I just finished reading...'s topics - tribe.net

Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship

2009-12-28T03:29:31Z

If you are looking for a fun behind the scenes look at living and working on a cruise ship. I recommend Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship. I chronicle my life working for Carnival Cruise Lines and the long search for my dream job.

Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship has been ranked #1 on Amazon for lulu books and has received great reviews. Go to www.permanentpassenger.com to see more on book and www.michathemouth.com for articles and reviews.

Cheers and Beers
Micha Berman

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

Atonement by Ian McEwan

2009-12-20T03:17:57Z

Hi all! I finshed Atonement by Ian McEwan, my first of his books. I loved it. Wish I knew all the WW2 military/hospital terms, but the way he gets into the characters heads..wow! I copied a few parts on Briony's writing/philosophy. I used to write fiction, so I identified with her the most. I was really wondering if/how she would 'atone' for her sin.
Now I'm going to try his newest, Chesil Beach. Before I got Atonement (from library) the nytimes review of this piqued my interest. When I can, I'm going to get the video 'book tour' he put together. Anyone else read/ing Chesil or Atonement or any others of his?
Jennifer
jenniannie on yahoo messenger

posted in I just finished reading... - 16 replies

Ship of Fools, by Richard Paul Russo

2009-12-16T02:02:02Z

http://www.amazon.com/Ship-Fools-Richard-Paul-Russo/dp/0441008933/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260928511&sr=1-3#noop

Has anyone read this beautifully dark book?

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Galilee - Clive Barker

2009-12-13T23:58:00Z

Really different than his other stuff, yet still with the same theme of reunification between male and female into the androgyne.

My favorite of his is still Weaveworld. This I read with Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass. Proved to be a great project.

Sacrament is another great one.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

2009-12-13T23:51:05Z

What can I say, but...

Wow.

This is the first Robbins book I have read. I was so swept up in his wild ideas, the metaphors, the world travel, the time travel... concepts of immortality... And SMELL! I don't think I've had a book effect me in such a profound way since I read Rudy Rucker's White Light many years ago. This book truly takes you on a journey.

Question for Robbins fans: Which one of his should I read next? I need more! ha!

The citadel was dark, and the heroes were sleeping...

posted in I just finished reading... - 49 replies

High on Arrival

2009-12-09T23:36:44Z

This book was shocking. I couldn't put it down. What a life Miss Phillips has lead.

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

the island of the day before

2009-12-09T22:32:23Z

this was my introduction to umberto eco. i ended up w/this book in my collection somehow.

i thought it was great, though i have to admit the last maybe 5th of the book started to drag a little. still a great read.

just started baudolino, rented from library.

posted in I just finished reading... - 3 replies

protest handbooks?

2009-12-09T07:14:34Z

Any good suggestions?
Non-Violent Protest etc.
Anything remotely modern and/or relevant appreciated.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Travels with Lizbeth...other homeless travelogue suggestions?

2009-12-07T18:28:09Z

Just finished 'Travels with Lizbeth'...for the second time.
Great book. (Unreliable narrator trope in full effect boyeeeee!)
Hahaha...I'm so stupid, right?

Anyways, I seem to remember one by a guy named Cotton Something I'll have to look up...
...of course there's always 'On The Road' (yawn)...

So....any Memorable(!) Homeless(!) 1st person type works you wanna spread the word about?
Nows your chance....

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The Insufficiency of Maps by Nora Pierce

2009-12-06T02:28:28Z

Hi all! Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!
I finished this book on Sunday. This is a good first novel for its author. Fast read. Cute story, though the author did take liberties with the narrator being an all-knowing 8-year old. Not quite believable but cute. Anyone else read it?
Jennifer in chilly Phoenix

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

2009-12-05T20:40:43Z

A compelling and well crafted tale. I adored this story and was sorry when it was recently finished. I probably just relate to the main character..., lol.

posted in I just finished reading... - 24 replies

How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections on Service by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman

2009-12-05T05:18:52Z

Of course, Be Here Now is an essential book. I'd say this one is also. I have read nearly all of his stuff, but this is the ticket. All folks in service to others on a personal or professional basis will find freedom in this book you couldn't find anywhere else. Really a fun read. I wish the book would never end. Ram Dass is putting out another book now, but I am not sure what that one is.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The Dante Club

2009-11-29T23:14:57Z

I am currently reading the Dante Club. It is based around the Inferno and set in 1865. A series of murders take place that are mimicked from punishments of the sinners in the rings of hell. Four literary poets are on the trail to find the murderer. It starts out slow and then really gets interesting. Any one that likes Dante's Inferno: I recommend it.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

The Road-Cormac McCarthy

2009-11-24T20:40:41Z

A good weekend read. I wouldn't say a great though.
By the same author that wrote No Country For Oldmen.
It's a father and his young son's struggle to survive in post acpocalypic America.
It's tender and sad and horrifying.
To me the real story is the interplay between father and son.

posted in I just finished reading... - 25 replies

In Arabian nights- Tahir Shah

2009-11-24T12:05:05Z

The highly amusing autobiographical account of a Londoner moving to Morocco. Tahir Shah is of Aghan-British origin and buys a house in Casablanca with his Indian wife and two children, trying to get away from it all and to fulfill a childhood dream (If you can't go home to Afghanistan, vacation in Morocco...as his father did)
A tour de force in intercultural training that will make you laugh out loud. Starting with Shah balking at the thought of having to tell his long suffering wife that all the rooms in their house must be washed down in goat's blood AGAIN because the djinns are still there who wreak havoc on the house, their lives and everything else, and all their Moroccan servants believe in them... and Tahir's genius trapeze act of trying to keep his senses about himself without upsetting his superstitious servants, all told in a quiet humour and with a lot of wit. While keeping you in awe of the traditional Arabic custom of story telling.
I loved it! Am reading the book now that preceded this, "The Caliph's house". And already have my eye on "The sorcerer's apprentice" next, another book by Shah.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett

2009-11-24T11:39:29Z

His newest. Not my favorite. It was good, but a bit disjointed. He parodies a lot of stuff in it, although the main focus is on soccer/football. The wizards and four new characters are the main characters in it. Vimes has a cameo and Vetenari is in it a good bit.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr

2009-11-22T02:23:58Z

Hi all! I just finished this easy read. It's about an artist and brand new father of twin boys who wins a year-long gig in Rome. For those who have been in Italy, reading this will take you back, and you will enjoy reading this! The most conflict in this is when his wife becomes sick and they have to get to a hospital and navigate the language. Not very serious. He also happens to be there, I think in 03 when John Paul II died in April, and he writes about walking around all the pilgrims who come to get a glimpse of Him in state, and the conclave to follow. It is an easy and fun read.
Jennifer in Phoenix

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

new free e-book

2009-11-20T19:48:33Z

I thought many here would appreciate this new free e-book

"The Origins of Christianity and the Quest for the Historical Jesus Christ"
by Acharya S/D.M. Murdock newly updated version and free e-book
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/originsofchristianity.pdf

Newly Updated "The Origins of Christianity"
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2946

http://www.freethoughtnation.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_ZmsRUmuWU&feature=channel_page

The 2010 Astrotheology Calendar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxjVki0z-_E&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2_0GCLtScw

;

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Lovely Bones

2009-11-19T05:57:30Z

I finished this book about a year ago and find myself wanting to read more by that author ( whose name escapes me)

Have any of you read her other books?

What did you think?

posted in I just finished reading... - 18 replies

Aldous Huxley

2009-11-16T18:05:44Z

So I'm only half way through After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, by Aldous Huxley, and I'm blown away. I've read short stories by him before, and of course Brave New World, but never any of his other novels. His writting is marvelous, and I'm wondering if anyone has any favorites among his less known stuff.

posted in I just finished reading... - 8 replies

The Sheep Look Up - John Brunner

2009-11-16T14:17:06Z

I actually have NOT finished reading this yet. I'm have a hard time finding Brunner's rhythm I guess. Should I keep going? I haven't even made it out of "December" yet.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The King Must Die - Mary Renault

2009-11-15T02:59:41Z

An excellent retelling of the legend of Thesus in two books. The first book is The King Must Die and covers from his early childhood up to his return from Crete. The second book is The Bull From the Sea. It picks up where the first book ends and apparently ends with his death. I two thirds through the second book. It is equally good as the first.

They are absolutely excellent books. I usually shun historical fiction, but Renault did her research and her prose is blisteringly well written. I'm almost ashamed to speak the English language after reading her.

