Cocaine Pages discussion

the group read for October is now up! find it, read it, and come back here at the end of the month where we can talk about it!

I'm a bit of a cheater cause I've already read this one, but I'm looking forward to discussing it with you :)

Also I suggest you watch the movie made after this book if you haven't yet, but as an altogether separate experience from reading the book as the two don't really have that much in common. If you manage to ignore the fact that the movie is ignoring the book, it's a beautiful visual experience.

I downloaded an epub from the internet and will do my reading on the laptop, though is kind of hard and tiring.

Laurentiu wrote: "I downloaded an epub from the internet and will do my reading on the laptop, though is kind of hard and tiring."

Why not borrow it from the library? :) It's a big book to read on your laptop.

I got a library near to my house, but is a small one and I doubt they have the book. As for the big one in Bucharest I don't have a pass.

It's not that big.(238 pages) I know that I can't focus more than three hours in front of the screen reading and I tend to avoid long books, as well as reading more than 1-2 per month.

Hopefully in the close future I'll get myself an ireader.

Ok, well, if you ever want to check if that small library next to your house has a book you want to read, you can check here:

http://aleph20.bmms.ro:8991/F

They don't have that many books in English, but the Romanian version of this one seems to be very popular with them as it appears in 29 out of 35 branches of the Metropolitan Library :)

Just got it look forward to the discussion!

has anyone finished/started this ? it seems like the month just passed by.

shamefully, I haven't yet started it... tomorrow I'll do that for sure.

I started it, but I didn't have the time to finish it.I know I proposed it and should have read it by now (I am ashamed), so I will try to get back to it as soon as Ana will have read the book and give it back to me.

which will be soon! soon!! :))

I've just joined this group because I'm in the middle of listening to EII on CD and think I've missed something in the flashback scenes. Help!!!!

hi! i joined this group cause i finished reading the book, but i still have some questions after reading it. i hope we can share our opinions together :)

Tomorrow I'm gonna start reading it. I had one week of countryside action due to the fact that one of my relatives had to undergo a surgery . ( the reading I'll do on my laptop)

I got it from Brandu yesterday, and I'm currently reading it. It's... interesting. I like it, but I can understand why it's not for everyone!

I can't wait to discuss about it. :)

I just spent money on buying the book :) . Passing by some book shops today I couldn't avoid some short looks. Bang!Bang! and so I spent my pocket money.

Guess I'll start this evening. This is the edition I bought . This cover is so confusing!! always opening the end of the book.

Strange book. Wasn't what I expected. It started so dull, that it made me cry. The structure it had, with the correspondence between Jonathan and Alex and each of them writing a novel, but took me at least 50 pages to understand what the hell is happening. Also I had difficulties in understanding a lot of phrases and had to re-read them a couple of times to try and make some sense of the ideas ( most were in the 1700s story ). And god dammit I hate that word spleen, as well as all the names presented early on.

I loved Alexander as a character and his story,but Safran's side of the story annoyed me, just didn't get to care for any of those characters. The sexuality in the book didn't appease me and disturbed me, it was just loathsome for me.

Anyway, in the end after I passed throw the entire plot and the final conclusion, I can just say that I liked it.

I do agree with you on the understanding of some phrases.. I found myself trying to understand simple statements and not being able to comprehend them because I wasn't going the right way!

I found the sexuality pretty simplistic, nothing I can say about it that can be special.

The thing is I read some reviews on this book and got to understand that some people find the book an unnatural act and that its not good enough for Foer to be called a "good writer". They started comparing Foer with other writers, but I'm not up for the same thing. I think comparing writers is never a good idea if you want to see how good ONE of them is. Foer, as any writer, must be taken separately and studied under its own lenses, because otherwise we would risk making a big mess of his style and his creations.

I can't expect everyone to think like me, but I think that Foer is a writer, if not good, at least decent. He deserves his praise for his books, and even though his Everything is Illuminated is maybe not the best that he wrote, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is good enough and shows improvement.

The one we read here is an attempt to portray some things he may not have been able to portray at the time, and maybe that was his biggest fault.

I'm curious about something.Why was every women attracted to Safran's dead hand? Maybe it was explained somewhere in the book,but if it was I didn't get it.

I don't remember it being explained anywhere.. but I think it's connected with him not being able to take care of himself fully.. so maybe the women cared for him more because of his "inabillity".

i think it is mentioned that the dead hand caused the women to feel pity for him. i'm a bit curious on why the novel ended mid sentence. anyone have any idea?

i didn't remember it ended that way, just checked now and you're right.. I have no idea why he did that. interesting thing, though

I got no idea either. For me this can be added to the pages where he put many dots or repeated same phrase for dozen of times. Why did he have to do that? Annoying! I failed to see his point.

Answer: No idea!

There is another chapter where he talked about the fact that jews have six senses (this one I liked) and many other subjects, even ones that had the reference -see God- .Almost everything that I read there made me stare like a donkey, couldn't find the connection with what I was reading. This happened to me, not necessarily to you too.