It would probebly help if you write down the books you have already read then...

I can't, there are hundreds... if not thousands

Kadare - Broken April, General of the Dead Army
Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita
Marai - Embers
Faulkner - Light in August
Oe - A personal matter
Marias - A heart so white
Hamsun - Hunger, Growth of the Soil

edit: http://www.esreality.com/?a=post&id=277276 and Proust and Beckett.

I suspect some of that is a bit too intellectual for me...

I ordered The Master and Margarita though.

Nah, neither of these require too much intellectual effort while reading to be enjoyed. As you've excluded certain categories I suppose you actually asked for books that challenge the reader intellectually. (besides, authors like Dostoevsky or Stendhal are better than their reputation. I found both to be highly entertaining without being exhausting. Give em a shot)

Have you heard of Amelie Nothomb?

And how about Solzhenitsyn?

Proust > *

swansssssssss wayyyyyyyyy


(p.s. this thread is never dieing)

I´ve been thinking about buying Oe´s "A personal matter" for some time now , is it any different from his other books ? Because sometimes I had problems with his writing style in those.

The Science of Discworld I & II, by Terry Pratchett


Also, where do you buy your books? I find amazon to be very expensive when it comes to shipping to europe.

'NOT'

Amazon.co.uk mostly... If you order over £25, it's free shipping domestically

Oh, and those are fantasy :]

ah, didn't see the NOT. oh well :]

check amazon.com, same books, half the price, pay in dollars, cheaper all round !

Ok, Amazon for June:

Lost In Translation [2004] - Sofia Coppola; DVD
Y4k Presents - Uberzone; Audio CD
In Transit - John B; Audio CD
Bebel Gilberto - Bebel Gilberto; Audio CD
World of Dynamite - Dynamite Mc; Audio CD
The Discovery of Heaven - Harry Mulisch; Paperback
The Master and Margarita - Mikhai Bulgakov; Paperback

I am of course still open for book suggestions for July :]

I would swap the Mulisch for Philip Roth - Sabbath's Theater. He also has a new one coming out called "The Plot Against America". Or be über-cool and read Robert Walser.

Have you read the Mulisch book?

I have read "Siegfried" by Mulisch and didn't like it too much. I don't like Mulisch's spirit or writing style. I can give you a more detailed critical overview of this novel from my perspective if needed.

As I haven't read the book, sure. Personally, I found Mulisch writing style in the discovery of heaven very good. Very comical and very intelligent.

Please elaborate, if you wish.

I don't want to get too involved, because apparently Mulisch has a whole theory about this, but Mulisch writes about Herter, a well known and popular writer from the Netherlands. His alter ego if you will. He - Herter - finds out, that Hitler had a son. Wow. Sensation. OKay. But now Mulisch indulges into all those strange visions of how he sees Hitler. His theory is: The Führer was empty inside. And that's why it was possible for him to have his son killed after he was made believe that his son was not 100% aric. But what Mulisch means by that puzzles me. "Nothing", he writes, that's his image of Hitler. Uh ... wtf? Hitler was not a furious demon with fiery eyes, but a glacier in the shape of a human being. So in a way like a zombie. And alltogether entirely different from all other fascist leaders (ok Nazi Germany was not really Fascism in the strict sense of the word, but that aside). Hitler was lead by something. Something told him to act. But what? He had no morals, no norms, no values, writer Mulisch. Even if that were true, Hitler must have had a certain relationship to those values, which we normally attribute to man and which are prerequisites for moral conduct. Hadn't Hitler had to know these values in order to influence millions of people, that believed in them before Hitler? Didn't he even find an effective response to them to render them useless?

And then he takes Wittgenstein's famous quote, which says "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." With all respect, Wittgenstein didn't mean it that way. He was referring to something a bit more fundamental. If a writer proclaims the end of speech, well then good night, indeed. In that case the sun is setting over the horizon of this book and we cann all expect a cold cold night.

And then such horrible sentences like
"The number zero is the Hitler of numbers, because if you multiply something with zero, you get zero. It vanishes in the presence of the zero."

LOL Sorry, but I want to add here: If you add zero to any other number the effect is ... zero. So what's stronger, multiplication or addition? No. Not a good idea.

To make things shorter: Then the protagonist loses himself in a confusing array of ideas, that suggest a close relation between Nietzsches death date with Hitlers birthday and that Nietzsche already has foreseen the existence of a figure like Hitler. What's really missing is some ironic distance. Mulisch is a good writer. He could write about many things. In the end of the book a ghost slips into the weak body of Herter. Is it a thost like the one from Hamlet? Not really. It reminded me of Heinrich Mann's novel "Der Untertan". But the ghost (the devil) in the end Mann's novel was a bit more convincing.

