11/22/1963

New novel by Stephen King. I'm disappointed yet again, and I suspect my reasons why will be the very reasons why fans will favor the book.

I loved the concept since I read about the book months ago:

I was hooked. I love stories about attempting to change the past, and I'm a big enough Mad Men nut that I'll check out anything that takes place in the 60s.

At least from the book's opening it seemed like it would be everything I wanted. But only a few pages in and King begins his usual wandering story, going so deep into his characters and world building that I felt first a deep longing, then a kind of betrayal that he was taking so long to get to the story. I'm now a little over a hundred pages in, and damn it all to hell, to King's credit the concept is so interesting that I'll probably finish and return with a full review.

I just want to give a +1 to The Legacy of Heorot and The Mote In God's Eye. Haven't read Inferno.

Not for the prose with is so so at best, but for the ideas behind the writing--which is the heart of science fiction. The genre that Legacy lives in was better done by Card with Speaker For The Dead imo, but still I good read.

I love Speaker for the Dead, so maybe I'll have to try Legacy right after Mote.

Everything starts coming together around page 550 from what I remember. Until then, just enjoy the journey and try to get to bent out of shape about remembering everything.

in other news, Shaq just released a book so I'll be reading that...

alternating between

A Visit from the Goon Squad

and

The Angel Esmeralda

short story/chapter awesomeness overload

I'm reading NY Times writer David Carr's memoir, The Night of the Gun. He goes back and interviews people who knew him when he was a lawless drug addict. And he really took his degeneracy seriously, believe me.

I like it. I was inspired to buy it by the excellent Fresh Air interview Carr did with Terry Gross. Carr is very smart, and he has clearly put a lot of thought into this. Things like how our minds shape our memories, etc. I like his prose style about 90% of the time. Sometimes he can get a little precious though.

Finally finished A Dance With Dragons. It was good, but I did read a couple other books in the mean time. I might have to re-read the whole series to figure out if he's had this many nods to Robert Jordan/Wheel of Time the whole way or if it's a post-death thing.

i've read BLBC and liked LTZ more

I'd put BLBC maybe 3rd if ranked among all the BEE books

Honestly, there's not *that many* sets of characters.

You have the Tennis academy, the Halfway House, and the Canadian crew, and that's basically it. [Well, and the offshoots thereof like the punter's girlfriends, but that's not many characters tbh.]

It's not like you have to spend alot of brainpower on random names that get mentioned once and never come up again, like past champions at the Academy, et al.

What's going on is that the tennis kids are being teenagers, the recovering addicts are trying to stay clean [or not], and the terrorists are plotting various misdeeds of death and destruction. EZ.

i've never seen zoolander (i know right) but after reading glamorama and the summary of the movie, it's blatant ripoff. wow

It's not the keeping track that's my problem - it's that I am having a very hard time getting sucked into the book. I read in bed, and when I am really into a book I stay up late to read - something like Art of Fielding, for example, I read in 4-5 days. Right now I am averaging like 5 pages of IJ a night. It just seems like such a chore. The downside of reading on an iPad is the fact that I wind up screwing around online instead.

I just finished Lord of Misrule. Though it starts out conventional, it really caught my interest as all that mythic stuff emerged in the last race. There's a lot going on there ...

A visit from the goon squad is brilliant

Ah, well there's your problem right there as you noted. IJ is a commitment, like many other longish 'great works.' A few are always gonna be more difficult than others to finish.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/ma...pagewanted=all

More interesting than the usual crackhead story, I agree.

Reading some Eric Ambler now, probably the original top-notch spy novelist. A Coffin for Demetrios is a perfect, well-written example of the genre. Fantastic settings, characters, history, and just overall....feel for the era.

Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

awesome book, in my top 10

Yes it is.

Have to read a book before january as a school assignment. I want to go with either The Rum Diary or The Great Gatsby. Which one should I choose?

Gatsby, not close.

Gatsby because it's good stuff.

I got Martin Dressler and The Dante Club at my library b/c they didn't have any of the suggestions that people recommended.

Martin Dressler was alright. I didn't really like the Vernon characters and am not sure how I feel about the small amount of dialogue in the book. The overall book was entertaining though and gave an interesting take on the American Dream. It'd give it about a B.

I just started the Dante Club. The first chapter was good hopefully the rest of the book is.

I posted this much earlier ITT but I was shocked how much I enjoyed Gatsby when I finally read it. I just always assumed that I didn't care about a bunch of flappers. But it is an excellent book.

While I haven't read The Rum Diary I will not diss Hunter S Thompson. He wrote some great stuff. But lets be clear, you are talking about the best book Fitzgerald ever wrote here and are comparing to a book that barely got published by Thompson.

Great Gatsby ainec.