hey estela guess what

jordan bought me carver's FIRST EVER mass-produced semi-chapbook (poetry): 'winter insomnia'

it's pretty rad

i'll show it to you next time we hang out

oh hey can we just make this the all-purpose sandbox book thread

i started reading "the toughest show on earth" at the bar last night and it is really poorly written (even with a ghost writer/helper dude).

um ital not quotes lol

that is great, ruby, oh! you married well.

the sandbox needed a book thread
except i haven't really been reading lately
except these two verrrrry slowwwwwly
http://chroniclebooks.com/images/items/1568982/1568982836/1568982836_large.jpghttp://media.us.macmillan.com/jackets/500H/9780312423636.jpg

first one i started a loooooong time ago and i should be done soon, i just have to bring it back and check it out again because i ran out of renewals
second one is ok though author is a journalist and i can get tired of her style sometimes. i just like books about neo-nazis and stuff.

i am reading 'after leaving mr. mackenzie' by jean rhys.

and 'friend of my youth' by alice munro.

this is not a "book" so much but the lorrie moore story in this weeks nyer was really nice outside of some sort of iffy dialogue and almost made me cry on the subway today, although im feverish

i am taking a break from gravitys rainbow which is beginning to drag for me a little bit and i just finished bolanos nazi literature which was interesting and beautifully written but im not really sure how i felt about it (tho the last story was a++++) and am currently in the first half of aleksander hemons the lazarus project which is really great so far kind of a sebald + nabokov steez which is like catnip to me

i'm about 600 (out of 800) pages into yoshihiro tatsumi's A Drifting Life. i'm not gonna finish it now though cuz i don't want to take it on the train today. too heavy. it's a graphic novel, autobiographical, about this dude's life making manga. i'm surprised how much i like it, since it meanders so much. "...and then i edited shadow number 11...then i switched publishers...then i remembered how much i missed making full-length manga." beautifully drawn though.

i juat finished jamaica kincaid's A Small Place, her personal history of growing up in Antigua and hating the british. lotsa spite for such a thin book.

i wish lxy would post on this thread but i bet she won't. she has phases where she reads a trashy mystery a day

oh lol i was just getting ready to post but maybe i shouldn't now so you're not proven wrong?

i should try lorrie moore again - i read 'birds of america' awhile ago, but it was right after i'd read alice munro's 'open secrets' so i think it just couldn't live up to that.

(estela that carver book is limited to a 1000 copies! also, it has really cool prints)

i'm on a a.m. homes kick right now and about to start 'the safety of objects', and also joan didion's 'democracy'.

ytth tries every 2nd day to get me to read a graphic novel but so far i've resisted.

i want to know what lxy is reading

this thread probably!

i never tried these books by people like lorrie moore. maybe i should but not right now. still stuck in the 19th c. as far as fiction goes :o
intrigued by trashy mysteries though, because i like to watch trashy crime shows on the tv

;)

estela how do feel about janet frame

saw 'owls do cry' in the bookstore and felt nostalgic so i bought it

cmon lx

yeahh lxy it's ok to post about trashy novels

i willingly admit i have read and ENJOYED
the da vinci code and other d.brown books
TWILIGHT - not just one but the WHOLE trilogy!

altho 'enjoy' isn't really the right word for twilight.... that shit is on some other level. i was totally conscious the whole time i was reading all 3 books that the writing was terrible, the storyline predictable, the characters boring and one-dimensional, yet i was totally compelled to read them

oh, in no way am i embarrassed about my reading choices.

i had a funny moment with a book an hour ago.  i must have read about it on ILB's best of the 00's and then read the back and it sounded good. Andre Aciman's 'Call me by Your Name.'. i started in on this summer love story in 1st person and it all seemed fine until the third page. that's when i had my "wait, this is a dude talking about another dude" moment. whoops. no indication on the back cover, whatever i'd read about it hadn't mentioned man-on-man love. ha, i guess i'll give it to kyle. not that he finishes books, but he'll get further than i will.

started SWAY: the irresistible pull of irrational behavior. it's y'know nonfiction 

are you saying you dumped a book when you realized it was about gays

about gays FUCKING

new info about jergins life: started book about dudes doing it, couldnt finish

oh god that's awful! xp

that must have been the irresistible pull of irrational behavior

^_^

kyle might finish that one. xp.

xp also: is it about the musical artist SWAY?

cuz i would be surprised if you read a book about that guy.

okay people, here it is:

Illicit, Moisés Naím
Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear << there's your trashy mystery
Leaving Tangier, Tahar Ben Jelloun
The Day of the Owl, Leonard Sciascia

that's the last 4 books i read.

it took me months to read illicit because i suck at reading non-fiction. so instead of reading, i was doing crossword puzzles.

the winspear i read in about 6 minutes, that's how trashy it is. i chose it to remind myself that i can actually read more than 10 pages in a day. it's true, i do <3 trashy mysteries. mainly british ones.

jergins gave me leaving tangier. he bought it but then didn't read it, i guess on account of it is about the gay. (it's also about a lot of other stuff, btw.)

the sciascia is reportedly the first fictional account of the sicilian mafia. written in 1961. even though it's a murder mystery, it doesn't count as trashy because of its historical significance.

that enough for now?

the day of the owl looks like i would like it as long as no gays are fucking

does mary higgins clark count as trashy mysteries? i used to be into her after a bunch of her books were at this beach condo we rented, but it's been years.

no gays fucking, nor straights fucking either. at least not yet. only 12 pages left, so i doubt it'll come this late in the game. xp.