But of course, don't believe me. Read the book and see for yourself. Good night.

Well, I do believe you. It's ofcourse all subjective. Thanks for elaborating.

Yes, one should always rely on own views, not on others. So I don't want you to believe me but make up your own mind. There is no other way to judge literature anyway I guess...

Please, nobody Daishi him that Master and Margarita is fantasy :) (it's a sure classic tho, id buy it in a hard cover if I was you :)

Yeh, I thought it might be.... I hope it doesn't have elves and goblinds in, I've already read lord of the rings

no! the fantasy isn't really the main mateial for the plot, it only allows for neat tweasts :)

"Bright lights, big city", jay McInerney

principia discordia

<o>

comedy is always good.

Have you read the telephone book yet??

I hope you aren't expecting me to plus that :]

Yes, it matches your criteria :<

harry potter!

Aimed at 10 year olds! And I've read it!

i was just about to say it, gg fu

my math book ;)

why did you delete my post - Me

I'm certain that you'd enjoy Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (Book Information)

Here's a quick description:

"Victor Mancini, a medical-school dropout, is an antihero for our deranged times. Needing to pay elder care for his mother, Victor has devised an ingenious scam: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be “saved” by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor’s life, go on to send checks to support him. When he’s not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park. His creator, Chuck Palahniuk, is the visionary we need and the satirist we deserve."

Yes, I've read that, it was pretty good.

Better than lullaby, but maybe worse than fight club...

Then perhaps you should wait for his upcoming novel, Diary. I'm going to pick it up the day it comes out.

have a description? :)

I think I've stolen already enough material for today. ;)

i havent read any palahniuk books except of course the generic fight club but tbh that sounds like just a very slight variation of the fight club theme O_o not flaming you, just curious what you/others think..

I'd have to agree. But it's still a great read.

Is that the one from the mp3 that was posted a while back ago... about the guy stuck in the swimming pool? That was pretty disgusting :)

Nope.

I'm going to be picking up this weekend a novel by Mitch Albom titled The Five People you Meet in Heaven. (Book Information)

Here's yet another quick description:

"Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident kills him, as he tries to save a little girl from a falling cart. He awakes in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a destination. It’s a place where your life is explained to you by five people, some of whom you knew, others who may have been strangers. One by one, from childhood to soldier to old age, Eddie’s five people revisit their connections to him on earth, illuminating the mysteries of his 'meaningless' life, and revealing the haunting secret behind the eternal question: 'Why was I here?'"

sounds very interesting

* The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart
* The Outsider by Albert Camus
* Generation X by Douglas Coupland

Those are three off the top of my head considering your stated conditions.

Have you read Camus' "The Fall"? I'd rather recommend that.

Well in light of The Outsider being all of about 100 pages he should read both :)

Yay, The Fall has about 130 pages, so he should indeed read both ;-)

edit: Then he should start with The Outsider though as I suppose it's easier to grasp Camus' existentialistic ideas there than in The Fall.

I thought Outsider was written so simplistically that I just couldn't appreciate it as literature. Sure, it has some nice thoughts, but it was boring for as long as it lasted...

so then let punee enlighten you

The way in which you try to sound smart just shows how little you know about what you're talking about.

gnoti sauton

gnothi seauton

But what are you trying to say?

yeh, it's omega theta. but the seauton is usually contracted to sauton.

As for the editing of your post which I've just noticed, it was really uncalled for, but since you want me to enlighten you (because you're obviously the one who needs that), I'll do that according to what I remember.

The very first sentence was kind of funny, as you said something along the lines of 'Camus wasn't praised for the artistic quality of his work'. Oh really? Was he just praised for he was a handsome man then? I thought he wrote novels, and seeing as Literature is an art, I thought that the sole thing he could be praised for was for the artistic quality of his work. If you're trying to say that his philosophical ideas were what was important, then you'll be satisfied to learn that these are intrinsic to his artistic work as well.

You then went on ranting about existentialism while obviously not having a clue about it, calling repeatedly Camus an 'existentialist philosopher'. I'll just quote him for once:

"When I and Sartre met, it was to realise our differences.[...] Sartre is existentialist, and the only philosophical essay I've published: The Myth of Sisyphus, is directed against so called existentialist philosophers"

The conclusion was thus kind of laughable, when in your show-off manner you said something like 'If you're interested in existentialism at all ;p'. Well, I hope you aren't, because that's really not the kind of book you should be reading.

Whatever.

Camus is for me as much an existentialist as Sartre or Beckett are. They start from the same assumption (the absurdity of life, dissociation with one's surroundings) and then divert in the following reflections (more or less). In a further consequence all three have their roots in Nietzsche. You obviously dissent with this conception of existentialism. I haven't read anything in German that would make me change this opinion. German opinion may be generalistic putting all three under the same category, but that is not my fault.

