I'm just starting "Sins of the Assassin" by Robert Ferrigno, which is a follow up to his book "Prayers for the Assassin". I loved Prayers. Relentless pacing and a few parts of the book that had deeper introspection than a lot of mass market fiction. Anyone read "Prayers for the Assassin"?

That's a hilarious way of putting it, but no, if I would fear anything it's that I would be disappointed in myself for liking it so much back in the day -- being that shallow or just plain dense, whatever. It would make me wonder how much dumber I am than I think I am right now.

I've also accepted an odd thing too though -- that I may have lost some things I don't normally question and don't feel comfortable questioning, some honesty or integrity or passion somewhere along the line that would make me scorn old books that are just as good as they ever were. It's possible not just that a book doesn't bring as much to the table on further readings, but that you yourself don't bring as much as well.

I haven't read "Paradise Snare", but I have read a lot of Star Wars books. The last one I read was five years ago, I don't know how much I would enjoy them now or if I would enjoy reading another Star Wars book now. I've heard some of them are very good ("The ones about admiral Thrawn come to mind) that I haven't read.

I am not frightened of the book losing its weight (same goes with movies). We change our tastes, so if I don't like any book anymore I just accept that it was fun to read before, but not so fun anymore, my tastes change and I get interested in different things at different times.

Blarg, that's sort of what I was talking about too, or at least what I thought about. Maybe I didn't say it in my post, heh. I definitely was worried I would read it and be like "wow, I really was a little weiner kid." Instead, I realized that the things I related to in the book back then are still there, but now I relate to entirely different parts of the book. For whatever reason, it still has some power with me and I think it's fantastic. I hope everyone has a story they can have that with, even if it is something as silly as a Star Wars book.

Enrique, I've heard the same thing about the Thrawn books, but I also never got into those. I read a lot of the SW books, but not those. I'd recommend TPSnare for a really easy read. I thought it made me appreciate the movies a lot more creating a sort of background for Han.

It's funny you say that about movies because I don't think that I look at too many movies all that differently. I no longer consider myself a huge Star Wars nerd like I once was, but I still love the movies. After reading The Paradise Snare last week I wanted to watch IV-VI this last weekend. Unfortunately I left those back home and had to settle for II and III.

That said, Ewan McGregor's acting in SW Ep III was so far beyond any of the other actors that it's silly. No one else was even remotely as good.

Trying to read Infinite Jest in between studying....its exhausting. Plenty of time for it to get off the ground but so far its just a lot of extra mental power for not much payoff.

I made it 150-200 pages in before throwing that book in a box.

I think I've moved it to a new box once or twice since then, when rearranging all of my non-shelfworthy stuff. I'll probably pick it up again at some time to move it to yet another box.

Scott

I'm not quite that far in, and I can only think of like 2 or 3 books in my whole life that I've ever completely quit on (and Gravity's Rainbow will likely be the fourth, havent touched it in 6 months) but yeah, this one seems to be heading that way.

There are a lot of buzzwords that reviewers and readers use when describing a book that are pretty gigantic red-flags that its going to be brutal, and many of those were in the reviews for Infinite Jest. I should have heeded the warning, perhaps.

I just started The Road by cormac McCarthy and it is very good so far. Thanks to the book club this is where I got the idea to read the book.

I just finished Clapton, which is Eric Clapton's autobiography. Overall I thought it was a good book although I fast forwarded through some of the intense musical stuff and focused more on his life, addictions etc. I found some inspirational parts in the book especially for addicts or former addicts.

An English course I am taking is centered on novels diagnosing the "modern condition" and "diseases" of the era. All the selections are well-reviewed and seem to intersect fictional literature I might choose on my own.

Read:

The Waste Land a famous poem by T.S. Eliot. The poem itself is just over 400 lines and is on the web. We read the Norton Critical Edition which contains extensive footnotes translating some foreign lines, explaining allusions and contextual references, etc. It also contains Eliot's notes, critical essays, and readings to understand the poems context. I couldn't have understood or fully appreciated the essay without the annotations and references.

Next, we read The Ice Storm by Rick Moody which later had a succesful film adaptation. The novel explores the various points of view of members of the 'Hood' family. It is set in 70's wealthy suburban Connecticut and explores adultery, drug experimentation, sex, etc. This book started out very slow for me, but ended up being a decent read. I doubt I will read it again.

The next selection we read was a two part play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner. Angels in America was made famous by the HBO mini-series adaptation with a stellar cast receiving great reviews. Kushner brilliantly develops characters whose interactions explore tolerance, AIDS, Reagan-era politics, and hope for the future. I thought this was an easy read which I enjoyed. The character Roy Cohn is based on the real-life lawyer who was Chief Counsel to McCarthy during his twenties. Cohn prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage and later proudly claimed his personal influence led to them receiving the death penalty. Cohn died of AIDS claiming he had liver cancer. This is all reflected in the play.

I have seen a few selections from the mini-series and would recommend watching it over reading the play as the effects and acting make it more powerful and enjoyable. While a brilliant play, Kushner is trying to deliver a message which I thought was hollow in the end.

Currently, I have almost finished reading White Noise by Don DeLillo. I have really taken my time to think about DeLillo's style and themes finding it to be masterfully written. For example, when the novel turns to crisis characters refer to having deja vu. At the same time, the reader gets a sense of deja vu as the events reflect earlier scenes and conversations in the book. DeLillo is a contemporary writer famous for other novels including Underworld. I would definitely recommend reading White Noise.

Other novels on the slate for the semester:

Pastoralia by George Saunders.
John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Twilight of the Superheroes by Deborah Eisenberg

I will follow up with some thoughts as I finish the maybe lesser known novels.

