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Pynchon is such a recognizable figure that it can be hard to remember that I'd never actually read anything that he'd written (until now). Rating a Pynchon novel feels like a loaded exercise, like I'm wading into a generations-old war between one side that believes he's the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper and another side that believes that everyone from the first group is a pretentious know-nothing masquerading as an intellectual. 👇

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

Uh… what?

I think I‘m glad I read this? It at least saved me from wasting time on Gravity‘s Rainbow 😬

January‘s #doublespin and another #1001books checked off @TheAromaofBooks

My first Pynchon! And what a great read it was! I like mindfucks and this sure is one 😁 And I even learned something about the history of the post business!

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/us/digital-libraries-from-your-couch-trnd/index.h...
A list of 7 digital libraries.

Today is also the start of National Library Week 🎆🎉

Neo Noir Classic.

Update

Satire - The Crying of Lot 49

Drama - A Raisin in the Sun

Up Next:

LGBTQ Romance - Red Scrolls of Magic

Regency - Frederica

I'm not sure what I read. This is what I know:

1. New York Times called it a satire. It was set in southern CA so I could tell the cultural pieces - actors being lawyers and so forth, drugs, rock and roll, CIA involvement

2. Oedipa was the MC's name so I knew going in there would be incest. I was not mistaken.

3. A crazy mystery about a postal service that kills people who find out about it. Yeah, this is where I got lost.

4. LSD trip

A fun and worthy read.

My husband, a Pynchon fan, says I just didn‘t want to like this book. But that‘s not true. I don‘t read books I don‘t want to like. I want to enjoy every reading experience. I just didn‘t like this book. I didn‘t ever get a feel for the main character‘s personality, I didn‘t like the prose, and I never got into the story itself either. Pynchon himself spoke negatively of it later on, so I can‘t be totally wrong. Sorry to bring that 36% even lower.

Liked parts but others were boring

This week in rdg group we read this my 1st Thomas pynchon. Im not sure i can describe it in the few words available here other than i loved its anarchic drug infused madness, moving from a gruesome elizabethan play to the history of 17th century post service in Eur to a philatelic auction but i hated feeling out of my depth and confused. Dare i read more pynchon- im tempted but may have to reread this, not tonight but wine or lsd i think wd help.

Thomas Pynchon is one of my favorite authors, so I finally decided to officially join W.A.S.T.E.

I'm about to start reading this.
Any thoughts or opinions on this book?
They would be greatly appreciated.

1. Virginia Woolf. Period. Not that much happens but thoughts and feelings. Besides, I would love to be so well understood and so gently destroyed.
2. The Crying of Lot 49 3. 5‘7”? Mebbe? 4. So many ways! Nearly all the ways!

Adore Waterstones Tottenham Court Road - they always pick such good displays! #bookshop

#bookmail Thank you @JenP 😀 I can‘t wait to dive in!!!

Plus, I just finished my 3-D VW bus puzzle. Love that it came with a surfboard.

"Tell me a story about a complicated man."

some light summer reading ?

Anyone want any/all of these books?

Today‘s, #Goodwill #bookhaul. All are #TBR except the AJ Jacobs.

I was all over the place with this book. And maybe we‘re supposed to be. As far as unreliable narrators go, Oedipa ranks pretty high. I liked the writing style, I liked quite a few of the characters, I liked how silly it was...but something just felt off, for me. I felt lost for a majority of this book...is that the desired effect? 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️
135/1,001 #1001Books

The only thing saving this from “pan” status is the madcap momentum that propels you forward against your better judgment. Perhaps if I were partaking the drug of choice, the sheer juvenile giggling I could feel in the author‘s word choices wouldn‘t bother me as much.

I have a 110 pages to go. Do I have the patience for this? It feels like I can see the author, high as a kite, horny, and giggling as he names his characters Hilarious, Mucho Mas, and Fallopian. Sigh....This was recommended so I will try....

After the first chapter I wanted to bail. Somewhere before the end it became almost a pick. Is this book a hallucination by the protagonist? Or by the author? Would it be more accessible to a reader who has experienced southern California in the early 1960s? I suppose it is, at least in part, about our need for symbols and patterns, and our (in) ability to constitute reality. I'm left mainly with an urge to scribble the Tristero symbol everywhere.

'Day by day, Wendell is less himself and more generic. He enters a staff meeting and the room is suddenly full of people, you know? He's a walking assembly of man.'

I started off strong with this book. For the first chapter, I really felt like I knew what was happening and was interested. Somewhere after that, I got lost, and by the end I was just confused. It‘s short, competently written, and made me laugh a few times, plus the narration was good. I just don‘t really get the point?

