Yep, that’s exactly what I did on one of the attempts.
First try was:
It gave a little ‘uploading’ indicator with progress. In the end, nothing changed and no image appeared.
Second try was as you describe. Third try was like the second try, but I used GIMP to scale the image to 50% and uploaded that file. Still no image displayed. shrugs Thanks for posting it for me.
Odd, i haven’t had issues uploading to the site in the past (besides the size restriction to gifs, which constantly frustrates my attempts at memes)
I’ll just PM you next time I need to post an image. 
Oh I’m sure it was. One of the things amusing about Ulysses is that underneath all the virtuosic writing it’s a big fart joke. A fart joke that contains life, the universe, and everything.
I’m not reading a bad book right now.
After the sentence, “Who is John Galt?”
If you like reading Homer or the Icelandic Eddas, you’d like the Silmarillion – it’s basically the myth cycle of the elves and as such is written like one rather than a novel.
I tried to read Atlas Shrugged once, and made it about halfway through (if that) before I couldn’t stand Rand’s sheer insufferability.
i read that once a decade to remind myself of the evil in the philosophical background of so many republicans and capital L libertarians.
I tried to read Moby Dick three times before finally listening to it on audiobook. Damn, that book.
Kinda glad I finished it in the end, if only so I can know what I’m talking about when I say “Christ, how the fuck did this ever get considered the Great American Novel?”
I mean, it does have a few really, really great bits in it. But the rest of it! Oh, the interminable rest of it!
Don’t feel bad. I had to read that in grad school. It went on and on, just when I thought it was done I was about half way. I’m pretty sure he got paid by the word.
That’s the one. Thank you.
I think I hated it so much because it was praised and seemed to be held in high regard. But christ, that kid. What a despicable fuckwit.
Three novels in a day? Damn, that makes my reading rate seem pretty dismal.
I disagree about Infinite Jest. I think it is worth the read, but you have to get past the first 300 pages ( and preferably do a re-read)
What? How is that possible? GoT is long but it’s not bad.
Yeah, A Passage to India was the one and only book I’ve been so frustrated by I chucked it across the room.
And I’ll make a note to avoid ever reading that book you threw!
There are hundreds of strategies for reading: constantly experiment!
One I learned from Marshall McLuhan - hey I just looked in my notes and it was from BoingBoing: if it’s a serious book, only read the right hand side pages (or, for bibliomanes: the “recto”; the left side pages are the “verso”…anyway):
Never feel guilty for abandoning a book: there are ALWAYS others in which to delve.
Also: if you wanna say you’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow, commit to it: use the abundant secondary sources it demands. You’re some weirdo independent scholar! Isn’t that exciting?
Many read maybe the first sentence of Finnegans Wake and give up, after thumbing through…“is the…whole thing like this?” I just decided to give myself until, oh, DEATH to finish FW. I already finished it, but about 1/10 of the way through realized, this is not a book you start, read all the way through and then “accomplish” the finish: you’re never really done reading the Goddamned Thing. Why do I still read in FW? I obtain mild psychedelic effects from it, and my dreams are weirder. Also: tons of scatalogical jokes and maybe the entire history of everything is hidden in it? Others can’t stand the Thing. I get it. I suspect reading FW has contributed to my being unemployable. (Or I read it 'cuz I’m congenitally unemployable? Alex Haley/Arthur Hailey…)
Alone again along the riverrun…
I feel similarly about Infinite Jest. I very much enjoyed it when I read it, but it wasn’t until after I’d read some of DFW’s essays and short stories that I figured out how to sell people on it: just think of it as a collection of (highly) interrelated short stories and/or essays. I haven’t tried this myself, but I think it would make the reading easier. For me, the most difficult part was just knowing that there was still so much ahead, although most chapters on their own would be relatively easy and enjoyable to read.
Used to just plough through books; now I analyse.to see what doesn’t work.
Six weeks back I borrowed Neal Asher / Infinity Engine and James S.A Corey / Persepolis Rising from the local library.
Neal Asher / Infinity Engine
I want this to work - it has many of the ingredients I enjoy: space war, snazzy sounding tech, robots, AI… by page 20 the veil of disbelief began to fall. I laboured on to page 40 (end of chapter 1) to see how lay the land, and then let it rest. Picking it back up was a chore - it’s a borrow; it also has heaps of praise on the back cover:
‘Asher rocks… a vivid future’
‘An exciting, intricate, and unabashedly futuristic story rife with twists and turns’
That’s going to ramp up the buzz, right? Eventually I had another go, soldiering on to page 64. It’s going back to the library, the balance unread. The report will have to say: Sorry Neal, this isn’t for me.
Neal Asher is a fellow Brit.
On to James S.A. Corey / Persepolis Rising
From the get go the style pulls me in. The high-conceptuals don’t pull me on but what does is a terse, direct narrative. I got to page 22 (end of chapter 1) and realised I might enjoy the full package.
So, Mr James S. A. Corey, you scored a hit (both of you 
)
I probably won’t finish it as I’m on the job hunt… yada yada yada.
Conclusion: stop reading when it’s due back at the library.
I gave Joseph Heller’s Something Happened! 600 pages. That’s 12 hours of my life I’ll never get back.
Now here is an interesting case. I thought about giving Movy Dick up during the unending section where Melville abandons the story and goes on and on describing whales. But I stuck with it, eventually he got back to the story and in the end I liked it.
