currently reading "Good as Gold" by Joseph Heller.

just a fantastic read. i think i like it more than catch-22, at least thus far.

I read for pleasure quite quickly. I read The Art of Racing in the Rain in about 3 hours.

I read IT in 2 days back in the day.

Thought you readers might like this article on how to read.


Master the True Art of Reading: How to Read A Book

There’s an important distinction between reading for relaxation and entertainment, or reading just for information, on the one hand, and reading for understanding, for deepening your mind, and for acquiring insight, on the other. Mortimer J. Adler–who wrote the classic “How to Read a Book” in 1940–explains that if you want to lift your mind up, you have to read books that are currently “over your head”. Books that are at your level can’t possibly elevate you.

The art of reading consists of having the skills required to take a book and use it to lift your mind up from understanding less, to understanding more. Adler’s book, which was rewritten with the collaboration of Charles Van Doren in the 1970’s, will initiate you into the true art of reading. This post will show you how the wisdom contained in “How to Read A Book” will make all your future reading more enjoyable and worthwhile. In addition, it will show you how to use books written by others to create something new.
Reading for Information v. Reading for Understanding

Adler and Van Doren explain that the goal that you set for yourself when you’re going to read any text-whether you’re reading for entertainment, information or understanding-should determine the way in which you read. Reading for entertainment is very simple. But what’s the difference between reading something for information, and reading for understanding?

When you read something–such as a magazine, a newspaper, a blog post, and so on–which is completely intelligible to you, your store of information might increase, but your understanding doesn’t. Your understanding was equal to these texts before you read them. Otherwise, you would have felt the puzzlement and perplexity that comes with reading something that is out of your depth.

When you read something that at first you don’t completely understand, then what you’re reading is initially higher than you are. The text contains insights which you lack. If you manage to acquire greater understanding after having read some text, you’ve elevated yourself through the activity of reading.

The Four Levels of Reading

The authors of “How to Read a Book” explain that there are four levels of reading, which are cumulative. That is, you can’t move on to the next level until you’ve mastered the one before. The four levels of reading are the following:

1. Elementary: This is the level of reading that is ordinarily learned in elementary school. A child that is learning to read is simply trying to make sense of the squiggly lines on the page. The question at this level is: What does the sentence say? If the sentence says, “The cat sat on the hat”, that’s all the teacher wants to know.

If you try to learn a foreign language as an adult, at first, you would be back at this level. Also, if you’re trying to read at college level, but you lack the necessary vocabulary, or knowledge of grammar and syntax, you will need help with elementary reading. The current educational system often stops at the elementary level, and fails to move on to the next three reading levels.

2. Inspectional: Inspectional reading is scanning and superficial reading. You do this in order to get a general idea of what a text is about, and the type of information that it contains, in order to determine whether it’s something which you’re actually going to take the time to sit down and read. At this level you want to know what type of book it is –a novel, a biography, a historical treatise, and so on–and what the book is about. You’re just acquiring superficial knowledge of the book at this point (you’re on a reconnaissance mission).

3. Analytical: Analytical reading is thorough reading. This level of reading is very active: the reader is making the book his or her own. Analytical reading is done for the sake of understanding. The authors of “How to Read A Book” point out that Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.

4. Syntopical: When reading syntopically, the reader reads several books on the same topic, not just one. The objective is to be able to construct an analysis of the subject matter which cannot be found in any of the books. You’ll be making novel connections and coming up with new insights.

The levels of reading are further discussed and explained below.

Level Two: Inspectional Reading

Even though “How to Read A Book” devotes a chapter to the elementary level of reading, we’re going to jump straight into level two: inspectional reading.

The first thing you want to do when you pick up a book is decide what you want to get out of reading the text that’s in front of you. Are you reading for pleasure? Are you looking for an answer to a specific question? Do you want to gain general-knowledge of the subject matter of the book? What do you want to know, or what do you want to be able to do, after reading this text?

Once you know your purpose for reading the text, set a limited amount of time which you’re going to use to inspect the text in order to determine whether it’s going to help you to achieve your goal. Inspectional reading consists of two different steps: the first step is systematic skimming, or pre-reading; and the second step is superficial reading.

