Over the weekend I read

Against Gravity, by Farnoosh Moshiri
This one was okay but not great. I don't recommend it. I don't think it added anything to my understanding of people or mental illness or emotions or refugees or any of the other subjects it purports to deal with.

Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk
I was surprised by how much I liked this one. His essays are kind of like David Foster Wallace's crossed with Joan Didion's but then crossed with his own kind of peculiar hand.

a sizeable chunk of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Palahniuk raves about Hempel's writing in a way I have only rarely seen a writer rave about another writer. So I went out and got her recently published collected works. They're really intense and beautiful and my only problem with them is that they're so short. I really don't like short stories and these are really really REALLY short stories. But beautiful writing.

The Black Veil by Rick Moody
This was lovely and peculiar and many different things all at once. I really appreciated the fact that it is a memoir of his drug/alcohol addiction without being self serving or grotesque and also that the metaphor he chose and the Nathanial Hawthorne short story that reveals it are so apt without being stridently blatant.

and started A Border Passage : From Cairo to America--A Woman's Journey by Leila Ahmed
Just started this, so I can't really comment as yet. I'm wondering whether my favorite Egyptian book reviewer reviewed it. I can't wait to get home to find out.




~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

ARC of Richard Powers' newest one. I'll be putting all else aside for a moment or two or three.

www.abebooks.com

It's your pal.

~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

It's good but not his best.

It's better than Gain and Galatea 2.2, but it kept reminding me of Gain because it was so plot driven and way less like the unrelated but interwoven stories that make up his best work.

Also, the voices seem a little tired. I've seen these relationships before.

I mean, it's okay. He's still a great writer. It's just that every third book or so he needs a rest.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

if it's better than galatea 2.2, it's still well worth reading.


"I maintain with clemency and munificence" -- J-Live

But there are similarities to Gain. You know how in Gain it just seemed like one narrative with some interruptions? There's some of that here.

Publication date is October so maybe there'll be some revisions. I can't see it changing dramatically, though.

I'm just in the intro. The guy has lived an interesting life.

It's really tremendous (I'd also like to hear some of the behind-the-scenes, and just how much they were around for. It's tough to picture a random white guy or two just existing like a fly on the wall for most of this stuff).

Next up, either Death Comes for the Archbishop, or uh...something else, I forget exactly what. Also, a couple New Yorker issues.

i really want to read homicide and the wire also.

rick

---
Refusing to Let Go:
OkayBlowhards Champ 2004

---

http://www.imageyenation.com/main

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844163814/sr=8-1/qid=1152191272/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4007454-2861530?ie=UTF8

i still don't believe that's real.

'Things...' is pretty damn amazing so far. Believe the hype.

I also read 'Found : The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World' & 'PostSecret : Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives', which were fun. I tended to enjoy the Found book in more of a 'tee-hee' voyeuristic kind of way, but Postsecret sort of made me stop and consider the greater psychological/philosophical implications. Pretty fascinating stuff in both those books though, I recommend them.

So now I'm at home and I got nothing to read
actually... there's my old French classics around
from High school
maybe I should read them?

oh yeah I didn't bring the "weekend novelist"
which I picked up 'cause it was on sale
I couldn't find something similar in french
which is the language I'm most comfortable expressing myself in
but yeah so far I'm liking it and it's interesting
I'm starting to think of books differently
but yeah I'm writting
and since I can't live without structure it's actually helpful

It was pretty good, a little creepy but all in all a good read.

I just started The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and The Satanic Verses is on deck.

"I maintain with clemency and munificence" -- J-Live

Well, naturally. Seems like it gets a decent amount of burn around these parts, so that's good.

My mom just returned the copy she was borrowing, and her enthusiasm has me wanting to read it again. It's cool though cause she's been calling me up asking all this comic history and stuff, trying to separate the fact from the fiction (I kinda rained on her parade when I told her the title characters weren't real people)

i love this novel. very funny, very smart. thanks for the rec, janey. i'll probably move onto another one from your list, likely the sparrow by mary doria russell.

i'm also about to start breezing through a bunch of the left behind novels -- but this is for research purposes.


"I maintain with clemency and munificence" -- J-Live

two things:

thing one: you know I think that people should follow up The Last Samurai with Jonathan Glover's Causing Death and Saving Lives, right?

thing two: http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=167632&mesg_id=167632&page=

as for thing #2: taken care of.


"I maintain with clemency and munificence" -- J-Live

and because in many respects, this one is the whole theme of the novel in the first place.

