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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

bookmark graveyard

12:42 / 03.01.02

i hope i'm not the only one who does this..

but sometimes i start books.. and one day..

someday.. i might even finish them

reasons for falling into the infinitly bookmarked set are many and varied..

some other (more accessable) book takes my fancy.. or (in the case of 'catcher..' and 'the republic') the book just really annoys me

currently book marked:

Neitzche - on the geneology of morals
Homer - the oddessy
Plato - the republic
(the ever popular..) Professor Steven Hawking - a brief history of time
Albert Camus - Myth of sisyphus
Niccilo Machiavelli - the prince

i'm sure there are more.. but there is hope..

i managed to finish one of my long term bookmarked books .. Catcher in the rye - JD saliwassisface..

i really didnt like it.. but i got through it..

so i rewarded myself with a great book that i finished in a couple of days. namly Complicity by Iain Banks..

so .. anyone else out there got a bookmark graveyard of their own?

12:48 / 03.01.02

Yay. I'm not the only one to do it. It's a relief. I have loads on the shelf, but I can't recall what they are.

'Cryptinomicon' got shelved and there are a load of others scattered aroud it.

...I will resurrect some of those books in a while, they'll annoy me by their very presence each time I put a book away....

13:06 / 03.01.02

There is no way in hell I could tell you all the books that have got book marks shoved in them. It's maddening really.

Current kings though, meaning no matter how much I'm enjoying them, or how much I want to finish them, I just can't seem to do it:

A Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilbur
Real Magic, Issac Bonewitts
Mind Tools, Rudy Rucker
Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.

Though, I have been on a reading kick lately. I finished the last two books I started (two JG Ballard books) and I'm almost done with Under The Frog, by Tibor Fischer.

My problem is I always start reading a book, and then get an urge to read something else. And so, untill recently, you could find me jumping between straight fiction, sci-fi, history books, books on mathmatical theory, and a book on magic, all at once.

I think for my new years resolution, I'm going to try to read one book at a time this year. Yeah, that's a good resolution. Hopefully, that'll be easier then quiting smoking. Though, I'm not sure how optomistic I am.

13:40 / 03.01.02

Oh man, i've done this so-o-o-o many times-

The End of Certainty : Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature - Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers - At the end of chapter one they claim the book is written for the layperson. Chapter two is filled with all sorts of chemical equations. Ye gods. Reminds me of a book I "finished," Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe."

The Complete Aristotle, Volume 1 - Gee, Todd, it's a great idea to read Posterior Analytics for fun! (actually, Topics is kind of fun to read. But only for about 5 pages at a time)

Gig: Americans talk about their jobs A collection of over a 100 interviews with people about their jobs. Some are fascinating, some crushingly dull, but I just lost interest.

Some Penguin Modernism Reader A book of essays about modernism.

13:43 / 03.01.02

countless, countless bookmarks. and huge stacks of half-read corpses by the bed.

16:29 / 03.01.02

I have an ongoing problem with long novels because I don't like spending too long reading the same thing - I get bored.

Half finished books:

Against A Dark Background - Iain Banks (just because, well, I couldn't be ARSED frankly..)

Sophies World - whoever wrote it (patronizing, rationalist crap - if I wanted philosophy I'd go straight for the hard stuff)

Lord of the Rings - Tolkein (I've tried to read it again about every two years and never got past the first book. Now we've got the movies, which are better, so I'll probably never bother)

Coercion - Douglas Rushkoff(?) (wasn't really telling me much that I wasn't aware of already and had an unhelpful habit of going out of it's way to justify paranioa)

17:02 / 03.01.02

Bloody hell - half my books are semi-read.

As Grant says: countless, countless bookmarks. and huge stacks of half-read corpses by the bed.

Plus other books I chose because they were collections or short stories which I didn't have to read all at once.

(Such as the Father Brown Stories by Chesterton, which are all short stories, or collections of journalism such as HST's The Great Shark Hunt or PJ o'Rourke's Give War a Chance.)

Plus I re-read books in the wrong order, dip in and out of them, and sometimes read the end first...

19:20 / 03.01.02

The Cornelius Quartet, turned into the Cornelius Doublet and a bit.