Systematic Skimming

Here are some suggestions offered by Adler and Van Doren on how to skim a book:

1. You can start skimming the book by looking at the book’s subtitle, which will probably give you an indication of the scope and aim of the book. Flip the book over and look at the back cover, which usually contains information about what’s inside the book. If the book has a dust jacket, read the jacket flaps. These often contain good summaries of the most important points developed in the book.

2. Place the book in the appropriate category in your mind: What genre does it belong to? What type of book is it? If you walk into a classroom in which a teacher is lecturing, the first thing you want to know is whether it’s a history, science, or philosophy class. Likewise, you want to know what type of book you have in your hands.

3. Study the book’s table of contents to get a general idea of how the book is structured. In a good nonfiction book the table of contents will probably be similar to an abbreviated outline of the book.

4. Check the index, if the book has one. Look at the range of topics, and the types of books and authors that the book refers to. Identify crucial terms by the number of references under them. You might want to go ahead and read some of the passages that contain these crucial terms in order to get an idea of the crux of the book, and what the author’s main arguments are.

5. Read the book’s introduction, preface, and foreword. If the most important chapters in the book contain summaries, read those.

6. Now start leafing through the book, quickly dipping in and out, reading a paragraph here and there. If something catches your attention, you may want to read two or three pages in sequence, but no more than that.

Once you’ve skimmed the book in this way you should be able to decide whether the book is likely to meet your objectives, and is therefore something you’re going to read carefully, or if you’re just going to set it aside. Even if you decide not to read the book at this point, it’s now part of your mental catalogue and you may decide to read it at some future date.

Superficial Reading

If you decide, after skimming, that the book meets your objectives and that you’re going to go ahead and read it, then move on to the second step in inspectional reading, which is to read the book superficially.

The authors explain that the first time that you read a difficult book you should read it once through without stopping to look up terms that you don’t understand, or ponder over concepts that are new to you. Just pay attention to what you do understand, and don’t worry about those things which you can’t immediately grasp.

Adler and Van Doren are not suggesting that you avoid consulting a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or other materials and references in order to try and make sense of the difficult passages in a text that you’re trying to read. They just caution that you shouldn’t do it prematurely. When you’ve read through the book once superficially, you can go back to the parts that you didn’t understand and look up anything that you want to.

Why is it so important that you read the book once through without stopping?

* First of all, what you understand the first time you read the book–even if it’s just about 50% of the text–will help you to make sense of the rest of the book the next time you read it.
* Second, if you stop frequently to look things up it’s very likely that you’ll get frustrated and bored, decide that the book is too difficult for you, and just set it aside.
* Third, constant starting and stopping may make you miss the forest for the trees.
* And fourth, reading the book quickly once through will allow you to form your own impressions about the book, before you start reading commentaries by others on what the book is trying to say.

Make the Book Your Own

The authors of “How to Read a Book” are big proponents of marking up your books. They say the following:

“When you buy a book, you establish a property right in it, just as you do in clothes or furniture when you buy and pay for them. But the act of purchase is actually only the prelude to possession in the case of a book. Full ownership of a book only comes when you have made it a part of yourself, and the best way to make yourself a part of it—which comes to the same thing—is by writing in it.”

While reading a book, you should be holding a conversation with the author, asking questions, making comments, and so on. Write your questions and comments in the margins. Underline key sentences. Circle things you want to come back to. Place an asterisk next to a passage you find particularly interesting. Highlight key words. Write your observations and short summaries of what you have just read at the top and bottom of the page. Place the number of other pages which are related in the margin. Make the book your own.

Level Three: Analytical Reading

Analytical reading–the third level of reading–consists of three different stages. Each stage consists of several rules, for a total of fifteen rules of analytical reading. This is further developed below:

First Stage: What Is the Book About As A Whole?

The first stage of analytical reading consists of 4 rules which have the objective of helping you to determine what the book is about and to outline its structure. These four rules are:

Rule 1. Classify the book according to kind and subject matter.

Rule 2. State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. That is, you’re going to state what the book’s theme is–its main point– in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a short paragraph).

Rule 3. Divide the book into its main parts and outline those parts.

Rule 4. Define the problem or problems the author is trying to solve. What questions is the author trying to answer?
Second Stage: What is Being Said in Detail, and How?

