200 books in 10 years? Don't read a lot I take it.

Yeah, novels. A novel takes about 1-2 weeks to finish, sometimes less than a week. I read things from other genres as well (paper, magazines, diaries, non-fiction, poetry).

If I am reading a genere I really enjoy I usually finish them within a day or two, though if It is something that is ok it takes me quite a while.

War and Peace, Two years and counting

=/

I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

-Woody Allen

I don't get it. What's so great about 'Sabbaths Theater'? I don't know how to express it in english, but in my humble opinion the whole book is filled with 'schweinigeleien' - and those are quite boring. I enjoyed the Humain Stain, though.

Thomas Bernhard is my favorite author. I buy first editions despite their horrendous cots and admire his "lifestyle". There's no other author, neither Shakespeare nor Mann, who could keep up with him (based on subjective thoughts). I would recommend to read the 'Auslöschung', his monumental last book.

Dostoevsky's books are not quite 'easy'. I really love them, but you should keep your hands off if you're vulnerable for depressions and similar stuff. 'The Idiot' is a slowly boost to the absolute desperation.

I think's it's quite hard to pick only three books, especially when you say that 99% of everything is shit. I would set the rate to less than 70% (but I could hardly pick at least five books out of 300). I get alot of new sentiments by listening to music, reading books or watching movies.

I believed you replied to the wrong person.

Thanks for the imsg though!

Yes, the protagonist Mickey Sabbath is a shameless dirty old man, engaging in grotesque activities such as ejaculating on his girlfriend's grave or stealing a friend's daughter's underwear drawer, etc.. You have to be able to put up with Roth's anti-political-correctness. It's a shameless book, but such is life. To me Mickey Sabbath encompasses the best of the human race, and this book bursts with sheer energy.

oh lordy, we have a severe depression case on our hands.
start liking yourself, then you might enjoy other things.

Even if it was a depression, I'm loving it and not going to cure it. It feeds me.

if you could find aniara by harry martinson in english (or german, suite yourself) i'd recomend it.

Hm Amazon has it but for about 50 bucks. Strange that I have never heard of him and that he is not published worldwide, since he won the Nobel Prize.

it was quite a while ago he got it.
i love his lyrics - i dont know if it's as good in english though.
i'd really like somone else to read it, it's quite heavy reading (atleast the swedish version) so noone really cba to read it through here and if they do they often don't understand what they're reading.

so i beg you, ask someone to get it for you (at a library or summit) if you think it's too much money.

I doubt I will have any luck in the library, but will look for him there. On http://www.ulrike-nolte.de/aniara.htm , the site of of a a german Harry-Martinson-translator, there are a couple of excerpts from Aniara in german. Makes me wonder where the rest is. So maybe a german book "Aniara" does exist.

i hope so :). gl in your research!

No luck so far. Neither the city library had anything by Martinson, and in the university library there was only one doctorate dissertation about Aniara but not the work itself.

i think (atleast in sweden) the local library can order books for you (without taking money for it) - dunno about germany though. k duder, i wish there was an online version of it :/

I think they need to have it in their computer system in order to get it for me. I shall contact this Ulrike Nolte, who apparently is Germany's premier Martinson-translator.

ah, cool. do you know what kind of book it is? you might get dissapointed :/

It's a book with 109 chants and it's SciFi :-) Haven't read all of the excerpt yet, but sounds very lyrical.

Update: Dr. Nolte replied to my inquiry and said, that she could not find a publisher for her recent prize-winning translation of "Aniara", because the financial risk was too great. But - and that's the good news - she will send it to me privately as soon as she has returned from overseas (she is on holiday in New Zealand at the moment), although it is not complete. She stopped translating it as there were no publishers willing to print it.

if you have read every book, or select them randomly then that 1/100 ratio could be correct,
but if you pick your favourite writers or follow reviews then surely you must have read more than 3 good books

or you have a very high standards :p

Yes, there are more than 3 good books. "99% of everything is shit" can be (must be) viewed upon with a pinch of salt, i.e. with a leaning towards sarcasm. Actually, it was just the spoon I fed you my shameless plug for 3 very good books with.

