The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I think redbullgreygoose asked for books that weren't shitty, right? A lot of what Gladwell writes in his books is pure sensationalist nonsense.

Anyways, it's an excellent question; I would read books by great authors. I am very rarely disappointed in what I read these days, and I think it has a lot to do with author selection. So check out works or series by

Steinbeck, Kundera, Eco, Murukami, Conrad, Nabokov, Orwell, Akutagawa, King's "Dark Tower" series, Farmer, Peter F Hamilton, Brin, Pratchett's "Discworld" series, Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Pressfield (especially "Gates of Fire"), Fitzgerald, Dreiser, Maugham, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, etc.

That's a few hundred books right there. Should keep you for a while.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Take something you're somewhat interested in, and read a "pop science" book. For example, "Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters" is a good example of a pop science book that introduces some of the tenets of evolutionary psychology. It mentions Steven Pinker's book about human nature, David Buss' research and most of the important books and studies that helped found the field within the text of the book. You don't even have to browse the notes. So, one good book turns into at least 4 authors whose entire body of work are potentially interesting.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Okie Dokie, I'm going to start posting reviews of a shit load of books here, with the theme being "Lesser known novels of great novelists". For the first entry, we'll go with:

Demons or The Possessed by Dostoevsky

This is probably my favorite novel by Dostoevsky, and objectively speaking I think one has to regard it as his most powerful. The driving force in Demons is a political (Nihilist) revolution sought after by Pyotr and his followers, and all the intrigue and shady shit that occurs in the background serve to produce some of the most interesting and intellectually deep characters I've ever read about.

I guess you'd have to call Nikolai Stavrogin the "main" character, though this novel definitely resists any terminology like "protagonist" or "antagonist". He is a charismatic and somehow extremely likable guilt ridden, self destructive asshole for the most part. He seems unable to take life seriously, committing heinous acts regularly (such as seducing a 12 year old and driving her to suicide) with seemingly no cause at all, but it isn't that he simply doesn't care as we see him tortured with guilt throughout the entire novel. Pyotr recognizes his immense social power and magnetism and envisions him as the figurehead of his revolution, something that Stavrogin entertains though never really takes seriously.

Stepan, Pyotr's father, is an elderly academic who fancies himself revolutionary and dangerous, though in actuality he is pretty much impotent. Much of the novel is influenced by his "ideas" and his attempts to endear himself to the youthful revolutionary movements.

Of course Pyotr is the leader of the Nihilist movement, based on Sergey Nachayev. Over the course of the book we see him manipulating just about everyone in the hopes of igniting a revolution across Russia. He's a little turd in my opinion.

My favorite character is Kirillov, a Nihilist who believes that committing suicide is the ultimate expression of one's will, and that killing yourself is the only real way to assume control of life. I won't try to break down his philosophy here, but despite being viewed as a loon by most of the other character's, he is thoroughly intelligent and fucking awesome. Without ruining anything for you, I'll just say that a certain scene with him is unparalleled in literature, and stands as one of the most beautiful, haunting things I've ever read.

If you've read The Brothers Karamazov or anything else really by Dostoevsky, this novel works in much the same way. Extremely complicated and ambiguous, the truth hidden and only being revealed to the reader in bits as the action progresses. Don't be a loser, read this book.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

try <a class="postlink" href="http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/</a>

For example, I just banged in a book I read recently (Peter F Hamilton, The Dreaming Void) I got back about 45 results, There's about 25 or 26 books on the list that I've read before and thought were awesome, two books that I didn't like and a bunch of books that were either already on my reading list, or look pretty interesting.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Thanks for all the suggestions. Someone recommended (rep) to also look at the NYT book review section. From there I just ordered a book on Amazon called The Good Soldiers. It sounded pretty good. It also had almost five stars on Amazon. Has anyone here read it?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I went to that site and typed in a book (Fight Club, as it was on my mind from the movie adaptation thread), and got some very interesting results, including:

Beverly Cleary - RAMONA QUIMBY AGE 8 (Ramona Quimby)
Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel - Fox in Socks (Beginner Books)
Ron Rosenbaum - Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil
A. A. Milne - The World of Pooh: The Complete Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner (Pooh Original Edition)
Robert C. O'Brien - The Secret of Nimh

Some of the books I expected to see: more Palahniuk books, The Contortionist's Handbook (which, BTW, is an awesome book) by Craig Clevenger, maybe some Kurt Vonnegut and Bret Easton Ellis (who were both on there), but I think the LAST thing I expected to see was some Bevery Cleary or Dr. Seuss, let alone Winnie the Pooh. How those go with "Explaining Hitler" is completely beyond me.

