books

[No spoken words]

Still.....

reading.......

the name of the rose......

So many excellent parts, hidden amongst Eco's diatribes.....

must finish......

 

[VintagePunk]

I've finished both Fury and Shalimar the Clown by Rushdie.

I find Rushdie at his best when writing his stories in the context of geopolitical and historical events. Fury is the first book of his I've read that didn't really include any of that within the story - it's more an examination of a middle aged man's existential crisis, within the framework of cultural differences. Of the four books of his I've now read, I'd rank it the lowest, but still worth a read.

Shalimar the Clown - wow. I find Rushdie's books very dense with events and characters, and while this was a good book, maybe it was a little too dense? The book begins in the present. takes a long look back at the past, starting in pre-WWII Europe, and going up to the 90's, set mostly in Kashmir, before concluding the story that takes place in the present. In particular, I found the characters involved in the various wars and tribal invasions a little hard to keep up with, but I guess that's what you get with a book like this. I was a little disappointed by the ending. Of Rushdie's books, this ranks 3rd for me.

Next up are William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I've read the first 20 or so pages of Gibson's book, and I'm not sure if it's going to hold my interest, I'm not a sci-fi fan. I'm looking forward to Alias Grace, though.

 

[lazarus]

Have fun with Neuromancer. It's one of the best books of the last 25 years.

 

[U2isthebest]

I'm thinking of picking up "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas" after I'm done with the Brokaw book I'm reading now. Has anyone here read it? I've heard it's excellent.

 

[meegannie]

I've finished both Fury and Shalimar the Clown by Rushdie.

I find Rushdie at his best when writing his stories in the context of geopolitical and historical events. Fury is the first book of his I've read that didn't really include any of that within the story - it's more an examination of a middle aged man's existential crisis, within the framework of cultural differences. Of the four books of his I've now read, I'd rank it the lowest, but still worth a read.

I liked Fury because it was a bit different from his other books. My husband is reading his new book (not sure if it's been released yet), The Enchantress of Florence and he's really enjoying it.

 

[Earl-Of-IMDb]

I'm currently reading The Westies

Inside New York's irish mob, and it's a great read, you won't put it down!

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

I'm pretty convinced I'm going to be reading The Satanic Verses for months. I'm enjoying it enough not to give up on it, but as has been my experience with Rushdie before, the plot is unfolding very slowly and in a very non-linear way, and there are a lot of tangents and secondary characters.

I also started Robert Olen Butler's collection of short short stories Severance the other nice. It's an interesting concept--apparently, based on how long a severed human head remains conscious and how many words a person speaks in an excited or emotionally heightened state, a severed human head can think roughly 240 words. So these are all 240 word short shorts by people who've been decapitated. Nice use of language, though there's not much by way of plot. They're enjoyable little reads, though.

 

[Salome]

just finished Stephen Fry's The Liar
it was a hoot

now reading Jose Saramago's Blindness
it's good but I only read about 1/4 of it so far

 

[verte76]

reading great book

I'm reading a book about Meena, the founder of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

 

[corianderstem]

#10 Perfect From Now On - John Sellers

As a writer and a music nut, I have oodles of room in my heart for music nuts who write books about their musical obsessions, especially when they're around my age.

Sellers wrote a really funny book about his musical loves, with a couple of chapters focused on Guided By Voices, including a sojourn to Ohio to hang with the band and attend their last handful of concerts before breaking up. I feel the need to seek out more GBV now.

The only thing I didn't like was a reliance on too many footnotes. He does acknowledge at one point that it's a reference to one of his favorite authors, but I would have preferred less footnotes. Most of them were funny comments, but at some point you have to ask yourself, "why don't I just put this in the text itself and not a footnote?"

Anyway, I liked it an awful lot, and it made me laugh out loud many times.

 

[LMP]

Now I've gotta read Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for school. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

[Mr. Green Eyes]

^
That was a good one. Did you read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein yet? It's one of my favorites.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

I really love The Great Gatsby now, but I remember hating it in high school. It's slow in a lot of places, but there's this real aching beauty to it. It's also fascinating to see what Nick ultimately learns about himself by telling Gatsby's story.