By saying "it's not important what they are", I think the question of what they are is actually brought to a bigger importance than if I had said "They are ... so and so".

99% of everything IS shit. Why else would so few friends stick around, so few songs be memorable and so few books really shine through the crap?

I'm a bit confused by your 1-2 weeks for a novel, since I usually finish any book I actually like reading within 3 days, including the whole Tolkien trilogy (when I was 11). Reading speed isn't the limiting factor for me, I just hate reading books that suck, so I only read stuff by a few authors who I know are capable of producing stuff that is only moderately crap or not crap at all.

I think it boils down to the idea of not doing anything if you can't do it well. If a book isn't great then it can't really be classified as good either, since there are bound to be thousands of books that are better (1% of millions).

"99% of everything IS shit. Why else would so few friends stick around, so few songs be memorable and so few books really shine through the crap? "

true.

"I'm a bit confused by your 1-2 weeks for a novel, since I usually finish any book I actually like reading within 3 days, including the whole Tolkien trilogy (when I was 11)."

maybe that's because you're a faggot or something. not everyone reads 24/7. it usually takes me a month or so to read a book, though I can easily read a 500 page book in a couple days if I want. I just don't.

See, that's my point, I read books that compel me to keep reading, not books that are the type you can just put down on the bedside table for a day and come back to it for another 50 pages before you go to sleep.

I don't do anything half-heartedly, so it only makes sense that when I read, I read things through quickly. That way you get to the end without having lost sight of the beginning. It's different with "fine" literature like Tolstoy and Dostoyevski, because they pace themselves differently, but thrillers and such usually demand that you keep reading to the end with minimal pauses.

But he just called you a faggot!

Is there anyone he hasn't called a faggot?

This is a book thread, so the word "faggot" should be replaced with something like "jarring motley-minded foot-licker" or "fawning beef-witted coxcomb" or "droppings of a syphilistic greek mountain goat" or something.

Thank you. I kiss the ground that awaits your corpse.

if I ever read a book that abuses adjectives in a manner similar to the one described in your post, I will personally seek out its author so that I can either: separate his testicles from his scrotum, or cut her ovaries out -- whichever pronoun is applicable.

Now that's better.

Well here is one book you should like.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/093439...32-8244868

actually, I prefer this one.

Well nice to see you have at least read something in your wretched life.

I agree.

He said he read Tolkien books in 3 days as an 11 years old boy. Since at this age when things are very interesting you lose control of time and just go on and can't stop. It happened to me a lot when I was a kid, it has nothing to do with 'reading 24/7 (faggot) lifestyle'. Heck it has nothing to do with speed reading or reading in general.

1-2 weeks on average. But it usually doesn't take me that long. Usually less than a week, like 4 to 7 days for novels with 300 to 600 pages. Elke Heidenreich, a german reading enthusiast (who has her own book show on german TV - god knows why), says she reads 100 pages in 2 hours. Either she has a very quick comprehension or reads sloppily. By her remarks I'd go for the later.

100 pages in 2 hours? That really isn't very much... I read 100 in an hour in easy-to-read books (think Crichton, Douglas Adams) and around 80 in a bit harder books (Tolkien, Clancy, random Russian author #12).

Thing is, you never have to read every word, the fastest readers read a line at a time and can easily do 150-200 pages an hour. Comprehension suffers a bit, but a trained speed reader can easily get the gist of everything. I do similarly, reading a few words at a time - images form in my head but I can't necessarily recall what the whole sentence was.

It works, and it really helps for academic pursuits where the adjectives really don't matter but the gist does.

I read your post in 0.02 seconds and summarised it as worthless.

Yes, the mechanics of reading can be sped up quite a bit, but the brain has to follow just as quick. I think what my mind does when reading is

a) to understand the sentence grammatically (is it written in a language I can understand?)
b) to grasp the sentence semantically (what's being said)
c) to interprete the sentence in the context of its occurence (why is being said what is being said)
d) to interprete the sentence stylistically (how is being said what is being said)

Now, sometimes I read one paragraph to collect more than one sentence and just do the above. This is not mechanical but intuitive.

