What are you currently reading?

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

With regard to Frank Herbert , there are some species of fungus that have upwards
of 500 types of sexual morphology.
This enabled them to survive and prosper.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

After reading Blood Meridian, which was an amazing, mesmerizing novel, I needed something light. So I’m now into The Dinner by Herman Koch, translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett. And it is indeed light. Description from Amazon:

It's a summer's evening in Amsterdam, and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant for dinner. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse -- the banality of work, the triviality of the holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen-year-old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable, insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children. As civility and friendship disintegrate, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

Tautly written, incredibly gripping, and told by an unforgettable narrator, The Dinner promises to be the topic of countless dinner party debates. Skewering everything from parenting values to pretentious menus to political convictions, this novel reveals the dark side of genteel society and asks what each of us would do in the face of unimaginable tragedy.

Sounds like My Dinner With Andre, but with meat to it. But so far, the meat is overcooked and has no nutritional value. But I’ll plod on.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Amsterdam is a nexus of sailing ships and so was exposed to a lot of different
cultures quite early on.

Much of the Netherlands was created by advanced hydrodynamics.

They learned to harness the power of the Sea.

The ancient Hawaiians built large and sophisticated fish farms .

Ahem
'
I found a copy of the book "Life" by Keith Richards recently and it's a good read.



The low lands were pumped free of water with windpower.

That's what a lot of those windmills were doing.

Most commercial trade across oceans was done on sail powered ships.

The early migration of the Honored ancestors was powered by a Zephyr.

[scrivener]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli (2012)


Jake and Lily are twins, and this story, narrated by both in alternating chapters (like Paul Zindel’s The Pigman) traces their special relationship at a time when one of them is ready to form a separate, non-twin identity while the other doesn’t even grasp the concept. Jake is hanging out with some neighborhood boys Lily can’t stand. Lily, left to spend increasing amounts of time alone or with her grandfather, searches for a hobby or friendship to replace the void her brother has left her.

One thing I like about Jake and Lily is Jerry Spinelli’s use of the short chapter, some of which are just one or two sentences long. The varying chapter lengths, combined with the alternating points of view, create a pacing and voice young readers will enjoy.

I appreciate, too, that the main plot is not thematically the big idea. We are caught up in Lily’s anguish about the increasing distance between her and Jake, but what we really see at almost every turn (through both narrators’ eyes) are themes of noncomformity. The case could be made that the real theme is bullying, and Spinelli handles that theme with uncommon sensitivity, as when Jake finds himself caught up in bullying activity without really knowing why or how. Maybe the difference is subtle (or negligible), but it seems to me that the author’s angle is to focus on how valuable it is not to be like everybody else, a theme highlighted by the twins’ parents and grandfather.

There’s something a little too easy about the way the story plays out, and I don’t know what it is. I like how the story ends, but I’m not convinced it could have worked out this neatly.

I have known many students who found themselves uncomfortably on the border between the cool kids and the loners, easily friends with both, not sure the trade-off for hanging out on either side of the line is worth the benefits. It’s for these students I would most recommend this novel. Others will find it at least an enjoyable read.

[scrivener]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Rules by Cynthia Lord (2006)
A 2007 Newbery Honor book



Catherine’s little brother David is autistic, so social cues and expectations are a puzzle to him. In order to help David with social appropriateness and to avoid his embarrassing her in public, Catherine has written several rules about behavior. David takes most things very literally, and rules are something he can understand, as with “Late doesn’t mean not coming,” or “Keep your pants on in public.”

David’s need for near-constant attention can be trying, even for a family who obviously loves him. Catherine often feels like a second thought in her family, and her father’s extended working hours mean more of the load is carried by her mother. The strain on David’s family in just managing him from day to day feels like those ever-tensing rope-bridges in movies, coming slowly undone, fiber by fiber, until something catastrophic happens. Or something heroic.

Catherine doesn’t seem to be aware of it, but however forced-upon the responsibility of caring for David has been, it has taught her an uncommon sensitivity for others, something that emerges when she strikes up a friendship with Jason, a wheelchair-bound boy around her age who can’t speak. Jason “speaks” to others through the use of a book containing word-cards, pointing out sentiments like, “Tell. Girl. Stop.” Their friendship begins roughly, but it blooms when Catherine asks if she can add a few more words to Jason’s book, words that make it possible for Jason to communicate beyond the utility of literal meaning.

I bought this at a book fair without knowing much about it, and when I read the synopsis on the back, I was pretty sure I was going to hate it. I doubted the writer could write a book about a girl with an autistic brother without making it all Afterschool Special. The world does not need books about how to live with an autistic sibling; it needs books where autistic children are characters in real people’s families; in other words, David would need to be a character and not the plot.

