i'd be really interested in knowing what the people in this forum read.

right now, im reading "the magus" by john fowles. good fuckin book

just finished "the electric kool-aid acid test" -tom wolfe
and "what's the matter with kansas" -somedude (ha, name escapes me at the moment)

ohyea, i came 30 pages away from finishing
" a short history of nearly everything" but gave up becasue it was due. really interesting and well written goodness.

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I read Robin Hobb's books, fucking love them. i've been reading a book about vikings recently, the name slips my mind at the moment, Son of Odin possibly? and i've also been reading Nietzsche - Beyond good and evil.

edit: i swear there was a thread like this a few months ago...

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Yes, I searched "books" and "novels." There's a few threads I remembered that were lengthy in there.

Currently I'm not reading any books. Just stuff on the net about plastering 100 year old ceilings and gardening stuff and an occasional magazine.

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Currently 'Jung and Feminism'

I like Dean Koontz books, bodybuilding magazines, and I like reading about horror movies and shit like that. Usually at online bulletin boards, but it's still reading.

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transformation by whitley strieber. this is a book on alien abduction. a guilty pleasure that i wont talk about in the presence of certain company.

Haha, I think you just got yourself in trouble by mentioning that

What do I read for pleasure? Erotic fiction.

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I don't really read for pleasure except the paragraphs in playboys accompying a picture. Well... I'll ready music and guitar books and mags for pleasure as well.

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ok fine, i fantasize about making love to alien women while wearing one of these

http://people.csail.mit.edu/rahimi/helmet/

edit: no but seriously, people give me shit about reading that stuff, i like it like a good suspense novel. i used to be scared shitless of being abducted as a kid so this stuff interests me now that im older. so i dont like to talk about it among the more high-brow literary friends.

i borrowed the book from some people who are building up an impressive home library. i was really embarrassed to ask for it, i got funny looks and stuff, but whatever. i dig this stuff

I like reading things that are grammatically correct, for one.
I've always been a big fan of John Grisham, when I do read. Which isn't often at all. Actually, almost never unless its required by school. Its not a hobby of mine.

Last thing I read was two Michael Moore books, and "Lords of Chaos."

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ive been reading slaughterhouse five, i also have lolita, the prince, the davinci code, dante's inferno, nietzche's why i am so wise, and the last two in the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy series.

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man slaughter house was one wierd movie

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That Nietzsche book's actually called Ecce Homo. 'Why I am so Wise' is one of the chapter titles that the publishers of that series of books ('great ideas' or whatever) decided to put where the title should be.

My reading breaks down into what I read for class and what I read for pleasure.

Class:
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time
Lewis Carrol, The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Version (annotations by Martin Gardner)

Pleasure:
Alain Robbe-Grillet, Towards a New Novel
Jorge Luis Borges, The Selected Non-Fiction
Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto
Charles Bukowski, The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Colour
Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?

I think that's it.

Oh, and Moe Blunts seems to be reading the hippy canon.

Not this forum, that's for sure.

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reading a collection of bukowkski myself

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i "read" playboy for pleasure

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Ive been into a fair bit of Patrick Moore lately.As well as other Cosmology/ Astromony/ Quantum related books.Actually,Im reading a good book by Martin Rees called 'Just Six Numbers'.Its fairly simple,but really puts the universe into perspective.Iwas big on philosophy,not so much now.More interested in science at the moment.
As far as fiction goes,Ive read ALOT of Wilbur Smith,King,Grisham,Forbes,ect.Ive been into hitchhikers guide for years,and I admit I havent really 'grown out' of Harry Potter.The DaVinci code is THE most over-rated book Ive come across.I cant stand the hype around it.

is charles bukowski the same person mentioned in the modes mouse song "bukowski"?

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. i got into it last year for a week. i read tons of stories and then realized "i think i can find something better to do every night". its crazy though, those stories are more like memories now because my imagination was working so hard at playing them like a movie.

Yeah, its about him. I hate that band.

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Zen and the art of Voodoo.

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There's also a song about Bukowski by Anthrax, and it doesn't suck. Bukowski's always been fairly popular among people he hated, so I guess it's appropriate he's getting a hipster revival.

Some magazine with titties in.

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Yeah, yeah, YEAH!

Jim Goad is only one vowel away from deity for good fucking reason.