dunno, t, i've never read her. i always had the idea that they were sort of supernatural phenomena based? maybe not correct?

the only one i remember well was about a girl with multiple personalities that i think was murdering people and also did a lot of weird sex things maybe?

haha and ai yi yi! i think i have been wise to avoid mary higgins clark!

oooh for good and not-that-trashy mysteries you should try maeve binchy

i read one by her a long time ago but i don't remember it as a mystery, more like a romance?

oh no way, defintely psychological thriller styles

ok u are right i just checked wiki

i must be confusing here with someone else??

hmm, wonder who you're thinking of

the writer i'm thinking had a lot of her thrillers turned into mini series and she's british. goddamnit i can't remember any of the titles!!

was ordered to come to this thread. I just finished Alice In Wonderland and am like 5 pages into Through the Looking Glass. I've been boring lately and have also been re-reading my favorite bits of Calvino's Cosmicomics instead of seeking out trashy summer thrillers like I should be doing.

i started reading that janet frame book today but couldn't get into so instead i'm gonna read another a.m. homes

oh lxy you might like muriel sparks??

xp: thank you, unr. i'm sorry i didn't say please, i meant to but then i had to go make a drink.

thanks for the rec., ruby!

something about reading unreg's post made me choke and then i spit wine everywhere which was not so classy but kinda trashy so maybe it fits.
anyway, i was gonna say i should read those this summer, unreg. why bc <3 them.

you're drinking spitz!

hey estela guess what

chickenbutt

xpost

hahaha. er, sorry, I guess. is there a special type of wine you're supposed to drink while posting on ilx? (need this for my records)

I <3 them as well but feel a little cheated for not having read Alice as a kid — like I'm missing a lot of its magic by reading it with an adult's mind, stopping to figure out how x passage has made its way into pop culture, and not getting totally immersed in it the way I expected. but a giant, hookah-smoking caterpillar is AWESOME no matter how or when you read the book, so no great loss there. Cosmicomics is highly recommended etc.

The Tourist, Olen Steinhauser

is what i'm reading now. it's about SPIES!

recently read

Roseanna, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

this is the first in the acclaimed Martin Beck series, which is apparently the measuring stick for all second half of the 20th century detective-genre fiction.

i had to make a book cover for it because there is a yucky picture on the front. but the story was good.

now reading

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, Seichō Matsumoto

Sjöwall and Wahlöö are referenced in the accolades. I love the description of the protagonist on the cover:

"Inspector Imanishi... Haiku poet, gardener, and the most dogged homicide detective on the Tokyo police force."

i just started i was amelia earhart, which my friend left for me because she said it was quick and fun. it is quick but so far not fun and more ehhhhhh. i am not having good book luck!

i started the janet frame but didn't like it so i put it down

i started some book by ishiguro but i didn't like that either so i put it down too

i then started 'democracy' by joan didion but that wasn't working out for me either

then i got halfway through steve erikson's 'our ecstatic days' but it was weird and not that well written and i was only keeping on reading it because i felt bad about giving up on the last 3 books

now i'm REALLY reading 'another you' by ann beattie which is okay and also 'los angeles' by a.m. homes (who is currently my favourite writer) which is really good

I started the newest China Miéville The City & The City on the bus ride home tonight. Just the right tinge of strangeness and something-not-quite-rightness so far. The imaginative leaps in Perdido Street Station will be hard to top.

lxy i LOVE the beck novels. what do u think of the wallander books?

max i haven't read any but, like the beck series, wallander has been on my list for a long time. i will go to the book store at lunch. my supply is running low and today is pay day!

you might want to consider the imanishi mentioned above. his detective work is rather more naive than beck's, but there is a similarity of disposition, i guess, between the two.

i will! i got into beck & wallander last year while ari was studying sweden & we took a trip to stockholm.

i highly recommend the bbcs wallander series w/ kenneth branagh too.

and obviously the matthau laughing policeman movie even tho its set in SF not sweden

true confession: it turns out i have read a wallander. jergins reminded me. i never remember that detective's name, just the author.

i liked how grimy it is, and i like the detective a lot. i found it to be a bit more gruesome than i normally like, though, so i haven't read any more.

it was One Step Behind that i read.

i need to hook up my printer so i can take the paper to the library that will get me a library card but i'm using the printer box as a bedside table right now. choices.

max i am unrecommending that imanishi book. it's annoying me.

Man in the Dark, Paul Auster

i am a HUGE fan of auster's wife, siri hustvedt - just went through a phase of reading all her stuff

i loved the new york trilogy tho i havent read it in five or six years but i havent been able to get into anything else by dude

turns out i only read comic books anymore... the last wordsy book i read was "artists in trouble" by aram saroyan. it was pretty good - well written, but not too engrossing.

The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark (thanks, ruby!!)

AND

Lonely Planet, Australia !!!

XD

the ballad of peckham rye is one of my favourite books, i <3 muriel spark, she is so evil and funny.

AND

:) !!!