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

Running With Scissors AND Falling Leaves

2009-11-03T00:54:15Z

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs was the story of his actual horrific childhood. His humor made it definitely quick flowing. I loved it so much that I'm currently reading his second book "Dry"

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah was amazing and sad at the same time. I can't believe she lived through as much as she did the first time around, let alone living through it again while writing it. Parts of it made me cry... Loved it.
:)

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

The Power of Myth

2009-10-22T19:25:51Z

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

I found the book to be very enlightening in regards to the worlds religions and myths.

Five out of Five

posted in I just finished reading... - 13 replies

Tenth Circle by Jody Picoult

2009-10-20T04:33:58Z

This was suggested to me by a friend and i thoght it was FABULOUS. It was written well, the story kept me interested.. and I've passed it on to my 14 year old daughter who desperately wanted to read it.
anyone else read it?

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The Wanting Seed - Anthony Burgess

2009-10-19T10:27:36Z

Same guy who wrote Clockwork Orange, although this book makes that look kind of happy. It is a dystopian sci-fi book set in the not so distant future in England. Overpopulation has become a massive problem and the book begins with a society where women are scorned, life is cheap in a very literal sense and homosexual men are held above heteros. There is a highly encouraged, but not forced, 1-birth limit and even having one child is a massive social stigma. Things go down hill from there, and the pendulum swings back and forth as the society goes through several drastic changes in ideals and morals.

Burgess's mastery of the language is astounding, this was the first book since grade school that I needed a dictionary for occasionally. It is extremely well written, but moves a bit slow and there is absolutely no happiness in the book. Everything is horrible and you would be hard pressed to find a more grim prediction of the future.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

First Law Trilogy - Joe Abercrombie

2009-10-19T10:12:50Z

The Blade Itself - Before They are Hanged - The Last Argument of Kings are the three books. There is also a new stand alone novel in the setting, Best Served Cold, that takes place just after the First Law trilogy and focuses on some of the minor characters from the trilogy. I haven't read that yet though. The first law trilogy are his first books.

They are mostly low fantasy with some elements of high fantasy thrown in, but no dragons, elves, fairies or any of that. He sticks pretty close to standard formula for the genre through the first book, although all the main characters are a bit off archetype. As the series progresses he pulls farther away from the standard fantasy tropes and formulas. By the third book he kicking them squarely in the balls, which makes for some interesting reading. There is a good bit that is still predictable, but there are major plots resolutions and events that completely blindside you because they are so far from what you would normally expect. They are not great books and there are definite areas that Abercrombie falls flat, but they are his first books and get better as the trilogy progresses. I'd recommend them over most other straight fantasy though.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

2009-10-12T05:29:40Z

It was only okay. The protagonist wasn't very sympathetic.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

"Bad lands" by Tony Wheeler of Lonely Planet...

2009-10-11T07:17:29Z

Has anyone here read this yet? I think, I should...

from http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/Primary/Product/General_Travel/Travel_Literature/PRD_PRD_2854/Bad+Lands.jsp?bmUID=1255245078783 :

'You guys really are the axis of evil', our guide splutters over his stein of beer in the Pyongyang duck restaurant. 'You're always leaning out of the windows and taking photographs when I tell you not to.'

In an age of plastic knives on planes, Tony Wheeler can make the extraordinary claim of having visited all the rogue countries currently on newsreaders' lips. Bad Lands is a witty first-hand account of his travels through places often perceived as having some of the most repressive and dangerous regimes in the world: Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia. Taking into account each country's attitude to human rights, terrorism and foreign policy, he asks 'what makes a country truly evil?' and 'how bad is really bad?' - all the while engaging with a colourful cast of locals and hapless tour guides, ruminating on history and debunking popular myths.

Written by the founder of Lonely Planet, this fascinating account of life in these closed-off countries will appeal to anyone with an interest in the state of the world today.

Who's Bad? Download the free 'Axis-of-Evil'-meter screensaver HERE.

Other Travel Literature ›
Other Guides for Middle East ›
Wait, There's More! Related Titles

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

dexter series- jeff lindsay

2009-10-07T23:00:56Z

just finished darkly dreaming dexter. been watching the show so wanted to read the books.
anyone got any thoughts on the series ?

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The Zahir by Paul Coelho

2009-10-04T01:51:42Z

Hi all! I finished "The Zahir" by Paul Coelho, the author of "The alchemist". The "Zahir" book was not exactly what I expected, though knowing Coelho I should have known better. While I did not care for "Alchemist", I liked "11 minutes", and like this "Zahir" also. The main character is a famous novelist, who meets and marries a journalist who leaves him to follow her "Zahir" (obsession) and he in turn follows her though mostly in his mind / same city until the very end. That was the part I thought would be different - thought it would all be about a physical journey, though in a way it is, as he meets another man who prepares him mentally and then guides him to his wife. If you like Coelho's work, you'll like "The Zahir".
Jennifer in finally-it's-cooling-down-Phoenix!
P.S. anyone read "Winner Takes All"?

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

"Censoring an Iranian love story" and "Reading Lolita in Teheran"

2009-10-03T09:06:44Z

I just got this book in the mail from amazon and have only browsed through it a little and read bits here and there. But I already love it! This book is going to be great fun, the author is my kind of guy. ; ) I have read "Reading Lolita in Teheran" before by Azar Nafisi and was impressed by the intelligence and candour of the female author and her unbreakable spirit. A popular, well loved, dedicated Persian professor of English literature who resigned from her position at Teheran university after she almost got "busted" by the moral police for not wearing a veil, and the Dean called her in and tried to talk her into wearing one after the Ayatollah took over the goverment. Instead she resigned and asked the female students to visit her at her house where they read all the now forbidden books in secret together, and she draws the most amazing connections to women's life in modern Iran from Nabokov, Scott Fitzgerald and so on. I am still in the middle of "Things I have been silent about", her other great book, that one is too unsettling for me to read long stretches at a time.

"Censoring an Iranian love story" is by Shahriar Mandanipour, a male Iranian writer who got tired of writing gloomy, bitter stories. I don't know enough about it yet, but I assume, he had to write those, as every movie I saw that made it out of Iran under this government is in fact rather gloomy, showing stern looking, long suffering women with strict morals and a tragic aura, dressed in a black abaya, telling tales of endurance, unshakeable morals and such.
Instead Mandanipour now tried to get away with writing a light hearted love story. He must have smuggled the manuscript into the West, as the book has been printed in full, with the censored bits crossed out but still readable which is a delightful fascinating experience to read. I was full of mirth when I saw how skillfully the crossed out sentences had been chosen, without altering the flow of the story but still completely altering the meaning of what was expressed. Read: deleting everything that is controversial, political, sexual, critical, comparing the Iran to Western standards... A great experience for readers who love wit, candour and irreverent critical thinking.

posted in I just finished reading... - 9 replies

Literary Analysis...who else hates it?

2009-10-03T02:42:50Z

Yeah yeah,

I know

it's just a hoop to jump through

and no one likes a complainer

....but that never stopped me before

...and really...
isn't it just another complicated game people play to seem smart when it's a totally useless skill except at dinner parties and if you teach it?

Or if you're a fiction writer?

And honestly, not to crush any dreams, but how many of those are there in the world?

And so it goes like this:
I'll *pretend* that I'm thinking this reeeally interesting (implausible) interpretation about this short story and then craft a paper (leaving out all the parts that contradict or don't fit) ...AS IF anyone will ever know WHAT the author REALLY meant because... he never said what the central idea or theme was himself! Maybe it doesn't even have one! Maybe it has ten! At any rate we won't discuss what significance the ideas have on our lives or etc just this make believe, unprovable, symbolism.

If life can't be summed up into a nice tidy little plot line why are we trying to do this with stories?
Why simplify thing?

haha,...I'm so flustered I'm babbling.

I'd much rather learn grammar any day of the week...at least I'll be using that once the class is over.

Now I can't even escape into a good book anymore without wondering about plot and theme. Yuck. It's like learning where hot dogs come from.

What a waste of energy.

Etc.

:P

Thanks for listening to me whine.

posted in I just finished reading... - 6 replies

Middlesex written by Jefferey Eugenides

2009-10-02T22:00:31Z

I truly loved this book. It is so well written, and the story in itself is fascinating. I learned a good deal from reading it. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it already.
Has anyone read his other book, Virgin Suicides? I would like to know your thoughts on it.

posted in I just finished reading... - 10 replies

Great Mambo Chicken and the Trans-Human Condition

2009-09-08T19:38:39Z

Fringe Science like its Comedy. All real. Life will never be the same again.