You can read more about it here http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=180847&mesg_id=180847&listing_type=search although you'll have to scroll down some, lol

absolutely hilarious. it's mind-boggling how densely packed with humor his books are

i just started asimov's 'foundation' trilogy and i'm really enjoying it so far. the only problem is i'm supposed to believe that humans have conquered the galaxy thousands of years in the future and some planets still rely on coal and oil for power? i mean, i guess it's possible but that's the kind of thing that puts a dent in the illusion of the world the author has created (imo). but i suppose that's one of the problems with reading scifi written in the 1960s (even tho 1960s scifi >>>> all other scifi)

oh, and i picked up huxley's 'doors of perception' & 'the perennial philosophy' and i'm looking forward to reading both

just read: the corner by david simon and edward burns. this book was amazing, im definitely reading their other stuff. before that i read cloud atlas, which i loved. thanks for the rec janey.

reading: grimus by salman rushdie. who knew his first novel was sci-fi? this book is totally bizarre, but i really like it.

will read: either mountains beyond mountains or another rushdie novel. i want to read the book for the wire before the season 3 dvd drops, so that's next. i also want to finish every rushdie novel before his next one drops in october.

rick

It's such a great story and so well told that you'll zip right through it. :-)

I'm glad you enjoyed Cloud Atlas. I was in the optometrist's the other day, bullshitting with the workers there and one of them said, "... and this (worker) really likes fiction." So I said, "What are you reading?" and she said, "I'm just finishing up Black Swan Green." And I got so happy and excited that all I could say was "ohfuckohfuckohfuck DAVID MITCHELL !!! !!!!! CLOUD ATLAS !!!! !!! "

She kind of responded the same way and pretty soon we were just kind of yelling in code at one another and the rest of the crew were just standing there laughing at us.

i go to through the hayes. i love the doctor but i wasnt too pleased with the selection last time. i like that new bjorn spot at church @ market.

n2pj (not 2 post jack), but i know the coolest dentist in all san francisco. he's totally chill, practices in the upper haight, and has a dope little cd case where you can pick out whatever you like.

dr. anthony daniel, dds

rick

The guy in there is roommates with Sean San Jose of Intersection For The Arts.

I only found out recently that they even do eye exams. I go there because they carry Oliver Peoples and I LOVE Oliver Peoples.

My dentist is in the financial district. He's cool, although doubtless not as cool as yours, but more to the point, he's convenient. I can only see service providers near my work or who are open on Saturdays.

Fan
______________________________________________________________________
"Both teams played hard, my man."
-Rasheed Wallace, providing my new stock response to any future OKP "board beef" starters

Peace,

*** MARBLES ***

Nah, it's alright. It's a bit more in-depth than I expected.
______________________________________________________________________
"Both teams played hard, my man."
-Rasheed Wallace, providing my new stock response to any future OKP "board beef" starters

Followed by:

The acid house- irvine welsh

And being the first book of his I read I could see where Fight Club came from.

It's pretty amazing. It's an unfinished work (two of a planned five books) by a Russian, Jewish woman living in occupied France in 1942, and it's about... occupied France in 1941/42. So it's a novel, but it's startlingly immediate and intense, especially because you know that Nemirovsky didn't finish the books because she died in Auschwitz in August 1942. The manuscript was kept by her eldest daughter (who was about 8 when her parents were deported and gassed) and not read by anyone, including the daughter, until a couple of years ago. The daughter thought it was a journal, but lo and behold it turned out to be a novel.

I'm also most of the way through Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed. I read the Harper's article when it first was published a couple of years before the book, and I always felt like I got everything I needed from the article. I still kind of feel that way, although the book is entertaining. I would say skip this one and instead read The Working Poor by David Shipler.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

so far, so good.

I left my copy of The Time of Our Singing in Cape Cod, so it'll be a while before I finish that. I could kick myself for that one.
_________________________________
Now all I need is a crew.
One that can act as if,
One that can slay on cue,
And sneeze and sniff

I'm going back to the water
been landlocked too long

Not to dissuade you from 100 Years -- that's an amazing book.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

Proof that sportswriting, at it's highest level, can rise to the level of the best literature.

_______________________________________________________________________________


Hot to Trotsky: http://www.regeneratedheadpiece.com

The story of her first year of being a widow, in her mid thirties. Her husband was a Zen priest so a lot of her discussion is informed by Buddhism and Zen practice in particular. But she's not really a practitioner of any particular religion or lineage herself.

I kind of wish I had her guts. I picked up the book to see if it had anything that could give me insights about the grief surrounding the end of a relationship. She just powers through stuff in a way that I don't have the energy for. I wish there were such a thing as grief disability.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

************************************************

<<<<<<<<Don't Drool On The Avy>>>>>>>>

"There's a fine line between persistence and foolishness..."
-unknown

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

**************** OKP Free Agent****************

it bugged me

it just seemed like he was creating intersting "facts" by completely ignoring relevant variables that would completely change the results.

Like he was saying how swimming pools killed more kids than handguns and were therefor more dangerous. Oh Really? How often do kids use handguns compared to the amount of times they go swimming?

I assumed the book was more of that, so I skipped it.
_________________________________
Now all I need is a crew.
One that can act as if,
One that can slay on cue,
And sneeze and sniff

I'm going back to the water
been landlocked too long

I noticed he was grandstanding alot on the fact that

"Economics is moral-free and the only objective way to look at the world"

And he did seem to gloss over some other variables. But other than that it seemed like he did gloss over some things that I wanted to know. Like he went over high end white people names, but not high end names of Blacks, which seems like he would have done given the topic he was discussing.

