New year, new thread! I have been reading this book from Will Clarke - Lord Vishnu's Love Handles (A Spy Novel - Sort Of): Completely an "impulse borrow" because the title caught my eye at the library. Best title ever? One of them at least. The novel itself is alternately fascinating and frustrating, as it is told in a stream-of-consciousness style by a narrator/protagonist who really isn't all that sympathetic. But rather than try and share the plot, I will paste this from the NYT review from when the book came out 7-8 years ago: "Here, nonetheless, is the skinny: Travis Anderson, an alcoholic, clairvoyant dot-com Dallas millionaire, is preternaturally gifted at the online game “Psychic Cow” (in which players predict the changing colors of the beast’s udder). As the novel opens, his business is failing and Travis is plagued by nightmares that his wife, Shelby, is cheating on him with his evil, corrupt business partner. While he anesthetizes himself with golf and liquor, the I.R.S. comes after him for tax fraud and Shelby and her toothpaste-smile friends strong-arm him into rehab. But a freaky offshoot of the C.I.A. called Shimmer, awed by Travis’s Psychic Cow record, rescues him in order to apply his telepathic powers to their nefarious ends. Violence, kidnappings and apparitions of the Hindu god Vishnu ensue." Now that's a way to start the year!
You're slipping, Ismitje.... Last year you started the thread at 1:39 EST and this year it took you til 3:43 EST
A reread to start the year (actually, it was a DNF by about 20 pages) Why Mahler: How One Man and 10 Symphonies Changed the World by Norman Lebrecht. Mainly because I have all my books unpacked, but the CDs are still mostly in boxes, save some box sets, and I might listen to some Mahler as I wait out the snow.
A proper homage would involve dying of a heart condition after learning one's wife was fooling around with an architect. But I'll stick with leaving the last 20 pages unread as my minor, petty tribute.
Giving this a whirl: Tom Standage's The History of the World in 6 Glasses. Starts with beer and the Mesopotamians/Egyptians, moves onto wine with the Greeks and Romans, then through spirits, tea, coffee, and finally cola.
Has anybody read Scarcity? And if so, do you have any comments? Heard a bit on it this morning and it seems like it might be good for whom I work with, but I'm not sure. (I work with kids who, for the most part, have dropped out of high school and are trying to get their lives back on track.)
Alan Fisher's Country Walks Near Washington. I found out that the park a block from my house was built on top of a landfill on the tidal flats of the Anacostia River, filled in with more than two million cubic yards of earth from the tunnels dug for the city's subway.
I was hesitant when I realized that the WWI book my wife picked up for me at the library was written by a woman. Sexist remark I know but I've never read a war story by a woman that caught the essence of the conflict...Until this one. "The Cartographer of No Mans Land." It's set 50/50 in Nova Scotia and Flanders "Vimy Ridge" Well worth the read. "From a hardscrabble fishing village in Nova Scotia to the collapsing trenches of France, a richly atmospheric debut novel about a family divided by World War I. When adventurous Ebbin goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and search for his beloved brother-in-law. With his navigation experience, Angus is assured a position as a cartographer in London. But upon arriving overseas he is instead sent directly into the trenches, where he experiences the visceral shock of battle. Meanwhile, at home, his perceptive son Simon Peter must navigate escalating hostility in a fishing village torn by grief and a rising suspicion of anyone expressing less than patriotic enthusiasm for the war." A photographic history of Vimy Ridge. https://www.google.com/search?q=vimy ridge&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=g0nHUoPbGcTfoASm74GQAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDkQsAQ&biw=1431&bih=816
Sounds interesting, though how you knew the author was a woman from the name P.S. is unclear. I finished a novel by Christopher Moore today - first time reading one of his books. Funny book. Centered on a screw-up of a pilot who almost lost his testicles in a mishap that involves the mile high club and a plane crash at the beginning of the book, it features a Melanesian tribe which follows a Cargo Cult and the god who they worship trying to set things right after some missionaries-cum-organ harvesters take advantage of them. The god - Vincent - cautions the protagonist not to play cards with the dude with the long hair and holes in his hands; he always knows what cards you're holding. Way more than that to it. If Moor writes stuff this out there but also readable, then I will be back for more.