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

The selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

2009-09-08T19:26:58Z

Sometimes get the feeling that there's more to you than just yourself ? Then mebe your'e in touch with more than you think.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Ericw Newby-The Last Grain Race

2009-09-07T19:01:15Z

The end of the era of the great Windjammers-1938. Eric Newby is as entertaining as he's informative. I'm guessing Eric led the way to the modern travel/humour style. Who else fits in here ?

posted in I just finished reading... - 3 replies

Tom Sharpe, Puppenmord

2009-08-30T23:21:47Z

"Doll murder" is the title of the German translation and it was lent to me by an artist friend who has a bit of an evil streak.
A truly unique whodunnit, which starts off on page three with a dedication:
"For Meat 2".
"Meat 2" is the class of aspiring butchers to which the main character has to teach English literature.
His wife, who has boobs the size of a melon and a half each which he finds mildly unnerving, never fails to remind him of how miserably he failed in his career. So one day he decides to get rid of her. Once and for all. Since he has never commited murder before except hundreds of times in his mind, he decides to play it safe and conduct a rehearsal. Yeah, and now I need to tell you the story of how he came about the prop he uses in this rehearsal:
Actually, I keep seeing this scene right before my eyes, every time I think of...well, I will leave this up to your imagination, but you only get three tries in this guessing game.
Anyway, what happened was that one day he was invited to a party on a yacht by a rich and bored couple and the nymphomanic wife spiked his drink. When this did not work, she applied Plan B which he realised on the morning after, awakeing from his drug induced stupior and becoming painfully aware of an alien presence close, all too close to his body. The scorned lady of the house (or actually, the boat) has taken revenge and after undressing him, dragging him about without being able to get him interested, she has finally attached an inflatable women to, um, where she belongs, and then overinflated her, and this is the condition in which he has to leave the boat, trying to walk home unseen, doll in place.
After successfully removing this all too pain-inducing gadget from his private parts, he decides to practise on her how to dispose of his insufferable wife. Only, from afar the police cannot see that it was only a doll, and then it is too late...

A read of the blackest British humour which you will never forget. Try it!

posted in I just finished reading... - 4 replies

do I HAVE to read Twilight?

2009-08-29T01:03:17Z

My usually very sensible, substantial-literature-minded book club chose TWILIGHT for next month.
(That's what I get for missing a meeting!)

I don't want to sound like a holier-than-thou snob jerk, but I never even read any Anne Rice stuff since THAT sounded hokey to me.
Can I stomach this stuff? Amazon reviews suggest not.

I did just read the Harry Potter series because my 8 year old did and wanted to talk about it.
Twilight sounds like it may be similar: simple-minded prose that's driven just enough by the story to keep you at it.

The crummy gender roles and close attention to characters' appearance sounds very off-putting... not exactly the kind of stuff I want to keep around the house for my daughter to pick up.

Talk me down? Let me off the hook?

posted in I just finished reading... - 30 replies

Early returns on Pynchon's newest ?

2009-08-28T21:10:30Z

Anyone?

Sounds like a bit of a departure. Really curious what others think of it.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

Tim Moore - Continental Drifter

2009-08-28T19:27:44Z

TM sooo groovy, Iv'e read continental drifter twice and will again.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

"Travels In Siberia" by Ian Frazier in 2 Parts

2009-08-26T00:27:45Z

This was an enlightening documentary by Ian traveling the approx. 4,000.00 miles from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok on the eastern side side of Sibeira. I didn't know that Siberia was as extensive as it was nor indigeneously inhabited by mosquitoes in parts or beautiful but inhabited small towns growing(Strawberry) devastation environmentally in cities. Finally reaching Khabararrsork, after being in Irkutsk, the home of "the Decembrirsts, Tolstoy." what reading.
It was in 2 parts ....broadiening my knowledge of Siberia, the vastness, individual habitation.
What happened to the White Russians, and the scarceness, pigs and geese outside of towns squawking/oinking, loneliness, appreciation of steppes and rivers Amur tributaries all north of Mongolia, China.
What great reading...and their final destination happened on 9/11/2001 in Vladivostok not Saharin.(sp).
So, this was great reading where I found out 2 previous issues in the New Yorker, very long as they traveled what looks like a small 4 dr. Datsun(I don't know the make of the vehicle) starting from St. Petersburg across the Urals.
Good reading....D
Did anyone else read this 2 part issue in the New Yorker?
And don't if I'll ever vist the place unless I would be sentenced there but I am not A. Solzehnighten(sp) or or needing the Trans-Siberian Railroad to go anywhere.
What was strange from this reading...was that some of the towns names literal are odd like "Old Believer."
Great 2 part article and I want to read the book...

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

Apathy and Other Small Victories

2009-08-19T16:36:45Z

I just finished reading this book, by Paul Neilan and I was very entertained. I heard about it through a webcomic about libraries (check it out, overduemedia.com) and was just wondering if anyone else has read it.

Its a short pithy little hilarious novel about a quirky guy who makes totally inappropriate yet incredibly funny observations about his very odd life. I would highly recommend it to those who like Chuck Palahniuk.

posted in I just finished reading... - 6 replies

"The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You" (Formerly "The Comforter") by Dorothy Bryant

2009-08-12T11:48:51Z

A trippy utopia book written in the '70s about a people who fallow their dreams, in the literal sense. I had never heard of it until a buddy of mine read it in jail and did a moral 180. I was pretty impressed my self.

posted in I just finished reading... - 5 replies

Just Me.

2009-08-08T13:14:49Z

A question for the Moderator.
Can I post ANY book I've finished reading?
Does the book have to be on the A list?

I finished The Complete Works of E. A. Poe
"Another Fine Myth" by R. Asprin.
"The Crack in the Cosmic Egg " by J. C. Pearce.
I read for fun and I read for knowledge and I read just because I can.

posted in I just finished reading... - 9 replies

Mystery of Grace by Charles de Lint

2009-08-03T18:42:04Z

I am a big fan of Charles de Lint. I like his concept of that "sideways step into Faerie". Makes you wonder if what you're looking at is what is really there.

I was looking forward to MYSTERY OF GRACE. It was advertised as his first adult fiction in a while. I hate to say it, but I was disappointed.

While the concept of the book is intriguing, it seemed to be written more in the style of his young adult fiction. Most of his earlier work is thicker, meatier..a full meal, so to speak. This book seemed kind of like "soup" in comparison. It scratched the surface of things, didn't delve as deeply as his other books.

WW

posted in I just finished reading... - 3 replies

Time Was Soft There

2009-08-03T06:49:55Z

I've enjoyed a fun read about life in the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co by Jeremy Mercer. Time Was Soft There is a great companion read to the film Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man, available online. Bohemian bookstore lovers dream!

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

Deborah Grabien's haunted ballad series

2009-07-25T17:01:36Z

Found NEW SLAIN KNIGHT at a Library book sale, and I was hooked. Being a Steeleye Span fan, the title pulled me in. I wasn't disappointed.

Each book takes its title from a Childe ballad of traditional British folk music. They're set in contemporary England, but the stories wind back into the past to the times of the ballad. Ringan Laine is an architectural expert, folklorist and folk musician. Along with his beloved, Penelope Wintercraft-Hawkes, they meet the ghosts of the ballads and solve the mysteries surrounding them.

I devoured all 5 books in a few weeks. They're fun, chilling and a quick read. Here's her site...

http://www.deborahgrabien.com/HauntedBallads.htm

WW

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

Laurie Notaro

2009-07-16T17:53:06Z

I am halfway through The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death, and I swear I cannot make it through two pages without seriously laughing out loud, which makes secretly reading at my work desk perilous.

I started out with The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club, and I think it might be possible I like her as much, if not better sometimes, than David Sedaris. It depends on whether or not I also feel crying, in which case I will opt for Sedaris.

posted in I just finished reading... - 23 replies

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2009-07-03T21:07:29Z

read it again.

posted in I just finished reading... - 19 replies

The Oblivion Seekers

2009-06-30T17:52:48Z

Reread it, just to make sure I did not miss anything the first few times I read it.

Nope.

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

Otherland City of Golden Shadow

2009-06-25T18:24:31Z

By Tad Williams. The series has 4 books. This is the 2nd time I've tried to read the series and I'm stuck in the same spot, just a little ways through book 2. Has anyone read this series? Is it worth continuing? Feedback would be most welcome!

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Burning Book

2009-06-25T11:51:45Z

Has anyone read this and can explain what this is all about?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1416928243?tag=tribenet-20&camp=211493&creative=379997&linkCode=op1&creativeASIN=1416928243&adid=0BBEEF53X3N2615RNN4G&

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

Wilhelm Reich's books (forbidden in Nazi Germany, burned in the US

2009-06-25T07:03:16Z

The Mass Psychology of Fascism

In this classic study, Reich provides insight into the phenomenon of fascism, which continues to ravage the international community in ways great and small.

