[Hercules Rockefeller]

dbelle, on Jul 21 2008, 11:35 PM, said:

Herc, for non-fiction books, I'm almost done with Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach. She's a funny writer, who also wrote Stiff , about how American culture deals with the practicalities of death (i.e. what happens to the bodies) and Spook, about what science and others say about what happens, if anything, after death. I've actually learned a lot about human bodies and the crazy ways that science (and scientists) work. Plus, it's funny!

Hey thanks!
I will definitely check all three of those out. Should I start with Bonk? Spook sounds very interesting. And I always like funny! Have you (or anyone else) ever read Devil in the White City? Totally fascinating book that tells parallel stories of what really happened at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago (aka Columbian Exposition). It's about one of the most important events in American architectural history, which prompted a serial killer to prey on the crowds that came to visit Chicago for the Fair. Awesome. :hugs: It may go on my re-read list.

Also: "literary beard" = :lol:

[KOA]

TheAliasMan, on Jul 20 2008, 06:45 PM, said:

What's the deal with these? I've never seen them before and I was in Barnes and Noble today and there are a ton of displays all over the first and second floor for what appears to be 3 serial novels. What's the storyline and where they released all at once? Seems like if its a connected story, you'd have heard and seen them by now (ie: the Harry Potter hype, etc)

It's actually a 4 novel series and the fourth is to be released in a couple of weeks. That's probably why the display was up. It's a young adult series. My wife is a teacher, so we often read this stuff. The storyline is interesting, but it gets a little too mushy sometimes.

Spoiler

It's about a normal girl who falls in love with a vampire and a werewolf. Like I said, the love part gets a little old, but the action and some of the interaction is good.

It's an okay read if you have no other prospects.

[Matt]

http://www.tbpcontrol.co.uk/TWS/CoverImages_1_9/190/491/1904919405.jpg

Just started this last night. I don't know much about him but have been on a kick of Greek philosophers lately

[ScottT]

Sweet T, on Jul 20 2008, 04:28 PM, said:

Lot of Spanish in all his books.

It's not that I found it offensive to have so much Spanish - it was just that I had no means of translation at my disposal while I was on vacation. I suppose I could have set it down but it was the only reading material I had...




So I ended up taking a Cormac McCarthy hiatus and started The Gunslinger. That's Book 1 of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. So far, so good.

This post has been edited by ScottT: 23 July 2008 - 10:06 AM

[Dr Gonzo]

http://www.rebeccacaudill.org/teacher/covergallery/1988/light.jpg


Been going back through this in my spare time. I loved this when I was a kid.

[the gregster]

ScottT, on Jul 23 2008, 02:04 PM, said:

So I ended up taking a Cormac McCarthy hiatus and started The Gunslinger. That's Book 1 of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. So far, so good.

The Gunslinger is great. If you decide to continue the series, be prepared for a shift in genre come book 2.

[elsbieta]

http://www.oceansofosyrus.com/forums/public/style_images/master/snapback.png' alt='View Post' />Dr Gonzo, on Jul 23 2008, 02:16 PM, said:

Been going back through this in my spare time. I loved this when I was a kid.

Pardon me sir, but were you not the one some time ago disparaging the reading of Harry Potter by adults on account of the Potter series being "children's books?" :tongue:

(I kid, I kid..... Silverstein is timeless and should be read again and again)


I just finished a second reading of Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

This novel is absolutely gorgeous.

I read Housekeeping a few years ago and had to come back to it, as it has been haunting me ever since – once again, I found myself having to stop and read a paragraph a second and third time for the sheer beauty of the language, which contains a shadow of something Faulknerian. The writing is as cold as the landscape it envelops and startlingly beautiful, start to finish, as the narrative unfolds quietly around a subdued brutality and an undercurrent of transience, loss, and mental illness. It's a reminder that a great novelist is often a better poet than so many writing in the poetry field.

*My disclaimer is that I've been hesitant in the past to recommend it to most people because plot is very much secondary to the language and imagery… I think a lot of people would have a hard time getting into it.


I'm now about 70 pages into her second novel, Gilead, written 30 or so years later, and have not been disappointed. Very different in tone, but the writing is again shockingly beautiful. Part novel, part meditation, part philosophy and page after page of profound wisdom.