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett

a favorite

"I don't like crooks, and even if I did, I wouldn't like crooks that are stool-pigeons, and if i liked crooks that are stool-pigeons, I still wouldn't like you."

t.c. boyle's 'road to wellville' (about kellogg and his sanitarium). this is the 3rd novel of his i've read - not totally loving his stuff, but they're easy to digest. his short stories are waaaaaay better - really weird and unpredictable.

i really liked World's End waaaay back when i read it - 20 years ago? but i heard him read one of his short stories on npr after that which sounded horrible, and the reviews of his other novels made me think maybe he just had one good book in him

'tooth and claw' is amazing - it's the first collection of his i read. there's a story about a down-on-his-luck guy who ends up agreeing to buy this mountain lion (i think? or some other big cat) from some old guy at a bar, and what happens when he gets it home is just bizarre.

ytth told me he teaches/taught at USC and is apparently a really arrogant asshole.

yeah i saw him read at a bookstore in LA and hes a real pompous jackass

i saw dave eggers at a reading on saturday - for all the ilx hatred of him, he's actually a very affable guy, not smug or anything. is it just some kind of weird jealousy thing that ppl hate him?

the reading was full of annoying old ppl who asked stupid questions at the end.

i think people mostly hate him due to the whole narcissism of small differences thing

Berlin, Pierre Frei

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7941/48964405.jpg

I'm at the chapter where gay guys inherit their shallow, passive, childlike nature from their oppressed housewife mothers. I'm half-convinced that Betty wasn't a homophobe at all — she just really, really hated Tennessee Williams.

(er, great book in almost all other respects...)

that's interesting, unreg! i always meant to read that but never got around to it. i'm curious about it.

i think i am secretly interested in outdated pseudopsychology too

the early history of dream interpretation fascinates me, probably because I did a project on it in lolinto to psych. like there was this 19th century French psychologist/philosopher who believed dreams were our way of expelling (peeing & pooping, in technical terms) wasteful images from the brain. and he thought people who didn't dream went loony because their brains were overstuffed with useless memories that had no outlet for escape. I'd pay good money for a bathroom reader full of batshit psych theories, & I'm sure such a thing exists somewhere...

"lolintro to psych," even

intro to the interpretation of dreams has some good overviews of previous dream theories.
i should get back on that book... i read it in bits and pieces.

yeah, I read the entire intro & some excerpts assigned by the class, but I've been meaning for a long time to get through the whole book on my own time. eh, summer probably isn't the best time to read Important Books that Changed the Way We Live. I feel like I should be using this time to catch up on all the Matt Christopher books I didn't get to read in elementary school.

i also read the entire intro and some excerpts and now i have the book and i didn't read it. i also have the mass psychology of fascism by wilhelm reich and i have not read that either, but i know i would like it. i don't read books when i own them! but i like that stuff. i don't like science fiction but i like crazy theories.

somebody gave me sexual personae a few years ago and i haven't read it bc i am scared but i tried to ask about it once on ile and it resulted in a huge clusterfuck.

thats because its a stupid ridiculous book written by a challops robot

yeah i'm not curious about that one at all

i'm trying to weed some books out of my collection including a bunch my mom got me for xmas that i never read so i'm reading a book about a lady who got divorced and built a cabin for herself in the adirondacks and just lived there and carried a gun and stuff. i don't know why i never read it before but now i am thinking maybe i should do the same thing..............

the first step is finding a husband to ditch.

don't remind me, estela

any old no good will do.

the death of a beekeeper by lars gustafsson
i've had it for like 6-7 years. so so swedish. good though.

now i am reading "as far as my feet will carry me." it's very riveting. it has everything i like including mining and long treks.

the extraordinary true story of one man's escape from a siberian labor camp, btw

^^^would read!

estela i am mostly reading magazines. at least i'm getting paid to

do you have the 10 steps to a brand new you! down now?

no but i been takin a lot of Cosmo quizzes and also i know soooo much about the leads in Twilight

do u know how to please ur man

wakeup BJ?

*scribbles notes*

oh my

label this thread nsfw please

today i read part of a large print romance over an old lady's shoulder in the waiting room at the doctor's, a spirited girl called cassandra had accidentally offended a duke and an older woman was advising her about what to do next, she said ordinarily she would never countenance anything so forward as a young woman of her station commencing a correspondence with a gentleman but this time was different because an explanation was warranted, so they wrote him a letter saying he could come and see them to get filled in and then they waited around all day for the return post which arrived at last but unfortunately his reply was two curt lines saying no explanation was necessary, signed A.D., so it all seemed pretty hopeless just as it should at the 67% mark. i didn't get any further with the story because i became distracted by the old lady's bookmark, which was a long list of capitalised praise words like wise, heroic, altruistic, top-notch, erudite, virtuous, excellent, remarkable- it was nice, i guessed a friend or a grandchild had given it to her, then i realised it was an acrostic that spelled out WHATEVER.

i love reading

whatever

estela is WHATEVER

i heard a woman in my store on friday, chasing her little girl round, yell out YOU LITTLE ROTTER and i thought of estela and loled

i love that word.

hey estela i finished heart of darkness yesterday but i don't think i understood it.

q for english majors: how many papers did u write about heart of darkness being racist in college

i personally wrote 3, also i got in a VERY heated argument with a red-faced british exchange student who insisted that heart of darkness wasnt racist, because conrad was actually in africa, and was writing the truth about the cannibalistic savages living deep in the heart of the congo

i suppose one of those papers was more about how vs naipaul was racist, with conrads racism as a corollary

it was a VERY good paper by the way

i am re-reading neuromancer for the millionth time and loving it

i was not a liberal arts major so i only wrote boring philosophy papers on occasion. it was obviously racist but also somewhat not racist (mostly racist though). but i just felt it didn't live up to the blurbs calling it the worst nightmare or whatever. i mean i kept waiting to get to the most nightmarish part. the ending was like huh? maybe i'm just not smart enough. there are other "great books" i "don't get" so i just throw this one on the pile i guess.

