Author Topic: What are you reading?  (Read 551668 times)

Ken Fresno

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1250 on: March 19, 2016, 03:03:19 AM »
Paul Beattys, the author of White Boy Shuffle. who just won a shit-ton of awards   for his new book. Saw this coming a long time  go. Guy's a serious contender. But Getbig being racist... Best book by far, in 2015, , 

Really enjoyed Tuff, but I haven't read any of his other stuff. May give The Sellout a look.

Ken Fresno

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1251 on: March 19, 2016, 03:14:49 AM »
Mick Herron's Slough Series is pretty good if you enjoy realistic (and humorous) spy thrillers. They are all based around an outstation for disgraced MI5 officers.

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1252 on: April 01, 2016, 12:50:52 PM »
Evicted by Matthew Desmond. Book with a lot of hype; thought I'd look into it. Wow. Desmond, a Harvard prof studied housing and evictions in Milwaukee. A real eye-opener; and a mostly objective view of tenants and landlords. His examination is both policy-wide and ethnographic. Revealing, as well as heart-breaking, it follows those from the city's inner neighbourhoods, and a trailer park. Who knew that poverty is so, so grindingly endemic, and that so many people depend on keeping others under foot. If you are a non-fiction reader this book is amazing. Kinda like Katherine Boo's 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers.' Highest rating.

Straw Man

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1253 on: April 03, 2016, 07:25:05 PM »
Just finishing up The Ocean at the End of the Lane (trippy book but very cool) and then starting the physics book about nonlocality

CalvinH

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1254 on: April 04, 2016, 05:47:30 AM »
Evicted by Matthew Desmond. Book with a lot of hype; thought I'd look into it. Wow. Desmond, a Harvard prof studied housing and evictions in Milwaukee. A real eye-opener; and a mostly objective view of tenants and landlords. His examination is both policy-wide and ethnographic. Revealing, as well as heart-breaking, it follows those from the city's inner neighbourhoods, and a trailer park. Who knew that poverty is so, so grindingly endemic, and that so many people depend on keeping others under foot. If you are a non-fiction reader this book is amazing. Kinda like Katherine Boo's 'Behind the Beautiful Forevers.' Highest rating.


So whats the best version of Treasure Island to get?

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1255 on: April 07, 2016, 01:38:15 PM »

So whats the best version of Treasure Island to get?
No idea. My copy is my Da's school prize from 1946. Reprint. Thin, leather-bound. I would hazard a guess that it is in public domain, so maybe choose your format, to suit? If you are so taken, and have the cash, maybe look on ABE for a 1st? Ripper of a book.  

Check: ABE 1sts seem to run from 26k-6k. Good luck, hombre.  

CalvinH

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1256 on: April 08, 2016, 05:26:07 AM »
No idea. My copy is my Da's school prize from 1946. Reprint. Thin, leather-bound. I would hazard a guess that it is in public domain, so maybe choose your format, to suit? If you are so taken, and have the cash, maybe look on ABE for a 1st? Ripper of a book.  

Check: ABE 1sts seem to run from 26k-6k. Good luck, hombre.  

I was on Amazon the other day and ended up all kinds of confused >:( ;D

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1257 on: April 08, 2016, 07:13:10 AM »
I was on Amazon the other day and ended up all kinds of confused >:( ;D
Maybe a nice HC with those cool Wyeth pirate drawings?

Ken Fresno

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1258 on: April 20, 2016, 02:54:02 AM »
Just finished Irvine Welsh's Blade Artist. Decent addition to the trainspotting series, based around a reformed Francis Begbie.

Still less than a quarter through Moby Dick after 4 months.

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1259 on: April 25, 2016, 04:13:57 PM »
Just WOW!

"Mr. DeLillo's haunting new novel, 'Zero K' — his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, 'Underworld' — is a kind of bookend to 'White Noise' (1985): somber and coolly futuristic, where that earlier book was satirical and darkly comic .... If there are echoes in these pages of Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 movie, '2001: A Space Odyssey,' Mr. DeLillo's vision turns out to be considerably darker. He is skeptical of those who might regard human life as a step on an evolutionary ladder between the apes and a futuristic race of star children .... This novel does not possess — or aspire toward — the symphonic sweep of 'Underworld'; it's more like a chamber music piece. But once the novel shakes off its labored start, 'Zero K' reminds us of Mr. DeLillo's almost Day-Glo powers as a writer and his understanding of the strange, contorted shapes that eternal human concerns (with mortality and time) can take in the new millennium."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/books/review-in-don-delillos-zero-k-daring-to-outwit-death.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

Good enough. Just ordered.

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1260 on: May 02, 2016, 05:18:49 AM »
Just WOW!

