Literature fans?
 

Maybe there´s already thread about this.

I have always read quite a lot, although I nowdays I haven´t got time to read as much as I want. My favourite writers are Stephen King, J.R. Tolkien, Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut, Feodor Dostojevksi, Mihail Bulgakov, Nikolai Gogol and Finnish writer Marko Tapio. I have also read some books from rock musicians for example the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Wigwam, Joy Division, Hurriganes. Now I read a book about famous Finnish guitarist Albert Järvinen (he played in Hurriganes).

Kafka and Vonnegut are sublime. If you like those, should definitely check out a good translation of Patrick Suskind, starting with Parfum, and the Pigeon, The Death OF Mr Somner, these books are perfect in that self-reflective film noir kind of fiction that is realistic surrealism with a kind of biting sarcasm that is not quite bitter or nihilistic or even pessimistic, more like the true artistic sense of melancholy and melodrama, or even more particularly the ideal Greek comedy (which is not quite funny by modern tastes)

I have an ecclectic taste in literature, I prefer non-fiction and history and theology texts, but I do enjoy my certain flavors of fiction. I also liked Julius Caesar and Hamlet and a Midsummer Night's Dream.. I like classics like Alexander Dumas or Gabriel Garcia-Marquez or even Homer. I have ready absolutely every single thing written by Clive Barker, and I will continue to do so in the future. Ray Bradbury fascinates me but he sort of gets a bit redundant with that whole Mars thing, but a lot of it is a gem. Huxley of course, but Brave New World is perfect whereas Ape and Essence is sort of lame actually. Chuck Palahniuk would be better if he knew any adverbs or impressive dialogue, but I enjoy the kind of free-associative style it has with a bit of grit, it just could be SOOOO much better. Surprisingly I really enjoyed these two Anne Rice novels this cool homeless lady I kick it with gave me, The Violen and the Angel, and they are both really good because they are not about vampires, but vampirish musicians, but I like anything not overtly Churchy but written from a rather religious perspective so I like Anne Rice in that regard, she nails it in the less vampire novels. Arturo Perez Reverte is also the shit, it mixes my two favorite subjects, deep religious lore and drug running, absolutely pure genius!
I don't care what you say, Carlos Castaneda is remarkable. I wish I had read some Jules Verne and I just got my first collection of short stories by Rohl Daal today. ..

I tend to reread the same book over and over, I always come back to it. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. My girlfriend is a writer and studied literature, and can't understand why, but I guess I find it difficult to invest time in a book which may not turn out to be fantastic. I can walk out of a movie, change the music or switch over the TV, but I don't have the patience to trawl 200 pages into a new book to find that it's crap.
I look forward to the day I can download books to my brain via USB, and just delete the rubbish.

when burroughs murdered shakespeare:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o71Gw...eature=related

I have to read a lot of non-fiction for work. As a consequence, I mostly treat fiction (when I have time to read it) primarily as an entertaining diversion. So I mostly read crime novels, especially those by Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard.
In terms of more literary fiction, I like current writers such as Ian McEwan, Michel Houllebecq, Kazuo Ishiguro and Don Dellilo but don't get much time to keep up with them.

I really like The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, 1984 by George Orwell, and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I also appreciate the works of dudes like Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Clive Barker, and Stephen King. Oh, and of course Poe, and Burroughs rule. I've been wanting to give Pynchon a shot... I think it's funny how popular Palahniuk got for a second, and now he's totally "uncool". He may be somewhat of a one-trick pony, but he does his trick well, and his voice is sinister. I also think David Wellington is quite the talent.

Horror/Sci-fi novels mostly.

If you like good musician books then read Miles Davis' autobiography.

I'm currently reading Kafka's THe Metamorphisis.

I love Kafka. THe Castle is my favorite book ever!


however I don't read THAT much and I don't keep up with a lot authors.

