The Reader’s Nook - The N&G Book Thread

BjorgenFjorgen said:
Please let me know how you like it once you've finished! That's been on my reading list for a long time.
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I will. My sister loaned it to me and it was 4th on my stack of summer reading, so I'm pretty happy to have done so much reading this summer!
So far at times it reads as if he dictated to a writer, and with Stephen Davis noted as co-author I wonder if that's how it went.
 
livinsmall said:
For those of us who always regret not appreciating those really cool English/literature classes in high school and college because we were dumb kids, I HIGHLY recommend George Saunders' "A Swim In A Pond In The Rain". It's just fantastic.
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Talk about kismet; I picked up the kindle edition on sale last week.
 
Sonicpharmacist said:
Anybody here ever read The Sound and the Fury? I just powered through the first chapter, and Jesus, what a difficult read. Not sure I have the fortitude to carry on with it.
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Nope, but I read* As I Lay Dying in high school and found it a tough hang.

* had my English teacher explain As I Lay Dying to me as my fourteen year-old brain had internalized absolutely nothing from the page.
 
In my city, there's this guy that always drives around downtown, and, well, here's someone's photo of his van:


EuC3QICXMAM_a2n.jpg


Today was the first time I noticed the "Smell Your Nightmare" part, which I actually find most perplexing about all of it.
 
LeSamourai said:
In my city, there's this guy that always drives around downtown, and, well, here's someone's photo of his van:


EuC3QICXMAM_a2n.jpg


Today was the first time I noticed the "Smell Your Nightmare" part, which I actually find most perplexing about all of it.
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Gotta say the website is definitely on brand, design-wise. It looks like they use a few mentions of murder/assassination from The Dead Zone and mentions of John Lennon to indicate Stephen King did it. The footnotes are...regularly and thoroughly updated.
 
LeSamourai said:
In my city, there's this guy that always drives around downtown, and, well, here's someone's photo of his van:


EuC3QICXMAM_a2n.jpg


Today was the first time I noticed the "Smell Your Nightmare" part, which I actually find most perplexing about all of it.
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Miami's version of this (well, I mean one of the versionf of this, because of course we have a lot of .....this,) is The Hialeah Spiderman:

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which of course has a facebook page, so you can keep up with his appearances (he comes to my local denny's a lot to have breakfast with his kids) Log into Facebook
 
I've been trying to read more lately and make it part of my routine again. In the past month or so I've read Piranesi - Susanna Clarke, Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro, and All the Murmuring Bones - A.G. Slater. Piranesi was wonderful and my favourite of the three. Klara and the Sun was really good but it was what I expected and fairly similar to his other works. All the Murmuring Bones was a good fun read, pretty quick to get through.

Next up is the We the City - N.K. Jemisin. Has there been any word on the second book in the series yet? I'm pretty apprehensive starting new series these days, in case they don't get finished. I don't really expect that with Jemisin though, she's been putting stuff out pretty consistently.
 
I finished Doctor Sleep, the sequel to the Shining, last night. I enjoyed it, thought it was pretty good and did a good job as sequel. King has always been hit or miss for me but I think The Shining is great and was happy the sequel was solid. Been making pretty good progress catching up with my coffee table piles and next up is going to be We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen or Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson. Only concern with Deadhouse Gates is that it's book two in a series that I haven't read for a couple years.
 
Finished my first book of the year a few days ago, Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary.
I really enjoyed it as a light holiday read, but I can see why he shelved it. I think by virtue of being a novel its a bit light on the gonzo style that made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels so interesting.
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
Finished my first book of the year a few days ago, Hunter S. Thompson - The Rum Diary.
I really enjoyed it as a light holiday read, but I can see why he shelved it. I think by virtue of being a novel its a bit light on the gonzo style that made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Hell's Angels so interesting.
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Oh man, I can't like this post enough. The Rum Diary is my favourite book and one of three books that I repeatedly read every year. I have a first edition of both the UK and US versions, although it was only released in 1998 so not quite as rare as his others. I also have a beat-up reader copy that I read each year and scribble a tally on the front page, the current count is 9 I believe.

