Bibliophile Thread

Postby **LeopardLetang** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:45 pm

I picked it up out of the blue last month and started reading it. After 40 pages of approved fun I went to that thread to see what people were saying and saw those quotes as well hah.

But then I started reading blood meridian and it sort of took over. I've been plodding through it ten to twenty pages at a time. So much about it is incredible. The characters and dialogue and interaction. But it's sort of like playing assassin's creed or that red dead game. It's awesome and beautiful and brutal but tedious and I'm ready to put it down after forty five minutes. I'm hoping for a huge plot change in these last eighty pages.

I also bought grapes of wrath at the same time as those two. So far it's been an outstanding 100 pages. I love the different chapter techniques and the characters and dialogue. It may prove the best of the bunch.

I also bought Moby Dick that day but only read the introductions and first chapter. After reading lots of new fiction and wolfing it down lately and enjoying it but being left unsated, I realized some classics were probably due for my next course.

I'm wondering your guys thoughts on reading multiple books at a time. I think it's no different than watching multiple television series week to week. Sometimes I'm up for something heavy and ponderous and sometimes I just want some simple plot progression. Luckily I have a lot of free time.

Postby **Reveutopique** » Wed Jun 03, 2015 10:51 pm

I picked it up out of the blue last month and started reading it. After 40 pages of approved fun I went to that thread to see what people were saying and saw those quotes as well hah.

But then I started reading blood meridian and it sort of took over. I've been plodding through it ten to twenty pages at a time. So much about it is incredible. The characters and dialogue and interaction. But it's sort of like playing assassin's creed or that red dead game. It's awesome and beautiful and brutal but tedious and I'm ready to put it down after forty five minutes. I'm hoping for a huge plot change in these last eighty pages.

I also bought grapes of wrath at the same time as those two. So far it's been an outstanding 100 pages. I love the different chapter techniques and the characters and dialogue. It may prove the best of the bunch.

I also bought Moby Dick that day but only read the introductions and first chapter. After reading lots of new fiction and wolfing it down lately and enjoying it but being left unsated, I realized some classics were probably due for my next course.

I'm wondering your guys thoughts on reading multiple books at a time. I think it's no different than watching multiple television series week to week. Sometimes I'm up for something heavy and ponderous and sometimes I just want some simple plot progression. Luckily I have a lot of free time.

I read multiple books at times but I find concentrating on one book better and faster. Sometimes one book wins out anyway.

Postby **eddy** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:20 am

Source of the post
I'm wondering your guys thoughts on reading multiple books at a time. I think it's no different than watching multiple television series week to week. Sometimes I'm up for something heavy and ponderous and sometimes I just want some simple plot progression. Luckily I have a lot of free time.

I have a tough time with this, I'm constantly looking for the next book and that usually means I pick it up and start it when I should just finish what I'm reading. I usually have 4-6 books going at one time. Most of the time I find one that I can't put down and plow through it and then another pops into the rotation. My bed stand has about 15 books on it right now and I wonder if I will ever get to all of them.

Postby **dodint** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:49 am

I very rarely read more than one fiction book at a time. I prefer to immerse myself in one thing rather than hopping around. I don't get mentally fatigued reading a book the same way I do when pushing through a TV series binge.

Non-fiction, whether history stuff or computer studies I can skip around all I want, taking on several at a time. I think that's because non-fiction is typically structured in a way where the chapters are more modular and have more defined jumping on/off points making it easier to switch around.

Postby **Troy Loney** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:50 am

My standard is to have two books going at once. I keep a non fiction book at my office that I take outside to read during lunch, then have a fiction book I read at home.

A recently added #3 to the cycle, as my fiance and I now read a book out loud to each other. It usually takes a little to get through them, but it's a really engaging and fun thing to do with your significant other. We first read True Grit like that, and now we're reading The Last Flight of Poxl West (because she knows the author from home and they both went o Kenyon).

But right now, I have four going.

