"A Fan's Notes"is brilliant. Have read it 3-4 times.

porterhouse blue

Finished American Pastoral tonight. Good but really depressing.

I'm also stuck about a third of the way through Starship Troopers. Is this boot camp stuff going to end soon? I mean, it's not even a futuristic boot camp, it's just like regular boot camp and every once in a while someone mentions space pods or laser blasters or some **** just to remind you that it really is the future. Like, when does the alien fighting start?

Just finished a Canadian novel called Where Nests the Water Hen by Gabrielle Roy. It's about the isolation and death of French Canadian culture in Manitoba in the wake of English settlement. But also how that seclusion and displacement relates to all of Canadian culture as a whole.

Starting another Gabrielle Roy novel called The Tin Flute about life in Montreal during WW2.

Yes, one of the truly wonderful American novels, reminiscent of The Great Gatsby in some ways. The ending is a good as it gets.

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Robertson is an amazing stylist, a pleasure to read.

I've also read the rest of Exley's trilogy, an while not up to the level of the first, there are good moments in both.

Straight Man is my favorite book, so that would be my highest recommended. Lucky Jimm is really good, too. Of course, Straight Man steals (pays homage to?) to Lucky Jimm pretty heavily in some scenes, so I'd definitely read them both.

I finished two more Abe Lincoln Award Books.

#6: House Rules by Rachel Sontag: This was interesting because I don't really consider this a YA novel at all. It's about teenagers, but it's pretty heavy material. In this memoir, Sontag chronicles her life in a weirdly abusive family. Her father is an overbearing type, that reminds me of fathers who make their daughters write "What I did was wrong" a thousand times in a notebook or something. Her mother is basically a child in an adult body and provides no help to her cause of escaping her father's torment. It's a rough novel to read because it's filled with more pain than joy, but still it was mostly engaging. 4*/5

#7: Unwind by Neal Shusterman. In a future set a couple generations from now, the effects of the second civil war are pretty terrifying. The war was fought between the Lifers and the Choicers, with a truce ultimately being found in a weird set of rules and laws that no longer allow abortions. Instead, from the age of 13 to 18, children can be "unwound" by their parents, essentially turning them into 100% organ donors for those in need. Thus, they are not "dead" but rather "living divided."

It's a wonky setup, but I like that the novel plays by its own rules pretty well. It doesn't ask anything too crazy of you after you've decided to play within the universe. For a teenager, it asks some interesting questions about what it means to be loved or living. For an adult, it's well-tread ground with not a whole lot groundbreaking. The characters are certainly distinguishable, which can be a rarity in YA lit. However, they're not terribly interesting, and I wouldn't want a spin-off novel, which for some reason is becoming my new gauge of whether or not I liked the characters enough. 4*/5.

Only 15 more to go if I wanted to read them all. There's just way too many of these. It keeps me from reading for my own pleasure. Reading for work just != reading for pleasure sometimes.

Much too late and it's too short. There's a lot of horsecrap to have to sit through to get there.

Listened to Ethan Hawke audio version of Slaughterhouse Five. Still pretty good stuff.

They say Hitler liked dogs.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, authors of Mao, The Unknown Story can't find anything similarly pleasant about Mao.

The book paints Mao as a master opportunist and schemer who claws his way to the top using terror, purges and manipulation while surrounding himself with sycophants.

The research behind the book relies very heavily on recently opened Soviet archives which the authors use to tie Mao much more closely to the Soviets than earlier material. There is a great deal of coverage about the instigation of the Korean War, the Chinese nuclear program and the degree to which Mao was willing to put his own population on a course of famine in order to ship grain and foodstuffs to the Russians in return for military hardware and industrial infrastructure.

The authors rewrite much of the past of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and poke holes in the hagiographic versions of events like the Long March presented by Western writers like Edgar Snow and Harrison Salisbury. The authors paint the Long March not as an epic tale of survival and hardship, but rather a vehicle by which Mao maneuvered for power and access to the Russians. The book calls into question many claims of battle and presents a thesis that says the CCP only was allowed to survive due to Chiang Kai-shek's hope to mollify Stalin, who was holding Chiang's only son as a de facto hostage in Russia.

The authors strip away the mythology that it was the CCP who was carrying on the war against the Japanese during WWII. Rather the portrayal is of a brutal time of purges in Yanan while the Russians held the CCP and the Red Army at a distance so as not to antagonize the Japanese to turn on the Russians.

Mao is shown to be totally indifferent to all those around him, both relatives and friends. He goes through a series of wives and children, many of whom who are sacrificed to his political ambitions. He leaves children behind, allows a brother to be executed, the same fate which has befallen an earlier wife. He abandons children and shows a general callousness in all interpersonal relationships. To fill this void, the authors go to great lengths to paint a picture of an isolated dictator surrounded by a bevy of girlfriends and surrogates for gratification.

Anyone who has done any reading about the PRC and the various upheavals the filled the 20th century in China will not be a stranger to these stories and the authors keep the tone of the book starkly harsh. All the horrors of starvation and cruel political purges and recreated on the pages with the main difference being that the authors spend more time on the the political consequences among top leadership rather than the bleak existence faced out in the fields. The purges of Peng Dehuai and Liu Shaoqi are given extensive treatment. The details of the mysterious flight and death of Lin Biao (and family) are filled in with the help of Russian archives and research.

