Currently: "Terrorist"- John Updike. Half way thru, good, very topical.

Just Finished: "Brave New World", "Marabou Stork Nightmare", "The F*** Up"

Stuck On: "Catch 22"

hah, yeah. that's my approach. only been to the races twice, though. a year ago in france and last week at keeneland in lexington. but it would be fun one of these years to spend a day each week at the track and see if i can figure it out...

cheap entertainment, regardless.

kentucky is pretty and full of nice preppies and strange mountain people and a SS/FG lurker who i talked to at a thai restaurant.

The only Palahniuk book I read prior to Haunted (which was OK) was Fugitives and Refugees, because I my wife and I were seriously close to moving to Portland a few years ago. I knew CP had written Fight Club, and wifey had read Geek Love by his friend Katherine Dunn and loved it, so I thought I would give one of his recent offerings a try...

anyway - I've been to Stumptown twice in the last two years and would move there in a heartbeat if there were a job waiting for me... Powell's is such a great place to spend a rainy afternoon... **** I'm rambling

ive been skipping this thread a lot. i dont know why. i smoke and ride my bike(sometimes at the sametime) which one cancels the other out? i read a lot of books and i watch a lot of tv(sometimes at the sametime). which one cancels the other out?

so since the begining of 2006 this is what i have gone through:

a movable feast-hemingway
fear and loathing in los vegas
running with sissors-burroughs(the new one)
dance dance dance-haruki murakami
a wild sheep chase-haruki murakami
interviews with hidous men-david foster wallace
in cold blood-capote(still reading...)
travles with chralie-john steinbeck
grapes of wrath-steinbeck
dress your family in corderoy and denim-david sedaris
geek love-katherine dunn
random parts of a Poe collection
at times dosteyevski(in parts...i have a hard time with russian lit/style)


thats all i can think off now....

Nelson Algren - The Neon Wilderness

Another great 'neon' read: The Neon Bible

Since I broke my collarbone and can't do jack, I've read most of the lemony snicket's series of unfortunate events.
I know they are kid's books, but they are just so witty and quirky and hilarious

they seem like they are, totally.

i've been slacking lately, but officially, i'm still reading joyce's "ulysses" as well as the ongoing (lifelong, i hope) project that is really and truly delving into "finnegans wake", and aldous huxley's "brave new world".

but i've also been skimming through "fugitives and refugees" by chuck palahniuk (who apparently is only a couple degrees of separation from my girlfriend--as is matt groening, and probably elliott smith--so she tried to pull some strings to hook her mom up with c.p.)

that book reminds me of a lot of cool things about this town i'd probably forget otherwise. recommended read for anyone visiting or moving to pdx.

and *jack*, +1 billion on the beauty of powell's.

john fante- the wine of youth

I'm trying to showcase how cultured I am, and so I shall list all the most esoteric titles that I have read for the expressed purpose of attaining superiority in your eyes.







Tha DaVinci code

2 degrees to e.s. through me, if that counts. your girlfriend's a native then? where'd she go to school?

holy ****, i just finished one hundred years of solitude. bloody amazing.

bump.

I want to recommend Studs Terkel, "Division Street: America". It was Studs' breakthrough work. It's all write-ups of interviews done with people in Chicago in the sixties. I'm getting to know more about what life was like then, and earlier, all in these peoples' own words.

A quote, by one Gladys Pennington:
"I think this is a real great country. I think most people are on the ball. I think most people love their houses, love their lawns and their shrubs and their plants and their mode of life, and I think they'd to anything to protect their way of life. There are those, the unsuccessful few, and they hate everything. But the majority of the people like it the way it is, corrupt, maddening, aggravating, horrible, we would fight to keep it that way. We wouldn't have it any other way because we can still go down and blow off steam to some minor bureaucrat when something aggravates us. And if nothing comes of it, we don't get locked up for it."

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159...lance&n=283155

NICE.

Currently reading Solzhenitsyn's Invisible Allies. He basically pays tribute to all of the people who helped him to safeguard his writings (incl. The Gulag Archipelago) from the KGB. Fascinating read.

while we're at it:

Death In Midsummer, Yukio Mishima
The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf
The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite, Ann Finkbeiner

did you know that mel brooks made a movie version of ilf & petrov? i still haven't seen it, though.

Why not Pearl?

yeah it's one of those films i keep telling myself to check out but haven't.

type for DAYS

I had to read BRave New World for yr 12 English I still dont know what to think of it. A lot of things that happen in the book are happening now, but in a lot of ways they are kinda justified now, where they aren't in the book. I dunno the people in the book while shallow and superficial are happy in a way, does that make it a bad system. What do you reckon?

Also finished Catch 22, I think it will be one of my favourite books ever. While it is genuinely funny a lot of incidences in the book bring war into perspective. I love Yossarian's friend trying to be bored as much as he can.

Currently...
Looking for History, Alma Guillermoprieto
Acquainted with the Night, Christopher Dewdney
The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky (not well written, but interesting insight into the painter's mind)
and Xcites, ed. Georgia de Chamberet (because it came accidentally stuffed in the same envelope with the Kandinsky... an interesting read)

Just finished...
Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut
Bean Trees (again; this time with a reading group), Barbara Kingsolver
Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger

Baghdad Express by Joel Turnipseed, A Gulf War Memoir

Check it out.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

by Bill Bryson

Its really, really good.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076...lance&n=283155

American Iron Magazine

https://www.aimag.com

just finished the pornography of meat by carol j adams. its not that long, it took me two nights i believe. but there were two or three statements she made in that book that i was just like f-ck f-ck f-ck what a good point. a good book to make you conscious of some things often overlooked.
also i love the book boys and sex by wardell pomeroy. there is an ultra-convincing argument in it about *****exuality that i had NEVER heard before but which seems so stinking logical. has to do with whether or not *****exuals are born *****exual or if all of them choose that way of life. i can ruin the fun of reading it if youd like, just pm me [id rather not introduce an argument into this thread]. but the rest of the book is good as well.
im going to pick up that tufte book, envisioning information, from the library once i get off work [at the library that the book should be at].
also, i plan on picking up a murakami book. hope to be baffled!