On the other hand, I really hated Frankenstein. I think at least 100 pages of it was long, boring passages about the mountains and the trees

 

[LMP]

^
That was a good one. Did you read Mary Shelly's Frankenstein yet? It's one of my favorites.

Not yet.

 

[lazarus]

Now I've gotta read Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for school. I'm really looking forward to it.

Because it's so much about shattered dreams and the sad acceptance of loss and adulthood, I'm surprised they spring this on people so early on. Many students are turned off because they can't relate to it in the way that they do with Catcher in the Rye, for example. But if you open yourself up to its melancholy, it will hit and haunt you like no other assigned novel.

Not my favorite Fitzgerald (that would be Tender is the Night), but about as perfect and concise a masterpiece there is.

On my end, I'm about 1/3 through The Road. Im enjoying it, but I'm still waiting for something to happen.

 

[Lancemc]

On my end, I'm about 1/3 through The Road. Im enjoying it, but I'm still waiting for something to happen.

Not much does.

 

[lazarus]

But you liked it anyway, right?

 

[Lancemc]

I did. It's a great character piece.

Nothing life-changing though.

 

[The Sad Punk]

Has anyone read Benazir Bhutto's Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West yet? I'm tempted to pick it up,

I'm currently reading Irshad Manji's The Trouble With Islam Today, which is something I've been meaning to check out for a while. Very good read.

 

[Dalton]

I've finished both Fury and Shalimar the Clown by Rushdie.

I find Rushdie at his best when writing his stories in the context of geopolitical and historical events. Fury is the first book of his I've read that didn't really include any of that within the story - it's more an examination of a middle aged man's existential crisis, within the framework of cultural differences. Of the four books of his I've now read, I'd rank it the lowest, but still worth a read.

Shalimar the Clown - wow. I find Rushdie's books very dense with events and characters, and while this was a good book, maybe it was a little too dense? The book begins in the present. takes a long look back at the past, starting in pre-WWII Europe, and going up to the 90's, set mostly in Kashmir, before concluding the story that takes place in the present. In particular, I found the characters involved in the various wars and tribal invasions a little hard to keep up with, but I guess that's what you get with a book like this. I was a little disappointed by the ending. Of Rushdie's books, this ranks 3rd for me.

Next up are William Gibson's Neuromancer, and Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. I've read the first 20 or so pages of Gibson's book, and I'm not sure if it's going to hold my interest, I'm not a sci-fi fan. I'm looking forward to Alias Grace, though.

VP, have you read Haroun and the Sea of Stories? I think that is his best work. He wrote this book immediately after Satanic Verses in order to help his (then) 14 year old son answer his own question: "What's the point of telling stories that aren't even true?"

Its fantastical an fantastic.

 

[Cute Irish Bono]

I like all kinds of books. I am really getting into Danielle Steel and C.S. Lewis. I just finished reading "Johnny Angel." A very heartwarming book. I also have the audio book for "Out of the Silent Planet." It's a higher up reading level for me but I am enjoying it so far.

 

[No spoken words]

30 pages left for In the Name of the Rose. This is the longest it's taken me to read a book in a very long time.

 

[VintagePunk]

VP, have you read Haroun and the Sea of Stories? I think that is his best work. He wrote this book immediately after Satanic Verses in order to help his (then) 14 year old son answer his own question: "What's the point of telling stories that aren't even true?"

Its fantastical an fantastic.

I haven't read it yet, but I'll look it up, thanks. I also want to read The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

I finished Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood a few nights ago. It's a fictionalized account of the true story of the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper. Grace Marks and James McDermott, two employees of Kinnear's were tried and convicted of the murders.

Once I got about 50 pages in, I found this hard to put down. As Atwood notes in the afterword, many facts from this then-internationally known murder case were woven into the story, but she used fictionalized versions of events to fill the story in where necessary.