The best part of the book was the chapter about Why Drug Dealers Live with their Mothers. When he detailed how drug operations run pretty much like corporate america, it confirmed what I've been saying for years. (nameley that these dudes on the streets could make it in mainstream America but got sidetracked by various influences...)

So interesting in some facets and a quick read, but now it's all about Cormac McCarthy. His new one has me engrossed so far....


************************************************

<<<<<<<<Don't Drool On The Avy>>>>>>>>

"There's a fine line between persistence and foolishness..."
-unknown

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

**************** OKP Free Agent****************

and got:

The Denial of Aging: Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life, and Other Dangerous Fantasies. Muriel R. Gillick, M.D.

The Year of Magical Thinking. Joan Didion.

Marriage, A History. Stephanie Coontz.

My Mother/My Self. Nancy Friday.

i just read:

Nothing Special and Everyday Zen. Charlotte Joko Beck.
Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. Leslie Marmon Silko.
The Night in Question. Tobias Wolff.

i hope the didion is good. i've read some of her stuff before and didn't like it all that much.

you feel for her loss but she comes off as really bourgeois and elitest and that puts up a real big barrier.

sometimes i wonder if she writes with her pinky up.

i go back and forth about whether or not that's a valid reason to say that's one reason i'm not the biggest fan of her work. i especially wonder what that says about me, the reader.

another reason why i wasn't excited about the book was because i started to not care towards the end of it. i didn't want to feel that way. if she wants to write 1,700 damn pages about her husband and daughter, well, she has every right to do it and treat that matter as she sees fit.

however.

even with the considerable free pass she kind of gets b/c she's dealing with the weighty life-changing reality death and illness, i felt like the book was a little bit too long. i started to feel like she was making a mountain out of a mole-hill and i can't stand that i felt that way as a reader and yes i want to blame joan, the writer, for it. ha.

it's the "questions" she asks at the end of some blurbs, that make me say that. those questions also made the book seem like an inside inside story, that only she knows. that was disappointing. it's hard to say that's not her right to go at it that way, though.

obviously the book was about grieving, obviously it was about writing. in fact, she all but hints that it was about both and much more. for example, the re-calling of 9-11 was unecessary, to me. the way she balanced the "both and much more" part?...ionno if she pulled it off.

that's where i go: i feel like a schmuck for saying that.

that's why the book wasn't too hot, to me. if i wanted to comment on something more critical about the writing, i felt badly saying it, because of her situation.

i've also started reading jPod, by douglas coupland

Jesus

it was a long weekend in more ways than one.

and I read pretty quickly.

...Although part of me wishes I started a fiction book. This might be too heavy/depressing. But it's good so far at about ten pages in.

I hope it's as uplifting as billed.

************************************************

<<<<<<<<Don't Drool On The Avy>>>>>>>>

"There's a fine line between persistence and foolishness..."
-unknown

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

**************** OKP Free Agent****************

O'Nan has been disappointing me more than pleasing me lately. I think it's the Stephen King influence. He was a way better writer before he let that charlatan influence him.

Now I think I'm going to re-read The Human Stain by Philip Roth, although I found a weird little novel by Nelson George that might be fast and easy.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

local library didn't have russells's the sparrow.

That and Bobbie Ann Mason's In Country were the two books that made me realize that Vietnam War Lit had something to say to me. Then The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, and Dispatches, by Michael Herr, solidified that.

Then I spent like a year reading ONLY Vietnam War lit, ugh. lol

Saturday was the perfect thing to read shortly after The Echo Maker. McEwan always surprises me by taking the less obvious route. But then I had nightmares that I could tell were based partly on the book.

i've had my eye on it for some time now...

I don't think it's his best. I think Atonement is way better. And I think I would have liked Saturday better had I never read Enduring Love, which I also think is better than Saturday. But I like what he does with his story. He's good about not taking the easy/expected route with stuff, even though I feel like what's missing here is directly related to the fact that he makes the book take place in one 24-hour period, which feels like an artificial constraint, like a writing exercise rather than a literary attempt.

I'll give it a B, but that's graded on a curve against his other work not against every book ever published, if you know what I mean.

is what i find interesting. i've read atonement and liked it, but i think you liked it a whole lot better than i did.

fyi, if anyone ever, ever tells you should read anything in the left behind series, do not contemplate doing so for a millisecond. i'm 7 books in and this stuff is the most inane drivel you could imagine. far worse than the da vinci code, if you can believe that.

If you like limited time books, there's a great one by Nicholson Baker called "Room Temperature" in which he simply records all the thoughts that go through his head while he's giving his baby her bottle one night. It's actually quite lovely, and no one does oddball train of thought the way Baker does. You know Stephen King said that Baker's writing was about as worthwhile as fingernail clippings, which just made me like Baker better, frankly, lol.

