Page created 26 Apr 2002 by blvdgirl , last modified 26 Apr 2002 by blvdgirl
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/booktalk.htm
So, what are you reading? What's good? What sucks? What speaks to you?
Just read the novella Shopgirl by Steve Martin. I bought it a couple of months ago randomly and picked it up two days ago while thinking, I should read the books that I buy. The basic premise- MFA storeclerk and late- night artist, Mirabelle, has an affair with a wealthy, older man. She thinks it's serious. He thinks that she knows it's not serious. And both of them learn about their true identities in the process. Set in the more affluent, artsy segments of Los Angeles, with brief interludes in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Vermont. Major themes- honesty in relationships, power issues in relationships, and the importance of "peership" (my term). Overall, the plot is fairly predictable. There are some great supporting characters, especially Jeremy and Lisa; but the appeal of the main characters feels a little flat. So, don't waste your money or even your librarian's time. Eventually, they will probably make it into a mini- series that you can ignore as well. And my final conclusion, all the critical acclaim it received was simply an effort to kiss Steve Martin's ass.
im reading The Lord of the Rings. I read The Fellowship of the Ring before the movie came out, and have since seen the movie 6 times (my sixth was with, surprisingly, pedro, dogmanphil, blvdgirl, oldpossumus, and barefootjumper). I have read several things since then (couple poker books, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, some short fiction by Roald Dahl). but a couple days ago, while thinking about LOTR:FOTR i was thinking about how i wanted to finish reading the story. so i picked up 2Towers and plowed right in. im almost done with it. Sam, Frodo, and Slinker/Stinker are at the crossroads before Cirith Ungol.I love this series. i love it more and more every time i read it or see it or discuss it. amazing.
then i SWEAR i will finish reading Underworld.
Ok. So, who, after reading parts 2 & 3 of LOTR believes that Eowyn is a dispensible character? I ask you.
Yes, I may let this die someday...
i don't think she is. i mean, somebody else could slay the chief Nazgul, but i don't think Tolkien wanted anybody else to.
eowyn must be there...no man can slay the Witchking...that was the deal, why he is lord of the nazgul...its a very devilish deal... if you mean dispensible = she should have died from her wounds and heartache...well then, that is a further debate, but I would again point to tolkien knowing more of this world that he wrote than the books, or anything since published, has mentioned....with the renewal of
with the renewal of the kingdom of gondor, the return of the king, it was necessary for aragorn to bring healing, to be first revealed as a healer...so, if eowyn just died, then, well, aragorn wouldn't have looked as kingly, you know? anyway, I forget any point I thought I had...she's awesome, and I don't think she could be excluded from any version
I know. You all see the indespensible beauty of Eowyn- how she is necessary to the plot and the thematic wholeness of the tale... But, it stil boogles my mind that they may have axed her from the films altogether, and I must vent my fears and frustrations.
Last weekend I procured a copy of Neil Gaiman's Sandman - The Dream Hunters. It's a retelling of an old Japanese folk tale, and it's incredibly badass. It also helps that it is illustrated by my personal lord and savior, Yoshitaka Amano.
just wanted to finish the Eowyn thing... She is in the next two movies...She (as in the books) has a large part of the coming events..I'll just say this...I geek hard (as I can attest to baggins as well) and I've been a snoop about these movies for a good 2 and a half years now....the story is in good hands....
Ok...I just checked the website and you're right, they are keeping Eowyn. Good thing or else I would have been forced to hate the next two films. I guess I should have kept my geek up, but I hadn't been to the site since before I saw the Fellowship.
I figured from the first movie that they were trying to merge her into Arwen somehow.
I had also heard they were going to do that. But that was a long time ago, and I've let my geek down about it.
Nope...two girls, one for each of you.... actually, after seeing the preview for TTT, a friend of mine (who shed a light tear at the first teaser for Fellowship) declared he was more moved by this new one....and, after seeing Eowyn (who is in much of the trailer) declared that Aragorn should choose differently...my friend, he's one in a million....
Man, I can feel my clothes getting stinky and the pizzaburger sauce all over my fingers, just like I was there.
Sad, though it is, Aragorn doesn't choose differently. Actually, I was a little pissed about the sword-wielding Arwen in the movie because she is supposed to be more of a foil to Eowyn. Sort of blurs some of the points that Tolkien was making... However, Eowyn has to understand Aragorn's rejection before she can really love Faramir. But, I've always thought that Faramir was definately getting the better gal.
I bequeath the task of coming up with the Entree name for LOTR to Mr. Peter E. Carlson.You are the Entree Bearer, Peter.
Seeing Amy's suggestion, i probably would have done it (badly) if it weren't bequeathed before i got here.
regarding arwen and eowyn:
alas, my geek has waned a bit as of late. i haven't had the $$ to get out and see the latest TTT trailer yet. im almost ashamed to admit it. however, the couple of times i tried to organize something, plans got all shot to hell, and it wasn't my fault. Eowyn seems to me to be the stronger, more resilient, more hardy-and-down-to-Middle-Earth girl. Arwen seems to have more of a glamorous, idealistic, romanticized air about her. seems like the truly powerful stars always get the flashier chicks. but maybe the best ones are saved for the lesser heroes. i don't know which one i would choose, given the choice. then again, i don't like to talk about the situation as men choosing women (thus asserting dominance over a passive object [thus objectifying women]). makes the ladies out to be prizes on a game show or something. i know none of us are putting it that way. and i don't think Tolkien ever intended it to be taken that way. but sometimes stories like this don't always go out of their way to make the distinction.
much more to say on arwen and eowyn, and it'll be a good topic to start off with, if only we could get something to eat while we talk......
Re-reading CS Lewis' Space Trilogy....The first book is Out of the Silent Planet. It's interesting to see how similar Lewis' ideas are to Tolkien's in the Silmarilian. Kind of makes you wonder who influenced who... Kind of makes you wish you could have sat in on some of their conversations at The Eagle and Child- that would have been cool.
ive always thought that when i get to heaven, one of the first things im going to do is sit and have a pint with Martin Luther, JRR Tolkien, and CS Lewis. and im going make Lewis finish the Dark Tower. that book was going to some REALLY cool places. but it was never finished. or it was destroyed before his estate could publish it. it bugs the heck out of me that i can't find out the rest of that book until i die.
I read the unfinished Dark Tower, and I must say it was really cool. He was getting into some odd soul-migration stuff and parallel universe stuff. Crazy!
I've been skimming A Gravity's Rainbow Companion which I either purchased while sleepwalking, or moonboots left on my bookshelf. Almost makes me want to re-read that beast....almost. Last weekend I happenened across Mason & Dixon new for $4.99. So I'm going to start that soon if anyone cares to join me. It could be an informal diner bookclub of sorts.
and its just beggin to be read. don't know how committed i am to it right now though.
the learned english dog a conversation between two clocks passing by and pynchon with a heart read it...... and it may be time for me to read it again.. yes, yes, I will do this with you just say when
i also wish to join the happy throng. huzzah!
I just have to find a copy.
i guess if all you cats are game, i'll ante up too.
Look for a new entreé for the Mason & Dixon reading group in the next week or two.
are we going to have like assigned pages per week or something? how will we keep from getting ahead of each other? how will i know if i'm winning?
so id prefer if i had time after i got back to 'catch up' with those of you starting this week.