Today I read approximately 15 journal articles from such luminary sources as Biological Psychology, The New England Journal of Medicine and Medical Hypotheses.

"Without science, we wouldn't have cheap bathtub biker speed!"

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so who is this bukowski guy, in lamens terms, im looking him up on wiki, but i want a PST88 description of him.

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bukowski once moved back into his parents house at 45 years of age, after a while of being useless,drunk and unemployed his dad kicked his ass and threw him out.

thats just a little sneak preview of the man, the myth

Mainly Pop Science (Dawkins, Pinker etc.) and Douglas Adams.
I don't get alot of time to read outside of Chemistry.

Bukowksi's a post-beat poet and novelist whose success comes from being a fairly shameless hedonist and writing about it in a completely unpretentious way. He's an inveterate alcoholic who once officially died because he ruptured his stomach, but continued drinking anyway (his self-made legend has it that he woke up in the morgue and was so freaked out he began writing poetry). He bounced around the country doing any shit job he could get his hands on until he couldn't even get one of those and ended up being just another bum. He burned up a significant portion of LA's mail with a cigar when he worked as a postal sorter. He finished his first novel with this: 'In the morning it was morning and I was alive. I decided to write a book. So I did.' He first gained fame writing a column in a free press paper called 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man,' which included, among other stories, a story about how one night he woke up in bed with a girl from the night before who he couldn't remember, and decided to reward her for staying by trying to have anal sex for the first time in his life, so he just got it up and inserted, thrusted a few times, then suddenly realized that this was not a girl but rather a long-haired guy, so he got up and made breakfast. Here's a sample Bukowski poem, from his first collection:

original courage is good,
motivation be damned,
and if you say they are trained
to feel no pain,
are they
guaranteed this?
is it still not possible
to die for somebody else?

you sophisticates
who lay back and
make statements of explanation,
I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more.

In one poem he described the poems he writes as gunslingers, hanging around his apartment and drinking his beer and threatening him until he goes ahead and writes them down. He also described the difference, for him, between a poem, a short story, and a novel being essentially one of length. It shouldn't, but it totally works. And I think that's enough about Bukowski for now.

Jim Goad definitely does kick ass.

Im currently reading "Heavy Metal, Sound of the Beast"
by, Ian Christe
its basically the entire history of metal all the way from the 60's to now.

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I've been getting into the Star Wars novels. I've so far read "Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter," "Shadows of the Empire," and this one book in a trilogy written by Timothy Zahn called "Heir to the Empire." The other two are "Dark Force Rising" and "The Last Command." It takes place 5 years after Return of the Jedi, and it's about this Warlord and Grand Admiral from the Empire named Thrawn who gathers the remains of the Imperial fleet and plots to overthrow the New Republic still under construction, and in the first book he forms an alliance with a Jedi Master who had supposedly died during the Clone Wars.

I'm on the second book now, "Dark Force Rising." It's finally nice to read something more enjoyable than the crap they make you read in school.

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thank you much, i will definitely look into his writing, as i am rather intrigued.

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The Encyclopedia. Why not? But with so much on the internet these days, I tend to entertain my reading senses with E-articles and various info-surfing. You never know what you'll run across. Sure, there are a lot of misguided or completely idiotic pages out there, but it's not too hard to find an interesting read on just about any subject you can think of. When it comes to books or reading in general, for some reason I've never been a fan of fiction.

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Non fiction....always and forever.

I couldnt care less about stories from another.
heh

edit to add....

I get that from films.

On The Road - Jack Kerouac
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
Everything ever by Michael Moorcock (waits for cretins to begin laughing)
WWII History books
I'm about to start reading Sartre's "Being and Nothingness", looks pretty heavy!

AHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH MOORCOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I forgot to mention, I also like reading books like 1984, Anthem, Animal Farm, and stuff like that.

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H.P. Lovecraft books and stories
Edward Lee books and stories

Old EC Horror comics like Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror ect.

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One of the few fiction authors I enjoy.

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We read that in Jr High....

the entire symbolic study of it is a little pretentious in my opinion.

The book itself's more than a little pretentious to begin with, especially since it's designed to be read in that completely symbolic way. I won't get started on George Orwell.

My favorite line on that:

"I'm a god-damned magnet to the human herd
and I don't like it and I don't want it and it won't
stop."

