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if you asked me,
"What five books should I read?", I would say...- Ask the Dust by John Fante
- Factotum by Charles Bukowski
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
- Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
- The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
"What five movies should I watch?", I would say...
- Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
- There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson)
- Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant)
- Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
- The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
"What five albums should I listen to?", I would say...
- 24 Hour Revenge Therapy - Jawbreaker
- Black Sheep Boy - Okkervil River
- A Name Writ in Water - The One AM Radio
- Goddammit - Alkaline Trio
- Life. Love. Regret. - Unbroken
4 comments:
if you told me to read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" I would tell you to go away. That book is an awful piece of self-absorbed literature and the only thing that saved it was the dog's commentary.
This isn't meant to sound sexist, but that's because it is a "man's" book, the same way Tropic of Cancer and Ask the Dust are decidedly men's books. I mean this in the way that men love books written about men by men who write about themselves. These are easily my favorite types of books. People have called my writing "self indulgent," and that's only because I took cues from my literary heroes, who were men who wrote about themselves. I see nothing wrong with self-absorption or self-indulgence in writing. After all, I'm writing for primarily myself, correct?
Plus, this book was beautiful... but that's just my opinion.
Also, one time a guy at a bookstore in San Francisco said I had too much testosterone pumping through my taste in books and that I should read something that tapped more into my feminine side. I said, "No thanks, I've read Jane Eyre. That was enough."
True story.
lulz... The Bronte sisters. I didn't get the "man's book" vibe so much from "Lightness." Although that may have to do with the fact that when I read it, I was so pumped full of Hemingway nothing else seemed quite as masculine. I guess that wasn't my issue with it.
In this context, there's certainly a difference between self-indulgent and self-absorption. Had Kundera written a self-indulgent book, I feel like it would probably have had at least a little more feeling. I just hated Tomas.
God, sometimes I get so frustrated thinking about things. That's no fault of your's or Kundera's though.
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