Metamorphisis is pure genius, you should get some more Kafka, though his shorter stories are a bit better reads then the longer stuff like the Trial. Kafka is about as sincerely sarcastic as 1991:The Year That Punk Broke..

I like old pulp novels by people like Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, Philip K. Dick, etc. I do like Vonnegut quite a bit and also enjoy almost anything by Martin Amis, Nicholson Baker, Jess Walter, Jonathan Lethem. I work at a bookstore where I am almost constantly reading so I try to touch on a lot of genres but I still fail.

My tastes are quite predictable, perhaps... Ballard, Burroughs, Corso, Sotos, CARLTON MELLICK III, Siratori... really, I mainly like biographies.

I read Satan Burger only because there was a blurb on it comparing it to Vonnegut. I found the satire of it pretty funny actually but his writing is awkward as hell.

Thanx, I will check out Suskind, hope there is Finnish translations available (i´m not very fast reader and in english I could read maybe a book in a year!). I read also a many years a ago some of the Shakepears´s plays and liked them quite a lot. From the classics I liked also Rabellais. I have thought I read Cervantes Don Quiote sometime in the future. I have read some Marquez books, he´s ok but not my favourite. If I remembered correct, I have also read Bradbyry and Parker´s book and Bradbury was ok, but Parker wasn´t. Huxley´s Brand new world is great! Somebody mentioned also Poe, he´s also one of my favourite!!! If I understand correct, you haven´t read any Russian literature. I think you will like Dostoevsky: the Brothers Karamazov or Bulgakov: Master and Margarita.

I´m not a big Miles-fan (I have something on c-cassette) but maybe I read that someday. Hope it is translated to Finnish.

I love his Hoke Mosely stuff. Miami Blues and Sideswipe are fantastic.

lol whioops....I meant the Trial....that's my favorite book. I don't know why I wrote the Castle.

It´s not a long time when I read both Castle and the Trial again. I think there was over ten years since I read them before. I remembered that they were more difficult to read than I now experienced. Altough the both books are quite desperated, I still found them very attractive! When I first time read Kafka, I read all the books I found in my homevillage library and what I remembered, I then thought the short stories were much easy to read than novels. I will read them again someday, also have to read America. Damn I haven´t got enough time to read!

Good thread.
I'm a fan of Kafka, Paul Bowles, Vonnegut, Oscar Wilde, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Tolstoy, Thoreau, Gogol, Dostoevsky etc...

Right now I'm revisitng Peoples History by Zinn and Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.....

I am refreshing my delight in Roald Dahl.. his work is such a fantastically original blend of vivid descriptions, clever insights, and biting humor. One of the best of the 20th century for sure..

my friend just found this

What´s that got to do with the literature?

Victor Serge: Unforgiving Years

So I just finished Metamorphosis....and....well.....it just made me incredibly sad.

^ How Kafka can make us care about some dude turned into an insect is partly why he was a genius.

By the way, read it again and look for comedy. You'll find plenty.

Next, read The Castle.

I'm in the middle of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook. Exquisitely written, lots of lovely politics and she seems to have more registers of writing than is seriously reasonable for a single individual.

I may have also mentioned this before, but Helene Cixous' Neuter was probably the best thing I read last year (and last year was a particularly heavy year for reading for me). Baffling, but beautifully so.

^^^ YES!!!

kafka was by all accounts a very funny man and once you get past the shock of being thrown the futility of our little lives on the face (we're all insects, kinda), his books are hilarious.

1st time i read the castle i wanted to hang myself from the boredom.

btw, i highly recommend orson welles's film version of the trial-- it's very fucking good! great screenplay, great great great cinematography, i shot a brain cumload when i watched it.

I have a lot of free time today(class cancelled due to bad weather) and I guess I can go re-read it.

I know, maybe it was a bad translation, because while there were melancholy overtones, overall that short story was quite hilarious if you took it in a literal sense, I mean imagine that outlandish event actually happened to your family, exactly the way Kafka narrated it at that! More psychedelic then mushrooms!!

