Like a great many books of that ilk, it's utter bilge. If this was a thread of 'books you've read and wish you hadn't' I'd have that in there, along with THREE fucking Milan Kundera books, all guffer than oceans of guff.

I'd throw any and all Dickens I had to suffer through to that pile of shit books.

ha ha ha really? i like kundera. it's not that he blows my mind or anything, but he's always amused me, and i figure i'd enjoy having a couple of beers with the old bastard.

haha, i'll take your word.

i fucking love unbearable lightness of being, but it's for a battery of personal reasons.

why, it's a delicious book, not in a glorious but in guilty sort of way-- romance novels for smart people, ha ha ha-- i love sabina, what a hot slut.

i've had a number of conversations with certain people over sabina's qualities. gotta love young literary men.

also, i've never read "all tomorrow's parties" by william gibson, but i'm lazy and his stuff gets tiring.

It's pretty much a personal thing, but I associate him with that category of 'books for young-ish people' whereby the young-ish people get old enough to read better things and still insist upon Easton-Ellis'/ beats' 'literary qualities'.

ellis is an unfuckingreadable twat, and what does he have to do with cranky old kundera and his european mannerisms? i don't see the parallel, if you were making one.

No parallel, except insofar as I view them as inferior writers. Personal thing, as I say.

aw, i love ellis. but american psycho is one movie that possibly is better than the book.

well, one more inferior than the other from where i stand.

and yes, kundera is not a revolutionary of any sort-- and yes, pleasure is a matter of personal preference-- but he's pleasant and entertaining to read-- for me anyway.

sure i read him with greater enthusiasm when i was, oh, 20 maybe, but i learned a thing of two from him that was just beyond the entertainments of mere literature.

beats most comic books anyway.

i really can't think of anything i've always intended to read...

possibly gravity's rainbow. but really i've always intended to have read it. i've never intended to do the actual reading.

gravity's rainbow is AWESOME.

i'm not arguing that with you... though i haven't yet read it, it's physical size does inspire awe.

i started it, read a few pages, eh.

i read the whole of the crying of lot 49 and it was a chore-- i made myself finish it-- a fucking chore.

you need to read it. read infinite jest by david foster wallace right afterwards, not because there's any literary connection, but because it's a killer mindfuck.

i never liked lot of 49. blegh.

schizo, you remind me of st. francis of asisi, who loved all creatures and preached to the birds. in truth i'm stealing this metaphor from roland barthes who used it to describe severo sarduy's love for words-- all words. but what i mean is that you love allbooks indiscriminately-- and that's great.

once you get older however, like me or grandpa glice, you're going to start to notice a lot of repetition, a lot of irrelevance, a lot of fluff, and you'll become picky.

this is a great time for you however so enjoy it while it lasts.

btw there's this tears eliot article about literature and the formation of character (or some such pap) that you might find interesting.

right now i'm enjoying the fact that i get to meet my husband again on saturday. but i'll stop there.

ha ha ha. ok. well i edited a bit so please notice the changes.

i should get to work now.

are you on yahoo? send me the link.

I've been meaning to read The Magic Mountain for like three years now. But for some reason, something else always catches my eye. Also, I heard it was boring, but my Dad strongly recommended it to me and he's usually dead on when he recommends books to me.

Ulysses.

People have recommended the Charles Schultz bio. It's something I think I'd like but I haven't tracked it down yet.

What for real? I see it all the time in the bookstore.

I just mean I haven't bothered tracking it down. Sorry. It's not a novel, either, is it. Sorry for going off track.

In reality, I read so many literary novels as an English minor that I can't think of many "serious" novels I still need or want to read. Which is one reason I do a lot of re-reading.

I somehow missed out on The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and have always been curious about whether it's a good read. Again, not a novel, but interesting?

I don't know if I want to read about Hippies.

Really? Why not? They're part of our history and culture.

i really enjoyed the incredible lightness of being. it was a very smart book. i also read it in hebrew, which i dont often do, and iot transfered incredibly well

Their whole attitude was boorish. Let me rebel against my middle-class upbringing. Sorry, they do not appeal to me.

everyone shoud read

HOUSE OF LEAVES by mark Danielewski

I like literary mind fucks

I always want to read that one, but they never have it. Another book, that was funny as hell was The Raw Shark Texts.

i have been reading less since i started studying literature. and i keepon buying books and nat reading them. next ones that i want to read are master and margerita and sorrows of young werther and faust

Sorrows of Young Werther is pretty Depressing. Go Goethe.

studying literature will kill your love of reading, i'm afraid.

oh that? sorry-- i wasn't-- but anyway, not sure about a link.

i read it in a book of essays by him. he didn't write many, it's in a volume. im sure you can research it-- it's what you're going to be doing everyday for the next 4 years anyway!

THE SACRED WOOD.

that's the title.

he was a pompous fucker.

no, im sorry, that's not it. sacred wood is from 1920.

it's a later book...

Going back to Kafka, I wouldn't call him a young person's author. Not to say I'm very far from "young". Even Metamorphosis is so multi-layered... When I was younger I enjoyed it, sort of, for its mildly funny and desperate tone, but now, several years later, it feels much more impressive than it ever did. Obviously, Kafka's talent is in writing the indescribable, but the older I get and the more I reflect on his stuff, the more I realize how epically indescribable the Metamorphosis is. Not a word of it means what it says. It's all a singular "thing" that most young people won't appreciate until they're older, even if they know the concept. Read something like Josephine the Singer, or the Judgement, and try to take it in as a single word. It's fucking intense.

Has anyone read House of Leaves? It's pretentious as hell, but the guy is as talented as he thinks he is. One of my favorites. I recommend adding it to everyone's list. At least for a look.

I must come across as fantastically misanthropic if I come across as elderly at the sprightly age of 26. Winner!

Otherwise I agreed with the post.

There's an article in the most recent issue of radical philosophy about Josephine the piper, I'd recommend it to Kafka types.