I sort of agree. I am fairly adept at the 'speed reading' technique even though I usually don't read alot. However, when I do read, I find it that I can read somewhere over 500 words/minute, probably (more likely is over 400). I usually, though, find myself slowing down to about 250-300WPM in order to ensure that I take everything in properly. This still results in 1 hour per day, 3 days to read a 100,000 word book at a consistent rate of 300WPM. (add on a couple days to even it out or whatever, if you want)
Not that I care or anything.

i finished 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' a while back. it took a long time to read and theres no doubt its a fasinating book but i'd be lying if i said i understood it all. i'd imagine it might suit your... 'style' of thinking.

Indeed it does look like I might like it. And it's even available on-line at http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Quality/PirsigZen/

ugh, id rather have a physical book. also reading a screen for long periods hurts my eyes.

Yes, just for a quick look if it's shit :-)

it most certainly is not :)

I'm sure it isn't.

Trudi Canavan - Black Magicians Trilogy
1. Novice
2. Magicians Guild
3. High Lord

excellent books.

also
Johnny Cash - Cash
its not a novel, but it reads beautifully really an A+ book.

Stephen Baxters Phase Space.. Also, http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 is a nice read. :)

My favourites: Albert Camus - La Peste, Jose Saramago - Blindness and Zofia Nalkowska - The Limit

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Sounds a bit like something Henry Miller might have said. In all honesty: What a frightening thought to call up Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka or Knut Hamsun. I would have liked Charles Bukowski or Philip Roth as a friend though.

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It's always because of both - reader and author.
BUK created some of the nastiest characters in his short stories. He wrote from the perspective of a pedophile commiting his crime in a garage once. In his autobiographical novels (Women, Factotum, Post Office) he created a very sincere picture of himself. Sometimes an asshole, sometimes a good guy, but always entertaining.
Hans Castorp (the guy from the Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann) is constructed as very likeable, so are mot of Roth's protagonists I know ("protagonists" - a concept he still seems to believe in), see The Human Stain, The Dying Animal, I Married A Communist, Portnoy's Complaints.
Kafka and Hamsun are a bit more complex.

Don't agree with you at all.

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"Castorp may be constructed as likeable, but Mann constantly reminds you of his mediocrity, his fallacies, his deficiencies."

Doesn't that make him the more likeable? Of course, Mann would have called Castorp "inferior" (like he called people "der inferiore soundso" in his diaries) if Castorp would have been a real person known to Mann.
The relationship between writer and protagonist is probably one of the most debated topics ever, it's either love and compassion or cold hearted analytical manipulation. There is not much room in between. I do agree that TM was more of a "Käferforscher" with a huge lense, conducting experiments with his characters.

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The relationship between writer and protagonist is probably one of the most debated topics ever

I could write a book about the slash in singer/songwriter - great, huh? :o)

But a reader may very well like a character the author didn't like

Could you please give some fine examples?

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go for Nabokov's 'Lolita'!

sumptuous

not

if you like fantasy and politics read A Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones, Clash of Kings, Storm of Swords and soon to be Feast for Crows) by George R.R. Martin.

Unbeatable.

I don't like fantasy at all. Maybe the combination with politcs will give it more depth, but then why use a fantasy world to get across political things? I already judge a book by its cover when there's some fancy fantasy graphic design on it. I know, unfair.:-)

What else do you recommend in the fantasy genre?

The shadow of the wind! from Zafón (spanish writter) been translated all around the world the past year, cos of the very good job in this book. I recommended it to Daishi (and other ppl) and they liked it a lot... :D

And in the actuality there are new books like "the last caton" which is from Asensi, a spanish woman too, or "the eight" which are much better than the da vincis code, which had a very good marketing!

If u like classics, then no doubt u gotta go for Goethe with the young werther one, or kafka, specially the metamorphosi.
As brandan said, asimov is also good.

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Im not living in Spain by now, but if theres a second book, ill try to get it in April, when im back there for the CPL, no doubt!

Yes, I read the junge Werther. Then I read it again after I saw Sigrid Löffler (an austrian book critic and writer) explain it thoroughly. A very rich book.