Yesterday I finished Thom Jones's short story collection Cold Snap. The first group of stories, about nutty folks all somehow associated with African medical aid missions, were excellent, but the rest (the last third or so of the book) were rather annoying. But that's okay because the third story is about a drunk baboon, and it's impossible to go wrong with that level of craziness.
I recently finished David Brin's Kil'n People, which was a fairly straight-foward detective tale set in a quirky future where one can purchase clay "blanks" into which you can imprint your soul's Standing Wave, so they they can do all the boring work stuff, and you can do other stuff.I also got a copy of his book Earth, which I have read before. The copy I got is a brick-like paperback with nice small print. Excellent.
always thought books on tape were a more than semi-lame idea, but then i'm butt-puckeringly anal about somebody else spoiling my read by interpreting the words for me. i hate to hear poetry read by anyone, even the author, if i haven't had the pleasure of reading it first. i like the inflectional blankness, disembodiedness, openness of written words. but, i think i'm wrong about this a lot - for instance: this last weekend i listened to david sedaris' book me talk pretty one day as spoken by the author this last weekend on a long drive, and it was cran-tastic. infrequently has five hours of "reading" gone so fast or seemed so pleasant. and besides that, the book is really good. if you've listened much to this american life (which if you haven't i can unreservedly recommend although i miss it almost every weekend) you may already have heard a few of the book's better stories, and you may be familiar with the confessional tone and substance of his writing. so maybe i'm not wrong about this a lot, because confessional nonfiction (i think mostly) writing is a pretty special case, but in any case, find this set of tapes if you can, because they are pretty short and plenty silly and occasionally laugh-out-loud-and-wake-your-sleeping-brother good.
that's the crappiest book review i've ever read! there's not a single specific in the whole paragraph. all he says is that he thinks it's a good book. what a bunch of crappy crap. like for instance, he doesn't say that not all the stories are really that great, and he doesn't even name the best ones, like "a shiner like a diamond" or "picka pocketoni", nor does he mention that most of the really good stories are about france. plus, he doesn't describe the style much, or say why the stories are good, just that they're good. moonboots is a jackass.
I haven't forgotten about the mason & dixon reading. I don't think assigned chapters is a good idea since we won't be meeting face-to-face and people read at different rates anyway. Maybe I will create a room this week and those that want to start reading can join in on the conversation. If there are people that would rather hold off to July or something, speak now and we can postpone.
I'm almost done reading a really cool book called Let It Blurt. its a biography about an old school rock journalist, Lester Bangs. The book is done well, and tells the story in a real amazing amount of depth with a lot of details and stories. it also has some AMAZING quotes from the man. Here is an interview, and brief bits about the book. You all should check it out.
it is by one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card. the whole series is good. there is talk of a movie. learn more here.
I had luck at the libary last night. They finally had the copy of Fight Club and I also got Gateway by Frederik Pohl and Hyperion by Dan Simmons, both Hugo winners. I also picked up Fermat's Last Theorem by Amir Aczel and Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller. It was one of those rare time that they had most of the books I was looking for. Plus they had Rushmore in their video section. And now, I've got my PIN number so I can reserve books online and stuff. Not that I lack reading material at home and every time I go to the library I end up with more books than I can read in three weeks.
this is a really cool book. the whole series is a great read, but its definitely a mindfuck (sorry to those who are offended, but that's the perfect word). i think you'll enjoy it, lukas. i was thinking about you today. i drove a guy from DC who said he was having trouble finding work in the IT market. said a quick prayer for ya. hmmm. html tags don't work in the headers?
A Canticle for Liebowitz? I'm about halfway through right now and finding it fascinating reading. Coming from a Catholic background, it's interesting to see how the new world religion is building on the old world, and how it references the crusades (the simpletons). I'm really digging it so far. Anyone else read this book? (Someone recommended it to me, and it may have been Pedro but I don't remember who told me to read it, but thanks to whoever did!) I get this problem where people tell me this book is good, so I go buy it then I lose it on my bookshelves and re-find it a year, maybe two, later and cannot recall who recommended it or why.
I really dig that book, and might have recommended it to you.
Excellent book! I like Part II the most I think, but the rest of it is just amazing. A couple of us folks read it for a class at NPU... Christianity and Literature in the 20th Century- what a great class that was! Enjoy the rest of it... And, if you can find it, try Lost in the Cosmos by Walker Percy when you finish Canticle. They go quite well together, I think.
not the canadian football league. canticle for leibowitz. i wasn't in the class, but i also was roped into reading A Prayer For Owen Meany which made me weep. read it if you haven't. read it again if you have.
For those of you with them thar computer sound file players, NPR did an audio dramur production of A Canticle for Liebowitz. Oggs away!
Tastytronic Industries Prefers Ogg Vorbis to MP3!Also, the new version of Winamp supports Ogg Vorbis out of the box.
I haven't yet read Canticle (it's on the reading list) but I've read some other really great books that are science fiction + religion (although I'm not sure that's what Canticle is about). The books are Children of God and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. The books center on a Jesuit mission to a far of planet and the journey of faith of one of the priests. There's some more info on the books on her website.
I'm reading 2001 again. It's sort of slow going, I think because I've had a lot of other stuff to do recently.After that, I get to start in on the frosted flakes box. ;-)
I like the premise of 2001. The idea that aliens are giving us gentle nudges is neat or whatever, but what I really like is the underlying assumption that unless we unlearn our aggressive instincts (either from alien nudges or by our own doing), we'll annihilate ourselves before we can start exploring the stars. Sometimes I feel like this might be true. But mostly I'm just boggled by the sheer number of humans on the planet, and wonder how we manage to get anything done at all with all the free porn available on the Internet.
...oh wait. nevermind.
Part II is really really damn good. I am fascinated with the way this book is moving. It's hard - I used to finish a book in one or two days because I'd get so into it and I don't have the time now and it really really bugs me. I wish I could finish a book quicker - it's like leaving an old friend.Thanks for the other recommendations. Books connecting society and religion fascinate me - religion and the study thereof is a pet topic of mine as a Catholic-Turned-Jew.
I got the DVD of 2001 recently. Maybe it was the frame of mind I was in, but it annoyed me intensely. It's so slow moving, and full of "look how cool the future will be" sequences. I suppose they could just be take as "everyday life in the future" scenes, though. Never mind.
I still take occasional reminding that the "computer displays" in the film were all done by animation.
Just finished the book. Was good.Regarding the movie, I suspect that the sequences are so slow because, well, you have to move slower in 0-gravity. Remember, this movie came out before we landed on the moon. Aside from the easily-dated furniture, I'd say Kubrick and Clarke did a laudable job of predicting details of the near future. Much better than any other sci-fi flick I've seen.
Perhaps another reason for the drawn-out-ness of things was to give the audience a chance to realize what was happening, and to think about things. Sure, we all know now that astronauts would eat liquids from tubes, but that wasn't common knowledge in the 60s, os there's a few minutes of a guy eating stuff through a straw. Or the zero-gravity toilet. Or the disorientation of the girl walking upside-down in the circle.
My favorite favorite thing about that movie, though, is that the soundtrack features two pieces by Gyorgi Ligeti, and people don't whine incessantly about it.
So now I'm reading from a Frosted Flakes box (thanks, Lukas!) And I find myself wondering: did Philip K. Dick write anything bad?
