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[Max]

Also, Don't Point that Thing at Me was terrific.  Have you read any of his other novels, Pink?

I read After You With the Pistol a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It's a bit more madcap than Don't point that Thing at Me.

Finished John Crowley's Little, Big last night. Fantastic book: a big sprawling romantic fairy tale, with lots of odd little details, flourishes, and references to Lewis Carrol.

I think many years ago I read a collection of short stories by John Crowley called 'Novelty,' and I have to say it was one of the best collections I ever read.  Have you read any of his other books?  I should get into him.

[CortJstr]

So... was I supposed to whole-heartedly enjoy Fouc*ult's Pendulum? I mean, yeah, it was a creative storytelling, but good Pete it took forever to get through. I don't recall the last time I struggled so much with a book to get the payoff (which was not quite worth it, but I'm glad I finished it).

I read that over the summer and I found it thoroughly meh. While I'm really enjoying the Baroque Cycle even though it was slow to start.

[Choop]

While I'm really enjoying the Baroque Cycle even though it was slow to start.

Yeah, Quicksilver was a painful first few chapters. After this Mulliner collection, I've got Gibson's The Difference Engine lined up, followed by The Confusion. I won't even order System of the World until after I've finished that second one. Man, I've been into the tomes lately.

[CortJstr]

While I'm really enjoying the Baroque Cycle even though it was slow to start.

Yeah, Quicksilver was a painful first few chapters. After this Mulliner collection, I've got Gibson's The Difference Engine lined up, followed by The Confusion. I won't even order System of the World until after I've finished that second one. Man, I've been into the tomes lately.

I'm 700 pages into System of the World and I must say that the Confusion was my favorite of the 3, especially The Juncto. I was about 100 pages into SotW when I stumbled onto a signed copy at Olsson's, which was kind of sad.

[PinkStainlessTail]

Also, Don't Point that Thing at Me was terrific.  Have you read any of his other novels, Pink?

I read After You With the Pistol a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It's a bit more madcap than Don't point that Thing at Me.

Finished John Crowley's Little, Big last night. Fantastic book: a big sprawling romantic fairy tale, with lots of odd little details, flourishes, and references to Lewis Carrol.

I think many years ago I read a collection of short stories by John Crowley called 'Novelty,' and I have to say it was one of the best collections I ever read.  Have you read any of his other books?  I should get into him.

I'll definitely be reading more by him, and Little, Big is officially on my list of "you have to read this" books.

[PinkStainlessTail]

I read After You With the Pistol a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It's a bit more madcap than Don't point that Thing at Me.

A bit?  I'm about half-way throught it, and it's way more madcap, but I'm enjoying it too.  Just taking a while longer because I just started finals.  I wish more of his stuff was readily available.  He's a lot of fun.

I think all his works (sadly not much) are available from the UK if you feel like importing; and Overlook will be releasing Something Nasty in the Woodshed sometime this summer in the US.

[miles]

For us students, summer is upon us.  It starts this coming Friday for me, but let's face it, I'm phoning in these last three papers (two classes down, two to go).

Do any of you have a good summer reading list?  I was cleaning my room tonight (much needed) and made a stack of books that I mean to read this summer.  I'm taking classes, but in the form of an intenstive language program in Germany that will last only a month.  So I should have some time to read.

The stack turned into three stacks (plus my German text books stack), so I doubt I will get to all of it (in fact, I know I won't), but I think I'm going to start with the recent translation of Don Quixote by Edith Grossman.  I was supposed to read it for my Comp Lit class a few years ago but never got around to it, and I hear this is a good translation (I read her translation of Love in the Time of Cholera, and I loved that book, so she's doing something right).  Next, Demons by Doestoevsky.  And then I need to finish (actually, start again and finish) the autobiography of Garcia Marquez (also trans. by Grossman).  I'll see where it goes after that.  I will start on Don Quixote when I finish Don't Point that Pistol at me, which may not be until this next weekend, as I'm really busy this week.

That reminds me, in between the weightier stuff will be the normal fix of crime fiction, plus some Pete Dexter.  He's great, and is usually a pretty quick read.  I really liked Meet Mr Mulliner, so I'll continue with Wodehouse, as well.

Depending on how my German studies go (it's been a couple years), I may even tackle some Kafka and Goethe in the original.  But we'll see.

[Bozack]

Has anyone here rocked the Illuminatus trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson? Is it good?

[Max]

Well, post used book sale today the list is in this condition:

Allan Bloom: Closing of the American Mind (already started, more on it later)
Saul Bellow: It All Adds Up
Oliver Sacks: Seeing Voices
Thomas More: Utopia
Gabriel Marquez: The General in his Labywrinth
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
Haruki Murakami: South of the Border, West of the Sun

There's more than that, but even my most optimistic estimations don't get me through anything else before I head back to school.

Anyway, back to the Bloom book: I just started it today, and it's incredible.  Infuck*ngcredible.  Anybody heard of this guy?  He was a professor at U of Chicago, died a couple years ago.  A quote:

There is one thing a professor can be certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative...[students] are unified only in their relativism and their allegiance to equality....
Openness - and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth...is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past....The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.

Guy goes on to chalk the whole thing up to the fact that educational systems are invariably defined by the political systems they serve, and that the reason students are brainwashed with 100% equality of all things and so retreat to relativism is that a democratic government demands 100% allegiance to said equality.

I can't say I don't feel pretty thoroughly implicated, and I'm only 20 pages in.

[miles]

I haven't read any Bloom but he's talked about a lot by classicists, and I have some friends that are.  Also, I dated a girl that attended a small private college run by mormons down in Southern Utah, and I think she talked about him some (the school was built around a classicist philosophy, as I remember).  And it seems that back when I was an English major he came up when studying Shakespeare.

I think he was also embraced by the right with the publication of that book, and I think I can see why.  Although I've heard it doesn't match the entire agenda of the right.

[St_Zartan]

Has anyone here rocked the Illuminatus trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson? Is it good?

YES.

[Bozack]

Exxxxxcellent.

[AugustWest]

Has anyone here rocked the Illuminatus trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson? Is it good?

fnord Me too fnord

[V-Adore]

Man, I haven't even started on a summer reading list. I suspect it will involve finishing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, though. The problem, of course, is that I am overscheduling my summer in advance -- "oh, yeah, I'll go up and spend a week in Pennsylvania, and my parents will come later on, and I'm going to learn to knit, and I'll go to Boston all the time, and if there are cool shows I'll go, and at some point I'll do my research-assistant job, oh boy" -- that reading may not even come up.

[Max]

I haven't read any Bloom but he's talked about a lot by classicists, and I have some friends that are.  Also, I dated a girl that attended a small private college run by mormons down in Southern Utah, and I think she talked about him some (the school was built around a classicist philosophy, as I remember).  And it seems that back when I was an English major he came up when studying Shakespeare.

I think he was also embraced by the right with the publication of that book, and I think I can see why.  Although I've heard it doesn't match the entire agenda of the right.

My school is big on him for the same reasons.  I have his translation of the Republic (which is very good) and that's why his name caught my eye.

Bloom was the first influential student of Leo Strauss, the latter of which is falsely given credit for developing the neoconservative philosophy.  In fact, neoconservativism (as near as I can tell, I've been trying to untangle the mess all semester) pirated and subsequently bastardized Straussian philosophy in order to meet its own ends, when Strauss himself (and by extension Bloom) did not intend for their philosophical ideas to be used in such a way.

That's how I get to sleep at night, at any rate.