4215 replies to this topic

[yvonne johnson]

I was reading about Ruhlman's 20 on Amazon, and there I see a very negative review by Janet Zimmerman (JAZ). It's worth reading for its vehemence, especially her subsequent comment.
Review (scroll to top)

Interestingly, its her only review on Amazon.

[SLBunge]

Started reading The Nature Principle by Richard Louv. Louv got some buzz with his book Last Child in the Woods a few years back and this is a follow up to sort of say "same stuff applies to adults". With me, he's sort of preaching to the choir in talking about the importance of connecting to a sort of wilderness or nature. I think he's honest about the fact that there isn't a lot of hard science here and researchers even struggle to come up with working definitions for terms like "nature" and "wild". But I think he's organized and clear and acknowledges the benefits of technology. There's nothing shrill in the delivery. I like it more than I thought I would.

[splinky]

I was reading about Ruhlman's 20 on Amazon, and there I see a very negative review by Janet Zimmerman (JAZ). It's worth reading for its vehemence, especially her subsequent comment.
Review (scroll to top)

Interestingly, its her only review on Amazon.

she scares me. she's gone after him on eG as well. did he kill her puppy or sex her up and never call her back? [i can hear it now: "that's not how you kill a puppy, mister. you can't be so sloppy about it and that's not a big enough knife" "that's not my g spot mister. you can't be so sloppy about it and that's not a big enough cock"]

[yvonne johnson]

I was reading about Ruhlman's 20 on Amazon, and there I see a very negative review by Janet Zimmerman (JAZ). It's worth reading for its vehemence, especially her subsequent comment.
Review (scroll to top)

Interestingly, its her only review on Amazon.

she scares me. she's gone after him on eG as well. did he kill her puppy or sex her up and never call her back? [i can hear it now: "that's not how you kill a puppy, mister. you can't be so sloppy about it and that's not a big enough knife" "that's not my g spot mister. you can't be so sloppy about it and that's not a big enough cock"]

I'm sorely tempted to place a Comment:
"It should be fully disclosed that JAZ is an admin on eG and this is the way admins treat their "participating members".

ETA: By "participating members" I mean "the ones they run off the site".

[yvonne johnson]

Finished Coetzee's Diary of a bad year, after a very long time of picking it up and reading a little bit. It kind of lends itself to that, as you get three perspectives (pieces of writing by the main character; his diary; and his secretary's/transcriptionist's monologue) on the same page. I found it very moving in the end. Without giving too much away, a warm (and I don't associate warmth with C) bond ensues b/w the main characters.

Now onto his Slowman. I see from the jacket and comments on this thread that another of his characters (Elizabeth Costello) will make an appearance in it shortly. I don't know how I'll feel about that.

One of my favorite writers, without a doubt.

[Daniel]

Yes, the book was much better than the movie, which is saying a quite a bit.

I'm finishing up "Every Man Dies Alone." It is very good. A fairly simple yet powerful read. The story of the intimidation and oppression by the Nazis on the German people is, to my uneducated knowledge, fairly untold, at least in America. We like to believe, I think, that all Germans of the time were evil. I recall a discussion with a friend on the shift cultural shift from having countries and "people" as enemies (i.e., the Germans and Japanese were bad in WWII) to having governments as enemies (i.e., we're not enemies with the Iranians, but with the government of Iran). He noted that it was wrong not to acknowledge that the German people were not in a position to challenge the Nazis once they had gained power given the all-encompassing penetration of the Nazi machine into the lives of the people. (Indeed, when I described the book to some Jewish people of my parents' generation, they seemed somewhat irked at the suggestion that it could be intended to exculpate the German people of their crimes.)

It's also interesting that intimidation, spying, etc., portrayed seems that it could easily have been written exactly the same about East German communists or the Soviet Union. Well, not too interesting, as that observation I think has been made often.

Also, Mao in the 60's and 70's.. I was having a conversation with this political Chinese Guy.. He was really laying into the government and telling me about how it was for his father when Mao was alive.. Police would come and take you away.. That was it.. People would spy on neighbors, kids would turn in their parents, you said the wrong thing or upset the wrong guy, you just disappeared.. No questions asked. I described to him this book as I was reading it, he said, that sounds about right.. I think they have Mao down for 60 or 70 million people.