I just finished read Dan Simmon's Hugo Award winning novel Hyperion. And I must say that it is a fine book. Probably my favorite out of the other 3 Hugo winner's I've read recently. Gateway by Frederik Pohl was good, but it relied heavily on building to a climax at the end of the book. And since the ending wasn't all that great, I felt somewhat let down by the preceding story, which was well written and interesting, it just never delivered. Both A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge were great books with engaging stories. I liked the first book quite a lot and am glad I bound it, but I felt there were some major holes in the story. The latter was a prequel and good in it's own right, but it seemed to move rather slowly at times.
Then I picked up Hyperion. The story is fantastic and I absolutely loved the structure of the book. It is told through the personal stories of seven pilgrims and each story is fascinating and engaging. The technology is very cool even if it is wholly impossible, but then again, so is most tech in sci-fi books. The strong point of the book is definitely the characters. Rarely have I read science fiction that has conveyed such emotion through the pain and struggle of the characters. Even though the ending does not resolve anything, I was not bothered. It was a book that left me wanting to discuss the implications of the TechCore, the Farcasters, the destruction of Old Earth and so on. This is one I had considered binding, and may do so now so I can read it again and return my overdue library book.
Next up is A Canticle for Leibowitz or Dhalgren, two more Hugo Award winners. Plus, I want to read Fall of Hyperion to see what happens. And then I'm going to stay away from the library and try to read some of the books on my shelf like Mason & Dixon, the Don Delillo books I got years ago, the Einstein biography gathering dust, and the list goes ever on.
Hyperion is really cool man. im glad you liked it. i really liked the structure too, sort of a SF Canterbury Tales. sort of (i think that description was printed on the book itself, which is lame of me to repeat it, but i think its a good description). Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and Rise of Endymion are all really good too. i was happy with that series as a whole. i love the technology in those books. the Farcasters are so freakin cool. i especially love the river that flows from planet to planet through the 'casters. super cool idea!
if you like those books, you might like Darwin's Blade by Simmons. i also have his novel Crook Factory which i haven't read yet. its about Hemingway running a bunch of spy operations in Cuba during WWII. seems pretty cool, so far. I like Simmons' ability to reference other literary works and authors without ripping them off.
also, if you enjoy SF with good characters and well-written plots, check out Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. he's probably my favorite SF author, and i've read 90% of his stuff. EG and the rest of the series is fantastic, and is supposed to be made into a movie sometime (this was a long time ago, but i heard it from the man himself, at a signing). sooner or later we'll have to get that M&D club going.
Ender's Game is good stuff. After reading that many years ago my sister (who I need to get on here along with my wife et al) and I went on an Orson Scott Card kick. Well more my sister than me, but I ended u perading a whole lot of his books and Ender's Game is definitely up there with his best work. For a while I was into the Alvin Maker series, but that got all kinds of hokey and I haven't picked up a Card book in a while. I should read Ender again though.
On the recommendatino of Nick, I picked up Perdido Street Station from the library and I must say that it is a thoroughly enjoyable book. I'll write a semi-review one of these days.
Seriously, after I finish/quit reading Dhalgren (so far I don't like it) then I'm all set to pick up M&D. Seriously.
Erik just gave me The Body Artist by Don Delillo. Its short, and probably a good way to read a whole Delillo book without having to attempt Underworld yet again. not that i couldn't handle it, i just kept putting it down for too long, and having to start over. i will read it someday.
re: OSC
He's definitely one of my favorite SF authors. I first got into him through Will Duffield. He had a big ole collection of short fiction by OSC that i blazed through in about 2 weeks (1000+ pages). i loved it. i then started reading his series, starting with Ender's Game. did you read the whole series, or the book, lukas? read the series if you didn't already. i like the Alvin Maker series, though its got a long way before its over, and he hasn't put one out in a while. his single, non-series novels are good too. like Songmaster, Enchantment, Lost Boys, Wyrms, Saints, etc. also good is the Jason Worthing Saga. check it out. man, its been a while since i read his stuff. makes me wanna go back and reread it all again.
Started reading Moby Dick the other night. I am officially one chapter in... It's beautifully written actually, something I wasn't expected having never been much of a fan of Melville's prose. But there is a real poignancy in the text that I think I am going to like.
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth,; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."
"meditation and water are wedded forever."
"Ah! how cheerfully we assign ourselves to perdition."
"as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote."
I've finally gotten around to reading Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. Remarkable stuff, truly. I've always been a fan of Atwood. I'm taking a course in Canadian Women's Lit (such is the stuff a writing major's day is made of) currently, and finding it quite fascinating. They could've called it Atwood, Munroe and Shields, Oh My! It's quite good. I don't want to talk too much about the particulars, but it totally illustrates differences between men and women that I've noticed a bazillion times before. Women's hatred is calculating, cold. Fierce, quiet, running beneath the surface. Men, it's in your face and you can deal with it, but women, oh no. So calm, so quiet. This book is a good illustration of that, and Elaine's artistic abilities are great. The whole thing reads like a masterpiece gallery of art. Really a fascinating structure for a book, and a really engaging set of characters. I actually know a girl like Cordelia. Knew. I got out before Elaine though.Highly recommended.
Another book I'm reading is the Nanny Diaries. Don't waste your time. I've got a book club I participate in and this is quite the piece o crap they dreged up. Totally without the humor it seeks.
Next up? The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields.
I'm reading this cool book called Lord of the Rings by this british guy named J.r.r. Tolkein. It's cool you guys should check it out.
i think its evil, like those harry potter books.
and I heard that tolkeen was a CATHOLIC!For those of you just joining the conversation from The Internet, this interchange is a joke... now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
unless its the biography of U2. i wount read it. but, i have heard of this "lord of the dance of the rings." supposed to be good.
i just finished this one by alice sebold. it's her first novel if you don't include her memoirs and it's amazingly graceful. the title phrase, 'the lovely bones' refers to the lives that keep growing around someone's absence from earth. somehow, reading this book helped me to find wonderful, warm memories from throughout my life.
the problem I suffer from is I attempt to read something like 7 books at a time only to finish one of them... if I am lucky. So I end up with such experiences as reading the first 45 pages of Xenocide 10 different times. And then other books never get read because I tell myself, "This time I will read until the last page" and once more dig into a book I have started more times than I can remember. Although, it does make me feel better to know that I am not the only person whose copy of Underworld is gathering dust on the shelf. Someday... that is if I can ever finish Xenocide.
One book that I am definitely glad I was able to finish recently was Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I know I missed 3/4 of what was intended, but it was an incredible read. It made me wish I had the opportunity to have studied it in college... it would have been interesting to hear Dooley's comments on it.
Dooley!
on the bus to work today, I just finished reading "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" by John Gribbin, which is a piece on Quantum Physics, and totally changed my life. Unfortunately the first third of the book reads like Genesis "so-and-so begat this theory, which led to what'shisname's theory on this..." and so on. Then it goes to the meat and potatoes of quantum theory, and then hits la-la land with a lot of Metaphysical conjecture.I give it a four out of five stars, and maybe all five, cause if you sit on the bus and read a book about physics or any sort of science, the weirdos will leave you alone. Pittsburgh has lots of those extra- talkative whackjobs prowling the bus lines.
are we talking Xenocide by Orson Scott Card? if you're trying to read that book without reading Ender's Game or Speaker for the Dead first, you're gonna be lost, and not that into it. if that's the case, i'd highly recommend going back and reading those first. if you have read them first, and are still having trouble getting into Xenocide, well, i don't know what to tell you. except that its really good. and so is Children of the Mind, which comes after, and is really freaking metaphysical-cool. god i love Card.
if we're talking different books completely, then forget i ever mentioned it. and what is this similiarly-titled book about?
