books

[UberBeaver]

I've had Ulysses on my shelf for years. Never picked it up cause I know I'm going to take 4 months to read it.

 

[U2Man]

After a couple of months of stopping and starting I've finally finished Joyce's Ulysses.

Wow. It was an incredibly hard read. I'd often find myself drifting while reading it, and then not even having a clue what I'd just read on the previous page, and having to go back and reread.

Maybe it's just me and my low-brow tastes talking, but I found it to be an over-hyped, pretentious, stream-of-consciousness set of ramblings.

I'm curious as to what others have thought. Comments?

did you get through the last 60 pages without lifting your eyes from the pages?

 

[VintagePunk]

I've had Ulysses on my shelf for years. Never picked it up cause I know I'm going to take 4 months to read it.

Read it and get back to me, then.

 

[VintagePunk]

did you get through the last 60 pages without lifting your eyes from the pages?

Was there some olde-timey system of punctuation (or lack thereof) back in the day, that I'm not aware of?

The way Molly rambled, and many of the other characters, too, it was very difficult to keep track of who they were referring to.

 

[VintagePunk]

Come to think of it, maybe it's just the way of the Irish. It was a lot like attempting to listen to Bono rambling.

 

[beegee]

I spent about three hours in Barnes and Noble today

Among other things, I bought and started reading We, The Jury which is a new book written by seven of the jury members who sentenced Scott Peterson to death.

I've read pretty much everything that's been written about this case and I think it will be very interesting to read exactly how the jury reached their verdict.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

Are we all being lazy and not reading this summer?

I finished Richard Ford's newest novel The Lay of the Land while I was on vacation last week. It's the last book in the trilogy about Frank Bascombe, and I have to say that I think it was the best of the three (the other two being The Sportswriter and Independence Day). I often wondered while reading if Ford ever intended to write more than one book about Frank, but I'm glad he did. The Sportswriter was one of my favorite books in college, and reading this was like catching up with an old friend. It's slow in places, but overall I really liked the style and the character development. Some zany things happen in the last 25 pages, but the ending is just right.

I also took The Prince of Tides with me on my trip because I wanted a fluff read. I'm surprised that it's a lot less fluff than I expected. It's so different from the movie. I'm over 150 pages in and I still have 500 to go

 

[bonocrazy88]

My favorite book is "The Vagina Monologues" compiled by Eve Ensler. It's a great collection of stories by women...but for all. I have had my friends (women and men) read it, my friend's mothers. It's just empowering.

What else? I just went to Books-A-Million and bought a book called "The Lives of Animals" by J.M. Coetzee. It's very interesting and thought-provoking.

 

[Utoo]

Finished off "The Time Traveler's Wife" a week ago. Slowly getting through "The Bourne Identity" now, though I've got too much other stuff going on to get into it. I probably won't finish it by the time HP-7 comes out.

 

[corianderstem]

I'm up to book 45 of the year.

I just finished a really trashy romance that was heavy on the smut. It was very, very silly. And yet I couldn't put it down.

 

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

I finished How Sassy Changed My Life in about two days, and now I'm reading Kitchen Confidential and am already about halfway through it.

When I'm finished with that I may start on The Handmaid's Tale. It's been on my shelf for a couple of years.

 

[corianderstem]

I loved Kitchen Confidential! I love Margaret Atwood, too.

How was that Sassy book? I'm curious about it for nostalgia's sake. It didn't change my life or anything, but man, I wish I'd kept my Sassy collection.

 

[Tiger Edge]

When I'm finished with that I may start on The Handmaid's Tale. It's been on my shelf for a couple of years.

It's a great and depressing book. My English teacher made us read it in 11th grade. I should really pick it up again. The ending was really muddled for me then and I'm sure I'd have a better understanding of it now.

