I've always wanted to read something by Irvine Welsh. His stuff looks rather depraved. But I don't really know. Every time I pick up a book by him, the cover tells me to put it back.

oh dear. you shouldn't have asked. i recently finished "submission" by marthe blau. you might not recover... good luck.





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ps on second thought, if you are looking for something of more literary value (this is not a great book or anything, just a bit scandalous), i could suggest

-justine by the marquis de sade
-les chants de maldoror by lautrEamont
-histoire d'o by pauline r#age
(nobody does depravity like the french, he he)

have fun.

I don't know where I got the R.K. from. There is no famous person named R.K. I am terrible witch names.

The books are great. Guess you have to spend more time on the board...

Chuckie

R.L. Stine, maybe. Or J.R.R. Tolkein. Lots of R's.

I was so into R.L. Stine in the 2nd/3rd grade. The Werewolf of Fever Swamp is the best Goosebumps book.

Oh man I read that one. I loved those. I stopped reading them when they got to Beast from the East - I remember it was the last one I read. But Welcome to Dead House scared the shit out of me. I remember I lost my copy of Why I'm Afraid of Bees and was really sad for like a month, because I couldn't find it for sale anywhere. The Cuckoo Clock one was my favorite.

I heard they were ranked the most poorly written books or something. They were, now that I look back. Except Dead House.

Wasn't that the one where time kept repeating, or something? And the main character had to relive it all?

Ya, something about him turning the cuckoo's head upside down and time went backwards. Every morning he woke up a couple years younger and finally when he was one year old or something, his mom took him to the store where they sold the clock and he got it back. I don't remember exactly.

http://www.iblist.com/series442.htm

I must have read 2/3 of those up to #43

The goblin don't do so much reedin right not enough time cos I gotta serve the public like by causin trouble for the elves 'n' that but me 'n' Mrs Goblin are readin "Elves are rubbish" by Bogga Furgg its like a nonficshun book right its the follow up to "Elves are poo" thats his other bestseller we read both of 'em well Mrs Goblin reads 'em and I listen cos I'm not too hot at readin y'kno we all hav our skills yeah 'n' mine is makin trouble for elves 'n' gnomes thats it I'm prou of Mrs Goblin 'n' shes proud of me it's been cool talkin to ya yeah.

I concur; although, the two essential documents of depraved literature are 120 days of Sodom by de Sade and Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher Masoch. The latter is beautiful, the former is frankly awful, but very sick. I would add George Bataille's 'the story of the eye' or anything of his literary stuff... there's a book with three of his short stories in that comes highly recommended - Madame Edwarda, My mother, the Dead man. Madame Edwarda is outstandingly wrong. As is my mother. Yeah. I think the book club should read Bataille. He's beautifully wrong.

oh madame edwarda is awesome

bataille's literature and evil is sorta like my bible, ha ha, if i ever had one

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haven't read venus in furs but i suspect you find it more interesting than me due to your own eh persuasions
im more of a natural sadist-- not as inhuman as the marquis however
his are books i read in small doses

I like 40min. from steven king.
I walked the road where he was hit by the van.

Im also reading The fundamentals of eletricity.

i wholeheartedly agree with this but i think madame tronquée would protest any more translations...

I might be mistaken, but I think you're wrong. '32 STORIES: the complete OPTIC NERVE mini-comics' presents the original seven Optic Nerve comics, his early work he started drawing in high school; these were drawn before he signed the deal with Drawn & Quarterly and became known to a bigger public. They're extremely rare and are presented in this single volume. The 10 Optic Nerve comics from D&Q, that are also bundled in Sleepwalk and Summer Blonde, are successors to these 'mini-comics'.

Be it as it may, they're all worth the read. And I love how the reader's comments (be they fictional or non-fictional) in the D&Q Optic Nerves are in fact pretty similar to the stories Tomine reveals. They work beautifully together. Furthermore, I love how Tomine merely sketches out possible situations, without complete storylines, that leave a reader behind on his own with a vivid sense of emotion.


I hear you. Have you seen the Art & Beauty magazines? Love them. [Faits divers: I was able to track down some of the images he drew those portraits from.] And you must see the T. Zwigoff documentary on the Crumb household if you haven't already.


'Le bleu du ciel' by G. Bataille is in my heart. A woman named Dirty; portrait of the Interbellum state of mind. Can it get any more real than this?

Trying to read the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and it's kind of boring. I like some of the ideas the Pranksters have, but I'm not to interested in a bunch of hippies and beatniks taking drugs.