So a long time ago peter berquist bought this book at amvet's called A Day with wilbur robinson. It was an illustrated children's book and it was one of the coolest books i've seen of that genre. Well I had totally forgotten about it until the other day when something rattled around my old brain and I did some web searching to find the author. His name is William Joyce and he is awesome. He's probably a household name for those that know kids books, but I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes.
raskol got me the latest installation in the Ender's Game series the other night, for my recent birthday. he's cool.
i just started the first chapter, and it seems pretty cool already. definitely taking a different turn from the way the first 4 books went. but them again, the last 3 books started when the first book started, and has progressed from there. but following different characters. quite good.
...a month later... I was referring to Card's Ender series. And, yes, I have read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead many times each. Recently, I even went back to read them again simply so I could continue on with Xenocide and not miss a beat. But I just can't get into Xenocide. I even have the prospect of eventually getting to Children of the Mind, which some claim to be the best book in the series. Basically, this is all to say that some day I am going to have myself chained to a chair and not allowed to be released until I complete Xenocide.
it might take a bit of time to get into. but you will weep at the end. and COTM is REALLY good! the whole series is one of my favorites. The latest installation is entitled Shadow Puppets. so far its been really good. i haven't had a huge chunk of time to just sit and read it all day, unfortunately. but tomorrow i will have some time. and perhaps another chapter or 2 tonight. OSC is one of my favorite SF authors, by far.
I don't like it. Why must I teach it?... Oh yeah, dead white guy canon.
But, I did come up with a fun project idea for it that my students will probably whine about, neglect to turn in, or turn in late (that whole karma, what-goes-around-comes-around thing)-- they have to make brocheres to try to get tourists to travel to any of the painful and deadly places visited by Odysseus in his journeys... They have so many fun options- Circe's island, the Siren's place, the channal where Scylla & Charybdis hang out, the Land of the Lotus-eaters, the island of the Cyclopes, the home of the giants, Helio's island, and, of course, Hades.
The Odyssey just seems like a great way to get to show lots of Xena episodes in class.
I love Charles Bukowski. I love him because he hated the world and I want to hate it too. And his poetry was touching while full of anger, spit, urine, and whiskey.But then I found Fante. Fante is like Bukowski but with more heart, more genuine feeling. Bukowski would of been fante if fante had been born just a few years later.
Now I'm reading the rum diary, by Hunter S. Thompson. It's really good, he wrote it in his 30's before he was all drugged up. When my boyfriend gave it to me to read, he said, "You'll like it, there's even a love story." Why does he think that about me. Rum Diary is good, becasue when Thompson was 30 he was still young and not quite so diluted...but he also wasn't out of his mind or irrational. Also you can find some form of tenderness in his words.
But my favorite is still bukowski.
i am reading a kick-ass book. its called: J.R.R. Tolkien Author of the Century and its written by Tom Shippey. he's all over the extended super max ultra platinum collector's DVD of FOTR, talking about Tolkien. the book is really great, talking about JRRT and his work on Middle Earth and just why it is so damn great. also, his knowledge of and work with philology and his understanding of Tolkien's fascination and obsession with it is really great, and the insight in this book is invaluable. i highly recommend it. ask and maybe you can borrow it.
Somebody lent me Ender's Shadow. It was pretty good. I think I would have liked to have a little more of Ender...I think Ender's book had a little more of Bean anyway, but I only read Ender's Game once when someone lent it to me in college. I think I will have to go back and re-read it now and then the sequels.
you must go back and reread it and read the sequels: speaker for the dead, xenocide, children of the mind. then the alternate sequels: shadow of the hegemon, and shadow puppets (which i just read a couple months ago, and its pretty good.) anyways, i love this series very much, and i finally got my dad to read them. though he started with EG, then decided to read ender's shadow next, then wanted to read shadow puppets after that. which is definitely not a good order to read them in. but he claimed he couldn't find SFTD in any book store he went to. i told him i look for it everytime i go to a book store, and they always have it. so i finally bought it for him.
harrypotter the fifth!
I finished the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's triumvirate of novels about the colonisation of Mars. Red Mars is a long and tedious book that by some act of grace won a Hugo and a Nebula. There were lots of cool sci-fi gizmos and many details reagrding the technical aspects of colonising Mars, but these didn't save the book from it's lack of any sort of character development. The plot line is pretty thin and there is a loack of continuity throughout the book. Maybe I just read it too fast, but I really could not get into any of the characters. They read like cardboard cutouts of Mars settlers. I checked out the second book as well and may see if it's any better since I think it also won a Hugo. Red Mars could have been a really great novel, but it's not.
I liked the series. Red Mars, however, was very disjointed, and was the hardest one to read all the way through. in the other 2 you will get a lot more character development, and get to know quite a few people really well. i really like the rest of it, especially just watching them terraform Mars and having it develop into a habitable place. and hte politics are crazy, and there are some really cool ideas in it, such as a giftbased economy. which i dig in some utopian sort of way. read the rest of the series before you give up.
...you can give up, but you'll have read the whole series by then, so by "before you give up," baggins means "".I don't really care, I just thought it was funny!
"Red Mars" . . .I made it through it but it scarred me. Even good friend Peter V, who normally devours those books, had bad things to say.I just wandered past the next two volumes in the Sulzer lib yesterday and thought it was about time to get back to reading those before the semester swallows me alive.
Just read the 10th Jordan book too, and am ruminating over filing for divorce from the series, given the amount of time I've committed to Rober Jordan over the years, and the law of diminishing returns, novelist version.
is getting better...although I still feel like he's trying to be the ayn rand of mars or something.
i got a late christmas gift of The Best American non-Required reading for 2002, edited by David Eggers. It's geared toward college age kids (am I that old already) but it looks like it has some fun stuff in it. One of these days I'm going to get Eggers new book from the library. I also want to read the upcoming issue of McSweeney's but don't forsee shelling out the douhg for a subscription. I am, however, going to pick up a copy of Conjunctions 39.
At the moment, Im re-reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, which is really, really good fiction.
Also at this moment, Im reading (for the first time), The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill, which is also really good fiction.
And though I'm sure many people are already fans, anything by David Sedaris is great. I first started reading him from Esquire magazine, but then got into the books. So for those who have gotten into the books and like them, there's great stuff not to be found in bookstores here
any OWEN MEANY fans find this story interesting?
from the onion
I read White Noise on the bus over the last two days. People always talk about how great Don Delillo is but he hasn't lived up to my expectations. It's very melancholic and meandering. The storylines that develop are marginally fascinating and I can't deny that Delillo ias a skilled writer, but I haven't been able to enjoy or connect with the book in any meaningful way. I also have a copy of Underworld (obtained along with White Noise at the fabulous Brandeis Book Sale) that I have yet to crack open. I was planning on tackling that next, but I don't have much enthusiasm for that task at the moment.
"Underworld" is worth reading for the absolutely fantastic prologue. After that it's clear that DeLillo didn't have as much enthusiasm for the meat of the book.Everything I know about waste management (actual waste management, not Sopranos-style "waste management", I have learned from this book.)
I'm reading The Left Hand of Darkness for the first time. A long overdue reading and so far it's a really good book. Also, I did start Mason & Dixon but never got very far. Anyone still up for a communal reading of this one?
we'll see how far i get.
