I want to read a book by an author I haven't read before. This shouldn't exactly be hard since I mostly read non-fiction. I don't really have a good abstract description of the kinds of books I like so instead I will list some specific books I liked over the last year or so and try to explain why I liked them.

Post Office by Charles Bukowski. He said a lot in 100 or so pages. I like the whole style and the stream of consciousness kind of way it was presented. The guy is both frank and poetic and I guess that's appealing to me.

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Probably the book I have liked most ever. Murakami switches up styles really fluidly and does surreal sci-fi/fantasy type stuff without it feeling corny or like genre fiction.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick. Mostly liked this one for the way it was written. This book gave me some of the best mental images. I guess some of the artificial intelligence / identity stuff it explored was kind of cool too.

Those are the ones I liked the most. I'm open to reading whatever but prefer books that are short and a bit surreal. I'm really stuck as to where to go next. I was thinking of reading Franz Kafka's The Castle but while I liked The Metamorphosis, it also made me really depressed and I don't feel like being that down because of a book for a little while. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Neuromancer?
Vonnegut??

yeah i've read all the ones you mentioned and i got into them alot back then, too, but i think i hate bukowski now. i mean he was always a dick but i bought into his don't try crap so much and i still find it kind of attractive and being an alcoholic that's something i need to not let myself buy into cos it's easy yeah but it's totally empty. i think there are two kinds of intensely positive reactions - people who actually give over to not trying in life and try to make it poetic somehow (i thinkt this is me), and people who flirt with the idea but move on and forget about it. people who describe bukowski's book as gritty and frank are probably in this group. both groups are dumb shitheads for falling for the whole thing, i think, so i think i pretty much don't like him. i mean he can write a pretty poem but i can't admire him anymore.

I don't read as much as I want to right now, but I'm trying to work on that right now. At the moment I've got the ruined map by kobo abe, fictions by jorge luis borges, collected stories of franz kafka and dubliners by james joyce as well as this film studies book i'm reading through. i've read parts of all of these books, and lost track of them amidst all my crap, so what i'm gonna do is pick one and re-start from there, then read them all before i get any other books.

So for a reccommendation I'll give you Kobo Abe. I've only read Woman in the dunes and Sakura Ark and I liked them both quite alot. I think there is something sexism in there. I mean there are only one or two female characters in his books and all of the characters say sexist things, but I've been taking that as just a portrayl of the way gender relations actually were and are in japan. I don't know enough about kobo abe to know whether he is as sexist as some of his characters, but the way he writes women makes it pretty obvious he is at least a little that way. The stories themselves are good though. I think woman in the dunes is the better book of the two I read, although I read it like two years ago. I still think about it, though. It's a creepy and interesting book. Actually I think I'll read it again sometime.

yeah i've read all the ones you mentioned and i got into them alot back then, too, but i think i hate bukowski now. i mean he was always a dick but i bought into his don't try crap so much and i still find it kind of attractive and being an alcoholic that's something i need to not let myself buy into cos it's easy yeah but it's totally empty. i think there are two kinds of intensely positive reactions - people who actually give over to not trying in life and try to make it poetic somehow (i thinkt this is me), and people who flirt with the idea but move on and forget about it. people who describe bukowski's book as gritty and frank are probably in this group. both groups are dumb shitheads for falling for the whole thing, i think, so i think i pretty much don't like him. i mean he can write a pretty poem but i can't admire him anymore.

I don't read as much as I want to right now, but I'm trying to work on that right now. At the moment I've got the ruined map by kobo abe, fictions by jorge luis borges, collected stories of franz kafka and dubliners by james joyce as well as this film studies book i'm reading through. i've read parts of all of these books, and lost track of them amidst all my crap, so what i'm gonna do is pick one and re-start from there, then read them all before i get any other books.

So for a reccommendation I'll give you Kobo Abe. I've only read Woman in the dunes and Sakura Ark and I liked them both quite alot. I think there is something sexism in there. I mean there are only one or two female characters in his books and all of the characters say sexist things, but I've been taking that as just a portrayl of the way gender relations actually were and are in japan. I don't know enough about kobo abe to know whether he is as sexist as some of his characters, but the way he writes women makes it pretty obvious he is at least a little that way. The stories themselves are good though. I think woman in the dunes is the better book of the two I read, although I read it like two years ago. I still think about it, though. It's a creepy and interesting book. Actually I think I'll read it again sometime.

thanks dude. kobo abe sounds interesting. i will check him out.

