Finished this last night. Thought it was pretty good, and I do feel like I have a greater understanding of the Muslim extremist mind-set. What I didn't like is that after a brief discussion of the attack of 9/11, the book just ends. I mean they spent 300+ odd pages building up to this. I figured there would be some sort of conclusion that tied it all together, but there was not. Technically, I guess it's not necessary, but from a readability standpoint it just kind of felt like the book was missing it's final chapter.

Since then I've started reading Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman which is a hilariously funny take about life in small town North Dakota. About half-way through, and I really, really am enjoying it. Haven't read a new author that I just click with in quite a while, but this dude has it.

That version was pretty near the book. They just cut some stuff out and it seems pretty dated now. It feels like an after school special that we would watch during a study hall in middle school, which, I suppose, makes sense because that's pretty much what it is.

There's some German film from 2008 that is feature length about The Wave. I'd love to see how the Germans play it.

Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty (Hardcover)


sick book. if you remember these days, i dont i was too young, you can probably appreciate this more but nonethtless this is a fun read. Michael Irvin is awesome.

read a few books

the winter of frankie machine- fun book, fast read, enjoyable. don't go in expecting a classic though. story is an ex-mobster comes back to the game and wrecks souls.

oryx and crake- someone recommended this book somewhere here. i loved it...its a post-apoc tale, reminded me alot of brave new world. very disturbing. there were a few parts i was a bit torn on but whatever. overall, i enjoyed this book.

currently reading- count of monte cristo- about halfway through. ive been churning away at this book for a bit now. i go through moments when i read 100-200 pages extremely quickly (and very enjoyable) and times where the passages are quite slow. perhaps this is just the nature of the story, but whatever. overall though, im enjoying it, and it's very very good at times.

This was on at the student cinema at my university and I meant to go and see it, but just as I was leaving the door I released I had to give a presentation in my seminar the next day, so had to stay and work on that. Bah. If anyone has seen the film, I'd be interested to know if it was any good.

Finished Downtown Owl. Had kind of a twist at the end that I guess I should have saw coming, but did not. For 250 pages it was a beautifully crafted book with no real point, which was awesome because it was good at not having a point while drawing you in by being side-splittingly funny. Then they had to insert a point, and everything I enjoyed about the book was suddenly moot. I'm really quite torn up over this.

Now reading The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.

It's not yet available on Netflix, but when it is, I'll be sure to let you know.

eff the effin' Cowboys, and $#@!&!$!%*! Michael Irvin, Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman and Emmit Smith, as well.

Effers.

You will be interested to hear then, that Atwood's new novel, out this fall, takes place in the same post-apocalyptic setting.

Is all of Atwood's material dystopian? The two just mentioned in the post above this obviously are. I know that Handmaid's Tale is as well. Are her others?

I have not read HT. It's like the #1 novel I've wanted to read forever and never get to.

can't wait.

just finished hit #29 by 'joey'. a mob hitman details this hit and the intricacies/planning that has to go with it. pretty interesting and a fast, cool read if you're into crime/mob stuff.

read the alchemist today as well. i really enjoyed this novel. its about a shepard boy who is on a path towards his destiny, treasure in egypt. i liked the philosophy behind it, doing your own thing and following your dream. enjoyed this book alot.

Just started reading Gunslinger by Stephen King. Pretty cool so far.

The Alchemist is a funny novel. It's not comical, but people react so differently to it. I fall into the category of terribly overrated and "other similar books did it better." It's no The Secret though, thank the maker.

I finished King Dork, which is a pretty big hit with adolescent males these days.

The story follows Tom Henderson, aka King Dork, who is a socially inept nerd whose only real friend was developed because they grew up in close proximity via the alphabet. Who didn't make friends in grade school because their last names fell next to each other? Henderson finds a cache of old books that were his father's when he was a teenager. King Dork's father has been dead for a while and so Tom decides to read the books to connect with his deceased father. The story then delves down some paths involving mystery, crazy teachers, crazier students, etc.

I quite enjoyed the novel overall. The voice is pretty engaging. Of course, that's mostly because it's like an intelligent adult narrating an intelligent, although socially inept, teenager's thoughts. It's probably not the most realistic voice for a novel, but it's interesting and better than most adolescent lit by a mile. It has a modern day feel of Holden Caulfield's voice, though admittedly way less goddam whiny. Of course, the parallel isn't a stretch to make, considering how much Catcher is talked about in the novel. It's one of his father's books and the novel itself draws the ire of King Dork because all of his teachers are madly in love with the novel.

Anyhow, the novel is enjoyable. However, I didn't realize until reading a couple Amazon reviews how sexist it can come off. The narrator's mother is an alcoholic and his sister is a stepdad-hating puddle. His fantasy love interests are one-dimensional and lack any form of depth as well. Basically, I realized while reading it that females wouldn't really care for this novel. But it's about as empowering for a female reader as Twilight would be for males. The flip-side to this problem is, of course, that it may give young boys the wrong idea about male/female relationships. But it's an issue that I'm not sure is severe enough that this novel is a waste.

