What are you reading today/book club

[wax]

My favourite murakami is norwegian wood, I get the impression that's not a popular opinion. I think it might just be that I read it at the right point in my life.

I need to finish slaughterhouse 5 and the trial, will see if I can knock that over tomorrow or the day after.

[schiaparelli]

[bhajz]

I've been reading God is Not Good by Christopher Hitchens lately, which has been really enjoyable. I wish I had more time to read at school, definitely one of the things I miss most about being at home.

[brusque]

I've been on a reading binge this past month (two months? it all blends together) and have finished The Bell Jar, Kafka on the Shore, Tender is the Night, The Waves, and Moby Dick. I am working on Dante's Inferno, and might continue on to purgatorio and paradiso because I'm really enjoying it. Finishing up A Farewell to Arms...reading Ulysses in a few months with some friends. It's a lot, but it's been nice. I haven't read any other Murakami, and Kafka on the Shore was by far my favorite, so what would you guys suggest to read of his next?

[bels]

Wind up bird chronicle

[sparkyoriental]

I'm a slow slow reader and I have an extremely short attention span so novels and fiction has always been difficult for me. I've made it a goal to read one book a month in 2014, though. I bought The Goldfinch ebook last week so that's next on my list. Currently I'm reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which is a collection of essays by Joan Didion and I'm enjoying it a lot. She has such a distinctive and unique style, and it's unlike any other author I've read before. My favorite essay in Slouching is John Wayne: a Love Story. Other books on my list:

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison
The Hobbit, Tolkien

[Prince of Scandinavia]

Today and the next few days I'm reading up on last semesters books from my Introduction to Anthropology course. I'm reading a few books and compendiums from scandinavian anthropologists like Thomas Hylland Eriksen, along with a book from Steinar Kvale. It's kind of exciting to read all the examples of how anthropology works, but I really want to dig in deep with it. But I'll have to wait until my third semester.

Edit: eli7, I'm really into reciprocity, holism and kinship in foreign cultures (like field work from Evans-Pritchard, Clifford Geertz or Franz Boas. Those are the only one's I've read about so far).

[Syeknom]

Philip Marsden - The Levelling Sea: The Story of a Cornish Haven in the Age of Sail



Account of Falmouth port's history as Britain's maritime dominance grew and conquered rooted in the author's own life surrounded by sea.

[spahdfgo]

Got a kindle at christmas, it's pretty cool given that I had kinda lost the pleasure of reading. Anyway, I read The Three musketeers (Dumas), The Metamorphosis (Kafka), The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), and currently reading Sherlock Holmes: A study in red (doyle)

[tttigre]

Picked up The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen to continue it from last summer, forgot how much I'd enjoyed it. I also have Franzen's Freedom to continue after I finish this one.

[parastexis]

Just read The Crying of Lot 49 yesterday. For Pynchon fans, should I just jump into Gravity's Rainbow?

[odradek]

don't expect them to be at all similar, but yes. and after that read against the day, which may be (OPINION!) better than GR but denser and twistier and longer.

[freddy]

i've been reading the random discussion thread and what piqued my interests thus far was the mini-discussion about public criticism and the need for find such reasons for XYZ justifications of one's fashion choices. so i present u guys with this book that has recently ascended as the cornerstone of my introspection right now.



for me, i finally got to read this in the ideal intellectual context (timing is everything obv) and it's def fucking up how I see things. he speaks in a very psychoanalytic perspective, which is what is driving my current engine of analyzing all things life right now. odradek i pinged u on irc to see if you were read up on Lasch's work. it seems like you would enjoy it and if so id love to hear your critiques and remarks, if any at all

as for everyone, i think y'all will get a strong connection out of it his framework of thinking can be most def applied in the respect of the entirety of socio/psycho-discussion and "issues" (drama) of fashion and the ppls whom collectively congregate together. consumption and materialism is addressed here. i also feel that this will hone in on how society is dillsuioned and perhaps unfold a personal realization that we no longer should be beholden to what others say, and that we need not to self-justify our self-interests and choices in fashion – or anything we do – and perhaps our choices that go against the hivemind/groupthink/mainstream is right indeed after all, that is only until we realize we no longer need to self-deluded ourselves to save face for public opinion. obviously, reading this will provide framework for understanding my rebel attitude and my fashion choices and copping sprees along with my aesthetic choices that seem not to follow/warrant on the pure trajectory of a specific hype manifestations