Next, though, and more interesting, I plan on reading either Turgenev - Fathers and Sons or Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged. I'll probably read the latter first.

I kind of want to read Atlas Shrugged, but I heard that it hammers the idea of Objectivism into the readers ad nauseam, because she didn't feel Fountainhead did a good job of it. Sounds like it would be a bit tedious if that's true. I've always kind of shied away from it. If I take on a book that big, I have to really want to read it.

True. I happened upon it in a used bookstore and figured why not? so I got it.
I have no idea of objectivism and I haven't read Fountainhead (this will be my first book by her), so it might not be so nauseating.

Hah on second thought, to be honest I don't really understand objectivism myself. So perhaps I should read it. Of hers I've only read The Anthem, which is under 100 pages. Excellent book. But the descriptions I've heard of her philosophy seem really contradictory, so I don't know if it's selfish or selfless. But anyway, I suppose I should add it to my list of books to read. I'll be on it in a couple decades. I say go for it.

don't put words in my mouth, i defy anyone here to read some heartbreak soup stories and see that they are not below the par of whatever contemporary literature.

Well if you insist...

and it's a shame you can't "persue a thought" from a drawing the same as you would be able to if you had it l i t e r a l l y s p e l t o u t t o y o u

Snob, yes. Pathetic, no.

Alright, I don't actually care that T&B reads comics, I was just trying to get a rise out of him. I do think people read comics and attempt to give the process some sort of gravitas and endlessly defend its 'intellectual merit'. Bollocks I say to that. You enjoy something, great. If it's a comic, great. You want to tell me it's intellectual? Then you can fuck off. I'm a snob, I'm a pedant, I'm a studenty twat, but I'm certain that I'm right.

palahniuk - haunted

beyond the shock value, beautiful insight regarding contemporary life..

i knew you were getting a rise out of me, it wasn't until other people started chipping in that i got irritated.

i don't care whether they are perceived as intellectual or not, and to be honest i'd prefer that they weren't, it's just when people have this knee jerk reaction that there's something intrinsicly inferior about them that i get vexed. and i don't see why someone like chris ware wouldn't be held in the same esteem as any great author or film maker.

Yeah, understood entirely. Like I say, whatever floats your boat is ok by me. I just find people defending their tastes in high fallutin' ways really gets my goat. They're not any more inferior than any number of ways to kill time before we die. It doesn't really require any defence.

I maintain you're a spacker though.

I'd like to read something by Noam Chomsky. Any recommendations for a first timer?

i feel sooooo out of place for bringing up palahniuk...
sorry for the interruption folks..
carry on...

Recommendations? Ludwig Wittgenstein. Chomsky is an irritant par excellence, I would heartily recommend avoiding him.

Don't know Wittgenstein. Will check it out. Thanks Glice.
What about Mark Z. Danielewski?
I've heard that House of leaves is a trip.

Politics?
Hegemony or Survival.
His new one, Failed States, looks pretty good. You probably want to get something with the most relevance to now. HIs book on thought control in democracy is intresting, as well.

-Propaganda is to a democratic state as a bludgeoun is to totaltarism-
(Probably mis-quoted)




I know Chomsky is a linguist, but can he be compared to Wittgenstein?

Not really... Wittgenstein is crucial to contempory linguism/ philosophy, and a lot of Chomsky's ideas are reactions against the more European ideas. I can't stand Chomsky, personally... Zizeck has written some very damning papers on him which I would recommend. Basically, there's a lot of inconsistencies in Chomsky's attempt to politicise language. Doesn't hold any water over this side of the Atlantic.

Last book I read was by the great Agnar Mykle. The Song of the Red Ruby.
I'll advise you to check it out, he's one of the best norwegian writers ever.
http://www.aheger.com/myklex.jpg

the witching hour thanks to krastian!

Hell yeah....don't fuck with LASHER!!!:D

Noam Chomsky is a Red Khmer admiring (oh wait, didn't they just erase a fifth of the Combodian population within 4 years?), Israel & America to Nazi Germany comparing and poo-poo eating idiot who finds nothing wrong with denying the Holocaust - Chomsky for president!

You, sire, should post here more often.

Hear hear! Never forgetting, of course, self-denying hypocrite.

It's pronouncing 'Noam' (Nome) as 'No-am' that gets on my wick the most I think.

The reason people do that is because there are a lot of Jewish-Americans with Israeli relatives who want to impressed them by pronouncing it the Hebrew way.

I think it's funny to pronounce it 'nome' as it undermines him in my head and relegates him to an ineffectual, ugly, short guy holding a fishing rod in my garden.