Considering his impact his ideas are more important than his artistry. If you read him for the enjoyment for the latter you'll miss the point of his novels.

edit: the presentation speech for his nobel prize also calls him an existentialist.

And I suppose you know better than he did anyway?

While it's impossible to give an accurate definition of existentialism, I think Camus' novels can be read as literature of a revolting existentialist. Of the old true existentialists, I only found Kierkegaard to be entertaining and digestable. He also was a humanitarian. Nietzsche was not. Not a nice guy. According to Kierkegaard, man is doomed in front of god. But in a good way. God is always right. Thus, we always have a possibility to throw ourselves down in the dirt and ask for forgiveness. For Kierkegaard this is our ultimate luxury and gives us a chance to sooth our worried minds. There is hope in being wrong. If we were right with everything, it would be like hell, because we would be like gods. We cannot really understand the world, why we are here and what this is all about. He plays with different "Proofs for god", one is about slaves on a ship. One tells the other "I know that god exists, because he hates me." Like Pascal he accepted life to be full of paradoxes.

That said, as I have read Camus, he never accepted faith in god as the ultimate way of living. Pascal and Kierkegaard only saw darkness and dispair in a world without god, but Camus said "NO! Even if god doesn't exist, there must be a good reason to live." I have never finished "Myth of Sisyphos", so I can't really say, if he managed to struggle himself totally free from faith.

I suggest you finish reading it before going into such baseless arguments.

Oh well, only 20 pages left. Interesting read after all these years. Brushing off numerous paragraphs with only one laconic remark is not a sign of having particularly strong points. If you feel you can add anything of value to the debate, feel free to report back.

There is no debate going on, the point is clear enough and is no subject to arguments such as these, no matter what you think. Bringing up new irrelevant points isn't what I call debating.

If you want to stick to this black/white way of arguing...ok. But if you stop with "Camus was not an existentialist", you stop early. To me the interesting thing is the relation between "Being an existentialist" and "Having existentialism in his works". But I think I don't need to repeat myself.

The author can and is not the supreme instance when it comes to interpreting his own works. Considering that I have noone besides you and himself so far heard saying that he were no existentialist but rather seen a broad agreement that he is one I'll go with him being an existentialist. And regarding your argument, I'm still missing a single valid point for your position apart from putting forward rather insulting replies.

Reading some of your earlier stuff, I would have thought that being the great mathematician you are, you wouldn't fall for the 'Majority is always right' fallacy. Unfortunately, your usual flaunting has some bad side effects as you seem unable to refrain from jumping in the existentialism bandwagon, and display, just like most of your peers, a level of self-righteousness that remains unmatched.

The argument I've provided is largely sufficient to show you my point. If you don't believe what Camus says about himself, and even though it is arguable that others know better about someone then he does himself, I think you owe him some respect. Camus has studied philosophy several years, and has been friend with the most influencial french existentialist writers, so now if you're going to say that he doesn't know what he's talking about (in which case you shouldn't even bother reading him at all), then you should reconsider your statement.

Talking about self-righteousness ...

Consider who this majority is you are talking about there. And secondly, would you mind providing more than this one line from Camus? I believe this is somehow out of context.

Camus didn't speak much about that matter, he didn't have to anyway, since it's pretty obvious throughout his work. Although he did give a more humorous remark about that for he was starting to be annoyed by people calling him an existentialist:

"You do not accept the existentialist philsophy because you say the world is absurd. Following that logic, eighty percent of the Metro passenger, according to the conversations I hear, are existentialists."

He also condemned people calling him a philosopher, in the very beginning of 'The myth of Sisyphus':

"The following pages deal with the absurdity that can be found sparsely throughout our century - not of a Philosophy of the absurd that our time has so to speak not even known" (Pretty rough translation, I'm missing some words here).

Just read this book, by then it should seem obvious to you that he ain't no existentialist philsopher.

As you seem to like quotes, here's one more by Camus: "A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images." So as you seem to go by the word you would have to agree now that his novels serve first and foremost a philosophical purpose. You also asked earlier what he was praised for if not his artistry in writing. If you're alluding here to his Nobel Prize ... well, Mommsen was a historian and definitely no writer of fictional text. Whatever.

