just finished osc shadow puppets. good book, can't wait for the last one. reading fast food nation and whatever the latest elmore leonard book is
Just finished Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon and about to re-read Guys and Dolls by Damon Runyon
Just finished "Monkey Bridge" by Lan Cao. Not as good as I had hoped. Working on Kemal Kursapahic's "As Long as Sarajevo Exists" which is a memoir about journalists in Sarajevo putting out the newspaper despite all the shelling.
Kinky Friedman's latest, Stepping on a Rainbow, and for a class I'm teaching, "A Simple Heart," by Gustave Flaubert. Anxiously awaiting for the mail to bring two footie books, Gazza Agonistes by Ian Hamilton and Hold On To Your Day Job (I think) by a Scottish footballer who works as a banker by day and plays for a 1st or 2nd division side on the weekends.
Ok, so that whole plan to read mysteries is on hold. I'll get there, though. I bought Elizabeth George's A Great Deliverance but have yet to start it and I'm keeping suggestions in mind. Right now, though, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice.
I'm nearly positive that a few years back Hamilton wrote a short article for the litterary journal GRANTA (which Bill Buford was editor of at the time he wrote Among the Thugs). I wish I could remember the volume #.
--They had roughly 50 million copies of that GRANTA on sale at Borders last year where I picked mine up.
well, your a better person than me...i just sat in the cafe and read the article then put it back. i'm such a cheap bastard. anyway that should be a good book, i really liked the article.
I can't leave a bookstore without buying a book. I don't know what's wrong with me! --Finished the Elizabeth George book in one sitting. Very different from the Mystery! that was based on it and very good. Will be reading more of them. Still reading Pride and Prejudice as well.
I loved that book. I read it a few years ago and I was amazed how Murakami's writing was able to work its way into my dreams and vice-versa. I read somewhere that this "novel" is really just a compilation of several different short stories and other disparate things Murakami wrote. If that's the case, it somehow works brilliantly as a whole and doesn't really seem like pastiche at all.
Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenously by Bill McKibben. Excellent so far. He takes a year off to train like a real athlete (in this case, nordic skiing) so that he cans spend a season competing at the sport. I just finished the part where he forgot his "windshield," which is something x-country skiers wear to protect... erm, Mr. Johnson on cold days. He managed to get through it with no lasting damage to his reproductive organs... Another funny part involves his participation on nordic message boards... when CBS short-changed coverage of cross-country ski events during the Naagano Olympics... well, a few hours on bigsoccer will give you some idea of what they're like (same thing when some Alpine-oriented ski mag dissed nordic skiing... you'd think ESPN just pre-empted a Champions League match with news of Michael Jordan's un-retirement.
Yeah! We need to keep track not just of the number of posts per user, but also the number of posts with $.50 words. Increment my count by 1, baby!
I'm having to do a lot of reading for work right now, but for fun I'm reading Alan Furst's latest: Blood of Victory. I'm glad to see this guy got a big review in the NYT Book Review recently. I've been a fan of his for years. All his books are about spys in Europe during WWII and he does a wonderful job of creating the time and place, plus he seems to be genuinely knowledgeable about espionage during that period. If you've ever read Le Carre and started thinking about tradecraft as if you were a spy yourself, Furst might affect you the same way. I think his novels about the soviets are best, starting with Night Soldiers (about a young Bulgarian who gets recruited by the NKVD, goes through the Spanish Civil War, and ends up in Paris), but it's all really good. Night Soldiers Dark Star The Polish Officer The World at Night Red Gold Kingdom of Shadows Sincerely, Alan Furst's Mom
Recently finished "American Scream: The Bill Hicks Story" by Cynthia True. Good posthumous story, with lots of insight as to why Mr. Hicks thought the way he did. Pretty severe, honest indictments of the behavior of certain other comedy icons, including Sam Kinison (a coke-hoarding self server) and Denis Leary (stole lots of material). Even though you know it's coming, it's still sad at the end of the book when Bill dies. Good first book by True, who's a regular Rolling Stone contributor. For those that don't know who Bill was, he was considered one of America's top standup comics until he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994, at age 32. If you like your comedy intelligent and political, do yourself a favor and pick up one of his CDs (I recommend Arizona Bay or Relentless). And, yes, in their song Aenima, Tool is paying homage to Bill Hicks with the "Arizona Bay" and "learn to swim" references...
Just finished "36 Views of Mount Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan" by Cathy Davidson. A pretty insightful look into living abroad and coming to grips with who you are (which is often done best amongst the unfamiliar.) Just started "Cute, Quaint, Hungry and Romantic" by Daniel Harris. It is a paradox that both celebrates and condemns certain aspects of consumerism. I can't quite tell where the book will wind up, but it is quite good so far.
I am reading "SALT" By Mark Kurlansky. Its an interesting read , but his book "Cod" was better. Kurlansky can take a topic as boring and overlooked as salt, and tell an amazing story about it, and teach you how truly important it is.