law school sort of destroyed my ability to really read things tbh. i read way way too fast and like the way they teach you to read in 3rd grade, look for the "main idea" or whatever.

i need to stop or whatevering. WHATEVER.

for a lot of people, like for example me, heart of darkness is not a "great book" and maybe there isnt so much to "get" really

also what blurbs have called it "the worst nightmare" except like george plimpton writing in 1944

for example, the thread about oral sex on i love tmi was a "worse nightmare" for me than fuckin heart of darkness

i dunno i don't remember. i don't usually expect books to live up to blurbs really. i feel better that you said it's not so great. i mean i liked it ok but, meh

yeah

here are the hottest items at the enoch pratt free library

What Others Are Reading At Pratt
Hottest title: Just take my heart : [novel]/ Mary Higgins Clark
Hottest author: Seuss, Dr
Hottest subject: African Americans--Fiction.

HOT HOT HOT!

i wrote one paper about heart of darkness for a post-colonial/colonial lit paper. i did not like the book - way way too grim.

hey estela guess what

estela, plz guess! the suspense is killing me!

i guess not.

tsk

" "

but it wasn't that grim imo :(

i'm reading 'the selected works of ts spivet" - it's pretty good so far. not much about it on ilx except for one person who doesn't like it and some others who agreed that it sounds stupid.

not really a book that id expect ilx to like frankly

just finished:
veronica by mary gaitskill
duplicate keys by jane smiley

both v v good - mostly character-driven, introverted stories. the smiley was a sort of airport thriller, in terms of the basic plot outline, but was actually an interesting study of friendships and relationships.

jaq, what was the name of that kansas/republicans book you were talking about? i think i will read it.

What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank - it's kind of dated, published about 5 years ago.

i like 2 read

me 2

even tho the books i'm reading i am not loving

book about soccer formations
memoir about a guy's mom

i am almost done with go tell it on the mountain. i read so slow these days :(

i am almost done with the human stain

was disappointed by the meaning of the title. i thought it was about a man who was little more than a stain.

lxy: i finally remembered that author's name!!! it's MINETTE WALTERS

the human stain was bad btw, don't read it
now i am reading "memoirs of an anti-semite" and i like it

i read most of the human stain. wish i hadn't.

i kept reading it because i wanted to know what would happen but every time something happened i was like UGH WTF even though when things happened in that book i thought "what's the point of this happening"

i re-started that amelia earhart and was more into it this time but then i forgot about it again.
i am determined to read middelsex, which has gone from sitting near bed in ny to sitting near bed in seattle without more than 5 pages being read. gah. years i've been trying to read this book!

also really wanna read the james hamilton patterson stuff.

i am bad at reading :(

james hamilton patterson will be fumigated 4 u.

aw <3
feeling better?

I've upgraded to meh. Mr. Jaq is still deep in the viral clutches.

the used bookshjop on dixon gave me $15 credit for three books. good!

the clerks got in a funny discussion about carbon footprints and how not having a baby is the best way to reduce ur footprint. i snickered as i looked through the stacks

the thin man
the miracle of castel di sangro
what i loved

from 'what i loved'

Lucille's complaints were banal-the familiar stuff of joyless intimacy. I've always thought that love thrives on a ceratin kind of distance, that it requires an awed seperateness to continue. Without that necessary remove, the physical minutiae of the other person grows ugly in its magnification

still working on memoirs but it has 5 parts so i take breaks in between
reading because it is bitter and because it's my <3 by joyce carol oates

i really liked 'what i loved'!

i finished two alice munro short story collections (she is amazing, maybe the best short story writer ever, can't wait for the new book coming soon!), 'the things they carried' by tim o'brien (v v good kind of war-story vignettes), and 'bad behavior' by mary gaitskill. now onto a collection of essays by siri hustvedt and 'another you' by ann beattie.

i like that excerpt!

hey, if you're into a book, and read it before bed, how long after you wake up do you start thinking about it?

i hate (like) when i wake up on a saturday or sunday and pick up the book again right away and lay in bed for 2 hours being really hungry and really having to pee. i don't know the answer to your question but i think it is 0 seconds. i'm going to go read a book and drink rum drink in my bed.

sounds like the life

drink rum drink is fun to read

i really liked 'what i loved'!

closest i've come to crying @ a book in a looooong time

sandbox book club pick

crying because it moved you or crying because you hated it so much??

i think i mentioned this on an ILB thread, but one of my favourite things about hustvedt's writing is how she slips in all these really sinister events and stuff, but in the end they're really only marginal to the story - they're never what the plot revolves around.

i am very intrigued by this book.

if i still have my copy i will send it in yr care package that i still have not sent but will hopefully make it by xmas <3

i finished because it is bitter, etc. i liked the first 2/3 but the last 1/3 made me wanna barf. it was all about this girl's exquisite fairytale wedding. i wanted more disasters to happen to her instead.
then i read balzac - le colonel chabert. i wouldn't care if all the non-balzac books in the world got burned and only balzacs were left tbh

i am re-reading the half-mammals of dixie bc it makes me nostalgic by gently mocking while simultaneously appreciating my home state.

loving graham greene
the brief wondrous life of oscar wao
the fire engine that disappeared
exile on main st: a season in hell with the rolling stones
hell of articles

i dragged a file called "FUTURE READING" halfway around the world, to ab out the remotest place you can get, and i had the funny feeling of wait why did i bring this crap all the way here?

oscar wao in his speech reminded me of nedddddddd

i feel like i need to read that bc EVERY SINGLE PERSON on public transportation in the last year has been reading it.

tender is the night - fitzgerald (even the back cover calls it an immature work. yep)
i started but didn't finish a philip roth book about nixon. it was written in 71-72 and i'm sure it was 'incisive and hilarious' then but whatever it was boring.
1/3 of nostromo by joseph conrad. still carrying it around so i guess i'll finish it at some point.
brave new world. had never read it.
clandestine by james ellroy. i read it in a day.
just started snow country by yasunari kawabata. love the cover.