Christopher Hitchens' Arguably as the non fiction. Poxl West out loud with fiance, Absalom, Absalom and Royal Flash. I started Royal Flash because I've been doing eliptical at the gym and like to read something light when I'm using the machine.

Postby **columbia** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:53 am

A recently added #3 to the cycle, as my fiance and I now read a book out loud to each other. It usually takes a little to get through them, but it's a really engaging and fun thing to do with your significant other.

Indeed.

Postby **Troy Loney** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:55 am

A recently added #3 to the cycle, as my fiance and I now read a book out loud to each other. It usually takes a little to get through them, but it's a really engaging and fun thing to do with your significant other.
Indeed.

She loves doing accents, so True Grit was the ideal book to do this with.

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:01 am

Just started David Maraniss' Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero yesterday. Excellent book, and Maraniss is a gifted storyteller.

I read this morning that the movie rights have been sold to Legendary Pictures, whose chairman has a stake in the Steelers: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2 ... 1506030265

As I read the opening chapter yesterday, I thought about why Clemente's story hasn't been made into a movie. Had he been a Yankee or Dodger, he would have had a movie, a remake, an HBO miniseries, and a 30/30 documentary.

Postby **Freddy Rumsen** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:04 am

I've gotten into a rut lately where I have fallen off the reading train. Need to get back on it.

I usually have one non-fiction, one fiction, and one fantasy book going at a time.

Currently I have Loon: A Marine's Story by Jack McLean, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Thurston, and the second book in the Saga of Recluse series by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

Postby **eddy** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:28 am

I recently picked up Southern Gods by John Horner Jacobs based on a blurb:

A sumptuous Southern Gothic thriller steeped in the distinct American mythologies of Cthulhu and the blues . . . Southern Gods beautifully probes the eerie, horror-infested underbelly of the South.

Also picked up This Dark Earth by the same author which appears to be a cross between "The Road and World War Z".

Postby **Reveutopique** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:43 am

A recently added #3 to the cycle, as my fiance and I now read a book out loud to each other. It usually takes a little to get through them, but it's a really engaging and fun thing to do with your significant other.
Indeed.

Kaiser and I do that too!

I am trying to do 1984 which I read a long time ago but I may switch to Anthem by Ayn Rand or Animal Farm ...Not that Kaiser needs any help in disliking communism...

And short stories.

Postby **dodint** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:50 am

I still want to do Animal Farm Warz but relantel has a game going...

Postby **DigitalGypsy66** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 9:54 am

We read to each other once - pre-kids, on a 14 hour trip up to Canada. It was one of Steve Martin's books - Shop Girl, I believe. Good times.

Postby **Willie Kool** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:36 am

I may switch to Anthem by Ayn Rand or Animal Farm ...Not that Kaiser needs any help in disliking communism...

If you think Animal Farm is an indictment of communism, you really don't understand it.

Postby **Reveutopique** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 10:54 am

I may switch to Anthem by Ayn Rand or Animal Farm ...Not that Kaiser needs any help in disliking communism...
If you think Animal Farm is an indictment of communism, you really don't understand it.

Postby **shafnutz05** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 11:10 am

If you think Animal Farm is an indictment of communism, you really don't understand it.

It is most certainly an indictment of communism. Orwell was a socialist that viscerally disliked the more extreme form of communism that was featured in the Soviet Union. I'm not saying Orwell was a righty (he wasn't), but he most definitely did not like communism.

Postby **Willie Kool** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 11:20 am

If you think Animal Farm is an indictment of communism, you really don't understand it.
It is most certainly an indictment of communism. Orwell was a socialist that viscerally disliked the more extreme form of communism that was featured in the Soviet Union. I'm not saying Orwell was a righty (he wasn't), but he most definitely did not like communism.

It was an indictment of Stalin's cult of personality, not of pure communism.

Postby **nocera** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 11:32 am

I just finished A Confederacy of Dunces. I enjoyed it.
Confederacy of Dunces is one of my favorites. The story behind the author is pretty heartbreaking also.