China today is a lot more relaxed compare to those days but, you still see traces.. A friend of mine was "asked" to move her home. She accepted and they gave her instead of her old house, a shitty little apartment that she now rents out.. I said, what if you refused, she said, some neighbors decided to stay.. However, the police hired men to come in and break their windows and beat them up.. They decided to move..

[Daniel]

I read Catcher in the Rye for the first time, on a recent trip.. I had heard so much about it and there must have been so much built up expectations however, i really did not care for the book all that much.. Perhaps it's a time period piece or something but, i felt it to just be ok.. I would not place it in like the greatest book of all time genre.. I was happy to have met this guy this weekend who agreed.. Out of nowhere, or in my mind it was out of nowhere, he said, and I hated Catcher in the Rye.. I didn't go so far as to say hate but, i was disappointed..

[Lippy]

Just finished An Atheist's Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg. Sensational title aside, the book purports to explain how the brain works according to established principles of physics on the most minute levels. Along the way, you learn that emotions and narrative are illusions. It's enough to shake your worldview, even if you are already a committed atheist. Maybe G.Johnson can confirm that the physics is correct? The author is a professor at Duke, so, presumably, not a flake.

[Wilfrid]

Remarkable book for anyone who has heard of Colin Wilson - a novel called The Furnished Room by Laura Del Rivo. It's been on my "list" for many years, but I finally found a copy.

Published in 1961, it's purportedly a novel about the "lost youth" of the period. In fact, the main character is a transparent portrait of the young Colin Wilson during his late '50s "I am a genius" days, when he briefly took the London lit scene by storm. Del Rivo knew him then.

The main character gets lots of great lines attributed to Wilson in real life, and rampages around coffee bars, caffs and bedsitter parties, complaining about being surrounded by mediocrity and fantasizing about "acts of will". There's some great cod Sartre in it too.

Wilson must have felt a little uncomfortable when he read it.

[yvonne johnson]

Don't know his work, but is he prolific!

[g.johnson]

Philip Hensher's King of the Badgers. Sort of Richard Russo transplanted to Devon with a lot more fisting. Recommended.

[Stone]

I need to read more Russo. I enjoyed Straight Man, and my uncle, who's read them all, said that was the weakest.

I'm currently reading The Finkler Question. Apparently it won some big, muckety muck prize. I don't recall why I bought it -- I think it was an Amazon recommendation. "Finkler" means "Jewish". It's a long meditation on Jewish identity, perceptions of Jews (both Jewish and gentile), with smatterings of the holocaust, the occupied territories, circumcision, inter-faith relationships, etc., thrown in. None of it, yet, is terribly enlightening, although it is interesting to read. I'm not sure whether I'm offended.* And I wasn't aware that "Jewishness" was so relevant to anyone under the age of 60.

*Actually, the most offensive aspect, and it's not very offensive, is that the character through whom we get the gentile perspective is fairly "dense" compared to all the intelligent, witty, thoughtful and intellectual Jews surrounding him.

[Stone]

Just finished An Atheist's Guide to Reality, by Alex Rosenberg. Sensational title aside, the book purports to explain how the brain works according to established principles of physics on the most minute levels. Along the way, you learn that emotions and narrative are illusions. It's enough to shake your worldview, even if you are already a committed atheist. Maybe G.Johnson can confirm that the physics is correct? The author is a professor at Duke, so, presumably, not a flake.

Interesting. Can you expand?

[Wilfrid]

The physics might be correct but the interpretations based on the physics could still be very badly reasoned. See Dawkins and biology.

Proving that emotions and narratives are "illusions" is just the kind of "soft" conclusion which "hard science" (which reduces, essentially, to measuring things) is not designed to support. Sells books, though. See Dawkins and biology again.

[Wilfrid]

Robinson by Chris Petit (1993). I thought I'd read this before, but no. A slim novel, dark comedy I suppose (a bit like a nasty version of "Withnail and I"), set in the streets of Soho, and clearly written by someone who knows every inch of them.

Some might remember Petit as a film maker ("Radio On").