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Douglas fucking Adams

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plus fucking one

any reccomended readings from Mr. Bukowski?

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Best to start with his earliest books of poetry (my personal favorites are The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills and play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit); I personally liked his poetry less as he got older. You can only get so far just typing up whatever comes to you and anthologizing it. As for prose, it's probably best to start with either Post Office or Factotum, though I might like Women better than either.

The Halo Novels

You sad, sad man....

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Bass Player magazine, ha

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My English/Lit teacher that year was a very well kept and overly neat new at the game teacher.
He was groomed to blueprint specs....my class was a HORRIBLE example for his first year at teaching...it was comedy and tragedy...I laughed so hard at his anal approach at everything and often felt bad for him when the boys in class would turn up the heat and literally have this man on the verge of exploding.

He got so INTO Animal Farm and trying to get a bunch of working class slob kids to appreciate Orwells vision...the heirarchy (sp?) in the classroom between the bullies and the teacher was much like the struggle in the book.

Here's how he'd tell you to throw away some trash around or on your desk...

"Vicky....please deposit your waste materials in the waste recepticle promptly. (or he'd say "post haste" often too..."

(FYI I just hit a bowl is why I am rambling)

we need MORE teachers that say post haste!

a good teacher can make a bad book awesome and vice versa

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A good teacher wouldn't make a bad book awesome. He'd know not to teach a bad book; or, if he was required to teach it, would make sure that the students got out of it what they were intended to without being dishonest about the fact that it's a bad example of Great Literature and that they'd probably enjoy a better book more. Somebody who can delude you into liking crap is the worst kind of cunt.

For reasons found in another thread I just have to throw this at someone.
You're so damn conceited.

Ha.



Anyway, if you wish reading for pleasure, you might want to take a look at a cheap bunch of pages, spit out by the brit Pratchett, called The Colour of Magic.
Twisted way out on the uttermorst edge of all concievable probability curves and in many cases only seen by physicists on bad acid, plus Pratchett, but that shouldn't be a problem to any of you hardcore metalheads. Metal is stoned enough in itself to endorse the idea of a flat world making it's way through space at a leaisurly gait on the back of four gargantuan elephants, whose foothold is better not told, but experienced. It's good reading.

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What's your favourite?

Mine's 'the long, dark teatime of the soul'

I've been reading Meshuggah lyrics lately. I actually printed them all out and put them in a binder. I've always thought that Haake had a fascinating writing style.

dirk gentlys holistic detective agency

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Oh hell yeah, Lovecraft rules horror, imo his stuff is scarier than any other horror writer ever, you know, with Lovecraft and his "I could here a scratching around the corner" style is much scarier than the "RAAR BIG MONSTER!" style of horror.

Maybe. Still true. Unfortunately for my social life, I do research for fun.

Today, I am going to read papers about body image and fat people. To my ongoing horror, this is one area where post-modern cockbaits & literary theorists who know nothing about the body have very important things to say and thus need to be read.

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i just started moby dick

the first chapter takes place in a town about 15 minutes drive from where i live. pretty cool

now reading papillon

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Always Running - Luis J. Rodriguez

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books by Umberto Eco are my favorite. because they are the only books that not only challenge my brain, but also are quite entertaining.

anything concerning philosophy (my second major, my first is english)

i really enjoyed analyzing Herman Hesse's Siddhartha and The Stranger by Camus.

i found Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer was probably one of the best contemporary novel i have ever read. i will definitely read it again.

and i like to read Junko Mizuno's graphic novels as well.

i love reading more than talking to my goldfish, James St. James. ( named after another one of my favorite authors, who wrote Disco Bloodbath)


edit: add orwells' 1984 to that list as well.
You know you're a true nerd when you write essays on books and take notes for fun.

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Is that the sequel? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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aldous huxley-doors of perception. cool shit

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typo. so sorry .

but that was funny. ^__^

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finished slaughterhouse five, working on lolita, i really like his writing style so far

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Yeah, Nabokov rules.

Super System 2 - Doyle Brunson

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I know it was a typo. Classic novel on the other hand. 2+2=5

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Eat lots, work your arse off, literaly and metaphorically. There, that wasn't too hard was it?

I can't really say anything as I do that too; research for fun. And you've in all likelyhood also found how this can also be a gigantic agumentation in any social life.