But I really, really like the first eighty percent of this novel, and it’s because Cynthia Lord creates a main character who, for all her expected pre-teen flaws, is a decent human being who has not only the inclination to do nice things for others, but the assertiveness and creativity to do them in ways that seem like natural expressions of her personality. This is not a novel about living with an autistic sibling; it’s a novel about one believable character, driven by her specific experiences and needs. And because Catherine is so well-developed, nothing feels especially preachy or teachy.

Until the last part of the novel, which just seems to happen too quickly and too nicely. I don’t mind the lesson Catherine sums up in her rule about the aquarium; what I mind is that it feels like a “Hey, in case you missed it, here’s what I learned through all of this” message, and it’s completely unnecessary. Not only that, but it feels unearned. Lord could have taken a few more chapters to deal with Catherine’s anguish and then given us the aquarium lesson with just a bit more subtlety. The result is a novel that feels almost great, which is only a shame because it felt like it was leading to true greatness.

Still, Catherine’s voice is so well formed that I would beg Lord to visit her again in a few years and let us know what’s going on with her in high school.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

An intriguing tome surfaced at one of the local thrift shops.

Titled "From:The President : Richard Nixons Secret Files"


Edited by Bruce Oudes it is a first edition from

Harper and Row.

I had never heard of this book before.

ISBN 0-06-015953-7 .

[Walkoff Balk]

Re: What are you currently reading?

http://shopping.yahoo.com/news/10-bo...213232125.html

Sorry, but I haven't read any of them.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

http://shopping.yahoo.com/news/10-bo...213232125.html

Sorry, but I haven't read any of them.

Curiosity got the best of me. So I took a peek at the list, which is heavily post-modernistic American. Of the ten on the list, I've read three.

—The Road by Cormac McCarthy. One of the best Amercian novels I've read in a while.

—2666 by Roberto Bolaño. A masterpiece. Might be the best novel written so far in the Twenty-first century.

—Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson. A very ambitious novel, somewhat overrated in my opinion, though I really liked the early portion of the book, especially the first chapter. However, I was disappointed by the direction the novel took at the end. This is one of those novels that get high praise as well as scathing criticism. I'm somewhere in the middle.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Just finished The Shining by Stephen King. Better than I thought it would be, a somewhat different ending than Stanley Kubrick's movie version.

And I just started The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. Bolaño is somewhat of a cult literary figure, much of his works having been (and still being) published posthumously. It's often been said Bolaño is the most prolific dead writer in history. He just keeps churning them out.


He has also quickly become my favorite writer. 2666 (see above post) and The Savage Detectives are his two best works.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Superb reads each.

I am reading a book called
The Past at Present

in Issaquah.

The book is the history of Issaquah by

Edwards R. Fish.

This little town predates Seattle.

The original encampment of Aboriginals is at the end

of Sunset Way . Instead of getting on the freeway off of Sunset,

continue on a mud trail to where the last Aboriginals of

Issaquah were herded to and then stamped out.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Currently reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. Published in 1981, many considered this his best work, more so than his more well-known The Satanic Verses, which resulted in a fatwā issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini.

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Fascinating book.

That guy has had some bumps in his road.

Currently reading 'Molehunt' by David Wise.

The main topic of the book is James Angleton,enigmatic head

of counterintelligence within the cia.

The Philby case embarassed him and led to extreme paranoia.

He was an Orchid fanatic and Merritt Huntington of

Kensington Orchids was an aquaintance.

Angleton remarked that

" The Ladies Slipper is my favorite because it's the hardest to grow"

[lensperson]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Angleton travelled abroad as an exotic orchid dealer.

Hugh Ashmead was often the alias.

Jim was a master angler and tied his own flies.


Sam Papich was his fishing buddy for nineteen years.

Papich was the main fbi-cia liason person.

[Kaonohi]

Re: What are you currently reading?

Lately I have been reading collections of SF short stories and novella from The Science Fiction Megapack, I am up to volume 5. I get them online for $0.99 on my iPod, and each has 25 unique stories.

[Honoruru]

Re: What are you currently reading?

It's been a very slow reading year for me. I just finished The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean. This is the second novel I've read by Gabriel Vásquez, a young Colombian writer, and he's turning out to be someone to watch. This particular novel is simply excellent, well-crafted and, as far as I can tell, superbly translated.

Now, I'm just into Ender's Game, a sci-fi novel by Orson Scott Card, soon to be a major motion picture.