as a way of cleaning up my burgeoning (and messy!) reading list, here are the books that i most enjoyed reading in 2004:
bukowski's notes of a dirty old man, on the recommendation of burlyshirly of all people
ink: . it was crude, it was uneven in its quality, but much of it was hilarious.
w. somerset maugham's the razor's edge. typically i don't like "society" or "people" novels, but maugham's writing was good enough to make it all enjoyable.
tom wolfe's a man in full. i have to admit that i've never read through all of bonfire of the vanities, but i'm tempted to after this book. the portrayal of the racial tension in atlanta struck a nerve, and the story itself was well worth the however-many-hundreds-of-pages.
a combined nod goes to alfred bester's the demolished man and frederik pohl's the merchant's war, with the recommendation for the pohl coming from a thread here on rm that i can't find. i grouped them since i figured if you like early sci fi you'll like them both. (on a similar idea, if you like gibson's neuromancer you'll probably love stephenson's snow crash.)
finally, peter matthiessen's "at play in the fields of the lord" gets the final spot on this random list. it paints a world far from what you or i know that nevertheless exists half way around the world this very day, and the language doesn't beat you about the head a la pohl...
what books did you guys like that you read in 2004?
bukowski's notes of a dirty old man, on the recommendation of burlyshirly of all people
ink: . it was crude, it was uneven in its quality, but much of it was hilarious.w. somerset maugham's the razor's edge. typically i don't like "society" or "people" novels, but maugham's writing was good enough to make it all enjoyable.
tom wolfe's a man in full. i have to admit that i've never read through all of bonfire of the vanities, but i'm tempted to after this book. the portrayal of the racial tension in atlanta struck a nerve, and the story itself was well worth the however-many-hundreds-of-pages.
a combined nod goes to alfred bester's the demolished man and frederik pohl's the merchant's war, with the recommendation for the pohl coming from a thread here on rm that i can't find. i grouped them since i figured if you like early sci fi you'll like them both. (on a similar idea, if you like gibson's neuromancer you'll probably love stephenson's snow crash.)
finally, peter matthiessen's "at play in the fields of the lord" gets the final spot on this random list. it paints a world far from what you or i know that nevertheless exists half way around the world this very day, and the language doesn't beat you about the head a la pohl...
what books did you guys like that you read in 2004?
I-IV were pretty good, but I think they started to fall off a bit in the more recent ones. Just not as sharp. Plot elements seem more gimmicky than inventive.
"Goddammit, I've read this before" 