As for myself, I'm just finishing Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix (book 5). I'm also nearly done with re-reading Animal Farm and I'm still in the middle of The Kite Runner.
Unfortunately, I want to finish with the Harry Potter series before the other book is released, so I'm going to have to continue putting my other books on hold.
Red Dragon
The Children of Men

Ohh, and I want to read The Audacity of Hope sooner or later. Maybe I'll hold off on it until next year when the political race heats up.

 

[LMP]

I have to read Kite Runner and The Emperor Was Divine for school. I'm hoping it's about Emperor Palpatine, but I doubt it.

I hope I can pick up HP7 on the 21st before I go to the airport, it would be perfect to read on the trip.

Children of the Men the book sounds like a great read, the movie is one of my favorites.

 

[No spoken words]

I read Kitchen Confidential, loved it. The Handmaid's Tale is the only Atwood title that I've read, though I own another.

I am about to wrap up "Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian. Hate reading books after I've seen the film, but since the film is actually 2 O'Brian books combined, I went for it. I'm digging it.

Prince of Tides. Nice. I like Conroy a lot, well, I like 3 of his books a lot, one not so much.

I read the first 4 Potter books in rapid succession after 9/11, have not read the 5th yet...might try to jam through it in advance of the film.

Books.

 

[bonocrazy88]

When I'm finished with that I may start on The Handmaid's Tale. It's been on my shelf for a couple of years.

I really liked that book.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

The Blind Assassin is another great book by Atwood. I love how she combines genres in the novel--everything from sci fi to romance--into a a complex, beautifully layered novel. It's a little long, but it reads very quickly, and it's a page-turner to the very end.

 

[Tiger Edge]

Children of the Men the book sounds like a great read, the movie is one of my favorites.

It's a lot different from the movie, though. It's a lot more depressing, actually. I'm only a few chapters in (still) because I actually don't own the book. I just pick it up every time I get dragged to Barnes and Noble.

 

[LMP]

It's a lot different from the movie, though. It's a lot more depressing, actually. I'm only a few chapters in (still) because I actually don't own the book. I just pick it up every time I get dragged to Barnes and Noble.

More depressing than the movie? What happens? Does Theo fall down a well? Do kittens jump into meat grinders?

Those are really the only way CoM could get more depressing.

 

[BonoIsMyMuse]

More depressing than the movie? What happens? Does Theo fall down a well? Do kittens jump into meat grinders?

He falls down the well trying to save the kittens from the meat grinder

 

[LMP]

Such a noble man that Theo. I read the synopsis on wiki and wow, that sounds about 100000x less interesting than the film.

I'll probably read 2001 and 1984 before Chillen' of Men.

 

[VintagePunk]

I thought it was time to resurrect* this thread, given that many of us got books for Christmas...and, because I'm reading an exceptionally good book at the moment.

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs by Ken Jennings. Some of you might remember Jennings. He was the 74 game winner on Jeopardy back in 2004. I know that back then, me and most of my family watched his run with great interest, cheering him on. Since then, he's been blogging and keeping up his personal web site, making promotional appearances, etc.

This book is part autobiography, part history of trivia book, and part nerdy trivia worship. Jennings is articulate and funny with a delightfully snarky sense of humour, with a healthy dose of self-deprecation thrown in. Interspersed throughout the various nuggets of information is the story of his experience of becoming Jeopardy's longest-running contestant.

A must-read for Jennings fans, or even just plain ol' trivia buffs.


*While searching for this thread (keywords: what are you reading), I came up with about a gazillion Temple Bar threads. We're a surprisingly literate bunch in there.

 

[corianderstem]

Yay! Someone bumped the book thread! I'm on book #78 of the year, and I bought two more books today!

Wasn't that Ken Jennings book great? Have you seen his blog? There's some trivia/game related posts that I usually skip, but his non-trivia/game entires are usually hilarious.

I guess he lives somewhere in my area - I hope I have a Ken encounter someday!

http://www.ken-jennings.com/blog/

 

[VintagePunk]

Yay! Someone bumped the book thread! I'm on book #78 of the year, and I bought two more books today!