Beyond Mao, they also heap opprobrium on Zhou Enlai. This is a departure from traditional scholarship which normally paints Zhou as a moderating influence on Mao and the excesses of the CCP during the period. The authors paint him as a willing, paid collaborator who has been cowed into frightened submission from a lifetime of watching Mao's successful and bloody purges.

The book takes other deviating paths from most modern Chinese history as written in the West. They use a strange hodgepodge of romanization, relying mainly on the Wade-Giles system (which has fallen into increasing disuse over the past 30 years). To those who are familiar with the political ramifications of such choices, this would tend to put the two authors in a Taiwanese type camp of ideology. The reason this is significant is that they are far less critical of the Chiang government than is typical, so a simple choice of spelling calls into question the degree to which they can be credited with impartiality.

The book is an interesting departure from the larger "Who lost China" framework on which many other modern Chinese histories are loosely hung. The authors put Mao as being a clear and unambiguous protege of Stalin and closed to the concept of American cooperation or involvement in Chinese affairs of the era. Though it is not the point of the book, the content leaves no room for the thesis that the hostile, McCarthyite era of anti-communism in the US pushed the CCP into the arms of the Russians. The authors show the Russians as having already been deeply entrenched and calling the shots.

Got a buncha new stuff lately and haven't read most of it. I'm reading a book on modern China that's pretty good now, can't remember the title.

Also, I just made an audiobook purchase on audible.com of four Woody Allen books in a combined package. It's got Without Feathers (which I loved), Getting Even (which I liked a lot), and two I haven't read - Mere Anarchy and Side Effects. Should be fun, especially since it's Woody narrating them.

Picked up another YA book, but I also got a couple for me this time. Lost Horizon by James Hilton (who wrote Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Whaaaa?) and Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

when is cormac mccarthy coming out with a new book? I thought he had one set in new orleans ready to be released somewhat soon.

Thats such a huge selling point. Let me know how you like them

2010 Abe Lincoln YA Book #8 (of 22): Deadline by Chris Crutcher (5*/5)

In the summer before his senior year of high school in podunk Idaho, Ben Wolf is told by doctors that he has a terminal illness and will be lucky to see the end of the school year. He elects not to tell anyone, even his parents or his brother, who really is a wonderful character in this book.

Ben gets so amped up on his nothing to lose nine months that he manages to snag the girl he dotes upon. Another decent character for my money. It seems a little over the top, as many things in this novel do, but for some reason it's all believable. This could be partly because she's not described as the homecoming queen, but rather just a believable hottie.

The novel explores what it would mean to have a deadline put on your lifeline. It does is especially well for a young adult novel. I'm sure there's better adult books out there, but I've got to be honest, I really enjoyed this book. I read it in a day, and it's definitely put me in a bit of an appreciative mood.

It also makes me want to start doing things I've wanted to do for years now. Maybe a YA book can have enough punch to help me make some things happen.

It's the second best book I've read so far for these Lincoln Award Nominees. The Hunger Games is still the best, but this is easily the second best by a large margin.

So just finished a biography of Nikola Tesla, A Man Out of Time. With respect to the other biography I have read (only one?) "Buffet" by Lowenstein it didn't "read" as well. Her arrangement based on fields of study didn't feel right to me, but it worked and the book is interesting if you are even moderately interested in the history of electricity or you like mad scientists because Tesla was the epitome of a mad scientist.
4/5

Started Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K Dick. So far so good. This is my third Philip K Dick and for light fun reads I really enjoy both Dick and Vonnegut. Although they are quite different they both remind why I love to read and once I start one of their novels I don't want to put them down.

Excellent review, and I find this part strangely fascinating for some reason.

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through Tales from Q School by John Feinstein. So far I'm pretty disappointed with the book. The "tales" become very repetitive. He makes the same observations about the career paths of the players over and over again. At times it's hard to tell when one story is ending and a new one is starting.

Anybody pumped through "My Booky Wook" by Russell Brand? About 30 pages through but haven't had time to bang through the rest. Is it worth it? I'm really on the fence.

Chinese and Russian history is really amazing. I have one book called "Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China" by Philip P. Pan, Former Washington Post reporter. I'm still working through Cider House Rules, so this one is next. Review soon.

I think so. I dont really like biographies, but I do really like Brand, so I gave this a shot, plus I figured it couldnt hurt to be the guy at B&N coffeeshop reading the book that is hot pink and covered in glitter. He is brutally honest about himself, he had a pretty interesting life, and he is a bright guy. That combo will do it for me every time.

johnny i just went to the library and got your books. i also got kraekeur's last book "where men go for glory" and am really looking forward to it as i love kraky. also plan on getting michael lewis's's new book the big short.

I just bought "The Passage" by Justin Cronin.

Caught my attention because there is a creepy young girl on the cover and it was 35% off. Enough for me to read the first two chapters in the coffee-shop of the book store. They are so well written that I bought it. Now Google told me that it is a post-apocalyptic vampire story... Awesome!

John, I have Wallace Stevens and the Pound Era now and they both appear to be completely inaccessible to me. I'm going to give it more effort but am not optimistic.

Reading Lost Horizon now. I'm only thirty pages in, but I like it.