What Books Are You Guys Reading?

[brvheart 1,759]

An amazing book I read a couple months ago:Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz ZafonThis is a book I will definitely read again. It is about a kid who discovers a rare, mysterious book (Shadow of the Wind) and it takes him on an adventure as he tries to find out the book's history. This is a book for people who love literature and language. It's hard to describe exactly what it is about without giving too much away, but this is one of the best books I've read in many years.

Is it non-fiction?

[Tactical Bear 3]

No, it's absolutely about change. But this is of course impossible. Growing up is inevitable. Our lives are merry-go-rounds, constantly moving forward, and we can't do anything to prevent that. So what then? Do we just throw up our hands in despair? Do we just kill ourselves now instead of facing the horrors of adulthood? No, we meet someone in the rye, someone that we truly love, and confront the future with them. The song really goes, "if a body MEET a body coming through the rye." We grab hands with the person we love the most, in Holden's case it is his sister Phoebe, and, hand in hand, leap off the cliff together. This is what Holden learns by the end. He embraces the inevitability and learns that you can't erase the bad in the world, instead you have to embrace the good.

First off, yeah, I was going to say something very much like what you wrote. We have similar interpretations of the book, though I would guess that mine's a little more pessimistic. Secondly, that bolded part is probably the most important metaphor in the book. He takes Phoebe to the carnival (or whatever), and watches her on the Merry-Go-Round.

But I totally missed how incredibly sad the whole thing is, how tragic a character Gatspy is. He creates this entire empire, this world, this person for the sake of a girl. He throws parties that last all night long just for the off chance that Daisy will stop by. He is lost in his world of nostalgia, of longing for past moments with this girl that he once had, of a perfection that (he believes) he had and lost. It just chokes me up a bit to think about it. Not because he doesn't get her back (she was never worth it anyway), but because a man can be so moved by something, so caught up in an illusion, can so alter his life for something, can be so caught up in an impossible goal, and can end up ruined by it.

I can't read Gatsby because it makes me so insecure about everything. I fancy myself a decent communicator, and a solid writer, but I'll never -- and I mean NEVER -- be able to write prose that even remotely approaches what Fitzgerald accomplishes every page of that novel. It's extra-painful for the reader, because we're aware how retarded Daisy is, and Gatz isn't.

[hblask 1]

Is it non-fiction?

It is fiction. It was originally written in Spanish, so this is a translation, but I can't imagine that it lost any of its power, because few books are this good in any language. The author obviously loves books and writing, and wanted to write an ode to his passions.

[brvheart 1,759]

It is fiction. It was originally written in Spanish, so this is a translation, but I can't imagine that it lost any of its power, because few books are this good in any language. The author obviously loves books and writing, and wanted to write an ode to his passions.

Yeah... I was joking. But I'm glad you liked the book.

[eYank 0]

Has anyone read Outliers?

[frautotenkinder 1,025]

Big Fitzgerald fan here--Gatsby being one of my favorite books of all time. I bought a book of his short stories, and left it at work. It's easier for me to read at lunch, taking months off of reading it, to get back into a short story, than to try and choke down a novel in 40 minute increments.I just finished Safe at Home by Alyssa Milano (it's her baseball book, shut up). I'm trying to read living, female authors. So, I guess, it's Annie Proulx or bust!

[hank213 1,823]

Just finished the most recent in the Dresden Files series. Getting ready to start American Gods since I enjoyed Anansi Boys so much.

[Balloon guy 158]

Recently finished:Poland by James MichenerAlaska by MichenerMake Love the Bruce Campbell Way by same ( reread)Rigged by Ben MezrichConspiracy of Fools by Kurt EichenwaldTreasures of Khan by Clive CusslerConspiracy of Fools was the story of Enron, interesting, but if I wasn't on a plane and a boat I'm not sure I would have finished it, kind of dry.Have a new Cussler book, and then planning on getting something on government grants because I have an idea of how I can scam the Obama government out of millions, and then make some real money...

[Sportsmack 0]

Recently finished:Poland by James MichenerAlaska by MichenerMake Love the Bruce Campbell Way by same ( reread)Rigged by Ben MezrichConspiracy of Fools by Kurt EichenwaldTreasures of Khan by Clive CusslerConspiracy of Fools was the story of Enron, interesting, but if I wasn't on a plane and a boat I'm not sure I would have finished it, kind of dry.Have a new Cussler book, and then planning on getting something on government grants because I have an idea of how I can scam the Obama government out of millions, and then make some real money...

reading this right now myself, pretty good so far...I can definitely see a movie in it's future.

[avsfan 0]

The Black Cloud - Fred Hoyle

[lvpro 0]

Just finished Moneyball. Good read, but I somehow feel like it could've been better. Can't quite figure out how they intend to make a movie out of it. Now I'm reading Josh Hamilton's autobiography... the guy who lent it to me told me it wasn't very well written, but an interesting story. I've yet to get to the interesting story part.