with that said, i am p happy with the fashion trajectory has turned out for me; i am finding a congruence semblance of connection with the wardrobe I curated and the clothes I choose to wear. I feel as if I am expressing a linear self-expression of my internal world and external-self-expression. i think a lot of people who dive into fashion are obviously unsure of the trajectories of what they want to do, let alone what to self-express. however, i think having the right framework of understanding the world around you and how you exist relative to the world, and to question your own needs and feels for self-expression within this paradigm of realization, is when will realize enlightenment of eternal connection when we synthesize the articles of the articles of clothing we choose to buy, the pieces of a designer's work we decide to wear, how we want to express ourselves in a given moment in life, and how we react and congregate together to form a collective intersubjective experience of fashion feels, is when I think we will realize that we have really made it – and that we can make our own fucking hype and be the hype-machine that hypes the fuck out of our hype, to be the ultimate motherfucking hype beast of our self-directed/self-guided hype where no existing hype has ever hyped before.

[nucktux]

[pips]

Just finished reading Where Are You Wearing by Kelsey Timmerman. It talks about where our clothes are made, the conditions on which these clothes are made and the lives the people who make our clothes lead. The whole premise of the book hinges on the author's adamant desire to find out exactly where his favorite shirt, boxers, jeans and flip flops were made and visit the factory where all those came from. Some of the countries visited: Honduras, Cambodia, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia and there's also a part that talks about how American garment factories deal with globalization and cheaper labor elsewhere.

It's a book about sweatshops but it's not one loaded with facts. Actually it felt more like a cross between a travel blog and an editorial piece. It's a light read and in some parts you can really see the sheltered, country boy upbringing of the author contrasted to the very difficult lives of the factory workers he met. Sometimes it irked me, because do you really need to travel halfway around the world to realize that there are millions of people living in deplorable conditions working in jobs that straddle the line between earning a living and slavery? But then I realize that there are a great deal of people who are ignorant, whether involuntarily or willfully, and it's good that this privileged man went and did more than what a lot of us do and wrote a book about his experiences. A lot of the stories echo those of people I know, some of which are relatives, especially the ones where the workers had to leave their villages behind in order to work in the city or in some other country because there are no jobs in the village. It's a common scenario for people living in third world countries.

The book does not give a definitive conclusion on whether buying clothes made from third world countries are terrible. Actually in some cases it seems like buying garments made in Bangladesh or Cambodia can help the workers because they depend on demand to keep their jobs. I like that the book encourages readers to decide for themselves and to do their own research. There are companies who outsource their production to third world countries but strive to keep their factories up to standard and avoid exploitation, it's just a matter of finding out which those brands are. This made me rethink my shopping practices, like my rather strict avoidance of high street stores.

Next book I'm reading would be One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde. I love Fforde's works and this is really just to tide me over until the next Shades of Grey book is published which the wait for is killing me.

[Syeknom]

[Mippipopolous]

I'm reading Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries now. Shaping up to be an interesting book, certainly an ambitious one! So far the much-talked about astrological organization hasn't been terribly noticeable, maybe I'm just being a lazy reader though, at any rate I'm interested to see where that goes. Enjoying the mystery elements a lot so far. All very early still. Hopefully I'll have time to make a dent in this thing with the new semester starting up!

[pips]

Books I've read since the last time I posted: One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde and Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

The Fforde book is the latest one in a series and of course it's the first one I pick up. I plowed through it though with a little difficulty and to help me understand it a little better I just bought the first book in the series, The Eyre Affair and now I'm reading it.

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of short stories by Kurt Vonnegut. Like schia I tend to buy books based on the cover design and I was attracted to the retrofuturistic look of the cover. Also it was only a little over a dollar at the secondhand bookstore.