'Existentialism' was never an organized movement. The only one who embraced that term for a longer time was Sartre. Sartre coined the term and filled it with a meaning that he elaborated in his novels and essays. In that he was quite specific. Therefore no one else should be called existentialist. Camus recognized that his ideas also differ from Sartre's so he truthfully stated that he wasn't an existentialist.
On the other hand existentialism shouldn't be restricted to Sartre. Most likely there wouldn't have been neither Sartre nor Camus without Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. So the latter are not totally unjustifiedly called existentialists or at least precursors to it. Considering the work, the preparations done by them, where Camus and Sartre start is quite identically. They differ in their argumentation and consequences to be drawn from that original situation. Where is, in the end, the difference between Sartre's disgust and Camus' depiction of man's absurd situation? Where do their conclusions differ? Sartre postulates that man has to set his own goals, has to recognize the difference between existence and essence. Camus on the other hand dictates to recognize the absurd struggle as what it is and live with it ("we have to imagine Sisyphos as a happy man" and his novel "a happy death", which is actually intended to give a meaning as he said himself).
If you define existentialism as what Sartre made out of that term, Camus is no existentialist. But existentialism isn't down to what Sartre says. The term's been filled with a meaning by so many more. Of course there's a difference between them. But why don't consider existentialism as what oscillates between them? I don't like yourtighly focused approach, to cut it short.

Don't like my 'tightly focused' way of putting things? Fits me better than your broad and fuzzy one.

You seem to reproach me not to take enough distance to consider the matter, though as the first Camus quote I gave stresses it, taking a too broad definition of Existentialism tends to make everyone an existentialist.

You're just running in circles there. Camus wasn't an existentialist philosopher, full-stop. I'm not arguing about anything else.

First of all, I didn't actually give a definition of what existentialism is. For me existentialism is a collection of ideas and thoughts from different philosophers. This seems to be the main point of differentiation here. You seem to fill the word existentialism only with Sartre.
Would you be so kind as to name a second big philosophical 'movement' that is filled with only one person's works? At first glance I could name none. It occurs to me that labels for philosophical streams are very general such as political or moral philosophy and in these with certain specifications. But none with only one philosopher. And none with only one 'root'. I don't see why it should be any different with existentialism. You'll have to admit that the ideas of Sartre and Camus are very closely tied together and related. So why not give them the same label? If you want to specify, name the philosopher. And that is why I don't like this kind of discussion - it's purely academic and doesn't serve a purpose.
And then: name me one person that's not asked for the meaning of his or her life. This is an existentialistic (and existential!) thought. It doesn't make him or her an philosopher though, I think Camus was rather joking there.

Blabla, again.

"For me existentialism is a collection of ideas and thoughts from different philosophers."

Very deep, but then so is any other philosophy.

"You seem to fill the word existentialism only with Sartre."

You probably want some more Camus quotes including other philosophers (As I myself made no mention of Sartre or whoever, considering I thought we were talking about Camus)? Alright, there you go:

"Existentialism has two forms: One with Kierkegaard and Jaspers ends with divinisation through the critique of reason, the other, that I'd call atheist existentialism, with Husserl, Heidegger and soon Sartre, ends with divinisation as well, but simply that of History, considered the sole absolute. You do not believe anymore in God, you believe in History. For my part, I understand the interest in the religious solution, and percieve very well the importance of History, but I don't believe in either in an absolute sense."

Happy?

"And then: name me one person that's not asked for the meaning of his or her life. This is an existentialistic (and existential!) thought."

Talk about making stupid generalizations. You're basically saying that everyone is an existentialist because everyone is wondering about the meaning of life. That's just pure nonsense.

Waste of time.

How could Camus as an absurdist then consider writing a book "that gives the sense" at all? And how could he suggest to understand Sisyphos as a happy man? I see very well from where you're coming to say that he is no existentialist (but an absurdist). But you've been avoiding this question from the beginning. So yes, waste of time.

I've spared a quote for quite some time now: "I call the existential attitude philosophical suicide. How else to start from the world’s lack of meaning and end up by finding a meaning and a depth to it?". Yes, that's Camus. I wonder why you didn't post that one. This one's more down to the point than your whole ramblings. Why can't you just for once come down from your high horse and actually try to argue your point?

Getting a little tired of reading replies by someone who so obviously hasn't read much of the author he's talking about.

"How could Camus as an absurdist then consider writing a book "that gives the sense" at all?"

Yeah, that's the kind of paradox not-so-smart people from my philosophy course used to pull all the time. You're merely being picky with words here. If that's your understanding of the Absurd, then it's very little.

"And how could he suggest to understand Sisyphos as a happy man?"

Couldn't it actually help if you had read the book? Not my job answering that.

As for the quote, what's wrong with it?

"I call the existentialist attitude philosophical suicide." (somewhat corrected)

Camus is critizing, much as he has for religious beliefs, the fact that existentialists are having an evading attitude toward existence by divinizing the irrational, by trying to find answers and a sense to life out of our world.

