Originally Posted By Terminus I love the whole "Song of Ice & Fire" series by George R R Martin. It's actually probably my favorite series ever, but the last update on his next book in the series was February 7th, 2007. Almost 4 years since his last UPDATE. It's been 5 years and two months since the last book in the series came out. I'm a little concerned that it will never get finished. I'm excited though that the TV series based on the books should be out on HBO next spring. Hopefully they do a good job on it...
Originally Posted By WDWdreamin Oh, I totally didn't know about that. I need to get going on the books so that I will be finished before it comes out then. I really love them. I also love Memory Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams and The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.
Originally Posted By sarahwithbaloo Angel Time by Anne Rice. First of her non vampire books I am reading and its been a while since I read her books, only a few pages in but they seem too be turning easy enough.
Originally Posted By bobbelee9 Just finished "Shoulder Bags and Shootings" about to start "A Night Too Dark" by Dana Stabenow.
Originally Posted By Anatole69 I just finished reading Tokyo Underworld by Robert Whiting. It's about an American mafioso who ends up in Japan at the end of WW II dealing in the black market, gets caught and deported, returns with help from the Mafia and opens a pizza restaurant in Roppongi just before that area takes off and becomes the richest Gaijin in Japan. Whiting uses this man, Nick Zappetti, to explore the connections between the political and criminal worlds in Japan, and the collusion between the CIA and American businesses that eventually led to Japan holding 50% of the worlds wealth during the bubble economy of the 1980's. The entire time I read it I imagined I was watching a lost film by Martin Scorcese. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Underworld-Times-American-Gangster/dp/0375724893" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Tokyo-Un...75724893</a> - Anatole
Originally Posted By WDWdreamin Sounds interesting. I normally have something to add to this thread, but hey, i'm reading long books here, people. Anybody else care to talk about some of the long books they're read? War and Peace? Anna Karenina?
Originally Posted By Anatole69 ^^ Gravity's Rainbow and Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon; Underworld by Don Delillo; Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon are the ones that come immediately to mind. I don't like long novels. Most could be cut by a 1/3 and be much stronger for it. - Anatole
Originally Posted By Anatole69 I just finished reading Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. The nobel prize committee cited this novel as one of the reasons for making Kawabata the first Japanese to win the Nobel prize in literature in 1968. I liked it, it reminded me of the minimalists and Raymond Carver for the way it told as much by what wasn't said as by what was said, and also for its ending which is in the vein of logical exhaustion, which was also favored by the minimalists. Yet it is also romantic in its descriptions of nature, and the translator Edward Seidensticker points out in the introduction that it is very like Haiku for being a series of short passages that use contrast as the means of communicating a deeper message: such as a flower in winter, or a cool wind in the summer. The story is about a wealthy dilettante who meets a young geisha while vacationing at a hot spring resort in Northern Japan during the winter time. - Anatole
Originally Posted By WDWdreamin I've never even heard of those. I felt that Moby Dick and Two Years Before the Mast and the Count of Monte Cristo and Don Quixote were all that way. I finally finished my fantasy novel, but I never feel like they are too long.
Originally Posted By Anatole69 Gravity's Rainbow: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Gravitys-Rainbow-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143039946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292727605&sr=8-1" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Gravitys...5&sr=8-1</a> Mason & Dixon: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mason-Dixon-Novel-Thomas-Pynchon/dp/0312423209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292727673&sr=8-1" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Mason-Di...3&sr=8-1</a> Underworld: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Don-DeLillo/dp/1416548645/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292727718&sr=8-1" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Underwor...8&sr=8-1</a> Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Adventures-Kavalier-Clay/dp/0312282990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292727786&sr=8-1" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-...6&sr=8-1</a> - Anatole
Originally Posted By WDWdreamin Okay, well, checked out all four and... see why I haven't heard of them before. I guess I'm narrow in my book tastes. Thanks for getting back to me and educating me a bit.
Originally Posted By ecdc Fair warning: There's long novels and then there's long, dense, challenging novels. "It" and "The Stand" by Stephen King are long. Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon are long and dense. They're well worth reading, but if you're used to page-turners, these will throw you off. Pynchon's prose is always somehow...askew. It's not a criticism, I love the man. But if you're going to get into Pynchon, read "Inherent Vice" first followed by "The Crying of Lot 49." I'm not nearly as familiar with Don Delillo but people typically recommend starting with "White Noise" before tackling "Underworld," which is pretty-well universally hailed as brilliant. Another long-but-great one is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
Originally Posted By WDWdreamin I would not describe most of my reading as light, maybe others would, but dense and challenging are definitely not what I am looking for at this point. Length doesn't scare me.
Originally Posted By Anatole69 ^^ Yes I wouldn't start with those novels, though I feel Gravity's Rainbow is Pynchon's masterpiece, I feel the middle could still be trimmed by about 100 pages. I don't like Crying of Lot 49 even though it is clear compared to some of his other writings and would suggest V. instead. I actually don't like Underworld, but White Noise is one of my favorite novels of all time and the prose in that is less difficult than Underworld. The prologue to Underworld, however, is perhaps Delillo's best writing from any of his works. - Anatole