"Mr. DeLillo's haunting new novel, 'Zero K' — his most persuasive since his astonishing 1997 masterpiece, 'Underworld' — is a kind of bookend to 'White Noise' (1985): somber and coolly futuristic, where that earlier book was satirical and darkly comic .... If there are echoes in these pages of Stanley Kubrick's classic 1968 movie, '2001: A Space Odyssey,' Mr. DeLillo's vision turns out to be considerably darker. He is skeptical of those who might regard human life as a step on an evolutionary ladder between the apes and a futuristic race of star children .... This novel does not possess — or aspire toward — the symphonic sweep of 'Underworld'; it's more like a chamber music piece. But once the novel shakes off its labored start, 'Zero K' reminds us of Mr. DeLillo's almost Day-Glo powers as a writer and his understanding of the strange, contorted shapes that eternal human concerns (with mortality and time) can take in the new millennium."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/books/review-in-don-delillos-zero-k-daring-to-outwit-death.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0

Good enough. Just ordered.
Nice. Heard good things. Gonna try for signatures next month. Been waiting years.  

/indie buy, yesterday. x2 

Kahn.N.Singh

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1261 on: May 04, 2016, 07:02:58 AM »
Nice. Heard good things. Gonna try for signatures next month. Been waiting years.  

/indie buy, yesterday. x2  

Awesome!

The latest paean: "I don't read a DeLillo novel for its plot, character, setting; for who betrayed whom and how hard life with Mother was; for Phoenix days and Bombay nights; or for how to tune a fiddle. I read a DeLillo novel for its sentences. And sentence by sentence, DeLillo magically slips the knot of criticism and gives his readers what Nabokov maintained was all that mattered in life and art: individual genius …. This is fiction in touch with the starker parables, with Kafka and Beckett, with the austerity of bare rooms and declarative, uninflected sentences. I was uncertain as I read these early pages. Had DeLillo created a world of pure abstraction where the reader would be left to float in the ¬zero-gravity chamber of the death fable, everything to think about and nothing to latch on to? But this is only one of several canny feints in the book, which continually shape-shifts and reimagines itself. In the end, it all adds up to one of the most mysterious, emotionally moving and formally rewarding books of DeLillo’s long career …. The book inspires a lot of intellectual play as it drifts away from stark Kafka landscape into Borges-inspired mindspace, even flirting with the trippier themes of Philip K. Dick, and elegy starts to compete not with science fiction, exactly, but with fiction about science."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/books/review/don-delillos-zero-k.html?action=click&contentCollection=review&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront

I received my (signed) book from B&N last week (got it in two days – free shipping).

Looking forward to the experience.


The Ugly

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1262 on: May 05, 2016, 09:49:42 PM »
Rereading Fante's "Ask the Dust," just 'cause.

/no idea what the backslash means.

sync pulse

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1263 on: May 06, 2016, 01:33:15 AM »
.

CalvinH

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1264 on: May 06, 2016, 05:37:54 AM »
I've been slacking :-[

Grape Ape

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1265 on: May 06, 2016, 06:15:28 AM »
I've been slacking :-[

Read The First Law trilogy
Y

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1266 on: May 14, 2016, 06:06:04 AM »
Rereading Fante's "Ask the Dust," just 'cause.

/no idea what the backslash means.
Solid book. Kinda forgotten author. Not great. Not shitty.

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1267 on: May 14, 2016, 09:12:34 AM »
Sad news. Katherine Dunn has passed. Solid writer. Much noted for her book 'Geek Love.'

CalvinH

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1268 on: May 17, 2016, 05:40:55 AM »
Finished the latest Brad Taylor, Pike Logan book.
Shooter with Mark Walburg has been on the TV a lot so it made me re-read
Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact which is the book the movie was based on ;D

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1269 on: June 17, 2016, 07:45:22 AM »
Played a charity tourney. Got totally runs/points destroyed. Table had some nice books. I availed.   :)

/was good. drove the ladyfriend home.

Tedim

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1270 on: June 17, 2016, 12:14:26 PM »
Treaties of Human Nature....Hume

horrible masochism on my part












and Whitman...

funk51

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1271 on: June 18, 2016, 08:46:03 AM »
world of baseball ten volume set.on the last book
F

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1272 on: July 02, 2016, 05:17:09 PM »
Saw Michael Herr died. Sad news. He was notable for his book, Dispatches, which totally encapsulated the Vietnam War, and wars, generally. I think it's one of the best books ever (although it does fade a bit 2/3rds in). Highest recommendation.  :)

dr.chimps

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1273 on: July 04, 2016, 05:52:45 AM »
world of baseball ten volume set.on the last book
Wow. The Mick. Great pic. I kinda have the same swing, but, like, 1/10th the power. Go Irish!   ;D

rocco-x

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Re: What are you reading?
« Reply #1274 on: July 10, 2016, 05:55:38 AM »
any book with a lot of pictures. I especially like the ones you color in.