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Book Club - Not Tits, Books
Today I'm working with this, for starters.  âThe true University of these days is a Collection of Books.â â Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), The Hero as a Man of Letters Jun 10 09 08:45 am Link  While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial) account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that Christopher Moore presents a funny, lighthearted satire of the life of Christ--from his childhood days up to his crucifixion--in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.  Palahniuk's audacious ninth novel tells the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn queen who intends to put an exclamation point on her career by having sex with 600 men in one day on film.  Andy Warner reanimates after the car accident that kills his wife, but is too mangled from his injuries to talk. He lives in his parents' wine cellar, occasionally attending a zombie support group and struggling to rejoin a society that offers the undead no rights, bans them from working and doesn't even punish those who destroy them. Apparently, Diablo Cody is making a movie about this one and I can't wait for it. Jun 10 09 08:51 am Link  This Pulitzer Prize winning novel was originally published in the early 1980s, but the âtragi-comedyâ is sure to amuse readers in 2009. Library Journal describes the protagonist as a âmodern day⦠Don Quixote⦠[who is a] fat, flatulent, gluttonous, loud, lying, hypocritical, self-deceiving, self-centered blowhard who masturbates to memories of a dog and pretends to profundity when he is only full of beans.â Although, Lamb is way up there too haha. Jun 10 09 08:54 am Link sl3966 wrote: If I read fiction, I bet I'd read all of these. If fiction can't be conceived as well as these, it's not worth doing. Jun 10 09 08:55 am Link Rex Maverick wrote: Love this one too. Jun 10 09 08:55 am Link sl3966 wrote: I havent read this yet, what did you think of it? The last book of his I read was Haunted which is probably in my top 5 books ever. Jun 10 09 08:57 am Link I've been reading The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo; not an easy read, lol! For those of you that don't know anything about Aurobindo, you might be pleasantly surprised. His scholarly approach to thing can be very dry at times, and way too intellectual for most, but if you can get past that, the level of complexity he goes into about the human system and the spiritual path is astounding. A Cambridge trained philosopher, terrorist and one of the worlds most profound enlightened masters. Definitely an interesting person!  You can read more about Aurobindo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurobindo Jun 10 09 09:00 am Link Model Sarah wrote: It was a bit slow in the beginning but if you stick with it it's classic Palahniuk. I liked it... I think like Rant better. Jun 10 09 09:00 am Link Wow.... Okay, I have literary OCD- I will literally read EVERYTHING in the house and then go looking for more. Top picks: Jacqueline Carey- the Kushiel series. Intensely poetic, erotic and terrifying by turns- gods, angels, war, and true, everlasting love and devotion that wars with duty and pride. Truly beautiful novels, every one of them. I like Laurell K Hamilton, if only so I can bitch about what a worthless piece of manipulating and controlling crap Anita Blake is. Like the Merry Gentry novels better, and I hope she continues them. Neil Gaiman. Nuff said. Ditto for Terry Pratchett. I'm a Louis L'Amour, Dick Francis and Diane Mott Davidson fan. I'm in love with the Maximum Ride series from James Patterson. Jun 10 09 09:03 am Link Detoured by this for 15 minutes.  The Original Sin wrote: I hit a new term in something I'm reading, and then I need a book on that term. Hence the sidetrack already. Jun 10 09 09:05 am Link sl3966 wrote: I havent read Rant either. I've read everything before Haunted - god what a great book that was. Jun 10 09 09:06 am Link  Jun 10 09 09:11 am Link On a learning level - I loved "A Short History of Nearly Everything" - By Bill Bryson This is the most readable and entertaining book I ever read, on the history of the sciences. And for sheer fun - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - seems to be taken a bit for granted by the current generation - But, no other single book ever had me laughing out loud - so many times. CC Jun 10 09 09:14 am Link SKPhoto wrote: That "Salt" is a very good read : amazing stories about the most simple thing we take for granted . Empires were built on salt ! Nation went to wars over salt ! Jun 10 09 09:20 am Link Janice Marie Foote wrote: I did enjoy this book Jun 10 09 09:21 am Link Crimson Clover wrote: Read Lamb. I embarrassed myself laughing on the subway. Jun 10 09 09:21 am Link  class study in a 2 dimensional world  kind of a Taoist take on daily life Jun 10 09 09:27 am Link  a study done a few years back that pretty much describes the flow of people/money/power in the world. It was fairly prescient considering how the world has changed since it was written. I think the title turned people off because it was a paper based on an intelligence study, not really about the pentagon. It was the authors observations on previous think tank predictions. What had worked and what had been wrong and an examination of new paradigms in international realations. Jun 10 09 09:33 am Link  a view of human life from a dogs perspective. A quick, sad read, made me cry. Would've made a better, more meaningful dog movie than "Marley and me" Jun 10 09 09:37 am Link Rick Edwards wrote: Search Inside. muwahahaha Jun 10 09 11:12 am Link I like memoirs, so...  