Stalled on Don Quixote many times.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:46 / 04.01.02

Don't get me started... "Moby Dick", "Ulysses", Herodotus'"Histories", Ken McLeod "Dark Light", Richard Calder "Impakto" (and the last two are two of my all-time favourite SF writers as well, and they don't seem like bad books either, I just got... distracted), Samuel R Delany "Dhalgren", and loads of other stuff but this is starting to depress me so I'll stop.

08:56 / 04.01.02

Way too many books...

Symposium
Atomised
Father Brown Stories
Napoleon of Notting Hill
Geneology of morals
Crime and Punishment
The Rebel

To name but a few...

08:56 / 04.01.02

ahh.. crime and punishment..

it took me the best part of a year to get through that one..

but believe me, it is worth it in the end.

11:01 / 04.01.02

Atomised...that's houllebecq, right? Called "The Elementary Particles" here in the States. Man, I wish i had stopped reading that in the middle to protect my brain from its vapidity.

Also this: An awful lot of Philosophy books on our collective list here. Does that say something about Barbelith attention spans or the writing styles of most Philosophers/translators?

The Return Of Rothkoid

11:10 / 04.01.02

Add another one to the pile: I've still yet to make it through Bertrand Russell's The History Of Western Philosophy. Sigh.

11:22 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Toddlike Powers:
An awful lot of Philosophy books on our collective list here. Does that say something about Barbelith attention spans or the writing styles of most Philosophers/translators?

Probably both - certainly I find it difficult to concentrate on Spinoza after a hard day at the coalface. It can be hard enough to read tough or 'academic' books when you have nothing else to do, but on top of work it becomes almost impossible unless one is really enthused about the subject - and if you're reading something 'becasue I ought to' it is more likely that you will not be enthused...

My deadlist is extensive and includes:

Filth, by Irvine Welsh (hated the main character so much I couldn't get beyond page 50)

Middlemarch - first intimidated and subsequently distracted.

The Island of the Day Before - has no plot for the first hundred pages or so...

Tristram Shandy - I love this book, but I have never managed to finish it, though every time I read it I get a bit further in so there is hope yet.

Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama - got fed up with his terrible baroque style (Schama's, not Rembrandt's).

Mostly classic novels after that - probably because I buy Penguin classics and start by reading the introductions - always a bad move.

11:31 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Kit-Cat Club:

Probably both - certainly I find it difficult to concentrate on Spinoza after a hard day at the coalface. It can be hard enough to read tough or 'academic' books when you have nothing else to do, but on top of work it becomes almost impossible unless one is really enthused about the subject - and if you're reading something 'becasue I ought to' it is more likely that you will not be enthused...

You're right about this. I was reading Foucault on the subway and it was kind of hard to concentrate while (A) being bundled up in my winter gear (B) being constantly jostled by people getting on and off the train.
quote:

Mostly classic novels after that - probably because I buy Penguin classics and start by reading the introductions - always a bad move.

Hah. This is so true. I've taken to avoiding the intros until after I've finished the book and only reading them then if I've really liked it. Now that I've gotten my Penguin Classics "Iliad" for the Barbelith Biblioteca (which seems wicked long compared to what I remember from reading the Iliad back in High School) I'll be sure to leave the intro for last.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:01 / 04.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Toddlike Powers:
I've taken to avoiding the intros until after I've finished the book and only reading them then if I've really liked it. Now that I've gotten my Penguin Classics "Iliad" for the Barbelith Biblioteca (which seems wicked long compared to what I remember from reading the Iliad back in High School) I'll be sure to leave the intro for last.Too right. Dodgy introductions are the reason that I've given up on many a Penguin Classic, purely for the fact that so many of the people writing them seem to lose sight of the fact that it comes at the start of the book, so giving away the fucking conclusion of the story could have a disheartening effect on someone who hasn't read the tale yet! The amount of times I've discovered key events (and spent more time looking out for when they'd occur in the text, instead of reading as one normally would, and being surprised by them) as a result of an introduction is frustratingly high. I think it's just that they maybe forget that not everyone will be intimately aware of a work's structure if they haven't read it yet. Hmm.

I do think, too, that work and general mood play big parts in how far along you can get with books you're reading, too. I know that there's days when I must have some kind of brainless guff to read, purely because I know I'd just sit and stare at the same paragraph of a Penguin Classic for far too long, not really understanding any of it. Having a block of time in which I can settle into a book, particularly a non-fiction/academic book is crucial; otherwise I can find myself reading it, but not really taking it in, which sucks more than not being able to read it at all.

Coherent? Nah.