For reasons that aren't the least bit interesting I've been on a a hiatus from posting or even surfing much here (or anywhere on 2+2) for the first time in years.

Tonight I was in the mood so I come to The Lounge and found this thread. So I skim partly to see if anyone is reading the book I'm reading. Well I didn't have any luck so I search the whole 2+2 forum on the title of my book and find only one post by El Diablo in a thread that had something to do with a game plan for picking up chicks at work. Here's El D's comment:

"Like 42 says, next time stalk the girl online first. Then when you IM her you can be like "Hey, what's up? Things are kinds slow here. Just hanging out here in the north building listening to the new Meiko song and reading A Thousand Splendid Suns."

So I'm in the middle of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and think it's at least as good as "The Kite Runner" which IMHO was pretty darn close to great besides being topical.

Does this mean that I'm potentially a natural for picking up the kind of woman who in my younger years used to idolize "Alan Alda types" and now watches too much "Oprah" or do I simply have awful taste in books?

~ Rick


PS to Lounge regular and long time friend John Cole: Is my penchant for the two Khaled Hosseini books akin to thinking that "Titanic" was one darn fine movie?

For some reason I was slightly amused by your post Rick. Heh.

I started and finished Reel Conversations: Reading Films with Young Adults yesterday. I have to do a book review on it for a class I'm in. The book basically was written to help teachers start to use movies as a means of analyzing rather than passive viewing. It was actually pretty interesting to see how they do the lessons and the rationale behind them. Perhaps the most interesting thing was when the authors posed the question of why for some reason plays are considered literary and useful in a classroom but films aren't. Neither were intended to be read in a high school classroom after all.

Pretty good book for teachers I suppose. Beyond that, probably not much audience.


One of my resolutions for 2008 is to read 50 books. At the end of February I'm through 9. 10 will be Cosmicomics.

Ebert loved the Kite Runner movie.

Ebert's a good critic.

My friend who didn't read the book liked it quite a bit (much more than "NCFOM") and I did too. But you need to have dimished expectations compared to the richer detail of a book. I'd recomend the book even though I'm no fan of Oprah .

I do think the author writes woman well; a comparable (native born) American Author might be someone like Larry McMurtry.

~ Rick

PS Not sure why notifications of replies to posts are sort of erratic; didn't get one here.

Rick,

I think his books have received very good reviews from a number of people. My reading tastes are a bit different, and since I don't usually have too much time to read, I stick with those things I really enjoy.

Also, I think Oprah has picked out some very good books, A Lesson Before Dying, for example.

Your taste in books is better than most; in fact, almost everyone who posts here has better taste than most.

As far a Titanic goes, well . . . .

SoloAJ, an excellent choice, and you should be able to put ideas from a book like that into practice. Keep in mind that Literature itself was never intended to make its way into a classroom either. The study of literature in the classroom is a fairly modern development, one that met with some opposition. The proper study of Englsih was always Rhetoric, not Literature.

For some reason I'm sort of surprised that I never was explicitly told this. It certainly doesn't come as too much of a shock, but I really wasn't ever told this in a class or anything. Sigh, so much to learn.

I just finished Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman. Lately i have been more focused on nutrition, and this book really brought some things to light. I DO think that some of his points are a little bit farfetched, though there is tons of merit to most everything he says, and I DEFINITELY recommend this book to anyone an everyone. It will take a few hours to read and force you to completely rethink the current American diet.

raptor -

What are the "far fetched points" he makes, i.e., give me a brief run-down of his premise. The first book in my queue at the library is Sugar Blues by William Dufty and I not sure I really want to read it since I am such a sugar junkie myself...sigh...change is good, right...knowledge is power...melts in your mouth not in your--it's gonna take a LOT of reprogramming for me, I think...

Finished Cosmicomics and then read a couple of comics ("Wanted" and "Ex-Machina"). Wanted was an interesting comicbook, it will be made into a movie this summer and I am looking forward to it.

I am reading Raymond Carver's "What we Talk About when we talk about Love" by Raymond Carver. I have read a couple of stories so far and I haven't been loving them.

You better hope Blarg and JCole don't see this.



Edit to add content: Still working on Cosmicomics. This is just really not my type of genre. I think part of the problem is that I'm having trouble slowing down to chew on it all. I get the impression this is existential in topic...and I like existential...but I'm not pulling much out of it.

Is this the type of novel (/collection of short stories) that you guys are pulling a lot out of it in terms of musings about life? Or am I giving this more depth than it probably has ? (which would explain why I can't get into it yet).

I finished my 1,000 word review on this. It reads a little awkward because of the loose prompts we were supposed to attack. I find it odd that in reviewing the book I actually now feel that it was more powerful and useful than I initially did. In short, I'm not sure what more this book could have done. I didn't have any questions left at the end and it seems they left no stone unturned. Man alive, I would love to be teaching film at the high school level. I don't know enough about it yet to teach it at the college level necessarily.

Actually, I probably could...just not well.

Actually Solo, I read that hoping Blarg and Cole would read it to tell me why they love it.

You don't find the stories in Cosmicomics fun and fresh? I think they are very original and fun to read.

Perhaps it's a little too "out there" for me. I don't know what it is. I'm only 3 or 4 in. I plan to zip through this baby end week. Classes end Thursday afternoon and I don't leave until Saturday afternoon for spring break.

I really dont think there is too much super deep and complex meaning there. The stories are first of all light and fun, second of all fairly straightforward "moral of the story" kind of thing. I would say there is very little chance that there is more to it than you think there is, assuming you arent a complete dunce.