The second stage of analytical reading consists of four rules for interpreting the book’s contents:

Rule 5. Understand the terms and key words the author uses. The key words are those which are emphasized, repeated, defined, and/or italicized. You can find the meaning of those words from the context.

Rule 6. Grasp the author’s most important propositions. Propositions are the author’s judgments about what is true or false. They’re also the author’s answers to the questions he or she posed in the book.

Rule 7. What are the author’s arguments in support of his or her conclusions? What are the grounds, or reasons, the author gives for having arrived at his or her judgments and conclusions?

Rule 8. Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and as to the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve.

Third Stage: Do You Agree With the Author’s Arguments and Conclusions? What of it?

The third stage of analytical reading sets down the rules for criticizing the book.

Rule 9. You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, “I understand,” before you can say any one of the following things: “I agree,” or “I disagree,” or “I suspend judgment.” Do not begin criticizing until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. As Adler and Van Doren point out: “Reading a book is a kind of conversation. The author has had his say, and then it is the reader’s turn.”

Rule 10. When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously.

Rule 11. Demonstrate that you recognize the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting good reasons for any critical judgment you make.

Rule 12. Show wherein the author is uninformed.

Rule 13. Show wherein the author is misinformed.

Rule 14. Show wherein the author is illogical.

Rule 15. Show wherein the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

Level Four: Syntopical Reading

It's been said that anyone can read five books on a topic and be an expert. However, becoming an expert really depends on how you read those books. If you read the five books analytically, you’ll be able to give a good explanation of the arguments and opinions presented by the five different authors that you just read.

But what you really want to do is read the five books syntopically, so that you can develop and present your own unique perspective and insights, make novel connections, and contribute something new to the field. That’s what will really make you an expert.

Inspectional reading (reading level two) is critical to syntopical reading. Once you’ve put together a bibliography of books on your subject-matter which look promising, you must quickly indentify which of these are among the best five (10, or 15). You do this by inspecting all of the books on your list. Once you’ve decided which books deserve the time and attention to be read carefully, you can apply the five steps of syntopical reading.

The five steps of syntopical reading are the following:

Step 1: Find the relevant passages. You’re going to inspect the books you’ve chosen once again in order to select the passages from the books which are most germane to your needs. It is unlikely that any of the books will be of use to you in its entirety.

Step 2: Establish a common terminology. In analytical reading, you identify the author’s chosen language by spotting the author’s terms of art and key words. But now you’re faced with a number of different authors, and it’s unlikely that they all use the same terms and key words. At the syntopical level of reading you’re going to either choose the terms and key words used by one of the authors, or come up with your own terminology.

Step 3: Clarify the questions. Decide which are the questions that you’re going to answer. You want to come up with a set of questions which shed light on the problem which you intend to solve. At the same time, the questions should be stated in such a way that all, or most of, the authors that you’re reading can be interpreted as giving answers to them.

Step 4: Define the issues. It’s very likely that not all of the authors answered your questions in the same way. When experts have differing or contradictory responses to the same question, this means that an issue has been defined.

Step 5: Analyze the discussion. Now you’re free to analyze the discussion. Identify and compare where each of the authors stands on the issue you’ve identified. Why are the authors saying what they’re saying? Who do you agree with? Why? Did you come up with an entirely different conclusion (thereby adding unique value)? You’re holding a discussion with the experts on the issues which you’ve identified, and by this point you should be conversant enough on the subject matter to be able to hold your own.

Conclusion

If you follow the process laid out in “How to Read a Book”, you’ll be continuously lifting your mind by reading–and understanding–books which contain insights and perspectives which are new to you. In addition, you’ll be able to become an expert in your chosen topic by using books written by others in order to ask your own questions, come up with your own answers, discover new connections, and draw new conclusions.

Currently reading The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Really enjoying it so far.

Glide your finger along and follow it. If you're reading every word, you're inefficient. You don't need to, it's just your habit. Your comprehension is unlikely to improve whether you read every word or not, so keep that in mind.

