What are you reading? - Page 74

The secret is, no one has. They've just read the commonly-referenced chapters. No snitching.

Absolutely.

I've read the novel cover to cover 5 times, but only enjoyed the last 2 readings.

I still feel silly sometimes having this avatar and screenname without having read Ulysses, like how a Hitler studies professor would feel about not knowing German.

Wouldn't not reading German, or perhaps not reading at all, make the life of a Hitler studies professor more worth living?

Books v. Cigarettes - Orwell
The Dice Man - Rhinehart

Sorry to dissapoint, read it in my native language though. And it's not such a hard read if you take your time for it, most of the trouble comes from the many, many names in it...
So far only three books in my bookcase that I've found too tough: "das kapital" , some freud and "die kritik die reinen vernuft"... Ill never takle the first, dont care to bother the second(charlatan) and i might try the third eventually, but not in the near future..

How does it stack up against something like A Confederacy of Dunces?

I don't know? I was just relating my feeling to the main character's shame in Delillo's White Noise.

I'm on Antigone right now. I love this:

The Grapes of Wrath. I wish I had read this earlier, but at the same time I love the feeling of reading something this incredible for the first time.

Wow, that's a surprising reference point. I liked it more than CfD (which I read once a long time ago). It's also very different in sensibility than CfD. To oversimplify, I think CfD's protagonist was a very characteristically European-American nutcase. The protagonist in Wao is very much rooted in a dual-identity, immigrant (in this case Dominican-American) sensibility. Part of what's enjoyable about it is Diaz's language play, mixing Spanglish and Dominican idioms into the dialogue (and the omniscient narrative voice). There are also lots of discursive discussions in footnotes of Dominican history and culture -- primarily during the Trujillo era -- that to me make something like Infinite Jest more of a touchstone than CfD.

Le siècle des intellectuels by Michel Winock (the century of intellectuals). Starts with the Dreyfus affair and the use of the word "intellectual" to define cultural producers or facilitators who leverage their prestige and connections to participate and influence sociopolitical debates.

Choke, Chuck Palahnuik. Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan

good to know. thanks.