One of the reasons that I like it is because it was written at the start of his career, just before Hells Angels and 10-ish years prior to Fear And Loathing. You can really see from the writing how he begins to see the evils in the world and the worst in people, which kind of set the foundations for his whole career. Whilst the Gonzo style is less apparent with the Rum Diary, I actually imagine a lot of it is based on Thompson's early life. I'm sure you know, but the cover shows him sitting on a beach with a glass of drink in one hand and a pencil in the other, with a new hotel in the background. It's pretty easy to imagine it being Paul Kemp rather than Thompson.

Here are the copies I have with the cover photo I was referring to.

IMG_2900.jpg
 
Selaws said:
Oh man, I can't like this post enough. The Rum Diary is my favourite book and one of three books that I repeatedly read every year. I have a first edition of both the UK and US versions, although it was only released in 1998 so not quite as rare as his others. I also have a beat-up reader copy that I read each year and scribble a tally on the front page, the current count is 9 I believe.

One of the reasons that I like it is because it was written at the start of his career, just before Hells Angels and 10-ish years prior to Fear And Loathing. You can really see from the writing how he begins to see the evils in the world and the worst in people, which kind of set the foundations for his whole career. Whilst the Gonzo style is less apparent with the Rum Diary, I actually imagine a lot of it is based on Thompson's early life. I'm sure you know, but the cover shows him sitting on a beach with a glass of drink in one hand and a pencil in the other, with a new hotel in the background. It's pretty easy to imagine it being Paul Kemp rather than Thompson.
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Wow, I did not know he wrote it so early, for some reason I had it in my head that he wrote The Rum Diary after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during the realisation that he couldn't really be a gonzo journalist anymore, trying out a novel.
It makes a lot more sense as a development of gonzo than a fading away of it. I wonder why he never fleshed it out and published it then?
The whole time I was thinking Paul Kemp is just a watered down Raoul Duke, which knowing this now makes it feel like that is absolutely true, but in a good way.

Nice set, I got the same edition as your beat up reader copy.
 
BoilerRhapsody said:
Wow, I did not know he wrote it so early, for some reason I had it in my head that he wrote The Rum Diary after Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas during the realisation that he couldn't really be a gonzo journalist anymore, trying out a novel.
It makes a lot more sense as a development of gonzo than a fading away of it. I wonder why he never fleshed it out and published it then?
The whole time I was thinking Paul Kemp is just a watered down Raoul Duke, which knowing this now makes it feel like that is absolutely true, but in a good way.

Nice set, I got the same edition as your beat up reader copy.
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It was a surprise to me as well when I first read it. I really can't understand why he never released it during his lifetime, it really is a great book.

The story goes that Johnny Depp found the manuscript when clearing out Thompson's office after his death. Quite the find. I don't know whats more bizarre, the fact that they were friends or the fact that Thompson's will stated he wanted Depp to fire his ashes out of a cannon across his estate (no joke).
 
BabiesAreWorthlessDiapers said:
I remember quite enjoying The Rum Diary as a book - and with having read Fear and Loathing and Hell's Angels (great reads, too).
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I think what's really interesting about all three of those is how different each one is in my opinion. The Rum Diary reads as being believable without the more outlandish elements from Fear and Loathing. Hell's Angels is much more of a study of the gang overlaid with Thompson's own accounts. Pretty incredible really.
 
Selaws said:
I think what's really interesting about all three of those is how different each one is in my opinion. The Rum Diary reads as being believable without the more outlandish elements from Fear and Loathing. Hell's Angels is much more of a study of the gang overlaid with Thompson's own accounts. Pretty incredible really.
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Fun Fact: While Thompson was out researching Hell’s Angels he partied with Tom Wolfe who was researching Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test with the Merry Pranksters. The 60s musta been wild.
 
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