After watching The Pacific on HBO, I decided to read the stories of the three main characters. I started with With The Old Breed on Peleliu and Okinawa by Sledge, and I'm currently about a third of the way through Leckie's A Helmet for My Pillow. Both are excellent. Sledge writes in a conversational style, bluntly sparing no details. Parts of his book are truly cringe-inducing. Leckie is a much more polished writer and his accounts are much more dramatic. It's interesting to pick up the personality differences of these very different men going through much the same thing.

I guess after this I'll read up on Basilone.

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Just finished The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television, a book of media studies, criticism and scholarship about the best TV drama of all time.

About to start up Sloane Crosley's new collection of essays, How Did You Get This Number.

A really long time ago, I finished the Maze Runner. It's a YA in the vein of Hunger Games, which I love. It took a while to get into but I ended up liking it enough to pick up the next one in November. I'm half skeptical of where it's going and half intrigued. Giving it a benefit of the doubt.

Long ago, I finished The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. Sadly, it wasn't as good as the previous two. In fact, it felt like it was finished by another author. They claim not so but the style seemed to fade. As did the spunk and previous character arcs. It basically Hollywoodized itself.

Recently, I just finished Moneyball. Absolutely fantastic yet depressing because Dayton Moore was hired in a post-Moneyball era and yet consistently denies the concepts (which have always made sense to me) in the book.

Today's Amazon box contained the book and movie form of "Less Than Zero," and "Imperial Bedrooms."

Another Ellis kick. So delicious.
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Me too. Fast paced. Easy to read. Good story. I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed it.

Picking up today:

The purpose-driven live: what on earth am I here for? by Richard Warren
The snowball: Warren Buffett and the business of life by Alice Schroeder

Psycho-Cybernetics

I just finished reading the Zombie survival guide. It was pretty funny and I needed something to pass the time on the bus.

Let me know what you think of the first book.

I just read First Love by Turgenev. I also recently read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Both were very good.

After spending a couple or three years reading mostly history and politics, I'm back in a novel groove. Just polished off "The Road" and "Wonder Boys" the last 2 weeks.

I just started "Infinite Jest." Wish me luck.

Good luck! I love that book.

I'm about 1/3 finished with Dewey Lambdins "Alan Lewrie" series. Kind of like Horatio Hornblower with prostitutes.

After reading the inside cover, looking through the TOC, and realizing what it was about, I left it. Instead I got The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves by Andrew Potter.

You're too awesome for this book, sir. It contains some truth, just don't confuse it for something based on Christianity.

I ended up leaving it once I read the inside cover & TOC. Not what I'm looking to read.

With about three weeks left til law school orientation begins, I'm going to dive into Scott Turow's famous One L.

Just devoured The Passage by Justin Cronin in around 4 days. It's right at 800 pages of painfully small font that completely fills the page... but damn. It's good. We're on vacation, and I've driven my family nuts by wanting to do nothing but read, read, read all day every day thanks to this book. I finally just told my wife, "I'm staying up tonight and finishing this book, so I can actually enjoy being on vacation."

If you like post-apocalyptic, end of the world shit, you'll love this. Think World War Z, the Stand, I Am Legend, etc... The book has gotten a lot of hype, and I feel it is deserved. I really, really liked this book. Check it out if you get a chance. It's already slated to be a movie, and I believe there are two sequels planned (which I was glad to find out, because the ending of this book destroyed me). Just when you thought that Twilight and True Blood and made vampires jump the shark, Cronin comes along with this book and takes the genre to a new, surprising level.

I'm now reading Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You CAn Do about It by Kelly Gallagher. Nothing that I don't already know or haven't seen covered in more depth, but it's a good focus for getting back into the swing of the school year.

Just started Abercrombie's "Last Argument of Kings". Really have had fun reading the First Law series. He seems to write in a stark almost harsh manner, but it functions well with what he wants to accomplish.

Best of luck. First year they'll try to scare you to death, 2nd year they'll try to work you to death, 3rd year they'll try to bore you to death. Where are you going to school at?

Finished The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves by Andrew Potter last week.

Started Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment by Peter Buffet.

Still waiting to start The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life.

Yeah, it's really good stuff.

I just finished reading all of Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series, really good stuff in its own right, and now I'm midway through Glen Cook's Black Company series, which I've read and liked before, but it's been years.

TJ Stiles' The First Tycoon - the Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Pretty good.

Iowa. It's pretty easy so far. A lot less reading and work than I expected.