It was hot outside and instead of walking to the public library, I grabbed a book I've had sitting around unread. I'm enjoying it so far - its very nostalgic for me and I can see, depending on your level of cynicism, that this could be a bad thing.

The follow up to Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (I *think* that subtitle is right, in any case it's a close approximation), this one is about science's attempt to prove or disprove an afterlife or the existence of a soul.

Roach is a delightful writer. She has a mean sense of humor and she's good at seeing the funny and peculiar aspects of her research.

But Stiff is better. And I'm glad I waited a few months after reading Stiff to pick up Spook. Too much of a good thing is still too much.


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Breathe and know you're breathing

It's quite lovely. I don't know whether it's his best, and I don't know how well it would speak to people younger than me, but I found it very moving.

Now I'm starting his book Patrimony, about his father's death in 1987, and Night Draws Near, about Iraq.

loved it. the style, the plot, everything.

then finished City of Glass by Paul Auster. It was short, so I finished it quick. I'm waiting on someone to return to the library the next two parts of that trilogy.

in the meantime, keeping with the NY theme, I'm reading Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. It's okay. The last few books I've read have been much deeper and subtle. I suppose its good sometimes to read something easy.

I've got so many books I want to get to. I can't wait.

*edit*
I originally had the subject as "Quarantine" by Saramago. Quarantine was another book I read recently. I can't remember the authors name, but the book was cool.

I keep thinking I should start it and then I don't.

Everyone who has read it seems to agree with you. I don't know why I don't just pick the damn book up!

no quote marks, dialog mixed in with narration. It's hard to get at first, but after a while (especially after the blindness factor comes in), it all makes sense.

I have to wonder what the book was like in Portugese.

ive been in a shorts mood so its been a collection of shorts by himes, singer, and murakami. i finished the singer one a while back and i frequently go back to it for sheer enjoyment and the beauty and simplicity of single lines like "the cold winter, long as jewish exile." i dont have the first part of that memorized, so it could be a hot winter thats as long as jewish exile.

but murakami's single standout lines are just weird. they make sense but they stick out and in a way can be distracting.

like this one from 'the second bakery attack': "six pull tabs lay in the ashtray like scales from a mermaid."

which was an old highlighted line i happened to find while flipping thru to get the exact text of the next few examples, and not an example of a distracting one. just one i liked and found while passing thru. you ever mark up a book, leave notes in the margin, cover it in highlighter, then go back some time later and wonder what the fuck you meant by it? luckily this isnt one of those times. just a nice little line.

from 'a window': "and so it happened that i spent a part of my early twenties like a crippled walrus in a warmish harem of letters."

wtf? that is weirdly distracting. which isnt to say that in this usage of the term distracting i imply something negative, but its kind of like if you were standing in line for coffee, and the person in front of you whipped their dick out. and there were bjork stickers all over it. then he puts it back and everyone goes on in a normal fashion. its the kind of thing that sticks with ya long after.


and from 'the last lawn of the afternoon': "I listened to rock music on FEN while I gave one last touch-up trim, then raked the lawn repeatedly and checked from several angles for any overlooked places, just like barbers do. By one-thirty, I was two-thirds done. Time and again, sweat would get into my eyes, and I would go douse my face at the outdoor faucet. A couple of times I got a hard-on, then it would go away. Pretty ridiculous, getting a hard-on just mowing a lawn."

isnt that just about right for a murakami character though? so lost, so unsure of his own place in the world and why things happen. mother fucker turned a dick joke into a riff on theme.

but my favorite recently read paragraph has been, in the story Caleb, from Walking the Choctaw Road, by Tim Tingle: "But even before that, Tillie awakened and instantly knew everything. For she was a good mother, and a good mother knows. If her child lies, a good mother knows. If her child takes as his own the possessions of another, a good mother knows. And if her first-born son is off in the woods, shape-shifting and devouring the neighborhood children, a good mother just knows."

Have you read any Amy Hempel?

I think you might like her.

"I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence."

"The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me."

cause i know ive heard that name somewhere. im sure im not the only person on this board that goes into a bookstore, and in the course of looking for something specific, sees something random and thinks 'oh yeah thats the one janey talked about'

that shit even holds over when youre thumbing thru the used records. 'hm did janey say that she liked this r carlos nakai album? or was that someone else?'

I read his book of essays and the guy was just going WILD over her writing so I got her collected stories and have read most of them. They're really great, although I think at the end of the day, since I'm not a big short story fan in the first place, I probably vote for Julie Orringer. Not based on the things Palahniuk & you love -- use of language -- but based on the connection I felt with the situations & emotions she describes.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

i went with orringer's 'how to breathe underwater,' which i am quite enjoying. i like her pretty phrases, as they do more than look good and have a way of further enhancing ones understanding of what is going on.

its slow reading but thats my fault as trying to read while stoned can require multiple attempts.

so what part of her work were you able to connect to better than hempel? were you too at one point a young jewish girl swimming while fully clothed? a model with a mysterious mother? a young boy with a protective older sister?

i too have hidden porno under the steps of abandoned houses

I guess the one I'm really thinking about is the one where the older girl is talking to her younger, isolated self. I had cotillion, too, and while I didn't have as awful an experience as the girl in the story, I was saved from it by just a hair.

nice little thriller/murder mystery, up until the end, when Bayard pulls a Shyamalan on all of us. Seriously, read it up until the epilogue.

also just read the first three books of "Bone" by Jeff Davis. . . wow. really good stuff.

