whos your favorite author

[i heart xenakis]

You are an ass.

I think it's impossible to call someone an ass without being one yourself.

You must have nothing to do

I haven't been on here in months because I have much better things to do with my time.  My leg is broken atm, which disrupts those things.  What's your excuse?

if you spend your time making fun of anonymous people online.

Remind me, what are you doing?  Also, I only made fun of one person; my previous post, as I stated multiple times, was not aimed at any specific person in this thread, or even at the posting demographic here in general.  Do you need glasses?  The person I was "making fun of", or as I like to put it, "bringing to the limelight his idiocy and hypocrasy", was the person who called me a pseudo-intellectual, which is an insult.  Go *** yourself Viking, you massive hypocrite; you're making fun of someone (or miserably attempting to) when they haven't ever been anything but nice to you.  So the fact that the person I chose to make fun of was someone who has trolled me on this forum for some time would make people who have half, nay, a third, of a brain, realize how ridiculous it would be to take you seriously or give your comment here any weight whatsoever when you're doing the same to me with infinitely less provocation and infinitely more viciousness.

The fact that you brag about your knowledge

I am not bragging about my knowledge; if I were to do that, it would be much more obvious.  I am mearly attempting to solidify that, as purported, I am not a pseudo-intellectual.  I find it hilarious you would prefer pies to get away with calling someone a vicious and incorrect derogatory than have someone stand up for themself.

only points to the fact that you live a very sad life alone.

I have more valentines than you, I promise <3  I'll also be getting more sex tonight, even with a broken leg.

Oh, wait, you're gay right?  Damn, get a girl to loosen you up and live a little.

I don't see why you've taken such offense to my comment here.  You're obviously not a pseudo-intellectual, which is what I was griping at.  With comments like those, pseudo-intellectual would be a flattering term for you!  Oh my!  Sexuality jokes!  You are the pinnacle of wit.  Also, I think maybe you should get a guy if you ever want to be "loosened up" 

Or you could always shoot yourself.

I don't own a gun, so no I couldn't.

The world doesn't need people like you.

Who was it that said there is never a true necessity for something, but only the ingrained need in the human psyche?  Oh wait; look who I'm asking.  Now why don't you go to bed and curl up with that Anne Rice novel you've been struggling with these past few months.

Sam

Plebe.

[viking]

I didn't read a single thing you wrote in response to my previous post, but the length of it confirms the fact that you are a loser and nobody likes you here.  Anyone else here care to prove me wrong?

Sam

[pies]

He's just an annoyingly bad troll.  Best thing to do is to ignore him.

[i heart xenakis]

Viking, Pies: I did not read your responses because they are so short they only confirm the fact that you are either:

A- unable to make any sort of valid response to my righteously undeniable arguments and logic, and any post that could even begin to comment on such would be much longer

or,

B- the only response you are able to muster up to anything even remotely intelligent are vague, baseless derogitories, which, as would the first instance be, are a total and unmitigated concession to my superiority and a concession to your sup-par intellects.



Oh.

And my favorite authors are Burgess, Wittgenstein, Roth, Durell and Davies.  Lol; considering my posts thus far in this thread, I feel the only one missing off that list would be Proust, although I will admit I have a hard time keeping interest in his works XP

[rc]

Anyways...  Since we've got a thread of people who like to read, maybe someone would enjoy this thing I stumbled into a while back, the Harvard Classics.

From Gutenberg.org: "The Harvard Classics, originally known as Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf, is a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, that was first published in 1909.

Dr. Eliot, then President of Harvard University, had stated in speeches that the elements of a liberal education could be obtained by spending 15 minutes a day reading from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf. (Originally he had said a three-foot shelf.)

The publisher P. F. Collier and Son saw an opportunity, and challenged him to make good on this statement by selecting an appropriate collection of works; the Harvard Classics was the result."

They've got most of it here: https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics_%28Bookshelf%29

And whatever's not there, can be found here: https://www.bartleby.com/hc/

I could never stand so much reading off a screen.  Buying them new is pricey and I couldn't find a good used set.  But I found buying the seperate works that make up the volumes to be more affordable.  I s'pose the broke could find any of this in the public library.

I think it's a worthwhile project.  There's no reading from the last century, but covers a lot of ground before that.  I won't have to wonder "what do I want to read now?"

[indutrial]

Oh.

And my favorite authors are Burgess, Wittgenstein, Roth, Durell and Davies.  Lol; considering my posts thus far in this thread, I feel the only one missing off that list would be Proust, although I will admit I have a hard time keeping interest in his works XP

I liked Roth's recent sorta-trilogy of novels beginning with American Pastoral, and continuing with Human Stain and I Married a Communist. You are talking about Philip Roth, right?

I recently reread a couple of short classics that I enjoyed a lot in college - Bohumil Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains and Yuri Olesha's Envy. I've also been digging on Joseph Conrad and Thomas Mann lately, despite how swamp-like the writing in the latter can get at times.

now why's there so much hostility in a forum about *** books! I better not stay here or else I might punch someone in the face next time I go to Barnes and Noble.

