Haven't seen one of these in a while... does anybody out there still Give a Hoot?

Carter Beats the Devil (Gold) - Maaaaaad props to our own lonesome_d for the suggestion. This book was funny, suspenseful, touching... basically everything I could reasonably want from a novel. In a similar vein to 'Kavalier & Clay', and while I hesitate to say it's better, it's probably more consistent and has a stronger finish.

David Boring (Clowes) - Gotta rep for the funnybooks set. Now this, this was something else. The author once jokingly described this book as "like Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Gilligan's Island." Sure, why not. Anyway, I loved it. Gorgeous, weird, and just as good as any Clowes I've read (which is more or less all of it at this point).

The Corrections (Franzen) - Figured I'd give this one a shot, as it comes highly recommended. Not finished quite yet, but so far so good. Good writing, strong humor, sharp observations and utterly unlikeable characters. Not a bad mix.

PEACE

nm

was, and i guess still am, a big fan of the dude up until he did Haunted which i thought was horrible.

with is newest i'm not quite sure how i feel about it yet but as always with him there's lines thrown here and there that i really like but it's not touching Choke or even Diary for that matter.


PEACE

PEACE

I'm halfway through The Road, and am ready to slit my wrists

Good reading, but boy is it depressing
______________________________________________________________________
(I REPEAT)
... and all that could have been...

i just finished "on beauty" by zadie smith, and i liked it though some of the characterizations were too on the nose and caricaturish.

i just started "cloud atlas" by david mitchell and i'm halfway through "can't stop won't stop" by jeff chang, "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius" by eggers, and "the watchmen"

Cloud Atlas is wicked and i really enjoyed On Beauty...


PEACE

I have pretty much no one to talk about it with in the real world. A friend of mine tore threw a few months ago, but didn't really appreciate it. My fiancee got about half way through and never finished it.

Can we do this?

This could be what pushes me into its arms.

Let me know when you do and I'll try to go back and re-read some parts just to further the discussion.

i need some incentive to finish off the rest of it, too. its very interesting, but part of me just wants to hear about LL Cool J and shit, and not necessarily the socioeconomic situation in jamaica, although i know its pertinent

I remember being pissed reading the 1st 3 chapters @ B&N.

How can Jeff not get it?

one
k. orr

I really enjoyed the book and I know several others who have. Hell, the book got a lot of praise from both literary critics and hip hop fans alike.

What did you dislike so much about the first 3 chapters?

At times I think law school was a mistake, but then I come to my senses when I read what "scholars" put out.

one
k. orr

Just finished Fearless Jones by Walter Mosley,
Just started Omerta by Mario Puzo
Im Out like Kast

Just finished two:

Civilwarland in Bad Decline by George Saunders (which was great. I'd recommend Saunders to anyone...he's hilarious, poignant and original. This is a book of short stories. I liked his second book of stories, Pastoralia, even more).

and

Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.S. Salinger (Raise High...was great. Seymour...was a disappointing mess).

Free Food For Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee. It's a first novel by a Korean-American woman, and it purports to give perspective on Korean-American issues and sensibilities.

Nah, it's a chick lit novel with a little ginger and tofu mixed in. It sucks and it sucks worse that it's going so fast that I'm gonna finish it anyway, lol. And to think I bought it not only because of the blurb but also because when I flipped it open I saw her properly using the subjunctive mood, so I thought, oh, okay, at least she can write. No. Sorry. I took the hit on this one so you won't have to, not that any of you smarties woulda been suckered in the way I was.

:-( I was hoping for a female Chang Rae Lee.

It's good and the short story thing works for the Rawlins character.

Just finished "The Hot Kid" by Elmore Leonard. Really good story about a young hot-shot on the U.S. Marshalls during the early 1930s, chasing guys like Pretty Boy Flloyd through America's heartland. And unlike a few Leonard books, it has a satisfying ending.

CAN go wrong w/ other Mosley stuff, but not w/ Easy Rawlins.

I'm going at it again that I'm a little older and have more time.

Next up though:
The Last Samurai
Cloud Atlas

.

I just started Divisadero by Ondaatje. The book has gotten mixed reviews but I don't mind the fragmented nature of his novels, usually they work for me. I also picked up After Dark by Murakami.

native son

Fortress Of Solitude.

Really amazing. Much better than I remembered.
I've heard they are working on a movie, wonder how that will turn out.

right now I'm reading an 11-play collection of Henrik Ibsen

...again. Still a great book by Dave Eggers, but I can see more of the anger towards the world at his situation (loss of parents, responsibility of raising his little brother)this time around.

