Author Topic: Fave Books / Currently Reading  (Read 947291 times)

Keith Whitener

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #570 on: December 29, 2008, 11:42:46 PM »
I am enjoying Richard Wright's Black Boy.

Hey, I just found out there's a book by this name, too!

Hay-O!

Thanks, Humor Buddy!

I don't understand what's happening here.

Shaggy 2 Grote

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #571 on: December 31, 2008, 08:26:39 AM »
I am enjoying Richard Wright's Black Boy.

Hey, I just found out there's a book by this name, too!

Hay-O!

Thanks, Humor Buddy!

I don't understand what's happening here.

It's OK, there's not really anything to understand.
Oh, good heavens. I didn’t realize. I send my condolences out to the rest of the O’Connor family.

dave from knoxville

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #572 on: December 31, 2008, 09:37:18 AM »
I am enjoying Richard Wright's Black Boy.

Hey, I just found out there's a book by this name, too!

Hay-O!

Thanks, Humor Buddy!

I don't understand what's happening here.

It's OK, there's not really anything to understand.

It was just a silly little joke, as if "Richard Wright's Black Boy" was a person rather than a book, and Keith Whitener was somehow enjoying him, like, for instance, I am enjoying this discussion. Then Steve of Bloomington did a terrific Ed McMahon impression, as if this might pass as a joke on some alternate-reality version of The Tonight Show, from the Carson years. Then Grote threw in a "nothing to see here, move along" comment. And now I am explaining the joke to the best of my ability, which undermines it to some degree, but I never really expected it to show up in Milton Berle's next joke book anyway, so it's OK.

I can also explain maths confusion. Just let me know.

crumbum

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #573 on: December 31, 2008, 12:54:53 PM »
If you have any interest in historical memoirs, I can't recommend Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand's autobiography 'Memoirs from Beyond the Grave' highly enough. That thing blew my mind. It's incredibly hard to find in English except in abridged versions; I became aware of it after reading Paul Auster's 'The Book of Illusions', in which it's referenced a number of times (though there it's called Memoirs of a Dead Man).

This guy was a regular 18th century Forrest Gump, if Forrest Gump had been a highly celebrated aristocratic politician and novelist. He played a part in the French and American Revolutions, the reign of Napoleon, and various political upheavals in the 1800s.

If that still sounds dry, the book is super-readable and very modern in its structure: he uses flash-forwards and often reexamines events from multiple later vantage points, and through the whole thing he obsesses over his own approaching death, and the gradual disappearance of everything he's known in life, in a very moving and poetic way.

Jack from Arkansas

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #574 on: December 31, 2008, 06:33:48 PM »
My brother-in-law beat me at chess so many times in a row over the holidays.  I've decided it's time to step it up and purchased Silman's Reassess Your Chess.  Those suckers at Yahoo Games won't know what hit them.

cleveland jonah

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #575 on: January 02, 2009, 01:08:26 PM »
Devil In The White City - Erik Larson

crumbum

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #576 on: January 02, 2009, 02:11:14 PM »
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. That's some heavy shit.

Ignore Function

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #577 on: January 02, 2009, 06:15:28 PM »
Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. 

gravy boat

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #578 on: January 02, 2009, 09:46:27 PM »
My brother-in-law beat me at chess so many times in a row over the holidays.  I've decided it's time to step it up and purchased Silman's Reassess Your Chess.  Those suckers at Yahoo Games won't know what hit them.

Did he say "Jack, I've literally been in a thousand chess matches"?

cutout

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #579 on: January 16, 2009, 12:18:12 PM »
"Holidays in Hell" by PJ O'Rourke. I understand that it's supposed to be funny, but I can't say I've laughed. He just seems glib and obnoxious.

A book I mentioned previously, "I Wouldn't Start from Here" accomplishes everything I was expecting from O'Rourke's book -

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21814090-5003900,00.html

aka, it's well-reasoned, well-researched and funny without being irritating.

fonpr

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #580 on: January 16, 2009, 06:44:59 PM »
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. That's some heavy shit.

Ben Nichols lead singer of Lucero just released a solo album based upon that novel.
"Like it or not, Florida seems dedicated to a 'live fast, die' way of doing things."

iAmBaronVonTito

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #581 on: January 16, 2009, 06:50:31 PM »
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. That's some heavy shit.

Ben Nichols lead singer of Lucero just released a solo album based upon that novel.

true story.

Last Pale Light in the West, straight outta Memphis. 

masterofsparks

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #582 on: January 16, 2009, 08:29:47 PM »
Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. That's some heavy shit.

Ben Nichols lead singer of Lucero just released a solo album based upon that novel.

true story.

Last Pale Light in the West, straight outta Memphis. 

The Earth album Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method is sorta based on Blood Meridian as well. It's an instrumental album, but the several of the song titles are lifted directly from its chapter headings and the sound is very evocative of the novel's world as well.
I'll probably go into the wee hours.

Fido

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #583 on: January 16, 2009, 08:42:42 PM »
Planet of Slums by Mike Davis. 

Mike Davis is a gifted writer. Agree with his perspectives or not, it's well worth checking out his stuff, especially his books about L.A. The lens through which he sees and analyzes both the world and the world of southern California is fascinating and his writing well worthwhile.

Keith Whitener

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Re: Fave Books / Currently Reading
« Reply #584 on: January 16, 2009, 08:45:06 PM »
I'm making my way through The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Best American Magazine Writing from 2004.

There was a great piece by Katherine Boo called The Marriage Cure (http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2003/the_marriage_cure). The background for the piece is that some time ago the Bush Administration made a push for funding programs that would encourage marriage amongst the poor as a means of combating poverty. I think that to equate marriage with improved finances would be reductionist. Poverty is the result of not one cause but many and is perpetuated by a cornucopia of elements rather than by a single mechanism. All of the stimuli that lead to poverty are interrelated and stretch backward through time, often spanning generations. Simply put: there's a lot more to poverty than being poor, just as there's a lot more to a poor person than their poverty. That's one reason I enjoyed this article so much. The Marriage Cure allows readers to learn just how deep poverty's causes run and how far its influences extend by observing the lives of two African American women living in Oklahoma City as they attempt to make use of the matrimony remedy.

This anthology is great so far and I shall certainly pick up more installments. Right now I'm in the middle of an article written by Tucker Carlson--who the book refers to as "the whitest man in America". The piece is about going on a piece keeping mission to Liberia with Al Sharpton and Cornel West. It's insane and feels like it would make a great movie: http://tinyurl.com/carlson-sharpton