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Just wanted to see what the fuss was about. After this I have "1776" waiting on me.
OK, so 7 days ago Shantaram was next. You read that thing in a WEEK? That's some heavy-duty reading. Glad you enjoyed it. I'm with you on it's excellence. Shantaram may be in my top 5 books all time, and as I said it's right up there with Lonesome Dove if not surpassed it.igbomb said:
I liked the reader. My aunt recommended it, saying she particularly liked the reader. The audiobook was pretty good. The story was conducive to the audiobook format.God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: Kurt Vonnegut. Fantastic.I've never been a comic book guy. Like many others, I was intrigued by the Watchmen preview and just read the book. I really enjoyed it. Currently halfway through The Dark Knight Returns.Is that the reader with the heavy South African accent? The old lady's voice was terrible. Chaaaaarrrlie...And then the pseudo-tough guy Spider voice was pretty bad too. Somebody else mentioned loving the vocal talent on this audiobook...but I really disagree. I didn't like the story, and I think a big part of it was because of the hokey voices.Cat's Cradle rocks...I think I liked it more than Slaughterhouse.Great book.
Do you ever get to Iowa City for football games? Ever need tickets? PM me as I've been a season ticket holder for years and have extras/interest in meeting fellow Hawkeyes all the time...I liked the reader. My aunt recommended it, saying she particularly liked the reader. The audiobook was pretty good. The story was conducive to the audiobook format.God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: Kurt Vonnegut. Fantastic.I've never been a comic book guy. Like many others, I was intrigued by the Watchmen preview and just read the book. I really enjoyed it. Currently halfway through The Dark Knight Returns.Is that the reader with the heavy South African accent? The old lady's voice was terrible. Chaaaaarrrlie...And then the pseudo-tough guy Spider voice was pretty bad too. Somebody else mentioned loving the vocal talent on this audiobook...but I really disagree. I didn't like the story, and I think a big part of it was because of the hokey voices.Cat's Cradle rocks...I think I liked it more than Slaughterhouse.Great book.
Aw, bummer. Well, I guess it's not for everyone. If you haven't already, you might try Norwegian Wood by the same author. No open-endedness on that one, while still being different and interesting.Just finished the Wind Up Bird Chronicle. It was interesting and different but overall disappointing. Im ok with some open endedness but damn.Ooooo, I can't wait to see your update on this one. About a month ago, I finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which easily slid right into my top 10 all-time favorite books. Better than Kafka on the Shore, which I also loved.
a coming-of-age novel about a hermaphrodite
If you haven't yet, read The Fall. I make it a point to at least once a year.
I'm halfway through it right now. It's not all that suspenseful since I know how everything ends. My main criticism is that the book is too long. I'm halfway through, on about page 200, and already a lot of the same stuff has been repeated several times. The whole book should be about 200 pages. My other criticism is that the authors' political views/biases are evident in the way they phrase things. To compare it to the world of legal writing, it reads more like a brief for one side than like an opinion by a neutral judge. That detracts just a bit from its reliability -- although in this case it's not all that annoying since the side they are on is right, and the side they are arguing against is wrong. Overall, it's a good study of how people's political views can make them very stupid. It also depicts people engaging in one of my major pet peeves: people thinking they are close to 100% certain about something when, not only do they happen to be wrong, but they have no objective reason to be even 50% certain of it. Humans are funny.
Slated to be the next Ridley Scott movie, releasing in 2010. No cast yet, but the plot sounds very interesting.
I'm working on Echo Burning, #5 in the series, right now. You know exactly what you're getting with a Reacher novel, but it hasn't gotten old yet.
For the record, I have finished 60 pages of this book since May 13. At this pace, I will finish it in the summer of 2010.
Very entertaining book. If you read it and loved the story, I highly encourage you to go seek out some of the interviews and writings of the other people on the trip to get their side of the story as well (I think the most famous is a book called "The Climb" or something like that). Krakauer made a lot of people really mad with his account of things.
I haven't read any of the other books, but I did dig around to see what the controversy was about. My take on it was that although there are some disagreements about his account, it seems pretty clear that the tour guides' critical mistake was to not turn around at the cutoff time and to keep driving to the top. Bad, bad move.
There were lots of bad moves. 8 people dead is a pretty big mistake...and you have to put those mistakes on the tour guides as it is their job to make sure that doesn't happen. That's not the problem that people have with Krakauer. He really criticized the tour companies and blamed their greed for the disaster (while not detailing or even mentioning how freakish the weather was and what a fluke a number of the things that went wrong were). He also commented and gave accounts of a number of things that he wasn't present for and had no knowledge of (particularly the Japanese meeting up with the Indians). The general consensus of all the other accounts (and there are a bunch of books/videos/etc) was that Krakauer was a jerk in the book and made himself a hero when all he did was sit around. I don't know. I think everybody is bitter and Krakauer got a lot of heat because he made a bunch of money off of the whole thing. Did he 'make things up' and sensationalize his own account? I'm sure he did. But that's what anybody would do if they were writing that story. No matter how you look at it...the book is a really good read and the whole story is amazing.
See I don't get the whole 'made himself a hero' thing. While I can't speak to what was truth or fiction, I think he was pretty forthright that he a) didn't really do anything to help the situation and b) his mistaken identity snafu may have cost a man his life.
Read this one years ago. I would also recommend it.
1776 is a great read.I'm reading Harry Potter.Just wanted to see what the fuss was about. After this I have "1776" waiting on me.
Just read that this will be the new main selection for Oprah's book club. I don't know what that means in the larger scope. I don't know that I've ever read a book that she had in her book club. But I still thought it was a very good read.
While Oprah picking a book shouldn't make you run out and pick up the book, it's also not a reason to avoid a book. After all, she did pick the Pulitzer Prize winning The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a great book that's about to come out in the theaters.I've got Wroblewski's book next on my pile to read and am looking forward to it.
she also picked steinbecks of east of eden
Was planning a re-read as well but couldn't find my copy, so I went to Borders to pick one up. Huge space in the Ws where this would have been. Went to two other bookstores--no luck. Clearly a lot of people have decided to try this book again after his death. I'm still horribly sad about this.