Next up is Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Pessl),
Absurdistan,
What is what (another Eggers book),
then the Jonathan Foer book he wrote after Everthing is Illuminated. That should tide me over for a while, at least.

and I'm still a little ambivalent about the rest.

>
>Next up is Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Pessl),
I didn't like this much.

>Absurdistan,
I'll be interested to hear what you think of this

>What is what (another Eggers book),
This one I appreciated much, much more after seeing him speak with Valentino Achak Deng. I think the thread is gone, sadly.

>then the Jonathan Foer book he wrote after Everthing is
>Illuminated. That should tide me over for a while, at least.
I liked this and there was an archived thread but I don't know if it survived the archive pruning. His second novel is far better, I think, but I think they're worth reading in order.


~~~~~

It is painful in the extreme to live with questions rather than with answers, but that is the only honorable intellectual course. (c) Norman Mailer

i tore through the first 120 and kept thinking "wow, this is GOOD" but then i got to like p. 150 and i quickly began to lose interest. perhaps eggers' voice is just something that can only be taken in small doses

He says in the intro or someplace that they're two different books and if you quit reading after the first part, you won't miss anything, lol.

that first part was great!

You know, the whole time I was doing hospice work, you could tell when someone had picked that book up for the first time, because they were completely blown away by the first part. Completely. They'd be walking around with the book in their hands and this glazed expression on their faces.

And then they'd hit about page 150, and they'd get that Scooby Doo Puzzled Look going, and they'd start flipping around, going "Arroooo?" and other Scooby-like noises.

I see where you're coming from. *bit of a spoiler*





When it gets to the part where he interviews for the real world, It definitely slowed down for me. The second time around, I saw some of the flaws that I missed due to momentum in the book.

that was convinced it was called "heartbreaking works for staggering geniuses"

She has a clever website for the book: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

summer reading so far:

"the omnivore's dilemma" - i thought, "i had no idea..." several times while reading this, which is always good. i haven't thought so much about food since i tried to impress this vegan girl in charlottesville. it kinda depresses me, though. how do we get ourselves out of the industrial food chain? i'd move to a cabin in the woods until you guys sort it out, but hunting and gathering sounds very difficult.

"god bless you, mr. rosewater" - this was the first kurt vonnegut book i read, when i was in high school and needing something to look at while i prayed that adobe audition or whatever it's called didn't crash and destroy my short film for english class. i still like it a lot, though people who read more than me tell me it's not so great. come on, that baptismal speech is awesome.

"seven seconds or less" - the one about the suns. i kinda want to kick shawn marion. i probably enjoyed this the most out of all the books i've read lately. as far as getting inside a team, this is as good as it gets for most of us short of sitting courtside.

"world war z" - i read this in one sitting. maybe that's why i lost interest at the end (there are only so many consecutive minutes i can devote to zombies without pot), but until then i was pretty much hooked. i can't wait for the movie. war AND the undead?

now reading:
"the black book" - this is my third pamuk, and probably my least favorite so far. i didn't like "snow" at first either, though, so i'm gonna keep going.

"the assault on reason" - i have an audiobook, not the actual book. so i'm not actually reading this. i find it impossible to listen to disembodied voices unless they're telling jokes or talking about traffic. so i just put this on before bedtime and lull myself to sleep. i'm making the best of it, i guess?

next:
"the road" by cormac mccarthy

betchu never knew hannibal had six fingers on one hand!

If you're a fan, the book is fucking fascinating.
Everything from episode guides to backstage to a shooting script.

Did you know that after every show Taxi had one of the hottest weekly parties in Hollywood?

the fuentes book varies a lot between "that happened to me and i can relate to it" to "highly allusive and literate," but it's certainly at least thought-provoking and touching in bits. it's a series of short essays (A to Z, kinda) on kinds of love and relationships. It's the kind of book I can talk about with people I know or to remember in conversations/situations...halfway to poetry for me perhaps.

"One Big Damn Puzzler" (by John Harding) is a "tragicomedy" about a relatively *unspoiled* group of people living on South Pacific island...the three main characters (at least POVs) are an old man on the island who's sort of the most Western-influenced (he's trying to translate Hamlet, and the only literate person from his people) and also the most anti-change (he has some secrets), the lawyer who comes from NYC to get them reparations from an American military expedition (suffers from OCD), and a British ethnographer who's been the only white person around for a year or so (she thinks she's neurotic, but I'm not feeling it). I'm about halfway in, and magical thinking + the standard themes of ethnography and commodification/culture clash seem to be the most important veins running. One person in a review said the non-island characters all seemed too village British, but I didn't get that at all...I think she was confused because half of them *were* Brits. Name drops on the book jacket include Christopher Moore, Pynchon, and Waugh....but I don't agree much with any of those comparisons.

I'm also reading "Children of Intercountry Adoptions in School" but it's for my job and not terribly interesting.

and i really wanna check out "i am legend" based on the premise.

She makes a LOT of errors throughout that book. They are either the result of oversight or they're things that don't matter to her.

Grammar guides can be fun and interesting without being "popular" or catering to the snob in us. For American English, I recommend Garner's Dictionary of Modern American Usage, and for British English, Fowler's Modern English Usage is a classic, and very, very funny.

Louis Menand (no intellectual slouch, he!) wrote a simply *scathing* review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves for the New Yorker when the book was released. No doubt you can find it in their archives.


