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Postby gauchebag » Wed Apr 10, 2019 1:36 pm

What is up with Philip K Dick and teenage girls? I'm on my 4th book is his now and they all seem to feature teenage females with un(der)developed bodies that are very attractive

Ubik- Pat Conley
Electric Sheep - Rachael Rosen
Flow My Tears The Policeman Said - Kathy Nelson (maybe she was early 20s?)
A Scanner Darkly- more than one mention of teenage girls, including 15 year old selling her body for drugs/money (or just about to)

I'm not asking for an explanation of the appeal of young women to certain men- it's just very brazen. The guy is 4 for 4 so far.
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Postby tolka » Wed Apr 10, 2019 1:49 pm

object wrote:the joyce is bad takes are en vogue atm


i've been 14 years on this horse, i ain't for movin'

(also i don't actually think joyce is bad, just portrait which partly gets saved as a result of being *a joyce* but i am glad that you all enjoy it and appreciate it in a way that i can't)
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Postby tawny frogmouth » Wed Apr 10, 2019 1:56 pm

i'm rereading some borges essays atm, and even though he loved and venerated joyce as a craftsman and artist, at one point he says "we have those two vast and - why not say it? - unreadable novels..."

some things can be admired from a distance, but every time i've tried to do ulysses i've gone crosseyed
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Postby shacky » Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:10 pm

'portrait' has been on my shelf for a few months now and this talk is making me not wanna tackle it

i just finished this which i enjoyed more than the fall which i prefer to the stranger (which i think, generally speaking, is all backwards, right?)
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it's making for a hell of a heavy double feature with this right now
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Postby chowder julius » Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:14 pm

i lvoe the sheltering sky. i bought another bowles book recently that i realized is literally all stories about smoking weed

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These are four tales of contemporary life in a land where cannabis, rather than alcohol, customarily provides a way out of the phenomenological world. Thus, of the men in these stories, Salam uses suggestions supplied by smoking kif to rid himself of a possible enemy. He of the Assembly catches himself up in the mesh of his own kif-dream and begins to act it out in reality; Idir's victory over Lahcen is the classical story of the kif-smoker's ability to outwit the drinker. Driss the soldier, with aid of kif, proves the existence of magic to his enlightened superior officer. For all of them the kif-pipe is the means to attaining a state of communication not only with others but above all with themselves.
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Postby shacky » Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:27 pm

chowder julius wrote:
I saw him run off the back porch and into the garage. He came out with a two-by-four about a foot long. From the corner of my eye I saw him throw it. I saw it coming but made no attempt to avoid it. It hit me on the back of my right leg. The pain was terrible. The leg knotted up and I had to force myself to walk. I kept pushing the mower, trying not to limp. When I swung around to cut another section of the lawn the two-by-four was in the way. I picked it up, moved it aside and kept mowing. The pain was getting worse. Then my father was standing beside me.

ok this is kind of triggering. i like this book. baby's first bukowski. i can't believe i like this?


chowder julius wrote:i've read a lot of books about shitty families but i guess this is the first that captures a relatable experience of poverty and violence and abuse for me. i'm intrigued! i'm not sure i want to read any of his other books tho


just catching up on the last few pages and, yeah, this was my favourite novel for a time. it did for me what catcher in the rye does for most people. it's the only book i've read three times. it still stuns me how i can find such suitable counterpart events in my own life to match almost every episode he writes, not only the family stuff, but just the horrible, horrible confusion and fear and only intermittent but still ineffable beauty of very early childhood. i don't know of any other books that really capture the hellish presentiments that are capable of lingering in the back of a 3-year-old's mind. he was never happy, never understood what was happening to him as he was tossed about the world. it felt like someone had written my biography, as cheesy as that sounds (at least in the early parts, he thankfully becomes more unrelatable as he ages into Asshole Bukowski)

i can't separate factotum and post office in my head but feel they'll both resonate for anyone lost in the capitalist grind, i think, though i can't remember how much bullshit misogyny and alcohol glorification is interspersed. possibly too much, given dude's present rep.