I'm noticing a huge tendency on this forum towards philosophy and what is often referred to the classical and/or heavy literature, no pun inteeended. In that context however I wish to press my own point a few inches further; do we have any readers or haters of Pratchett around here?

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That has nothing to do with body image, and I don't think any claim to simplicity when it comes to fitness will do much for Jim.

I also haven't seen much of a tendency towards philosophy or heavy lit. Towards some of the pretenders in the Great Literature race, yeah, and to some genuinely great and difficult books, but very little that shouldn't have been read by the end of high school.

There are probably millions of people who read Terry Pratchett the world over. I'd be surprised if there isn't one here. But I'm not that one.

Possíbly not, but then again, I didn't claim simplicity. I put it simply.

And what one should have read at the end of high school, well, that's one up for grabs. But at the end of it I'm just grateful that at least we science students - our school system is somewhat different than yours - had some inkling of what a... a... gngh, what is it called in English...
y = 2x
y' = 2
is called a...
however, the word I'm looking for is
f = 2
F = 2x

now, where did this sentence get off to... oh yes - is.
I honestly doubt that very many could say anything about who Moliére was, for example.

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Calculus, surely.

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You claimed that there was a simple solution. You also stated it simply. You're smart enough to know this, so don't play games with me.

Is that a derivative you're trying to demonstrate? The only mathematical symbols I've seen lately are those laid out by Bertrand Russell, and I've never been nearly as good at retaining this type of information as others. Which I think has around as much to do with my school's requirements regarding these subjects as it has to do with my natural proclivities. Which, combined with my own observations on how slow the going often is in high schools and how much is left out because teenagers are believed to be dumb when they can't be even when they try as hard as they might (and they do try hard), is why I think a lot of what's been mentioned should have been introduced to students by the end of high school. It's hard to foster a kind of genuine intellectual curiosity if you spoon-feed kids simple, and often bad, books as though there were great, necessary, and all they can handle. And, of course, I hold the same attitude towards the sciences. Perhaps especially in that case, due to my own experience in school and how that affected my aptitude for math and the sciences.

I agree that not many could say much about Moliere. But that this is the result of most recent education reform is a damn shame.

http://www.allaboutvision.com/art29/doublevision.jpg
When you've had vision like that for as long as you remember the fine print in some books makes it very discouraging to try to read anything. I wish I knew then what I knew now. Add some foggy spots and you've got my eyes. I hope once I get my new glasses it helps. It's better than it was but it fucking sucks.

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Just started reading Spike Milligan's "Adolf Hitler: And My Part In His Downfall" last night, bloody funny book though it is dated a little!

PST, i just picked up a copy of the redneck manifesto. fuckin brilliant. can you mention some authors who are just as vulgar/hilarious as this as well as suggested books? thanks bro

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Jim would actually be better for that than me. Though I'd recommend checking out www.jimgoad.net for some more from Mr. Goad.

Almost done reading the Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zhan. Reading "The Last Command." All three books were good. I"m definitly going to get the other Star Wars books he's written.

What can I say? I'm a star Wars nerd.

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I like guys like you. Proves that I'm NOT a Star Wars nerd.

FBS, thank you; calculus led me to what I was after, that is deriviates and integrals. Long live Newton. Oh. Shit. He's dead already. Forget it.
Stands to reason that it is practically the same word in both languages.

I don't know if he's been translated into English, but I have just started up on an in Sweden bordering on legendary rock star/writer's, Ulf Lundell, books. Not fine literature at all and partways vulgar, but despite some of the usual scandinavian standard issue of depression they are interesting. Partways hilarious too. Like the episode where a friend of his did, with pinpoint accuracy, shortcut an entire building with a throwing knife.

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We are a proud people.

I usually hate reading. Mainly because all the stuff I'm forced to read at school is boring and is hard to get into. Stuff like Star Wars and, for a little while, Harry Potter, made me wnat to read to see what was going to happen, which is mainly what I look for in a good book; a decent plot and storyline.

Well, there was one book that I read ouside of the whole Sci-fi fiction stuff. This one Mrylin Manson boigraphy, "The Long Road out of Hell." Good book. Learned alot about his life.

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I guess you are, but I like Star Wars so I can't say anything.