Hm, I am not a fan of the metamorphis by Kafka, although the image is haunting. For me this has always been a very youthful story for readers starting with Kafka. I read everything by him and the diaries and the novel "Amerika" (also published as "Der Verschollene" in Germany) are my favorites. In this novel we find a very vivid plot. A real plot - something that is missing on the other two novels by Kafka.

I don't know Zafón, so maybe a good addition to my knowledge of the eerie world of Javier Marias. Thanks for the tip.

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I did read lots of books from Kafka and parts of his diaries... had to do a lot about him in the university, but i surelly will read the rest. I know the metamorphosis is pretty much for starters who want to get in touch with Kafkas style, but i think its cute and shows pretty clear some of the real personality of him, thats why i like it and thats why we spend lots of time with that book :D

U should get the shadow of the wind, i really loved it, its obviously another style of writting.

Well, well, well, it certainly is interesting how Kafka is being read nowadays. It was some time ago I read the metamorphosis, but "cute" was probably not an adjective that I associated with this story. Some say Kafka is a riddle, but the element of something weird or phantastic happening to characters in his stories, seems to be a repeating one. In the diaries there is a short prose passage where the narrator awakes from a nap and finds a long sword sticking in his back, just beneath the skin. As he is met by his friends, they pull it out and laugh at him. How strange. How brutal. How horrific.
(" ,)

I assume Zafón is somewhat lighter than Kafka.

I really like Amerika too, but I think the argument that it has a plot is a bit strained. If anything, the novel is picaresque, hence it stops without leaving any great feeling that something is missing. It is a fabulation, the story a means of exploring a dreamworld that Kafka chooses to call America. The comparison might be with Brecht's plays and operas that claim an American setting: everything is bigger, brasher, uglier and more beautiful than the everyday European reference. By the way, who said that 99% of everything is shit? It's driving me crazy trying to remember; I think it's an American writer of the late 50s, early 60s (at least, that when I date the quote).

lord of the rings!!111

No book thread would be complete without it.

Currently I am also reading Tricks with Your Head : Hilarious Magic Tricks and Stunts to Disgust and Delight, by Mac King

Funny stuff.

is it good?

i liked angels and demons just went to rome on a holls and did the path of illumination.... and a lot of beer was fun :)

Some of the stunts are ancient and fool nobody, but most of it is supposed to be funny on the spur of the right moment. I'm not really a clownesque kind of guy so I rarely pull off some weird trick with my nose or ear. Also I noticed that my ear is not flexible enough to perform "Make people believe you poked your thumb through your earlobe". Damnit.

Oh, if you meant if Lord Of The Ring was good: It's okay. Youth literature.

Ein Nachtrag: Könntest du bitte ein paar Worte zu Bernhard's "Verstörung" verlieren? Habe das erst gestern wieder gelesen und teils schallend gelacht, teils bittere Tränen vergossen. Dieser Fürst!

Hast du Hennetmair's Buch über sein einjähriges Aufzeichnen des Bernhardschen Alltags gelesen?

Achja: du siehst, ein wenig, aus wie S. Eisenstein. Aber nicht weitersagen!

Gruß
Marc

P.S Iris Radisch ist scharf. Ehrlich.

Hm, als besonders spaßig habe ich den Fürsten nicht in Erinnerung. Vielmehr krankhaft in sich selbst verschlungen - metaphorisch gesprochen. I hob's Buch vom Hennetmair noch ned duarch.


P.S. Auf wen?

Gar nicht der Fürst an sich, sondern die maßlose Überzeichnung dieser Rolle. Und für die Wortschöpfung "Sonntagseheerbärmlichkeit" sollte man schon auf die Knie gehen.

Issa denn guad, da Hennedddmair? Was ned, ob i zum Hardcower greiff soll! Gibbet Bilder?

Ich meinte: was macht das Buch zu einem deiner drei wichtigsten?

Eine/Die Literaturkritikerin der ZEIT. Man glaubt's gar nicht!

Ich weiß, wer Iris Radisch ist. Ich fragte ja, auf wen sie denn scharf ist. Absolut nicht mein Typ.

P.S. Wieso "Nachtrag"? Worauf? Auf einen von Dir (= ?) bereits verfraßten Beitrag in diesem Thread?