NB: I have never 'avoided' answering that question (have you ever asked it before?) or posting that quote which I happen to find completely irrelevant.

"Would you be so kind as to name a second big philosophical 'movement' that is filled with only one person's works?"

Nebuism? :-)

"You'll have to admit that the ideas of Sartre and Camus are very closely tied together and related. So why not give them the same label?"

In order to answer that, one would have to study how closely they are "tied together". They come closer to each other the less exact our definition of existentialism is. But then it's really no use in insisting that Camus was an existentialist anymore. A somewhat circular argumentation.

"And then: name me one person that's not asked for the meaning of his or her life. This is an existentialistic (and existential!) thought."

Existential surely, existentialistic hardly.

What would nebuism be? Now don't talk about goats ;-)

Sartre and Camus were very closely related for along time (and it broke rather for their political conviction than anything else) and have influenced each other. Their 'philosophies' both come from certain basic considerations about the human being and its life. You could say their common denominator is Nietzsche's "God is dead". Both try to find a way how man can now cope with his situation. From there on they diverge. But what they achieve (ie. that man can actually live) is again quite similar, if not the same.

A Child called It
The lost boy
A Man named Dave
all by Dave Pelzer

First 2 are really good books, haven't finished the third. First is a bit disturbing though :/

If you fancy a laugh:

Douglas Adams - Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
Douglas Adams - Dirk Gently's holistic detective agency
Rob Grant / Doug Naylor - Red Dwarf
Rob Grant / Doug Naylor - Better than Life
Doug Naylor - Last Human
Rob Grant - Backwards
Rob Grant - Colony

As you can tell I'm a fan of the space-comedy style book :>

More seriously:

George Orwell - 1984 (tho I suspect you've read this, I can't think of anyone who hasnt =)

I've read all of those except for colony... (Also read incompetence).

And yes, 1984 too!

1984 >>>

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375...05-0195849

I haven't read them but my friend did and he recommended them to me. I would buy those books but: 1. they are not available in Poland 2. the shipping would be to expensive from britain.

maybe you like them. btw: www.gutenberg.org

The Farewell Waltz by Milan Kundera. This is one of those books that you wish would never end. Still have to read his The Unberable Lightness of Being which was made into a movie.

I don't know the first, but the latter is amazing.

No good books to recommend but one simple question: How comes that ESR/esport addict has time for reading? I have problem with this myself.

when you get older you will notice, that there are other things then computer games or esport forums. You will begin a new life, that is if you wish to change something ;)

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Yukio Mishima - The Sea of Fertility
Yann Martel - The Life of Pi
Ernest Hemingway - For Whom The Bell Tolls/
The Old Man And The Sea / A Farewell to Arms
Joseph Conrad - Nostromo / Heart of Darkness
Joseph Heller - Catch 22 / Something Happened
Herman Melville - Moby Dick
Gunter Grass - The Tin Drum
Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Primo Levi - The Periodic Table / If This is a Man
Nikolai Gogol - Dead Souls / Diary of a Madman
Ian McEwan - Atonement
James Joyce - Ulysses
Homer - The Illiad
Ford Madox Ford - Parades End
Any Truman Capote
Any Franz Kafka

Half of those are 100 years old!

I've always found a lot of old classics to just be tedious, long on exposition, short on entertainment.

What have you read?

James Joyce - Ulysses
Homer - The Illiad

Those two, for a start... Inferno too, and Pilgrim's Progress. You sit there reading another dense passage of poetry/prose/whatever, and eventually you are just reading it because you want to get it over with, not because it's any good.

I had that problem with Dickens too.

I wouldn't exactly call them boring. But the examples you brought forward definitely require more attention and effort from the reader than most modern novels. But as I see where your opinion stems from I have to repeat that you might like Dostoevsky or Stendhal. Or Turgenev. Or Gogol. Or one of Tolstoy's shorter pieces. Or some French writer from the same time like Stendhal or Flaubert.

Kafka's way too philosophical to get into anything entertaining. A lot of the book is totally abstract, and then in the end of the book you realize that it's just been an account of one day in the life of a doctor. Zzz.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

^^ franz kafka, i liked metamorphosis.

anything by Orwell also. I recently bought a couple of books by Chuck Palahniuk, this is the guy who wrote Fight Club. Its really inspiring original stuff.

*bookmarks thread.

check out No Logo by Naomi Klein. i am currently half way through this book. it has been refered to as a "movement bible". it talks about advertising and brand hawking (selling the brand, not the produt) throughout the world (nike, starbucks, wal-mart). definately a must read if you don't want t be left in the dark.

Ah yes, read that.

Also michael moore, Al Franken, etc.

