suzywire:

(via sugarspun)
Tags: books
Definitely scared shitless by this massive novel, but I’m up to the challenge.  979 pages, plus 100 some-odd end notes.  4 hours in and I’m not to page one hundred.  Could be the intense vocabulary (I look up one to two words per page).  Don’t believe me?  This site contains a few of the words people tend to look up during their voyage through this satirical postmodern post-american science fiction magnum opus.

Definitely scared shitless by this massive novel, but I’m up to the challenge.  979 pages, plus 100 some-odd end notes.  4 hours in and I’m not to page one hundred.  Could be the intense vocabulary (I look up one to two words per page).  Don’t believe me?  This site contains a few of the words people tend to look up during their voyage through this satirical postmodern post-american science fiction magnum opus.

walkwhilereading:

Not how I’d set up my bookstore but still pretty impressive.

I could spend days in used bookstores.  Where is this one??

walkwhilereading:

Not how I’d set up my bookstore but still pretty impressive.

I could spend days in used bookstores.  Where is this one??

Reblogged from Walk While Reading

54 Best Books of the Decade; mostly in no particular order.

lawful:

bibliotheque:

compiled & reviewed by Anaïs Escobar—this will be permanently in the links at the top of my main page below the writing archive if you need to find it in the future. reblog as needed.
1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, 2007
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, 2001
3. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, 2003
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, 2007
5. Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, 2006
6. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2005
7. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, 2007
8. Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales & James Andrew Miller, 2002
9. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, 2009
10. Sailing Alone Around The Room by Billy Collins, 2001
11. Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, 2003
12. Invisible by Paul Auster, 2009
13. Livability by Jon Raymond, 2008
14. Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau, 2005
15. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
16. Captain Freedom: A Superhero’s Quest for Truth, Justice, and the Celebrity He So Richly Deserves by G. Xavier Robillard, 2009
17. Littlefoot by Charles Wright, 2007
18. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II by Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill, 2003
19. No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July, 2007
20. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 2004
21. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, 2003
22. 30 Days in Sydney by Peter Carey, 2001
23. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, 2004
24. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, 2005
25. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, 2002
26. The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, 2000
27. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin, 2007
28. The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel by Amy Hempel, 2006
29. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, 2005
30. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, 2009 (US)
31. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, 2000
32. Super Spy by Matt Kindt, 2007
33. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, 2008
34. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, 2003
35. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, 2007
36. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, 2000
37. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, 2004
38. The Puppet & The Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity by Slavoj Žižek, 2003
39. Life of Pi by Yann Martel, 2001
40. Rose of No Man’s Land by Michelle Tea, 2006
41. Blonde: A Novel by Joyce Carol Oates, 2000
42. Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser, 2001
43. All Families Are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland, 2001
44. Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende, 2007
45. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, 2003
46. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, 2003
47. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl, 2003
48. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, 2009
49. The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan, 2001
50. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane, 2001
51. Cecil & Jordan in New York by Gabrielle Bell, 2008
52. Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It by Geoff Dyer, 2003
53. Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, 2000
54. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, 2007

