The Dead Zone by Stephen King-great fucking book.

Just finished, "The Sense of an Ending", Julian Barnes which was excellent and"Disgrace", J.M. Coetzee which was very good and, "Salvage the Bones", Jesmyn Ward also very good.

Just starting, "The Sojourn, Andrew Krivak.

Moby Dick and it is a pleasure!

I just finished Fifty Shades Trilogy!!!!! It was awesome! Need to find another series!

Reading an ARC for a friend. Good story, but too much dialogue

She's good about critique or I wouldn't have agreed to review it

Night Shift by Stephen King.

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King.

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King.

i"m reading Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead....in the middle of it...
Has anyone else read it?
I'm curious, because I'd love to exchange impressions of the book...
I have read a couple of NM's works, but nothing serious...this is his "big" book, the one that made him famous.
It is so well written, that a couple of times...you're pulled out of your reading experience to re-read a particular
sentence or paragraph again in admiration...that rarely happens.
His cast of characters are
filled with hatred, greed, laziness,obsequiousness, cruelty, stupidity, insecurity, vanity, rage, lust, self-pity and just about
every single hateful thing there is. Mailer shines a light so bright on humankind, there is no place to hide. Just as the troops are
exposed to the horrors of war and each other and finally, their own characters:There is hardly any place to enjoy, so you really feel like you're going through the
hell the soldiers are...it's sickeningly accurate a reflection of ourselves I guess; however ugly and unpleasant.
So while I admire his achievement in unrelenting realism; I hate living there. I hate the characters just like they hate each other.
I'm sure this is an intentional irony and commentary...that if we think we are better, see how easy it is to "hate"...
Also, I'm sure it's much rawer, and therefore hard to stomach because many of these types of "voices" are not so common today...
people are more politically correct.. the sexism and misogny is astonishing and universal.....

I remember reading Faulkner and at first I was completely distracted by the characters because I did not find them credible...not
understanding the south, the educational levels, the feudal life, how "stuck" people were in time and place.
As NAKED was written in the 40's, there are also lashings of previous cultural nuances that appear. The fact that most women work now, I believe has changed everything.
Anyone???????????????

Anyone?

I've read many of "war" novels, memoirs, histories, etc

War and Peace
All Quiet on the Western Front
And No Birds Sang
Catch-22
The Caine Mutiny
From Here to Eternity
Slaughterhouse Five
Winston Churhill's WWII
The Gun's of August
The Desert Fox (Rommel)
The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich
etc, etc, etc...

I've been prompted to pick it up the next time I happen to be somewhere where it's available! If I continue on with my plodding progress through Anna Karenina though it will be a month or so before I'll even be ready to start another book.

I have it but haven't yet read it. I like Tolstoy's short stories but Karenina has me wary of starting another Tolstoy novel anytime soon.

Now you're talking! This is one of my favorite books.

I considered this one to be an overly long though enjoyable read.

I've been considering re-reading this one. I have never been able to appreciate Vonnegut.

EDIT: Of course, for pleasure or as a challenge, I am currently reading Anna Karenina.

Give yourself a break and read War and Peace...

it's wonderful and so easy to read...
the Only problem is you want to swallow it whole and just can't do it because of it's length...
but it's so good, you read until you drop and are forced to re-trench...

Tolstoy again brings you into intimate family groups within a larger society and various social strata with
such ease...The characters are beautifully alive...and above all, the beauty of natural life, the effect of
natural beauty is breathtaking...I don't think anyone does it better and it's magical here...
I can still "feel" myself with the characters in the Russian countryside...

when you read Norman Mailer, let me know what you think...

I'm going to give myself a break and read The Naked and the Dead instead. I went to a 1/2 price store today with the intention of picking it up but they didn't have it. I walked away with four musician biographies: Thelonius Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years, Willie Nelson: An Epic Life and Einstein's Violin: A Conductor's Notes on Music, Physics, and Social Change. In addition I picked up The Monopoly of Violence: Why Europeans Hate Going to War (I'll need some convincing to buy the subtitle, but we shall see) Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, and NORMAN MAILER's Barbary Shore mostly on the strength of the backcover blurb: "At the height of the McCarthy era, Norman Mailer proved his audacity by writing a novel about socialism,[...]"

I intend to pick up The Naked and the Dead tomorrow. I had been doing so well at staying away from bookstores lately...

I am quite a fan of a Tolstoy collection of short stories I have called The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories and expected to take to Anna Karenina as well... well, I've slogged through approximately half of it now and intend to pick it up again later on.
I will.

Hilarious!...might have to look for that one particularly! Since I assume the blurb was not meant ironically, I"m intrigued by any arguments supporting this the author would propose... You got an armload...that's always fun...i've been more immersed in online texts lately, as gutenberg's rarities continue to fascinate and as you know, one thing leads to another...although I have Powell's bookstore stacks to peruse and that's disneyland for booklovers.

Does anyone else dream longingly of visiting Larry McMurtry's bookstore? ("While at Stanford he became a rare-book scout, and during his years in Houston managed a book store there called the Bookman. In 1969 he moved to the Washington, D.C. area, and in 1970 with two partners started a bookshop in Georgetown which he named Booked Up. In 1988 he opened another Booked Up in Archer City, which is one of the largest single used bookstores in the United States, carrying somewhere between 400,000 and 450,000 titles. Citing economic pressures from Internet bookselling, McMurtry came close to shutting down the Archer City store in 2005, but chose to keep it open after an outpouring of public support.")

Just afraid I might never leave and be found dessicated and lifeless among the stacks...lured on and on by one title after another...

In fact, did anyone read his memoirs??
2008: Books: A Memoir
2009: Literary Life: A Second Memoir
2011: Hollywood: A Third Memoir

I read the first two and found them interesting and share his gluttony and passion for books, if not his artistry and resourcefulness. Fascinating that he grew up in a household without books for one...it's also nice to find someone else has loved passionately an obscure favorite of mine, and to discover
those beloved by others...

(EDIT: The author's name is James Sheehan.) I think I know what it will be - that Germany, France, England, and their smaller cousins don't invade one another, or other countries, at the drop of a hat anymore like they used to. Still, Vietnam, Falklands, actions taken as member states of NATO, and particularly "investment" capital sent overseas should moderate the hyperbole of the subtitle.

Books are a weak spot for me... better to just avoid stores entirely. I haven't developed the ability to read online for any appreciable length of time.

Speaking of pressures from Internet bookselling I went to a Barnes & Noble to pick up The Naked and the Dead. It had been years since I had been there, as I get all my books from used bookstores. Well, talk about an inventory that has shrunk! I could hardly what had become of their once once robust collection of literature (not that it ever approached McMurtry's goliath) - 2 novels by Mailer, that's it. I recall the last time I was there was there to pick up a rather obscure Philip K. Dick novel (Counter-Clock World, I believe) and browsing through an impressive array of his titles... yesterday, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (titled instead, Blade Runner ::facepalm::) A Scanner Darkly, and VALIS. gah...

Anyway, on to The Naked and the Dead.

"Dragon Soul" by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett
"The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins
"Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll

I like to switch between different books.