Yesterday, after being on airplanes all day and travleing with my family for a week before, I felt I needed a little pick-me-up... So, I read the last chapters of all of the Anne of Green Gables books (there are eight total). I used to do this often in high school... They are such sweet books, and I love the happy endings. Ok, I warned you it would be a silly confession....
I do the SAME THING. I even got the movies, the ones that PBS runs yearly. I consider it an antidote to the sickness and too-real reality of the world today. When I need to feel better, I read the ends of Anne of Green Gables - or if I've got time, I pick one of em and read the whole thing.That's too funny - I thought I was the only one in the world.
I have the first two, but haven't seen (and have decided not to see) the most recent continuing saga one. I allow the plot adjustments in the first two because I saw them and loved them prior to reading the books, but I don't think I could handle the changes made in the third one.
I should have known you were a kindred spirit Dex.
STAND UP, ERNIE BAXTER: YOU'RE DEAD
ADAM VOITH
he did some reading from his book last night at the damien jurado show. very cool stuff.
I too am thinking of divorcing the Jordan books, (haven't read this entree in a while) but like the second to last one, so am wishy washy on it. However, have you read the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth Books? I personally see them as successful versions of the Jordan books, vast, epic, long, but engrossing to the end, and I can't wait for the next one!
My upstairs neighbor on berteau gave me a few of the Sword of Truth books when she moved out. I could never bring myself to read them. They were enormous and I couldn't get into them. I just couldn't imagine how he could write 1,000 pages a year and still have it all be quality.
My personal favorite epic other than LOTR is George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" Series. Notably, in that he does what no other fantasy author can really do; he's not so attached to his characters that he can't kill them off. If you haven't read it, you may feel free to borrow them--i can get them to you via Guylla, or however else . . .But Martin is light-years better than Jordan. Don't get me wrong, Jordan is good, but Martin's done in three books what it took Jordan six. Jordan needs to off some characters; I mean, come on, BigJ, you and I probably agree on some characters whose POV chapters I skim, looking for importance.
I'm still torn on "Crossroads of Twilight". I have one reading of it under my belt, and Peter V and I usually re-read and then go back to the new book. He's on his first reading of Crossroads, and I'm in Crown of Swords right now working back. He always re-reads thoroughly first, I read the new one first, then go back, and usually we talk about it.
Here's a tag you might find useful to kill some time at work: the Wheel of Time FAQ. Pretty darn tasty. http://www.darkfriends.net/wheel/
Goodkind didn't hook me like Jordan and Martin did . . don't know why. But Jordan set out deliberately in the first 100 pages of his first book to get a Tolkien-flavor in it, and I think he succeeded--that's what hooked me. And the cover art is awful.
I read The Catcher in the Rye last week, mostly on thursday. I liked it, but it didn't hit me as hard as some people, who claim it as their favorite. However, I read Franny and Zooey last night and that book is amazing. Just really beautiful, it hit me. I was seeing so much of myself in Zooey at times and at others wishing I had somebody like him around to talk to me like that.
I don't think it would hit me as hard today as it did when I first read it in high school -- it was revolutionary for me then, because it so captured how I was feeling at the time. I know I'd still enjoy it, and there's a lot of Holden's responses to things that I identify with, but I think it would be more nostalgic for me now than directly communicative.
that makes sense, pedro. i never had to read it in high school, but everybody else under the sun did. my little sister just had to read it, and she loved it. check out Franny and Zooey sometime. i think you might like it.
Lukas you should read the Goodkind books, I like them a lot. I am waiting for the next one to come out this August. But he got me when he created some new characters and then killed them for the sake of the book. THat really got me liking him, it seems like he does a book on other people with little plot movement toward the main goal, and then writes the next book with the main movers and shakers really doing stuff, I kind of like that. And yes Jordan needs to kill off about 30 characters, and that's being modest.
read it and dug it. baggins, you should read 9 stories -- The Laughing Man is, I think, my favorite short story of all time, and I have always thought would make an awesome movie, if done by the right people. (Not that Salinger would let that happen in a MILLION years.)
Anyway, I read (pretty much all the way through--just a few pages left) a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln last night. My sister was in DC this weekend, and picked it up for me at some Monument or another. It is written by Carl Sandburg, and is just riveting. I expected it to be a little more well-written, perhaps, because Sandburg is such an awesome poet, but it is fascinating all the same. And not saying it's poorly written, it's just kind of got that cliche' biography feel to it.Mary Todd Lincoln is a distant relation of mine--my great-grandmother's cousin. And this does not surprise me, because Mary Todd Lincoln is INSANE. Like, clinically speaking. And a lot of my mom's side of the family are INSANE, clinically speaking. I'm not making light of it. It's really sad.
"Catcher in the Rye" used to be, obviously before I read it, my best winning answer to that game all book people play" "what is the greatest book you've never read."Upon having read it, I can't stand it. The farther away from 15 years of age you get and read it the more it dates itself, and the more Holden Caulfield annoys me, and now I'm at the point where I'm no longer interested in what he has to say, because it seems like whining . . .
and BigJ, do you mean Goodkind or Martin? It's been my experience that Goodkind hasn't killed off anyone remotely interesting in his series . . .
...and that's alright.
that being said, i absolutely adored Franny and Zooey, while i just sorta liked Catcher in the Rye.
I read Catcher my junior year of high school but just didn't get it. I mean, I wrote an english paper about it and understood it in that sort of way, but I didn't identify with Holden at all.... I didn't try Salinger again until late in college when I picked up F&Z (which I also adore). So then I re-read Catcher and liked it more than I had as a teen. But I don't like it as well as his other books.
I meant Goodkind because he has written two books that were focused not so much on Richard, and has killed off 2 of the 3 characters that he created in those books. They weren't crucial to the main plot, but they were still major characters in those books. He also has far fewer characters than Jordan does and I would say that makes it harder to kill some of them off, but with the next book (due out in August) I wouldn't be surprised to see someone major die.
never read any. should i believe the hype and get some from the library?
Lukas, you are really missing out. My favorites are the short stories, although all the novels are great, too. Any of it is awesome. Enjoy.
i'm reading 'middlesex' by jeffrey eugenides. god, it's good. i read his first novel, 'the virgin suicides': book, excellent; movie, not so much. i highly recommend 'middlesex'
"pedro páramo" by juan rulfo. It takes place in a cemetary, underground, with dead people.
I always thought people were crazy when they said they were into "biographies" but now as I, ahem, approach adulthood, I find myself more interested. I've recently read "Man's Search for Meaning" for the first time. Before that was "An Anthropologist on Mars" which was more about case studies, but like a biography in that it was about real people. And awhile before that I read "Riding the Devil" about a sociologist in West Africa. All were excellent. Right now I'm reading "Ghost Rider" about Neil Peart's (drummer from Rush) travels on his motorcycle after losing his daughter in an accident and his wife to disease within a year of each other. I'm liking it a lot too. Some good books I liked and just sent my neice are "Bitterroot Landing", "What Girls Learn", "H", and "Bastard Out of Carolina".
that is a great book. But was it a biography? I remember it being about the writer's stay in a concentration camp & more of a (personal but detached) psychological study. Okay...I guess that is sort of a biography. Maybe I'm thinking of the completely wrong book, anyway.
i recently picked up Infinite Jest again, for the third time. i really like that book. every time i read it i get more and more, and make more and more connections, and get so much out of it. i recommend it to all who are willing to put a little effort into reading a novel.
re: The Virgin Suicides
I haven't read the book. but i liked the movie. i'd like to see it again.