So, there were some good recommendations on that list, but wow, there are some strange recommendations, too.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

This is a social reccomendation engine/crowd sourced - so it's susceptible to data poisoning like any other crowd sourced reccomendation engine. I'd suspect that someone was just fucking with the Fight Club reccomendations.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I dunno, I threw in one of my favorite author's books and got ten books back with the word "woods" in it. I'd say take word of mouth over that site any day...

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Got Assholes Finish First the other day. I've only read Tucker goes to campout, sex stories 2 and Capitol City clown crawl, even if the rest of the book was just copied and pasted from IHTSBIH it'll still have been worth the $15 I paid for it. Good stuff, and I guess 'maturity' didn't have as much impact on my appreciation of his style as I thought.

I also find it suspiciously hilarious that at the end of Capitol City clown crawl he posts his and Nil's mugshots, but only posts the details page (where they list height) for Nil's report. I'm willing to bet the farm his says 5'10 or 5'11 and he didn't want to post it. Does anyone know why he's so obsessed with being identified as six feet tall?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is a long and interesting read. Pretty much the author's life, with names changed and calling it fiction. He's an Aussie who breaks out a maximum security prison and ends up in Bombay, India. (This is the only book set in India that I've ever liked.) Excerpt from opening chapter:

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It too me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choice we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in that flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

In my case, it's a long story, and a crowded one. I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison. When I escaped from prison, over the front wall, between two gun-towers, I became my country's most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me across to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed and starved. I went to war. I ran into enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

But my story doesn't begin with them, or with the mafia: it goes back to that first day in Bombay. Fate put me in the game there. Luck dealt me the cards that led me to Karla Saaranen. And I started to play it out, that hand, from the first moment I looked into her green eyes. So it begins, this story, like everything else -- with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.

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Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

^^^
To add for above: Well it took about two minutes to get a neg rep because the excerpt from Shantaram sounded "cheesy." Maybe a little more detail is in order. Some of the philosophizing of the author is cheesy. Sometimes the writing is overdone. The author isn't a Hemingway, more like a Ken Follett with tattoos and no money. Imagine a book written by a Hells Angel.... that's close to what you're getting. The author was an armed robber and heroin addict who broke out of prison and was on the run for 10 years. The main character in the novel is an armed robber and heroin addict who broke out of prison and was on the run for 10 years. The book is a study of a good mind having a hard life. Roberts served two years of a 19 year sentence before breaking out of prison. When he was caught and returned to Australia to serve out his sentence, he wrote this book, covering his life from the mid to late 1980s in India and Afghanistan. It doesn't read like a professional writer trying to be a criminal... it reads like a criminal trying to be a writer. The level of detail is extraordinary (especially the conversations), as the author kept notes every day of his life. The characters are complex and as deeply expressed as is possible from one person's perspective. This is the first time I've read a book set in India where India didn't come off sounding like a cartoon or cliche. If 90% of this book is fiction, the author has a better imagination than me. If 90% is true, his will to live is stronger than mine. I found the story interesting enough to want to see a sequel.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I finished Assholes Finish First the other day. It felt really uneven compared to IHTSBIH. Perhaps the "maturity" thing hit me, but this book focused more on Tucker's narcissism, to the point where he blatantly points out how awesome he is on just about every other page. In fact, some parts made me cringe (the part where they are in Jojo's apartment).

I'd borrow it or rent it, but this one isn't as much of a purchase. Maybe it's the relative lack of Slingblade and his law school that didn't do it for me.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I finished AFF last night. Removing the obvious drawbacks of reading everything he posted online and some of it being in the book (especially the last chapter) I thought it was a damn good book. I don't know what it is, but when I watch movies or read new things, I start with zero expectations and add points, where as I feel that a lot of people start off with an expectation and subtract points.

