What are you currently reading?

[Simple Torture]

I feel like I would enjoy a classroom discussion about it that spanned a couple weeks just because of the myriad of ideas in it.

I discussed it with my honors students once and we had an awesome time. The toughest part of it is to get past the idea that he hates TV--that's what you would sort of expect with an essay like this, but it's a much more complex argument than that. He hates Joe Isuzu and he's got problems with Letterman. But that doesn't mean TV itself is a bad idea or a wasteland.

[bune]

Yeah, that sentence was just from my update blurb on Goodreads. I wish I had the book here so I could pull from it. It's weird how you can basically see from what he's writing how we got to where we are right now as far as people who watch TV more than they interact with real people.

He may not hate TV but I'm pretty sure he would hate the fuck out of Twitter.

[bune]

"Getting Away from Already Being Pretty Much Away from It All"

This one was interesting, especially since we went to the State Fair for the first time last year so I used that as a comparison. Pretty apt the way he puts it, even here in Washington and almost 20 years later.

"Greatly Exaggerated"

OK, this seems like he's getting pretentious for the sake of pretention but it's a first read and he used a lot of words I've never seen before. Is this not almost a refutation of the earlier critique of criticism by making it sounds so stilted and boring?

"David Lynch Keeps His Head"

I went back and forth on this one. I don't remember that version of Dune - I kind of liked it, after all - and I've not seen any of his other movies or anything. I'm very interested now, but certainly not with my wife or son present. Jesus. Also I couldn't help but think about the new season of Twin Peaks the whole time he was talking about how bad the second season of the show and the movie were. I wonder, at this point, if they were truly terrible and they just used the 3rd season to corral all that weird shit into something that fans would enjoy.

On the tennis one now, just started it.

[bune]

Finished today. It's hilarious the number of times DFW says "It's a long story, I won't go into it" in the middle of his long stories.

[bune]

TOTALS
I read 50,942 pages across 208 books

I still have 7 books to read yet for my challenge so that will change.

SHORTEST BOOK
23 pages
The Playground
by Ray Bradbury

LONGEST BOOK
597 pages
The Night Manager
by John le Carré

MOST POPULAR
1,630,080
people also read
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley

Considering the news this year, no surprise there. Last year was Animal Farm with 2,687,854 readers.

LEAST POPULAR
7
people also read
The Mighty Skullboy Army Volume 1
by Jacob Chabot

Odd that Volume 2 wasn't listed, but maybe that's because Volume 1 is a combination of two graphic novels? Last year my least popular was only read by 2 other people.

[BurtReynolds]

Always wondered how banks got around the whole usery thing. Not sure how the muslims justify it to themselves, though.

[epilogue]

I wish trag was here to tell me how much Colin Meloy sucks. I really miss that gorgeous curmudgeon.

[bune]

I read the first Wildwood book; I was excited about it because it's set in Portland. I read it again to my son because, years later, I was like, "That was an OK book."

Eh. Maybe?

Dude's too verbose and his thesaurus vomited on his keyboard. There's probably a good third of that book you could cut out. Or even make it a trilogy by itself. But no, it's a gigantic book and it's aimed at kids. Or ostensibly aimed at kids, who knows with Colin Meloy fans.

[epilogue]

I read the first Wildwood book; I was excited about it because it's set in Portland. I read it again to my son because, years later, I was like, "That was an OK book."

Eh. Maybe?

Dude's too verbose and his thesaurus vomited on his keyboard. There's probably a good third of that book you could cut out. Or even make it a trilogy by itself. But no, it's a gigantic book and it's aimed at kids. Or ostensibly aimed at kids, who knows with Colin Meloy fans.

The second book of the Wildwood trilogy is the best. It's a great, great book. I thought the final Wildwood book was a little flat.

So far, this is better than the Wildwood books. But I just started it. We'll see where it goes. But this has a different voice and isn't as weighed down by the stuff you're describing. So far. Again, we'll see where it goes. But you can tell already how much Meloy has grown and improved as a fiction writer.

[Monkey_Driven]

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

A book about the development of 10 different video games, notably: Stardew Valley, Destiny, The Witcher 3, and Diablo III.

[bune]

I read the first Wildwood book; I was excited about it because it's set in Portland. I read it again to my son because, years later, I was like, "That was an OK book."

Eh. Maybe?

Dude's too verbose and his thesaurus vomited on his keyboard. There's probably a good third of that book you could cut out. Or even make it a trilogy by itself. But no, it's a gigantic book and it's aimed at kids. Or ostensibly aimed at kids, who knows with Colin Meloy fans.

The second book of the Wildwood trilogy is the best. It's a great, great book. I thought the final Wildwood book was a little flat.

So far, this is better than the Wildwood books. But I just started it. We'll see where it goes. But this has a different voice and isn't as weighed down by the stuff you're describing. So far. Again, we'll see where it goes. But you can tell already how much Meloy has grown and improved as a fiction writer.

Oh man. My son keeps hounding me to get the second one so I guess I have to now. We're going to finish 1984 and then move on.

[epilogue]

I read the first Wildwood book; I was excited about it because it's set in Portland. I read it again to my son because, years later, I was like, "That was an OK book."

Eh. Maybe?

Dude's too verbose and his thesaurus vomited on his keyboard. There's probably a good third of that book you could cut out. Or even make it a trilogy by itself. But no, it's a gigantic book and it's aimed at kids. Or ostensibly aimed at kids, who knows with Colin Meloy fans.

The second book of the Wildwood trilogy is the best. It's a great, great book. I thought the final Wildwood book was a little flat.

So far, this is better than the Wildwood books. But I just started it. We'll see where it goes. But this has a different voice and isn't as weighed down by the stuff you're describing. So far. Again, we'll see where it goes. But you can tell already how much Meloy has grown and improved as a fiction writer.

Oh man. My son keeps hounding me to get the second one so I guess I have to now. We're going to finish 1984 and then move on.

So your kid liked Wildwood? Why then wouldn't you get the second one? Under Wildwood is a lot of fun. It's a great follow up and the highlight of the series.

[bune]

I just see the size of those books and think about reading them out loud.

Stop making me feel worse for what I've done!

[Simple Torture]

God, I just know I'm going to have to read Harry Potter or some shit out loud to my kids someday.

[epilogue]

I just see the size of those books and think about reading them out loud.

Stop making me feel worse for what I've done!

There's a lot of pages. But they aren't even regular sized pages! In a normal tpb format those books would be like 240 pages. Plus there's a ton of pictures!

[epilogue]

God, I just know I'm going to have to read Harry Potter or some shit out loud to my kids someday.

I'll do it!

[bune]

I just see the size of those books and think about reading them out loud.

Stop making me feel worse for what I've done!

There's a lot of pages. But they aren't even regular sized pages! In a normal tpb format those books would be like 240 pages. Plus there's a ton of pictures!

I've seen the book, it's just about 2 inches thick. What version did you see?

Also we read the Kindle version because there was no way to get through the book in the time a library would let you borrow and renew. That was still massive.

[epilogue]

I just see the size of those books and think about reading them out loud.

Stop making me feel worse for what I've done!

There's a lot of pages. But they aren't even regular sized pages! In a normal tpb format those books would be like 240 pages. Plus there's a ton of pictures!

I've seen the book, it's just about 2 inches thick. What version did you see?

Also we read the Kindle version because there was no way to get through the book in the time a library would let you borrow and renew. That was still massive.

Oh Kindle's even better. You should be through it in like two days. Max.

[bune]

Yeah, 48 hours sounds about right.

[BurtReynolds]

Pretty much complete dogshit.