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.