Comments | thisisfurious: Book List 2009, The First Six Months

thisisfurious

Book List 2009, The First Six Months

Jul 15, 2009 12:34

Now that the movie list is up, it's time for Book List! As with the movies, an asterisk is a book that I've re-read (though there aren't really any this time). This list took me a lot longer than usual, I've made my reviews a bit more thorough (or as thorough as one can be in a few sentences, anyway).

( begin here if you dare )

Comments 12

__bin July 15 2009, 17:31:29 UTC

I'm saving this to my memories for later reference! I like that you have a lot of non-fiction on here. Also, I've been hearing a lot of tempting things about Doyle lately, but I'm also waiting until after the summer to start with Sherlock.

scarfboys July 15 2009, 18:00:18 UTC

I read both volumes of The Complete Sherlock Holmes and then recommended them to Emily EVERY time she was between books until she finally gave in. I just finished reading The Lost World, which does not take place in blustery London so is good for summertime Doyle.

(The comment has been removed)

thisisfurious July 15 2009, 18:31:22 UTC

this is emily, not Joey! Joey's LJ is over here:

http://untoward.livejournal.com/

also re: food, are you referring to something about food in DFW, or the Oxford Companion, or the food adulteration book?

panicbreakfast July 15 2009, 21:36:41 UTC

1)i HATE Waugh. Ugh.
2)Sherlock Holmes, yes!
3)This summer I may strictly read Harlequins pre-1974.

queclecumber July 16 2009, 01:16:40 UTC

05 Consider the Lobster: and Other Essays; David Foster Wallace. Came very close to upsetting A Supposedly Fun Thing, but not quite. "Authority and American Usage" made me so sorrowful that no one will ever be his student again.

I read Consider the Lobster in a book of essays and fell in love with DFW's writing style. Then I found out that he had killed himself. It isn't cool! That was the point when I realized that killing yourself if fucking selfish.

38 The American Way of Death Revisited; Jessica Mitford. Mitford's 1963 exposé of the American funeral industry, revised in the 90s. Full of just the sort of open manipulation of the bereaved that you would (sadly) expect. One of the interesting additions concerns the use of embalming for spurious hygienic reasons in contrast with the refusal to embalm AIDS victims.

This was a fantastic book. I now have a tendency to glare at funeral homes. I can't help it!

queclecumber July 16 2009, 01:17:08 UTC

*is f**king selfish. Is.

twoheaded_boy July 16 2009, 05:49:36 UTC

My god, you read a lot. Infinite Jest, Savage Detectives, and Moby-Dick in the same half-year??? IJ took me three months (though I read three other books while I was chipping away at it), and that was years ago. All three of those books were year-makers for me.

I think I've read about 15 books so far this year.

thisisfurious July 16 2009, 13:54:03 UTC

keep in mind that my job is to make comics on the internet! this leaves lots of time for reading, and I'm conveniently across the street from a branch of the biggest library system in the country.

IJ did take quite a while, and I certainly finished a couple of other books while reading it. I'd initially taken it out of the library, but ended up having to buy a copy because I couldn't renew it (too many other DFW-fans crowding around post-death). I did like IJ - although the last couple of hundred pages didn't fulfil the promise of the middle section, for me - but overall I think I'm liking his nonfiction much more than his fiction. Is his earlier stuff tolerable? I know I've read that he himself later disliked it, but I feel like that's almost inevitable.