Okay, we are halfway through autumn, time to get a check on
our respective reading habits.  Not that reading grex itself on a daily
basis wouldnt keep one quite literate, but there are fine works of
fiction and non-fiction out there that everyone should know about.  

Remember, "A chapter a day keeps your brian cells at play"

69 responses total.

  I've read several interesting works in the last three months or so...
I read Herman Wouk's 1951 Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Caine Mutiny"
which is an excellent book about the effects of war on a young man.

I also did something which I rarely do, which is read a current
bestseller.  In this case, "The Lost World", which is Michael Crichton's
sequel to Jurasic Park.  This I thought was a little disappointing,
because the actions mimicked the first book and movie too closely.  It
didnt seem to say anything that wasnt pointed out in the first book,
so although it has lots of good action, I question whether this work has
an artistic (as opposed to financial) reason for being.

Currently I am reading "Sophie's Choice" bny William Styron, which I
picked up at a library booksale for 10 cents.  Not very far into this yet
but it seems like a good deal I guess

I also read part of a biography of Lenny Bruce.  That book is on my
bedroom floor someplace and one day when I actually find the thing, I
hope to finish it, because he was a fascinating person.

Current reading:

  Vladimir Nabokov, _Speak Memory_. The autobiography of a great
    20th century novelist, literary critic, and lepidopterist.
    Fascinating snapshots of aristocratic life in Russia in the
    last years before the fall of the Tsar, narrated with Nabokov's
    typical verbal magic.

  Susan Holtzer, _Curly Smoke_. Her latest mystery novel, set in
    Ann Arbor as was her previous one. Susan was a long-time
    Ann Arbor resident before moving to San Francisco, where she
    now resides. She is a figure of some historical importance
    in Ann Arbor computer conferencing, having been the first
    president of Arbornet back in 1985-86, after it became a
    non-profit entity. (This was long before Arbornet's merger
    with M-Net, although Susan was an avid M-Netter as well.)
    The heroine of her novel is, not surprisingly, a computer
    consultant.

  Jan Tschichold, _The Form of the Book_. Essays on typography by
    one of its leading 20th century figures.

  Clifford Burke, _Type from the Desktop_. A book on computer
    typography.

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Well, at this instant I'm reading a Digital Webster program that I'm not
terribly happy with:

 lep-i-dop-ter-ist: a specialist in lepidopterology.

 lep-i-dop-ter-ol-o-gy: a branch of entomology concerned with lepidoptera.

 lep-i-dop-tera: insects that are lepidopterans.

 lep-i-dop-ter-an [NL Lepidoptera,  fr. lepid- + Gk pteron wing P more at
  FEATHER] (ca. 1902): any of a large order (Lepidoptera) of insects
  comprising the butterflies, mots, and skippers that as adults have four
  broad or lanceolate wings usu. covered with minute overlapping and often
  brightly colored scales and that as larvae are caterpillars.

 mot [F, word, saying, fr. L muttum grunt P more at MOTTO]: a pithy or witty
  saying.

Well, OK, finally.

Just finished:

    _The Black Bird_ by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark.  I didn't
    think this was as good as the other Grofield novels.  On the whole,
    nothing fabulous.

    _Shadow's End_ by Sheri Tepper.  Just started this.

    _The Shapechanger's Wife_ by Sharon Shinn. A rather fine fantasy, a bit
    reminescent in style of Peter Beagle.  A plainly told story of love and
    transformation

,

Hi Freida, and welcome to Grex! It gets easier.

(Oops, almost forgot--you're an olduser. :) Well anyway, welcome back.)

<John, love him, is rather getting on, you know.>

Let's see, I'm almost done with both Chalres DeLints _Dreams Underfoot_
and Harry Turtledoves book-whose-title-I-don't-remember-but-it's-about
an-alien-invasion-during-WWII.
I'm also reading a UNIX textbook and about 4 different magazines.

Let's see, the last thing I read was Uncle Wizzmo's New Used Car
by Rodney Greenblat, and Katie and the Smallest Bear (author forgotten).
Oh, adult books?  What are those?  

re: #1:  When Sophie's Choice was first published, I read it and
*loved* it.  Then I saw the movie when it came out.  An outstanding
movie, and Meryl Streep was excellent.  However, it remains for me one of
the most disturbing movies I have ever seen, and the story still haunts
me.  It was one of those movies I should never have seen.

Item 88 in Fall Agora has been linked to Books item 44  - those enjoying this
item in Agora might like to come over to browse books.

Valerie, isnt there a movie called "Bright Lights, Big City" starring Michael
J. Fox?

The only book on my desk that isnt school related is "We the Living" by Ayn
Rand. I am been moving slowly through that book due to time constraints. 

  I read "bright lights big city" a couple of years ago,  It is much better
than the movie, but the movie wasnt bad.
  Its about a yuppie using drugs to deal with the collapse of his 
marriage and haunting memories of the death of his mother.  I thought it
was quite good, but it sone of those gen x books that noone not of 
that certian age and time is going to understand that well.

Actually, I think it was written about ten years prior to the onset of
'generation x'

reading Hitchhiker ... for the first time (hard to believe, but true.)

UNIX for dummies...

'sacajawea'

Uniform Commercial Code: Tips, Tricks, and Traps. ;)

Just this week started reading the Dune series.  Finished re-reading Mission
Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard.  Opps! Dune by Frank Herbert.

The X Factor by George Plimpton  and about a dozen magazines.

_A Thousand Acres_ by Jane Smiley for my Literature class

_Darkness at Sethanon_ by Raymond Feist -- the fourth book in my favorite
series (the Riftwar series).  I can't put these books down!  I just finished
_Silverthorn_...it took me two days.  =)

Are you enjoying _A Thousand Acres_?  (I liked it a whole lot.)