I've had time to read 300 pages in the past 3 weeks of . . .

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

The catcher in the rye for the 50th time in my short life.

Why so many times? Not that you literally mean 50 (I don't think), but there's a lot of good books out there.

Yeah not literally 50, but quite a few times.

I read it when I get too much faith in the human race and then I read it to bring myself back down to earth, haha.

I just finished reading Blackwater Security's book and before that I re-read every single one of my Charles Bukowski books, that man is incredible.

NewPHin...

All I can say is thank you. WOW. And I HATE the Vampire Genre. For the most part, I think Anne Rice and her infantile, overly religious literary daughter, Stephanie Myer, did the world a great disservice.

But this book is golden.

I also just finished the Girl who kicked the Hornet's nest. I felt it was the weakest of the trilogy, but all in all, I enjoyed Mr. Larsson's writing.

Read Tales of the Madman Underground recently by John Barnes. Pretty good YA, though it's so gritty and dark (the ending is amazingly poignant, though), that it's only suitable for high schoolers.

I'm still recommending The Passage by Justin Cronin to all of you post-apoc/horror fans. It's freaking awesome.

Currently reading The Kids are All Right, which is the memoir the recent movie is based on. It's alright at this point. Not sure if I'll stick with it.

Awesome. Glad you enjoyed it. It's almost a shame to throw the vampire label on this book... because it's such a departure from the neovampire bullshit as well as the traditional gothic vampire stuff.

I tried to read Dragon Tattoo, and I just couldn't get into it. I probably need to give it another go, but there's just too much out there I want to read right now.

Finished the Peter Buffett book last month and started the Warren Buffett book.

Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet Series - listening on audiobooks during my commute, well narrated, and unabridged. Into the 5th book of the series now, should be through book 6 by the end of next week. I'm on a bit of a military science fiction kick right now, so if anybody has any suggestion, I'm open.

Apart from dicktons of various essays, I've recently read or re-read:

Nella Larsen - Quicksand
Willa Cather - A Lost Lady
Mike Rose - Lives on the Boundary

I'm going to begin Christie Hodgen's new, acclaimed novel, Elegies for the Brokenhearted, tonight. KC represent!

Read, read, read, read! Let me tell you something - last time I read a book, I was raped. Let THAT be a lesson to you.


(It's a line from a movie. Bonus points if you can tell me the movie.)

After seeing the Media Center thread, I went out and bought A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It's incredibly easy to read and is very entertaining. The book is as advertised and is delivering on all fronts. Looking forward to reading the next 3 (maybe 4?) in the series.

Yellowbeard.

Betty: When little Dan was two minutes old I tattooed it on his head.

Yellowbeard: Does he know about this?

Betty: Oh, no no no, that's why I kept him in the cupboard for three years. That may be why he's a bit odd with all these books, and reading, and stuff like that.

I'm reading a book at blaise's suggestion. It is End Zone by Don DeLillo.

Good stuff.

Mike Rose is awesome.

My wife has Quicksand at home and read it in college. I've never read it.

DeLillo is awesome.

I read Quicksand about once per year. It is a very underrated text in terms of proto-feminism. There's an awful lot going on in such a short book.

Wow, you are dedicated. I'm currently just a little over halfway through. But it is a loooong book. Good stuff, though.

I'm in the middle of Jeff Shaara's A Rise to Rebellion. What a great book. If you haven't read him, he basically writes historically acurate fiction that is seen through the eyes of 4 characters in each book. This one follows George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, and General Thomas Gage. Very interesting stuff. Highly recommend it.

So, ahem, has anyone read any of these books on the 2010 Man Booker Prize "shortlist?"

The six books, selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13, are:
Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America
Emma Donoghue Room
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question
Andrea Levy The Long Song
Tom McCarthy C

Have you read David Weber's Honor Harrington series? Really good stuff. The books are available online (for free - legally!) at this link (gotta love Baen Books...) and they're all available in audiobook format as well (not free - legally).

As for me, I'm still slogging through Glen Cook's Black Company. Up to the seventh now, She Is The Darkness. Really great dark fantasy series about a group of mercenaries.

Currently reading: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff

Really entertaining book with a good story mixed into the Biblical history.

God I love that stupid movie.

