So you are reading what? v. 2016

Discussion in 'Books' started by Ismitje, Jan 1, 2016.

  1. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

    [​IMG]

    Just okay.
     
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  2. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Stuart Jeffries -- Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School, an interesting biography of a group of left wing, mostly Jewish intellectuals who lived through, as the Chinese curse has it, iinteresting times.
     
  3. RitztotheRubble

    RitztotheRubble Member+

    Apr 15, 2011
    [​IMG]

    The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

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    Best. State. Ever. - Dave Barry
     
  4. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey

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    "It's the truth even if it didn't happen."
     
  5. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Mark Leyner --- The Sugar Frosted Nutsack which covers the beginning of the Gods emerging 14 billion years ago to the present, where one character has John Cage's 4'33" for his ringtone.
     
  6. kenntomasch

    kenntomasch Member+

    Sep 2, 1999
    Out West
    Club:
    FC Tampa Bay Rowdies
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Just finished Blackout, the story of Jackie Robinson's first spring training in 1946. Obviously, 1947 is what everybody focuses on, but the spring of 1946 when he was trying to make the Montreal Royals was an overlooked piece of the mosaic.

    I recognized some of the stories in it as having been co-opted for use in 42 as if they happened the following year. Enjoyable.
     
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  7. RitztotheRubble

    RitztotheRubble Member+

    Apr 15, 2011
    [​IMG]

    Library - Matthew Battles

    This wasn't exactly what I hoped it would be, and was pretty boring for the most part. I'm happy I stuck with it until the end however, as the last couple of chapters turned out to be interesting.
     
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  8. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Big Sur - Jack Kerouac

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    "I'm not going to ask you if you're Jack Duluoz because I know he wears a beard, can you tell me where I can find him, I want a real beatnik at my annual Shindig party"
     
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  9. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^
    Best description of waking up with a hangover I've ever read in that one:

    The church is blowing a sad windblown 'Kathleen' on the bells in the skid row slums as I wake up all woebegone and goopy, groaning from another drinking bout and groaning most of all because I'd ruined my 'secret return' to San Francisco by getting silly drunk while hiding in the alleys with bums."

    [​IMG]

    Mark Atkins and Iain Sinclair: Liquid City, a collection of photos by Atkins and prose by Sinclair

    {Atkins} trespassed down the byways of a neural labyrinth, exploiting, when he needed it, my well-worn grimoire of rivers and railways. The Minotaur of rapacious capitalism lurked in shadows that were the photographers natural element. Atkins stalked with intent, a shaven-skulled Futurist. He waited for the moment with the curtain parted and the visible world confirmed, for a split second, an occulted script he had already prepared
     
  10. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #285 Atouk, Oct 26, 2016
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2016
    [​IMG]

    Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Sign of Four
     
  11. Los Santos

    Los Santos New Member

    Oct 27, 2016
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Club:
    Valencia CF
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I'm working through a trilogy at the moment, on book #2 which I should finish tonight -

    [​IMG]
     
  12. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Thatcher Stole My Trousers
    , a memoir by Alexei Sayle which Is available in my library's network, though alas it's a sequel and the first volume, Stalin Ate My Homework is not.

    Hey, does anyone know if I can get kindle editions from amazon.co.uk? And is the exchange rate still in our favor?
     
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  13. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    9780618134700_p0_v2_s192x300.jpg

    Tolkein's The Hobbit, annotated by Douglas Anderson

    All books are not created equal. I'm talking about the work itself -- surely The Hobbit is one of the greater stories ever written -- but in this case, I'm talking about the book itself. This is both stunningly annotated, and yet it is still spare and not overdone. I love love love Hobbit and LotR, but don't consider myself a Tolkein fanboy, so I do not need the heavy-handedness I've seen of some annotated versions of his work. This is the best. This is probably my single favorite "book" that I own, other than maybe a great, great, great Quality Paperback Book Club version of La Morte D'Arthur.

    One of the highlights of the book is the selection of illustrations from foreign editions of The Hobbit. All I can say is that there was one hell of a great edition printed in Estonia in 1958.
     
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  14. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    I remember John Luc Picard using the story of Gilgamesh as a language bridge.
    "And the walls came down!"
     
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  15. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    I loved this book when I "first" read it all those years ago. It's reputed to be the first adventure novel.

    Then just, maybe 20 years or so back I read the man who saved Robinson Crusoe, that was a better story.

    image.jpg

    It got so, that to visit Isla Alajando Selkirk was on my bucket list.
    The Scot Alexander Selkirk was the man who was marooned on the island for some 4 years. The man the story was based on.
     
  16. BalanceUT

    BalanceUT RSL and THFC!