This vacation I've been reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. It starts with the formation of the universe and proceeds to explain the sciences of the solar system, earth, and living organisms from there. I am about 300 pages in, and have only begun reading about life. It is pretty much a science book that is well-writen and funny. Good stuff if you find science at all fascinating but aren't about to start reading geology treatises.
Finished Peart's Ghost Rider and highly recommend it. Now I'm almost done with Malcolm X's autobiography and it is truly interesting. He was a highly complex person who went through tremendous changes. I have Chuck D's Fight the Power which I've only read a little bit of, but I think I'll pick it up next. Also, listened to Bridge to Terabethia in the car driving home from NH and it's such a great story! Little things keep reminding me of it.
Now there's a book I haven't thought about in AGES. For some reason I associate it with the book A Wrinkle in Time. I should get those from the library and spend an evening back in the fifth grade.
I l;ove that book, I think upon rereading it in college it took me all of about 3 hours, good times. I am currently reading the latest installment from Robert Jordan, for all you Wheel of Time fans out there. It is absolutely horrid, I am 500 pages into the book, and he has spent more time describing about 150 characters than doing anything else, and I feel like nothing has happened at all, in 500 PAGES!! I am only reading now because I want to get to the end, but I am afraid it will never come! It feels like with every book he writes he actually get FARTHER from the end of the series, I am starting to get really frustrated. I can't wait to pick up the Terry Goodking book that just came out and actually ENJOY a book I'm reading.
Skip to the end two chapters, Is**K, I give you permission. The rest isn't worth it.
The great book that I finally just finished was Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamont. It is a coming of age story of a whole family (that one character in the story calls the "kind of family you would get at a garage sale"). A family coming of age story, meaning that there is a 13-year-old girl going through all the horrifying mess of becoming a teenager and breaking away but that we see the story not only from her perspective but also the perspectives of her best friend, her parents and her parents' close friends. It is riveting. The characters are real and beautiful and tragic and the story does not try to pat anything into perfection. It insprires the reader to "practice ressurection" and find strength in both the little and the big things.
The guily pleasure that I polished off was To the Nines by Janet Evanovich. I don't know that I've ever mentioned that author on here, but this is the ninth book in the series that I've read. The series is cross between mystery and romance; they have no socially redeeming qualities and are not a source of intellectual stimulation. But the characters and scenarios are so addictively funny that I continue to read them. So, if I guess I am recommending the series to anyone who wants something very light to read, the first one is called One for the Money.
...but without that pesky built in finale.
That's the grand finale, when the undead armies of all the previous murders are enslaved under the power of Dr. Moriarty, who uses an ancient mesopotamian ziggurat to unleash his hordes upon the earth.Sorry if I gave anything away.
Actually, I wish the Sue Grafton Z book would be half as cool as mine.
I am finally at the last two chapters, and boy was the book not worth it! I'm thinking the next one will be good though since he spent all 650 pages of this book doing nothing but setting up future action. No action that I can ever think of needs 650 pages to set it up! But I'm not bitter, no!!
I'd recommend it if you have reclusive tendancies.
i almost feel bad mentioning this book here because from what i'm told, it's very hard to get your hands on even when you're trying.but i adored this tiny little book. it's maybe about ninety pages, but it is brilliant, in fact, maybe more so because of its size.
the narrator is the older brother of a young girl who has two imaginary friends named pobby and dingan.
in a [kind of geeky] way i think the book reclaims something for humanity. i wish everyone could read it.
i just entered it into www.abebooks.com and came up with a lot of finds. if anyone's interested, the book is 'pobby and dingan' the author, ben rice.
I picked up Truman Capote's In Cold Blood at the company book sale for a buck. It's really good so far and a little disturbing. It's fascinating because it takes place in west-central kasnas just south of where we used to drive across on 96 when going to visit my grandparents growing up. So I can picture all the towns in my head and although I've never actually driven through Holcomb I have a good idea of what it all might look like.
by Tom Robbins, Einstein's dreams by Alan Lightman and Three to See The King by Magnus Mills are all excellent books that I would highly reccomend. All three for different reasons. However, please try to ignore the title of the Mills book. The title kinda made me feel dirty after finding it out after finishing the book.Next, that darn wind up bird chronicle that Murakami has bee taunting me with for years.
I am debating on whether to read the next Terry Goodkind novel (which I know I will love) or whether to go get Life of Pi instead, I've heard good things about the Life of Pi, and I think I could use a book that's not just mindless fiction for a change. What's the opposite of mindless fiction? Mindful reality?
get life of pi.
with the barefootjumper hijack. BigJ, you should definitely read life of pi. And read it by October, because Martel will be speaking at the Chicago Humanities festival, and when I saw him speak about the novel a couple months ago, it was by far the best (barefoot jumper is BLABBING in my ear right now and won't stop and as I'm a man I can only do one thing at a time and this is very hard with all the extra noise!)iamashithead.That is also barefootjumper. Maybe she will barefootjump her way off my ass for a while! And let me write! HA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!
ANYWAY . . .
Is.. I mean BigJ, hearing Martel talk about the book is really great and shouldn't be missed. And you like animals and lifeboats too.
And Smax, whoever you may be, you will not be dissapointed by the Wind Up Bird. Do you like his other stuff?
This will probably be my only post for another ten months, so here are books I've recently enjoyed the last couple of months . . . pobby and dingan by Ben Rice, Lamb by Christopher Moore, Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides (barefoot's recommendation), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. I guarantee you will like the dog in the night-time one, and I've only read thirty pages of it. Yes, and barefootjumper likes that one too. So she is saying in my ear.me=jerk
Oh yeah and The Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break by Steven Sherrill, about a five thousand year old minotaur who works the beef line at Grubs Rib Shack in modern day North Carolina.
And here's the early tip on what will probably win the Pulitzer or somesuch garganenourmous prize - Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem - if its half as good as his Motherless Brooklyn it will be great. Ciao Bella! Hello heffer!
i liked motherless brooklyn. i also liked gun with occasional music.
oldpossums and barefootjumper The Movie. That script excerpt above has me mightily intrigued.
thanks for the 411, I'll check the Life of Pi instead of Terry Goodkind, but it will be a truggle not to get Goodkind since it's the 7 in a series that I have loved more and more since it started, not many like that. ^See Posts Above^
oldpossumus, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was my favorite by him so far. I also read N. Wood and underground, not as good but not bad either. I think I may have read one other, but I can't remember, maybe not. It was during a massive reading frenzy when I was reading Murakami last. So far Wind up bird is good... I'll see in a hundred pages or so.
The DaVinci Code
My friend Maria had been bugging me to read it for months... I finished it last night at 2am when I should have been sleeping, I do not have the luxery of sleeping late anymore. But, it was page-turner, a thriller as the jacket suggested. A lot of research and an intricate plot. Characters not very developed... Anyway, at 2am when I had finished and finally knew all the secrets that the protagonists and I had been pursuing faithfully for hours, I just got depressed and thought to myself, "that really wasn't worth it..."
i have only been working at my bookstore on saturdays, but every saturday for the last 2 months, i have sold so many copies of that book- it is always people who come up to me and say, "give me a good book" and i keep saying that one. we sell out of it once a week, it seems.
