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1Neurofancy
1. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. Conversations with Zizek by Glyn Daly
4. Die Naturliche Tochter by Goethe
2. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
3. Conversations with Zizek by Glyn Daly
4. Die Naturliche Tochter by Goethe
3mamzel
I am only familiar with R.U.R. because it helps crossword puzzle writers with tricky intersections. Now I know what the initials stand for. I am intrigued to find and read it. Thanks.
4alcottacre
Welcome back, Jade!
5Whisper1
Hi There
I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.
Thanks.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833
I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.
Thanks.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833
9alcottacre
Happy Belated Birthday, Jade!
10Neurofancy
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I really appreciate it.
7. Astro Boy (Vol. 1) by Osamu Tezuka
7. Astro Boy (Vol. 1) by Osamu Tezuka
12Neurofancy
9. Die Verfolgung und Ermorderung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton by Peter Weiss
10. He, She, and It by Marge Piercy
10. He, She, and It by Marge Piercy
14Neurofancy
13. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris
14. Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
15. Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia
16. The Most Human Human by Brian Christian
17. In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
18. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
19. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
14. Barrel Fever by David Sedaris
15. Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia
16. The Most Human Human by Brian Christian
17. In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
18. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
19. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
15alcottacre
I am going to have to give David Sedaris a try one of these days!
17Neurofancy
21. Moon Palace by Paul Auster
22. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
23. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
22. The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
23. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
18Neurofancy
24. Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
25. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
I'd now like to follow up on some of these books with more detailed synopses:
First, I'll talk about David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day is probably his best book, in addition to being his most famous, but it is quite possibly one of the funniest, if not the funniest, books I've ever read. To quote briefly from a chapter in which he satirizes his experience as an artist,
"My socks balled up on the hardwood floor made a greater statement than any of their hokey claptrap with the carefully matted frames and big curly signatures in the lower left-hand corners. Didn't they read any of the magazines? The new breed of artist wanted nothing to do with my sister's idea of beauty. Here were people who made a living pitching tents or lying in a fetal position before our national monuments. One fellow had made a name for himself by allowing a friend to shoot him in the shoulder. This was the art world I'd been dreaming of, where God-given talent was considered an unfair advantage and a cold-blooded stare merited more praise than the ability to render human flesh..."
He later discovers that some of his art has been accepted for exhibition at a museum,
"When the notice arrived that my work had been accepted, I foolishly phoned my friends with the news. Their proposals to set fire to the grand staircase or sculpt the governor's head out of human feces had all been rejected. This officially confirmed their outsider status and made me an enemy of the avant-garde. At the next group meeting it was suggested that the museum had accepted my work only because it was decorative and easy to swallow. My friends could have gotten in had they compromised themselves, but unlike me, some people had integrity."
All of the stories are great, but two of my favorite are "Youth in Asia" and "A Shiner Like a Diamond."
I really enjoyed Barrel Fever, which is a collection of short fiction and essays, and are altogether less autobiographical with the exception of "SantaLand Diaries." When You Are Engulfed in Flames is yet another good one, the title coming from a poorly translated brochure, while Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, though still enjoyable seemed far less cohesive and unified.
To come back to some things which I've read more recently, I'll talk about The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. One of the things that stood out the most about this book was its descriptive power. To give just a little background, the character around which the plot revolves (not necessarily the main character, but the one at the crux of the story) is struggling with Parkinson's:
"...When he was taken by surprise, every sentence became an adventure in the woods; as soon as he could no longer see the light of the clearing from which he'd entered, he would realize that the crumbs he'd dropped for bearings had been eaten by birds, silent deft darting things which he couldn't quite see in the darkness but which were so numerous and swarming in their hunger that it seemed as if they were the darkness, as if the darkness weren't uniform, weren't an absence of light but a teeming and corpuscular thing, and indeed when as a studious teenager he'd encountered the word "crepuscular" in McKay's Treasury of English Verse, the corpuscles of biology had bled into his understanding of the word, so that for his entire adult life he'd seen in twilight a corpuscularity, as of the graininess of the high-speed film necessary for photography under conditions of low ambient light, as of a kind of sinister decay..."
25. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
I'd now like to follow up on some of these books with more detailed synopses:
First, I'll talk about David Sedaris. Me Talk Pretty One Day is probably his best book, in addition to being his most famous, but it is quite possibly one of the funniest, if not the funniest, books I've ever read. To quote briefly from a chapter in which he satirizes his experience as an artist,
"My socks balled up on the hardwood floor made a greater statement than any of their hokey claptrap with the carefully matted frames and big curly signatures in the lower left-hand corners. Didn't they read any of the magazines? The new breed of artist wanted nothing to do with my sister's idea of beauty. Here were people who made a living pitching tents or lying in a fetal position before our national monuments. One fellow had made a name for himself by allowing a friend to shoot him in the shoulder. This was the art world I'd been dreaming of, where God-given talent was considered an unfair advantage and a cold-blooded stare merited more praise than the ability to render human flesh..."
He later discovers that some of his art has been accepted for exhibition at a museum,
"When the notice arrived that my work had been accepted, I foolishly phoned my friends with the news. Their proposals to set fire to the grand staircase or sculpt the governor's head out of human feces had all been rejected. This officially confirmed their outsider status and made me an enemy of the avant-garde. At the next group meeting it was suggested that the museum had accepted my work only because it was decorative and easy to swallow. My friends could have gotten in had they compromised themselves, but unlike me, some people had integrity."
All of the stories are great, but two of my favorite are "Youth in Asia" and "A Shiner Like a Diamond."
I really enjoyed Barrel Fever, which is a collection of short fiction and essays, and are altogether less autobiographical with the exception of "SantaLand Diaries." When You Are Engulfed in Flames is yet another good one, the title coming from a poorly translated brochure, while Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, though still enjoyable seemed far less cohesive and unified.
To come back to some things which I've read more recently, I'll talk about The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. One of the things that stood out the most about this book was its descriptive power. To give just a little background, the character around which the plot revolves (not necessarily the main character, but the one at the crux of the story) is struggling with Parkinson's:
"...When he was taken by surprise, every sentence became an adventure in the woods; as soon as he could no longer see the light of the clearing from which he'd entered, he would realize that the crumbs he'd dropped for bearings had been eaten by birds, silent deft darting things which he couldn't quite see in the darkness but which were so numerous and swarming in their hunger that it seemed as if they were the darkness, as if the darkness weren't uniform, weren't an absence of light but a teeming and corpuscular thing, and indeed when as a studious teenager he'd encountered the word "crepuscular" in McKay's Treasury of English Verse, the corpuscles of biology had bled into his understanding of the word, so that for his entire adult life he'd seen in twilight a corpuscularity, as of the graininess of the high-speed film necessary for photography under conditions of low ambient light, as of a kind of sinister decay..."
19Neurofancy
I also wanted to talk about Voices From Chernobyl, which I finished near the beginning of June I believe. Oral history has become an increasingly interesting form to me; I think quite a few people probably find it to be appealing actually. It has a very raw, subjective quality to it. These are the stories of people who've experienced the nuclear meltdown in some form or another, including wives of the firemen who went initially to put out the fire at the nuclear reactor (firemen who died horribly within the next few weeks); people who were evacuated from the surrounding townships; soldiers who came to clear away debris and help make the land "livable" again; people who eventually immigrated to Chernobyl after escaping from war-torn territories. Some of it is a meditation on the horror of looking upon a beautiful, yet completely poisonous landscape; much of it also goes into how much the event was downplayed by the government. "Chernobyl" literally means "black event" in Russian.
A few quotes I enjoyed which I managed to write down go as follows:
"A Belarussian peasant hut! For us, city dwellers, the home is a machine for living in. For them it's an entire world, the cosmos..."
"We don't live on this earth, but in our dreams, in our conversations. Because you need to add something to this life in order to understand it."
"...man does not actually please science very much--he gets in the way of it."
A few quotes I enjoyed which I managed to write down go as follows:
"A Belarussian peasant hut! For us, city dwellers, the home is a machine for living in. For them it's an entire world, the cosmos..."
"We don't live on this earth, but in our dreams, in our conversations. Because you need to add something to this life in order to understand it."
"...man does not actually please science very much--he gets in the way of it."
22Neurofancy
30. Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
31. The Craft of Research by Booth
32. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
31. The Craft of Research by Booth
32. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
23Neurofancy
33. On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
34. Wuthering Heights
35. The Lifted Veil
36. How to Read Lacan (re-read)
37. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
34. Wuthering Heights
35. The Lifted Veil
36. How to Read Lacan (re-read)
37. Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
