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Pit Book/Discussion Thread

iodeac said:
Read about The Martian in this week's Entertainment Weekly. The writer was a former IT guy who basically wrote as a hobby, and this one particular novel was his big break. Just picked it up as an Ebook for free through my library, so I can't wait to get into it. They are currently filming the movie with Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon.
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I just finished this and found it interesting, though the writing itself was pretty bland. I'm sure the movie will take out all the science stuff that made the book cool and it will just be an action thriller about Matt Damon being rescued from Mars.
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
I really dug Oscar Wao. I love Diaz's style: irreverent, chaotic, unpretentious. Zadie Smith is my literary crush and White Teeth is one of my all-time favorites. She wrote that shit in college! Surprised to see NW get love as an HM; I thought On Beauty was better.

I thought Americanah was pretty good, but not top-ten mateial. Kavalier and Clay is great, but it kinda fades in the second half. First half is one of the best several hundred pages of a novel I've ever read. All the McEwan I've read I've not liked, but never read Atonement. Didn't read Corrections, but Freedom was just whatever. Bolano is on my need-to-read list.
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Had to read White Teeth at Wake in an intro British Lit course. I remember being astounded that she wrote that book at the same age as me.
 
iodeac said:
Just started The Goldfinch and am about 20% through, so far it's not really holding my attention. Does it get better?
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Just finished that a few weeks back. It does start off a bit slow, but picks up. I enjoyed it.
 
River of Doubt was great, need to read more about TR.
 
iodeac said:
Finished 'The Bone Clocks' the other day and thought it was pretty good, save for one of the main characters (the older book critic).

Just started The Goldfinch and am about 20% through, so far it's not really holding my attention. Does it get better?
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Nope. Actually gets slower and less interesting.
 
TownieDeac said:
I'll add that I haven't quite caught the Bolano hype. I've read the two that you're supposed to read of his, 2666 and Savage Detectives. 2666 was intriguing, dark, fucked up, lots of things I like, but maybe it's a problem with translation or something, but I missed the central point of it all. Savage Detectives was just a series of the same vignette over and over again - boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, boy gets drunk and throws up somewhere.
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I enjoyed By Night In Chile but it's kinda literary meta-criticism.

My brother loves Savage Detectives.
 
So in Infinite Jest DFW uses the metric system and then lists things at outlandish measurements, like 50 cm of snow in Boston in November or 197 cm height for Avril. Is there an upshot to all that? Is he just being absurdist or is there something more to it?
 
JuiceCrewAllStar said:
So in Infinite Jest DFW uses the metric system and then lists things at outlandish measurements, like 50 cm of snow in Boston in November or 197 cm height for Avril. Is there an upshot to all that? Is he just being absurdist or is there something more to it?
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I think he just prefered the metric system. Fits in with ONAN too.
 
Yeah, I get that for using the metric system, but the absurdity of the measurements I don't.
 
6'6" woman and nearly two feet of snow? For context, Chicago just had its fifth biggest snow storm in recorded history over the weekend and it's at 48 cm.
 
I read that maybe 15 or 16 years ago. I read it right after On the Road and I can't remember which one I liked better. Might have to revisit those.
 
I must have attempted Dharma Bums before because I knew I had a copy, and when I went to my bookshelf I found that I had not one, but TWO copies stolen, er, liberated from my high school library. Not sure what I was thinking -- must have been on a Kerouac kick 20 years ago. I will return them after I finish.
 
Just finished up The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, which is some pretty hard sci-fi -- time dilation, relativity, etc.

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