SaltyJon wrote: Toaster Mantis wrote: David Foster Wallace also seems to be no longer seen as a very highbrow author for that matter, but instead someone whom low-status people read to "snob upwards". Jack Kerouac seems to be in that position now too. I don't really know what people consider him, but so far I'm considering Broom of the System a really funny book...my favorite character so far is a cockatiel, though...

Looks like that's the number one stereotype about DFW's readers today. Just like how it's a common belief that Bret Easton Ellis' fanbase consists almost entirely of the exact same subculture his books make fun of.

Other authors who appear to fallen into that category right now include Roberto Bolano, Jonathan Franzen, Ernest Hemingway, Haruki Murakami, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Chuck Palahniuk and Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe also Thomas Pynchon now that the film version of Inherent Vice came out.

I'm rather fascinated with the process how the "high culture/low culture" hierarchy is constructed, and how the borderlines seem to shift throughout, hence why I pay so much attention to something like this.

Toaster Mantis wrote: I'm rather fascinated with the process how the "high culture/low culture" hierarchy is constructed, and how the borderlines seem to shift throughout, hence why I pay so much attention to something like this.

Yeah, I'm just interested in one thing when it comes to books: do I like the book? If the answer is yes, good. If the answer is no, oh well.

Then again, I guess I'm not one to talk since this is what I started reading this weekend:


British spy novel from the mid-1960s that's apparently based on several conspiracy theories that were very popular at the time? Its concept revolves around a bunch of expert scientist and engineers involved with a mysterious Australian corporation disappearing without a trace, which sounds like it could have been an influence on the Alternative 3 hoax that would pop up a decade later. The plot follows the MI6 agent tasked with finding out what happened to them.

I'm not very far in, but the overall tone and feel is very similar to the earliest James Bond movies with Sean Connery in them if not quite as campy.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde (in Portuguese).

I read "Purity" by Jonathan Franzen. 

btw ... has anyone read this or any of his work ?




Edited by t d wombat - October 11 2015 at 19:55

Windhawk wrote: Any thoughts on Piers Anthony's classic Bio of a Space Tyrant series, Farmer's Riverworld saga or Pohl's fabulous Hechee books?

I havn't read any of Pohl but I went looking for one of the Heechee books and somehow or other ended up with a Poul Anderson thing called Refugee. Man, banality does not do it justice. I really hate not finishing a book, even one I am not enjoying but man I am so tempted with this one.

Getting hold of FP's Heechee stuff is not easy. Kobo certainly has very little and none of that is the Heechee series.

(Just found a mob called Baen Books. They have pretty much all of FP available in EPub format.)


Edited by t d wombat - October 13 2015 at 19:48

t d wombat wrote: Mentioned China Mieville a couple of pages back and since than have read his "The City & The City".  Weird, but good weird. Have his "Embassytown" in the waiting to be read pile.

Edited by dr wu23 - October 14 2015 at 12:29

Second the recommendation of Iain M. Banks, I think The Player of Games is my favourite novel of his. I've been seeing some of Mieville's novels when I go to the nearest public library, and they look interesting from the descriptions on the cover.