It wasnt that great compared to the praise I read about it. I think I'm gonna go with Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk b/c of how much i liked Survivor.

Did u read haunted?

I like it a lot. I believe I'm gonna read Empire Falls next.

I strongly recommend this one. Shadid was on the ground in Iraq befor the war and during the first year or two of the occupation, and his reporting is all about the average Iraq citizen' view of the war and its aftermath.

It will give you a whole new perspective. It's really quite lovely and very much needed.

And then I started Baghdad Burning, by "Riverbend." This purports to be the publication of an anonymous blog by a 24 year old Iraqi woman and I wouldn't have even picked it up except that the introduction is by Adhaf Soueif, whose work I admire tremendously. Soueif thinks that Riverbend is real, but I confess that I don't. I'm maybe a third or so into the book and I just keep thinking, "No way." Maybe it's because most of what I read on line is not well organized or thought out or well phrased, but this does not hold the ring of truth for me, particularly as she's blogging in English. She claims to be bilingual and "average," but there's just a big disconnect between what she writes about and what Shadid saw. Not necessarily even in terms of events and politics. Just in terms of how wealthy her family seems to be, and how unaffected by the sanctions they apparently were, and so forth. I actually suspect that she's an American who has spent a lot of time in the middle east or who is married to someone from the middle east, but I think I'm going to drop this one.

which i liked, but not THAT much. I'm still planning on reading the Rules of Attraction soon.

right now i'm just reading Stephen King's "On Writing", which is pretty fun to read so far early on. I haven't even read any King novels before.

First, I read some of his horror novels when I was in high school, and I was just kind of disgusted.

Then, in like, the early 90s, he made a needlessly snarky comment about the writing of Nicholson Baker, a particular pet writer of mine, saying that his work had the value of fingernail clippings. I really thought that STEPHEN KING needed to go back and re-read all his OWN trash before commenting on someone else's work, especially since Baker isn't a pulp novelist, lol.

But another pet writer of mine, Stewart O'Nan, seems to be very close with King. They wrote a book together about some baseball season or other, and O'Nan thanks King in the acknowledgements in a couple of his recent novels.

I figure there's something going on that I'm not privy to, but I'm still not buying King's books, lol.

As for books on writing, I think the book that O'Nan edited: On Writers and Writing, essays by John Gardner, is a good one. And I like Frederick Busch's A Dangerous Profession. I think Busch is one of the most underrated writers working today. Practically no one knows his work, but he is both prolific and proficient.

finishing

The Best of McSweeney's issues 1-10: Stories and Letters
very creative short stories, w/ varying degrees of suspension of disbelief and reality. i enjoyed it. two more stories left.

next reading:

Ayn Rand's We The Living...heard a lot about her...always wanted to read her books.

then, V by Thomas Pynchon


***********************************

myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

I have a couple of McSweeney's publications along with a lifetime subscription to that hot mess, lol. The Believer is a way way better magazine, imo

It's beautiful and poignant.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

I enjoyed this quite a lot. You should try to get a hold of "Edward Said: the final interview" DVD, more information.

Choke is next!

First book of his I read and now I plan on readin more.

High Fidelity and About A Boy. They're definitely his best work.

just read: grimus, by salman rushdie. it was cool to read his first work, and you can see a lot of the brilliance of his later writing starting to develop. it's also weird that his first book was so out there, but i guess he has a lot of range in general.

i don't know if i would recommend it though, i felt like i was just trying to get through it towards the end.

reading: number 9 dream, by david mitchell. man, janey, thank you for putting me onto this motherfucker. i thought cloud atlas was great, and i like this better i think.

about to read: i ALWAYS let this be a game time decision, rather than deciding ahead of time, so here are the finalists:

the wire: truth be told, by david simon and ed burns, i want to finish this before season 4 starts. (and homicide: life on the killing streets also)

ghostwritten, by david mitchell. the appeal should be obvious.

midnight's children, by slamn rushdie. i want to finish all his stuff before shalimar the clown comes out in october.

If you like Number9Dream better than Cloud Atlas, then I bet you'll like Black Swan Green better than Ghostwritten.

The order in which I like his books:

Cloud Atlas
Ghostwritten
Black Swan Green
Number9Dream

Which isn't to say I dislike Number9Dream, it's just that I thought the others were better. Black Swan Green is more like Number9Dream in that it's more like a conventional narrative than either Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas.

But yeah, dude's a genius.

xxoo

and i dont buy books in hardcover. maybe in a few months.