That is also why I like Dahl, because he has that kind of absurdity to his most glaring reality, basically the Leslie Neilsen approach which makes something so damned inappropriately serious that you can't help but laugh and say is this for real?

in the literal sense...well...I can see it kind of funny since yer kind of describing it (bold script) like a prime time sitcom...but still. What's funny about potentially ruining yer family's life? Granted they were better off in the end....but Grete, his sister, for instance....wouldn't you have rather seen her become a talented musician, ESPECIALLY! after this

"And yet the sister was playing so beautifully. Her face was inclined to one side, her eyes followed the notes of the music with a searching and sorrowful look."

I mean....that sense of helplessness I sensed there....hit me hard. I dunno. when on the literal sense...the only comedy I can see is the fact that a human being was transformed into a giant bug.

whats funny is the way the people went about it in a rather mundane, routine and farcical manner when if the story went exactly as it was written, it would be unimaginably even demonically horrifying. Of course what is happening is so surreal it is absurd, and that is why it can remain funny, but it is indeed a chilling blend of fear and laughter, but what in life isn't? People still kept their sense of humor in the Concentration Camps, surely we can laugh with Kafka at the Metamorphasis, and then afterward delve into the deeper, more serious meanings, motifs and symbolism used to tell a deeper story that may be a bit less funny.

I'm just going to point out a couple of things, as I've drunk too much and, y'know, it's the internet and stuff.

First: I think that suchfriends... sees Kafka as funny suggests he's close to European humour. This is quite the compliment from me, as Americans are clearly the repulsive dogshit on the street of international culture.

Second: I have a habit of thinking anyone thinking Burroughs is a good writer is a prick. Don't get me wrong, I like Burroughs, but if that's the end of your literary knowledge you need to man the fuck up and read anything pre-20th century and non-American.

Note Bene: If suchfriends... has said anything pleasant about Burroughs he's excused because that motherfucker is a better read motherfucker than all of y'all illiterate motherfuckers.

I couldn't finish the Castle; book drove me nuts. Kafka's short stories/novellas are fantastic though. From what I understand, and I'm no German speaker, is that the first two or three sentences of the Metamorphosis translate something akin to "Gregor Samsa woke up like an insect" based on a specific grammar form in German. Can anyone confirm this?

Also, In the Penal Colony is amazing and a quick read.

I think nobody hasn´t yet mentoined Anthony Burgess book Clockwork Orange. I think it is very good accompanion to Vonnegut´s Player piano, Huxley´s Brand new world, Orwell´s 1984 and also Kafka´s works. I liked also a lot the film from Kubrick.

About Burroughs...Well he´s not my favourite, but somehow I have liked his paranoid world. And if I remembered correct, Junkie was quite good, easyreading book. I have also liked a lot the story behind Tom Waits Black Rider, although I have never read the original play.

Faulkner, Cormac, Hemingway, Joyce, Roth, Pynchon, Capote, David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Ayn Rand, Toni Morrison, Burroughs, Bukowski, William Gibson, Claude McKay, Jonathan Franzen.

For more easy reading (i.e., stuff that makes plane flights go by faster) I like Pahluniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, shit like that.

Marquis de Sade rules too. I Never dug Kafka much. Too. Salomon Rushdie is amazing, especially if your stoned on something.

you provide a clear picture.


must spread rep.

currently reading Executioners Song (about Gary Gilmore) by Norman Mailer, about 50% interesting, those Mormons is some weird people, for damnsure. It's especially interesting to read after having recently watched the Cremaster containing the Mormon/Gilmore stuff. Keep flashing to the bees and the riders. The Cremaster is HIGHLY recommended, if you haven't seen this one......

A couple months ago I read two big motherfuckers back to back: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and William Gaddis's The Recognitions. Both I highly recommend. Set aside some time and let them bowl you over.