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd118/embarchie/photo-5.jpg

what a beautiful cover!

i have just received the new (SIGNED!!!!OMG!!!) alice munro book from my lovely husband as a super early b'day present!!!

i have recently read
iron & silk - mark salzman. anecdotes from his 2yrs teaching english in a remote little chinese town in the early 80s. light weight, a little to0 not-very-modest-at-all but entertaining
another you - ann beattie. like a companion piece to richard ford's independence day. pretty good.

and i just started
good faith - jane smiley. i love her stuff. sort of epic, really slow moving yet absorbing. v v intelligent.

peter hessler (ny-er man in china) wrote a cute funny light book about living and teaching in china. not that u would want to read two like
that so close together, but maybe of interest to someone

lol rob just told me about that book

might be in the basement!

jergins you go to library there or what?

i finished medical apartheid by harriet washington
i started the execution of willie francis by gilbert king (it's about a thing that led to a supreme court case in 1947, louisiana ex rel. francis v. resweber in case u were wondering)
i want to read cousin bette but i got all these long nonfiction library books i gotta finish

I just finished reading Little Women for the first time and am all teary-eyed.

god little women is so great!!! one of my favourite books from my childhood. you should read the sequel, little men, next! it's also great (and sad, too).

I wouldn't have read it, smoove, except for your recommendation - after we did that facebook list of books you've read a few months ago - thank you so much for that! I wish I'd read it when I was 10 or 11, but I'm so glad I found it now.

oh wow - that's awesome! as a kid, i got little women/little men as part of a set of 'companion series' books, along with heidi (so so so great), black beauty (terribly sad) and call of the wild (also heartbreaking) - they were my favourite books and i read them a million times.

harbs what i did was go to the biggest city in fiji and then track down the best bookstore. which is a little underlit shack in a market. then i spent
twenty backbreaking minutes going througj all their stock. lotta
tom clancy and NEBRASKA! and shit like that. the classics section was gold tho. now ive been hauling aroumd a dozen books, getting rid of each one asi finish it.

i like cousin bette, harbl

i love balzac, t. silaviver

;-)

who DOESNT love "balzac" am i right

ball-sac

(scrotum)

oh yeah you know me i love scrotums

(ball sacs)

i might read effi briest instead of cousin bette bc i just have a feeling baout it
still gotta read 114 more pages of willie francis though

harbl & i have similar tastes, i really like the fontane stuff i've read

yeah i just know i would love effi briest! i'll read cousin bette later. i remembered because i want to watch the fassbinder (<333333) but i prefer to read the book first so it's not ruined

i also have to read closely watched trains so i can watch the movie. when i used to have netflix i kept it for 5 months and didn't watch it because i do that.

effi briest is v good

i finished snow country, liked it in a way, very cinematic, the main female character reminded me a little bit of estela and a little bit of harbl.
then i read Picadilly Jim by Wodehouse. not as funny as bertie and jeeves, but i ended up caring about the characters, which was strange for a wodehouse.
i read half of alain de botton's Architecture of Happiness. it's the problem i often have with non-fiction: taking three hundred pages to say what could be said in three pages.
then i read a few pages of virginia woolf's The Waves and thought oh no way fuck this shit
now i'm reading Sartre's The Age of Reason and liking it very much.
i'm getting to the danger zone, i only have 3 or so books left. gotta find a bookstore.

i have the age of reason but i have not read it
i started a virginia woolf book once and couldn't get more than 20 pages before i gave up

hey, if you're into a book, and read it before bed, how long after you wake up do you start thinking about it?

― jergins, Tuesday, October 20, 2009 6:00 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Permalink

i hate (like) when i wake up on a saturday or sunday and pick up the book again right away and lay in bed for 2 hours being really hungry and really having to pee.

[...]

― spite n ease (harbl), Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:49 PM (1 month ago)

did this this morning

i finished snow country, liked it in a way, very cinematic, the main female character reminded me a little bit of estela and a little bit of harbl.

ha i totally missed this! <3

she is very impetuous <3

the pages are falling out
ofthe sartre as i turn them. kindof love
that

do u guys ever lose control of yourself in the library and get 10x more books than you will read in 6 weeks

i had a dream last night that estela had written a book called THE RAVE and it was really dirty and violent!

tsk

good title tho

i finished effi briest and thought it was just ok
i finished closely watched trains and thought it was GREAT
i finished let's get free: a hip-hop theory of justice and it was not that good or i have read too many books on this subject and am not impressed anymore.
i am reading blood and politics: the history of the white nationalist movement from the margins to the mainstream
i am going to start a flannery o'connor book

estela:

jordan gave me first editions (in very lovely condition) of carver's
where water comes together with other water
ultramarine

they are so so pretty!

lovely <3

my stepdad likes to tell stories about hanging out with his wife. what a name dropper, to his own stepson even!

wait what does that make me

his wife = your mom?

