Anybody read a good book lately?

[General_Failure]

Didn't they rip half of it out to put in the thirty seven Hobbit movies they crapped out?

[rjs246]

Finished up The Dog Stars, which was excellent, and The Killer Inside Me, which was very good. Just started Trainspotting but I'm not sure I have the patience to wade through Welsh's need to spell every word the way the scots pronounce it. It's like reading A Clockwork Orange but with heroine instead of Vodka Milk.

[smeags]

Didn't they rip half of it out to put in the thirty seven Hobbit movies they crapped out?

nothing from the silmarillion has been in the movies. the events are from 2500 years prior to the hobbit.

[General_Failure]

Then I look forward to not watching those three movies when they come out.

[smeags]

Then I look forward to not watching those three movies when they come out.

i would def go see them. that in no way indicates they would be quality movies, just shows how much of a tolkien geek i am.

[Munson]

Anyone read Piketty's Capital yet? Bought it a couple weeks ago and am considering getting started...but afraid I'll be bored to tears.

[phattymatty]

Just read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Incredible.

Everyone should read it.

[rjs246]

I've been reading some glowing reviews of that. Can I borrow?

Also, I read finished Trainspotting and The Great Gatsby last week. Trainspotting was very good, but mostly just served to remind me of how perfect the film is. The even the minor changes that Boyd made when he brought it to the big screen (combining characters, changing the tone of Renton's betrayal at the end) were absolutely perfect.

I read Gatsby as a freshman in highschool and thought it was stupid because I was farging 15 and a story about class struggles the emptiness of wealth in the gilded age didn't mean shtein to me. Rereading it, I could certainly appreciate the themes more, but it still wasn't the transcendent piece of literature that it gets credit for being. It was well told and well written for sure, but it didn't bowl me over the way I expected.

[Rome]

That's because there's not a single redeeming feature in any of the characters. 

Fitzgerald was a hack.  If he was writing today he'd be working on a TV network soap opera or selling soap on Madison Avenue. 

farg Gatsby too. Glad he got shot at the end.   And Daisy was a twat too.

[rjs246]

The characters were not meant to have any redeeming qualities. They were meant to illustrate the vapidity of the elite. Ridiculous social views, absurd parties, no human connections. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that the whole thing was just underwhelming. Once you get the point the story isn't meaty enough to keep you interested.

[Rome]

Nick Carraway was meant to be sympathetic and so was Gatsby to a lesser extent.  Gatsby's noble futility in chasing the illusion of Daisy was, in the end, just a ridiculous allusion to Americans chasing the brass ring in that era. 

Awful rich people win. 

farg all of 'em.

[rjs246]

I didn't find Carraway to be anything other than a neutral narrator. He's a bond dealer who is also chasing the brass ring, albeit in a more traditional manner. He toys around with the idea of being with a girl for social status reasons. What's to like? Gatsby is a bit of a sympathetic character, I guess, but his attempts to attain status are desperate and driven by a misunderstanding of what love is.

I don't know man, I don't really think F. Scott was trying to make any of them especially likable.

[Rome]

I read it in high school and only mildly disliked it then.  I read it again years later after seeing the Redford movie randomly on cable, and only then did I truly begin to despise it.  My own life experiences have colored my views as well, having dealt with spoiled, rich, tone-deaf fargheads in these last couple of decades.

I admit it freely. I can't stand the sort of 1%'ers the book skewers.  My raging socialist soul loathes everything about them.

[Diomedes]

It's a time piece.

Next.

I'm reading Sons and Lovers.  Another dated work, I'm afraid.  We'll see.  Lots to go.

[Rome]

My daughter has finished her high school reading list and is starting her college list now.  She's going into 10th grade.  That is weird to me and I was a voracious reader in high school.

Anyway, pride and whatnot.