And I know school systems world wide do their utmost do discourage generation after generation of potential readers. Being an enthusiastic reader of all manners of sci-fi and fantasy, however, I just want to say that it is worth struggling through at least a few books of most genres. Despite what school makes a majority believe, there is quite a few books that are worthwhile even among the classics.

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I pretty much read the Bible,Car Craft,and Bass Guitar magazine

what are some good VIOLENT novels. i wanna read about blood and guts and that kinda shit.


someone recommend something por favor

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so how'd that work out for ya

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Blood Meridian is a great place to start if you're wanting some violence. It's like the bloodiest parts of the Iliad and the Old Testament, all set on the Texas-Mexico border around a century ago.

i read The Things They Carried in probably 3 hours. great book , i got it for a class and only had to read a few parts but i liked the whole thing. does anyone know what a similar book about vietnam was called? it was about a vet who lost a leg in the war, he starts out post-war working at a diner

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Metal Maniacs magazine... only on the crapper though.

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read bits,gleaned thru chapters from time to time, of this book years ago. extremely fucking brutal, possibly the most violent shit ive ever read. i been looking for this book recently.

The Streets Of Rage Novel had some nice violence in it you can download the whole thing in a word document.
http://www.streetsofrage.org.uk/sornovels.htm
Even though it's based on a game it is still cool but the games kick arse too.

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Heh,noticed most of the people that write in looking for contacts are incarcerated.

Wheel Of Time by Robert Jordan

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i have just started part two of lolita, this book is money. i LOVE the way nabakov writes, he is a fucking genius.

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A good series is the Takeshi Kovacs series by Richard K. Morgan. Well written sci-fi that is gritty and BLOODY as hell. (Also at least two sex scenes per book.)
His other work is pretty damn good too.

Oh, new sci-fi [Insert the mental image of a blood hound, standing up in the classical I've-found-a-good-trail-and-boy-do-I-look-good-pose] thank you.

Ever heard of Gillou, anyone? Hamilton and such? Anyhow, despite some apparently unavoidable arab-fetischm, his series about Arn (you can't pronounce it) - starts out with "The road to Jerusalem" - is very good. Basically, it's the story of how Svealand, Västra Götaland och Östra Götaland became Sweden, and much more. Of course, looking at it from this angle one might wonder if it was really worth all the hassle, but still the 3+1 books are very good, both as entertaining literature and because of the fact that Gillou so far has been proven wrong on one single historical point:
Tulips probably weren't introduced to Scandinavia until a whole century later. And then he still takes a big detour over to Jerusalem and what happened there in the middle of the 12th century. Lots of blood running too, gore and the casual beheading of a relative of a relative whose uncle once said something about our Shawn, so it shoud have something to offer the most of you.

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sounds interesting.

snuck and "och " instead of and in there

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Sheit. Well, draw and let's decide it right here and now.

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I just got done reading Star Wars: Dark Lord; the Rise of Darth Vader. The storyline took place between Episodes 3 and 4 and was about several events occuring that were all connected in some way. Along with Darth Vader's rise to being the Dark Lord of the Sith, a couple of Jedi, Master Roan Shryne and Padawan Olee Starstone, who escaped the Great Jedi Purge, try to find out why the Jedi were executed and if there were any others.

It all ends in an all out battle on Kashyyyk when Vader finds out the Jedi are hiding on the planet.

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I just started reading 1984.

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I am re-reading "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market"

"Similar to the newsletter scam, but with a slightly different
twist, is a story related to me by an acquaintance who described
his father's business and its sad demise. He claimed that
his father, years before, had run a large college-preparation service
in a South American country whose identity I've forgotten.

My friend's father advertised that he knew how to drastically
improve applicants' chances of getting into the elite national
university. Hinting at inside contacts and claiming knowledge
of the various forms, deadlines, and procedures, he charged an
exorbitant fee for his service, which he justified by offering a
money-back guarantee to students who were not accepted.

One day, the secret of his business model came to light. All
the material that prospective students had sent him over the
years was found unopened in a trash dump. Upon investigation
it turned out that he had simply been collecting the students'
money (or rather their parents' money) and doing nothing for
it. The trick was that his fees were so high and his marketing so
focused that only the children of affluent parents subscribed to
his service, and almost all of them were admitted to the university
anyway. He refunded the fees of those few who were not
admitted. He was also sent to prison for his efforts."

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