Noam Chomsky, and I'm reading something or other whose name I can't remember, dealing with what the ruling class are up to.

i've got Hegemony or Survival by Chomsky, but it's a very intimidating read (being as he is a linguist and all).

Indeed, I've meant to pick up No Logo, but I'm broke most of the time, so I haven't. =/

pfft naomi klein.
not as bad as michael moore, but close.

not as bad? what is the matter with you child?

oh, you think shes just as bad? :o

edit: just seen you were the original writer, i misunderstood :p

yes, shes almost as bad as michael moore. :x

why do you say that?

because the book was directed at young people, preying on their need to channel agression at big corporations etc etc etc without encouraging them to think about both sides.

like michael moore, but done more intelligently. michael moore uses drama and unfair tactics to gte kids to adopt his views, which is wholly unfair, imo :x

and after reading about their shady tactics, you think agression, mainly going to waste, targeted at major perhaps evil corporations is a bad thing? go have a big mac.

edit: i love your whole "targeted at youth" point. have you read anything else on advertising these days? tell me where it's going? how are you going to interupt that constant force-fed flow of advertising kids face everyday? the kids will not be alright if we don't aim our focus towards them in a positive way for once.

edit 2: young people wouldn't have a need to channel agression at these corporations if the corporations didn't bring it upon themselves. be lucky you have some young people attacking these companies right now who just made make a differnec ein the future.

"perhaps evil corporations" ?
evil how, for gods sake?

"i love your whole "targeted at youth" point. have you read anything else on advertising these days? tell me where it's going? how are you going to interupt that constant force-fed flow of advertising kids face everyday? the kids will not be alright if we don't aim our focus towards them in a positive way for once."

its the parents responsibility for them to keep the kids shielded from that stuff, by not lettin them vegetate in front of the tv all day. but michael moore et al use young peoples impressionability to get them on side, aggressively.. at least corporations dont exploit that to such an extent.

"young people wouldn't have a need to channel agression at these corporations if the corporations didn't bring it upon themselves. be lucky you have some young people attacking these companies right now who just made make a differnec ein the future. "

corporations bring it upon themselves? its practical business for the most part. yes, there are some bad apples, and im not going to defend every large business ever, some with questionable tactics, but i think that klein and moore go about it the wrong way...

"by not lettin them vegetate in front of the tv all day."
how about the fact that little girls get locked up in sweatshops with out air conditioning, let alone tv.

also, have fun walking down the street and not being forced to look at 15 ads no matter where you look. tv might be a huge source of ad money for companies, but it's not even the half of it. but i realize that parents can't hold their kids hands everywhere they go during their day, whether it be while reading a magazine, watching the bullshit news broadcast in class in the morning, or riding the subway.

"how about the fact that little girls get locked up in sweatshops with out air conditioning, let alone tv."

believe it or not, they do have a choice.
they can work the land like theyve done for years before, no problem.

"also, have fun walking down the street and not being forced to look at 15 ads no matter where you look. tv might be a huge source of ad money for companies, but it's not even the half of it. but i realize that parents can't hold their kids hands everywhere they go during their day, whether it be while reading a magazine, watching the bullshit news broadcast in class in the morning, or riding the subway."

aye, theres shitloads of advertising. but it takes soem fuckin spack to be taken in by it all... you recognise that all this advertising coudl be a bad thing? give people some credit, man.. theyre not all more mindless than you.

anyway again, that wasnt my point... i was just sayin how klein and moore go about it the wrong way, by appealing to, well, kids. im not tryna defend bad apple companies ;)

what about bill bryson?

how the hell can you read, i have never read a book in my life. i think they are the most boring things in existance. if i read for more than a few minutes i stress out bigtime.

So you'd rather watch a 16 year old Finn jumping around on stage shouting "Pikku G! Pikku G!"?

yes

You're a braver man than me.

Try Nick McDonnal's Twelve: it's short, hip, filled with drugs, sex, violence and manages to maintain a sound moral centre. Somthing for all the dysfunctional family. Also, it's still available from Amazon UK. I really liked Diran Adebayo's My Once Upon a Time, which upset reviewers who lacked the appropriate reference points (hardboiled detective pulps, blaxpoitation and kung fu movies). Honestly, it made going to the LSE sound kind of cool, so if this guy doesn't know about forcing suspension of disbelief on readers, who does?

going to the lse IS cool ;)

super system - doyle brunson

irvine welsh - porno

the follow up to trainspotting,

also

steven king - desperation
its a simple story yet i just have a strong liking for it, for some reason. Its one of those "want to know what happens anyway" things

but one of the best books for pure enjoyment i have ever read has to be

lenny mclean's the guv nor, awesome biography

Plato - Republic
Burgess - A Clockwork Orange
& anything by Steinbeck

Pedido Street Station by China Meiville (check out king rat by the same author). Dunno wtf you would class it, sci-fi/fantasy with alot of cyberpunk... but its a killer book.

