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Book Talk - What are you reading?
"A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail" by Bill Bryson. Even though I doubt if I'll ever do the entire trek, this book sure inspires me to consider it.
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Jefferson's Call for Nationhood by Stephen Howard Browne
Recent reads include the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee (good at first but dragged bad) and my favorite SciFi of the last year or so, Counting Heads by a Fairbanks author, David Marusek.
It's not your usual formulaic Stephen King kind of book and it takes a bit of a commitment as it is 765 pages long. But it's a great read as the crew fight "it", the ice, and each other. It's also a rather scathing commentary on what, in the 19th century, was called "progress".
If you want a good guy for writing thick books that you can't put down try Nelson DeMille. He is good at what Stephen King used to be good at - sucking you in with just enough perfectly plausible material that when it takes the turn you are hardly aware of it.
I particularly like his stories involving Detective John Corey - Plum Island, Lion's Game, Night Fall and Wild Fire. Best read in that order (chronological).
Have been reading State of Denial but it is slow moving for me and only gets me angry...
'State of Denial' - I'm not surprised..... :shades:
Nope. Not gonna go there. Wouldn't be prudent.... :P
I read the first Bush at War book at it was just a gush piece. Missed the second and that third one I'm just going to give up on.
The Charm School is an amazingly good book. DeMille writes all his stuff long hand. Ya gotta love that.
The Friday Night Knitting Club - Story of a woman and her teenage daughter in New York. The woman owns a knitting shop where women congregate Friday evening's to share their life stories and experiences.
The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz- one of those amazing true stories. The guy was a Polish cavalry officer captured by the Red Army in 1939 when Germany and Russia partitioned Poland. Sent to a gulag in Siberia, he esacaped with 6 prisoners and they walked 4,000 miles to India
Everything through Slaughterhouse Five was fantastic and even his lesser works had the touch in them. He'll be missed
His first book, Life at the Bottom, was fabulous and readable. This one is just plain educational, but I paid $25 for the hardcover and dammit, I'm going to finish it.
Off-season, but I'm also reading Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris.
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I usually avoid short stories but I really enjoyed Counting Heads by the same guy. Plus he's not prolific at all, so this will have to tide me over until his second novel, which could be years.
In this quick read, Duane gets some of his act together. Ok if you're a McMurtry fan but still a bit thin.
just kidding :P
Easy to read (a simple, clear prose), enlightening, amusing, amazing, moving. Present history wisely confronted with ancient times. I am enjoying this book very much.
For references
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400043385
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryszard_Kapu%C5%9Bci%C5%84ski
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travels_with_Herodotus
Regards,
Jose
Loved every bit of it. Thought it was much better done than the last couple.
Nice tying together of things.
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Since the narrator is comparing his failed marriage (and his hippie helper's rocky relationship) to his pioneer grandmother's unhappy marriage in the late 1800's, it is all a bit of a time warp.
The Wiki summary covers it, but the book was quite an enjoyable read. Especially after having to give up on Digging to America, the Echo Maker and Baroque-A-Nova after about 50 pages each.
And my list tends to be a bit...well... different than most.
Right now I'm reading a book on Bayesian probability and one about the politics of the 1800's that lead up to the Civil War (which some refer to as the war of Northern aggression)
I'm winding down on The Baroque Cycle, so I'm ~100 years ahead of you.
Making out the possible next future with Crichton's scientific insight and irony; peeking at the XVI Century global past with Rushdie's fantasy and scholar classicism.
I'm enjoying both.
Regards,
Jose
I've read pretty much every one of his books, and his travel tales from Australia are wonderful ("In a Sunburned Country").
Am currently re-reading all of the Tom Clancy novels (currently on "Executive Orders"), plus I've got a few books from the local library that are in the queue. One on the NFL, one on NASCAR, one on marketing / branding and the last on professional golf during WW2.
Now reading Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut---also very weird indeed.
Currently on the nightstand is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. The story of a mute Wisconsin boy and his dogs, aka a modern take on Hamlet set in rural Wisconsin. Good read and good North Woods local color.
But with a review from you, I'm confident this may be in the 10%. :P
Have you heard about www.paperbackswap.com?
PAPERBACK SWAP
I joined and I really like it. For joining you get 2 credits. Then you list all the books you want to "trade away", and you get 1 credit for each listing.
In turn, you can create a Wish List and if someone else has posted a book that's on your Wish List, you order it from them and spend 1 credit.
The sender of the book pays the postage, you get the book "for free" so to speak.
In reality, it's costing you about $2.50 a book because of the postage you will have to spend to send your book to others.
So far i've gotten 4 books, all promptly, all in good shape. They also do books on CD.
Then, of course, there was the travesty of one of her recommended books being pure fiction, when it was meant to be a first-person account of substance abuse.
Oops!
Sounds like there will be a few folks here who are glad this is her last season.
Famed Seattle librarian, Nancy Pearl, taught me, in her book, Book Lust, not to bother with any book that doesn't grab you within the first 50 pages. I make frequent exceptions to that rule (otherwise I wouldn't have plowed through Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy last summer), but it's a pretty good rule of thumb.
Hm, a bit of channeling Faulkner there with all the comma delineated clauses instead of readable sentences. :shades:
(I enjoyed breezing through Stella btw).
Among the ones I threw out the window at 50 pages (that I recall)
Eat Love Pray (chick book, all the way--the women's version of Raiders of the Lost Ark fantasies).
The Da Vinci Code (beach book for a rainy day I guess---nonsense and surprisingly badly written IMO)
Girl With the Dragon Tattoo --- people swear to me you have to stick with it past 50 pages, but I just couldn't. Maybe I'll come back to it someday. Sooo boring in the beginning.....
Fat Girl --- I actually did come back to this one. It was painful to read in that it was so self-denegrating, but I gave it a second chance. Great book? Nah. But morbidly seductive I suppose.
Am curious to see how the movies turn out.
1. Catch-22
2. Remains of the Day
I even recall a movie that was *way better* than the book -- JAWS :P
I've been on page 75 of Ann Rice's "Interview 'With A Vampire" going on 18 years now. Just couldn't get into it.
"Salem's Lot", a vampire book by Stephen King, was awesome. A book I could really sink my teeth into.
Aside from the usual blood-sucking, there is a very conspicuous nod to both Mesmerism (popular in the day as a form of hypnotism performed by quacks, mostly on delicate Victorian females (actually M. Mesmer lived long before this time)...and also hints of sexual predation of course.
Also, can't tell you how many times I started to read the 3rd book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.... and, just got put to sleep by the dwarf and the elf promising how they would die for each other, yada, yada, yada... zzzzzzzzzzz.. (and, I loved those books...)
What am I reading? Tonight, it's Sports Illustrated..
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That reminds me of an incident that happened to me many years ago.
I'm not much of a Steven King fan, but my first wife was. She bought the book "Four Past Midnight" and I picked it up and read the first story "The Lingoliers".
I was scheduled to travel from CA to Boston on a red-eye flight for business not long after I read the book. Had no idea what the story was about when I started it, but, let me tell you, that book made it real tough to sleep on the flight.
I got into Boston very bleary-eyed.
Let me save you from that pain. We rented "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and couldn't get past the first 30 minutes. It's in Swedish with dubbed voices - very BADLY dubbed voices. I suspect that if you spoke Swedish it'd be pretty good, but the dubbed translation made the conversations seem very stilted and it was dead boring.
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