Prior to this book the only work of Vonnegut I've read is 'Harrison Bergeron' which is also included in the book. I like his easygoing writing style and I didnt know he wrote a lot of sic-fi influenced stuff... I'll def check out more of his work.

[seth83292]

I decided to give murakami another shot after not really being into 1q84, and am starting Kafka on the shore.

[charybdis]

NOOOOO STOP. KAFKA AND 1Q84 ARE MY LEAST FAVORITE NOVELS BY HIM.

A WILD SHEEP CHASE, AFTER DARK, SO MUCH BETTER

[brusque]

I say seth sould read Kafka, I really enjoyed it.
Recently, I began reading Grapes of Wrath...and it's going slow. So I bought Sylvia Plath's collection of poetry to read when I'm getting bored of the dust bowl.

[charybdis]

Ionno, I liked the falling fish and it's a fun book to talk about. But I thought the metaphorical sister fucking was a bit.

[gnarph]

Reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep for the third time. Actually taking my time and enjoying the scenery, rather than just rushing through for the sake of the story (as I generally do with all books). Different experience this way

[charybdis]

I feel like the majority of goodreads reviewers are crazy.

Currently reading "I Want to Show You More" by Jamie Quatro. The cover is incredibly awful, but the stories are rather interesting—if really heavily about adultery and God. There was a really lovely review in the New Yorker that made me pick it up.

[hig]

about to finish a collection of vonnegut essays entitled "a man without a country." a really interesting collection of works that touch upon some offbeat topics, but he essentially has a surly attitude towards almost anything he writes about. this does indeed make for an entertaining read. i've always enjoyed vonnegut, and "a man without a country" maintains that.

also recently read frankenstein and tale of two cities for ap flaxy. a couple of great classics that i would highly recommend. i particularly enjoyed frankenstein both for the riveting story and writing style.

on another note, i'm currently studying lawrence ferlinghetti in ap flaxy and analyzing some of his poetry from "a coney island of the mind." who are everybody's favorite poets/favorite styles of poetry? i used to not be a fan of poetry but have really grown to like it as of late.

[prawnzee]

uh yeah so after Grapes of Wrath I read Of Mice and Men, which I really enjoyed. at some point I read Nocturnes from Kazuo Ishiguro, it's a collection of short stories and most of them kind of ended abruptly, but I like his writing style a lot so it was good. though some of the stories were left hanging pretty badly, there was always some sense of closure because he succesfully had conveyed an idea at the end. if that makes sense.

also read John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River, which was very enjoyable at times, and very tedious at others. had all the John Irving tropes you could expect and had one of the best characters he has ever created, but as a whole it wasn't amongst the strongest of his works.

never read a Murakami novel before so I picked up Kafka on the Shore, because it was available at the local library. seems really interesting so far, but I'm trying to save it because I actually need to get stuff done (one can dream)

[prawnzee]

Kafka on the Shore is creepin' up on my favorite books of all time list. it was really good!

[djongus]

[sparkyoriental]

I've been trying to read Anna Karenina for about three years now, and it's only been this week that I've managed to make any headway. I'm about halfway through, on page 400. It's the first Tolstoy I've ever read and really the first book by a Russian author I've ever read. Amazing characterization, and I like how political Tolstoy is. It's also surprisingly funny. I think I'm going to try and read the Gulag Archipelago next.

I also finished reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton which I never read as a kid. It was a fast read and I enjoyed it.

I've been reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem for a while now. I've never read any Joan Didion before, and I'm not really liking what I've read so far. She's very judgemental, sarcastic, and somewhat mean. Her essay on John Wayne was fantastic, though.

Has anyone read Donna Tartt's new novel, The Goldfinch? I bought the Kindle version but I haven't gotten around to starting it. Probably because The Secret History made such an impact on me as a high school student that I don't want to ruin the magic I associate with her.

Levin is also perhaps my favorite literary character ever. I've been fantasizing about adopting a cat and naming him Levin and then a dog called Kitty.

[can-]

gulag archipelago is a really amazing read. let me know if you get to it

Anna Karenina (and war and peace) are pretty daunting. I would tell someone new to Tolstoy to start w family happiness