just don't read 'women'
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Postby shacky » Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:41 pm

also re: kobo abe a few pages back, just a friendly reminder not to sleep on his 4 collaborative adaptations w teshigahara, they absolutely shred, esp face of another
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Postby Kenny » Wed Apr 10, 2019 4:03 pm

I really disliked The Sheltering Sky's ending the first time I read it but I liked the rest so much that I decided to re-read it again last year? The year before? and i was surprised at how much my opinion flipped on it
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Postby chowder julius » Wed Apr 10, 2019 4:05 pm

the ending of sheltering sky is completely wild ass but somehow it makes sense
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Postby gauchebag » Wed Apr 10, 2019 4:23 pm

shacky wrote:also re: kobo abe a few pages back, just a friendly reminder not to sleep on his 4 collaborative adaptations w teshigahara, they absolutely shred, esp face of another


i recently watched pitfall, woman in the dunes and face of another

the music dude is the other key guy here, they put together a neat little oeuvre between these i'm excited to watch the man without a map.
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Postby chowder julius » Wed Apr 10, 2019 4:24 pm

i did not know there were other abe movies! i have seen woman in the dunes. i am going to watch face of another asap
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Postby i_am_agriculture » Wed Apr 10, 2019 5:36 pm

i_am_agriculture wrote:Also just finished:

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Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories by Hisaye Yamamoto

Some cool short stories about Japanese immigrants and their children. Worth reading for the interesting depiction of life in internment camps, as well as Japanese-American life in southern California.


Just read another short story collection about Japanese-American life.

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Yokohama, California by Toshio Mori

Pretty good but I liked Hisaye Yamamoto's stories a lot more. He mentions Winesburg, Ohio in one of the stories and that seems like a pretty good reference point. William Saroyan's introduction is strange in that he says that Mori needs to improve as a writer. It's true but you're not really selling it very well, Billy.
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Postby ahungbunny » Wed Apr 10, 2019 6:53 pm

the fall > the plague > the stranger

and ham on rye i think is really good whereas all his prose after that is just glorification of the drunk sad asshole he was trying to become. i do like what little i've seen of his poetry though

just finished lispector - hour of the star, which i admire without really understanding it, and arabia felix, which i loved and will soon dredge the expedition thread to talk about

now onto jansson - the summer book which i intend to read half naked near a body of water
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Postby mission » Wed Apr 10, 2019 7:46 pm

A Portrait terrible?

Nah. It's miles away from terrible. And we are miles away from the late 19th/early 20th century and we do not feel the hot curl of fingers after cane nor the tug and pull of the faith of our mothers. It's hard to read and what is being read is hard to empathise with.

I'm Irish Catholic. My Cork-born grandmother was alive in the time of which Joyce writes. It's closer to me than most and I struggle with how far away it is.

Books are made of words and sometimes you just have to circle back to the simple realisation that anyone who builds a sentence like this - "On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins." - is making good books.

If that's your thing...
Good.
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Postby abs » Wed Apr 10, 2019 10:34 pm

shit. i'm six days shy of going a month without finishing a book, yet i'm halfway through four books. i don't like this space i'm occupying.
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Postby chowder julius » Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:21 am

i wish hamsun wasn't a literal nazi because i like his books but i can't really recommend them. at least he's dead i guess? mysteries is good and I bought growth of the soil this morning which would be my fourth hamsun read
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Postby tawny frogmouth » Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:32 am

finished rereading my borges selected non-fiction last night. i know this is corny and i don't care - i don't think i love any author as much as i love him. he really is the closest literary friend i have. reading him is a balm, it's calming and soothing in a way i can't replicate anywhere else in my life.

also, i had my second park encounter with a different guy because he saw me reading borges. something is in the air right now, you should all go out and read in parks
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Postby Seamus » Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:46 pm

Seamus wrote:Image


Not great! I've also recently read:

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Now I'm about to start this:

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I'm a minor Crews stan so excited for this one!
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Postby internetfriend » Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:45 pm

man. i’ve had china mieville recommended to me constantly for the past ~15 years, and have repeatedly seen his name come up in the same breath as some of my favorite authors, but i think i’ve always had an aversion to picking him up because the first person to insist i read him was a total amanda palmer/tom waits head and as a result i’ve always assumed he was pretty steampunky, and there were always other books to read

but i picked up perdido st station yesterday and it’s really incredibly scratching an itch for me. and—not sure i know how to put this well—seeing reflections of stuff i’ve done or been excited by, that were probably inspired by people that mieville himself inspired or was inspired by, to the point that i wonder if it seemed like i was totally cribbing from mieville books that i hadn’t read and knew nothing about

funny!
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Postby a-10 warthog champion » Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:54 pm

internetfriend wrote:man. i’ve had china mieville recommended to me constantly for the past ~15 years, and have repeatedly seen his name come up in the same breath as some of my favorite authors, but i think i’ve always had an aversion to picking him up because the first person to insist i read him was a total amanda palmer/tom waits head and as a result i’ve always assumed he was pretty steampunky, and there were always other books to read

but i picked up perdido st station yesterday and it’s really incredibly scratching an itch for me. and—not sure i know how to put this well—seeing reflections of stuff i’ve done or been excited by, that were probably inspired by people that mieville himself inspired or was inspired by, to the point that i wonder if it seemed like i was totally cribbing from mieville books that i hadn’t read and knew nothing about

funny!



i read like two of his books and found them really enjoyable to read

not like enough for me to go like nuts over but just solid stuff

i did city & the city and kraken i believe.
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Postby milano boy » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:03 pm

i don't read a ton, but i came in here a long time ago and asked for some recs and city & the city was rec'd to me and i liked it quite a bit!!
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Postby chowder julius » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:15 pm

perdido street station was a v engrossing read for me. it's the only one of his books i've read, was really good for reading in bits because iirc the chapters are a nice size and since the narrative is nonlinear u can kind of come up for air now and then
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Postby internetfriend » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:20 pm

yeah i’m not that far in but it’s been real crunchy and fun so far. which is what i wanted, ive been reading all nonfiction/theory for the past month and i was hoping for a cool good novel. and it seems like i got it!!
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Postby sadville » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:36 pm

tawny frogmouth wrote:finished rereading my borges selected non-fiction last night. i know this is corny and i don't care - i don't think i love any author as much as i love him. he really is the closest literary friend i have. reading him is a balm, it's calming and soothing in a way i can't replicate anywhere else in my life.

also, i had my second park encounter with a different guy because he saw me reading borges. something is in the air right now, you should all go out and read in parks


every part of this rules so much <3
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Postby sadville » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:42 pm

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this'n's intense and awesome and just shreds hillbilly elegy (which i admittedly haven't read but probably won't now). bought it on an impulse when i flipped open and saw a page discussing the hatfield and mccoy dinner theater place in pigeon forge, but really it's a liberationist/anarchist historiographic critique on how appalachia has been portrayed in the trump era and for decades beforehand

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what do y'all think about this cover?

first chapter was disorienting and awesome!
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Postby chowder julius » Fri Apr 12, 2019 2:48 pm

i love the new penguin classics edition cover art so much in general
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Postby shacky » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:00 pm

it's nice art but i never buy penguin classics, vintage, etc. even when they're the cheapest option, because i hate seeing uniform spine colours on my shelf

i love penguin essentials despite their being mass market size cus they have excellent cover art AND spine art
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Postby shacky » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:14 pm

look how purdy
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Postby chowder julius » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:19 pm

i don't mind the matching spines because i don't file them by publisher so i can hardly tell unless i get on a tear where they're all i'm reading like i did in february:

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Postby tawny frogmouth » Fri Apr 12, 2019 3:26 pm

i have a coffee date with my park friend on sunday
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