A bit off-topic, but since this is where the book people are:

I own a complete series of Ace paperback tie-ins to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tv show, including some duplicates, and also a few of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. story digests, AND a couple of Girl from UNCLE paperbacks.

I've been toying with the idea of selling them, not that they are all that valuable. I would maybe get $100 tops.

I certainly never re-read them. I do "look" at them occasionally, nostalgically. They're "cool," in a way. If I kept them, it would be for nostalgia and sentiment. I'm afraid I might also someday regret selling them.

Keep? Sell?

yeah, i hear you. i'm not anti-buying-- just anti-buying-as-default. i bought so much back in the day i'm stuck with oodles of cartons of books i need to offload. sometimes i trade them at the used book guy but he's HOURS away from my boondocks. so i'm like a reformed smoker with the knee-jerk purchases. i've learned my lesson.

anyway i just had an old book from the library that i had to renew & renew. i was going to buy it but then found something more complete and updated. which is this:



paperback is $15 (plus shipping). but the kindle edition? that's just $3. yes $3. three U.S. dollars ha ha ha. sweet sweet buy and it's a reference that i'll be consulting often. so i did. pay $3.

AH, LITERATURE!! :D

read the newspapers today.
doing that from time to time since the new government.
really, waste of my time. have guessed everything that is happenin already. before it happened.

You're not reading the Rabbits in order?

We have remarkably similar bookshelves. A little eerie, actually.

Updike's my 2nd favorite author, after Nab. But I don't feel like writing an essay.

I'll just observe that his books are similar to each other: an unlikable main character, not a lot of action, stunning masterly prose. For some of us, this is heaven.

I read Run and Redux in high school, Run first, and the Redux, about a year after it came out. I re-read Run about two years ago. I really don't want to re-read Redux, though, as I remember not liking it as much as Run. I haven't read the last two, so I'll start with Rich, naturally.

I'm also looking for a copy of the Bech book.

I agree wholeheartedly with all of this! For me, too, Nabakov is number 1, Updike number 2, but not lagging far behind. And for the reasons you state!

Last Exit to Brooklyn

I hate myself for ever criticising this book. I read it when I was a teenager and it changed my life, then I stupidly assumed I'd grown out of it and spent/wasted years looking for something new to obsess over. Like buying Yes albums, out of hopeful curiosity, cos you think you've exhausted The Cramps.

My local library has a very respectable used book sale every single month, and I've been able to amass most of Updike's stuff for very little money. In fact, I have duplicates of quite a few of his novels and three versions of Couples for no reason at all. But I splurged on the Everyman's Library version of the Complete Henry Bech. A really nice printing of some of his best stuff. Getting away from his WASPY-y background really fired his engines.

---

Did you already know Updike's first wife was Nabokov's student at Cornell?

---

Rabbit Angstrom really is a piece of shit and I've always wondered why those books were so popular.

My absolute favourite book. I've read that on average every other year for the last ten years. Fantastic book. Have you read any of his other stuff?

I've read everything except the Willow Tree and Waiting Period. I was obsessed with him in my teens/early 20s (before either of those came out). I remember when they came out being curious but not in the right frame of mind to ever tackle them.

i watched a movie of that book and it was okay but nowhere near as great as i had heard it was.

OF COURSE movies aren't books so i'm not going to judge it by that.

but seeing as how many fans of last exit to brookly are here-- can i ask why you liked it so much? thanks in advance.

LOL, at your last! My sisters are quick to point that out to me."We have issues with his treatment of women," they tell me. I try to explain to them that really nice people don't make interesting characters in novels. Their eyes glaze over. But isn't it because we Americans--at least, the smart, self-aware ones--see at least a little of ourselves in him? (I also try to explain to my sisters that a character is not the author. Rabbit is not Updike. Again, the eyes glaze over.)

No, did not know that about his first wife. A kind of Nabokovian coincidence, no!?

I would love to have just a cheap copy of the first Bech paperback, where the cover art shows the breasts in Beck's hair, I believe? I would love a copy of that. On the prowl!

The film version doesn't even come close.