I was given a copy of this book (it's very small) by my aunt; it was a copy owned by a sort of great-aunt in law. Anyway, it is a great devotional. if you're looking for something to read and meditate upon, I would totally recommend it.
i just gave an old copy of that very same book to a friend of mine...
raskol was kind enough to send me a copy, which i received this weekend, for my birthday. it is an enchanting novel. i already love it. will post more when i'm done. thanks, raskol.
I broke down and bought this book in the airport on my way home for Labor Day... Amy talked about it and I really wanted to read it... so far, it's great.
Sorry I never mailed it to you, as I said I would (this shouldn't really surprise you though). Someone here (as in the same state) borrowed my copy as soon as I'd finished it. Trust me, you will continue to enjoy it.
I figured, this is a book I probably would like to own anyway... I almost didn't even mention it on the bbs because you either forgot to send it or weren't done yet, etc., so no worries. I'm really enjoying it. It makes me want to go out and discover something important.
I lent someone a copy of that Lee Smith story, "Desire on Domino Island" today. Boy, does that story make me laugh and remember being in that Topics in Christian Lit class with d3R0ulet.
My favorite is the chapter in which she befriends a wild racoon names it Bruce and then nicknames it Posey. At least I think those were the names, funny stuff. I had my wife read it, as she has read a few of those on her day, and she laughed her butt off.
Good ole chapter 8. It's Posy, however... That is also the chapter where she sends for her retarded brother Lewis.
I'm halfway through the latest Harry Potter book. I usually wait until they're in paperback but a friend lent me this one. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to finish since my arms get sore holding it up in bed for too long. In other book news we got a bag full of books from the local library book sale this weekend for $5! It happened last year too. I love those events. Got a hard cover of Annie Lamott's Traveling Mercies, two Douglas Adams books, and two Walker Percy ones I didn't have. Also a bunch of albums for 50 cents each! Pat Benetar, Loverboy, Red Clay Ramblers, Rush. Quite a haul!
Good stuff. I like reading Murakami books. They make me feel normal.
but I don't know what I could possibly say about the book. Just read it.
i stayed up wayyy too late last night reading lance armstrong's ghost writen book about surviving cancer and winning the tour (five times as of this july). It is an amazing story. His doctors figured he had a few percent chance of living and somehow he survived and returned to become one of the greatest cyclists ever. Plus he had a kid (and later twins) after he was sterile (the day before chemo started he made a deposit at the sperm bank).The thing that struck me is that Lance is pretty much a walking miracle but he's still agnostic. The other sad footnote is that he's getting a divorce. In some ways it is understandable given the hardships of being married to a pro-cyclist, especially one as insanely driven as Armstrong. But, part of me wants it to be a picture-perfect story.
It's a good book and worth a read.
with Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I started it a few days ago and can't put it down. It is such a beautiful, pathetic tale. Strangely enough I thought I had read it long ago, but definitley have not. Sometimes all the books I've read bleed together, but I would not have forgotten this one.I remember Laura reading it, curled in our bunks in our little room on Canterbury Lane, in Oxford, and it made me miss England (and Laura) a LOT. She loves this book, too.
heidi! i am so glad that you are reading that....you need to read tess of the d'ubervilles next/ it is one of my favorite books of all time and i just know that you would love it too, maybe even more than jude.i miss you and i miss england/that was still my favorite time of my life, and a book like that would definitely bring a lot back.
maybe i will read that one again, starting right now.
(i just sighed)
i read that last year, and i really did love it--that's what encouraged me to read this one. i think you're right, i think tess is my favorite of the two, but i love jude as well. i am nearly done but i would say my main problem is sue. i love her but i also want to wring her neck half the time. but i love her because she is very human, in spite of this divinity jude ascribes to her...they are both really interesting characters. hardy is a genius. i like his poetry, too, but not as much as his novels.
I was pretty much forced to read that before I started my Ph.D. (at the idealistic stage) and when things were tough I remember thinking it was good advice.
its oldpossumus and I just wanted to remind everyone that Chicago's official "book of the year" (you know, where they try and get everyone in the city to read it, even the animals, and libraries have discussions etc) this year is Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried", which is an incredible book about the vietnam war and the nature of storytelling. So do you neighborhood and Mr Daley a favor and read this book. And for those of you in the windy city, O'Brien is giving a reading on the 30th (I think) of Oct. at the harold washington library.Go Cubs!
That we love you and miss you and K and PC. Can you guys do some kind of like, group hug or something tonight, from me to you?
the cubs win.!!
i always thought, "huh, that's an interesting name," and then as i was doing something really mundane one day after reading the diner, walking to subway for lunch i think, it occured to me: "OH! oldpossum's book of practical cats," which i have, and have read, and enjoyed. duh.i read the most absolutely putrid and offensive book last week. i checked it out from the library. i won't even write the name of it here, but trust me, it was scarring. the awful thing is i couldn't stop reading it because it was so very awful. it was like a train wreck that you can't look away from.
umm... I'm OK, You're OK!
Geek Love.
but Cinnamongirl has to agree to eventually tell us what the title was after a few days if we don't guess it.
alright, that's only fair. i'll give you a hint--it was this supposed genre called "chick lit," and it was by a british author, and it was very very abysmal. i still can't believe i read it--i'm so embarassed.
...so disgusting, you have nightmares.
American Psycho was written by an American, so that's out.
that's my guess, but then most people I know who read it thought it was really funny.
i love wuthering heights! sad!bridget jones' diary is a pretty good guess. my dad's girlfriend, who is very well-read and never reads anything written after the 19th century, loved bridget jones' diary, so i am guessing it is good.
in reviews i've read of this piece of termite-food masquerading as literature, i.e. the mystery book (i had to go on amazon to write my own scathing one, just to purge my soul), i saw this book LIKENED to bridget jones, in story and plot-line. except for the fact that it sucks, and this woman cannot write to save her ass.
I really enjoyed both Bridget Jones books. As per the awful one Hiedi is raving about, I have no idea...
no dice yet. i would like to read b.j.d, but as i said it has been likened to this book (hint hint), and at the moment that frightens me a bit.
.. THE NANNY DIARIES was it? Oh my god I almost died of retching.
but i think i remember someone telling me they liked that book. i will trust your opinion, dex.
Confessions of a Shopaholic... Please say that wasn't it, Heidi. I mean, the title itself depresses me. I can't imagine actually reading it... But, I do often read books that friends recommend and end up bitterly disappointed, so if it was, I guess I understand.
Personally I hate them all, but I know Heidie likes them so no dice there.
and i didn't realize amazon is selling underwear these days.and WHY do so many of you darn men insist on hating jane austen? she is hilarious! and i know a certain NPU english professor with the initials d.d. who loves jane austen, so boo-ya!
fyi, to narrow the field a little, it's a contemporary book, written in the last few years. and the author isn't really well known, at least i'd never heard of her (for good reason).
i will tell you just HOW much i hated this book. i wanted to go all oedipus on myself and gouge my eyes out, so i couldn't read it any longer. yet i kept reading it, much to my own chagrin.
on a slightly more elevated plane, i spent my lunch hour at the library as i am seeking out some new reads. is anyone here familiar with faulkner? i am not, but have always wanted to read something by him. any suggestions/opinions appreciated.
I just think it's funny to pick classics from the "chick lit" (your words) "genre" (someone's idea of a classification) and pretend taht they were so bad they made you want to die, precisely because they are so widely regarded as classics.
the mystery book is no classic. except for classically terrible. and tomorrow shall be...ta da! the unveiling. so this entree can get back to what's it s'posed to be about--good books.
