not that i'm reading much these days, given life's events.... but my queue has been flushed (apart from some stragglers i'm hesitant to get to) and i'm too tired to do the normal research i do in order to find new books to read.
most of the better books i've read of late have been recommendations from todd and joel anyway, so, what do you say guys?
Haven't done a lot of reading recently, so let me reach into my past... Have you read any Jonathan Lethem? I've written about his books on my blog and his "The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye" short-story collection would be a good place to start.
ReplyDeleteHave you read any other Pynchon other than Gravity's Rainbow? If not, you should give some of his less intense books a whirl. Vineland is an excellent novel, with that great Pynchon writing but without the nhilistic intensity of GR. It's also a hell of a lot of fun (a minor character is a landscape contractor named the Marquis de Sod: "Crabgrass won't be'ave? Haw, haw! No problem! Zhust call - the Marquis de Sod. ... 'E'll wheep your lawn into shepp!"). Crying of Lot 49 is short and has the best mind-fuck ending of any book I've ever read.
I'm sure i'll think of more but those were the first ones that came to mind!
And Chuck Klosterman! I enjoyed the "Eating the Dinosaur" essays a lot (one of which convincingly compared Kurt Cobain to David Koresh), so much so that I've got Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto on the way. He reminds me of DFW but with less gravitas and more laugh-out-loud humor. Plus, he loves rock n' roll.
ReplyDeleteTo give you a taste, he contributes to Bill Simmons' sports blog here: http://www.grantland.com/columnists/chuckklosterman
Let us know what you end up reading!