The combined effects of haze, unhealthy anime and general despondency
Okay. Thank goodness promos are over. The haze is killing me and I need something to counteract the influence of trashy (but oh so addictive!) anime that I have been overdosing myself on. Manga is starting to hurt my brain because it's turning into a major source of art angst for me
( Read more... )
Comments 18
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is a book I just lent Hongyu, being unwilling to finish it too fast, because it is so, so good. I think you will like it. Even if you are a Catholic. It is a book-length letter from a dying pastor to his young son, which is a crappy summary that omits how strong and sweet and thoughtful and genuinely holy it is. I really liked it.
The Invention of Love, a play by Tom Stoppard. AE Housman in Hades; 'the morals of aesthetics and the aesthetics of morals'; a great cameo by Oscar Wilde; tragic, but lightly done, slash. You should also read Arcadia, a play about Maths and love, (well, physics and sex - "the attraction which Newton left out") featuring a seventeen-year-old Maths genius and a really, really hot tutor; carnal embraces (not with the seventeen-year-old though) in the gazebo. Also, a tortoise that doubles up as a paperweight (Mr Perry has a great story about having to direct this) and all that P&P shit about landscaping gardens ( ... )
Reply
anyway, my two cents worth!
Dennis Lehanne-- Shutter Island, for a mind-numbing thriller about a psychiatric patient on an island for mental patients. Except,who are the insane ones here?
Read the rest of his novels, Mystic River , for its cold bloody take on friendship and the wolves of the past, and his Kenzie and Genarro series, a detective series where the whodunit element is masterful enough to recommend it. Top it off with an even colder and pessismistic take on the human condition, along with some excellent sex, and it gets better! Warning though: can cause depression, i personally had to stop reading a few times as it got too overwhelming. Although it somehow still manages to retain some CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM hahahaha. If you really dont have time, read Gone Baby Gone, and tell me what you think Kenzie should have done. Although you ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs is still a nice book imo. Non-fiction. I like his tone. And the quirky stuff at the end of each chapters. If you're not reading it for the content (which is basically a social commentary of sorts on America culture), you should read it for the quirkiness.
I think I haven't rec you Haruki Murakami yet. Prolong exposure to him makes me want to kill him. But I did like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles even though the process of plowing through the book was almost unbearable. I adore South of the Border, West of the Sun though. You must must must read it. It's pretty and it's readable (as in, honest). Plus, the guy owns a pub in the book. What's not to love?
I'm starting to miss my copy of Love in The Time of Cholera. (I want it. *wails a little ( ... )
Reply
Um. You've got mostly non-trashy stuff so far. So I'll rec the trashy-ish but fun stuff. Try Jeo Keenan. He does snarky gay fiction, and the characters are a bit flouncy. I think you'd enjoy it.
And a children's series I've been eyeing: Cirque Du Freak ala Darren Shan Trilogy. Getting very popular. I've read only the 1st book. But well, vampires, freaks, childhood friends turned evil. Kinda cute, really.
I want the Battle Royale novel and Thud! and Susan Clarke books badly. My reading list is so long it saddens me.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Anything from the Aubrey-Maturin series, by Patrick O'Brien. Historical naval fiction with adorable characters and silliness combined with real sea-fever and the thrill of life aboard an 18/19c. warship. It takes a while to get into it, because there's so much to learn about ships'n'stuff before you can properly enjoy the books, but once you've gotten into it my god it's addictive. Seriously, I pick up a book to flip through the first two pages and before you know it I'm curled up on the library floor, having completely wasted my lunch time, and am on the 200th page. Eee.
Also anything by James Herriot! If I haven't forced his stuff on you already. Reallyreallyreally cute short anecdotes on life as a country vet up on the English moors. Easy reading, WAFFy stuff that never gets saccharine.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard. Existentialist weirdness, gorgeous wordplay and absolutely cutting language ( ... )
Reply
Reply
YOU MUST READ NIETZSCHE'S WORKS. YOU JUST GOTTA. PHILOSOPHY FROM A LOONY FEANORIAN BASTARD = MUCHMUCHLOVE. ALSO SNARK. SNARK LIKE WOAH. REAAADD.
Reply
i don't do descriptions well, because i think it has an imprint of my perspective; read it, and find your own.
oh, and salman rushdie's fury. i can lend you satanic verses when i return to singapore.
Reply
Leave a comment