I gave it 4*/5. It's enjoyable, though not entirely amazing. Aside of the potential sexism issues, there really isn't a single thing wrong with this novel. It's the sort of thing that I could easily see becoming a staple of high school reading curriculum in the future at the lower levels. That said, I don't really recommend this book to anyone who isn't a teenage boy, a teacher, or, I suppose maybe, a parent of a teenage boy.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon since I recently finished his The Yiddish Policemen's Union (murder mystery in an alternate history where Sitka, Alaska is a huge Jewish enclave) and enjoyed it.

Starting The Godfather. I've read it at least four times, is just as good everytime. Good spinoff is The Sicilian. (Covers the events during the time that Michael Corleone is in Sicily after destroying the Cop and Turk in the restaurant).

I took a trip to the used bookstore today. I picked up:

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - A memoir/help with writing book

The New Kings of Non-Fiction collected by Ira Glass (NPR fame)- non fiction from Malcolm Gladwell, David Foster Wallace as well as others

A History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer (I flipped through the book to check if it was still in decent condition and saw red writing over a lot of one section, I searched for a different one and then realized it was part of the book)

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Night - Elie Wiesel

The Wave - Morton Rhue (picked up because I saw it in this thread and randomly passed by it in the bookstore)

On Writing - Stephen King

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie (I saw that this was recommended by a lot of people here but until I saw a copy today I didn't realize it was a "self-help" book. I almost didn't buy it for that reason but I figured I would give it a try)


Total - 37 dollars. Jackpot imo.

Also, I finished a copy of 2006 America's Best Non-Required Reading. It has a great Haruki Murakami story called the Kidney Shaped Stone that Moves Every Day. I also enjoyed the David Foster Wallace Kenyon Commencement Speech. There are a few really stupid parts of this book like "best American band names of 2006" and those ******ed Chuck Norris Facts but aside from that filler I enjoyed the book. Nice quick reads. 7.6/10



I really love these anthologies. I've bought the best short stories for years and I just started buying the Best American Comics.

The only thing that bothers me is that I never skip around in the book, I always just read them front to back which I really wish I wouldn't.

I'm also slowly getting though this.

I don't mean it's bad, I'm just going slowly. I don't love it so far either but it seems to be getting going. I'm about 160 pages in.

Ken

I hope you'll bring your thoughts back to this thread. I'm the one who recently read it and recommended it. I do think that you'll really enjoy it.

Also worth noting, Morton Rhue was the penname. It's actually written by Todd Strasser. He wrote Give a Boy a Gun or whatever the title is. That book is apparently really good too and sort of deals with a Columbine-like aftermath.

cleared no country for old men in a day and a half.

sweet book, i enjoyed it more than the movie (almost always the case). for those who dont know, its about a simple hick finding 2.5mil in a case and heading for the hills with a superkiller after him. its like a modern western...pretty damn cool book.

love being on vacation, always read a ton.

No. One might say that all of Atwood's fiction has elements of social satire, but not all of it is dystopian.

Re Atwood's new novel out in the fall, it will be called _The Year of the Flood_, and as well as being set in the same post-apocalyptic world as _Oryx & Crake_ (actually a prequel), I see in the new _Quill and Quire_ that it is described as the second part of a planned trilogy (the MaddAdamm trilogy). Actually, it's more complicated than that: "Atwood’s own take on the matter is ... murky. In a recent interview with U.K. magazine The Bookseller, she explained that Flood should not be considered a prequel. 'It’s not a sequel and it’s not a prequel,' she said. 'It’s a "simultaneouel" in that it takes place during the same time span and with a number of people in it who are peripheral in Oryx and Crake but are central in The Year of the Flood.'"

Besides _The Handmaid's Tale_ and one short story, her only other venture in sf (and she's written a lot of novels now) is her Booker winner, _The Blind Assassin_, which is set chiefly in the present but has a novel-within-a-novel that is scifi--a pastiche really.

1. Hwang's new PLO book
2. David Foster Wallace "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"

Just finished the diceman and flow, now reading The Fountainhead and Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.

After finishing two Bourne novels in a row, I wanted something different before I close the series (I also have to finish the Hitchhiker's 'series'). My brother gave me The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Under New York City. I had never heard of the book or the author, Jennifer Toth, but being a New Yorker and a frequenter of the subways, I had an interest going in.

Now, I'm about half-way through the book, which is only ~300 pages, and that interest has somewhat diminished. It just seems that all her claims are overly dramatic and sometimes outright exaggerations (for example the amount of tunnel dwellers, which is claimed to be in the tens of thousands). Since most of her information comes from "the mole people," or underground homeless people, its no surprise that she is probably off on a couple of facts.

That being said, its still a fun, quick read. This might be more interesting to people from NYC or those interested in trains, etc.