Comments | elyzabethe: We'll tackle song/album lists later, okay?

elyzabethe

We'll tackle song/album lists later, okay?

Dec 13, 2007 10:16

It's apparently the week of publications putting out best books of 2007 lists. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which I put on my amazon wish list earlier this week, before I read all this) is on all three of those lists linked above (Salon, Time, LA Times), And Then We Came To An End (which I read this summer) is on two out of three and No ( Read more... )

Comments 3

Do any of your other LJ friends read books? Seriously, you posted this a week ago, and I'm the first jbls December 18 2007, 22:12:57 UTC

And Then We Came to an End, Joshua FerrisYou are going to have to explain this book to me. I stopped reading it about halfway through, because I realized I was spending my free, away from silly office politics time reading about silly office politics. It seemed like an unfunny, unfulfilled, unfortunate season of The Office. Maybe that's my mistake for not finishing it. But yeah, it's on everyone's BEST list, and I simply didn't get it. Do tell ( ... )

Re: Do any of your other LJ friends read books? Seriously, you posted this a week ago, and I'm the f elyzabethe December 20 2007, 14:06:49 UTC

p.s. (this post-script is in reference to the fact that we talked about this comment/book-list last night, not in relation to me actually writing anything above the post script. for clarification): Do you only read fiction sanctioned by McSweeney's/believer/dave eggars?

p.p.s. ooh, I really want to read Savage Detectives

p.p.p.s. rachel's favorite author is hauki murakami (she named her cat mura), and she is always trying to make me read him .. but i don't.

Re: Do any of your other LJ friends read books? Seriously, you posted this a week ago, and I'm the f jbls December 20 2007, 16:06:37 UTC

Admittedly, I do have a lifetime subscription to all things McSweeneys, so it does slightly skew my reading to be informed by the Believer posse.

Or, on the otherhand, if 40% of my fiction list comes from McSweeney's, then obviously everyone should read their books. Now that's SCIENCE!

I could re-read Savage Detectives endlessly...

Murakami's works are something I dive into and forget to come up for air for weeks. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle stole an early summer vacation from me. When I should have been chasing squirrels, skinny dipping in lakes, and picking heaven-sent Michigan cherries, I was immersed in a land of missing cats, psychic women named after Greek Islands, and not-entirely-beguiling war veteran flashbacks.

Like David Foster Wallace's telephone book tomes, set aside some time for Murakami's longer works. If you're interested in less time-consuming Murakami, his collection of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Women, is refreshingly easy to put down. The real pay off lays in his longer works, though.