Drawing on his medical expereinces with men and women of various classes, races, nations, and religious beliefs, Reich refutes the still generally held notion that fascism is a specific characteristic of certain nationalities or a political party ideology that is imposed on innocent people by means of force or political manneuvers. "Fascism on only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man's character. It is the basic emotional civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life."—Wilhelm Reich

Responsibility for the elimination of fascism thus results with the masses of average people who might otherwise support and champion it.

Language Notes
Text: English, German
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Governing Character Structure

amazon reviews:
1)In this book you can read about revolutionary attempts to build camps for "deliquent" children in the early pre-Stalinization Soviet Union. In this book, you can learn the importance of the fight of young people for healthy sexual activity, and the negative neurotic damage done by this society's anti-sexual repression. You can read this in relatively short articles Reich wrote on a variety of topics collected here under this name.

This book is the most approachable introduction to Reich's positive contributions on the role of sexuality in capitalist society, on destruction of compulsory sex morality, and about what a new freer less pathological world would be like. Most of his other books were reedited in the 1940s and 1950s and smothered with the mumbo jumbo of his "orgone biopathy" theories. These theories were more of an expression of Reich's mental breakdown under the hammer blows of Stalinism, Fascism, and Americanism, than anything resembling science.

Perhaps this book has less of that because almost all of Reich's works were banned by the US government during the 1950s through the late 1960s. This was the first one of his books legally published (I remember reading bootleg editions of his work before then) after that ban and might have less of that stuff for that reason. Whatever people misremember about the 1960s, it was quite revolutionary to see this book with this author and this title in bookstores in 1968!

If you have never read Reich, or if you have been turned off by the insanity of orgone theory, this will be a pleasant surprise.

2)Ignore the dismissive comments of Tony Thomas regarding orgonomy. He says that it doesn't resemble science, but not all sciences have been discovered yet. Reich attempted to study a phenomena which had no established means of observation, and when he couldn't cure cancer quickly enough, was treated worse than any scientist since the Renaissance, perhaps. Because of this, you'll hear a lot of people with views based on the propaganda released when the government sought agreement from their supporters to deny Reich his rights. These layman will never claim to possess evidence that his work is mumbo jumbo, because saying that he was a crazy communist is much more effective propaganda.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Listen, Little Man!

amazon review:
Listen, Little Man! is a great physician's quiet talk to each one of us, the average human being, the Little Man. Written in 1946 in answer to the gossip and defamation that plagued his remarkable career, it tells how Reich watched, at first naively, then with amazement, and finally with horror, at what the Little Man does to himself; how he suffers and rebels; how he esteems his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he gains power as a "representative of the people," he misuses this power and makes it crueler than the power it has supplanted.

Reich has us to look honestly at ourselves and to assume responsibility for our lives and for the great untapped potential that lies in the depth of human nature.

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation)

I have read the first as a teenager, and it was brought up by a professor again in university in a quote on a textbook about prejudices. The next two I have never read but would love to. Interestingly, "Listen, little man" I discovered on the shelf in a very old house in Kappadokya, it belonged to a Turkish friend who had just finished his service at the Turkish military. Imagine the sarcasm and cynism he must have felt at watching Turkish soldiers being trained and training others. Seeing that book there up on his shelf told me more about his character than anything he said that evening.

posted in I just finished reading... - 23 replies

What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character

2009-06-25T01:41:25Z

What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character
by Richard P. Feynman is the sequel to "Surely you are joking, Mr. Feyman!" and describes the scientist Feynman's dealings with the NASA, the life of a rocket scientist with it's ups and downs, the total irreverence of the highly intelligent for other people's holy cows, and the behind the scenes absurdities of policy colliding in the presidential commission (his description of what orders he gets from the White House about how to go through hundreds of papers filed away at the research institute and what to look for in there is hilarious enough to make this book worth reading if you are interested to know about unusual ideas how to waste plenty of time)of the Challenger space shuttle disaster.
I love Feyman.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Re-reading

2009-06-23T16:54:36Z

"Please Write for Details". "The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything". By John D. MacDonald. Seriously Funny.
I think my saintly old grey haired mother has every book and short story written by him.
Ok, I'm a plebian but I like what I like. So there, pipe that in your put and get down off your throne.
Mein Kampf bored me and this is from the kid that read the entire Encyclopidea Britannica and Webster Collegiate Dictionary just so I knew something about stuff I wanted to talk about.

posted in I just finished reading... - 3 replies

Strange & left field books

2009-06-23T13:39:32Z

I think someone just mentioned Mein Kampf in a thread..I have never read it and might, just to see what was written and know more of the text which infuenced a generation+ of Germans.. Anyone here read it ? (and if you are thinking that is an inviation for a pro-Neo-Nazi rant.. I will probably just skip your post :)

However I have read (and own a copy) of Mao's Little Red Book.. Some good quotes in there.. but gosh.. hard going..

What left of field books have you read ?

What did you think of them ?

How about "banned books", read any ? What do you think about the fact someone somewhere banned them ?

posted in I just finished reading... - 53 replies

Wraethu

2009-06-23T12:24:35Z

by Storm Constantine.
Has anyone else read this book?

posted in I just finished reading... - 12 replies

The Fifth Sacred Thing - Starhawk

2009-06-23T05:46:42Z

Thinking of alternate realities caused me to recall this favorite. I didn't expect to like it, as I have found some of Starhawk's other writings a bit strident for me - and this one is pretty heavy on the environmental preaching BUT I loved the characters so much that I forgave her the soapboxing.....

here's an expanded synopsis for anyone interested.....

http://www.starhawk.org/writings/fifth_sacred_SFvision.html

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

The Banality of Evil

2009-06-19T04:51:34Z

The Banality of Evil

From the book Triumph of the Market

by Edward S. Herman

The concept of the banality of evil came into prominence following the publication of Hannah Arendt's 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which was based on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt's thesis was that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like Eichmann, a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats.

Normalizing the Unthinkable

Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on "normalization." This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as "the way things are done." There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals; others keeping the machinery of death (sanitation, food supply) in order; still others producing the implements of killing, or working on improving technology (a better crematory gas, a longer burning and more adhesive napalm, bomb fragments that penetrate flesh in hard-to-trace patterns). It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public. The late Herman Kahn spent a lifetime making nuclear war palatable (On Thermonuclear War, Thinking About the Unthinkable), and this strangelovian phoney got very good press. ~

In an excellent article entitled "Normalizing the unthinkable," in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists of March 1984, Lisa Peattie described how in the Nazi death camps work was "normalized" for the long-term prisoners as well as regular personnel: "[P]rison plumbers laid the water pipe in the crematorium and prison electricians wired the fences. The camp managers maintained standards and orderly process. The cobblestones which paved the crematorium yard at Auschwitz had to be perfectly scrubbed." Peattie focused on the parallel between routinization in the death camps and the preparations for nuclear war, where the "unthinkable" is organized and prepared for in a division of labor participated in by people at many levels. Distance from execution helps render responsibility hazy. "Adolph Eichmann was a thoroughly responsible person, according to his understanding of responsibility. For him, it was clear that the heads of state set policy. His role was to implement, and fortunately, he felt, it was never part of his job actually to have to kill anyone."

Peattie noted that the head of MlT's main military research lab in the 1960s argued that "their concern was development, not use, of technology." Just as in the death camps, in weapons labs and production facilities, resources are allocated on the basis of effective participation in the larger system, workers derive support from interactions with others in the mutual effort, and complicity is obscured by the routineness of the work, interdependence, and distance from the results.
Peattie also pointed out how, given the unparalleled disaster that would follow nuclear war, "resort is made to rendering the system playfully, via models and games." There is also a vocabulary developed to help render the unthinkable palatable: "incidents," "vulnerability indexes," "weapons impacts," and "resource availability." She doesn't mention it, but our old friend "collateral damage," used in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, came out of the nukespeak tradition.

Slavery and Racism as Routine

When I was a boy, and an ardent baseball fan, I never questioned, or even noticed, that there were no Black baseball players in the big leagues. That was the way it was; racism was so routine that it took years of incidents, movement actions, reading, and real-world traumas to overturn my own deeply imbedded bias. Historically, this was a country in which human slavery was firmly institutionalized and routinized, with abolitionists in the pre-civil war years looked upon as violent extremists by the dominant elites and masses alike in the North.