~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

i just find it hard to read hardcover books on the train, which is when i do 90% of my reading.

plus, for someone like david mitchell, whom i appreciate greatly, i dunno, i just want to own that shit.

rick

I like dude's editorials, I'm hoping this won't be too much of a lecture, cos i'll be taking it on my vacation. Just in case, I got the new Zadie Smith too, because I really liked her first two

I got the impression that he sounds smart when he has an 800 word limit, but once he ventures into book-length, he just sounds superficial.

I mean, he has this whole thing at the beginning (before I quit reading it) about how great it is that telephone help lines have moved to India. Good for the people (they can buy the food they're accustomed to for lunch!) and good for the companies (they can pay the workers shit -- oops, I mean, prevailing wage in India). And I just didn't buy it. I had the overwhelming impression that I was reading an apologia for corporate greed.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

...it is, without a doubt, a fucking amazing book.

Somebody gifted me "The Shadow of the Wind" yesterday. I always get a little leery of people giving me books, I might be off on my own thing, and I have thisirrational sense of obligation to read them if they're given with good intentions.

But I'm about 100 pages in, and it's a really cool book so far. Thank God.

I thought it was like homage to Arturo Perez-Reverte and homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I liked it.


~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

>I thought it was like homage to Arturo Perez-Reverte


I don't think I've heard of this guy...can you recommend a title to start with?

and
>homage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I've read 100 Years and In Evil Hour and extremely enjoyed them. I'm taking Spanish lessons in October and one of the main reasons is so I'll be able to someday read Marquez in his native tongue, but is there a particular translator for his work that you prefer?

Oh yeah, have you read the most recent translation of Don Quixote? If so, how does it hold up?

I liked "The Club Dumas" because I used to collect antiquarian books.

On Marquez, there was an interview with him in the LA Times right about the time Love In The Time of Cholera was published, in which he was talking about translations and so forth, and he said that he likes the sound of his work in English better than he does in Spanish. So think about that.

On Quixote, I'm not a big fan but someone on here is. Run a search through the ptp archives. I'm certain you'll find out who it is -- whoever it is has read the book like four times.

Probably I'll remember who it is in the middle of the night tonight.

