What are you reading

[Deadpriest]

On a slightly different note, I have been wondering what I should read. I find it hard to just read for the sake of reading, I think when I find a book that is truly interesting to me then I can read it just fine. I find that this is how I am in general. I don't just want to read a book, I want to read a book that makes me feel something different. I want a book that changes the way I look at the world around me. I find that as I mature as a human being, the world starts to appear from different perspectives, I want to expand my mind. This is why I have been thinking about reading philosophy books, but I've been procrastinating.

A book by Slavoj Zizek on Lacan would definitely provide you with some new perspectives. And dreams of Amputation by Gary J. Shiply is some pretty intense cyberpunk

[JHC]

Presently making my way through Killer Fiction by G.J. Schaefer.

From the Introductory Essays:
"These procurers pick up a cute runaway, take her out on a fancy yacht into international waters, and believe me, she (or he) don't come back when the party is over.Ain't nobody gonna prove nothing either.Give the girlie a needle to put her out, strap a diver's weight belt around her waist, and over the side in 500 feet of water.Girl? What girl? And the sad thing is the reason the kid is killed is because it ain't worth the risk to let the kid go when you can get 25 to life on unsupported testimony."

Noticed the somewhat high asking prices of this book with online sales.
My girlfriend bought my first edition copy at a secondhand bookstore for $3.95...go figure.

[JHC]

Is it the true first edition that Sondra London self-published, rather than Feral House's edition?

Well, no....my mistake.It's the first printing of the special edition on Feral House.
Still a great price...was marked down from $7.50.
Have never seen the Media Queen version.

[david lloyd jones]

'Snuff: real death and screen media' eds Jackson Kimber et al.
study of snuff from mythological urban myth of extreme poon through cannibal films, 'Snuff' the movie, real death websites.
Dry and academic at times, engaging at others.
Not too badly priced for an academic book, certainly more reasonable than the £50 for the study on torture poon.

[cantle]

'Snuff: real death and screen media' eds Jackson Kimber et al.
study of snuff from mythological urban myth of extreme porn through cannibal films, 'Snuff' the movie, real death websites.
Dry and academic at times, engaging at others.
Not too badly priced for an academic book, certainly more reasonable than the £50 for the study on torture porn.

Wouldn't mind reading this. I bought the new edition of Killing For Culture when the hardback was finally made available around the same time your read got released, and whilst fairly wide ranging in its study and hardly encyclopedic (although for the time it took to finally be published it really should have been), I couldn't help but wonder how notorious examples like Björk stalker Ricardo López's video diary slipped under the radar - that could have been a chapter in itself.

I have the original volume of KfC- has the 2nd ed. not been that extensively revised then?

[Andrew McIntosh]

Pessoa, Fernando - The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

I tried that. Seemed okay at first read but on the second go I just got bored with it. Just too twee for my tastes.

"Picture of Dorian Gray" is a good book, I think. Wilde's style is completely readable, although sometimes at odds with the rather darker themes he has in this book. I'm a big fan of Wilde's fiction and plays, find his poems a bit dull at times. 

If you're looking for things to read, I'd recommend the basics - Schopenhauer's "Studies in Pessimism", Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race", Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been", Perry's "Every Cradle is a Grave" and Cioran's "A Brief History of Decay" and "The Trouble With Being Born". For fiction, read Houellebecq's "Atomised" and "Platform", McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" and anything by Lovecraft and, again, Ligotti especially "My Work is Not Yet Done"). There are others, of course, but here is a full enough outline of what life really is and what we humans really are. And once you've learned, you can't forget or ignore. 

Forget the search for any bliss. Reject any notion of value in life. Take off the blinkers, stop listening to the yay-sayers, surrender to the dark side - it is your destiny.

[Duality]

If you're looking for things to read, I'd recommend the basics - Schopenhauer's "Studies in Pessimism", Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race", Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been", Perry's "Every Cradle is a Grave" and Cioran's "A Brief History of Decay" and "The Trouble With Being Born". For fiction, read Houellebecq's "Atomised" and "Platform", McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" and anything by Lovecraft and, again, Ligotti especially "My Work is Not Yet Done"). There are others, of course, but here is a full enough outline of what life really is and what we humans really are. And once you've learned, you can't forget or ignore. 

while all the books you recommend are fantastic, I'm sure that if he didn't enjoy something like Notes from the Underground or Kafka, he's probably not going to enjoy Ligotti's bleak prose, or Cioran's unrelenting pessimism

I'd recommend going for something really left-field, like Burrough's cut up stuff or something quite experimental. Maybe just try picking up a random book from the library you've never heard of and reading it.

