books

[corianderstem]

Okay I must be the only one who hated that book.

Why did you hate it?

I've heard it bandied about quite a bit but don't remember ever hearing about how someone loved it or hated it.

 

[Saracene]

I've been reading Alice Munro a lot lately, just finished two collections of her short stories - "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" and "Runaway". She is an amazing writer; she's been (deservedly) compared to Chekhov and her stories are so textured, full of details and complexities they make me feel like I've read a whole novel instead.

 

[U2isthebest]

I went to the used book store and found 4 books I've been wanting for $1 each.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror-Richard Clarke
Our Endangerd Values:America's Moral Crisis- Jimmy Carter
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid-Jimmy Carter
The Devil Wears Prada-Laura Weisberger

 

[A_Wanderer]

Took a peruse of The Doors of Perception, Huxley has nuance on experience.

Finished reading the Darwin biography which was a real eye opener.

Reading a book on sex selection called The Mating Game, out of intellectual interest and so I can have some good sexy conversation starters.

Also reading Daniel Dennets 'Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon' which is quite eye-opening as far as elucidating some of my own misgivings about belief and the reasons for people to believe.

 

[lazarus]

I read Huxley's Doors of Perception and Heaven & Hell before I tried LSD. I'm not sure if it necessarily added to the experience, but it added to my understanding/appreciation of it. Pretty interesting stuff (the books, and the drug)!

 

[Carek1230]

I went to the used book store and found 4 books I've been wanting for $1 each.

Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror-Richard Clarke
Our Endangerd Values:America's Moral Crisis- Jimmy Carter
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid-Jimmy Carter
The Devil Wears Prada-Laura Weisberger

Isn't that just the best feeling in the world when you can do that? Who doesn't like a bargain, especially a book person but most especially books you really want!! Enjoy them!

 

[corianderstem]

#25 Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson.

A former travel writer, Thompson spends some of the book lodging his complaints against the travel industry and travel writing, but spends more time writing about his own travels and the characters he meets, situations he gets into.

Much of it was very funny and very interesting.

 

[anitram]

Why did you hate it?

I didn't like the writing style (it's a bit too middle-of-the-road for my taste) but more than that, I thought it was kind of creepy. I felt uneasy reading some of those "flashbacks" or whatever you'd call them, especially when she was a child.

 

[corianderstem]

When I came across the first scene where her younger self and his older self, I had a little "uh oh" moment, but I thought she veered away from the creepy element very well.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

 

[UnforgettableLemon]

Just picked up some Norton Critical Editions of a few classics
Leaves of Grass and Other Writings - Walt Whitman
The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot
Shelley's Poetry and Prose - Percy Bysse Shelley
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

Also picked up
The Winter King - Bernard Cornwall
Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore

I'll probably read Cornwall first. I gave a paper at a medieval and renassiance forum this past weekend so Arthuriana is at the top of my fun list. Classes are winding down. I would like to get my hands on a Norton version of Le Morte D'Arthur, but as I own three other versions already I'm just going to ask my Norton representative to give me a desk copy for free. I was too lazy to do so with the other ones, and sometimes I feel bad since I know I'm not teaching most of them next fall. Malory I may teach, though. I definitely want to do something Arthurian. Off to Cornwall I go.

 

[corianderstem]

#26 Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck

Three teenaged girls in New York become "it" girls, and their lives are thrown into a whirlwind of celebrity politics, gossip and family drama.

It wasn't too bad - mostly entertaining but ultimately disappointing. Each of the sisters and the brother have their own section of the narration, but honestly, each part sounded like the same person to me.

 

[meegannie]

I want to call it historical romance but it really isn't a romance at all. Not even close. Henry VIII was a pig. And the way the families used the women to further themselves was disgusting. They did what they were told.

The book is based on fact - Anne Boleyn did have a sister and she was Henry's mistress. As for poor Anne, well, we all know how it worked out for her. It made the ending that much more tense, knowing it was coming the whole time.

I'd love to hear what you think of the book if you do read it.