[checkymcfold 0]

Has anyone read Outliers?

yeah, it's very interesting--not so much for the actual discussion of specific issues, but rather for the general sort of methodology he employs in doing his little study things. that said, the part about "geniuses" was, like, super enlightening, and i found the arguments he makes for specific points more compelling than in the tipping point and blink.

[Balloon guy 158]

reading this right now myself, pretty good so far...I can definitely see a movie in it's future.

I wanted to give you a couple days to finish the book.But goggle the guy who the story is about and the movie would have a really depressing ending.He basically lost everything when the big dog who invites him to partner with him in his new venture goes belly up.Now he is trying to be a 30 year old consultant on how to do things in business, with a resume of being at the right place at the right time for computerizing an archaic system, and failing in a company that's job was to predict the future of the markets.

[Balloon guy 158]

yeah, it's very interesting--not so much for the actual discussion of specific issues, but rather for the general sort of methodology he employs in doing his little study things. that said, the part about "geniuses" was, like, super enlightening, and i found the arguments he makes for specific points more compelling than in the tipping point and blink.

Blink definately fell short of it's hype.Also why did you put the effort to italize the titles of the books, but didn't want to waste the effort to use that pinkie to HIT THE SPACE BAR when typing their titles?Just curious if this is the effort you feel is acceptable in your cadre of underachieving waitstaff?

[Theraflu 1,035]

Just finished American Gods, and really enjoyed it. I've read Anansi Boys, is other Gaiman stuff worth reading? I kind of have this mental block about reading books that have been turned into movies,and Coraline and Stardust didn't really interest me as films, but if it's worth reading, I'll give 'em a shot. Also, everything I read is based out of this thread, and I've yet to be disappointed by a selection, so keep 'em coming.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

Simultaneously reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Brave New World.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I finished The Great Gatsby, and I can see why this would be true. If somebody had told me that I HAD TO read this book, I think I'd have been less than impressed.It's not a great *story*, but it's a great book. The author's use of phrases and structure is spectacularly good. There are turns of phrases that literally stopped my reading so that I could absorb them, enjoy them, and go back and re-read them.I'd be particularly interested to see how it compares to its peer literature -- the other stuff that was out at the time. I suspect it would be even more impressive in that context.

That moment of being blown away by a phrase is exactly why I read. I love that feeling of my mind being taken somewhere utterly new.

Oh, and here's my reading list for the summer:Slaughterhouse 5Moby DickHoward Zinn's A people's History of the United StatesThe Brothers KaramazovUlyssesI'm going to find some smaller books to slip in there so I'm not confronted with these huge monsters back to back. Maybe the Old Man and the Sea or the Metamorphosis, something like those.Oh, I'll probably throw in some Shakespeare as well.

I love you.

That book is so beautifully written that I can't stand it. Every page or so I have to just put the book down, look up, and marvel at its beauty. It's poetry the whole way through. I reread this recently. I didn't understand it at all when I read it in high school. Okay, I mean, I did understand it enough to get an A in the class, of course, but that's just a matter of repeating a bunch of BS the teacher says. But I totally missed how incredibly sad the whole thing is, how tragic a character Gatspy is. He creates this entire empire, this world, this person for the sake of a girl. He throws parties that last all night long just for the off chance that Daisy will stop by. He is lost in his world of nostalgia, of longing for past moments with this girl that he once had, of a perfection that (he believes) he had and lost. It just chokes me up a bit to think about it. Not because he doesn't get her back (she was never worth it anyway), but because a man can be so moved by something, so caught up in an illusion, can so alter his life for something, can be so caught up in an impossible goal, and can end up ruined by it.

I reiterate...

Have a new Cussler book, and then planning on getting something on government grants because I have an idea of how I can scam the Obama government out of millions, and then make some real money...

Don't bother, and don't waste your considerable money. Those books are generally crap, outdated and full of information any moron could find for free. Just go to http://www.cfda.gov To quote: "The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance is a government-wide compendium of Federal programs, projects, services, and activities blah blah blah." But mainly it's a list of government grants, and each grant has a link to a page that tells you all about applying. I did enough applying back in the day -- I can even give you pointers on whatever evil scheme you're cooking up.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I won't list all 40 books I've read since being laid off. Mostly, I was blowing through my shelves so I could list the books on Amazon and sell them. Lots of self-help that wasn't interesting and psych/sociology type stuff I was more interested in at the time of purchase than I am now. However, here are the books that were too good to sell and are going into my permanent collection:Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel GilbertFantastic book. Joyfully written, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and all about the psychological study of happiness, which Gilbert helped pioneer. Just a delightful book.The Chemistry of Joy, Henry Emmons"a three-step program for overcoming depression through western science and eastern wisdom." Combines ayurvedic medicine, brain chemistry, and Buddhist ideas of "emotional type." Not many books try to put East and West together this way, and the author is very good at making the reader see the connections.Committed to Memory: How We Remember and Why We Forget, Rebecca RuppWhen I was in school, cognitive science was just becoming the dominant paradigm in psych. One of the most fascinating things to me was that there was no real theory of forgetting. Was it a failure of the mind, a practical adaptation, or was it what the mind was designed to do all along? This is another pysch book, with lots of interesting anecdotes of experiments and such.Also, I just ripped through Alison Weir's Tudor histories, Henry VIII and The Children of Henry VIII -- 900 pages in three days. Now I'm starting Elizabeth I. I'm probably going to go ape-shit Shakespeare for awhile. Not the plays, but a bunch of scholarly works about him.Speaking of which, that reminds me: I've already raved about Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World. His Hamlet in Purgatory is just as great.Sorry, I know this doesn't make much of a reading list for anyone but me. I catalogued all my books into an Excel spreadsheet in order to put my Amazon store together. I have just over 500 books. Not counting Shakespeare's plays, fewer than ten of them were fiction.