~~~~~

It is painful in the extreme to live with questions rather than with answers, but that is the only honorable intellectual course. (c) Norman Mailer

and it's pretty darn good.

Different artist for each arc kinda prevents a steady vibe, but not that badly.

I haven't read any (non-comic) novels yet by Rucka. <My library doesn't seem to believe in them. I know Shock has hyped 'em up. Any recommendations?

For that matter, I haven't read any novels by Neil Gaiman, Brad Meltzer or Jodi Picoult yet...

I may have to pick up something of his next time I'm at the Library

Suggestions anyone?

(by Anthony Bourdain, for you who've been living in a cave, lol.)

I took a break from it to read King Suckerman (Pelecanos), which was GREAT. I'm going to devour The Sweet Forever (next in the series) as soon as it arrives.



~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


kurly's Super-Duper Awesome DVD Collection:
http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=kurlyswirl

I'm crawling through it, but there are definitely parts I enjoy.
I think I need a cheat sheet to keep track of the characters and the mexican history references.

hopefully the second half goes by faster. I've got a big stack of books I want to finish before the end of the summer. One of them is Don Quixote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/books/review/Survey-t.html?ei=5090&en=2c56de9e4298867b&ex=1338523200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Some interesting recs inside from the likes of Eggers, King, Eugenides.

I've never been able to take Stephen King seriously since he deeply insulted a writer I like very much, from the bully pulpit of a best-selling thriller writer. Asshole. Okay, now on to the recs.

I have, and have started Then We Came to the End, and I'm not really crazy about it. I think this same territory was covered better by James Hynes in Kings of Infinite Space.


We know by now that I adore The Omnivore's Dilemma and all of Michael Pollan, lol.

I simply can't decide whether or not I'm interested in the Englander novel. I think I'm on wait-and-see for this one.

I have, and have started, The Black Swan. I'm extremely interested in his hypothesis and the subject matter, and his writing isn't difficult, but for some reason I find this damn thing impenetrable. Trying to read this book makes me feel like my eyes aren't working properly or that I need a new prescription for my glasses. I think he's too scattered a writer. I'm going to keep trying, but I'm rapidly losing hope.

That book that Foer recommends sounds really good. I'm making a note of it.

Call Me By Your Name is beautiful and haunting. I loved it so much I gave it to SoWhat to read.

The Lost is so poorly described by Wills. It's way way way more than what he says. It's about these really deep connections that run from our immediate family, through our extended family, through all families, placed against the context of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and some ancient and modern Jewish commentators on the same. I was astonished by how much I cared about this book.

That Lincoln book and a few others were discussed by Adam Gopnik in a recent New Yorker. I like and respect Gopnik, and he's got me interested in the subject, which I otherwise didn't think I would find interesting. So this may come onto the reading list itself.

Coetzee is great, and Disgrace isn't a bad place to start, although in many respects it's one of his weaker books.

Edmund White runs hot and cold for me. I want to love him more than I do, and I do love some of his books. This upcoming release sounds interesting and I may pick it up.

People love Angela Carter, but she's a surrealist and a little too wacky for me. It makes some sense to me that Kathryn Harrison would like her work though. *twirls finger around ear*

Oh yeah, thanks to Eugenides for reminding me that I still haven't read The Lay of the Land. Huh, that may be next.

I haven't payed attention to King (outside of his finishing the Dark Tower series) since Dreamcatcher.

What's your take on that Saramago book... The Cave, I think? Alex loved Blindness but didn't enjoy Seeing.

lol

I don't know what's wrong with me

from Ishiguro.

I don't really like the way the narrator is telling me the story yet I do. We'll see. I'm enjoying it so far because there's an air of creepiness to it that Ishiguro has set up nicely.