I read The Other Boleyn Girl a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it. It really renewed my interest in Tudor England (I studied mostly British history as an undergrad). I also read The Boleyn Inheritance, which I didn't like quite as much, but I liked how the character of Jane Boleyn was filled out more.

I bought The Virgin's Lover and The Queen's Fool yesterday and borrowed David Starkey's The Sixth Wives of Henry VIII from work on Friday.

 

[beegee]

I'm glad you liked it so much, meggie!

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

I finally finished The Satanic Verses

 

[VintagePunk]

I finally finished The Satanic Verses

Yay! So what did you think?

I'm currently half way through The Ground Beneath Her Feet. It's pretty good, but not nearly as satisfying to me as most of his other books, I'd rate this near the bottom of his body of work.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

That's funny, because I actually liked it more than The Satanic Verses. I think part of it may have been that I read that one straight through. I think it's one of the only good so-called rock and roll novels that I've ever read, in large part because it's anchored in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

I really am in awe of the way Rushdie can braid so many different threads. It's something I have a hard time with in my own writing, and I feel like I've learned quite a bit from him in that respect. I got lost in The Satanic Verses quite a bit, though, which is part of the reason I kept putting it aside to read other things. Once I had all of the characters straight (and there's what--25 of them? No wonder I had trouble...), I really got into it, but that took longer than I'd hoped it would.

What stood out to me most by the end of the novel was the commentary Rushdie was making about the nature of good and evil. And after the dense (sometimes in my opinion a little too dense) prose, I loved the simplicity of that last little scene.

I need to read Midnight's Children at some point, especially since I've heard that it bears a striking resemblance to one of my favorite novels, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.

My next three reads are going to be relatively quick ones, I think--Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, Rob Sheffield's Love Is A Mixtape, and Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I also want to pick up Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of stories.

Now that school is almost done, I'm going to have so much more time to read!

 

[dsmith2904]

My next three reads are going to be relatively quick ones, I think--Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, Rob Sheffield's Love Is A Mixtape, and Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I also want to pick up Jhumpa Lahiri's new collection of stories.

"Love Is a Mixtape" is such an awesome book, so sweet and heartbreaking and hopeful. It was nice to get a different view of Rob Sheffield and know him as more than the guy from all those VH1 list shows.

 

[Mr. Green Eyes]

Reading To Kill A Mockingbird right now. A great read. College is almost over for me, so it's off to the library as soon as I get home.

 

[VintagePunk]

That's funny, because I actually liked it more than The Satanic Verses. I think part of it may have been that I read that one straight through. I think it's one of the only good so-called rock and roll novels that I've ever read, in large part because it's anchored in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

I really am in awe of the way Rushdie can braid so many different threads. It's something I have a hard time with in my own writing, and I feel like I've learned quite a bit from him in that respect. I got lost in The Satanic Verses quite a bit, though, which is part of the reason I kept putting it aside to read other things. Once I had all of the characters straight (and there's what--25 of them? No wonder I had trouble...), I really got into it, but that took longer than I'd hoped it would.

What stood out to me most by the end of the novel was the commentary Rushdie was making about the nature of good and evil. And after the dense (sometimes in my opinion a little too dense) prose, I loved the simplicity of that last little scene.

I need to read Midnight's Children at some point, especially since I've heard that it bears a striking resemblance to one of my favorite novels, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things.

I'm very anxious to hear what you think of Midnight's Children when you get a chance to read it. It's probably in my top 5 favourite novels of all time. It's one of those books where I thought "why the hell did I wait all these years to read this??"

I just glanced at a plot synopsis of The God of Small Things, and it sounds like something I would enjoy, so thanks! After realizing I'd like to read it, I only read the first few paragraphs of it so as not to spoil myself, so I could be mistaken, but it sounds as if Midnight's Children is a bit more political in nature, as opposed to being mostly cultural. I could be wrong in that, though.

I probably should be more open minded about Ground. I think part of the reason I'm a little reserved about it is that I've been reading it for several nights now while my cat has been keeping me up most of the night with her in heat howling. I may be unduly transferring my annoyance with my cat to poor Rushdie.