Lily Burana is an awesome writer, even though this is probably only interesting if you like strippers, or were one. She manages to portray the life of a stripper extremely well, without glorifying it, or making it seem dirty. She also occasionally references other books by whores or burlesque dancers or other strippers, so if you enjoy reading about that, Lily Burana is fun, and a resource. I approve. Diablo Cody wrote a memoir about her time as a dancer too, called Candy Girl, but I was significantly less impressed. She seems entirely too stuck in the shame spiral of stripping, even when she's kind of glorifying it. Meh.  Also by Lily Burana, a later book, about her life as a military wife, and both her and her husband dealing with PTSD in their own ways. It's a lot more serious and less flippant than her first book, but still interesting, and she can crack jokes at her own expense.  Chuck Klosterman is pretty light-hearted, even when he's being serious. Killing Yourself To Live is a story about his road trip across America, visiting rockstar death scenes, and the people he meets, and the women who aren't travelling with him. It doesn't really make you think, but it kinda makes me giggle. Especially when he compares each of the women he's thinking about, to a member of Kiss.  Anything he's ever written is awesome. Most famous for "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", his trip to sin city on a whole lot of drugs, involving kidnapping, hallucinations, and other shenanigans, his other works, fiction and non-fiction, are equally amusing, and often thought provoking. Peacocks, bikers, and shotguns! Jun 10 09 11:31 am Link sl3966 wrote: I loved "Lamb." I'd warn people not to eat or drink while reading, though, as finding this passage can cause breathing problems: Jun 10 09 11:41 am Link The God Of Small Things  It was heartbreaking and funny. Beautiful prose and so so descriptive. I could taste the tastes and smell the smells. It was a inside look at the Caste system and how it affects the people of India. I loved how quirky it was. I read it every couple years. The Celestine Prophecy  This book changed my life. It's about living with intention and recognizing that everyone comes into our lives for a reason. But it's presented in a fictional story form that keeps you from being bored and totally captivated with the journey. I'm getting ready to read it again. Edit: one more one more I ADORED this book!! It was so so funny. It's about a woman who goes through a hard time and ends up being able to hear dogs talk. It's funny without being TOO cheesy. Definitely a feel good Summertime book. Jun 10 09 11:49 am Link  I'm a history nut so anything I read is history stuff. I have become enamored with stories of mistresses of the past, and how they often pretty much ran the country. This book explores the mistresses truly in love with their Kings, the greedy mistresses, the mistresses that became Queens. Non-fiction and jumps all over the place so those who don't appreciate history without a "storyline" won't like it.  I just heard this is slated to become a movie. Set in Victorian England, to protagonist is a prostitute named Sugar. She's intelligent, sophisticated as she can be for her class, and you can't help but grow to love her. A rich man falls in love with her and makes her his child's nanny... but between his crazy wife (she has a brain tumor, of course they know nothing of those in that day), his ignored daughter, his brother a member of the clergy trying to reform prostitutes...it's an amazing read. Long, but amazing.  Best selling novel of the 1940's, banned in fourteen states and several countries. These days you wouldn't be all that shocked by the passages. The story of an orphan who falls in love with the man she can never have, and sleeps with/marries richer and richer men climbing her way into society. Set in 17th century England, it includes back stories of the plague and the Great Fire. Jun 10 09 12:09 pm Link and a book I'm dying to read...  The Mask of Sanity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mask_of_Sanity written by Hervey Cleckley, M.D., first published in 1941... but it's terribly hard to get for me in my current financial situation because it's pretty expensive and pretty rare... Jun 10 09 12:27 pm Link William Willya and the Washing Machine . . . only because I created, and published it . . .  SOS Jun 10 09 12:29 pm Link nathan combs wrote: +1 This is an incredibly great read...