 

[Carek1230]

I like all kinds of books. I am really getting into Danielle Steel and C.S. Lewis. I just finished reading "Johnny Angel." A very heartwarming book. I also have the audio book for "Out of the Silent Planet." It's a higher up reading level for me but I am enjoying it so far.

I haven't read any Danielle Steel in quite a while. For a while she was really cranking out the books and they became so predictable and dull so I hope her writing has improved. I didn't care for her children's books or her poetry, she should stick to the adult novels. Glad to hear someone else here is reading DS tho.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

I finished Severance the other night. Some of the stories were great, some of them were so-so, and some of them were downright weird. That's about what I was expecting from it, though. Last night I read Jeff Tweedy's poetry collection Adult Head--a short book of mostly short poems, so I was done with it in no time.

I think I'm going to pick up the Satanic Verses again. It's not like me to be reading more than one book at the same time, but the pacing of that one is so slow that sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress. I do like it, though, so I don't want to just give up on it.

 

[lazarus]

Well I finally finished The Road. Read the last 120 pages in one sitting. The language is pretty stark so that wasn't difficult

Lance you're right in a sense that "nothing happens" as the book is somewhat episodic (despite having no chapter breaks) and many of the events could have come in a different order and had the same effect. But there did seem to be a progression in terms of the boy slowly understanding the world a bit more, as he in turn attempts to teach his father compassion in order to preserve what little humanity he may have left.

I won't get into specifics here, but I really wasn't prepared for how moving the conclusion of the novel was, and the final stanza was so poetic and haunting it really elevated the whole thing for me.

My experience was altered somewhat by picturing Viggo Mortensen the whole time I was reading it, and for some reason I was imagining the kid from There Will Be Blood playing the boy. I don't think this was a bad thing but it was odd.

I look forward to the film and hope Viggo and Hillcoat can do it justice.

 

[corianderstem]

#11 & #12 Uglies and Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

I ran across these young adult novels at a used bookstore, and when I glanced at the teaser on the back cover, I thought they were typical little books about popular kids and the unpopular kids - you know, teen high school stuff. I'd just gotten done reading the Green River Killer book, and it sounded like just the fluff to wipe the taste out of my brain.

Well! Turns out they're the first two books of a sci-fi trilogy, in a futuristic world where everyone is made "pretty" on their 16th birthday and go on to lead a fun-loving, privileged life. Of course, not all is as it seems, and "pretty" isn't all it's cracked up to be. And since it's a futuristic world, of course there's a group of outsiders trying to muck things up. Our heroine, naturally, gets sucked into this group.

They were pretty good - very quick reads. The first book was better than the second, but I have third book on hold at the library because I want to see where the trilogy wraps up.

 

[No spoken words]

Well I finally finished The Road. Read the last 120 pages in one sitting. The language is pretty stark so that wasn't difficult

Lance you're right in a sense that "nothing happens" as the book is somewhat episodic (despite having no chapter breaks) and many of the events could have come in a different order and had the same effect. But there did seem to be a progression in terms of the boy slowly understanding the world a bit more, as he in turn attempts to teach his father compassion in order to preserve what little humanity he may have left.

I won't get into specifics here, but I really wasn't prepared for how moving the conclusion of the novel was, and the final stanza was so poetic and haunting it really elevated the whole thing for me.

My experience was altered somewhat by picturing Viggo Mortensen the whole time I was reading it, and for some reason I was imagining the kid from There Will Be Blood playing the boy. I don't think this was a bad thing but it was odd.

I look forward to the film and hope Viggo and Hillcoat can do it justice.

Well done Laz.

Finally finished The Name of the Rose. It was alternately great and frustrating. Glad I read it, but, glad I am done with it. Look forward to seeing the film now.

Up next, a quick Lehane-esque book called "The Blade Itself", a debut novel. Should be a quick but decent read. After that, probably the Brother's K.

 

[corianderstem]

I absolutely loved The Brothers K.

 

[No spoken words]

I absolutely loved The Brothers K.

An employee of mine bought it for me as a holiday gift.....so, instead of placing it well back in the queue, I'll read it after The Blade Itself. Have heard good things. Even Dalton loved it.