 

[*browneyedgirl*]

I really want to read Harry Potter now although I still haven't read the books I said I would a long time ago which are Atlas Shruged, Frankenstein and Catcher in the rye.

 

[The Sad Punk]

Livy's histories of the 2nd Punic War, some Dorian Gray on the side for fiction.

 

[Auhiz]

In limbo with a house move has given me some time to read stuff.

Nochnoi Dozor aka Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko.

A good, fun read. I chased this one down after watching the movie and being a bit baffled because it skipped over too many details and also because I'm easily baffled. I wondered why it (the movie) seemed to be universally acclaimed but maybe it wasn't universal, maybe it was only loved by the folks who'd read the book(s) and knew what was going on. So now I've read the book and I know that the movie did leave too much unexplained within the interesting world that this guy has created. The ideas are pretty cool, I heard the world described somewhere as Harry Potter meets The Matrix which is probably as good a one-sentence description as anything else. Anyway this first book is a good quick read and I'm keen to check out the next in the series..

Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson

Bit of a change of pace with this one. I saw the movie years ago and loved it, so the book's been on the must-read list ever since, and it didn't disappoint. I thought this book was brilliant - carefully and beautifully crafted. The copy that I read was a friend's but I need to own my own. I'd be keen to know what others have thought of this one, I know it's pretty popular. Are his other books worth checking out?

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban

While chasing up a children's book by this guy that I'd read years ago, I heard about some of his adult fiction and decided to give it a try. Riddley Walker is probably one of Hoban's best known books and now I can see why. It's initially a bit of a bizarre ride as the whole thing is written phonetically ("fun etiquette lee", he would write) in a version of English that's been blasted apart much like everything else after a nuclear holocaust. So there are some crazy but clever turns of phrase in there such as "voat no kynd of fents", but it's surprisingly intuitive and fluid once you get used to it. It was probably like a first language for Hoban when he was eating his mushrooms or whatever. He reckons that he lost the ability to spell after working on the book for five years though. Anyway, the story itself is a pretty good read, and focuses on the power of mythology and rituals, and since it's a post apocalyptic book, the obvious theme of the human tendency to perceive itself as separate from nature, and continually push forward without considering the consequences.

Everything's Eventual, by Stephen King

I love a lot of Stephen King's short stories but am not sure about this collection. He's almost always good at getting in the reader's head and describing thoughts and observing things, and he's more than capable of weaving a great tale, but the trouble here is that some of the tales just aren't great and occasionally the characters are too contrived. I read the stories in order and feared the worst after really not enjoying the first few, however they actually got better. Or maybe my expectations dropped as I went. No, looking at the list now, I think that everything including and after 'The Little Sisters of Eluria' ranges from good to great. Before then, not so good. Speaking of The Little Sisters, it was interesting to read that story again now (it was also in some other collection) after reading The Dark Tower series and knowing more about Roland's world.

 

[Auhiz]

#25 Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson.

A former travel writer, Thompson spends some of the book lodging his complaints against the travel industry and travel writing, but spends more time writing about his own travels and the characters he meets, situations he gets into.

Much of it was very funny and very interesting.

Cool, I gotta read this one. I don't suppose he mentioned Thomas Kohnstamm anywhere, did he? The book by that guy (Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?) might also be worth a look. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

 

[corianderstem]

The name doesn't ring a bell, but I might just have a crappy memory.

 

[meegannie]

Currently reading loads of Preacher, trying to finish up the series.

 

[The Sad Punk]

The Garth Ennis comic? Good choice.

 

[beegee]

I am currently reading Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library by Don Borchert.

I've worked in a public library for almost eight years. His experiences are so hilarious and so true that it's like reading about what I do everyday.

Libraries just ain't what they used to be, that's for sure

Meggie, I really think you'd enjoy this one, too.

 

[corianderstem]

That sounds like a book I need to read!

 

[beegee]

You really should, cori. It's both hilarious and disturbing at the same time. I thought when I went to work in a library that I would be meeting lots of well read, intellectual types.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I could have (and should have!) written this book myself.

 

[Angela Harlem]

I'm reading Angels of Death which is about the Hells Angels empire. It's great.