Also, while we're talking about Spanish language writers, don't sleep on Machado de Assis. Any book by him is a great book.

~~~~~

Breathe and know you're breathing

...much appreciated.

I'm gonna go look for Machado tomorrow, his name has come up before, but it's one of those I always forget when I'm in the bookstore.

Coming up:

The Interpreter of Maladies

can you school me on some rick moody? I've read some of his short stories (mostly from demonology) for different classes and wasn't too impressed. It seemed like there was a lot of style/intellect but not much in terms of actual story. There's an infamous review somewhere (I can't remember who wrote it, but I found it by googling "rick moody sucks" lol) that basically, actually, literally calls him the worst writer of his generation.

yet I continually hear comments about how much people love him. besides what you wrote, can you expound maybe why you enjoyed the book? I'm not trying to sound like I've made up my mind on him in the least, I've just heard such strong opposing views on boths sides I wanted to see if you had any insight on why you personally enjoyed it. I figger if so many people dig him he must be doing something right?

I happened to really like this book and I've liked some of his earlier writing, but you know, it's fiction, it's optional, you don't have to read it so if you're not enjoying it, just put it aside.

Some writers are better read at later times. Maybe Moody is one of them. He and I have a few frames of reference in common, so probably what I most get from his writing is validation of my world view, lol.

my recent books (which I loved all)

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness- Richard Yates
The Point and Other Stories- Charles D'Ambrosio
Civilwarland in Bad Decline- George Saunders
Love Medicine/Tracks/The Antelope Wife- Louise Erdrich

all good if you like melancholy, funny, poignant stories with beautiful prose.

Both are really good. Obviously.

It wasn't quite as good as Right as Rain, though.

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

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

but I agree.

im sure theres no one definitive book on the subject but i just want an idea of which ones cover what im looking for
id prefer something that focuses on the 20th century history of the region and how israel came to be. but obviously an overview of the history previous to the 20th century would be welcome. any suggestions?
thanx.

also suggestions for a (recent) history of lebanon would also be appreciated.

First, Howard Sachar wrote a history of Israel that we used when I was in Jerusalem, and since then he's written a second volume updating the first. Now, he's going to be somewhat biased, but if I recall correctly, he's less biased than one would expect. Our teacher, Ehud Sprinzak, was long considered a voice of reason in the Israeli government -- he was an expert on "terrorism and right wing extremism" which says a lot -- and he's the one who chose the book, so I have some trust in its objectivity.

For Palestinian issues, I don't know for sure that you want objectivity. There are some amazing memoirs, several of which I have at home and can check the titles on and get back to you with, but I would point you to Ahdaf Soueif's book of essays, Mezzaterra, for a whole host of middle eastern concerns.

Also take a look at this week's New Yorker. There's an excellent article on recent events written by a premier staff writer, and it's probably uploaded at the site. newyorker.com

appreciate it.

I still think the Sachar books, or as Ehud used to say, the Sacharbuchs, are worth reading for the long term history of the formation of Israel and for the sense of impending doom you get as you watch Britain fuck it up.

But I think, without having read this particular book, that I would recommend Edward Said's The Question of Palestine. Said was one of the towering intellectuals of the 20th century, born in Palestine, left in 1947 and was deeply affected by his heritage and displacement throughout his life. He wrote some of the soundest material on perspectives of the pan-Arab world, and The Question of Palestine is next on my list.

There's also a beautiful memoir called Strangers in the House, written by a prominent Palestinian attorney living in occupied Palestine, Raja Shehadeh.

Also, Drinking the Sea at Gaza gives a perspective on living in the occupied territories, interesting because it's pro-Palestinian and written by an Israeli journalist, Amira Hass.

Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Ilan Pappe, The Israel/Palestine Question
James Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War
I.J. Bickerton and C.L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict
William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East

The first one appears on lots of college syllabi for courses on that topic.

Another one that is more journalistic and readable (but still pretty good) is Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days. It focuses on the Temple Mount as the flashpoint for Jews, Muslims and Christians.

u and janey are geniuses...encyclopedic.

this one just happens to be close to my area of specialty.

I'm re-reading it now, because of Uncle Climax's question, and it is killing me. It's not like I'm feeling really cheery to start with, but she really illustrates the grind of living in Gaza and having your life completely fucked with on the grandest level and on the most minute level.

all those dumb evangelicals and pro-isreali lobbyists should too. (not that i want to group myself with them...)

on a related topic, do you know of any good films about the israeli-palestinian or israeli-arab world conflict? i've seen munich and paradise now (thought munich was okay and paradise now was good), but am wondering what else there is out there.

"I maintain with clemency and munificence" -- J-Live

I saw a three hour documentary called Route 181 (I think that's the right number) in which the filmmaker drove through the occupied territories and pointed out former Palestinian homes and villages and how they've been taken over by Israeli settlements.

There was one about the checkpoints between West Jerusalem and Ramallah, and it had "Checkpoint" in the name.

I really loved Shooting Under Fire, which is about the Reuters News photographers in Israel and the West Bank. It shows both sides of the news along with the whole question of what photos are appropriate for display.

And there was one documentary that was nominated for an Academy Award in like 2002? Something like that. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it'll come to me or someone else will know it. It's about the attitudes and beliefs of kids, both Palestinian and Israeli. The filmmakers were shooting for a few months and then they got the idea to bring the kids together. So you had these kids with their intransigent views suddenly seeing that the kids on the other side of the issue were basically just like them. Very touching.

Route 181 is indeed Route 181
and
the one with Checkpoint in the name is Checkpoint
lol

Promises: http://www.promisesproject.org/
Checkpoint: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391857/
Route 181: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403462/

Article about various films: http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs24/fea_porton_paradise.htm

i remember seeing a trailor or something for promises, now that you mention it.

Rigt now I am reading some books in preperation for a class on Law and Literature that I will be teaching in the spring.

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Stranger - Camus
Billy Bud - Melville
Law and Literature - Posner

It is actually quite interesting to reread The Stranger with the intent of deconstructing it from a legal, as opposed to a philisophical, perspective.

im like half way and im not overly impressed so far, but its a good story...thanks for the recommendation tho