Wasn't that Ken Jennings book great? Have you seen his blog? There's some trivia/game related posts that I usually skip, but his non-trivia/game entires are usually hilarious.

I guess he lives somewhere in my area - I hope I have a Ken encounter someday!

http://www.ken-jennings.com/blog/

I keep up with the blog sometimes (mostly my daughter does, though - she wants him to leave Mindy and marry her, even though he's much closer to my age than her's, so I'd like to think I have an equal shot ), and we both subscribe to his weekly e-mail trivia too. We checked when the book came out to see if he was doing any appearances around here, but alas, he wasn't.

Yeah, he's close to your area, isn't he? If you do happen to run into him, tell him he's got a couple of potential Plan B's waiting for him in the land of Trebek. Nerdy boys.

 

[corianderstem]

Consider the message delivered.

My favorite part in the book was when he talked about the annual trivia contest at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point. My home town isn't far from Stevens Point, and I loved listening to their college station.

The annual trivia contest was fascinating to me - it's one of the largest in the world, if I recall correctly, and while I never knew any of the answers, I'd listen to as much of the contest as I could.

When I was in college, our teeny radio station (10 watts) held an annual trivia contest as well, and while it was as teeny as the station, it was a blast to be one of the DJs, up all night reading the questions and playing whatever we wanted, while consuming vast quantities of junk food.

 

[LarryMullen's POPAngel]

When I'm finished with that I may start on The Handmaid's Tale. It's been on my shelf for a couple of years.

Still on my shelf.

I've read a total of three or four non-textbook books this year.

I miss reading for pleasure, but by the time a semester ends if I have a week or so off a book is the last thing I want to look at.

 

[lazarus]

Any Douglas Coupland fans here? I just finished Hey Nostradamus! and was pretty blown away. I'm rarely disappointed in his work, but this is the strongest thing he's done in a long time, certainly better than last year's J-Pod, which may have been his career low.

Next up: the recently-adapted-for-the-screen graphic novel Persepolis, and a short story collection by Scottish author Alasdair Gray, who wrote the best book I've read this year, Lanark (epic masterpiece).

Another note: if anyone's interested in reading J.D. Salinger's uncollected magazine stories (about 15 total), I found a website that has them and am currently editing everything for uniform font and size so they're easier to read. I'm VERY excited about this, as it's kind of like getting new material from a dead author (and we probably won't get any until he actually is dead).

 

[corianderstem]

Any Douglas Coupland fans here? I just finished Hey Nostradamus! and was pretty blown away. I'm rarely disappointed in his work, but this is the strongest thing he's done in a long time, certainly better than last year's J-Pod, which may have been his career low.

Oh, that's a bummer. I've had J-Pod sitting on my shelf for a while, and I've been looking forward to reading it. I loved Microserfs and was hoping I'd like this one just as much. I'll still read it, maybe if I go in with lowered expectations it won't be that bad.

I haven't read a lot of Coupland, but I'll check out Hey Nostradamus.

I just read I, California by Stacy Grenrock Woods. What a weird book. It started off promising: a snarky little memoir about a weird little girl with dreams of fame and who ends up in show business.

But man, while some of her turns of phrase were funny, as the book went on, I often had no freaking clue what she was talking about.

 

[RavenBlue]

I just finished Birds Of A Feather by Linda Johns.

Linda runs a wild bird sanctuary in Nova Scotia, and the book is all about the trials and tribulations of everything that goes with that. She's also quite the artists as all the illustrations are done by her. It's a very touching story, quite witty at times, and quite sad at times as well.

Great read!

I'm excited to see that she has other books out as well..

 

[No spoken words]

Finished Streets of Laredo, which was not as great as its predecessor, but still good.

Before that, had read the Kite Runner, before that was Children of Hurin, and before that, I think, was City of G-d.

Right now, am reading A Small Town in Germany, which is a very early work from LeCarre.

Books.