i want to find this book, estela http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swan_(novel)

what books did everyone get for xmas

my mum sent me two of tove jansson's books for grown-ups (because i'm a grown-up)

thank you for participating jabba, no one else will. i got:

i am a fugitive from a georgia chain gang! by robert e. burns (no my mom didn't just find this, it was on my wish list lol)
sherlock holmes selected stories
middlemarch

i don't think i got any books but i did get an envelope full of recipes.

my mum sent me two of tove jansson's books for grown-ups (because i'm a grown-up)

― jabba, Tuesday, December 29, 2009 12:07 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

ari just read one of these, the one about the girl who cons the older woman, or something

i got books i may or may not ever read

and books i have already read

i get books every xmas because my mom makes me ask for things (or will buy things i don't want if i don't) but it takes me 2-3 years to read them after i get them because i read other books i have or library books. so i'll read middlemarch in 2012 maybe

if the world doesn't end

reading 'portraits from an institution' by randall jarrel, it his actually, genuinely hilarious, i feel like i am reading a book by estela

jarrell

started brothers karamazov again. i'll never really read this book, it's too long.

i am still on a jane smiley kick, but am taking a break to read neuromancer by william gibson (i hardly ever get round to reading sci-fi so it makes a nice change)

also i am pulling a sickie today, for maybe only the second time ever

<3 neuromancer

ive probably read it a dozen times

i finished the piano teacher and i didn't think it was so great

the only other gibson i've read is burning chrome, which i liked a lot

yeah neuromancer is basically a 300-pg version of the burning chrome short story, but better

will make you disappointed at how boring the internet turned out to be

it's funny, but reading it (altho i'm not v far in), it doesn't seem as dated as i would have imagined

neuromancer so amazing and so prescient....doesn't he even anticipate poopsocking at one point??!

both the tove jansson books were really good, esp the short story collection 'a winter book'

poopsocking?????

u know.....poopsocking

yeah, poopsocking

started brothers karamazov again. i'll never really read this book, it's too long.

― spite n ease (harbl), Tuesday, January 19, 2010 10:01 AM (3 weeks ago)

yeah i keep reading other books instead of this

i think i am gonna read all day. i have been watching movies all day every day this week due to unexpected winter vacation but today i will read, estela

I'm way farther into War and Peace than I've ever been - didn't make it past the first party last time. It's surprisingly engrossing.

i have that too and i know i would love it but i'm always afraid of long books

and now you can go - vendela vida. it was okay i guess. a quick read. not exactly remarkable, but sort of interesting.
love invents us - amy bloom. i liked this. but this is the kind of stuff that most people i know, hate. it's very 'female' and emo but she's a really good writer. on the same lines as mary gaitskill.
babel-17 - samuel r. delany. terrible writing but mindblowing ideas. really made me ~~think~~.
girl with a dragon tattoo - steig larsson. not sure what all the fuss is about tbh.

have just bought a couple of henning mankell books on max's recommendation, since i felt like some more crime fiction after the larsson book.

i was thinking about this thread!

larsson sucks

which mankell did you buy smoove? i just read his most recent one--something abouta red ribbon? and it was terrible. the wallander series is pretty reliable but the rest of his stuff can be pretty ehhhhh

i'm reading the collected stories of alice adams, i think you might like her, ruby.

i prefer her short fiction to her novels, but i am pro short fiction as you know.

i got the fifth woman and sidetracked. yeah the larsson was just... average? i mean, it kept me turning the pages, but the writing itself wasn't particularly good. i really don't get why the series has become such a huge thing.

estela, i'll put alice adams on my book list! i'm on a bit of a search for new author with a decent back catalogue i can get into. oh, i meant to ask you (have i asked you this already??): have you read any fiona kidman? she's an amazing wellington writer, reminds me a little of alice munro.

i have, but it was so long ago i don't remember properly. but i know i liked her.

have you read/heard the wellington poet kate camp? I like her.

thinking about her [fiona kidman] made me decide to email her and ask if she'd be interested in publishing something small with us. i probably won't hear back, or at the most i'll get a polite 'no thanks' but i figured it was worth a shot.

i don't know kate camp, but i never really got into any nz poetry, i'll check her out.

oh, i also just read the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime. it was okay, but seemed pretty juvenile to me. the writing was very good, in that it at least seems to capture the voice of an autistic teenager pretty well, but the plot and the intent made it seem like it was an educational book for children to teach them about asperger's.

hey max, the fifth woman was pretty rad, gonna take a break with something totally different tho before i read the next one. super unusual style of writing: short precise sentences, few adjectives, lots of minute detail... but it all works, somehow.

sweet, glad you liked it--it takes a bit getting used to the prose style, which is weirdly... i dunno autistic? it seems very disconnected but also quite direct, focused on odd things. but its worth it, imo. love those crazy scandos.

i am reading black boy by richard wright. it's very very good.

xp i just read the other one i got, 'sidetracked', which was good too, but written differently - more 'flowery' in comparison.

so i am at comic con for the next couple of days bc i am a good wifey - so i spent about 4 hours today in the middle of the convention at a table, guarding about 100lbs of books for ytth so he could go off and get shit signed and come back and leave it with me. so i took along the alice adams collection i just got, and it is GREAT, estela!

pretty sure i was the only person there with an actual book containing words

:D i'm glad you like her, ruby!

hey estela, i finished two books this weekend, and i started crash by j.g. ballard! i can't decide if i like it. all this boring sex crap. i'll finish it though. i finished a nabokov book that made me cry.

did you finish crash.

i like your condemnation of boring sex crap, i condemn it also.

oh i didn't even remember writing that. i have like 40 more pages of crash. i don't think i'll finish it, i kinda hate it. but i should just to do it. i am now reading "the warmth of other suns." it's about the great migration. i heard about it on npr. lol. it's very good!

