So I read a LOT lately…I haven’t been keeping up here….So my recent reading list…This is about 6 weeks worth I guess.
Title – Author
Pulp – Bukowski
South of the Border, West of the Son – Murakami
Absurdistan – Gary Shteyngart
Zombie Capitalism: Global crisis and the relevance of Marx – Chris Harman
Hotel Iris – Yoko Ogawa
Complicity against Palastine – Various
All pretty good. My favourite was the economics book. Bukowski was great! I’m currently reading The Story of Che Guevara by Lucìa Àlvarez de Toledo which I find a bit flat (tho in the intro she seems to say that because she’s Argentinian she’s more qualified to write about Che…whatever!!!!)…It’s like a bad american TV show (say CSI or whatever)…This happened…then this happened…then this happened…Just a bit of a boring narrative. I need more exposition or something…Nothing in this book is really making me think.
Hopefully by the time I get to the states I can spout my reading list and get some yank to spit on me whilst calling me a liberal, upper-class, elitist, big city, tree hugging, peace mongering, piece of bollocks…Most of which will be at least marginally untrue…at a minimum open to interpretation and even discussion (cept for wankers!!!).
On an unrelated note I’m really really enjoying a podcast “all songs considered”. It’s basically a bunch of music geeks sitting around and talking about music. Some concerts, some interviews etc. They tend towards indie stuff, but I’m still finding lots of new bands that I need to hear more of!
If you’re interested I think you can either google it or if you have iTunes you can go to the podcast directory and search there…Good stuff!
Sounds like the prescribed reading list for douchebags…
Wanker! Are you still on one book a year? Cracked a newspaper lately 😉
A quote from ‘one of’ the boosk i’m reading…”Nobody is impressed with Charles Bukowski references in your lyrics. You, like every other literate person, should have stopped reading Bukowski by age 20…along with Burroughs, Kerouac, and, if you happen to be female, Sylvia Plath.”
Douche 🙂
yeah, but in my case I had a very limited reading list as I was growing up. I never read him until a few months ago…I enjoy him and look forward to reading some more. So, I’m a bit behind in what I should have read as a child. In fact I wish my parents had encouraged me to read more challenging books as I was growing up. Alas, that’s life I guess.
Also note that I went to a crappy religious school, never went to university, and didn’t have horribly interesting friends in my teens/twenties…we all have our strengths and mine is not in being well read. I’m trying to fix that by reading more classics now. Is it ever too late to learn?
So, maybe I agree that nobody should read Bukowski after 20, but if you hadn’t read Bukowski when you were 20 does that mean you should never read him?
…AND that author is a judgmental prick and I could judge him/her as harshly for not reading books I read, listening to music I heard, not liking clown pants or generally disliking things I like. He or she is a douche!
Where’s the positivity 😉
Why are my comments still needing to wait for moderation?
No i don’t think there is anything wrong with reading the classics at all, just maybe your interpretation of the word ‘classic’. Like i said earlier your collection of ‘classics’ is what trendy people try to pass off as pseudo-intellectualism. Throw in a foreign author or two for good measure and there you have it, the douchebags reading list…Nothing wrong with reading them, just perhaps the reasons behind them. Is this part of the flatcap, sunglasses indoors things? 🙂
I do the same thing occasionally with movies…still have never seen a James Dean movie…only just saw my first Bruce Lee movie a month or so ago. I still have not read any Bukowski…and to be honest he’s not at the top of my list so probably wont without a good reason.
At times like this I wish I was capable of “laying into someone”…you’re accusing me of the exact opposite feelings/impressions I get whilst reading books that I get whilst listening to music….
I can’t extrapolate, but I think you’ll know what I’m getting at…you could write it better 🙂
How about I define something as classic (tho by all means you could question my credentials)? Shouldn’t my opinion be as valuable as whatever magazine/book author you’re reading? If I call a Bukowski book a classic that should mean something to a friend that values my opinion?
As far as foreign authors…Julia read a lot of Murakami, and now he’s my favourite author. The first book I read of him I didn’t really like, but I read another and so on..
At some point I realized I liked the viewpoint of foreign authors because they were different than what I knew or was expecting…I like that. Kind of like hearing Nirvana after listening to Snow for 6 months 😉
So now I seek out foreign authors ( to me non-american). This most often comes up when I’m at an airport and am looking for a book. If I can find something from a foreign author I’ll always choose that over some american author (that’s how I read Orhan Pamuk – thank you Florence aiport and your lousy book selection) . However, I also take recommendations from some podcasts I listen to as well as from people I like (I still think I’m open enough to be skeptical about recommendations from people I know)…I read “the Guns of August” on my dad’s recommendation (Good!) and if you have any, I’ll gladly take them as well.
I have moments when I read Bukowski that I feel like I could write…and that means something (to me at least)…
I’ve cried at both “East of Eden” and “Rebel without a cause”…some of the acting and dialogue is a bit cheesy and I guess that’s cuz it’s dated….so I would recommend you not watch any James Dean 🙂