    Oct 8, 2006
    Appalachia
    Club:
    Real Salt Lake
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I've not been posting here, but I've read these this year:
    American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Thanks for the recommendations here)
    The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

    If you not heard of The Player of Games it is considered a good entry point to Banks's Culture Series, set far far in the future in a post-scarcity multiple world scattering of humans and AI robots. This book is considered more accessible and linear than the others in the series, from what I'm told, therefore a good entry point to come to grips with the conceptual basis for The Culture. It is the story of a master game player, possibly the best in the multiple trillion person Culture. He is 'recruited' into a mission of first contact with a new spacefaring empire that bases its entire culture, including the determination of emperor, on an imponderably complex game. He is to be, as a diplomatic gesture, a guest player in the periodic highest competition that results in the next emperor being chosen, a multiple year mission because of the travel distances involved.

    I found it enthralling to read, taking it in ravenously. I can't recommend it highly enough. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18630.The_Player_of_Games?from_search=true

    I also started, and gave up on page 50, Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. Tedious tedious tedious. I didn't care about the characters, the setting, or the story one little bit. When one of the main characters does repeated stupid acts (returning to a scene of marital infidelity that he'd barely escaped the husband's return, only to have to escape it again, poorly), a callous decision (deciding that a man he thought he wanted to sleep with was suddenly repulsive because he saw in better lighting that he was middle aged), a decision to take up a deadly hobby that is completely in contrast to his heretofore hedonistic motivations... and the main relationship for the other main character lacks any clear reason for the two to be together.... honestly, it sucked. I can't for the life of me see why it has such acclaim. It does have beautifully compelling imagery for the starting few pages. It has gay themes which may create a following. It is supposedly a launching point for a movement of so-called fantasy of manners/mannerpunk novels. There are many other books in the series, curiously, written by a collection of writers. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68485.Swordspoint?ac=1&from_search=true
     
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  17. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Welcome back, UT.

    I've been wanting to read Banks for a while, but he always slips my mind when I make it down to the library.
     
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  18. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Two from the World Lit class I'm teaching. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

    And

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    The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
     
  19. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    The Basil and Josephine Stories - F. Scott Fitzgerald

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    Second-rate Fitzgerald, but he is a damn fine writer.

    "If he had seen the look that flashed suddenly across her face it would have alarmed him, for it was curiously like the expression associated with a prominent character in Faust."
     
  20. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    [​IMG]

    Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Hound of the Baskervilles
     
  21. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Out On Your Feet: The Hallucinatory World of Hundred-Mile Walking, which is apparently a thing in Britain, if author Julie Welch is to be believed. The subtitle refers to the fundamental fact of neurophysiology: if you walk 100 miles in 48 hours with little or no sleep, you will see and hear things.

    But what was it about this hideous sounding experience that was so compelling? Were there any prizes? None. What did the winner get, then? There were no winners. It wasn't a race. Anyone who finished got a round of applause. That was all. Plus a badge.​

     
  22. Atouk

    Atouk BigSoccer Supporter

    DC United
    Apr 16, 2001
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    Queens Park Rangers FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    [​IMG]

    Medea Benjamin -- Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection
     
  23. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    History of the United States of America During the Second Administration of James Madison – Henry Adams

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    "In politics as in theology, the practical system which resulted from sixteen years of experience seemed to rest on the agreement not to press principles to a conclusion."
     
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  24. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    American Philosophy: A Love Story by UMass-Lowell philosophy prof John Kaag (2016). This is the 3rd accessible book on philosophy I've read this year, and it might turn out to be the best (which is saying something because At The Existentialist Café and The Grand Hotel Abyss were excellent). The book takes place when Kaag, 29, has a post-doc at Harvard and a failing marriage, combined with a bit of depression. He finds the derelictd summer home of a forgotten American philosopher which houses a library of 15,000 books, many of them rare and valuable (hand signed copies of first editions by philosophers like C.S. Peirce, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, not to mention first editions of books like Hobbes' Leviathan and the first English translations of Descartes' books). Part memoir, part intro to American philosophy, and pretty damn good.
     
  25. chaski

    chaski Moderator
    Staff Member

    Mar 20, 2000
    redacted
    Club:
    Lisburn Distillery FC
    Nat'l Team:
    Turks and Caicos Islands
    Vanity of Duluoz: An Adventurous Education, 1935-1946 – Jack Kerouac

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    "Does it matter to five thousand sneering college writing instructors that I wrote seventeen novels after a youth of solitary practice amounting to over two million words, by the window with the star in it at night, the bedroom window, the cheap room window, the nut ward window, the porthole window, eventually the jail window? I saw that little winding dirt road going west to my lost dream of being a real American Man..."
     
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