4215 replies to this topic

[Lippy]

Earlier in the month I read Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot. Utterly conventional.

What a disappointment that was.

[splinky]

Earlier in the month I read Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot. Utterly conventional.

What a disappointment that was.

i never got what all the fuss was over him

[Daniel]

Savages by Don Wilson.. I am half way through it and it is a fairly exciting book.. Drugs, sex, violence.. There is no short of any of these sure fire winners.. Based out in California, it is almost like a Bret Ellis book meets Man on Fire. I was in an airport bookstore when my guy recommended it to me.. I have a friend at the airport book store, Ben.. It's going to be a movie soon directed by Oliver Stone, Uma Thurman and John Travolta are going to be in it, as is Blake Lively.. It will be interesting to see if Blake Lively can pull off the character the way it was written in the book.. She seems too conservative and proper like to be this young "free spirit".. Though, I actually have not seen here in anything..

It's a fun read. Plus, you get to walk out of the movie theater talking loudly so everyone can hear "The Book Was Wayyyy Better"

The author is actually Don Winslow, and as someone who has read every one of his books, I've got to tell you I think it's the weakest of the bunch. If you liked Savages, you'll probably like Dawn Patrol and The Gentleman's Hour, but my 2 Winslow favorites are The Power of the Dog, which deals with the Mexican drug trade and California Fire and Life.

oh wow.. great, i will add those to the list. I have just discovered this author through, this book. It's seems that I rarely read books that take place in current time or even in America. I am enjoying the currentness of it.

[Nancy S.]

Earlier in the month I read Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot. Utterly conventional.

What a disappointment that was.

i never got what all the fuss was over him

I thought Middlesex was compelling. The Marriage Plot, however, is not only derivative but dull.

[Sneakeater]

Yeah, Middlesex was pretty great.

I guess now he'll have to form that rock group I'd always had planned for him in my head, Jeff Eugenides & the Eumenides.

[StephanieL]

Jane and Michael Stern's new book The Lexicon of Real American Food. It seems to be a distillation of what they've found over the years through Roadfood.com, and they have entries on not only the usual suspects but also some fascinating, hyperregional foods and customs (e.g., something only found in Michigan's UP or one city in Connecticut). My only quibble with it is that for the more broad topics, like Pop-Tarts, the text is pretty much recycled wholesale from their earlier book The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture.

[splinky]

Yeah, Middlesex was pretty great.

I guess now he'll have to form that rock group I'd always had planned for him in my head, Jeff Eugenides & the Eumenides.

i find the story of how eugenides researched and wrote the book more interesting than the story he wrote. also later, when "the oprah" commanded that we should love the book, that made me like it less.

[Peter Creasey]

Unbroken A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit.

[StephanieL]

My father's younger brother, who died young, was an ardent bibliophile and had amassed a huge hardcover and paperback collection before his death. Among his collection was a book from 1883 that was part of the "Bermingham Medical Library", collected lectures from what was then the Medical Department of the University of New York. The title on the spine is merely Excessive Venery, but the full, glorious title is Excessive Venery, Masturbation and Continence: The Etiology, Pathology and Treatment of the Diseases Resulting from Venereal Excess, Masturbation and Continence. You always read about this hysterical aspect of medical history, but it's quite something to be able to hold an actual medical book from that time that really holds these views.

[Daniel]

Well, I made the probationary switch to an E-Reader.. I think I have the kindle, or whatever one Amazon is on. There are 100 free books to choose from so, I have started with Portrait of Dorian Grey. I was pretty interested to hear that you can get Ebooks through the library. So, that will be a large savings.

[balex]

Ice by Anna Kavan

Very strange book -- gripping but disorienting.

[Stone]

Well, I made the probationary switch to an E-Reader.. I think I have the kindle, or whatever one Amazon is on. There are 100 free books to choose from so, I have started with Portrait of Dorian Grey. I was pretty interested to hear that you can get Ebooks through the library. So, that will be a large savings.

If you're into classics, the free e-books can keep you busy for years to come.

I'm reading Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. The premise is that our ancestors' shift towards eating cooked food was the significant factor in evolution from the Australopithicenes to the Homo Habilis and beyond. The basic premise is that all animals are able to obtain a significant caloric benefit from eating cooked food (or just "processed" in the sense of being ground). Although the author acknowledges that there aren't many studies of raw diets, the few that there are (many are anecdotal, not studies) show that even if a person eats a full caloric compliment of raw food, the person will lose weight and become malnutritioned. Many men will lose their sex drive and many women will stop menstruating. He notes that in animal studies, all types of animals -- primates, reptiles, birds -- are able to absorb more calories from cooked food than from raw. The human gut, which is adapted to digest cooked food, is therefore significantly smaller than the gut of other primates. It can extract the necessary energy from cooked food, using less energy in the digestion process. Therefore, that energy is available to power the larger brain.

Interesting stuff.

(The book doesn't really take on the "raw food" fad, although it discusses where some of the myths -- such as that eating raw eggs are beneficial -- came from. The author pretty much says that whether raw or cooked, the proteins/enzymes from food will be denatured by the acid in our stomachs and then broken down to amino acids to be rebuilt as human proteins. Raw food just makes this process harder, thus leading to weight loss.)

[Lippy]

I received a Kindle for my birthday and promptly loaded the complete Jane Austen, the complete Charles Dickens, the complete Mark Twain, the complete George Eliot and the complete Anthony Trollope. Thackeray is downloading right now. Each of these, in the Delphi Classics editions, cost $2.99 - $4.99. I've already read the most well-known and popular books by these authors (and all of Jane Austen but now I'll be able to fill in and re-read.

[g.johnson]

I received a Kindle for my birthday and promptly loaded the complete Jane Austen, the complete Charles Dickens, the complete Mark Twain, the complete George Eliot and the complete Anthony Trollope. Thackeray is downloading right now. Each of these, in the Delphi Classics editions, cost $2.99 - $4.99. I've already read the most well-known and popular books by these authors (and all of Jane Austen but now I'll be able to fill in and re-read.

Assuming the Kindle is the same as the Kindle app on the ipad, you don't have to store all the books on the device. Once you've bought them you can download as many times as you wish (assuming Amazon doesn't go bust in the meantime).

[Behemoth]

Got a Kindle for Christmas as well. Particularly nice as before, I either had to rely on the local English bookstores, which didn't have much I was interested in, or order through Amazon UK which took ages. Downside is I am buying way too many books. Currently reading Hitchens on Orwell, and Alex Ross's Listen to This. Will get to the classics once my attention span is a little closer to pre-baby levels. (Essays don't require remembering characters...)

eta: Oh yeah, I'm also reading Dürrenmatt's Die Physiker in paper form (not available on Kindle) but that's just a short play.