About 3/4th's of the way through Confederacy of Dunces. Ignatius is easily the funniest character I've ever come across in literature.
I love that book so much.

Finished it last night. If you would appreciate the comical exploits of a protaganist who's nihilism and rejection of modern society is based on appreciation for medival philosophy and culture. His political goals include the restoration of a monarchy based on divine right.
Thanks fellas, read this last week and it was exceptional. I feel like Ignatius is what I would become if I let myself go entirely, was a superb read. I wouldn't have added it to my wishlist without your enthusiasm.

Kindle recommended some JKT biographies after I finished, I plan to dig into one shortly.

Glad you dug it. Now here's a little nugget from John Kennedy Toole's Wiki that'll bum you out:

Toole's novels were rejected during his lifetime. After suffering from paranoia and depression due in part to these failures, he committed suicide at the age of 31.

Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached noted editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless. Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., he shelved the novel. Suffering from depression and feelings of persecution, Toole left home on a journey around the country. He stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi to end his life by running a garden hose in from the exhaust of his car to the cabin. Some years later, his mother brought the manuscript of Dunces to the attention of novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Postby **shafnutz05** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 11:32 am

It was an indictment of Stalin's cult of personality, not of pure communism.

While Stalin had a lot to do with it, Orwell was a noted critic of both communism and capitalism, a theme (with communism) he echoed in 1984. Obviously, there are different forms of communism, but the Leninist/Stalinist strain has been the only one of note over the last century.

Postby **dodint** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 11:42 am

Yeah, my edition had a forward by Percy. Nice of his mother to be so adamant.

Postby **LITT** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 12:39 pm

had to go with the 'without special offers' version of the paperwhite as the 'with' was on backorder and wouldnt have been here in time

Postby **robbiestoupe** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 1:13 pm

Just started David Maraniss' Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero yesterday. Excellent book, and Maraniss is a gifted storyteller.

I read this morning that the movie rights have been sold to Legendary Pictures, whose chairman has a stake in the Steelers: http://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2 ... 1506030265

As I read the opening chapter yesterday, I thought about why Clemente's story hasn't been made into a movie. Had he been a Yankee or Dodger, he would have had a movie, a remake, an HBO miniseries, and a 30/30 documentary.

Picking this book up at the library today. I'm excited to read it, and also heard the news about the movie rights. I'm way too young to know anything about Clemente, but his Mario-like status in the city has me intrigued.

Postby **Willie Kool** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 6:39 pm

It was an indictment of Stalin's cult of personality, not of pure communism.
While Stalin had a lot to do with it, Orwell was a noted critic of both communism and capitalism, a theme (with communism) he echoed in 1984. Obviously, there are different forms of communism, but the Leninist/Stalinist strain has been the only one of note over the last century.

There was/is Troskyism, the true progeny of Leninism, which is what Orwell supported.

Old Major = Lenin
Snowball = Trotsky
Napoleon = Stalin

Your reference to 1984 actually reinforces my point, as it was as plain an indictment of totalitarian personality cults as you can get.

Postby **Troy Loney** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:38 pm

If you think Animal Farm is an indictment of communism, you really don't understand it.
It is most certainly an indictment of communism. Orwell was a socialist that viscerally disliked the more extreme form of communism that was featured in the Soviet Union. I'm not saying Orwell was a righty (he wasn't), but he most definitely did not like communism.

Lol at the clarification that Orwell wasn't a righty.

Homage to Catalonia gives you a pretty good understanding of orwells views. He definitely hated the communist party because they were backstabbing politicians.

Postby **shafnutz05** » Thu Jun 04, 2015 8:47 pm

Lol at the clarification that Orwell wasn't a righty.

Homage to Catalonia gives you a pretty good understanding of orwells views. He definitely hated the communist party because they were backstabbing politicians.

haha just wanted to make sure the clarity was there. WK is right in the sense that Orwell did endorse the purest form of Trotskyism.

He (Orwell) led one hell of a life. Then again, so did Trotsky.