Anybody read a good book lately?

[Diomedes]

I just finished Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage.

It was excellent.

[SD_Eagle5]

Read 'The Game' by Neil Strauss. Great book, highly recommend it if you're single or looking (not that I am)

[Diomedes]

What is that, a self help book?

[SD_Eagle5]

What is that, a self help book?

Sort of, depending on what you're trying to get from it. It's a true story about a bunch of average chumps who are taught from a guy known only as 'Mystery' how to become pick up artists.

[Diomedes]

A whole book about it?  One word:

money.

[SD_Eagle5]

Not really, the book is almost 500 pages long and only cost $12. Its a very interesting read and it might even teach you a thing or two on how to deal with women (I know, you're all super studs and don't need the help). Anyways, there's a whole online community with a message board called 'The Mystery Method' where you can get the same advice for free thats in the book. I recommended it to two of my friends and they loved it.

[General_Failure]

I got all my advice from a guy called Rhythm.

[Feva]

OK... I admit it.  I write under the Ghost Name: Neil Strauss.

You're welcome, you helpless mutherfargers....

[General_Failure]

You'd never pick a name like Neil.

[rjs246]

I finished Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) and Lunar Park (Bret Easton Ellis) this week.

They were both similar in a couple of very important ways.

First both authors are brilliant. This was my first McCarthy book and he managed to write an incredibly dense and wordy story about hideous violence and inhumane behavior that was impossible to put down. He shuns conversational punctuation and tends towards run-on sentences which is normally a pain in the ass to read. But he made it interesting and it gave the reader and author a feel of detachment from the gruesome behavior of the characters.

Similarly, Ellis, frequently uses run-on sentences but his prose is always easy to burn through and his stories are fascinating. His obsession with detail was annoying (but necessary) in American Psycho, but here it works a little better and his insight into his own egomania (he is the main character in a semi-autobiographical story) makes for extremely entertaining reading. I actually laughed out loud at a couple of the passages about his absurd behavior at the height of his fame.

The other thing that the books have in common, unfortunately is that they are flawed stories. Blood Meridian seems to have been written simply for the purpose of dispelling the romantic image of the American West. There is a definite 'Satan' character but no protagonist for the reader to associate with (unless you can associate with a band of marauding murderers). In the end you're just sort of left with nothing to take away from the story other than the knowledge that people are capable of something terrible. No shtein.

Lunar Park morphs from an awesomely insightful auto-biography into a Stephen King novel and Ellis is not very good at the kind of supernatural story-telling that is required for it. Ellis is at his best when he is exploring the egotism of the privileged and in this book he tries to become a good father and husband and fight spirits that are haunting him in the process and its BOR-ING.

Blood Meridian is an amazingly written novel, with an extremely dark insight into what humans are capable of and for that reason I would recommend it.

Lunar Park is also well written, and interesting if you're interested in Ellis as a person, but American Psycho was better and had more of an interesting social message. Not recommended.

You all care.

[rjs246]

It was brought to my attention that my review of Blood Meridian made it sound like I thought it sucked. I didn't think that at all. I just thought it fell short of its potential to be one of the greatest books I've ever read. Definitely recommended though.

[Diomedes]

I've read three or four of McCarthy's books.  I think he's one of the best living writers in America/one of the best English language authors living in the world.  Don't know how you'd actually rank them, so that's a silly comment to some degree, but I stand by it.

He's got a new one out, a post-nuclear-apocolyptic nightmare setting, rather than the brutal westen setting.  From the reviews I've read, it's at least as good as anything he's done before.  I'll pick it up someday.

[rjs246]

Borders just sent me an email about his newest. The Highway, I think it's called. It's very high on my must-buy list.

[Philly_Crew]

1776 - Interesting but I wouldn't say it is a must read.  A friend recommended Richest Man in Babylon, anyone read it?

Richest man in Babylon was a quick read and just okay.  Started Grisham's Innocent Man, which I don't think will change anyone's mind on capital punishment but a good easy read.

[Diomedes]

The Highway, I think it's called. It's very high on my must-buy list.

It's called The Road.  I bought it last weekend, started it on the train yesterday.  (Finally finished Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt, after forgetting it at a friends house in MD.  Liked it very much, but of course I did.  I luv me sum Greene).

McCarthy is flat out great.  People will read his books in 200 hundred years (if people still exist in 200 years).  I don't find his refusal of standard dialogue punctuation hard to follow at all, never have.  And the language he uses, the prose he strings together is just awesome.

The guy writes better than I wipe my own ass.  And I'm pretty good at that.