A Question for Poly's Literati (or: Getting D laid more often: A project not worth your time)

[Docfeelgood]

Don't need to read book if you do this.

[Sir Og]

I thought the women from OP dig Paulo Coelho and similar ****.

Also isn't reading Cosmopolitan enough material to strike a conversation with a "modern" women.

[Adam Smith]

Lots of smart young women (late 20's with Ph. D's) in my office. Not counting the obvious "girl" books, I have recently seen them reading books like The Great Gatsby, The Importance of Being Ernest, Things Fall Apart, Great Expectations, and anything by Evelyn Waugh.

[KrazyHorse]

I'm reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary (in French) as we speak. Its an amazing novel, probably one of the best written novels I ever read

Puke. Madame Bovary sucks my balls. I've read it in both French and English. There was nothing lost in the translation.

[KrazyHorse]

Actually, your best bet, Darius, is to find moderately obscure authors that the ladies haven't read, so you can turn this situation around. They'll think you've already read the contemporary stuff and are just ahead of them. As for the contemporary stuff, cliffnotes and wikipedia are your friends. You are just doing this to get laid, right? Not for any personal growth or crap like that?

Even easier is to just make some **** up. Like how I'm currently reading a conceptual postmodern novel by an author from French Guiana. It's structured as a cookbook where the recipes reveal more and more about the inner psychological turmoil of the anonymous narrator. I'm pretty sure that the narrator's wife is being unfaithful to him, possibly with a sommelier. Not to reveal anything, but the next chapter is titled "Chicken Florentine" which, unless it's ironic is a dead giveaway.

[KrazyHorse]

Fiction is gay. That being said, faggy hipsters seem to revere Infinite Jest, so maybe you should start there.

First hit on google 'infinite jest hipster'

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/RDL3NLW6FG3Z

[Imran Siddiqui]

God, the top of that reader's list from Random House is dreadful. Absolutely fvcking dreadful. I've read many of those novels and most are pure shit.

Define "top" . Yes, Rand and Hubbard are suck ass bad, but if you are talking the Top 25, "Lord of Rings" isn't bad (isn't all that amazing either, though - and the point here is to get laid, not to impress other geeks), "To Kill a Mockingbird" is quite good, "1984" is pretty good and easy to read, etc.

Even easier is to just make some **** up. Like how I'm currently reading a conceptual postmodern novel by an author from French Guiana. It's structured as a cookbook where the recipes reveal more and more about the inner psychological turmoil of the anonymous narrator. I'm pretty sure that the narrator's wife is being unfaithful to him, possibly with a sommelier. Not to reveal anything, but the next chapter is titled "Chicken Florentine" which, unless it's ironic is a dead giveaway.

You need to write this book so I may read it

[KrazyHorse]

More interesting would be a book about an author from French Guiana yadda yadda yadda. The conflict underlying the cookbook is actually a manifestation of his own guilt for cheating on his wife.

[Imran Siddiqui]

See, you already have a sequal in the works.

[Dis]

God, the top of that reader's list from Random House is dreadful. Absolutely fvcking dreadful. I've read many of those novels and most are pure shit.

why did you read them if they were bad?

[Imran Siddiqui]

How do you know if they are bad if you don't read them?

[KrazyHorse]

To quote Asimov: "you don't have to eat the whole egg to know it's bad".

Honestly, a plot summary or a few pages is generally enough to tell you if a book is an utter piece of ****.

[KrazyHorse]

And after suffering through two Rand novels, I think I'm qualified to claim that everything she wrote was trash.

[Kitschum]

Something by Don DeLillo.
Everything by Pynchon even though it's unreadable and all the same
That Frenchman who won the Nobel prize last year. Not Clouseau, but you can look it up.
The last 1-2 pages of Ulysses with the "yes, yes" dialogue.
That novel about being a cat by a Japanese author

Edit: The thing around your neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (had to look it up), a short story collection by a Nigerian author who won some prize

[KrazyHorse]

The Metamorphosis by Kafka. One of the easiest ones to read.

Pynchon is ****ing impossible. Just grab a plot summary from Wikipedia. Know one of the relatively clever metaphors he uses and the main characters from Gravity's Rainbow.