Currently involved with Strange, odd, weird, funny. It as the description on the picture says, has a bit of Monty Python. Read the second book, Lost in a Good Book, and found that strange, odd, weird, and funny. It is a story about Thursday Next, Literary Detective, who's job it is to find people who create and/or sell fake masterpieces, such a Love's Labor Won. Dad is a time traveler wanted by the government. Uncle is an inventor of some really crazy things that make sense when reading the book. And it turns out that Thursday can book jump - she can actually enter novels. (And you don't really need to have read any of them to understand the story, though it probably helps.) Oh, and her arch enemy is Hades. Oops, I shouldn't have said his name out loud.
Pst...I looked inside the back cover before I read it.... " C. More's (male) book sound like fun, I like a bit of offbeat humour.
I've read Sacre Bleu and Fool. The latter is a retelling of King Lear from the Fool's perspective. Both are hilarious.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte It's the source material for the movie The Ninth Gate, but the books themselves are more central. I'm quite liking it so far.
Out of the Woods -- Lynn Darling One of my belated Christmas presents (all my sister in law's presents are belated)... It's a memoir of a woman in her 50s who, suffering empty nest syndrome, retreats from New York City to a Vermont cabin in the woods. I have no idea why people read these sort of everyday person memoirs. So, she misses her daughter, has a moneypit experience with her house, and she gets breast cancer. These things matter, of course, and I have good friends who have suffered from all 3 of these maladies. I just don't know why anyone would read this. Oh, I'm reading it because my sister in law gave me the book and I'll see her over the weekend. But still...
I just heard this book reviewed on Fresh Air. If you think you can trust Maureen Corrigan, you can give it a listen then skim the rest. Ooops. Not posted yet. Anyway, as part of my books about walking, etc., trip... I'm rereading bits of... Iain Sinclair, Lights Out For the Territory as a warm up for one I've been looking for for a few years... London Orbital various musings inspired by Sinclair's circumnavigation (on foot) of the 120 or so miles of the M25 motorway that rings London.
This was given to me for Christmas by my mother-in-law... I'll be interested in knowing in advance if she is trying to give me entertainment or give me a headache! LOL!
I know what you mean, 90% of TV programing is the same. Yet people (Well some) watch this stuff. Dr Phil is one of Mrs Scouse' guilty pleasures while I hate the whiney voiced Texas twit, and wonder WTF cares...
I was just walking by my bookcase yesterday when this book reached out, grabbed me…..and told me it was time to revisit. If you’ve ever enjoyed O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey. C.S. Forester’s Hornblower, or Alexander Kent’s (Douglas Reeman) Midshipman Bolitho. Tales of oaken sailing ships on the seven seas, fighting the French and Spanish, winning prizes and women. This is the book that started all that, the book that Melville claimed to have made him want to go to sea and write the likes of Moby Dick. Conrad say’s “it’s greatness is undeniable” The author, Captain Frederic Marryat, who’s school studies included Classic Greek and Latin, went to sea as a midshipman when he was 14. Took part in over 50 naval battles and was wounded several times, his books are said to be semi autobiographical but even his main character would be hard pressed to outdo the writer. The title. “FRANK MILDMAY or The Naval Officer” By Captain Frederick Marryat. Published in 1829. Originally entitled “The Naval Officer; or, Scenes and Adventures in the life of Frank Mildmay” Young Frank Mildmay is a Rascal and cuts his way through the ranks of the 19th century Royal Navy. Braving hurricanes boarding French privateers, cutlass in hand. Well worth the read, for a contemporary early 19th century look into the way it really was. Take a little time to get into it, it's worth it. I got into the first couple of chapters last night and remembered how much the language has changed over two centuries. Starting to get into the flow now, just after his first gun action aboard his frigate. Fourteen year old midshipman working a foredeck gun during the Battle of Trafalgar.