So does Trystero exist? Is Oedipa insane? Perhaps a better question... do I care? 😳😂

#1001books

⭐️⭐️1/2

What a weird book. I think I would actually like this if there was an actual resolution at the end. Any resolution. Is Tristero real? Does WASTE exist? Is Oedipa mentally ill/caught in a prank/or chasing something real? Oh so confusing. I feel like I would have loved this in high school. Now? I need resolution! The wordplay is interesting, but given the book is 50+ years old, perhaps dated? #1001books #reading1001

March hasn't been the best month for reading so far, but I'm finally starting this for #Reading1001
In other news, still struggling with Ulysses. 🙄

Lunchtime #audiowalk today...

I have almost no idea what the heck I‘m listening to, but hey, I closed all of my rings. 🤪

Next up! I am nervous about this one, I suspect it might be too weird for my taste. At least it‘s short. #1001books

I pushed through most of it in 1 day, half read/half audio just to get to the end & see if there was any real ending. For me personally it was The Da Vinci Code with postal conspiracies, but with less science & scholarly work, full of impaired informants, whose cast in my mind‘s eye looked like 60‘s typecast players (I pictured cast members of WKRP)

If you are a Vonnegut fan, this one is most likely right up your alley, but it just wasn‘t for me.

Both circuitry swirls and road maps/housing clusters have a repetitive looking pattern of swirling that just might mean something if only we bothered to find out..... 👌so far

And they all look like hieroglyphics to be deciphered from above, and both actually do mean something if you study electronics or city planning...

But my brain keeps thinking, just like crop circles... 🤷‍♀️😂

Hmmm... I think the names in this book might be trying to tell me something about their characters personalities.... I can‘t imagine why?

#Reading1001

Interesting beginning to this book... I‘m intrigued...

Not sure if it‘s meant to be or not, but this seems like a great metaphor for the larger system of gender (also minority) suppression by the group, and the idea that the Knight can‘t rescue (because he‘s part of the same system), and if she can‘t figure out what‘s put her in the tower and why (from social norms to gaslighting), she may go mad or develop some superstition to explain it....

Nope.

I credit my current reading slump with this book which I neither understand nor enjoy reading. #1001books

Having completed chapter 1, i can safely say that I don‘t really understand any of what I‘ve just read. #1001books

I do find the names of characters and places fairly amusing though, especially the husband whose name is Mucho Maas.

#1001books goodreads group is reading these two short books as out BOTM for March. We‘re also celebrating women‘s history month with 4 options and finishing up Blonde by Oates.

We have discussion folders for each book. Stop by and join in the discussion if you are interested. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/180736-reading-1001

Getting some reading in and charging up while I wait around for power so I can shower 😖. It‘s currently 54 degrees inside our house. At what point do I need to remove our cat to a warmer location?

I‘m losing my mind after only 24 hours which makes me put into perspective the folks in Puerto Rico who are still struggling with obtaining steady power.

#reading 1001 #MarchBOTM, we are reading this short work of Thomas Pynchon over at Reading 1001 on GR if you would like to discuss this one. Started yesterday, finished today. First book of March. This one is a Quest and reminds me of Ulysses by Joyce.
@BookwormM #1001

Um... So I'm not sure how to rate this because half of the time I wasn't even sure what I was reading. The writing's good, the story's inventive, the dark satire is strong but I didn't enjoy this. I wouldn't have picked it up if it weren't for one of my courses - I'm just not interested at all (!!) in this type of literature.
After having read that this might be Pynchon's most accessible novel, I don't think I'll be reading any more soon.

⭐⭐

Another mini bookhaul! 👏🎉😍

I‘m trying to think of a way to say this that isn‘t just “Where was this going?”

I understand we were supposed to be tracing WASTE and rebellion through Freudian, etc veins. Normally I can follow Pynchon around his tales but dude. The road we took to a mostly unresolved end was littered with too many detours for my taste. #thisreviewfeelsignorant

Look what‘s happening to them. In school they got brainwashed - Morse and his Telegraph, Bell and his telephone, Edison and his light bulb. Only one man per invention. Then when they grow up they found out they had to sign all their rights to a monster; got stuck on some project or “task force” or “team”. Nobody wanted them to invent - only perform their little role in a design ritual. They can always tell when they come on another of their kind.

#firstsentence thx @Cathythoughts tagging @Anna40 “One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost 2 million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make...

Tube reading...

"...here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to communicate by U.S. Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, unpublicized, private."

I first read this as a freshman in college and spent most of the book totally confused. I just finished rereading and while I can appreciate more of it, I still don't get a whole lot. The cover art, though, is great.