The rationalizations for slavery were remarkable. A set of intellectuals arose in the South before 1860 that not only defended slavery, but argued its moral superiority on the grounds of its service to the slaves, to the disadvantage of the enslaving Whites! Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, ... is a superb account of how U.S. science at the highest levels constructed and maintained a "scientific" case for racism over many decades by mainly innocent and not consciously contrived scientific charlataury. The ability to put aside cultural blinders is rare. And it appears that what money and power demand, science and technology will provide, however outrageous the end.

Mainstream history has also successfully put Black slavery and oppression in a tolerable light. A powerful article by the late Nathan I. Huggins, "The Deforming Mirror of Truth: Slavery and the Master Narrative of American History, " in the Winter 1991 issue of the Radical History Review, shows well how the "master narrative" in historiography has normalized Black slavery and post-1865 racism. Slavery was a "tragic error" (like the Vietnam War), rather than a rational and institutional choice; it has been marginalized as an aside or tangent, rather than recognized as a central and integral feature of U.S. history; and it has been portrayed as an error in process of rectification in a progressive evolution, rather than a terrible permanent scar that helps explain the Southern Strategy, the current attack on affirmative action, and the enlarging Black ghetto disaster of today.

Profits end Jobs in Death

Normalization of the unthinkable comes easily when money, status, power, and jobs are at stake. Companies and workers can always be found to manufacture poison gases, napalm, or instruments of torture, and intellectuals will be dredged up to justify their production and use. The rationalizations are hoary with age: government knows best, ours is a strictly defensive effort, or, if it wasn't me somebody else would do it. There is also the retreat to ignorance, real, cultivated, or feigned. Consumer ignorance of process is important. Dr. Samuel Johnson avowed that we would kill a cow rather than forego eating meat, but visits to slaughterhouses have made quite a few people into vegetarians. A cover story of Newsweek some years ago, illustrating U.S. consumption of meat by showing livestock walking into a human mouth, elicited many protests-people don't like to be reminded that steaks are obtained from slaughtered animals; they like to imagine that they are manufactured in factories, possibly out of biomass.

The bureaucratization of the use of animals for human ends is a large and controversial subject, but the potential for abuse is continuously realized as stock raisers, slaughterhouses, trappers, the Pentagon, the Animal Damage Control Agency, chemical, medical and cosmetic researchers, and academic entrepreneurs search for ways to improve the bottom line or fill in niches of "knowledge" that somebody will pay for. At the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago there was a Head Injury Lab, funded by the government, in which baboons were subjected to head injuries in the alleged interest of helping us (i.e., creatures with souls, the culmination of the evolutionary process, and the realization of the purpose of the cosmos). The lab was invaded by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who among other things took away some records and films. The documentary which PETA made out of these materials, which showed these intelligent creatures having their heads smashed and rendered into zombies, also gave clear evidence that official rules of treatment of lab animals were violated, and, most important, that the participants' attitudes toward the animals were insensitive and ugly. It was not hard to think of death camps watching the documentary of this lab in action. Yet the scientific community at Penn not only defends the use of animals against outside critics with passion and apparent unanimity, but has never to my knowledge admitted in public that the Head Injury Lab got out of hand.

In building weapons, contractors and the Pentagon have become quite sophisticated in spreading business over many states, to reach a critical mass of jobs, profits and legislators/media by congressional district to maximize the lobbying base for funding. Jobs are jobs, whether building schools or Peacekeeper Missiles or cutting down thousand-year-old redwood trees. I was slightly nauseated during the Vietnam War era by Boeing ads soliciting workers for its helicopter plant, touting itself as an "equal opportunity employer (EOE)." Maybe the Dachau camp management was also an EOE, for jobs that needed to be done and for which there was an effective demand.

Normalizing Shooting Human Fish in the Persian Gulf Barrel

In the Persian Gulf War of 1991 Uncle Sam was an EOE, and our boys and girls over there were doing their assigned jobs, repelling naked aggression in another Operation Just Cause. The war was forced upon us by Saddam Hussein's rejection of the UN's and "allies" insistence that he disgorge Kuwait, much as Bush "plainly" did not want war (Anthony Lewis).

Having made it Operation Just Cause No. 17, and a game with winners and losers, we could reasonably root for us-the moral force-to win. We were also defending Kuwait, and if once again the party being "saved" was "destroyed," well, this was not our fault. Besides, there is the "principle," of non-aggression, to which we are utterly devoted.

The media could thus focus on our brave boys, girls, generals, and officials to tell us all about their plans, moves, reactions, and miscellaneous thoughts. We could watch them in action as they took off, landed, ate, joked, and expressed their feelings on the enemy, weather, and folks back home in the Big PX. They were part of an extended family, doing a dirty job, but with clean bombs and with the moral certainty of a just cause.

The point was not often made that the enemy was relatively defenseless, and in somewhat the same position as the "natives" colonized, exterminated, and enslaved by the West in past centuries by virtue of muskets and machine guns ... Our technical superiority reflected our moral superiority. If it all seemed like shooting human fish in a barrel, one must keep in mind that we were dealing with lesser creatures (grasshoppers, two-legged animals, cockroaches), people who don't value life as much as we do, who allowed "another Hitler" to rule over them, and who stood in our way.

One of the effects of high-tech warfare, as well as the exclusive focus on "our" casualties, plus censorship (official and self), is that the public is spared the sight of burning flesh. That enemy casualties were given great prominence during the Vietnam War is one of the great, and now institutionalized, myths of that era. Morley Safer's showing a GI applying a cigarette lighter to a Vietnamese thatched hut is used and referred to repeatedly as illustrating media boldness at that time because other cases would be hard to find. It caused CBS and Safer a lot of trouble (and he has been trying to make up for this sin ever since). Enormous government pressure and flak from other sources caused the media to provide grisly photos of enemy victims only with the greatest caution, and very infrequently, especially in light of the grisly reality. Capital intensive warfare in itself makes for distancing the public from the slaughter of mere gooks and Arabs. This is helpful in normalizing the unspeakable and unthinkable.

On February 5, 1991, the Philadelphia Inquirer carried an Associated Press dispatch by Alexander Higgins, "Marriage finds new expression in gulf: Honey, pass the bombs." It is a little romance of a newly married couple, located at an air base in Saudi Arabia-and therefore regrettably obliged to sleep in separate tents-whose function is to load bombs on A-10 attack jets. It is a personal interest story, of two people and their relationship, with a job to do, in an unromantic setting. A fine study in the routinization of violence, of the banality of evil and the ways it is impressed on the public.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

In Defense of Our America

2009-06-18T22:12:37Z

In Defense of Our America: The Fight For Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror, by Anthony D. Romero and Dina Temple-Raston.

This book is about what the ACLU has been doing since 911 to defend civil liberties that have been eroded by the war on terror.

What impresses me is just how hard the ACLU fights. As you can see from the cases discussed in the book, they don't take the easy cases, and they don't give up. The book gave me a new found admiration for the ACLU and shows they are still very relevant and necessary.

On the negative side, the book is a bit self serving. I get the sense the book was commissioned by the ACLU to promote the organization. That is fine, I support that, but it detracts from the quality of the book. The author is the head of the ACLU, so obviously this book is not an objective account of the ACLU's recent mission.

posted in I just finished reading... - 5 replies

A prayer for Owen Meany

2009-06-17T17:07:48Z

If you have read as much of John Irving as I have, you will probably know too, that Irving is always haunted by his ghosts. The recurring themes in all his novels- the mother who was loved dearly and died early, or went away address unknown, the closet gay, even the bizarre transgendered character appearing here and there. the self-flagellation of the catholic masochist is ridiculed occasionally but described in detail, another element is having moved to Canada for a reason, either to find the lost mother/being the lost mother or to get away from the military...

Owen Meany in the end turns out to be an anti-war treatise, a pacifist's novel. About somebody who would rather cut of a part of his finger with a stone saw than to be enlisted as a recruit for the army.
I enjoyed it vastly, the touching love of detail with which he described the childhood of the two main characters, seen from the inside of the childish mind, incl. the magic thinking. The speaking stuffed armadillo who replaces the absentee father and who can also do fortune telling and is kind of spooky somehow...the desperate attempts to win at cricket (or baseball?), the embarrassing roles one is given at school dramas...
The only draw back is that in the end the construction/constructedness of the novel becomes obvious. "One realises the intention and resents it" as we say in Germany. Finally it started to remind me of an interview with Johannes Mario Simmel, the bestselling German author, that I once read. "How do you write your novels, Mr. Simmel?" "Oh, first I take a large sheet of brown paper, spread it on the table, pencil in all the characters who are going to appear, and then I draw lines between them, to show the connections..."

