I read a lot, but not so much on the bus since the MTA is on strike in LA. My favorite authors include Charles Bukowski, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, who I've been lucky enough to meet and correspond with. Another great author I've met is Hubert Selby, Jr. and he was kind enough to do a reading for free at the library I worked at in 1998.
Below are some of the books I've read recently and the ones I'm reading now. If you see one you'd like to comment on, by all means, do so here. If you think you might want to buy one, please click on its Icon or Link.
Do It!
Let's Get Off Our But's (The Life...
This an inspiring book, written by a very inspirational guy, Peter McWilliams , who recently died tragically at the age of 50 (He was murdered, really...more on that here )*. Now, I don't generally read self-help type books, but this one is different. Far from either preachy or vapid, Peter and co-author John-Roger present their wisdom in a unique prose style mixing equal ammounts of optimism and pithy, sardonic humor.
(*I never, ever would've thought that someday I'd put a link to somthing by William Buckley on my homepage!!)
Ulysses
I can't tell you for sure when I first attempted to read this tome, but it was probably in the early '90s, shortly after reading
A
Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man..., an Easy Reader by comparison. I remember reading about the first eighty pages, enjoying the parts that didn't go over my head, and being really depressed when I realized that, for all the work I'd put into reading it, I'd barely even made a dent in it. I made another attempt after reading and really enjoying Dubliners a couple years later for a class at OSU, same results. I actually gave my copy away last year on Bloomsday to a friend who claimed she would read it, but then she gave it back to me shortly before Bloomsday this year. Buoyed by the Joyce scholarship and Irish Miscelanea I've received in my ebox from Robert Anton Wilson and Daev Walsh, among others, I'm currently making another attempt. This time I'm reading it as I travel to and from work on the bus, as Joyce is said to have written it to be read.
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