(I even have a signed copy) Jun 10 09 07:09 pm Link Rick you should check out Planiverse. It is considered to be the unofficial followup to Flatland. It's about university computer scientists working on a program discovering living beings existing in a 2D world exposed by their computational physics. The students communicate with the beings of the Planiverse. It's all written as an account of the actual "facts" and events that occurred, including drawings and diagrams of how the 2D "planiverse" works. It's pretty cool.  Rick Edwards wrote: Jun 10 09 07:22 pm Link If you like Buffy the Vampire Slayer ( the series)....  This is one of the many series based novels for adults. It's set during the summer of 1977 during the big Blackout in New York & the infamous Son of Sam murders.It's about Nikki Wood, the second slayer that Spike murdered.The story is mainly based on her and her Watcher as well as her trying to raise a son being the Chosen one.The author used newspapers from that year and time for reference to help write the book.It was really good and interesting.Spike being a punk hanging at CBGB's was also very amusing! If you love Oscar Wilde...  I'm not done yet..it's thick..but so far so good! Jun 10 09 07:28 pm Link I've read this a few times to verify its information. I find it fascinating.  Jun 10 09 07:34 pm Link I'm working with this today. If you are art, fashion and design oriented - you need this book. If you want the most out of life, and to play with all there is to play with, you need this book. Manipulate your biology, force your evolution. I do it 16 hours a day, and sleep the other 8 and do it again. Infinite and endless until it ends, and then it won't matter. It seems to be the basic assumption of traditional philosophies that human intellectual powers are for the purpose of accelerating our own evolution beyond the restraints of the biological determinism which binds all other living organisms. Methods such as yoga, meditation, concentration, the arts, the crafts, are psychophysical techniques to further this fundamental goal. The practice of Sacred Geometry is one of these essential techniques of self-development. Jun 11 09 01:03 pm Link Jeffrey Engel wrote: All atomic energy is alive. Much more than a concept. Jun 11 09 01:06 pm Link photoguy42 wrote: That book is fucking hilarious. I have 3 copies, because I loan it out, buy it again in case it doesn't come back, and repeat. 3 out of like..9..have made it back to my house. Jun 11 09 01:26 pm Link  Possibly one of the most confusing and amazing stories i've ever read. Its partially about a film, a photographer, and a man who loves strippers, and a house that is somehow bigger on the inside than on the outside by a couple inches. As well as interweaving a little bit of the Kevin Carter story. It is somehow terrifying.  My all time favorite book. A story about a book hoarder who lives in Czechoslovakia and is in charge of crushing the books banned by the government. Its absolutely beautiful. Jun 11 09 01:41 pm Link Corwin Prescott II wrote: That book is crazy. The words aren't written in the normal progression. That made it more fun. Jun 11 09 01:44 pm Link Corwin Prescott II wrote: Nice divine spiral on the cover. Jun 11 09 01:56 pm Link Corwin Prescott II wrote: I read that book about 10 years ago and found it quite compelling. The writing style was just unlike anything I had ever seen before. Jun 11 09 01:57 pm Link A book I read recently a friend loaned to me telling me; "you must read this, you'd enjoy it. He's a genius."  Vollmann is a relentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence. He has investigated the causes and symptoms of humanity's obsession with violence (Rising Up and Rising Down), taken a personal look into the hearts and minds of the world's poorest inhabitants (Poor People), and now turns his attentions to America itself, to our romanticizing of "freedom" and the ways in which we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire. For Riding Toward Everywhere, Vollmann himself takes to the rails. His main accomplice is Steve, a captivating fellow trainhopper who expertly accompanies him through the secretive waters of this particular way of life. Vollmann describes the thrill and terror of lying in a trainyard in the dark, avoiding the flickering flashlights of the railroad bulls; the shockingly, gorgeously wild scenery of the American West as seen from a grainer platform; the complicated considerations involved in trying to hop on and off a moving train. It's a dangerous, thrilling, evocative examination of this underground lifestyle, and it is, without a doubt, one of Vollmann's most hauntingly beautiful narratives. Questioning anything and everything, subjecting both our national romance and our skepticism about hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye and the reality of what he actually sees, Vollmann carries on in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, providing a moving portrait of this strikingly modern vision of the American dream. Jun 11 09 02:01 pm Link  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_the_South Harry Turtledove WOW what a writer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove Jun 11 09 02:14 pm Link  I'm stoked to be embarking upon my literary journey through Tom Robbins' 'Jitterbug Perfume' today... Jun 15 09 05:24 am Link |
