Reading Is Sexy: Books Part III

[corianderstem]

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

I'm a sucker for her books, but this one (about a kid with Asperger's who's on trial for murder) I did not like nearly as much as others.

 

[corianderstem]

jPod by Douglas Coupland

Ugh, I hated this book. I remember really enjoying Microserfs back in the day, so I was eager to read this one (well, not so eager, considering how long it languished on my shelves waiting to be read).

It started out fine enough, but a couple hundred pages in, something just clicked and I just found the whole thing so tedious.

 

[powerhour24]

I've been spending this week back in More's Utopia for the first time in a long time, we should require that every politician in this country understand every single thing this book is saying, perhaps force them to memorize the entire text verbatim.

 

[lazarus]

jPod by Douglas Coupland

Ugh, I hated this book. I remember really enjoying Microserfs back in the day, so I was eager to read this one (well, not so eager, considering how long it languished on my shelves waiting to be read).

It started out fine enough, but a couple hundred pages in, something just clicked and I just found the whole thing so tedious.

I'm a huge Douglas Coupland fan, so I'm a little saddened by your reaction.

I didn't think it was one of his better books, though. The two before it, Hey Nostradamus! and Eleanor Rigby, were both fantastic IMO. And its follow-up, The Gum Thief, was an improvement as well.

Haven't read the most recent, Generation A. Though I never buy books when they come out, even by my favorite authors. Too damned expensive, and I don't do libraries. When I can get a used copy cheap enough I just buy it.

 

[corianderstem]

I haven't read a lot of his. I do have Hey Nostradamus on my list to pick up one of these days.

 

[lazarus]

Have you read the stuff before Microserfs? Generation X, Shampoo Planet, or Life After God?

Love all of those.

Hey Nostradamus isn't as funny, but is pretty powerful and moving.

 

[corianderstem]

I think I read Generation X aaaaages ago, but do not remember a thing about it.

I'm sure I read another one as well, but don't remember which one. Maybe Shampoo Planet?

So I guess that tells you how much his books stick with me.

 

[corianderstem]

The Torn Skirt by Rebecca Godfrey

Blerg. I'd read a nonfiction book she'd written, about the murder of a teenaged girl by a group of other teenaged girls in British Columbia, and that was really good.

This was a novel about a troubled teenaged girl and other teenaged hookers and junkies on the streets of Victoria, BC.

It was seriously annoying.

 

[Saracene]

Freedom - Jonathan Franzen

I've enjoyed this one much more than The Corrections, which was entertaining to read but was also so thickly coated with the author's contempt for his characters it left a bad taste in my mouth. This one had a fair share of contempt as well, but the characters also felt more fully realised as flawed people who screw up and do stupid things but who in the end are not without redemptive qualities and who you can sympathise with. I chuckled at all the U2/Bono references

 

[powerhour24]

New thread time???

 

[IWasBored]

i am a geek. after work last week, a bunch of us went to the bar for breakfast. after beers, i went to barnes and noble with a friend of mine in search of the star wars-based books set when the old republic, the new mmo that's supposed to be out next year, takes place. cos we're wicked big nerds like that. my buddy is a dungeons and dragons dork from back in the day, so he talked me into some forgotten realms stuff (went with the icewind dale trilogy) because apparently i cannot leave a bookstore emptyhanded (and they didn't have the star wars stuff we were looking for).

drizzt is such a badass.

 

[IWasBored]

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

I'm a sucker for her books, but this one (about a kid with Asperger's who's on trial for murder) I did not like nearly as much as others.

pretty much all my female co-workers are a sucker for her books, too. which makes me think they're the exact opposite of what i'd ever want to read.

 

[corianderstem]

They're extremely predictable, and while the plots are "ripped from the headlines" kinds of things, the character structure is pretty much copy-and-paste from book to book.

And yet I usually can't put the suckers down.

 

[Sicy]

New Sexy Books thread time.