This post has been edited by elsbieta: 23 July 2008 - 07:56 PM

[KnownRider]

I'm about 100 pages into Blair Jackson's Garcia: An American Life. The current portion is taking place when the Acid Tests were in full swing. So far, so great. :thumbsup:

On a side note, I brought this book with me to the big family trip to Disney. My mom pointed out that I "always loved biographies in grade school". Then The Wife added "Yeah, you love that other one when we went on vacation to St. Petersburg" (Levon Helm's This Wheel's On Fire). And you know what? They're right. When I get towards the end of this book I think I'm going to move onto the Bill Graham or Rock Scully books.

This post has been edited by KnownRider: 24 July 2008 - 05:40 AM

[woo]

KnownRider, on Jul 24 2008, 09:39 AM, said:

I'm about 100 pages into Blair Jackson's Garcia: An American Life. The current portion is taking place when the Acid Tests were in full swing. So far, so great. :thumbsup:

On a side note, I brought this book with me to the big family trip to Disney. My mom pointed out that I "always loved biographies in grade school". Then The Wife added "Yeah, you love that other one when we went on vacation to St. Petersburg" (Levon Helm's This Wheel's On Fire). And you know what? They're right. When I get towards the end of this book I think I'm going to move onto the Bill Graham or Rock Scully books.

The Rock Scully book 'Living with the Dead' is by far the most entertaining book on the Dead out there, believe I read in like two days or something; quite a while back.

The accuracy of it is another story though, he had/has a number of axes to grind with a number of people in the band and organization,; he pretty much slammed everyone at some point except Jerry. Definitely worth reading though for the entertainment alone.

[Kevin]

ledfloyd, on Jul 13 2008, 10:27 PM, said:

i absolutely love the last sentence of that book.

I just finished Tender a couple of minutes ago... what a wonderful way to end it. 'Twas a memorable closing sentence, to say the least. I absolutely loved everything about this book. :hugs:

Better than Gatsby, if I may so blaspheme (granted, I haven't read that in a while). :whistling:

Now I'm looking for something new. Whenever I figure out what that is, I'll make sure to report back. I'm sure you'll all be waiting with bated breath. :tongue:

[ledfloyd]

kevinrutledge, on Jul 25 2008, 03:28 AM, said:

Better than Gatsby, if I may so blaspheme (granted, I haven't read that in a while). :whistling:

i agree with this.

[lawtoned]

Just finished Rushdie's Shame (his narration is a fun circus) and I have Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine on deck. Also been reading lots of short stories from an anthology lately, and I highly recommend James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" and Katherine Anne Porter's "He."

[paulitical]

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QP7HNAHRL._SL500_.jpg

i travel the panhandle quite a bit and get to see some pretty remote and wild spots. there are a few places where forts once stood (and some still stand) here and there from the seminole wars. most people don't really know much about this conflict, but it's the longest military engagement in our nation's history. the seminole tribe never officially surrendered.

(that's why the 'noles bust out those ridiculous all black uniforms once a year with "unconquered" written on the side. we lost the first time we tried the "black out." last year the team played it smart and wore them against duke. )

This post has been edited by paulitical: 26 July 2008 - 05:12 AM

[girl]

http://macroevolution.narod.ru/gene/images_en/cover.jpg

[pode316]

Here are the three books I am currently working through:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41zq4m6hO+L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

In this remarkable collection of linguistically acrobatic fictions, Alexandra Chasin employs forms as diverse as cryptograms and sentence diagrams to display a prodigious talent that is visual as well as verbal.

In one story, the words are arrayed on the page like troops, embodying the xenophobic image of invading armies that animates the narrative. Another story incorporates personal ads, and another is organized alphabetically, while yet another leaves sentences unfinished. A number of Chasin's stories take metafictional turns, calling attention to the process of writing itself. The last piece in the collection plays with genre distinctions, including an index of first lines and a general index. From the highly political and well-wrought montage about September 11th to a sexual romp that proceeds by punning on philosophers' names, Chasin's work playfully explores the curious and often contradictory qualities of language. Treating love and loss, sex, desire, and war -- among other things -- and set in New York, New England, California, Paris, and Morocco, these tales are narrated by men and women, old and young, gay, straight, and bisexual; one narrator is not a person at all, but a work of art. Each of these deft, playful, and sometimes anarchic fictions is different from the others, yet all are the unmistakable offspring of the same wildly inventive imagination. Chasin's diction is precise and purposeful, yet it retains a colloquialism that enables a dialogue with the reader. Humorous and heart-wrenching, often all at once, Kissed By offers the sort of acute insight evoked through the interplay of empathy and intellect.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YGVDTPVGL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

