it planet? I loved that book when I first read it. It's been years though, think I need to re-read it again soon.

__________________
"I know, honey. Look at the map. We go your way, that's about four inches. We go my way, it's an inch and a half. You wanna pay for the extra gas?"

nice. That's on my list of books to read. I finished her Affinity a while back and enjoyed the wonderful gothic atmosphere.

Has anyone here read The Hours by Michael Cunningham and if so, was it good?

__________________

Good opinion once lost, is lost forever.

No. Sunday is. The whole thing is an allegory for god's role in relation to humanity. God is both the benevolent creator AND the ultimate anarchist. His suffering, the suffering of Jesus Christ, is this infinite contradiction in God himself. And we, as individual mortals, are his solution. Each of us has to choose between the "front side" and the "back side" of Sunday. Good and evil, heaven and hell. Both are parts of God himself.