[News] What are you currently reading?

I finally got around to re-reading Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha earlier this week. When I originally read it in sixth or seventh grade, I didn't fully grasp all of the philosophical implications being thrown around, so I really enjoyed revisiting it. Hesse's prose, too, was wonderful. He managed to pull so much power out of very simple dialogue and vocabulary, along the lines of a McCarthy or Hemingway novel. It was impressive. For all the vast cosmological overtones, I enjoyed reading it thoroughly, and look forward to reading more of his works.

Currently, I'm working my way through William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Haruki Murakami's collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for my high school English class.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Add Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, 1972 to that list. His coverage of that year's pivotal presidential election for Rolling Stone is alternately hilarious and dispiriting, but, as always with Thompson, highly entertaining.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Jinn

I've been reading a number of things as of late. Finally started in on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by the man himself, Philip K. Dick. I'm about half-way through it and I'm enjoying it immensely. I'd recommend it to pretty much anyone, whether they're a fan of science fiction or not.

I actually was a little disappointed when I read this for the first time a year or so ago. I had expected so much from all the praise that is generally heaped upon it, but the prose middling and took you out of the story at times. The ideas he had were wonderful, but the execution could have been much better.

Originally Posted by Jinn

Glad to see Murakami has been getting some love around here as of late! I truly admire his works. Check out The Wind Up Bird Chronicle if you haven't yet, Capo. It's a great work of fiction.

I have.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Aaanyway, back to the topic at hand, I don't read very many children's books, but there are a few here and there on my shelves. Maybe the best of these, and one all of you should check out, is The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story, by Lemony Snicket.

The title alone was enough to sell me on it, but the content is equally subversive and hilarious. I'm sure he had an older audience in mind when he wrote this, as it gets a little odd for a toddler at points, but it somehow works. I only wish I could find it online.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

In the past few days I've read done a good bit of reading, namely making my way through three collections of Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. I enjoyed the movie adaptation, but his voice comes across so much more clearly in its original form. He manages to make the day to day minutiae we so routinely ignore hold great meaning. Even more impressively, he manages to make his life compelling without indulging or embellishing a thing.

I've also just started on Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. For the short bit that I've read (sixty pages or so), it's a wonderful novel. The story is charming and engaging, and the prose is so full of energy and life it's astounding. Sixty pages, and I can already tell Rushdie is a master of manipulating words, making every last one fit exactly as he'd like. I know it seems a hyperbolic rush to judgment, but it's refreshing to see such innovation in style, such originality in story, even if it all was written over twenty five years ago.

I was speaking idiomatically.