I grabbed this off the library shelf yesterday. Kurt has been prolly my fav author over the past 40 years. Billy Pilgrim was his own story from the Battle of the Bulge. Looking forward to this read. Over time I've used 2 of his quotes as my sig here. Still have the first one framed on my desk. "You are who you pretend to be" the other goes "...and I myself am a work of fiction."
I'll read Kurt's story as soon as I finish this. I've been waiting for somethings to come together but it's slow and to me quite boring. I've committed part of my life to it now, so I have to finish. My wife enjoyed it though...! (Chick book )
Finished two memoirs by American protestant writers. First a good one by the pastor Eugene Peterson: One of the reasons to read memoirs is to get an idea of what other people's lives are like. A protestant pastor's life is one that I was never going to live. And more recently, the theologian Stanley Hauerwas. This one also can be classified as an "academic" memoir, since he worked at Notre Dame and Duke for his career. Lots of interesting anecdotes, some harrowing stuff about dealing with his first wife's mental illness, and of course, lots of petty academic bickering and score-settling.
I usually read only one or two biographies/autobiographies in a year, but this makes three in a handful of months. I am enjoying Ebert's book; he writes a nice, tight chapter and covers some pretty interesting info, such as his time in South Africa with Rotary and the snapshot he provides of the newspaper business of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Just picked this one up. I liked the first two, so wanted to finish the crime action thriller trilogy.
Dana Stabenow -- A Cold Day for Murder My wife loves this series. I'm checking out the first one and very much enjoying it about 1/3 of the way though.
That's on my list. When I lived in Chicago in the 90s, I had a day to kill and I decided to hit a bunch of North Side bookstores. I saw Ebert first at Bookseller's Row over the New Arrivals Bin, then bumped into him later at Powells where we were both looking at books in the... whatever Powells on Lincoln had next to their poetry section. He was giving me the fish eye because I think he thought I was stalking him and was going to ask him, "seen any good movies lately." I didn't. Instead, I told him I heard he was a student of a guy who's work I'd recently read, James Carey, a communications prof U of I. We had a good 5 or 6 minute conversation about his college days and Carey's book Communication as Culture. Damn nice guy, really well read and very interesting. Damn hard to look at recent pictures of him and not think, damn... but from what I've read, he doesn't have a self-pitying bone in his body.
Just finished Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck. I would highly recommend that, and of course his first, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, regardless of whether you have children or not. The man has invented a new literary form. The illustrations are so lush and the transitions from prose to illustration so seemless, they really are hard to put down. These works are virtuouso performance pieces almost. I can't recommend them too highly.
Just started: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami... pretty excited to begin it, got it for xmas... but had to take the dust jacket off because it is so delicate...
Bonnie Jo Campbell's Once Upon a River, which I am not really sure about, even more than half way through. I know it was very well received, and I don't dislike it, but I don't really know what image I am supposed to have of the protagonist yet. I think I am meant to respect her pluck and verve and feel for her, but beyond several fabulous paragraphs early in the book, Margo Louise Crane is probably written to appeal to a different audience than me.
A third of the way through. So far, a really nice mix of humor, biography and examination of the things she has had to overcome to be successful. The first book I finished this year was Moneyball, which I waited far too long to read. I review it here as I do with all books I finish.
Starship Troopers Robert Heinlein I like it. I had not read this before, but had seen the movie several times, and had heard people complain about how they differed. I actually like both, for different reasons. I've read some criticisms of the book that found it boring - merely brief perfunctory action sequences to fill in between philosophical set pieces. But I don't mind that, and I appreciate the success with which Heinlein makes you feel that you could be reading the thoughts of any soldier, whether part of the Mobile Infantry, or a dogface from WWII, or one of Scipio's infantry. I still have 1/4 of the book to finish, but thumbs up.
This book is also notable for the novels that were written in response at the time. The world of science fiction was pretty compact in those days, and Heinlein was a very high profile figure. I've read a couple of those books, and I especially enjoyed Bill the Galactic Hero.
Hey, let's hear it for Harry Harrison! I'm thinking that maybe this is the first time he's been mentioned in one of these threads, but anyone who enjoys reading what I call popcorn books (books, that like simple action movies are just to sell some popcorn) should read The Stainless Steel Rat and subsequent sequels, all by Harrison. But to get back to your post, I remember a friend having this book in high school and I never got around to borrowing it from him and now you make me want to actually get around to reading it. Thanks...
Book description: Italy, August 1300. On the banks of the river Arno, a war galley is found with the entire crew dead inside. Dante Alighieri, Prior to the City, suspects poison but the only clue is a mysterious mechanical device. Dante suspects that the damaged device is the work of al-Jazari, the legendary Persian inventor. But others are also after the instrument and will stop at nothing to lay their hands on it...When Dante returns to Florence to work on his magnum opus, the Divine Comedy, he discovers that the renegade monk, Brinando, is stirring up trouble and recruiting Florentines for a new crusade to liberate the Holy Land. Is this disturbing new development somehow linked to the deaths of the galley crew? All of the above plays out merely as background; this is a very strange plot about something that (to me) makes entirely no sense.
As it turned out, I quite enjoyed the second half of Once Upon A River. The protagonist was more understandable, and every male in the story stopped being a rapist or murderer. And I came to like the remaining characters quite a bit. Now reading with my daughter: Stickman Odyssey which is indeed based on what it sounds like. And on my own )): CJ Cherryh's Cyteen, which I've just begun.
Night, by Elie Wiesel Harrowing book from a Nobel laureate recounting his captivity in, and ultimate survival from, a German concentration camp. But I guess what I found most tragic was the depths of denial that gripped his own family even as the Holocaust was in full swing. Wiesel's family wasn't taken to the camps until summer of 1944 and they had ample time, ample opportunities to get away, to escape. And they were unwilling to accept that such atrocities would come to them...
I don't know how to put pictures.....but as of now im reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Killed_My_Father
Maybe I should just start a juvenile literature thread, since that is so much of what I am reading.... Just finished, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, one of the Vlog brothers. Simply stunning. It's a love story about two kids with cancer who meet at Cancer Survivor Group, and who hate Cancer Survivor Group, but they find each other and are thrilled to have found each other. They have a dark, dark, gallows humor, and the first half of the book is pretty darn funny. But the second half is more like Bridge to Terabithia, except you couldn't see it coming in Terabithia. Here, you see it coming and coming and coming, and, like a deer in the headlight, you cannot get out of the way. I've been working, off and on, for the past two years on my own book, and my new year's resolution was to finish it. I've read a lot the past couple of months that got published and got me thinking, I can write as well as these schmucks. I've had a couple of productive weeks. And then I read The Fault in Our Stars, and I realize I can't. This book is literary gold...
Continuing on a serious note: "winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, is a comprehensive history of one of the commodities that powers the world--oil. Founded in the 19th century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. Yergin's fascinating account sweeps from early robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War."
Finished Bossypants, which I reviewed on my site. Now reading (on the Kindle) Farewell: The Greatest Spy Story of the 20th Century. Not sure what inspired me to put this on my Wish List, but it was there, and my wife bought it for Christmas. About 10 percent through and it's pretty fascinating. I never knew of this story.