[Andrew McIntosh]

I'm sure that if he didn't enjoy something like Notes from the Underground or Kafka, he's probably not going to enjoy Ligotti's bleak prose, or Cioran's unrelenting pessimism

I'd recommend going for something really left-field, like Burrough's cut up stuff or something quite experimental. Maybe just try picking up a random book from the library you've never heard of and reading it.

You may well be right. On the other hand, both Dostoyevsky and Kafka have particular styles that might put modern readers off. I've read that a few people have found "Crime and Punishment", for example, to be difficult to get through (I certainly thought so, although sticking with it has its benefits), and I don't think I'm the only one who finds Kafka's stuffy, self-centered characters in his books "The Trial" and "The Castle" difficult to get along with (bit easier with the short stories, perhaps).

Burroughs can also be difficult on the first go - I made the mistake of thinking "Nova Express" was a basic science fiction book until I read it. His autobiography is worth reading, though.

Perhaps he should try some Camus if he hasn't already? "The Outsider" is easy to read but has a serious impact.

[Duality]

I'm sure that if he didn't enjoy something like Notes from the Underground or Kafka, he's probably not going to enjoy Ligotti's bleak prose, or Cioran's unrelenting pessimism

I'd recommend going for something really left-field, like Burrough's cut up stuff or something quite experimental. Maybe just try picking up a random book from the library you've never heard of and reading it.

You may well be right. On the other hand, both Dostoyevsky and Kafka have particular styles that might put modern readers off. I've read that a few people have found "Crime and Punishment", for example, to be difficult to get through (I certainly thought so, although sticking with it has its benefits), and I don't think I'm the only one who finds Kafka's stuffy, self-centered characters in his books "The Trial" and "The Castle" difficult to get along with (bit easier with the short stories, perhaps).

Burroughs can also be difficult on the first go - I made the mistake of thinking "Nova Express" was a basic science fiction book until I read it. His autobiography is worth reading, though.

Perhaps he should try some Camus if he hasn't already? "The Outsider" is easy to read but has a serious impact.

For sure Dostoyevsky can be off-putting, and I have to admit to never finishing Crime and Punishment as it felt too much like writing a lot of dialogue for the sake of writing a lot, which is probably why I like "Notes" better as its straight to the point and extremely disheartening, which is what I like in fiction.

Burroughs can certainly be difficult but I was just making suggestion to try something a bit strange and maybe he'd kind of hook onto the surrealness of it. I read Naked Lunch first, which isn't his most comprehensible, but I still love it.

Camus seems like a good idea because of his easy style of writing, though I'm not a fan myself. Far too much of the whole "heroic" pessimism or heroic "pessimism" as Ligotti put it.

oOoOoOo, Have you tried Sartre's Nausea? that's a rather easy read and a pretty engrossing book.

[Andrew McIntosh]

Camus seems like a good idea because of his easy style of writing, though I'm not a fan myself. Far too much of the whole "heroic" pessimism or heroic "pessimism" as Ligotti put it.

He did, and he was right, but I have a soft spot for Camus. For one thing, this was someone who was involved in the resistance during the war. Not exactly sitting back, stroking his chin, smoking his pipe and arguing with others over cups of coffee. For another, he saw through a lot of the bullshit of the intellectual left of his time, resulting in his "The Rebel" which saw him arsed out of the comfy armchair movement (much to his disappointment, to be sure).

But in his books "The Outsider" and "The Fall", there's no concession to heroism, no pretense that life isn't what it isn't. "The Fall", in particular, although I like "The Outsider" because any book that ends with "...all that remained was to hope that on that day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration" is okay by me.

"The Plague", granted, a lot more optimistic, but that was an allegory about his own experiences during the resistance. It's a very good book, very strong.

I identified with Absurdism for a while, and still believe his conclusions about existence being "absurd", however wanky that sounds today in English, are sound. His solutions to that, those are his affair. I don't believe in solutions.

[oOoOoOo]

Pessoa, Fernando - The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

I tried that. Seemed okay at first read but on the second go I just got bored with it. Just too twee for my tastes.

"Picture of Dorian Gray" is a good book, I think. Wilde's style is completely readable, although sometimes at odds with the rather darker themes he has in this book. I'm a big fan of Wilde's fiction and plays, find his poems a bit dull at times.  