Tags: books
Took a charter flight on a DC-10 to London. Landed at Heathrow. Took a cab to the city center. Don’t let people lie to you: hostels are for the ugly. I’m staying in Home House, the most beautiful hotel in the world. Called a friend from school who was selling hash, but she wasn’t in. Met a couple of Brits who take me to, of all places, Camden Street. I flirt a bit at the Virgin Megastore, buy some CDs, then follow some girls with pink hair. I wandered around trying to get laid, until it started to rain, then went back to Home House. Ministry of Sound is dead, so I go to Remform - but it’s Gay Night. I find the one hetero girl in the place and we dry hump on the dance floor. We cab it back to Home House. I strip her clothes off, suck her toes, and we fuck. I hung out for four or five days. Met the world’s biggest DJ, Paul Oakenfold. Kept missing the Changing of the Guards. Wrote my mom a postcard I never sent. Bought some speed from an Italian junkie who was trying to sell me a stolen bike. Smoked a lot of hash that had too much tobacco in it. Saw the Tate. Saw Big Ben. Ate a lot of weird English food. It rained a lot, it was expensive, and I’m jonesing… So, I split for Amsterdam. The Dutch all know English, so I didn’t have to speak any Dutch - which was a relief. I cruise the Red Light District. Visit a sex show. Visit a sex museum. Smoke a lot of hash. I meet a Dutch TV actress and we drink absinthe at a bar called Absinthe. The museums were cool, I guess. Lots of Van Goghs and the Vermeers were intense. Wandered around. Bought a lot of pastries. Ate some intense waffles. We bought some coke and I cruised the Red Light District, until I found some blonde with big tits that reminds me of Lara. I gave her a hundred guilders. In the end, she pulls me out, and I cum between her tits, even though I’m wearing a rubber. Afterward we made small-talk about AIDS, her Moroccan pimp, and herself. I wake to the sound of a wino singing. It’s 8 AM and hot as blazes. I pretend to ice-skate around Central Station, while someone plays the sax. Trade songs with a Kiwi girl… Then split for Paris by train. Wander the Champs-Elysees. Climb the Eiffel Tower for only seven francs, because the ticket machine was broken. Got the hang of the Metro, took it everywhere. Went to a Ford model party and hooked up with a Romanian model named Karina. She chugs my cock at the Mariott Champs-Elysees, which is good. We played billiards, went shopping. I think she gave me mono. Drove a Ferrari that belonged to a member of the Saudi royal family. Made out with a Dutch model in front of the Louvre. Saw the Arc de Triomphe and almost became road-kill crossing the street… “Oakie” invites me to Dublin, so I catch an Aer Lingus flight and stay at the Morrison. Dublin rocks like you can’t imagine. Oakenfold lets me spin some discs with him. Irish girls are as small as leprechauns. I swap hickeys with a drunk woman. After groping my abs and calling me “Mr. L.A.”, she strips for me in the bath room of the club. Sneak into the Guinness factory and steal some stout so good my dick goes hard… I fly to Barcelona, which was a low-rent bust. Too many fat American students. Too many lame meat markets. I dropped acid at the Sagrada Familia, which was a trip to say the least. Cruise up the coast to the Museo Gala Dali, but had no more acid, which sucked. Some girl from Camden calls me on my cell, so I let her listen to the church bells in Cadaques. Canta Cruz is beautiful, but there are no girls here, just old hippies… So, I went to Switzerland where I, ironically, couldn’t find anyone who had the time. Took the Glacier Express up the Schilthorn, which is beautiful in a way I can’t describe… Euro Pass into Italy and ended up in Venice, where I met a hot girl who looks like Rachael Leigh Cook and speaks better English than I do. She’s living for a year on only five dollars a day. We gondola around, buy some masks. She think’s I’m a capitalist, because my hotel room costs more for one night than she’s spending her entire trip. But she doesn’t mind it so much when I pay the bills… I ditch her and hook up with a couple who obviously want a 3-some. Too much tension there, but the doofus offers to drive me to Rome, an offer I jump at. Traffic is bad and we’re stopped for hours without moving. The wife turns out to be a freak. The guy starts to wig out on me. It’s like a Polanski film… We stop for a while in Florence, where I see some big dome. A bomb goes off and I lose the weird couple, which is probably for the best… Ended up in Rome, which is big and hot and dirty. It was just like L.A., but with ruins. I went to the Vatican, which was ridiculously opulent. Stood for two hours to get into the Sistine Chapel, which - now that it’s been cleaned - looks fake. I meet two under-age Italian girls who I try to talk into fucking each other while I jack off onto them. Bored, I buy them some ice cream instead. My hotel has a gym, so I work out. I bump into some guy from Camden who says he knows me, but I’m sure that he’s a fag, so I lose him. I try to fart and instead shit my pants. Back in my hotel room, I masturbate and have a pain in my groin. That night, I dream about a beautiful girl, half in water, stretching her lean body. She asks me if I like it and I tell her she can clean fish with it. I don’t know what it means, but I wake well-rested, masturbate in the shower, and check out… I make my way back to London and hang out in Piccadilly Circus. Hmm. Palakon. I swap shirts with some upper-crusty Cambridge chick. Hers was an Agnes B., mine a Costume Nationale. She acts stuffy and prudish, but is really wild underneath it all. She barely looks at my abs, though she wants to. The next day, I drop some acid and get lost in the subway for a full day and can’t find my way out. I meet a cute girl who lets me jack off onto her as long as no cum gets onto her Paul Smith coat. We get stoned while listening to Michael Jackson records and the next morning I wake up talking to myself. I have a big bump on my head from flailing in my sleep. I get my stuff and barely make my plane back to the United States… I no longer know who I am and I feel like the ghost of a total stranger.
— “Victor”, Bret Easton Ellis’s The Rules Of Attraction. (via nedhepburn)
Reblogged from Ned Hepburn

In second grade I got my first pair of glasses. I thought maybe I had to keep them out of the rain, they were that precious to me. I thought maybe I could count the leaves on every single tree from clear across the other end of our yard. Sharp sharp clear. I have not had that clear new vision since.

Here’s what. Thursdays were library days, I always needed an extra bag. The library lady knew us all by name, the Mom with the book worm and fifty books each visit, five for her and forty-five for me. Sundays were for toast and peanut butter, books and milk. Do you know we used to use maybe 2 or 3 loaves of bread on Sunday mornings. When you are reading, bread and peanut butter slides down like nothing. Milk is cold and thick with sunlight and books are books are books.

Dad cutting my hair says If you brush your hair with your other hand while you reading, I would not have to work out these tangles all the time and then the dentist says If you’d brush your teeth with your spare hand all the time when you read, you would not have to come here so often. Silly Silly Silly. If I use one hand for my teeth and one hand for my hair, I will not be able to read. So I ignored them both and kept drinking in words. I wish I were still thirsty like that.

In the morning I watched the sky light up, cold bottom imprinted on a heat register. Dark to grey to white. I thought I could not sleep but really I was impatient, waking myself up. Here is Today! Here is Morning! Hello Hello Hello Here I Am!

“And I am sure that, as all pendulums reverse their swing, so eventually will the swollen cities rupture like dehiscent wombs and disperse their children back to the countryside. This prophecy is underwritten by the tendency of the rich to do this already. Where the rich lead, the poor will follow, or try to.” (John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley)

There’s nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don’t live up until their death. They don’t honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can’t hear it. Most people’s deaths are a sham. There’s nothing left to die.

that tore right through me

Bukowski (via likesbears)

Reblogged from (aqua)
Tags: books bukowski
Alright, this totally sums up my childhood - library card, 45 books a week, einie meinie mini mo to stack them in order to be read, a book for the car, the bath, the bed, the dinner table.  I’ve never lost my a(dic)(ffe)ction for the written word - in fact, now I have a college library as well of the local, which limits me to a 100 book check out.  Yep.  Booknerd.

(via infinitebutterflies)

Alright, this totally sums up my childhood - library card, 45 books a week, einie meinie mini mo to stack them in order to be read, a book for the car, the bath, the bed, the dinner table.  I’ve never lost my a(dic)(ffe)ction for the written word - in fact, now I have a college library as well of the local, which limits me to a 100 book check out.  Yep.  Booknerd.

(via infinitebutterflies)