"Us Yellowbeards are never more dangerous than when we're dead."




"Been out rapin' lad? Good work."

"No I haven't raped her!"

"No, you wouldn't you stupid little git. You're not the fruit of my loins. Your mother's a liar. I couldn't be your father anyway, no woman ever slept with me and lived!"

No Less Than Victory - Jeff Shaara. Pretty good fictional WWII book.

Interesting statement on Franzen's new book Freedom, and a bit on current literature as a whole:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...han-life/8212/

People are raving about it. I really liked the Corrections, so I'll be reading it.

Yeah, that's interesting, and it makes me not want to read him. The only thing I've read from him is a short story (the name of it escapes me) that was included in The Best American Short Stories anthology a few years back.
I had been considering reading his book because I'd been hearing that he's a great novelist, but this write up makes me feel like reading him would be sort of like reading Updike's Rabbit novels, which I don't really care for. They're well written, but I just don't care about or like the characters. And I really don't care much about suburban malaise, which Franzen seems to write about from what I understand.
The impression I get from that article is that Franzen is sort of 50% Updike and 50% Unbearable Lightness of Being-Kundera, but that it doesn't work because he's not as talented a writer as Updike and he's not as imaginative or deep as Kundera. And actually, some of those passages he included were almost a little Stephen King-like.
Maybe it's unreasonable to come to that conclusion without reading Franzen's novel, but that's the impression I get and I doubt I'll read his stuff anytime soon. I know a lot of people like his stuff, it just sounds dull to me. The worst thing this critic says about the novel, in my opinion, isn't that he think's the writing is juvenile, but that he just didn't give a crap about the characters. That's the greater sin, to me. Boring is worse than bad.

I'd compare the Corrections more to DeLillo or Wallace without quite the stylistic flair... but also more accessible as a result. The span and scope of the work reminds me of something like Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible or even East of Eden. The book has a "big" feel to it. I don't know... it's been a while since I've read it... but I really liked it.

reading now

Children Of The Night by Dan Simmons

I've read 200 pages of Skippy Dies by Paul Murray and loved every one of them.

This is a very fun read.
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So have you had a chance to dig into Freedom yet? I have been meaning to pick it up but you know life and wasting time on the net kinda slows a fella down. At any rate I am getting mixed reviews from a few friends that have read it. What is your take (if you have one)?

War and Peace..

I haven't gotten it yet. Been a horribly lame reader lately.

Really? Tell us about this experience. How much of it do you read in a day? How long do you think it will take you? Does it draw you in right away? How heavy is it on the historical details of the battles?

I'm right there with ya man.

I did knock out some Augusten Burroughs on my way back from the east coast (GD layovers) but that's about all I have read in the last couple of months. Kinda lame.

Same. Dunno why.

Football season.

Good point.

Are the Chiefs restraining my intellect?

Dammit. I think they are. That'll be my excuse anyway.

Gravity's. Rainbow. And not because I want to out of my own accord.

Dude. You're gonna love it.

For a class? That's a weird reading assignment.

@ yhf: I have read a sizable portion of it. I agree that it's not a bad novel; it's complexity is incredible. But sometimes it seems like Pynchon shows off just to prove that he can. But the subject matter and its humor make up for it... Though it gets incredibly grotesque at times.

@NewPhin: It's an upper division prerequisite literature class. The professor decided to apply a theme of Post-Modernism on a Post-Atomic Culture tangent.

Ahh. Post-atomic makes sense. Most classes do V. because it is more manageable in a shorter amount of time.

For reference, the rest of the course materials are/have been:

Eliot's The Waste Land
Kubric's Dr Strangelove
Kerouac's On the Road
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
Gravity's Rainbow
Delillo's White Noise
Watchmen (graphic novel)
Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I'm supposed to be re-reading Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury for the same professor's class. Don't think that's gonna happen.

Nice list for a class. On the Road is kind of a throwaway for an otherwise impressive group of works.

I feel ya but shit who can blame a litterateur for being wanky when his dick is so damn big.

I'd probably substitute Neal Stephenson for Kerouac were I putting together that readingl list. I also think if you're going Beats that Burroughs is more PoMo than Kerouac.

I just read and loved American Assassin by Vince Flynn.