According to this tongue-in-cheek travel guide, Toulouse-Lautrec, with the aid of one M. Menottes, a benefactor and fellow brothel-goer, opened a little shop in Brussels called Lautrec Handbags. Virginia Woolf, in an effort to find a place for her feminist squad to convene, established a cafe called A Room of One's Own-after her not-yet-published book-which, after her death, was renamed Virginia Woolf's Restaurant and went from specializing in vegetarian foods for the literati to pushing burger specials to tourists. And the proof? Axelrod, a professor of English and comparative literature at Chapman University and the author of The Poetics of Novels, includes black-and-white photographs of each business named for these celebrities of Western civilization, plus an array of footnotes and a general air of breezy certainty. "After the initial publishing of Don Quixote, Cervantes fell into a kind of post-partum depression," he writes, and goes on to explain how Cervantes opened an eponymous institute in Orange, Calif., specializing in "psychological problems associated with male mid-life crisis." Some 40-odd other little tales, none over two pages-concerning businesses established by Hemingway (the titular garage), Camus (cognac), Racine (Danish Kringles™), Joyce (pub), Van Gogh (potatoes), Bukowski (jewelry) and Shakespeare (monofilaments)-make up the rest of the volume. It's a sly, original idea carried, perhaps, a bit too far: the volume offers good browsable bits rather than an absorbing narrative. But it amuses-and may even momentarily confuse the credulous looking for signs of La Comédie humaine outside Balzac's Balls in Newport Beach, Calif.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41G6Q1WCMML._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg


"Beauty invited the Beast for a stroll on a crystal path strewn with hollow silver hearts that were being stirred up by stiff gusts of wind like clouds of dust: and so everything began."

And so begins F/32, Eurudice's award-winning first novel about Ela (a pseudonym meaning orgasm). The sight of Ela stops all hearts. Ela is an expert in love. No matter how many people love her, she daily inspires more. She spends half her life avoiding the people who love her, and the other half making them love her. She is mind blowing.

A mock-quest for self-understanding and unification, F/32 lures the reader into a landscape of sexual alienation, continually interrupted by gags, dreams, mirror reflections, flashbacks, and scenes from Manhattan street life. It is a wild, eccentric, Rabelaisian romp through most forms of amorous excess. But it is also a troubling tale orbiting around a public sexual assault on the streets of Manhattan. Between the poles of desire and butchery the novel and Ela sail, the awed reader going along for one of the most dazzling rides in recent American fiction.

[pode316]

Whitty, on Jul 11 2008, 07:19 AM, said:

I think you owe us all a 200 word book report first. Then I'll decide if it's worthy of a gold star sticker or merely a smiley face.


I've been on a bit of a reading hiatus recently, but I've nearly finished The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, an anthology I pick up every year and always enjoy. An intriguing blend of fiction, essays, non-fiction features, comics, speeches, and other literary documentation of the past year.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51phyGZC3%20L._SS500_.jpg

Yeah, thats always a pretty solid anthology. I like to read that and also Pushcart.

[Kevin]

http://www.harperacademic.com/coverimages/large/0060883286.jpg

So far, so good.

[ledfloyd]

http://www.oceansofosyrus.com/forums/public/style_images/master/snapback.png' alt='View Post' />kevinrutledge, on Jul 30 2008, 03:19 AM, said:

So far, so good.

have you read love in the time of cholera? i think i like it more than that one. but they're both masterpieces.

[dances_with_wooks]

I just started this book this week, so far so good

http://www.ccsf.edu/Library/exhibits/three_cupscover.jpg

Quote

"Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of the Central Asia Institute. He has dedicated the last 12 years of his life to creating
53 schools that have educated over 20 thousand children in the remote mountain areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Three Cups of Tea is a collaboration with Award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin on Mortenson's unforgettable
adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time."

“Three Cups of Tea is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of our time. Greg Mortenson’s dangerous and difficult quest to build schools in the wildest parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan is not only a thrilling read, it’s proof that one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, really can change the world.” —Tom Brokaw

This post has been edited by dances_with_wooks: 30 July 2008 - 04:32 PM

[pode316]

http://www.oceansofosyrus.com/forums/public/style_images/master/snapback.png' alt='View Post' />kevinrutledge, on Jul 30 2008, 02:19 AM, said:

So far, so good.

One of my favorite books, a cornerstone in magical realism.