[pianogeek_cz]

And my favorite authors are Burgess, Wittgenstein, Roth, Durell and Davies.

Yay for Wittgenstein! Amazing clarity.

Currently hooked to Styron. Sophie's Choice.

[gyzzzmo]

My current favourite authors:

John Irving (Untill i find you)
Chaim Potok (The Chosen)
Harry Mullisch (Discovery of Heaven)


For 'I heart xenakis': You MIGHT be right for some people, but by posting replies like that you lower yourself to the (low) level of those teenagers. Instead of writing like a pseudo-intellectual you should act like one.....

Cheers,
Gyzzzmo

[i heart xenakis]

For 'I heart xenakis': You MIGHT be right for some people, but by posting replies like that you lower yourself to the (low) level of those teenagers. Instead of writing like a pseudo-intellectual you should act like one.....

I've never been one to act like pseudo-anything

[indutrial]

My current favourite authors:

John Irving (Untill i find you)
Chaim Potok (The Chosen)
Harry Mullisch (Discovery of Heaven)

I like Irving's work a lot. Not one of my favorites, but damned hilarious. I haven't read it in years, but I loved Cider House Rules.

[slobone]

Evelyn Waugh
Nancy Mitford
Angela Thirkell
Barbara Pym
P.G. Wodehouse
Alan Furst
John le Carré
Len Deighton
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett
Elmore Leonard
Ross Macdonald
Jim Thompson
Scott Turow
Anthony Trollope
Edith Wharton
Henry James
Charles Dickens
Jane Austen
Gore Vidal
Erle Stanley Gardner
Rex Stout
Henry Green
Philip Roth
Margery Allingham
Colette

[pies]

a

[lucylucy]

i loveeeeeeeeeeeee oscar wilde !!

[Essyne]

lol, pies, you got me a little worried there for a moment w/ Chomsky and Zinn on your list . . .

I absolutely adore Marion Zimmer Bradley - she's completely masterful.

[indutrial]

Not favorites, just recent reads:
Freakonomics by Levitt
9-11 by Chomsky
A People's History of the United States by Zinn

I've steered this kind of literary roundabout in the past and, as good as some of the writing can be and as eye-opening as some of the history is, I've never left feeling inspired to dig much deeper. Zinn's unending pile of skeletons dug out of the American history closet left me feeling cold and more nihilistic than ever. My favorite authors are ones who take creative and personal approaches to elucidating the ins and outs of human behavior, history, etc...

[Essyne]

Zinn's unending pile of skeletons dug out of the American history closet left me feeling cold and more nihilistic than ever. 

The fact that what he writes is completely blown out of proportion has nothing to do with that 
As for Chomsky, I'm not really into distorting the truth and pushing extremist propaganda.

[mephisto]

As for Chomsky, I'm not really into distorting the truth and pushing extremist propaganda.

Chomsy does non of that, at least on the topics I have heard him talk about.

[Essyne]

like what?

[mephisto]

Name some stupid things he has said, and I will judge for my self.

[Essyne]

It's not necessarily one specific quote; rather, it is evident in everything that flows from his mouth (or his pen). From Nagasaki to President Bush, Chomsky essentially preaches that America is the equivalent to Satan and that She is always the aggressor. Yes, my country has done some deplorable things, but America is NOT the evil entity that Chomsky makes it out to be. He deletes and edits facts where it is expedient for him to do so, and in my book that is corruption and distortion of the truth.

[wotgoplunk]

And in my book that is corruption and distortion of the truth.

All books can be called biased by anyone who disagrees no matter how sound the facts they are based on.

So it's another pointless argument 

[Essyne]

So it's another pointless argument

eh... consistency counts for something, doesnt it? 

[pies]

My favorite authors are ones who take creative and personal approaches to elucidating the ins and outs of human behavior, history, etc...

Can you name some of these authors/books?

[indutrial]

Can you name some of these authors/books?

While I guess I was generalizing a bit, some of the books that really stood out in that respect are things like Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Michael Ondaatje's books Anil's Ghost and Coming Through Slaughter. In college I studied an assload of Soviet-period Russian/Ukrainian/etc. history and I enjoyed reading tons of fictional stories about historical events like Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard and Andrey Platonov's novels (Chevengur, The Foundation Pit, Happy Moscow) that deal with different aspects of Russian society from that time (utopianism, Stalinism, command economics).

Other authors and books that I've mentioned earlier in this thread are among my other literary favorites. The thrust of what I was saying about my interests is that I generally gravitate towards fiction/poetry/personal essays that grant the author more license and away from the more objectified approaches that historians, psychologists, and social scientists take (the academia-type writing). I thouroughly appreciate that stuff, having majored in history, but I think I've dealt with enough of it to make myself weary of its drawbacks. In terms of objective approached writing, I generally favor books about the natural sciences and mathematics/physics/abstract music theory texts.