[BigDMcGee 3,355]

Simultaneously reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Brave New World.

Odd one-two punch but both great books, that are probably in my top 10, def. in my top 20

[checkymcfold 0]

Blink definately fell short of it's hype.Also why did you put the effort to italize the titles of the books, but didn't want to waste the effort to use that pinkie to HIT THE SPACE BAR when typing their titles?Just curious if this is the effort you feel is acceptable in your cadre of underachieving waitstaff?

you mean the shift key, champ. rush must be giving you some of his medicine.as i've explained before elsewhere, i learned how to type papers with autocorrect in microsoft word, and my blindly ideological rigidity has kept me from learning how to incorporate the shift key into my OMGSUPERFAST typing. like, honestly, it frustrates me to use the thing because it slows me down so much.as to the job, i turned down an offer of management training so that i can follow the ladyfriend to a northern saskatchewan reserve and tutor math to injuns while going back to poker for money come august. women=rake, etc, etc. i might start writing again after we get our igloo built, though, so there may be a plus hidden in there. we also may buy a place in vegas so i have a place to escape when the 8 month winters start, which would be fairly cool.LLY, the brothers karamazov is far and away my favorite book ever. have you read a lot of other dostoevsky?SB, best of luck with the employment stuff. sorry to hear you were laid off. :(i'm trying to become better read on economics this summer, in an effort to round out my nerdliness. a lot of keynes and friedman on the list for the time being, although i'm currently in the middle of supercapitalism by robert reich. dark days america by morris berman was my last full-on, non-philosophy read, and it was great for the first half and pretty terrible for the second (he's not a very good urban historian/planner, imo), but i do appreciate the ambition in what he was trying to do despite his whiffing it in the end.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

SB, best of luck with the employment stuff. sorry to hear you were laid off.

Aww, thanks. No problem. So far I'm doing fine, just holed up reading and chilling.Last I was on here, you were pondering a move to Vegas or elsewhere. Glad to hear how it all worked out.

[Southern Buddhist 1]

I neglected to mention another book on my keeper list: The Geography of Thought, by Richard E. Nisbett. Highly recommended -- in fact, the reason I forgot to write about it was because I had given it to my husband to read and thus it wasn't at hand when I was posting.The author was working in the field of "human cognition," even published in it, when one of his Asian grad students casually said, "But of course you know Asians don't think this way at all." The author went all the way back to ancient Greece and China to discover the beginnings of philosophical thought and natural philosophy, and concluded that Asians and Westerners do see the world differently in that sense. So he began to wonder if thousands of years of philosophy had actually produced a measurable change in cognition, and he began measuring it in the lab. Sure enough, Asians see things in context much more readily than Westerners do, and they focus more on background cues and the whole picture rather than prominent or disparate individual elements. After the first 75 pages or so about philosophy, the rest of the book consists of various psych experiments and their results, backing up his hypothesis.If you like psych reading, with all the descriptions of experiments and results (and boy, do I), and if you're into Eastern thought or Asian culture (and boy, am I), it's a great book. Even if you're not, it's a well-considered explanation for cultural differences and an enjoyably well-written book. I think a lot of FCPers would enjoy it.

[hank213 1,823]

Just picked up Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko.

[BigDMcGee 3,355]

Flatland

[Tactical Bear 3]

an enjoyably well-written book.

Nerdy question (directed at Southern Buddhist, but open to anyone who wishes to attempt an answer):You are, quite obviously, either a well-trained or well-practiced writer. I have probably read 20-30 of your posts, and though I couldn't point to what it is, specifically, that leads me to that conclusion -- syntax? grammar? a use of dashes and parentheses that reminds me of myself (and my planet-sized ego)? -- it is readily apparent to me that you can find your way around a blank piece of paper. So, to the matter at hand: you obviously understand how to get jiggy with some adverbs and adjectives and some compounding with the hyphens and shit. I can't remember learning the rule, but I hyphenate quite often, as you'll see above. If I'm using two words to express one concept, I try to hyphenate. If it's three words, I do the same (assuming the phrase comes before the noun it modifies, and not after, though I'm not at all confident that's correct). And to the crux: is the phrase I quoted above correct? or should it be "an enjoyably-well-written book?"