All the Pretty Horses is great but The Crossing is even better!

just started that yesterday

first ~75 pages got me feeling like

A pretty unique take on the Vietnam war and life afterwards for a Viet Cong spy living in America. Thought this was pretty good, loved the narrator's voice and the dry humour that carries the story but thought it was a bit overwritten at times. Still really enjoyable, will definitely watch the show and see how they did with it.

My god this was hard work! Worth it of course because he really could mine the depths of humanity better than anyone, but f***ing hell I was bored and confused for a long time here lol. Glad I stuck with it because it really comes together in the end

Slick, gritty noir about a serial strangler in LA in the 40s. Really loved the sense of place throughout this. There's a thick fog hanging over the city and everyone is constantly smoking and drinking, and you can feel and see and smell all of that when you're reading it. Really fun

God I can’t wait to come ITT and post about how Charlie Kaufman’s Antkind is the funniest book of all time. Only 800 pages before that happens!

Have you seen the film of In A Lonely Place? It’s quite good

10/10

Not a big book reader at all so the score might not hold weight but finished "When Breathe Becomes Air" by Paul Kalanithi the other day, probably the first actual book I've read on my own in some years and couldn't put it down.

I really loved the way he wrote and articulated throughout. He does a great job talking through his youth and how he ended up on his career path but also does an amazing job with weighing the gravity of his situation as both a doctor of patients and patient himself as it progresses. His overall expression gets across in what I thought was a very heavy way through his style.

His questions/thinking into morality and meaning resinate and held a lot of ground especially considering his background and situation. Very worth a read if anyone has any interest in that type of theme.

He seemed like a truly brilliant mind and physician in the world. RIP

Also if anyone has some recs for what to start next I'd appreciate it

Wouldn't mind something similar to this, only thing I'm not really into right now would be fantasy/fiction

Nah I've heard it's good though, it's on my watch list now

Took a shot at lolita few weeks back
don’t know if I can "but the prose" my way through that one

You need to get past the first few chapters of part 2. I had the same the middle of the book was pretty boring, but it picked up towards the end again

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

Interesting book about a person who meets his soulmate as a child, then grows up, has a wife and children, but still yearns for them. Unrequited love for someone who you know loves you too. Mysterious dissapearances, confusion, and the yearning for someone you can't have.

Speaking of, who reads Japanese? Anyone read the new Murakami yet?

Really enjoyed Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon recently .. the noir elements + humour really did it for me. If anyone has any recommendations on that wave, send

I’m for sure defeating the purpose of this thread cause I’m still reading lmaoo but this is an amazing read so far. It’s essentially about how Pac and his family changed the fabric of American culture

Sounds good, did you watch that Dear Mama documentary on Hulu? Was amazing

I thought I learned everything there was to learn about pac so I pushed off watching that doc until late last year and it was so amazing. Everybody should give that a watch

El coronel no tiene quien le escriba by Gabriel García Márquez

short novel about a coronel who want to sell his chicken. that's about the gist of it lol. wasn't a big fan of the prose and Márquez was able to capture the hopelessness and despair of poverty and getting left behind by society but this one was pretty forgettable

6/10

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

yea this one was special

really enjoyed All The Pretty Horses but The Crossing was even better and is now my favorite McCarthy book I've read. the first part especially blew me away and was almost a perfect novela. wasn't sure how the book would continue after that but was pleasantly surprised and between the main plot, the descriptions of the landscape, and the run ins with random characters sharing their two cents on life, everything came together perfectly. this is what I expected Blood Meridian to be like, tho I might have to give that another try one day. tied with Song of Solomon for best book I've read this year

10/10

Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

jumped right into this after The Crossing, and although it was great being reunited with the main characters from the first two novels in this series, this final book felt a bit uninspired. even the prose seemed more toned down and less poetic. a lot of time spent in the monotony of ranch life and while there were parts of this that I liked it just didn't have the same magic as the previous books

8/10

what a trilogy tho, makes me want to read all the Cormac I've yet to get to. I also loved the intermittent use of Spanish throughout the trilogy. could see why some would be annoyed by it if they don't speak Spanish but thought it really added a lot to the realism

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

so picked this up at random when at a bookstore in Austin. had been in a reading slump and really just needed something... ANYTHING to get me out of the slump and this did the trick. on a very surface level, this is an entertaining read. the story is about this chinese boy in the 1800s who is taken from his home in Canton during a plague to London to be under the tutelage of this professor at Oxford university. I enjoyed this book well enough and its themes of colonialism are clear but my main gripe would be that the characters are sort of one note. at least all the characters that surround the main one. they feel more like representations of ideologies as opposed to fully fleshed out nuances human beings. Also i found I saw it pointed out in a different review but the story centers around this friend group who are supposedly really close, at least that's what the book keeps telling us but all their conversations usually revolve around topics of racism, misogyny, imperialism, and politics and like i get these kids are academics and intellectuals and all that but it just comes off weird that this is all RF Kuang has these characters be about.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

It’s everything they say it is and then some. “Things you learn in a Boston halfway house” is one of the greatest passages ever.

This worth the investment of time?

It is for sure! Like I said, everything you’ve heard about it is true. It’s long, arduous and the endnotes take a toll but once the storyline slowly bleeds and takes shape, you are in for a one of one experience. I personally have never ever dealt with d*** addiction but if you have or know someone close that did, I’m certain this will hit even more. In hindsight, it’s not just limited to d*** addiction but addiction in general, of acceptance, entertainment, love and greatness.

It’s worth it for the character of Don Gately alone, he’s the soul of the book

Have been contemplating it for my next read. Appreciate the insights!

When I say this book single-handedly made me fall in love with fiction again. McCarthy was in his f***ing bag meticulously crafting each scene and character. I’m happy it wasn’t my first Cormac novel (The Road) because the combination of the rich storyline and characters would’ve been overwhelming coupled with his style of describing everything in painstaking detail. I’m going to be sitting with this one for a minute, rereading some of the more dense passages where the Judge would go on his long and deeply philosophic diatribes.

5/5

Read this in uni and lately ive been seriously considering a reread. A truly life changing book. Glad you enjoyed it