HEY GUESS WHAT ILY

i read 200 pages of the warmth of other suns and i couldn't renew it because it was on hold at the library. need to reserve it again. i didn't finish crash still. i started bleak house but i'm too tired to read so i've read 14 pages in 4 days.

ily too

oh lordy, bleak house. it took me forever to read that. in two sessions separated by a year. i dragged that tome over the ocean and never opened it once.

ilyboth

i like bleak house a lot so far but i wonder if i have the endurance to read 900+ pages when i read so little during the week. i had a nice time reading in bed the last 2 mornings and got to page 65 or so.

i have been on an amy bloom kick and just read the last of her books. i do this, i find an author i really like and then read all their stuff in quick succession and then get really bummed when there is no more left to read. i did this with siri hustvedt and jane smiley also. the only person i didn't do this with was alice munro, who i paced myself on for like 3 years but i finally just finished the last one ;_;

now i'm obsessed with jonathan dee.

i am never goign to finish a book, i just read parts of multiple books. i'm back to the warmth of other suns. only 190 pages to go. i have a borders gift card, what should i buy?

an itty bitty book light and a tin of mints.

lol. i randomly selected 3 of those nyrb books.

never you read books?

new york review of books! there is a thread on them http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=55&threadid=74055#unread
i wonder if i will succeed at finishing more than 12 books this year. i've already finished the warmth of other suns, that's one for 2011. and a couple i read almost all of in 2010 and never did. i can do that. i'm just too tired most of the time.

there are 5 books that i read about 80% of, including crash. i need to just suck it up and finish that awful thing.

i wouldn't, i never force myself to finish books i don't want to read, it's a waste of reading time. reading time is finite and there are millions of books out there.

i don't know why i have this hang up. i tried to get rid of it and tell myself that very same thing. but i feel like i wasted time reading most of it and the time would become unwasted if i would finish.

i'm with estela on this one. ditch it if you don't like it.

The 50 page rule rules.

ok ok ok

lol, did we browbeat you into abandoning all 5 unfinished books?

not all 5. there is one i just re-borrowed. our library doesn't give enough time for slowpokes. i have like 100 pages left.
i just finished the true deceiver by tove jansson!!!

i read the first kurt wallander book and the first martin beck book, they were ok

ruby, i'm reading amy hempel's collected stories and finding her brilliant. if you have not read her i think you would like her.

that is the one i have, too! i started reading it a while ago, but then i got distracted. i think i liked it??

i got a library card last weekend btw

i did that too-- started reading, liked it, got distracted, and now i'm loving it.

i bet you have a good library there.

it's super tiny bc our city is super tiny. also i now officially live in contra costa county, not alameda county, so i guess i can't access berkeley's library with my card.

estela i am reading a novel right now, and the female protagonist's nemesis is the spitting (word) image of your 'friend' you told me about.

how lovely

hey e-stale-a

hey estela and what

^^ a good thread for a parallel ILX was mentioned repeated ages ago
kinda like the when pato met estela thread but with a sharper foil

hey t.skilaviver<3

hey estela, have you read any mona simpson? i'm reading 'off keck road', it's pretty good.

no i haven't read her but i always like to get a reccommendation from you.

i was trying to figure out why her name was so familiar to me in this backwards province and it's because she's steve job's sister.

omg

estela made a mistake <3

are you referring to backwards because that was deliberate, this place is too sunny and sky blue and beachy for backwoods.

or are you querying how we spell recommendation around here<3

or is mona simpson not really steve job's sister.

???

steve jobs'

or is it steve jobs's

i forgot that she is his sister!

i'm almost finished with it, it's quite bleak, sort of like richard yates but without the actual hardships i suppose? idk i have quite enjoyed it so far. it's a funny sort of novel, though - it's more like a series of short stories that are about the same group of people, but it took me like 3/4 of the book to to get a grip on who is who.

lol job's is a(nother) mistake, i am being a disaster. also i jist spelt lol as lot but i caught it in time.

just

i like linked stories.

I am reading this book about the Dust Bowl, and it is horrifying and amazing and completely engrossing.

Hey Estela guess what

I gave some marmite to my american friend and she LOVES it

i would never have guessed that.

at our grocery store there's a sad little sign next to the vegemite apologising that marmite is presently unavailable due to earthquake damage at the christchurch factory and i always laugh and think of you when i see it, it's the only lol i've had from that whole terrible ongoing nightmare.

there's an alley near me named christ church

did i tell you already that i had 3 stupid jars of marmite and now i (technically) have none??

- i lost the first through airport security
- i checked the BB date of the other 2 for lolz and one expires this month and the other already expired LAST YEAR

i gave the least-fucked one to my friend so now i'm down to one expired jar. still tastes normal.

aw if i see any anywhere i'll grab you some, nz ran out far quicker than australia did because the crisis got a lot more publicity over there.

oh i'm just gonna keep eating my expired jar - it's actually a 'best before' date, not a 'use by' date, so it's fine. and a small jar lasts me years!

next time you're in wellington you can check to see if the jar we left at the top of the cable car is still there

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3478/4013168312_2efed0c112.jpg

lol u <3

i love that photo, i have a clear memory of standing at that exact spot and looking at that exact view while someone told me a long not very good joke with a pun-ish song lyric punchline (but now i can't remember the song because it was a long time ago but it was something old but well-known like for example the night has a thousand eyes) (which always makes me think of possums in trees illuminated by car headlights)

margaret mahy died ;_;

estela

estela!

estela!!

estela!!!

ESTELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLA!!!!

HI my boss brought me two packs of CHOCOADE biscuits from nz, do you remember them? do you like them?

also 2 pixie{lxy} caramels and 2 perky nanas

and a "souvenir" tea towel (??)

hrmph

happy birthday mookie!

really??!!! well then, this is a day to celebrate and be joyful!!

happy birthday dear mookie (if it is)

yay ruby, that is a good haul. i haven't had any revived chocoades yet but my sister sent me some mackintosh toffees this week which are my current favourite thing from there.

nz seems to have gone souvenir tea towel mad in recent times, i have received a few (and given none).

macintosh toffees!!!!!!!!!!!

estela i am reading "summer of hate" by chris kraus. i think i might actually finish this. it's good!

aw thx <3

estela, i made FIVE rice/bean/veg salads from that cookbook tonight, for ytth's lunches this week... hope they taste good!!

aw<3 so do i, it would be woeful if you effed them up.

ruby, so, so glad to hear your sis is doing better <3

i am too, it is a great relief. <3 you.

thank you, my dear<3s

she is hello-kitty diehard so i ordered a bunch of hk junk off amazon for her, to cheer her up

it is truly amazing, the weird selection of objects in the hello kitty theme (including a dehumidifier)

hugs to you, j and glad to know your sis is improving. There's no object that can't be upped a notch by some hello kitty and you are a wonderful sister.

apparently my sister is convinced that ytth and i visited her already?!? and that she also went for a ride in a helicopter.

aw<3 lol, the wee darling.

justin3, i know you don't especially care about rugby but tonight i am going to an all blacks/wallabies game in brisbane and i am so looking forward to it, the haka kills when i see it over here, and at games in brisbane half the fans are kiwis so it's like going home for a couple of hours.

upon reflection i think estela is too good to be real

she talks a good game, vin scully and all, but i demand to meet her in person

we haven't even gotten doggy pictures!

i can vouch that our estela is even better irl.

xp i don't much care about rugby, but i enjoy a big-deal all blacks game if the situation arises.

we are at a restaurant near the stadium surrounded by hordes of black-clad kiwis, all cheerful because we have already won every trophy going for this year: )

we by chance saw a haka on tv in nz. it was utterly thrilling.

mookieprof, our estela is too good AND she is true. another reason to move west: she will surely visit again some day (i hope!!!!).

ps. amazon is hiring.

i met a hologram of estela that insisted on calling me "sug"

maybe it wasn't really my hologram ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjsh2j7W6Bo

our busy hotel keeper looks like ruby. she's spent the morning rushing around helping people with coffee and wifi, which always concludes with an "et, voilá." kinda funny since we're in spain.

does that mean she looks young, fun and awesome? or frumpy, boring and grumpy?

pretty, sweet, helpful, smart, funny, young, fun and awesome <3

look who's smoove, now!! <3

ruby there's a woman ranting outside my office window who looks just like you. are you here?

i am a bit of a ranter but unfortunately (or fortunately??) it wasn't me!

i dedicated the cadbury caramello egg i just wolfed down to you, dearest ruby, if you had been outside my window i would have gladly handed it over.

hey estela guess what i heard about georgette

that i love her, is my guess. i was having a very sad weekend and then she suddenly appeared in my thoughts so then f. and i looked at some pictures of her (including a couple with ted) and they were a genuinely cheering sight. i like how when you look at her face you can recall her voice and also her ridiculous fluffy hairdos.

estela, we were in portland on saturday and we stayed at the inn at northrup station<3

yay, i <3 that place, i hope it was wonderful.

hey estela guess what

there is now jelly tip chocolate and biscuits!! my sis got me one of each, i get to try them out in 3 days

https://i.imgur.com/la0QbBf.png

I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.

http://www.salon.com/1999/10/12/scully_koufax

miss u

otm

congratulations to the brisbane bandits for claiming the claxton shield

hey

cheers to the good guys

the other day i was walking to the wine store and a little white dog was on the sidewalk running away from its owner and she said "can you catch her?" and i picked her up and she said she's 14 years old and going deaf whenever i call her she goes away from me and i gave her the dog and it reminded me of harry because it was small and white and a rotter

also i was like 1 foot taller than the owner

aw, harry is small and white and a rotter and also he is 14 and a little bit deaf now too:( but he is in good and sturdy spirits and he still runs around a lot and is greedy and cheerful so that is as much as we could wish for. i can't even imagine what sorrow lies ahead so i hardly ever let myself think about it.

some dog advice given to me by a dog lover:

when your dog is elderly, that's the time to bring a young pup home; sometimes having that youthful energy around will give more energy to the older dog and extend its life. and when your beloved eventually passes, you'll have another little creature that needs all that same love and care from you and will help you move on.

that is good advice, it must be very quiet and lonely to suddenly be living in a house with no noisy little animal charging around.

i Double Dog Dare estela to post a poll of her 50 favourite albums

mookie

sorry i cherish you and everything but you've been double dog dared

i am pretending to be very disappointed

but even so

i’m working on this at my own pace, having noted on dare day that no deadline was provided. any postdated changes end this dare immediately and disqualify any new ones. sorry i do make the rules

i am extremely patient, and indeed stipulated no deadline, and am certain that you are posting this interim notice in the best of faith(s) <3