once the bears arrive it really picks up

>once the bears arrive it really picks up

lol good lyra is about to go try and hire one....

Next on deck is The Night Gardener (Pelecanos). I pre-ordered it and it'll be here Wednesday.

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

>Next on deck is The Night Gardener (Pelecanos). I pre-ordered
>it and it'll be here Wednesday.
>

I went to Border's on sunday and it wasn't there yet.

i just finished all seven books in like a week and a half.

they aren't technically the best written books, she needs a better editor or soemthing, but they have gotten better as the series continued.

they are damn exciting, kind of like junk-food.

very satisfying. she jams alot of mythology into a small space and forces you to deal with it. also she brings things up but doesn't resolve them until three books later.

i think im addicted to the potential the series has. the world she has creadted is so vivid it really gives buffy a run for her money, and at times eclipses it.

but this is the literary world and it shoudl since more can be done in the written world than visually.

i give the seires a B- for effort though

i need to get back to my chuck paluhnick and aurther nersisian, they both have newer books i haven't checked yet. and maxx berry.

that is all for now

Well, right now I'm reading McTeague. So far it's great.

Before that, I read "Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell. That was pretty good too. I certainly have issues with Russell's treatment of Communism, which he considered to be a kind of religion, but apart from that and a few other points. . . I think this book is a pretty inspiring pro-science, pro-democracy, anti-superstition, anti-bigotry statement.

Yep.

>Over the weekend I read
>
>Against Gravity, by Farnoosh Moshiri
>This one was okay but not great. I don't recommend it. I
>don't think it added anything to my understanding of people or
>mental illness or emotions or refugees or any of the other
>subjects it purports to deal with.
>
>Stranger Than Fiction : True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk
>I was surprised by how much I liked this one. His essays are
>kind of like David Foster Wallace's crossed with Joan Didion's
>but then crossed with his own kind of peculiar hand.
>
>a sizeable chunk of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
>Palahniuk raves about Hempel's writing in a way I have only
>rarely seen a writer rave about another writer. So I went out
>and got her recently published collected works. They're
>really intense and beautiful and my only problem with them is
>that they're so short. I really don't like short stories and
>these are really really REALLY short stories. But beautiful
>writing.
>
>The Black Veil by Rick Moody
>This was lovely and peculiar and many different things all at
>once. I really appreciated the fact that it is a memoir of
>his drug/alcohol addiction without being self serving or
>grotesque and also that the metaphor he chose and the
>Nathanial Hawthorne short story that reveals it are so apt
>without being stridently blatant.
>
>and started A Border Passage : From Cairo to America--A
>Woman's Journey by Leila Ahmed
>Just started this, so I can't really comment as yet. I'm
>wondering whether my favorite Egyptian book reviewer reviewed
>it. I can't wait to get home to find out.
>
>
>
>
>~~~~~
>
>Breathe and know you're breathing

before that, "the cat inside"

---
Refusing to Let Go:
OkayBlowhards Champ 2004

---

http://www.imageyenation.com/

no one seems to talk about it, though.

Liking it so far. Some very lucid observations on the human condition and whatever.

I'm glad you're digging it. It's cool watching somebody trying to justify their mundane existence. Stay tuned though the man's views will be quickly changing, basically that's what the whole damn book is about.

but if you like Ford and The Sportswriter, check out David Gates: Preston Falls and/or Jernigan.

I'm going to tackle Independance Day fairly soon. It looks like quite an epic book but I've heard from many people that it's better than The Sportswriter.

along with Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road) and Turkeyleg Jenkins's favorite book, A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley. They're all connected thematically.

I have Revolutionary Road lying in that evergrowing stack beside my bed and pretty soon Jernigan will be joining it.

Thanks for the reccomendations.

It really does tie in with The Sportswriter really well.

I just started both of them yesterday.

but let me tell you what I got out of Nickeled and Dimed: Don't hire a cleaning company to clean your house.

The rest of the book had been summed up well in the essay from which it was expanded.

I thought David Shipler's The Working Poor was way WAY better, because it's about people who REALLY live on minimum wage and close to the edge with no net, not a journalist who tries it out for a short period of time with a family and a savings account and a car and a house that she can always return to. I'm not saying her book is bad, I just think his is much more compelling.

i'm going to read more colson whitehead. he won the macarthur genius grant. evidently there's huge buzz on him, but i just randomly picked this book out of the library.

yellow was like a suspense novel, not exactly a mystery, about this woman who starts to have suspicions about her live in lover. it was aight.

I just finished Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl and this ain't kids stuff. These stories were originally published in Playboy and rightfully so. Each of the stories has the same basic theme; men are horney, selfish bastards. I enjoyed the book very much and immediately went out and purchased another book of his short stories.

But before beginning that one I wanted to read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I've only read the first thirty pages but it looks like I'm in for one violent, poetic ride.

his children stuff is pretty vivid and edgy already.

It's really great stuff, I'll mail it to you when I send you a copy of my movie. Blood Meridian is turning out to be quite an amazing novel. You'd really dig it so I suggest you run to the bookstore and get it immediatly.

If I read something, it's usually gonna be a non-fiction piece, something involving history, science, philosophy, etc.

I'm awaiting "Writing for Comics" by Alan Moore in the mail any day now, then I'd like to check out this book by Arthor Koestler called "The Act of Creation"

I posted about the latter, but nobody responded, so I guess I'll be going into that one blindly

I'm finishing up Drinking the Sea at Gaza and all I have waiting for me are more nonfiction books, one on teenage mothers, one on Justice Blackmun, one on passing, one on the first Black dynasty in the US, one a memoir from Palestine. And I just need something a little lighter. Something that flows a little more. Something that doesn't give me bad dreams.

before that i read "me talk pretty one day" by david sedaris

i think i like things that are in some way autobiographical these days
_______________________________________________
<-- good things start with ch

http://loteriachicana.net
http://flickr.com/photos/cindylu

He is sick muthrfuker but I love his work. Empire Falls by Richard Rusoso is next then back to Chuck with Haunted.

I was very impressed by it. I thought at first the language was a bit too flowery, but the way that it built up throughout I found it really worked.

Coronado...a short stories book.

The wife is going to read it first, but I'm looking forward to it.

Looks pretty good.
_________________________________

you used to be alright
what the hell happened?

The only thing I've ever read by Dennis Lehane are his quotes in Geroge Pelicanos' books. I've always been interested though. Is his stuff usually good? Which of his books do you like the best?

are big fans of Lehane and Pellecanos.