what do you read?

David Foster Wallace - DEAD!

http://http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080914/ap_on_en_ot/obit_wallace

One of America's contemporary, literary greats has passed, dead of apparent suicide by hanging, at age 46.

It's sad that creative genius tends to snuff itself out so early.

David Foster Wallace is one of my favorites. I first encountered his writing when selections from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men were assigned reading in a 20th Century Am Lit course in college. I have started and stopped Infinite Jest more than a few times; due to the length of the tome and my own limited time, I have never been able to get through more than one-third of the book. News of his suicide has encouraged me to redouble my efforts to finish the book and to read more stories from Girl With Curious Hair.

Anyone who has not yet read any of Wallace's work would do well to pick up his short story anthologies and enjoy his quirky blend of wit, caustic commentary, and humorous depiction of modern American life.
 
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DIY:
bike repair books
computer hardware and software manuals

Science Fiction:
Philip K. Dick is my favorite author, but there's obviously a lot of good Sci-Fi out there. I just read Asimov's I Robot and that was really good. Also the Dune novels by Frank Herbert are excellent.

Fantasy/Horror:
I like just about everything I've read from Stephen King. Huge DT fan (my favorite is the 2nd one, The Drawing of the Three). Also liked The Stand, The Green Mile books, and The Talisman. The novellas and short story collections are also excellent (Four Past Midnight, Different Seasons, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are my favorites so far). On a separate note, I'm one of those people who gets so engrossed watching movies that sometimes the scary ones can mess me up, but Pet Sematary is the only book I've ever read that scared the living crap outta me. I just finished reading the first 5 Amber books by Roger Zelazny and that was also a very good read.

History/Biography/Political Commentary/Non-Fiction:
I'm a big fan of Americana. A short list of some of my favorites books in this category are: The autobiographies of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, Six Frigates : The Epic History of the Founding of the American Navy by Ian W. Toll, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Richard Labunski, and Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini. As a Conservative, Ann Coulter's books always put a smile on my face. Her stuff is always informative and entertaining. I've read 2 books by Richard Nixon (The Real War and Beyond Peace) and both were very intelligently and concisely written.

Finally, even though I'm not a Jew or Christian (I'm a theist), I always find the Bible interesting. The stories are fascinating and the moral and theological philosophies remain relevant.
 
Jersey_Girl_Rides said:
http://http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080914/ap_on_en_ot/obit_wallace

One of America's contemporary, literary greats has passed, dead of apparent suicide by hanging, at age 46.

It's sad that creative genius tends to snuff itself out so early.

David Foster Wallace is one of my favorites. I first encountered his writing when selections from Brief Interviews With Hideous Men were assigned reading in a 20th Century Am Lit course in college. I have started and stopped Infinite Jest more than a few times; due to the length of the tome and my own limited time, I have never been able to get through more than one-third of the book. News of his suicide has encouraged me to redouble my efforts to finish the book and to read more stories from Girl With Curious Hair.

Anyone who has not yet read any of Wallace's work would do well to pick up his short story anthologies and enjoy his quirky blend of wit, caustic commentary, and humorous depiction of modern American life.
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He was a great one for our times. One of the funniest things I ever read was a piece he had in Harpers...he went out on a tourist cruise ship and descibed the whole trip. So funny, so true to life.
I read all of his stuff and while I enjoyed every word I always wondered if his sense of irony was truly misanthropic or actually just irony for the sake of irony (he certainly fostered the greater sense of irony that prevails today).
Either his suicide was an indication of a truly darker heart that gave him the will to create, or he just wanted to point out some higher level of irony to us by creating his own death. I suspect the former.
That dude could make me laugh like no one else writing in this age.
If you haven't read anything by him...pick up "Girl with Curious Hair".
 
I don't read nearly as much as I should or would like to... I have a stack of books in my living room waiting to be read... 😱

Currently, I making my way through the Slash autobiography, which is entertaining...

I don't read a lot of fiction.
 
The Westies

wow, this has been a long time coming. for whatever reason my book time dropped off the map the last few months. i'm not sure what i've been doing other than probably gettting stupider. translation: uh...

so after many months i finally sat down and finished The Westies by Todd English. this book describes the rise and fall of one of NYC's most infamous irish gangs, the westies, who occupied (more like ran) hells kitchen until the late 80's. it's a psuedo-biography of mickey featherstone who was not only a central figure within the gang but also the key witness for eventually bringing them down.

so what did i think? well, having read very few, if any, books like this, i was facinated. it read better than any mob movie i've ever seen and i've seen 'em all. the level of detail and the sheer violence that these guys partook in on a daily basis is simply mind numbing. there were a few things about this book that really made me want to keep reading:

1. this stuff was all happening when i was growing up. i don't remember a stich of it but the fact that all this went down in my lifetime is crazy.