It sounds like a cop out but you really have to read it to get a sense of it. It takes social realism to a level I don't think anyone's been, either before or since. It's written in a very intense way, with minimal punctuation, almost stream of consciousness, but without being self-consciously avant-garde. It just feels utterly appropriate. I suppose the only other book I can think of that does something similar is Irving Welsh's Trainspotting. But even that isn't quite at the same level. It's like there's 'realism', and then there's Hubert Selby.

hhmmmmmm.... interesting...

i've never heard the guy's name before-- if i did, i didn't notice it

i'll see if i can find some pages to check out that prose

finished the dark side of the enlightment today, as well as a biography of tennessee williams. then read the letters of f scott and zelda because i was feeling romantic, i guess

she's in good part the responsible one for getting his cornell lectures on literature published--the intro is by updike. by the way, that is one of the VERY BEST books of literary criticism i've ever read. just fantastic. it's always the artists who write the best criticism. and the best criticism always makes you want to read.


what is teh hemingway book where he drives around with fitzgerald he gets drunk too easily and they talk about his problems? and hemingway tells him to use a pillow so she can get pregnant. that whole look at him was hilarious.

whoa, I do not know of this. there's a book at the library about their friendship I should check out.

I think it's A Moveable Feast.

Yes, it is. I love that book.

my dad is obsessed with f scott fitzgerald and even wanted to call me zelda

I can't remember where I read the story--maybe apocryphal--about Hem and Fitz comparing penis size in Paris. Probably not Movable feast.



A character isn't even the book. A few years ago someone told me they didn't like Madame Bovary because of how Emma neglected her child. ??? I guess if a character is "bad" (morally) the book is "bad" (in terms of quality)? I don't know how some people read.

I think there is something in Movable Feast about that, actually. I'll check my copy tonight.

Seems our college library has this book! I'll have to check this out.

yes yes yes! me too. i could never take fitzgerald seriously after that-- i mean as a person, not as a writer. a weepy drunk. hilarious.


you're lucky he didn't! wasn't she a piece of work?


how do they read? they don't.

i didn't even know you were supposed to like emma. i mean, everyone in the novel is worse than her but that doesn't make her good.


you're in for a real treat.

how does he go: "seems to me that caling a movie house a theatre is like calling an undertaker a mortician". or something like that. i'm paraphrasing from memory. hilarious.

Nabokov's humor is one of his qualities that gives him the edge over Updike, for me.

almost finished with Mort(e)

i know - not exactly flattering....!!

also I already have a ridiculous surname so i would have sounded like a cartoon character

The Adventures of Zelda Pumpernickel

close, but it's cheese related rather than bread related :rolleyes:

Zelda Gruyere!

poetic / imaginative license. i just went for a good sound. i never thought i'd be so close!

anyway, not to worry. there are some great cheeses!



now-- you should start drawing that comic. it could be awesome!

:'( :'(

looks like i wasn't wrong after all

http://wapo.st/1HvwZE5

eye-opening :O

for class:


for my thesis:

so much of what she reviews sounds awfully crappy, though. There's a boatload of great "minority" fiction writers out there ( I use the term as she does, even though I would actually put them in the majority, if she says the word to mean, not white fiction writers).

I dunno. I thought this applied so much better to music, especially the scenes most of us dig.

i don't know why it would sound crappy. i would agree that being a "minority" doesn't make one a good writer (as college courses showed me), but there are so many "majority" writers who are crap but are read simply because they feed into what people already know (this is the cause of my american literature fatigue in general).

as for the reviewed stuff-- i was curious about that indonesian scifi.


i told you to listen to héctor lavoe but you laughed him off!


i looved the first book. the 2nd one was more depressing. growing up sucks.

We had to study 'poems from other cultures' at school and while i know for a fact there are some absolutely amazing poets from other cultures (obviously!) the ones we studied were SO crap which is just insulting really. (although to be fair the english poets we studied were also largely crap)

Here is the anthology for anyone interested - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AQA_Anthology I seem to remember presents from my aunts in Pakistan being particularly bad.



me too!