Bibliophile Thread

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Postby eddy » Tue May 12, 2020 5:18 pm

Sounds good to me

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Postby Gaucho » Wed May 13, 2020 4:25 am

Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.

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Postby Gaucho » Thu May 14, 2020 5:21 am

They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

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Postby Gaucho » Fri May 15, 2020 5:12 am

“You mean old books?"
"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."
"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"
"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”

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Postby Gaucho » Sat May 16, 2020 6:06 am

. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces.

Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth.

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.

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Postby Gaucho » Sun May 17, 2020 5:12 am

I knew he was unreliable, but he was fun to be with. He was a child’s ideal companion, full of surprises and happy animal energy. He enjoyed food and drink. He liked to try new things. He brought home coconuts, papayas, mangoes, and urged them on our reluctant conservative selves. On Sundays he liked to discover new places, take us on endless bus or trolley rides to some new park or beach he knew about. He always counseled daring, in whatever situation, the courage to test the unknown, an instruction that was thematically in opposition to my mother’s.

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Postby Gaucho » Mon May 18, 2020 5:25 am

Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

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Postby Gaucho » Tue May 19, 2020 4:48 am

My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody.

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Postby Gaucho » Wed May 20, 2020 4:31 am

The Bushmen, who walk distances across the Kalahari, have no idea of the soul's survival in another world. 'When we die, we die,' they say. 'The wind blows away our foot prints, and that is the end of us.'

Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians – with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds – project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.

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Postby Gaucho » Thu May 21, 2020 5:50 pm

All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is, for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the enigmas of nirvana.

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Postby Gaucho » Thu May 21, 2020 6:25 pm

In the middle of the 16th century there lived on the banks of the Havel a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas, son of a schoolmaster, at once one of the most righteous and appalling individuals of his time.

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Postby Shyster » Thu May 21, 2020 6:32 pm

So we're doing random book quotes? Ok. Here's one of mine:
"I’m going to **** your cousin until the bed collapses into a pile of splinters," Waterhouse says.

Actually, what he says is "I’m going to church with you." But Waterhouse, the cryptologist, is engaging in a bit of secret code work here. He is using a newly invented code, which only he knows. It will be very dangerous if the code is ever broken, but this is impossible since there is only one copy, and it’s in Waterhouse’s head. Turing might be smart enough to break the code anyway, but he’s in England, and he’s on Waterhouse’s side, so he’d never tell.

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Postby Gaucho » Thu May 21, 2020 7:08 pm

Cryptonomicon, if I'm not mistaken . Terrific read.

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Postby Shyster » Thu May 21, 2020 7:21 pm

Cryptonomicon, if I'm not mistaken . Terrific read.
Bingo. :thumb:

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Postby Gaucho » Sat May 23, 2020 6:00 am

Frederick J. Frenger, Jr., a blithe psychopath from California, asked the flight attendant in first class for another glass of champagne and some writing materials. She brought him a cold half-bottle, uncorked it and left it with him, and returned a few moments later with some Pan Am writing paper and a white ball point pen. For the next hour, as he sipped champagne, Freddy practiced writing the signatures of Claude L. Bytell, Ramon Mendez, and Herman T. Gotlieb.

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Postby Gaucho » Sun May 24, 2020 6:15 am

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Sun May 24, 2020 8:15 am

Love these Gaucho.

I just finished my re-read of the Thrawn Trilogy for the first time in 20 or so years. Man, what a fantastic ride.

As far as I'm concerned, the books in the Star Wars EU are canon, despite Disney saying otherwise. I forgot how much I loved exploring the wider world of that universe post-VI.

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Postby Gaucho » Mon May 25, 2020 5:05 am

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.
Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.
They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and f_ggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.
It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time.
Here's to them.

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Postby Gaucho » Tue May 26, 2020 4:02 am

Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered. You'd pushed futility at Public School 38 so long by then you expected the building itself would be embarrassed and quit. The ones who couldn't read still couldn't, the teachers were teaching the same thing for the fifth time now and refusing to meet your eyes, some kids had been left back twice and were the size of janitors. The place was a cage for growing, nothing else. School lunch turned out to be the five-year-plan, the going concern. You couldn't be left back from fish sticks and sloppy joes. You'd retain at the least two thousand half-pint containers of vitamin D-enriched chocolate milk.
Two black guys from the projects, twins, were actually named Ronald and Donald MacDonald. The twins themselves only shrugged, couldn't be made to agree it was incredible.

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Postby Gaucho » Tue May 26, 2020 6:38 am

@shad ;)

Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.

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Postby Gaucho » Wed May 27, 2020 3:55 am

A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclination to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the aperiodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes the facts fairly accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in August 1913.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed May 27, 2020 7:48 am

@shad ;)

Basically, I realized I was living in that awful stage of life between twenty-six and thirty-seven known as stupidity. It's when you don't know anything, not even as much as you did when you were younger, and you don't even have a philosophy about all the things you don't know, the way you did when you were twenty or would again when you were thirty-eight.
:lol:

I'm free at last!

Edit: Nope, not for another year.

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Postby Gaucho » Thu May 28, 2020 4:13 am

How peaceful life would be without love, Adso. How safe. How tranquil. And how dull.

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Postby Gaucho » Fri May 29, 2020 4:02 am

Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end there’s only death.

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Bibliophile Thread

Postby eddy » Fri May 29, 2020 1:09 pm

Anyone read Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane?


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