Spent yesterday reading _Diminished_Capacity_, by Sherwood Kirally.  Here's
a taste:

        It's always been Uncle Rollie's goal to publish the poetry
        written by fish that live in the Mississippi River....  And
        the main impediment to his doing this is not, as you might
        think, getting the fish to write poetry, but in getting any-
        one else to take their work seriously.

        For many years now, Rollie Zerbs has been going to the end of
        the pier below his blufftop house every day and checking the
        paper in his old Royal typewriter, which he leaves out when-
        ever weather and river allow.  What he's done is attach lines
        of different lengths to each key on that typewriter, and let
        them down into the water, hooked and baited.  Periodically, a
        fish will yank on one of those lines and depress a key on the
        typewriter.  And gradually, over the course of weeks and months
        and years, the fish have wound up writing things.

Poor Uncle Rollie, however is getting a bit senile now, and his sister-in-
law wants him put away.  So the narrator is called home to "help."  That
help takes the form of trying to sell Uncle Rollie's very rare 1909
Wildfire Schulte.  Unfortunately the narrator recently suffered a knock on
the head and his memory isn't functioning any better than Uncle Rollie's.

Obviously, I liked it a lot.  A nice story of memory and love.

Fickle reader that I am, the books I listed above have been
temporarily set aside so that I can concentrate on Paul Auster's
_City of Glass_, a mystery novel of sorts set in New York City
and published ten years ago. Auster is the author of the recent
film _Smoke_ and author and codirector of its sequel _Blue in the
Face_.  Haven't gotten very far into it, but the protagonist of
_City of Glass_ reminds me a lot of the William Hurt character in
_Smoke_.

Sherri Tepper's new novel _Shadow's End_ didn't really satisfy me.  Lots of
good stuff along the way.  You can count on Tepper for that.  But she thumps
the message a little bit too hard, and then ends the story with a deus that
isn't even ex machina, as all good sci fi gods are expected to be.

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ABC's of Nature, Success with House Plants, The Living Planet by David
Attenborough, Animal-Speak by Ted Andrews, New Choices in Natural Healing,
Also, Jurrasic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton.  I was confused
by The Lost World because the character of Ian Malcomn inn Jurrasic Park died
 of leg injuries, only to come back as a main character in The Lost World.

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Try _Slan_ sometime. A. E. Van Vogt.

 "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee  I had this as a kid, and I read it
for English, but retained very little of it. It will be nice to read it again
and again. Won the Pulitzer in 1961

Re #21:  I'm only on the fourth chapter, but I'm enjoying it so far.  

"A Son of the Circus" by John Irving.  Just started it.  It's interesting,
but it's no Garp.  Nor even as good as "The Water Method Man" which was my
favorite of Irving's.

_Notes of a Hanging Judge_ by Stanley Crouch (Oxford University 
Press 1990).  Crouch was jazz critic for The Village Voice for 
several years and, like Nat Hentoff before him, branched out into 
social criticism with the Voice's encouragement.  This book is a 
collection of essays, mostly from the Voice, from 1979 to 1989.  I 
picked it up because of a profile of Crouch in the current New 
Yorker, which brought out that he's a man with strong opinions and 
a nasty gift for bull's-eye polemical writing (eg, he called the 
Million-Man March on Washington "the _Waterworld_ of black 
politics").  Also, I remember someone either here or on Mnet raving 
about _Hanging Judge_ a few years ago.  Sure enough, it's a great 
read, whether or not you agree with anything Crouch says.  Much of 
it is one African American addressing his fellow African Americans, 
but it's still instructive and always entertaining.  I've been 
trying to think who Crouch's white counterpart is -- the stern 
conscience who sees through all our pious and cowardly BS -- and 
I'm beginning to think we don't have anyone exactly like him.  

Gore Vidal.

(My mom adores Gore Vidal)

Well, I had to leave work sick yesterday, and had an afternoon with not
much to do, so I put down the John Irving and picked up "The Shipping News"
which we got in our pass-around book club.  (We're looking for new members,
by the way - there's 26 women, and every year we buy 26 books and pass 
them around so that each person gets them for two weeks - if you're 
interested, send me mail - it means kicking in for the price of one book,
and delivering the selection to the next person on the list every two 
weeks)  I don't have the book handy at the moment, so I don't remember
the author, but it won a Pulitzer prize and it's a good read.  About a
loser type "third rate newspaperman" who loses his philandering wife and so 
decides to take his two kids and move back to the family's ancestral home
in Newfoundland.  If you don't like fish or boats, this is not the book
for you.

Gore Vidal!  You're absolutely right, Mary.  My mom, who also
adored him, once gave me a book of his Nixon-era essays which
I read and reread alomost continuously for a year.

  I read a NY times article on Vidal.  I was surprised to find out that
he's gay and has been living with a guy for many many years.  I've liked
Vidal since I found out he hates William F. Buckley's guts

Now now Richard, your views are showing. Vidal probably just had a little
disagreement in principal with WFB. Surely he did not "hate" his "guts".
We must aspire to accurate reporting lest we upset the children and have
to stay up all night calming them. :)

<slump> principle  - not the administrator - 

  No Adbarr, it is no secret, there are no two celebrities who dislike
each other more intensely than Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley.  They
havent been on speaking terms in many years, and once a couple of years
ago Buckley was booked on a Nightline panel and walked out at the very
last minute when he got to the studio and saw Vidal was also on the panel.
Vidal said he'd have walked out if Buckley hadnt.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss