Greg > Recent Status Updates

Finished! Last 200 pages are great. Tough time getting there though. Mixed feelings, need to think about this one before writing a review.

Without question some of the most beautiful passages ever written. But I'm taking a break, "City on Fire" and seeing a list of movies before Oscar Day next Sunday!

"....all he can do for other people essentially amounts to very little." This is such a challenge to read, but... things are falling into place.

There is now two lost kids being chased by a man wearing only a cowboy hat and a jock strap. You just can't make this stuff up.... oh.... yes, apparently, you can...

So excited! Found a bit of a narrative thread where three different people vomit within 12 pages! Just read it but can't remember who or why or when or in what order.

To late to stop now, 2/3rds of the way through. Gotta know who the murderer is anyway. I'll pretend this is high-brow Agatha Christie for the next 300 pages.

Is this 2 million bucks for one book or 200K for ten books shuffled together? I feel punk'd so far.

Is this 2 million bucks for one book or 200K for ten books shuffled together? I feel punk'd so far.

Okay, I'm a third through. Still not sure about a plot. Lots of big words. Too many pigeons. And for a publisher to spend #2 million on a book, surely they had enough money to include the song on a disc:"City on Fire", within the book. Cause I love good punk music.

This reminds me a bit of "Bonfire of the Vanities" (I think it might be even better) and reminds me slightly of "A Little Life" which I think is the best book of this century so far. But I'm definitely hooked on "City."

A beautifully written prologue is oddly followed up with three cliché filled pages and I almost set this one aside. But now I'm being drawn in. I've read no reviews, I've read no book jacket blurbs, I know nothing about this book other than my book club made it our next reading choice. So I dived right in. I do like a lot this late 70s punk NYC setting though. And I love big books!

I've finished this book. I have to let it sit a while before I can write a review, I have very mixed feelings. I'm trying to give Houellebecq a break and assume that no, his voice wasn't the book itself. Surely he doesn't really hate sexually liberal people. Or does he?

I think this author likes to write about self-pleasure. A lot. Like, over and over, page after page. Not sure why, I get the point.

Can't think of anything I've read which compares with this one. A genre in itself? I think I'm going to love this!

I've read "Sahara" and"Titanic" and others by this author so I thought I would go back to the first Dirk Pitt. So far, not on the level of the aforementioned works, but I'm going to keep reading, as maybe it gets better.

I must write, in its entirety, Kerouac's poem entitled "Poem." So here goes: "I am God." I'm interested in proofs that he is wrong.

Proust may be the best comedic writer ever. And finally, I know the origin of that filthy "We're the Aristocrats" joke. Proust would have loved where comedians have taken that story.

I can't recall ever reading a book in which so many possible plotlines are laid out within the first few chapters. Anything might happen. Yet, there is a single narrator telling the story, not a bunch of different characters whose stories may merge toward the end of the book. I like this a lot, but I have no idea what it's about.

From "Neal in Court," (referring to Neal Cassidy, Kerouac writes: "On all yr pain and tears and Allen Ginsberg loves you and Carolyn too." The 1950's exploration of alternative lifestyles/relationships was played out in front of the world under "avant garde" work. But I don't think Kerouac or Ginsberg or Burroughs were false in anything they wrote and their work is among the most illuminating I've ever encountered.

I'm reading a 1986 publication of this 1952 book, and it's a bit disappointing to read, on the back cover, that this is "one of the best selling lesbian novels of all time." While that factoid may very well be true, let's hope by now, in 2015, we'll stop labeling lesbian/gay literature as such (unless, perhaps, erotica). This book is very good, and it's about a complicated relationship, no more and no less.

Beautiful. How did Proust write fast enough to get his thoughts on paper? This IS the way we think, the conclusions we reach about people, and the often ridiculous and hilarious way we arrive at our conclusions in milliseconds. Astonishing.

But do we have an unreliable narrator? The pieces don't fit... so far.

Well...didn't see this coming at all. That's all I can say!!!

So far, not even close to science fiction, just pure fantasy, which is fine, but good grief Jack the Ripper, HG Wells, Victorian sentimentality, where is the fantasy?

Interesting how this one feels so "post-same sex relationships" and moves on as if that subject is a "been there, done that, now what...."

Talk about a mindf**k CREEPfest!!! Highsmith writes, about a work within her work, "Alone, alone, the piece ended...its naivety, its intensity, was much in its favor. " Highsmith, at death's door, was refused publication of this novel by her USA publishers. Naturally, a UK publisher got it, and published it. A totally misunderstood work here in America.

It's hard to believe that this, Highsmith's final novel, was turned down by her regular American publisher, Knopf. She passed shortly after the rejection, but within a few months this was published in the UK. I like it so far, can't imagine why Knopf turned it down nor why it wasn't published for ten years in America. Are we here in the States really that far behind the rest of the world, socially?

I'm struggling to find a narrative thread here as this feels on the episodic side so far, more like a group of short stories.

So beautiful. Pages and passages worth rereading immediately. And so darn funny.

Half-way through, and I can't help but to compare this to Marai's beautiful "Embers" and not in a good way.