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A club 30 rip off. Hehehe...
Thought it might be interesting to find out whether SC members read at all. If yes, what are your favourite titles?
I'll start.
My favourite book: The Rum Diary by hunter thompson.
The grandpap of gonzo said, that The Rum Diary would "in a twisted way . . . do for San Juan what Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises did for Spain.
The story involves a journalist named Paul Kemp, who moves from New York to work for a small newspaper, The Daily News, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Set in the late 1950s, the novel encompasses a tangled love story of jealousy, treachery and violent alcoholic lust among the American expatriates who staff the newspaper.
Thompson himself traveled from New York to San Juan in 1960 to write for an ill-fated sports newspaper on the island. Thompson had unsuccessfully applied to work at the larger English-language daily called the San Juan Star while novelist William J. Kennedy was the editor. While in Puerto Rico, Thompson befriended many of the writers at the Star, providing the context for The Rum Diary's fictional storyline.
Although Thompson was only 22 when he wrote the story, it deals extensively with a fear of “going over the hill” and growing old. The prominent characters are typical of Thompson's work; violent, maniacal and alcoholic, stumbling through life. It is written in a highly paced and rather exciting style, also typical of his work.
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An excerpt:
“Yeamon was familiar too…He was probably twenty-four or five and he reminded me of myself at that age - not exactly the way I was, but the way I might have seen myself if I had stopped to think about it. Listening to him I realized how long it had been since I’d felt like I had the world by the balls, how many quick birthdays had gone by since that first year in Europe when I was so ignorant and so confident that every splinter of luck made me feel like a roaring champion.
I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. Perhaps in the ambush of those years, the idea that I was a champion had been shot out from under me. But I remembered it now and it made me feel old and slightly nervous that I had done so little in so long a time.”
Edited by soleachip 09 Jun `08, 1:12PM
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My second fav: A Farewell to Arms (morbid stuff I know... ) by the greatest romantic of all times, bad boy of literature, Hemingway.
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1929. Considered by some critics to be the greatest war novel of all time, the novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during WWI.
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An excerpt:
"You do not know how long you are in a river when the current moves swiftly. It seems a long time and it may be very short. The water was cold and in flood and many things passed that had been floated off the banks when the river rose. I was lucky to have a heavy timber to hold on to, and I lay in the icy water with my chin on the wood, holding on as easily as I could with both hands."
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An of course the once famous but now cheesy line, "This was what you did, you died."
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I know I'm spamming now.
Final favourite: Catch 22, Joseph Heller
The novel, set during the later stages of WWII from 1943 onwards, is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the Twentieth century.
The novel follows Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier, and a number of other characters. Most events occur while the airmen of the fictional Fighting 256th (or "two to the fighting eighth power") Squadron are based on the island of Pianosa, west of Italy. Many events in the book are repeatedly described from differing points of view, so the reader learns more about the event from each iteration, with the new information often completing a joke, or setup, the punchline of which was told several chapters previous. The narrative often describes these events out of sequence, and are referred to as if the reader already knows about them.
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Excerpt:
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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Originally posted by soleachip:
ta ma de, he's the ultimate tragic anti hero.
What's your favourite hemingway title?
I've read all his novels and 'To Have or Have Not', 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'The Old Man and The Sea' left the deepest impression.
I also like some of his nonfiction works like - The Wild Years and The Dangerous Summer
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Originally posted by Detached:
I've read all his novels and 'To Have or Have Not', 'A Farewell to Arms' and 'The Old Man and The Sea' left the deepest impression.
I also like some of his nonfiction works like - The Wild Years and The Dangerous Summer
How did you get your hands on the dangerous summer? It's not available in the local libraries.
A moveable feast is pretty good, another odd but favourite title of mine, Islands in the Stream and The Sun Also Rises.
Edited by soleachip 09 Jun `08, 3:35AM
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Originally posted by soleachip:
How did you get your hands on the dangerous summer? It's not available in the local libraries.
A moveable feast is pretty good, another odd but favourite title of mine, Islands in the Stream and The Sun Also Rises.
I don't borrow! I buy my books! Yes! Islands in the Stream is good!
Oh yea, I do have 'Into The Wild'
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to me, his two greatest title is Fiesta, the sun also rises .....
I loved the latter book ... because I could identify so much with it ....
when you simply cannot walk away from a person .. and you are a willing sucker again and again whenever she comes calling ..... despite knowing deep down that you will never possess her .....
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Isn't The Sun Also Rises known as Fiesta?
"...then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing."
Hail the bastard. No one writes like him anymore.
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Originally posted by soleachip:
Isn't The Sun Also Rises known as Fiesta?
"...then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night is another thing."
Hail the bastard. No one writes like him anymore.
sorry ... I meant to stick "To have, and Have not" in there as well ... but it some how didn't hit as poignant a note for me ......
yes you're right, it's one and the same book ....
and if you loved hemingway, you'd like F.Scott Fitzgerald's short stories as well ...
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Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
The main reason for this book is involve people struggle financially is because they have spent years in school but learned nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work for money... but never learn to have money work for them...
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Originally posted by Fatum:
sorry ... I meant to stick "To have, and Have not" in there as well ... but it some how didn't hit as poignant a note for me ......
yes you're right, it's one and the same book ....
and if you loved hemingway, you'd like F.Scott Fitzgerald's short stories as well ...
Any recommended titles for Fitzgerald? Great Gatsby was said to have influenced Fiesta
Let's see... Torrents of Spring.
Fiesta.
Farewell to Arms.
Dangerous Summer.
To Have and Have Not,
Whom the Bell Tolls.
A Moveable Feast.
Across the river and into the trees. One of my favourite cuban tales.
Islands in the stream, Old Man and the Sea check. Men without Women, In Our Time, Snows of Kilimanjaro and Winner Takes Nothing check.
Didn't manage to finish True at First Light and The Garden of Eden, probably because it seemed unlike Hemingway in many ways.
Fifth Column and First 49 Stories.
I like the ending to The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.
Fear gone like an operation. Something else grew in its place. Main thing a man had. Made him into a man. Women knew it too. No bloody fear.
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Originally posted by thelesis:
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
The main reason for this book is involve people struggle financially is because they have spent years in school but learned nothing about money. The result is that people learn to work for money... but never learn to have money work for them...
This one and who moved my cheese. Two titles I never got down to reading :(
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across the river and into the trees ? ... ermmm ... cuban ? ...
that's the colonel and the young countess, in Italy, neh ? ...
try a copy of Green Hills of Africa .... I'm not sure if you'd like that side of hemmingway though ... but it's one of the few of his titles that i see you haven't read yet ...
for Fitzgerald, winter dreams is his greatest short story IMO ...
Tender is the night is one of his must reads ... and also the beautiful and the damned ...
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