Pattern recognition - William Gibson

I loved that book

I did too! Was pretty intense... had to read it in one sitting. I was pretty confused through half the book though, cuz i kept picturing it all taking place in the future.. after all it's Gibson :)
Have to read it again sometime.

Would assume you've seen the No maps for these territories documentary?

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Generation P

by

Victor Pelewin

books?

yeah, imagine that ;]

39.90 Frederic Beigbeder (perhaps spelled incorrectly)
one of my most favourite books

As well as I suggest the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...

Nice to see some people read Beigbeder outside of France, didn't know his stuff was translated. He was a pretty good read, so I couldn't agree more.

Speaking of short books. Here are a bunch of really good quickies:

* Ernest Hemingway, "The old man and the sea"
* Philip Roth, "Portnoy's Complaint"
* Charles Bukowski, "Post Office"
* All short stories by Thomas Mann

And if you like non-fiction:

* Dava Sobel, "Longitude" (The story about a watchmaker who made it possible to measure longitured accurately)
* Paul Hoffman, "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" (about Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. It's mostly about his quirky personality, only little math)

Speaking of shorter stories:

Salinger - Franny and Zooey
Baricco - Silk
Stefan Zweig - The Royal Game

2001 A Space Odyssey

Catch 22

Zen and the art of Motorcyle maintainance.

Isaac Asimov - Science Fiction Favourites...it's an audio book though.

I think I read everything by asimov when I was 13 or 14 anyway... And clarke, and a dozen other authors like that :]

how about Earth's Children series by Jean AUEL?
(pre-historical fiction)
or The Hammer And The Cross series by Harry HARRISON
(viking era england)

do you have "The Hammer And The Cross series by Harry HARRISON" in a .pdf file or smth? I would like to read it but I can't find it on the web or in any store here...

Dan Simmons' books:
-Hyperion
-The Fall of Hyperion
-Endymion
-The Rise of Endymion

Each a good read. Although it's likely that you've already read those, I couldn't pass without mentioning.

Vernor Vinge's books, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky are both excellent reads.

If you like scifi, each of these is a must. If not, they'll at least offer some interesting thoughts (especially the ones explained in The Rise of Endymion).

I quite like those 4... Not too sure that the final book was all that good though.

I liked his latest though, forgotten the name - Iliad? The one based around the Iliad anyway. Looking forward to next year for the sequel

What about the Vinges? I've only read True Names so I can't really tell, but heard only good stuff about these. For what it's worth, I believe Carmack called 'A Deepness in the Sky' one of his favorite books also :P

yeah, some pretty good ideas there, you dont have to be rocket scientist to see where matrix authors got some of the ideas :)

you've read thousands of books?? ive read like 10 books in my life from start to finish.. :X

i'm afraid you read more than i did :/

I feel sorry for you both :/

philip k dick - the man in the high castle
paul auster - leviathan
j d salinger - the catcher in the rye
che guevara - motorcycle diaries
ray loriga - tokyo doesn't love us anymore (translated from spanish)

that's what i been reading recently anyway

Read all of those except the last one... The rest on the list were pretty good, I'll take a look

For you only THE HOLY BIBLE can bring salvation!

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton

That was not too bad... Shame the next two books are coming out in 2005 and 2007 or whatever. I would have waited til all 3 were out (like his last trilogy) before reading the first then....

Fewer gibbering about zombies in this one too.

And hopefully no deus ex machina.

random Porn mag.

That's what the Internet's for

the dispossessed by ursula k le guin

Stephen Hawking - The universe in a nutshell ;)

aniara by harry martinson

man is wolf to man, by Janusz Bardach and Kathleen Gleeson

cliky here

it's about stalins gulag...
i really liked it, but i am a bit of a world war 2 (especially russian) nut.

tis a nice easy read though :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN.../202-9793805-0195849
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN.../202-9793805-0195849
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN.../202-9793805-0195849
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN.../202-9793805-0195849

broken urls :E

:P

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0007...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091...05-0195849

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375...05-0195849

i have it ;)
i bought it from the imperial war museum a couple months back! good reading, and quite light too :)

I'm glad you liked it

although you excluded thrillers from your wishlist i'd recommend dan brown - the da vinci code. it covers some interesting background information about the history of the church and stuff :)

Read that, and Demons & Angels... Mostly had those in mind when I was saying 'no thrillers' though :]

oh :x

Luke Rhinehart's "The Dice Man"

Makes you wanna roll the dice yourself sometimes.

Read that, it was pretty interesting

Whatever that means...