The construction layout in Owen Meany's case seemed a little too forced to remain subtle enough to go unnoticed , in the end.
Having said that, I still recommend the book as a high enjoyable, compelling read.
Along with all his other books, though I would skip the "Hotel New Hampshire", it is a little too odd for my taste. Also "Garp" I did not particularly enjoy, and sometimes Irving gets a little too depressing, teary and emotional, but mainly, these novels are a wealth of wisdom, life experience and sensitivity for people's characters. Moreover they are well researched, usually.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

2009-06-17T16:03:40Z

The first book in the "First Law" trilogy. Also the author's first novel. It is a fantasy novel and follows a good deal of the usual tropes and stereotypes. It is not horribly over the top, high fantasy. There are no dragons or elves or any of that. There is magic though and the main characters are all special in some way like they came out of a 14 year old's D&D game, so I wouldn't call it low fantasy either.

It took me a while to get into it and the writing started off kind of weak, but it got better as the book went on so I'm going to pick up the other two and check them out.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

My Struggle

2009-06-17T03:39:19Z

It was decided that I should go to high school.

From my whole nature, and to an even greater degree from my temperament, my father believed he could draw the inference that the humanistic Gymnasium would represent a conflict with my talents. A Realschol seemed to him more suitable. In this opinion he was especially strengthened by my obvious aptitude for drawing; a subject which in his opinion was neglected in the Austrian Gymnasiums. Another factor may have been his own laborious career which made humanistic study seem impractical in his eyes, and therefore less desirable. It was his basic opinion and intention that, like himself, his son would and must become a civil servant. It was only natural that the hardships of his youth should enhance his subsequent achievement in his eyes, particularly since it resulted exclusively from his own energy and iron diligence. It was the pride of the self-made man which made him want his son to rise to the same position in life, or of course, even higher if possible, especially since, by his own industrious life, he thought he would be able to facilitate his child's development so greatly.

posted in I just finished reading... - 5 replies

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

2009-06-16T14:03:20Z

By Richard P. Feynman. Rocket science made fun. The amusing, spirited, free life of a scientist in the form of an autobiography written in anecdotes. Truly anarchic and irreverent as only the mind of the highly intelligent can be, Richard Feynman is telling stories from his days in Cambridge, at his lab, in his class room, his travels,about interesting people he met etc. The title comes from the famous anecdote about the day he had to attend one of the innumerable tea and cucumber sandwich parties at the house of a research colleague in the small, quiet town of Cambridge, UK. When the very distinguished and extremely well mannered lady of the house, the professor's wife, was serving the Darjeeling, he answered her question:"Would you prefer lemon or cream, Mr. Feynman?" with "Both, please." and she politely inquired:"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman?"

one review that sums it up better than I ever could:

A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith, on amazon.com

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

"By bicycle through Kurdistan" and other travel books

2009-06-16T11:58:55Z

"Ararat! By bicycle through Kurdistan" is the German title of "Beyond Ararat: A journey through Eastern Turkey" by Bettina Selby.
Not everyone may feel the compelling urge to explore the outskirts of South Eastern Anatolia on a mountain bike, and right after the Kurdish uprising at that. Especially if you are a lone woman. But if traveling adventurously and cheaply off the beaten track is how you get your kicks, or love even just dreaming about it while remaining safely on your couch, this book is for you. Selby describes her journey from Istanbul, along the black sea, via Trabzon, through Kars (which sounds like the pits) through the green valley of Siirt, Diyarbakir, Harrang, Antakya etc., and tells you what to bring along on your trip: a dog stunner comes in handy, and so do diarrhea pills, antibiotica, typhoid shots, sun screen, bottled water etc.etc.
There are not many guide books for exploring Kurdistan for fun (which is listed as one of the most dangerous places on earth in an American travel guide for journalists and other professionals) . Lonely Planet Turkey gives you a reasonable amount of information about it, such as:
"Dogubeyazit- places to see: the local hamam. the one for men is one side of town, the one for women on the other." Oh, well. How much more interesting is Selby's account of discussing the political situation with the talkative and open-minded Kurds in the local tea shops and her tale of how to buy booze in the only shop of Dogubeyazit which sells whisky bottles wrapped in brown paper on the sly to Iranians crossing the border solely with this purpose in mind.
On the other hand, Selby devotes a great deal of time to visiting biblical places and describing ancient Christian monuments while I would have liked to know myuch more about Kurdish culture and the mentality of the people living in the area.
Anyway, I used a yellow marker to mark all the places to visit or not to visit which is a good deal of information on that very un-touristy area of Turkey.

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

"The Terror Dream"

2009-06-16T05:41:23Z

"The Terror Dream" by Susan Faludi.

Explains how 911 and fear of terrorism were exploited by the reactionaries to help further destroy feminism and women's rights.

posted in I just finished reading... - 23 replies

Who loves Moomin books?

2009-06-15T23:21:12Z

Do you remember reading Moomin when you were little? Moomin papa, moomin mama and the moomin kids? and then there was this little brat with the pony tail who was always in a bad mood and bullying everybody and starting fights? And that field of strange swaying worms that followed you in the dark or something?
I just saw one part of the series advertised that looks interesting:

"Moominsummer Madness
A huge wave has crashed through the valley, flooding the Moomins out of their home! With their usual resilience, the Moomins and their friends move into the first house that comes bobbing along. It's strange-looking, like a big cave with curtains hanging on either side. And when the house bumps into dry land and Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden decide to spend the night on shore--then the adventure really begins. Moomintroll and the Snork Maiden get lost, and Moominpappa decides to write a play which they will perform in the house, in the hope that Moomintroll will hear about it and find his way home.
"Moominsummer Madness," the fourth in Tove Jansson's classic series of books about Moominvalley, is enchanting and full of exciting adventures and surprises, some of them odd even by Moomin standards!"

http://us.macmillan.com/moominsummermadness

posted in I just finished reading... - 8 replies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-06-15T06:55:23Z

NO, I haven't read it yet, but I am very excited now that I have heard about it! But before I put my request in for a mother's day gift, has anyone here read it yet?

Justify my excitement?

posted in I just finished reading... - 12 replies

Daughter of Fortune; Isabel Allende

2009-06-14T07:18:24Z

Better than I thought it was going to be - I'd gotten the impression that it was going to be more of a Romance novel sort of thing. I only got started reading it because it was on the Book Exchange shelf at work. I'm not sure how accurate the history was, but if it was, it was beautifully interwoven with the story. Unfortunately, I've gotten gun-shy with "historical fiction", not having any idea which is "historical" and which is "fiction" anymore. And it wasn't an entirely sappy ending! What a lovely surprise!

posted in I just finished reading... - 6 replies

So Idle a Rogue

2009-06-13T14:06:05Z

"So Idle a Rogue
The life and death of Lord Rochester" by Jeremy Lamb

I finished this reading this book a couple of years ago, during my absinthe and crazy poetry phase, after seeing the movie with Johnny Depp. It was an amazing experience to read how modern in thought a 17th century poet could be. The irreverent John Wilmot, Lord Rochester (1647-1680) was born in the age of libertinism, a reaction to Calvinism/puritanism. Puritanism carried on in America (see Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The scarlet letter" as a description of that), it seems while England enjoyed an age of freedom, hedonism and decadence, at least for a little while. John Wilmot was, it seems, King Charles II's favourite critic. Sometimes he drove it too far and was banned from court or even thrown into prison (for insulting the king, as far as I remember), but King Charles II always forgave him and reinstalled him in court.
John Wilmot started out as a very sensitive, intelligent, idealistic youth, but lost his illusions when he was sent into battle, eventually, after experiencing the reckless hedonism and decadence at King Charls II's court, he turned into a cynic. Not that he did not join in the orgies, the sex, the drinking bacchanals and all that, but he also wrote poetry about it which shows his attitude.
The book describes his slow descent into alcoholism, decadence and disease. He finally died of syphilis and several other venereal diseases he had contracted from prostitutes, in combination with alcoholism, mainly an addiction to absinthe. The last month of his life he was constantly drunk for 30 days.
I finally had to stop reading the book because, as we all know, one starts to identify with the hero of a book after reading it intensely, after a while, and I could feel myself descending and spiraling into a dark murky and sinister abyss of decadance and depression, and started to wonder if a glass of wine or two a day would make me an alcoholic...; )
But I treasure many of the things he said, and here I will give you two parts of his poems:

Trust not the thing called woman: she is worse
Than all the ingredients crammed into a curse.
Were she but ugly, peevish, proud, a whore,
Poxed, painted, perjured, so she were no more,
I could forgive her, and connive at this,
Alleging still she but a woman is.
But she is worse: in time she will forestall
The devil, and be the damning of us all.
******************

