One Sentence Book Recommendations
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
This is the most British book I've ever read.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Seek the approval of your smart friends by pretending to understand this one.
Spot the Dog by Eric Hill
Ahhh, that's more like it.
Commissariat of Enlightenment by Ken Kalfus
My favorite work of fiction from the past five years.
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Literary eye rolling of the highest caliber.
Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe
I sincerely love this book and, yes, I would marry it.
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
Deceptively dry history text is a wolf in sheeps clothing: it's your very own biography.
This is the most British book I've ever read.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Seek the approval of your smart friends by pretending to understand this one.
Spot the Dog by Eric Hill
Ahhh, that's more like it.
Commissariat of Enlightenment by Ken Kalfus
My favorite work of fiction from the past five years.
Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
Literary eye rolling of the highest caliber.
Kangaroo Notebook by Kobo Abe
I sincerely love this book and, yes, I would marry it.
Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault
Deceptively dry history text is a wolf in sheeps clothing: it's your very own biography.
posted by Samwick @ 4:24 AM
11 Comments:
At 9:43 AM,
Impulsivecompulsive said…
Spot the Dog it is.
At 11:15 AM,
Sheryl said…
Which one has the best pictures?
At 11:39 AM,
Samwick said…
impulsive: Spot the Dog it is.
You have chosen wisely.
Sheryl: "Which one has the best pictures?"
Well, Jonathan Strange has a small number of charming illustrations. Spot has many cute, colorful pictures. And Discipline and Punish is filled with HILARIOUSlY horrifying prison schematics. You really can't go wrong.
At 12:59 PM,
Sheryl said…
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the recommendations. All kidding aside, if I ever take up reading again, I will keep these in mind.
I'm having one of those days where I feel the urge to get in my car and drive to Canada or California. If gas weren't so damn expensive and using it immoral....
Have a nice day!
At 4:11 PM,
Damien said…
I'll go for spot the dog, sounds like my kinda read at the moment.
Although I have tended to read lots of garbage recently.
At 1:35 AM,
Sheryl said…
You have a mic, Matt? Maybe you could read one of these books as some MP3 files.
Seems like Spot the Dog is a popular choice.
At 3:54 AM,
Samwick said…
Damien: "Although I have tended to read lots of garbage recently"
Me too. I'm picking up stuff at the used book store, just cheap paperbacks for my mental junk food. Sci-Fi, serial killer books, that sort of thing. The comfort reading can be fun.
Sheryl: "Seems like Spot the Dog is a popular choice."
He's clearly the book of the week. Although if you have to go with one of the choices, go with Kangaroo Notebook, assuming that you like Kafka-style, Japanese novels.
At 10:38 AM,
Girl With An Alibi said…
"HILARIOUSlY horrifying prison schematics" Sounds like Discipline and Punish for me!
At 12:55 PM,
Sheryl said…
"He's clearly the book of the week. Although if you have to go with one of the choices, go with Kangaroo Notebook, assuming that you like Kafka-style, Japanese novels."
Hey Matt,
I had been wondering about that book from your profile. I read the review you linked to, and it did have an Alice in Wonderland meets Kafka sound to it.
I had actually checked out that Tati film you mentioned in your profile when I first met you online (was curious.) To be honest, that kind of humor just makes me uncomfortable.
I don't think I am terribly literal or anything. Maybe it is just because my dad is so fucking eccentric that weird just doesn't strike me as funny. Especially if the characters are not able to get the weird under control.
In college many of my friends had a thing for surrealism. I'm having this party at my house while my parents are away somewhere, and we're standing in the kitchen.
The handle on our sink/faucet had broken off. My dad doesn't fix things; he gerryrigs them. So there was this wrench (the kind where you can adjust the distance between the two sides) attached to the pin that the faucet handle would normally be affixed to, and we had been using that to turn the water on and off for months. Literally for months!!!
My friend Jennifer, who adored anything "surreal" just loved this. "Oh Sheryl, your family is so surreal." She thought it was great. But for me it was a little too real.
I think humor requires just the right balance between realizing something is absurd and enough distance from it that you can laugh at something. Having been disempowered by eccentricities, I have a harder time thinking they are funny.
I remember in college my ex-boyfriend Mark and I were sharing favorite films. I adore Mark's humor, but he had me watching "The Gods Must Be Crazy," and I was just sitting there feeling uncomfortable that I could not appreciate his idea of humor.
I honestly think it's easier to laugh at peculiar or disfunctional behavior if you are not inundated by it.
I liked the movie Office Space, which was about being stuck in a disfunctional situation, but the characters were rebelling and getting the upper hand over the weirdness. They win over the insanity. But to see people being eaten alive by chaos. It just makes me squirm.
At 11:41 PM,
Samwick said…
That being the case, you shouldn't read Kangaroo Notebook. It has Kafka's comedy and Alice in Wonderland's horror.
Playtime is not for everyone, I just love it's complexity. I've seen it three times and still miss a lot of what's going on. Most of my friends hate it...in fact, most people hate a lot of my favorite stuff and that's allright. I do think the Jonathan Strange book is a likeable, happy-ish read.
At 4:36 AM,
Sheryl said…
I'll look out for that one then. It's probably about time I read a token book for the decade. Yikes.
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