Neuromancer?
Vonnegut??

have been looking for a copy of neuromancer but haven't found one. i kind of forgot vonnegut's cat's cradle on my list. it was another good book i read this year.

i cannot recommend cormac mccarthy - the road & blood meridian enough! esp blood meridian, wonderful wonderful book. sorry i will try and write up an actual summary or description tomorrow but i have a terrible case of the flu so i'm a bit loopy right now

If you liked Phillip K. Dick you might try 'The Futurological Congress' by Stanlislaw Lem. It's more straightforward than Dick's stuff and some of the themes (reality vs perceptions etc) sound kind of trite on paper but it's still pretty great. It's more of a satire along the lines of Gulliver's Travels or something than regular sci-fi and is very funny but it also has a kind of hysterical edge that I like a lot. Nathaniel West's 'The Day Of The Locust' is a really good novella about Hollywood which is worth reading just for the character of Homer Simpson (the real hommer....). 'The Sheltering Sky' by Paul Bowles is excellent and so are his short stories. They might be kind of problematic in some ways because a lot of them rely on the horror of the unfamiliar or the familiar turned strange or the loss of control when you're in a distant land and a lot of the plots involve WHITE TOURISTS GET FRIGHTENED OF/TORMENTED BY DARKIE NATIVES AND THE DESERT but really it's less about "s-savages...." or playing on racism or whatever and more about that horrible mindless core of hysterical ugliness beneath affectations of control and civility etc. aaaa I'm making him sound horrible but they're good books and very well-written so. Paul Auster is good too, 'The New York Trilogy' etc but also 'The Book Of Illusions' which is a lil less po-faced heh and kind of expands his earlier obsessions with more humour and heart I guess. Also Julio Cortazar's short stories are excellent and I can't recommend them enough.

thirding borges, particularly the lottery in babylon and the library. both are in fictions.

If you liked Phillip K. Dick you might try 'The Futurological Congress' by Stanlislaw Lem. It's more straightforward than Dick's stuff and some of the themes (reality vs perceptions etc) sound kind of trite on paper but it's still pretty great. It's more of a satire along the lines of Gulliver's Travels or something than regular sci-fi and is very funny but it also has a kind of hysterical edge that I like a lot.

I'm going to second this, it's the best

edit: didn't realize the_bub_from_the_pit already used the exact phrase "I'm going to second," now I feel weird

YOu should have thirded it instead Roman.

=== gw-readinglist.txt ===

- Kobo Abe
>>> currently reading: Ark Sakura
- Neuromancer
- Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano
- Other Bolanos
- Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
- Every single Borges, esp those in Fictions (3)
- The Futurological Congress by Stanlislaw Lem (2)
- Nathaniel West's Day Of The Locust
- The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
- Paul Auster: New York Trilogy, The Book of Illusions
- Julio Cortazar
- Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49

i think i got everything. thanks everyone. this should keep me busy and mildly literate for a long while.

This is the first time I've ever admitted this in my life so...please don't laugh.

Look. I love Golems. I don't know why, so don't ask. I see the word 'Golem' and something lights up in my brain like 'finally, we're talking about golems. what took so long'.

I'm going to look this book up right now. EXTREMELY curious with re: to the title. If this is a metaphorical Golem I'm going to smash my window and use a shard of glass to scrape the words 'APATHY' into the wall.

damnit.............gestalt golem go fry in hell.

bitch i said gustav meyrink - the golem DON'T disappoint me

ah shit i missed Ryan's ones too. they're in there now.

 currently alternating between dubliners and mccarthy's the road. both are really good though dubliners is probably out of my depth. it's enjoyably readable and i'm able to pick up on enough of the whole deal to keep me interested

and the road is just breezy lit. i dig.

THESE ARE DEPRESSING BOOKS BOTH OF THEM

i have some david markson in the mail. he died recently. dfw called his "wittgenstein's mistress" the highpoint of fiction this century or something like that. so.

i am going to watch the road now. this book could potentially work really well on the screen.