But mark what creatures women are:
How infinitely vile, when fair!

posted in I just finished reading... - 8 replies

Les Fleurs du Mal

2009-06-13T12:44:18Z

Another book I am still in the process of reading.
Since I usually read 4-5 books simultaneously, progressing at varying speeds, I am still not finished with this one. Moreover, I find each poem so inspiring that the "afterglow" tends to last me for weeks.
Charles Baudelaire wrote one of the masterpieces of French literature, and his "Flowers of evil" are best understood and interpreted if you read them while high and tripping on absinthe. He wrote many of them while high on absinthe himself, so I discovered one day that this is the way how to decode the images he uses in them. A bottle of the mild but enchanting "Absente" (made in France) and a copy of "Les Fleurs du mal" are a perfect match. Be careful, as absinteh can be addictive and moreover give you a terrible hangover if you don't limit yourself to a couple of highly diluted drinks but absinthe is the drink of the poets of the Belle Epoque, and you might start writing some yourself, after while when you start getting inspired. Of course, in those days they did not have that regulation about the 10mg max. of thujone, so I am fairly sure their drink was a lot more powerful than what you can buy in the EU nowadays again. Absinthe did not get outlawed for nothing, though the wine growers may have a lot to do with that legislation, their lobby pressured the politicians who created this ban, which lasted about 80 years.

Anyway, to give you a sample of his poetry:

The Exotic Perfume

When, with both eyes shut, on a close autumn evening,
I breathe the perfume of your heated breast,
I see happy shores unfold themselves
Dazzling in the flames of a monotonous sun;

A lay island where Nature bestows
Peculiar trees and savory fruit;
Men with bodies slim and virile,
Women with eyes of astonishing candor.

Led by your odor to climates of charm,
I see a harbor full of sails and masts
Still tired by the waves of the sea,

Whilst the perfume of green tamarind-trees
Circles the air and fills my nostrils,
Meets in my soul with the song of the seamen.

—translation by Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

You can find the poems online and I think, Baudelaire might deserve a tribe of his own. That would be fun, exchanging these poems with each other. A little more decadent, but potentially more inspiring and fun than the Rumi tribe. Anyone up for it, what do you think?
There is no problem with the copyright either, the whole thing i online already, I assume.

posted in I just finished reading... - 21 replies

Mavis Gallant

2009-06-12T22:59:41Z

“Varieties of Exile” by Mavis Gallant
I just finished reading this book of short stories. I was so very impressed. Mesmerized even. The introduction is by Russell Banks, who is a favorite of mine. Gallant’s writing is absolutely beautiful. Each piece is a character studies, each story somewhat linked to the previous one.
...”Wonderfully wise and funny investigations into the difficulties of growing up and breaking free.” Most are set in Montreal moving in time from WWI to the present.

Is anyone else a fan of her writing?
I first heard one of her stories read on the New Yorker Fiction pod cast. They have writers who have been published in the New Yorker, select a favorite short story from the New Yorker arcives, read it then discuss it. It has been a great source for new Authors.
I picked up “Paris Stories”, another collection by Mavis Gallant. This one had the intro written by Michael Ondatje.

The more I read about her on line, the more intrigued I become.
http://www.mavisgallant.com/

posted in I just finished reading... - 5 replies

THUD!

2009-06-12T18:27:56Z

terry Pratchett's latest discworld. I think its my second favorite Discworld book ever.

posted in I just finished reading... - 14 replies

Cities of the Plain

2009-06-12T14:54:37Z

Cormac McCarthy is now best known to the reading public for "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road" mainly because the former was made into a movie and the later was, incredibly, on Opra's book selection.

But he was first known for a trilogy, "All the Pretty Horses," "The Crossing" and "Cities of the Plain."

"All the Pretty Horses" was made into an unwatchable movie and has a catchy title, but of these three, Cities of the Plain is my favorite yet is probably the most overlooked.

I hope it is never made into a movie.

A plot summary will not do it justice. A poor ranch hand in hard scrabble southern New Mexico hand falls in love with an-illstarred young Mexican prostitute in Juarez. Sounds like a cliched plot, no?

But that's just the plot. It is the literary quality of McCormac's writing that keeps me coming back, and this is one of his finest. But to tell you the truth, all three of these books blend together in my mind. I suppose that is why they're referred to as a trilogy.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Magazines!

2009-06-12T14:33:37Z

I used to get Nat. Geo (yawn I know) but it had good pics and was a decent, interesting source of news.

'Vice' magazine (which I used to read a few years back) was always like peeking at my dads porn stash,
I got some cheap thrill out of reading about weird porn shops in China and a pic-a-day of rotting meat etc but felt 'dirty' and 'gross' afterwards. Cheapened somehow.
Enjoy!
http://www.vbs.tv/

Now I'm looking forward to my new 'Seed' subscription...and 'American Scientist'.
http://seedmagazine.com/
http://www.americanscientist.org/

Anyone want to share your good magazine subs with the world?
(God knows printed media needs all the help it can get.)

posted in I just finished reading... - 12 replies

Guests of the Shiek

2009-06-12T04:06:08Z

http://www.shira.net/bookrvws/guests.htm

Simply one of the best books I have ever read about the experience of a westerner living among the Arabs.

The author went on to become a founder of the Middle Eastern Studies department at the University of Texas and a leader in womens' studies as it pertains to the Middle East, and wrote several more books, all of which I recommend.

She was one the greatest humans I have ever had the privilege to know, as a student. Always kind, caring, and funny, but no nonsense and a very serious scholar.

She passed away last year. She will be missed.

posted in I just finished reading... - 1 reply

Book 'influenced' dreams after marathon reading?

2009-06-12T03:01:12Z

I have sometimes even had dreams I *was* still reading the book...but usually they are a weird mixture...like my dream is being narrated to me or something in the same voice as (what I imagine) the tone of the books narrotor.

Other times it's just a dream that is *in the style of the book* which can be weird too.

I once had a horrible nightmare after 'marathon' reading a Kinky Friedman Mystery (um...*trashy* reading anyone?)
where I had that shlocky, cheesy (sorry Kinky!) voice of the narrator *in my head* ...like it *was me* during the dream and my existence was degraded and hokey....haha...or something..it was a long time ago.

Anyways, am I the only one?
I think it's an interesting thing the way reading a person's story can expand your own life experiences and how they 'get inside your head' as if you had those experiences. Maybe thats why some books work for me and some don't...because some fit the template of my world view / personality and some don't.

Anyways I'm rambling.

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

Come on...

2009-06-12T02:34:14Z

I have been sitting back and I have watched this ''joust'', ''new moderator'' debate unfold. And all I have to say is, this is not a hostile takeover, it is not a playground bully, come on people we are grown ups. Canela saw a need for a new moderator and she put it out there to see how other people felt, she is not even nominating herselve she is putting forward someone she believes can do the job. We have been given the opportunity to a ''nay'' or ''ya' vote.
There is nothing hostile about seeing a need and trying to fill it.
Please can we get on to books and grown-up stuff because you know what I have been to university and I don t want to go back to kindergarten.

posted in I just finished reading... - 37 replies

I, Lucifer, by Glen Duncan

2009-06-11T15:27:59Z

"I, Lucifer" by Glen Duncan, is one of the funniest and most clever books I've read in a long time. Read it a few years ago. I think I'll put it on my reread list.

It is about a British writer who attempts suicide, and a deal is struck where Satan gets to occuppy his body and live as a mortal human, on a trial basis. God gives Satan a second chance, to see if he can behave himself while occupying a human body.

It either is now a movie or is about to be released. The movie will probably suck, as do most film adaptations of any book that had literary qualities.

posted in I just finished reading... - 9 replies

Odd Hours

2009-06-11T05:28:19Z

Light, fluffy, well-written.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Let's find a new moderator!

2009-06-10T21:27:38Z

Who wants to volunteer for the job of moderator for this tribe? (time's up, we agreed on a two weeks' wait til June 2nd, and Io never showed up)
In my personal opinion, Bink would be a good person for the job. Bink, do you accept being nominated? And do we have any other candidates?
Let's wait til Tuesday morning to see how many people we can find for this job, agreed?

posted in I just finished reading... - 61 replies

Tiger Force

2009-06-10T13:09:12Z

"Tiger Force" is a masterwork of investigative reporting, written by two Pulitzer prize winning newspaper journalists.: Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss.

It is about a group of elite U.S. Army soldiers in the Vietnam War who became a rogue unit responsible for a very large number of cold blooded murders and war crimes. They were enlisted men who operated in the field without any supervision from officers, but the officers knew.