I liked it better in the beginning than in the end. It was clear Moore decided to get more and more carried away as the book went on causing it to lose what little sense of structure but I still enjoyed it.

getting me through my job woes.

Read recently:

World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Fraud by David Rakoff
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Moseley
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Areas of My Expertise by John Hodgman

Currently reading Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones

Jesus' Son I can pick up whenever, a random story, read for five minutes and be satisfied

Also, Hodgman is a funny dude

but Siegel and Shuster are kinda depressing.

I think 50 pages is enough. It's just a parade of straw men and superheroes, all pandering to the worst parts of my personality. Oh, and Ayn Rand really doesn't like folk music.

it makes me happy to read this

With her whole "bad is good, good is bad" steez.

or her "I'm right even when I'm wrong" attitude. ;-)

> Oh, and Ayn Rand really doesn't like folk music.

It's been a long time since I read that, and I disliked it enormously, but I don't remember this (which would have caused my dislike to increase.)

Well, she talked smack about Folk Music in the Fountainhead, as well. The horrible villian in the book, Ellsworth Toohey, advocates everything mediocre and common. (He's basically Jambone.) He thinks people should stop listening to the classical masters, and listen to more folk music. But it turns out he knows all this stuff is inferior, and he wants to keep true greatness surpressed.

Then in Atlas Shrugged, there's some character who spends all his time working for charitable causes, a big no-no in Rand's universe. When he lists off the causes that he works for, Rand just uses it as a way to list off things she doesn't like. Included in his causes are psychology and folk music. It's such a weird, awkward tangent, that you can tell she must really hate folk music (and psychology, NO TOM-O)if she feels that obligated to find some way to shoehorn it into her opus.

And I actually enjoy The Fountainhead.

Yes, I know. No, I'm not 18. Although I haven't read it since I was 20, maybe even younger. Who knows if I'd still enjoy it...

At least the Fountainhead says some nice things about creativity and the importance of a singular vision in artistic endeavors, while it rails against poor people, altruism and folk music.

By Salman Rushdie.

I can see why Khomeini was pissed (even though he didn't even read the book).

The themes of exile immigration etc are what keep me hooked into this (as well as Rushdie's diction, it amazes me each time I pick up one of his books).

I know you're not too fond of it janey, but it's my first Mitchell book and I am actually very engrossed in it. Can't wait to get to his other work

because they just get better from there. :-)

It pales in comparison.

im on the last book of the series

and then stopped 1/3 into it, packed it in a box and haven't looked at it since. this was not because it wasn't good, but because as much as i raced through the others in the series wanting to know how it ended, i found myself not actually wanting the story to end. i might be inclined to do this with the last harry potter, but there's bound to be too many spoilers out there for that one.

---
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all the greatest villains in the series turn out to be retards and pussies before the end of the seventh book, it was incredibly disappointing after a DECADE of waiting.

just finished it a few days ago. Some are saying it's "the black Harry Potter".

It's been hanging around for a while and during my fruitless search for Can't Stop Won't Stop I ran across it. Unsworth has been on my radar for a few years but this is the first book of his that I've read. So far, I'm impressed.

It's like a 600 page version of the first book/story of Cloud Atlas.

Wow.

Plus it reminded me of the Los Angeles penal system because I was reading earlier about how people who paid off the jailers were given special treatment and privileges. lol

About 100 pages into it, just after the train incident.
It looks like the main character Cross is in for a hell of a journey.

Great storytelling so far.

Just got it as a gift. What's the word?

I don't find the subject matter compelling. I like him best when he writes from his own experience.

not only does it seem like a topic that's less dear to chabon....i mean the fuck do i know about sitka or 40 years of fake jewish history?

i was completely sucked by chapter 12 (when they head into the verbover areas and we meet the professor.)

which I found very thin and disappointing. You know?

I mean, I love Chabon and have every reason to believe that this is a good book, and yet I feel allergic.

it doesn't have the same tone...chabon does his tragedy and pain with the usual human condition whimsy....que sera and all that. and the world of sitka feels more immersive/fleshed out to me...rather than a novel with newspaper clippings tossed in.

hey they could combine the two into a portrait of the artist as a young invisible man......call me jack the bear, aye

everybody was kung fu fighting.

---
THE FAM:
http://www.marka27.com
http://www.biz20.biz
http://www.myspace.com/blackoutboston
http://www.myspace.com/indigginus

*CLIMATE CRISIS: reduce your impact!*
http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/index.html

Also a short story in this week's New Yorker. A wonderful and intense short story, may I add.