If you're looking for things to read, I'd recommend the basics - Schopenhauer's "Studies in Pessimism", Ligotti's "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race", Benatar's "Better Never to Have Been", Perry's "Every Cradle is a Grave" and Cioran's "A Brief History of Decay" and "The Trouble With Being Born". For fiction, read Houellebecq's "Atomised" and "Platform", McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" and anything by Lovecraft and, again, Ligotti especially "My Work is Not Yet Done"). There are others, of course, but here is a full enough outline of what life really is and what we humans really are. And once you've learned, you can't forget or ignore.  

Forget the search for any bliss. Reject any notion of value in life. Take off the blinkers, stop listening to the yay-sayers, surrender to the dark side - it is your destiny.

Hello. Thank you for your reply to my deleted comment. I had to delete it, because I woke up the next morning feeling embarrassed at how stupid I sounded. I may not have sounded stupid, but I felt terrible, as I often do when I say things.

Thank you for your suggestions. I have been wanting to get The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, but that book is rather expensive. Those other ones sound like solid suggestions, I've actually picked up a book by Cioran from the library called On The Height Of Despair. I dismissed it because it closely resembled my own journal entries. I have the complete Cthulhu mythos and early works of HP Lovecraft on paperback. Blood Meridian, hmm. I'll have to look into that one more and see if I'm sold on the idea of reading it, I don't usually like gangster themed stuff.

As for your comment about search for bliss. I think that it's good enough to simply not feel grim in the wake of every day life. Knowing that I am simply the self awareness and consciousness of a brain, somewhat relieves me and somewhat depresses me. Except, I know in my most lucid moments that there's really nothing to worry about, in this case. I can't change the things outside of my control, but there's also no real purpose to seek a sort of transcendental feeling or knowledge, because what is that? Just a rewiring of the parts of your brain responsible for feeling happy. I'm happy enough knowing when I die I won't feel anything and that I can observe reality, but not have it become an integral part of how I feel.

I recently bought a few books and I have a few more books that I want to get.

Franz Kafka - The Trial
Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray (Dover Thrift Editions)
Jean Genet - Funeral Rites
Clarice Lispector - The Passion According to G.H. (Emergent Literatures)
Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)
George Orwell - Animal Farm

Already, I can sort of tell which ones I'm going to read cover to cover and which ones I won't. I'll probably make it through Kafka, because I already read Metamorphosis with little struggle. I will probably make it through Animal Farm, even though I found 1984 boring and am still struggling to make it through that book. I will probably have a difficult time reading basically any of these other books, except I don't know about Oscar Wilde, I just bought that because Morrissey likes it.

[oOoOoOo]

I have been wanting to get into the existentialist philosophers. I have a sort of reluctance to read things on my kindle, because I like the feeling of waiting until I get a physical copy. I have been interested in Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus. I know Camus is very readable, I read a tiny bit of the stranger, but not much. I think I recall picking up Schopenhauer and being perplexed by the writing style, same with Nietzsche I think, but I can't remember. It's been interesting me, I hear about these authors a lot.

Other books I have my eye on and may buy:

Neuromancer by William Gibson
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
The Stranger by Albert Camus
The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings by Marquis De Sade
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (Penguin Classics) by Friedrich Nietzsche
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

[Yrjö-Koskinen]

You should look into A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole if you want an easy to read, misanthropic novel. Very funny too.

A piece of tragic trivia that may add to the allure of the book is that the author John Kennedy Toole killed himself, in part due to his failure as an author. Confederacy.. then won the Pulizer Prize for Fiction posthumously. Quite possibly one of the greatest pieces of American fiction, period.

[Andrew McIntosh]

I've actually picked up a book by Cioran from the library called On The Height Of Despair. I dismissed it because it closely resembled my own journal entries

HA! I like that! That one in particular is pretty much a glorified private journal, but he admitted every book he wrote was something of an autobiography. 

Blood Meridian, hmm. I'll have to look into that one more and see if I'm sold on the idea of reading it, I don't usually like gangster themed stuff.

Believe me, it's nothing like that. When you've got the time and opportunity, please do give it a go.

[holy ghost]

I just read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, really enjoyed it. Took a while as I kept feeling I was missing essential clues and lately I've only had time to read before bed so I'd only do a chapter or two. Great read. Watched the movie, trying to imagine how perplexed people must have been after seeing it without reading the book first. Trying to cram everything in must have been a nightmare.

Then I read The Widow which my wife ordered, very easygoing read about a British child abduction. I read it in about a day as I really was hooked and needed to know what happened. Would be a good cottage/vacation read.