Definitely read some Margaret Atwood, Heidi. It'll cleanse your pallette, so to speak. Cat's Eye is particularily good, but I also enjoyed Handmaid's Tale and Alias Grace as well.
A Light in August. I haven't read it since high school, but I remember liking it a lot. Our teacher had us read Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn prior to starting the book, and whenever I think of one I think of the other.
i'm really stabbing in the dark here, but are you speaking of White Teeth? i don't know if Zadie Smith is actually British, but i know the story takes place there. in my limited knowledge of contemporary authors this is the only one i can think of that might be it. but... i also am enjoying the book so far, so i don't know if we just have really different tastes in lit or what.
her second book 'the autograph man' got pretty poor reviews. i loved 'white teeth' and i'm glad you're reading it, walter. part of why i liked the book is because the neighborhood in london where the book is set is where i lived when i was there, so the whole thing was very vivid for me. it was like watching a movie set in chicago and every little thing you're like, oh, that's home. or seeing a p.t. anderson movie after living in the valley.
Tim O'Brien's reading is @ 6 PM at the main library downtown. I am currently planning to go, if anyone wants to go. You also have more than enough time to read the entire collection of short stories in "The Things They Carried.". They're intense but short . . .Let me know, friends.
I was away from the computer all weekend in the provincial village of Milwaukee. This awful book I read is called "Jemima J." Honestly, and I do not say this to negate any of my own fault on the part of reading this book; I read it because a website I like was slamming it viciously, and I wanted to know what they were talking about. It's by Jane Green (who I'd never heard of), and right after seeing it slammed so I was looking for "Hardy" at the library, and "Green" is close to that, and I saw it, so I checked it out for kicks. More like, it kicked ME in the ass. It is about this overweight woman who has no friends and no self-respect, and who stashes food all over the place and cuts pictures of models out of fashion magazines and stares at them all day, all because she is "fat", because that's what fat people do, right? So then she goes on this crash diet and loses like 100 pounds in a month through starving herself (which the author seems to promote rather than condemn, and even if you lived on lettuce you wouldn't lose that much weight in such a short time). She has met this guy on the Internet, and he is this Californian body-builder dude, so after she's lost all of this weight and is finally BEAUTIFUL!, she goes out there from England to meet him. At first things are great, but then she finds out he's cheating on her with--gasp--an overweight woman! Sorry I spoiled the plot, but I'd rather no one ever reads this book. Ever.Friends, this book is so bad that you'd rather poke yourself in the eye with a sharp stick than read 10 pages of it. Yet I did, and I am the baser for it. So in any case, avoid this book like you would the plague.
I'm reading a really awesome (and horribly sad) book called "Middle Passage" right now. Check it out.
hahaha... thanks for the warning.
I feel like I started the ball rolling about guessing the book and then was away from the diner too long to participate much. In any case though, that book does sound quite awful and I appreciate the warning. On the other hand, it wasn't a total waste b/c the discussion in this entree was fun and the final revealing of the title and plot was satisfying. Especially since it does actually sound bad.
How did I miss that. I am a big fan (as you could probably tell from my old diary posts). Make sure you read Nuclear Age.
library has a first edition of "Nuclear Age", which oldpossumus spent most of his undergraduate career plotting to steal. That's good writing of his, but my favorite is still "In the Lake of the Woods"
Under the influence of Covenant Brainwashing Seminars ( Go now to Covenant Estate Planning. Hand them a check. Do not question my authority to tell you this. Go. Go Now! ) I have determined that my fine literary mind is mush.I am 300+ pages in to Neal Stephenson's new novel, Quicksilver,, which like his last work, is massive, and it took me a full 30 minutes to figure out who little kid Ben, in 1715 Mass Bay Colony could be, another hour to figure out what "Mass Bay College of Technologikal Arts" could be, and five minutes of wandering around the house who Edward Teach was, and why that name was familiar.
So far it's good (not as brilliant or as mind-grabbing as Cryptonomicon was) but you need a course in 17th century English history, a copy of Samuel Pepy's Diaries, and oldpossumus father on speed-dial to really get everything that's going on. Sort of how Eco's The Name of the Rose revealed all sorts of hidden depths after a class on medieval church history.
i've become obsessed with picasso. i picked up this book, written by a former lover/girlfriend of his and it's really good. i'm not all too far into it yet, but it's assisting my obsession. it's always interesting to read about a public figure from the eyes of a very private relationship.
Several of my students are reading To Kill a Mockingbird for their English class (juniors in my mythology classes) and I am jealous of them because I love that book so much. I bought a hard-copy with the original cover art a couple of years ago but lost it somehow on the move from Chicago to here...
by Michael Faber. I am reading this right now. It is pretty amazing. So amazing, in fact, that I had to wait a month to get it from the library. It is a Victorian novel written by a contemporary author, and gives a very interesting and educated commentary on the society of Victorian England.
I say finally because I had been plodding through it slowly... Anyway, I found the ending to be so desperately sad that I couldn't go to sleep for several hours... I read it on laura's recommendation... I think I'd call it a good book, but I may need a couple of days to put it into some sort of order in my mind & heart. (I had the same response to One Hundred Years of Solitude).
one of those periodic tectonic plate resettlings of my bookshelves that all lit majors go through for the rest of their lives, and mine eye alighted upon Cien Anos de Soledad, and I said to myself, "self, you should read that again."Which doesn't explain why I ended up with one of my four copies of the Hobbit.
It's blustery--reallly blustery here--a perfect night to read The Hobbit.
I had a hard time getting through the first hundred pages or so (I'm not sure why, because it was good reading), but after that I finished the last 250 pages in one night. I could not take my eyes away from it. I am still processing the ending, too, but I think it was an incredible book.
and I loved it. LOVED it. I don't really know how to articulate how I feel about it, but it was very mystical and beautiful. It made me reflect and think on many things ina whole new way. Thank you for sending it to me, Raskol. (I feel like all I ever do here is list the books I read rather than analyze them. Sorry. I just can't put my feelings down in words. It's easier for me to talk about it).Right now I am reading Jane Eyre, which I thought I had read years ago--I'm always thinking I've read books which I haven't for some reason, amnesia--and it's fantastic. I can't put it down, which is good, because I was a lazy-ass over break and just started it a few days ago and have to have it finished by Monday. One of my student workers was reading it over break for a class she's taking with deR0ulet this semester, so another of my co-workers and I decided to read it as well and have a quasi book club next week to discuss it. Highly recommended. It makes me feel cold and chilly when I read of the moor, and the love story depicted is very unusual and riveting. It also makes me miss England. A lot. But then, so many things make me miss England.
Most of my reading is done on the el, so I don't try to tackle big, scary books. It's little novels for me; the easier-to-read the better.Lately I've been enjoying John Irving. Both A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Cider House Rules are excellent, and much much much better than the movies (the movie "Simon Birch" was loosely based on APFOM). I get the impression that his new stuff isn't as good.
I also finally read High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (and now I want to see the movie) and Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald. Both excellent choices for the commute.
I am currently reading the Dark Tower Book 5, and boy is it fricken good. I don't know who else here has read them, but anyone who hasn't should definitely. They are Stephen King at his finest, they are not horror but very convoluted sci-fi, and they kick all forms of ass. Aft