Page 210 of 310

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Mon June 14, 2021 9:27 pm
by tragabigzanda
Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Mon June 14, 2021 9:30 pm
by washing machine
I will admit it's a pretty tall order to top the opening sentence of that book. I love the glossary he invents in each of his novels, though. Trag - see my bottom paged plea to ST re: gibson.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Tue June 15, 2021 12:46 pm
by 4/5
Image

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Tue June 15, 2021 12:55 pm
by Simple Torture
tragabigzanda wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:
washing machine wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:Image
Hey there, razorgirl
I'm not enjoying this one as much as I thought I would. Will probably pull back from sci-fi for a little bit after this.
I've tried this twice and bailed both times.
I have less than an hour left and am limping to the finish line. There are some cool things in here, but putting aside the dated feel of the tech (which I actually don't think is that dated), I just think the characters are boring and the writing is ho-hum. Towards the end
Spoiler: show
there are those scenes where the AI traps Chase on the beach
and that was probably my favorite part. It was engaging and tense and interesting. The rest of the book just feels, I dunno, forced and dry.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 10:23 am
by Simple Torture
This is a re-read, but it's been 11 years since I first read it, so I'm looking forward to it feeling fresh.

Image
In Bartleby & Co., an enormously enjoyable novel, Enrique Vila-Matas tackles the theme of silence in literature: the writers and non-writers who, like the scrivener Bartleby of the Herman Melville story, in answer to any question or demand, replies: I would prefer not to. Addressing such artists of refusal as Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Arthur Rimbaud, Marcel Duchamp, Herman Melville, and J. D. Salinger, Bartleby & Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is utterly engaging, a work of profound and philosophical beauty.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 1:03 pm
by epilogue
Simple Torture wrote:Hurricane Season is great.
Staring this today.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:11 pm
by Mickey
Finish the first two chapters before you put it down, it really picks up after that.

Also, tamales.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:24 pm
by Simple Torture
Image

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:26 pm
by epilogue
Mickey wrote:Finish the first two chapters before you put it down, it really picks up after that.

Also, tamales.
Pfft... I don't put down books not titled Ulysses.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:30 pm
by Mickey
You should pick up Ulysses, it really is a masterpiece.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:34 pm
by dad
i feel like i need to find something to read. might go back and reread something I've read within the last six months.

just feeling completely unmotivated to pick up anything.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 2:35 pm
by epilogue
Mickey wrote:You should pick up Ulysses, it really is a masterpiece.
I'll try it again someday.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 3:59 pm
by Mickey
It's Bloomsday, no better time to tackle the ineluctable modality of the visible my friend.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 4:02 pm
by epilogue
By someday I meant in like ten years.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 4:02 pm
by blueviper
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 4:30 pm
by Simple Torture
Mickey wrote:It's Bloomsday, no better time to tackle the ineluctable modality of the visible my friend.
Happy Bloomsday, never forget that JJ used to write letters to his wife about assfucking:
"You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 5:57 pm
by tragabigzanda
Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 6:32 pm
by epilogue
Simple Torture wrote:
Mickey wrote:It's Bloomsday, no better time to tackle the ineluctable modality of the visible my friend.
Happy Bloomsday, never forget that JJ used to write letters to his wife about assfucking:
"You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."
Mickey wrote:masterpiece

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 6:39 pm
by Simple Torture
tragabigzanda wrote:Never saw that passage before. But I’ll bet dollars to donuts it’s where the horribly untalented Jonathan Franzen found his inspiration for the “he could imagine her turds” passage from Freedom.
These are known as "the Fuckbird letters" in Joyce scholarship.

Re: What are you currently reading?

Posted: Wed June 16, 2021 9:06 pm
by Mickey
epilogue wrote:
Simple Torture wrote:
Mickey wrote:It's Bloomsday, no better time to tackle the ineluctable modality of the visible my friend.
Happy Bloomsday, never forget that JJ used to write letters to his wife about assfucking:
"You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also."
Mickey wrote:masterpiece
Yes, precisely.