The higher ups knew and condoned it because they wanted to fight fire with fire. They operated in a hot zone, under desperate circumstances, so the officers let these men go bizerk and slaughter innocent civilians.

The book stems from an investigation of these war crimes. I won't say more so as to not be a spoiler.

The book follows through to the present day, explains what happened to these men after they returned from Vietnam, and also follows through on the lives of the survivors in Vietnam.

Incredible investigative work.

The book also reads quite well as a movie script. It has a movie-like flow to the narration. I was certain when I read it that it would be adapted to a movie, with its flashbacks and pacing, but I've heard nothing of any movie plans. The timing is probably off. After Apocalypse Now and Platoon, do movie audiences have the stomach for one more movie about the atrocities of the Vietnam War? Especially if it is a true story? The last Vietnam War movie in U.S. theatres was a comedy.

An excellent book about the Vietnam War, the U.S Army, military "justice," and what happens to men under the extreme pressure of combat.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

Does anyone ever read trashy books?

2009-06-10T12:43:53Z

or are you guys really only reading esoteric post grad fare?

posted in I just finished reading... - 22 replies

The World Without Us

2009-06-10T05:15:04Z

It's a great book!

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

House of Sand and Fog

2009-06-09T19:39:42Z

Better than the movie. The female lead should have been a different person, I could never imagine Jennifer Connelly, in any form, snorting coke. Although perhaps in Labryinth, David Bowie gave her a little toot.
The Persian words flung like wet droplets and I can imagine some literature teacher photocopying the PG-rated chapters and having her students highlighting the words they don't understand and looking them up on Google.
I wish the ending had been cut off about a chapter shy.

posted in I just finished reading... - 7 replies

Dishwasher

2009-06-09T17:23:39Z

Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States by Pete Jordan.

posted in I just finished reading... - 6 replies

Run by Ann Patchett

2009-06-09T14:40:36Z

I just finished "Run", by Ann Patchett.

I am afraid I was mildly disappointed. Maybe it is disappointment in comparison with her novel "Bel Canto", which I thought was brilliant. Maybe my expectations were set too high?
"Run" is a potentially interesting story, with some beautiful exploration into the meaning of what truly constitutes "family", but it seemed rushed and a spot forced to me. Issues of race are touched upon, but not to the emotional depth I feel they would have impacted the essence of the relationships of the characters in her story. I would have found it more palatable had she let it unfold with the same luxurious pace as "bel canto". Any thoughts?
Any other Tribe person read this? Or any of her other's? How are her other novels?

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

This is Your Brain on Music

2009-06-09T13:51:09Z

This is Your Brain on Music - The Science of a Human Obsession - by Daniel J Levitin

I am fascinated by the human response to art, both in the general sense, as well as the aspects that make it so subjective. This book did a good job of shedding light on what is known, circa 2006, about this topic in regards to music. For the musicians out there, you may want to skip the first few chapters, as they mostly talk about 'what music is', but it also can be a good refresher. The rest of the book digs deeper into how the brain processes audio information, and how that produces the emotional responses we experience. But, as with most books on these topics, there are no real 'answers', just 'observed phenomenon' and theories about what this means.. All in all it was a good read, and I recommend it.

-cpr

posted in I just finished reading... - 4 replies

Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil

2009-06-09T13:43:07Z

by Inga Muscio.

Ok Tribers, I'm not finished with this book in fact I just started it last night, I just cannot wait to tell you about it!!!!
I will however invoke some modicum of self control here and wait to share my reactions and thoughts until I am finished.

This book is a deeply raw, piercingly honest expose of racial supremracy indoctrination in America and the "White" world and how that effects the lives of everyone.

So until then, here's a chapter title teaser:

forward: Conceptions of a pale skinned savage
Intro
Columbus and the New World Order
God Told Me to Kill You
Five Hundred Years of Servitude
Manifest Destiny Variety Show
Postage Stamp Redemptions
Reckoning

Tiptoeing around Noah's Big Drunk Ass
Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Mo, Catch a Cracker by the Toe
Cards on the Table
Waving to Stevie
Full Spectrum Dominance
Opiate of the Asses
******************

Please Please read this book!
If you have already read it, I can't wait to talk to you so please don't be shy!

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies

reason Canela wants a new moderator - to shut you up.

2009-06-09T04:55:42Z

In her own words:

"The way to shut someone up in a tribe without a live moderator is to vote for a new moderator who will then go and get rid of him. This is what I have been told by tribe.help when I complained to them about being bullied by some new member on the "just finished reading" tribe."

posted in I just finished reading... - 10 replies

moderator election for this tribe

2009-06-08T23:01:08Z

We have permission from tribe.net to elect a new moderator for this tribe since the present moderator seems to be gone from tribe.net and is not doing anything about the recent copyright infringement case on this tribe.
Any volunteers who want to be the new moderator for us?

posted in I just finished reading... - 68 replies

Children's Books

2009-06-08T19:38:55Z

Anybody else like to randomly read some books aimed at children?

Some of the most enjoyable books I've read are kid's books. I love Harry Potter, Twilight, Sabriel and have recently gotten into the Wardstone Chronicles with the next book, The Spook's Sacrifice, out today.

Even though they'er aimed at children, sometimes you need a good brainless kid's book to keep you entertained!

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

Favorite Dr. Seuss Book

2009-06-08T13:26:02Z

I would say mine is "Yurttle the Turtle". specially because the way my girl friend pronounce it....

how about yours?

posted in I just finished reading... - 6 replies

A Fistful of Charms - Kim Harrison

2009-06-04T10:29:12Z

Wanting a bit of brain candy, I picked this one up at the library. The jacket promised a kick ass witchy private eye named Rachel Morgan who practically runs the supernatural side of Cincinnati with her band of merry elves, pixies and vampires. I had hopes of a Kelly Armstrong type heroine and a quick read but alas, I got a plot more convoluted than anything I've ever tried to read.

It took me a solid week to get thru it! Way too many characters to keep straight - charms being created as disquises, pain relief, inertia blockers (to cushion a car crash?) - pixies growing 6 feet tall - vampires that "live" as pretty normal folks that just are a bit strong and like to drink blood just for relationship building until they "die" and turn into the classic sun fearing movie villians we all know and love......not to mention the fairies, elves and werewolves - oh my......

The whole thing went on about 200 pages too long - I labored thru just wanting it to end (I have a thing about making myself finish books I start). I didn't even care if they ever rescued the poor human that turned out to be a lying thief AND the ex boyfriend of Rachel AND a corruptor of juvenile pixies.....really glad I didn't pay for this one!

posted in I just finished reading... - 3 replies

Anyone read Kenzaburo Oe?

2009-06-02T22:25:50Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenzaburo_Oe

I read "A Personal Matter" and found it to be a pretty good book. I like Japanese authors.
Haven't read too much of them though. Yukio Mishima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima

I read a bit of his stories some good time ago. The flavor of the writing is sometimes hard to get into.

posted in I just finished reading... - 7 replies

Ender's Game By Orson Scott Card

2009-06-01T15:38:59Z

Hi all! I just a few hours ago finished this book, right before dinner (yummy steak!). I liked the ending, its solemn voice/feeling. Anyone else read this? I'm going to look into the next books - both on the earth side and on Ender's side - anybody read them also? I think Speaker to the Dead and Ender's shadow.
This book had a plot/premise that is similar to an idea I had when I was little, and have been trying to outline it into a book/novel. Still a bit foggy on all the details and characters, but this book gave me an example of the story I want to tell. :)

Happy Mothers Day to those mothers out there!
Jennifer.

posted in I just finished reading... - 5 replies

Best Book Vote

2009-05-31T17:29:59Z

I am looking for some fiction reading for the summer. I usually read classic's but I would like to branch out. What have you read lately in the past year or at least the last most memorable piece?

I am looking to read something intellectually stimulating and fun? What have you read that was hard to put down?

posted in I just finished reading... - 11 replies

Welty's first two

2009-05-27T14:49:31Z

Eudora Welty's first two collections of short stories - A Curtain of Green and the The Wide Net were watercolor masterpieces, but they have to be read as they were printed in the first editions with the New Caledonia font which provides the correct visual rhythm for absorbing her language. It has to be savored slowly. The original printings scan almost like a childrens' book which is the most appropriate mood for her world.

posted in I just finished reading... - 0 replies

The Historian

2009-05-25T21:03:26Z

A friend of mine is pressuring me to read The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. Has anyone here read it? Is it any good?

posted in I just finished reading... - 2 replies