Can't remember the last time I finished a book I wasn't enjoying. It's been a while since I decided my time was too important to waste on books that I'm not enjoying.
I actually have kind of the same problem but somewhat opposite: I will read books that I really like and that I'm really enjoying, but I like to put them down for days at a time and come back to them later. I don't know why, I don't really have an attention deficit. I think maybe I got it from food, like savoring a really good food or dessert over a long period of time.
Yes, but his books are pretty good. Kind of reminds me of the french nouveau roman, especially Robbe-Grillet and his schtick. I'd start with Heartbreak Tango or Kiss of the Spider Woman for a taste. I've never read him in english, nor have I watched any film adaptations of his work. Seems like in the wrong hands, his books would get short service. He relies a lot on narrative authority and metafictional recontextualization to achieve certain effects, and he does that thing where the footnotes that go on for pages in his books are partially or entirely fabricated and aim to reveal parts of the story that the characters aren't aware of or that reveal parts of the story that wouldn't come up organically.
Have you read La traicion de Rita Hayworth? I didn't get anything out of this book other than people sure have dull lives but that's not really a novel observation
No actually, I got the same impression without cracking it open and never felt the need. Besides the two I mentioned, the Buenos Aires Affair and Pubis Angelical are also very good.
1 month ago
Anonymous
Fine I'll give him another chance and try Boquitas pintadas
1 month ago
Anonymous
I can't remember if I read that or el Beso first, but I just remember that those two novels were a great intro to him, and that a few of his other books were very good. I couldn't say that he's a very artful writer, more that he's a very good technical writer in that he is able to manipulate the page and the mechanism of grammar to fit his needs. It makes sense that he worked in the film industry, both european and american: his novels often exude this feeling of being on the editing floor and making sense of these disparate images and themes.
That being said, another of the big truths I've learned along the way is that you don't have to like everything a writer ever produced. Authors have very unorthodox careers, and sometimes you may fall in love with one of their books but completely dismiss another. I haven't read everything by Melville and Beckett, but I've read enough to know that they didn't just write one continuous book over a lifetime that I'm sure to enjoy. I think we're often blessed by writer like Juan Rulfo, the ones who write one or two incredible books in a short span of time and then never publish again.
And that's another big revelation: that sometimes you need to come back to a book you didn't like and see if you can interpret it differently. I remember when I read Vineland again after university, after breezing through it in my teens, and regretting how I'd just written it off as a minor work (I've never read DFW, but I'm familiar with his complaint about the long wait between Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland). It's on par with Gaddis' Carpenter's Gothic, a book I'd always held in reverence but for the wrong reasons: I'd always praised the structure, themes, economy without really appreciating the human struggle for meaning and purpose. Any book you read and feel is important when you're in your formative years, you need to revisit in your mature years. It's an eye-opening experience.
The Hippocratic corpus is the most arid stuff I ever read. I read the Adams’ translations twice through and the ER Lloyd book from Penguin once. Most of it wanted to make me claw my eyes out how dull it was. I did pick up some interesting insight into how the ancients saw the physical world and I could see the influence of many of the works in some sections of Plato (basing your city’s position on the running waters and the directions of the wind as he does in Laws is more directly studied in Hippo) but overall it was pretty dull.
I really enjoyed German for Reading and German—>Quickly, but I heard similar takes about FfR from various reviews and forums. Have you tried the Assimil series? I had a lot of fun with those.
Tartarin of Tarascon
1Q84.
Never read Puig. Is he a gay?
not sure, but you sure are
t. gay
Can't remember the last time I finished a book I wasn't enjoying. It's been a while since I decided my time was too important to waste on books that I'm not enjoying.
I actually have kind of the same problem but somewhat opposite: I will read books that I really like and that I'm really enjoying, but I like to put them down for days at a time and come back to them later. I don't know why, I don't really have an attention deficit. I think maybe I got it from food, like savoring a really good food or dessert over a long period of time.
Yes, but his books are pretty good. Kind of reminds me of the french nouveau roman, especially Robbe-Grillet and his schtick. I'd start with Heartbreak Tango or Kiss of the Spider Woman for a taste. I've never read him in english, nor have I watched any film adaptations of his work. Seems like in the wrong hands, his books would get short service. He relies a lot on narrative authority and metafictional recontextualization to achieve certain effects, and he does that thing where the footnotes that go on for pages in his books are partially or entirely fabricated and aim to reveal parts of the story that the characters aren't aware of or that reveal parts of the story that wouldn't come up organically.
Have you read La traicion de Rita Hayworth? I didn't get anything out of this book other than people sure have dull lives but that's not really a novel observation
No actually, I got the same impression without cracking it open and never felt the need. Besides the two I mentioned, the Buenos Aires Affair and Pubis Angelical are also very good.
Fine I'll give him another chance and try Boquitas pintadas
I can't remember if I read that or el Beso first, but I just remember that those two novels were a great intro to him, and that a few of his other books were very good. I couldn't say that he's a very artful writer, more that he's a very good technical writer in that he is able to manipulate the page and the mechanism of grammar to fit his needs. It makes sense that he worked in the film industry, both european and american: his novels often exude this feeling of being on the editing floor and making sense of these disparate images and themes.
That being said, another of the big truths I've learned along the way is that you don't have to like everything a writer ever produced. Authors have very unorthodox careers, and sometimes you may fall in love with one of their books but completely dismiss another. I haven't read everything by Melville and Beckett, but I've read enough to know that they didn't just write one continuous book over a lifetime that I'm sure to enjoy. I think we're often blessed by writer like Juan Rulfo, the ones who write one or two incredible books in a short span of time and then never publish again.
And that's another big revelation: that sometimes you need to come back to a book you didn't like and see if you can interpret it differently. I remember when I read Vineland again after university, after breezing through it in my teens, and regretting how I'd just written it off as a minor work (I've never read DFW, but I'm familiar with his complaint about the long wait between Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland). It's on par with Gaddis' Carpenter's Gothic, a book I'd always held in reverence but for the wrong reasons: I'd always praised the structure, themes, economy without really appreciating the human struggle for meaning and purpose. Any book you read and feel is important when you're in your formative years, you need to revisit in your mature years. It's an eye-opening experience.
The Bible
Kafka on the Shore probably. I gave up on the worst offenders like Anna Karenina and The Bible
If you didn’t like Anna Karenina, you probably had a bad translation. That, or you’re a gay.
Probably some math textbook
A Separate Peace. Frick that book, frick all those homosexuals in their homosexual boarding school.
The Hippocratic corpus is the most arid stuff I ever read. I read the Adams’ translations twice through and the ER Lloyd book from Penguin once. Most of it wanted to make me claw my eyes out how dull it was. I did pick up some interesting insight into how the ancients saw the physical world and I could see the influence of many of the works in some sections of Plato (basing your city’s position on the running waters and the directions of the wind as he does in Laws is more directly studied in Hippo) but overall it was pretty dull.
Mitchell Heisman's suicide note
This fricking thing
I really enjoyed German for Reading and German—>Quickly, but I heard similar takes about FfR from various reviews and forums. Have you tried the Assimil series? I had a lot of fun with those.