What Are You Reading?

[oceanharlot]

Vitamin P

 

[faust]

Originally posted by purechris@Oct 18 2004, 04:56 PM

Faust--I just picked up Four by Pelevin, will let you know what I think of it.

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I had to go to Amazon to see what it's about because the titles are different from the Russian ones. Six-Toes is my favorite short story - I hope it doesn't lose much in translation, because it's most brilliant satire on any society. If you like this book I suggest picking up Homo Zapiens - nothing describes present Russian Zeitgeist better.


Publishers Weekly editorial review is pretty accurate

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Young Russian author Pelevin (Omon Ra; The Yellow Arrow) demonstrates that Generation X is more of a post-Soviet Russian phenomenon than anything experienced by the youth of Western democracies. In this quartet of phantasmagorical short stories (originally published in Russian in 1994), the author drives home the creeping anxiety of a long-suffering nation awakened from a century of numbing repression, only to find the new reality is hardly an improvement. In his first story, a refugee named Six-Toes, cut off from his original "community," staggers around in a kind of mute despair, vainly awaiting some transformative nova called "The Decisive Stage." In the eerie allegory "The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII," a disembodied life force trapped within a utility shed struggles against the shackles of surrounding utilitarian objects (despite its bizarre metaphors, this story demonstrates the author's uncanny ability to project a literary Slavic gloom onto the most ordinary stage-settings). Pelevin pulls no punches with the metaphor woven into "Vera Pavlovna's Ninth Dream," in which a public toilet attendant finds her world transformed into a giddy commercial paradise, only to have a fountain of sewage plunge that world into a kind of septic Tartarus. "Tai Shou Chuan USSR" provides a sort of resigned look at Russian and Chinese Communist bureaucracy and the foul brew of propaganda, deception and corruption that they've showered on their citizenry. Pelevin's allegories are reminiscent of children's fairy tales in their fantastic depictions of worlds within worlds, solitary souls tossed helplessly among them. But the dark undercurrent the saga of a people lost between a doomed ideology and its floundering replacement is anything but simple.

 

[Girly Girl]

"Shopoholic & Sister" by Sophie Kinsella (aka Madeleine Wickham)

 

[faust]

Surrealism manifesto by Andre Breton. It's most refereshing.

youcanjudgeforyourself

 

[runner]

ai no kokoromi (meaning attempt to love) by Takehiko Fukunaga

 

[faust]

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Some imagination he posessed...

 

[Amélie]

i don't normally read, but i find myself halfway so many books atm...like i've started 6 books...and i haven't finished any of them...

-i'm going strong on a book about body language...it's amazing, really good, recommend it for anyone...

-schindler's ark...

-two michael moore books...and bit of politiks...

-an aussie book called "The Shark Net" for school

-and quite a few travel books...i'm dreaming of getting out of this place when i finish school!!!

 

[MaRtaB]

Originally posted by Amélie@Oct 21 2004, 05:29 PM
i don't normally read, but i find
-two michael moore books...and bit of politiks...

-an aussie book called "The Shark Net" for school

-

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i read stupid white man... Great book in my opinion. I'm reading Franz Kafka book at the moment and i like that book too.

 

[jennifer~]

Originally posted by Amélie@Oct 21 2004, 10:29 AM
-i'm going strong on a book about body language...it's amazing, really good, recommend it for anyone...

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I read up on body language once... and precalculated my every physical movement for a few days afterward...

 

[purplelucrezia]

I've finished Cereus Blooms at Night, which I loved, and I'm now starting on Chester Brown's comic strip biography of Louis Riel.

 

[eloes]

Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

 

[SophieKawaii]

The ancient Japan ~preparing for the entrance exam.

 

[AlexN]

Encyclopedia of Scales, Modes, and Melodic Patterns by Arnie Berle

 

[faust]

In Our Time - Ernest Hemingway

 

[meowmix]

stephen holmes - repairing individualist and communitarian failings

 

[dasha dempsey]

"cider with rosie" - Laurie Lee (in school)
"101 Reykjavik"- Hallgrimur Helgason (in bed)

 

[MulletProof]

Originally posted by faust@Oct 20 2004, 11:37 AM
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  Some imagination he posessed...

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turning into a roach is one of my biggest fears ever since. me being shallow and not thinking about the metaphoric side

 

[faust]

Originally posted by MulletProof@Oct 27 2004, 04:30 PM

turning into a roach is one of my biggest fears ever since. me being shallow and not thinking about the metaphoric side

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If you like his writing, definitely read the letter to his father. It's an actual non-fiction letter and explains all of Kafka's writing. You can read it HERE

 

[softgrey]

Originally posted by faust@Oct 20 2004, 01:37 PM
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  Some imagination he posessed...

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i read that in high school...(advanced english)...
it's one of the few assignments i actually did because it was so short...but it freaked me out so badly...

i think my imagination is too active because i can still imagine what it would be like to have an apple stuck and rotting in your back and not being able to reach it with your skinny little insect arms...

and i read that thing 20 yrs ago...talk about vivid imagery...

i have been reading some russian short stories...'the captain's daughter'...

 

[MulletProof]

Originally posted by faust@Oct 27 2004, 02:42 PM
If you like his writing, definitely read the letter to his father. It's an actual non-fiction letter and explains all of Kafka's writing. You can read it HERE

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danke!