Interesting?

Yeah. What's interesting to one might be boring to another. I have yet failed to gather any clues as to what you look for in a book. What's a good book?

I wasn't really expecting anyone to cater to my exact desires in a book, far too much effort.

When someone liked a book, I just say if I thought it was good, and then perhaps they can offer another book, that I haven't read already.

Though to me, good is one that keeps you entertained, or interested, that doesn't leave you feeling like shit afterwards. As to what'll entertain or interest me, I can't really say, because most things can... Except these in the list at the top. That's my criteria for movies too, I don't see the point in spending my time trying to make myself feel depressed.

Oh I love reading books that leave me confused and slightly disturbed. But it was Kafka who said "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us". But since he's probably not on your Top 100 list, it's not relevant here. For me I have replaced "I want to be entertained." with "I don't want to get bored." when reading a book. I think it's because I don't approach a book like let's say a movie. Many people do. I resent that.

Oscar Wilde - Dorian Gray

I've given this another thought. If I were to only recommend one single book it had to be Proust. Together with Musil and Joyce, Proust he influenced the modern novel in a way that you will find his mark in any serious writer's novel after his Recherche appeared.
Apart from his heavy influence on the literary world he will make you a present. Your life won't be the same after you've read him, and this in a way that probably no other author ever achieved.

And secondly, I found almost no author as entertaining as Dostoevsky. His books are quite long but afterwards you wouldn't want to miss a single page. I guess a common prejudice is that he is quite hard to read. Well, that's just not true.

I am under the impression that the difficulties that may arise while reading, are heavily dependent on the reader. For you, Dostoevsky isn't hard to understand. But I doubt that the average 17-40 year old is equipped with the needed capacities or curiousity to fully grasp the quality of works such as "The idiot" for instance.

"grasp the quality" ... :-)

I was just refering to the entertainment that arises from his lecture because I think many people are under a wrong impression here.

Well but entertainment is also highly subjective.

Man, crazy people kill folks for no reason, mad anarchists plot to free the world in an orgy of bloodshed, quiet critics of the state get sent to rot in Siberia for years, respectable bourgeoise citizens gamble away their families' wealth and happiness. Now that's entertainment!

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams R.I.P.)
Orion (Ben Bova)
Vengance of Orion (Ben Bova)
Orion in the Dying Time (Ben Bova)
Hammer of Darkness (L.E. Modesitt, JR.)

Mostly Sci-Fi..

i can reccomend for crime/thriller Foucault's Pendulum and The name of the Rose from umberto eco. couldnt stop reading those tbh.

Playboy.

Enrique Vila-Matas, Historia Abreviada de la Literatura Portatil

Unspeakably great book, and yet it's not translated into english. Scandal etc. But if you happen to know any other language that you can find this book translated into, it's a must read.

Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides (great book, a bit depressing, though)
Alex Garland - The Beach (don't know how it compares to the film as I've only read the book)
Primo Levi - The Periodic Table
Francis Chichester - The Lonely Sea And The Sky (autobiography, but exciting to read)
John le Carré - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (a whole lot better and more intelligent than your average spy thriller)
Maj Sjöwall, Per Wahlöö - The Locked Room

:-)

well i dont know if it fits in here and if so, you have proably read it as you seem to be a very intensive reader...

jonathan lethem - motherless brooklyn.

Jonathan Safran Foer - All is illuminated

18 Jun 2004 FFS!

Don't look at me!

check out
"Race Against Time" by Stephen Lewis

one of the only outspoken, passionate fighters in the war on HIV/AIDS.

u kidding me u gay bastard. let the thread DIE!




lolz

I think I might reply again to this comment in... oh.. a week?

Johan Norberg - In Defence of Global Capitalism
http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=indefense
But you're British so you probably dont need to read that :)

the unbearable lightness of being (kundera)
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius (eggers)
been down so long it looks like up to me (farina)
practical demonkeeping (moore)

Stephen King - The Dark Tower series. Though fantasty it's kinda not too. uh what? whatever, it's great

i'm reading the 4th book now (i think it's the 4th) :D

"The Discovery of Heaven" by Harry Mulisch

That was good. It was recommened above infact

Dave Gorman & Danny Wallace - Are You Dave Gorman?

One of the funniest books I've ever read, such an entertaining book.

The books gorman and wallace have come up with since are all pretty much more of the same, but this is by far the best one.

Yes, I quite liked Wallace's The Yes Man too. I think I have all of theirs

mog and meg.

Plato's republic, if you feel like you might get guilty of having any opinion once socratic method gets drilled into your head and you stop even talking to people because there's no point. Then you study law and post under a super secret alter ego on a gayming website after playing alot of Quake3.

.