I liked the first half of the book for what it was more IHTSBIH but the Tucker has grown up and even narcissistic realize things are off and have to adjust their lives. The second half of the book I thought was more interesting because it was more cerebral. I can only laugh at the "I'm going to get drunk, find a whore, call her a whore, fuck her, and then kick her out" routine so many times. When he added the reflection and more of his thought process that didn't involve "I'm awesome" every five seconds, it was all worth it. I have a feeling from what he highlighted that "Hilarity Ensues" will be a lot more like IHTSBIH, but I think as an author he had to get this book out to lay down the baseline and indirectly respond to the critics supposedly doesn't give a fuck about.

Now back to text and business books for me...yay.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

One of my favorite books is The Shack. Ever since reading that book, I've tried to find self-published diamonds, as I'm a huge fan of independent films. Does anyone have suggestions of self-published books I should read?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just finished reading Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase", his first major hit. Some writers, and a lot of movies fake being weird and quirky.

For Murakami, it comes naturally, all encapsulated in his very matter-of-fact language, and seemingly ordinary characters. Narrated from the first person, it still has plenty of sharp observations, and wonderful phrases, but as with other Murakami books, an ordinary trip or description devolves into pleasant insanity very quickly.

The book skips around between discussions of whale penises, an ordinary looking prostitute/typist who has magic ears that she can separate from the rest of her being, but which make her the most beautiful, hypnotic woman on the planet when she "connects" to them, and the amazing sheep at the heart of this work. Interspersed between this we have the history of a frontier town in Hokkaido, the history of sheep herding in Japan, a terse divorce story, and a secret right wing organization.

While Murakami is a Japanese writer, his sensibilities in the arts are purely Western. There are numerous references to things like "The Magnificent Seven", Joseph Conrad, Bob Dylan, and jazz music.

I don't want to spoil the nature of the sheep or the narrator's quest to find it, except to say that it is one of the more creative, awesome ideas I have read in fiction in a while.

It's not one of my ten favorite books ever like Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" was, but this is still a GREAT novel.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Assholes Finish First

I have to agree to most of the reviews here on the fact that this book was a lot more uneven than IHTSBIH. The first half of the book was like the last, and probably the most enjoyable and funny. The TuckerFest story and the DC Halloween Party were hilarious, and my favorite stories as well. The Post Fame Sex Stories and everything on from there had some good moments, but yes, a lot of it was filler and cut of been cut down. His writing has improved in certain areas I feel, and I'm interested in how Hilarity Ensues will turn out compared to this.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I got 460 pages into Perdido Street Station and then lost the book. I can't fucking find it. ANYWHERE. I'm going to do another hunt tomorrow around my apartment, but this is aggravating. Really good book so far.

I received a suggestion to read Dreamland by Sarah Dessen. I purchased it off of Amazon prime for $4 without reading the synopsis. When I couldn't find Perdido, I looked at the back cover of the book and it started talking about how this book was about girl falling for a rebellious boy. "Strange, sleepy Rogerson, with his long brown dreads and brilliant green eyes, had seemed to Caitlin to be an open door. With him she could be anybody, not just the second-rate shadow of her older sister, Cass." Uh oh... I started reading it anyways, hoping for the best. Elementary writing...maybe something good will come out of this...oh god...she's unwillingly trying out for cheerleading...and makes it? What the FUCK am I reading?

I go onto amazon and look at it a little closer. "Reading level: Young Adult". I just put it down. Damn Amazon Prime and their easy to buy books.

Ordered The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami at KIMaster's rave reviews for Murakami.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just read Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar for one of my classes and loved it. There's no real plot -- the book is essentially a collection of the title character's musings about life and the universe. All he wants is for it all to make sense. He tries to isolate one aspect of reality, an ocean wave, for instance, in order to understand its true nature and then deduce some sort of unified theory from his observations. His failure to find such an understanding is both comical and tragic, but above all it forces you to think. At just over a hundred pages, the book provides a succinct yet insightful exploration of the Big Questions we all end up asking ourselves.