2. i worked in the heart of hell's kitchen for three years. granted this was in the mid-90's but the area still wasn't completely cleaned up yet. sure, no westies and super mayor was on his way to disney-fying times square but just a few blocks west on 8th, well, i would walk by the same hookers, pimps and peep show places every day on my way to work. bars along the way were FULL at 8A. i was right in the heart of this surreal place and literally had no clue. this one bar that we used to go to, o'flaherty's on 46th (still there) has this old skool irish guy behind the bar that HAS to know about all this stuff. it's just crazy.

anyway, even if you've got no clue who the westies were, never worked a day in your life in NYC or have read a book in this style, you should make The Westies your first. this book was just awesome. bloody, but awesome. up next is a book called 'bikeman'. i have no idea what this book is about but based on the cover it appears to have something to do with a guy on a bike and the 9-11 attacks. it's pretty short so i should get thought it...um...tonight.

so, my Westies review: 5 outta 5 tasty crab flies on the bonefishjake rating scale. a must read.
 
Popular Economics...and Zen?

Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
The Undercover Economistby Tim Harford
More Sex is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg

Some of the stuff in these books is blowing my mind.

Also picking my way through Invoking Reality: Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen by John Daido Loori. IMO, Loori is one of the best Western writers of the Soto Zen tradition. The book is a clear, concise discussion of how Zen Buddhism connects to our everyday behavior.
 
I'm currently reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I read his other two books, Tipping Point and Blink, and really enjoyed both. Freakonomics is also one of my favorites, but I can't recall the authors' names off the top of my head. Its a very easy and fun read for pretty much anyone.

Not much of a fiction reader.
 
Fight Club

i just finished the latest installment in the BFJ Bookclub, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. if i'm being honest, it was sorta spoiled from the get go b/c i've seen the movie many, many times so my mental images were all off. kinda the same effect i had with 'no county for old men' but not nearly as bad.

anyway, the book is a good read and i managed to knock it off in about three bus rides so it's also a fairly quick and easy read.

i don't really know what else to say. the book follow pretty true to the movie for the most part, with a few notable exceptions, mostly the very end which i'm not entirely sure as to why it was scrapped. it was a WAY better ending than the movie.

it's certainly worth reading if you're out of options but don't expect anything crazy if you've already seen the movie.

next on the list is a short story called 'bikeman'. hopefully i'll be able to add more color to that review. there's just really not a lot to write on this one. still, it was a good read and w/o the benefit of the movie i would have to award it 4 out of 5 tasty crab flies on the bonefishjake rating scale.
 
bikeman

I'm not exactly sure what to say about Bikeman. It was nothing near what I expected it to be, no that I had any real expectations. Sometimes you buy things on a glance, and the title, Bikeman caught my eye. "Sure," I thought "a book about 9-11 from the perspective of a guy on a bike. Ok.". What I got was the emotion of "The Road" times some unquantifyable multiplier. The real life version. This is simple, beautifully stark poety that brought me back to that day and all the raw emotion that quite literally fueled my move from Boston back to NJ.

You need to read this. You need to remember how you felt that day.
 
Try The Third Policeman. Nothing to do about biking, but it has a weird bike connection. It's not at all what you expect but I think you would like it Jake.
 
bonefishjake said:
i just finished the latest installment in the BFJ Bookclub, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. if i'm being honest, it was sorta spoiled from the get go b/c i've seen the movie many, many times so my mental images were all off. kinda the same effect i had with 'no county for old men' but not nearly as bad.
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I'm a big Palahniuk fan: Fight Club, Choke, Invisible Monsters, Survivor. I agree with BFJ, Fight Club was spoiled a bit for me by the movie. Run out and read Choke before the movie - its a good read.

Other authors I am partial to: Bret Easton Ellis, Nick Hornby, Kerouac, Kundera, Hesse, lots more, but these readily come to mind.

Probably the best read I've had in a while is Yann Martel's "Life of Pi"

I'm also a big fan of cereal boxes.
 
TJ - you should try Jonathan Carroll. Bones of the Moon is interesting. Given your list of authors I think you might be open to it. It is 100% certainly not for everyone but naming Kundera makes me think you'll like him.

I read 1 Palahniuk book and hated it. I thought it was terrible. Survivor I believe.

Life of Pi is one of the best books to come out in recent memory, IMO.
 
Norm said:
TJ - you should try Jonathan Carroll. Bones of the Moon is interesting. Given your list of authors I think you might be open to it. It is 100% certainly not for everyone but naming Kundera makes me think you'll like him.

I read 1 Palahniuk book and hated it. I thought it was terrible. Survivor I believe.

Life of Pi is one of the best books to come out in recent memory, IMO.
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I will definitely check Carroll out- thanks for the tip. If you're willing to give C.P. another go, I would suggest "Invisible Monsters" - his best, IMHO. Be warned though, it has some pretty unsettling content. Or for non-fiction, "Stranger than Fiction" was a good collection of essays.

Oh, speaking of essays, I really liked David Sedaris's "Me Talk Pretty One Day." Thought it was hilarious. However, I also read "Barrel Fever" and was thoroughly bored.
 
Thanks Norm, I'll check it out.

As for The Life of Pi, Norm recco'd that to me and I concur, it was one of the best books I've read.
 
Jake - I'm in the process of cleaning my basement for the 30th time (I guess I'm finally accepting this is where I live) and I just came across it. If I see it again I'll grab it.

TJ - I also read Me Talk Pretty One Day and liked it. I've been hesitant to read anything beyond that because a lot of people say to stop there.
 
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