Book thread

[Jocephus]

Hello to FOX News star Bill O'Reilly. Bill has become quite the author. He's had two recent best sellers "Killing Kennedy" and "Killing Lincoln." He also wrote a book that was not nearly as popular "The Natural Peaceful Death of Taft." What were you thinking?

The truth is, Bill O'Reilly, this is true, is now working on his next book out this fall. This time it's about the killing of Jesus. It will be the first time in history Jesus' death is blamed on Obamacare.

[Freed Roger]

Bill O'Reilly has written another godawful "Killing" book, this one "Killing Reagan". Apparently it is as crappy as all his other crappy books, but this one has gotten George Will mad.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

I love a good conservative douchecanoe cat fight. "He's my Reagan. No he's my Reagan. Mine. Mine. meow. rawrh."

[Donnie Ebert]

About two years ago I started rating each book I read on Goodreads, mostly just to have a list of what I've read. Goodreads just sent me my end-of-year summary, and it says I've read 26 books this year, or about one every two weeks. I would've guessed more, but there were some longer books on there (like The Passage which first came to my attention in this thread...I also started The Twelve but could not finish it). I read 9,969 pages with an average book length of 383 pages, but I read mostly on a Kindle, so page number is a meaningless term anymore. The longest book read was The Passage. The shortest was Between the World and Me.

My favorites were In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, The Rosie Effect, Station Eleven, and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.

My least favorites were probably Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis: the meticiulously detailed research about WWII kept me going...but the plot and characters just made it feel like work to plod through.

Next year I will shoot for 30 books and probably end up around 26.

[lukethedrifter]

I'm going to sit my ass down and read The Corrections.

[heyzeus]

I'm going to sit my ass down and read The Corrections.

Oh, it's good. Far and away the best thing Franzen's written.* I'm pretty sure St. Jude, the fictional suburb in which it takes place, is a stand-in for Webster Groves, where he grew up.


*if you want to read something bad but interesting but still really bad, his first novel, 27th City, is about St. Louis. Kinda. In it, a descendant of Gandhi becomes chief of police in St. Louis and she and her friends use sexual coercion and blackmail to reunite the city and county and create some sort of totalitarian dictatorship, and a property scheme of some sort. If that sounds like a mess, it is!

[Freed Roger]

JacksonLand

History, but pretty easy reading. Andrew Jackson vs Cherokee John Ross and native Americans. Andrew Jackson was quite a conniving [expletive]. Dick Cheney, only he did some of his own dirty work.

hmm, Sean Penn as Andrew Jackson?

[Donnie Ebert]

I'm going to sit my ass down and read The Corrections.

Oh, it's good. Far and away the best thing Franzen's written.* I'm pretty sure St. Jude, the fictional suburb in which it takes place, is a stand-in for Webster Groves, where he grew up.

Agreed on it being his best, mostly I think because it's a funny book. His two more recent books take themselves too seriously.

*if you want to read something bad but interesting but still really bad, his first novel, 27th City, is about St. Louis. Kinda. In it, a descendant of Gandhi becomes chief of police in St. Louis and she and her friends use sexual coercion and blackmail to reunite the city and county and create some sort of totalitarian dictatorship, and a property scheme of some sort. If that sounds like a mess, it is!

I have 27th City on my "to read" list, but I always seem to find something else I'd rather read.

[heyzeus]

I'm going to sit my ass down and read The Corrections.

Oh, it's good. Far and away the best thing Franzen's written.* I'm pretty sure St. Jude, the fictional suburb in which it takes place, is a stand-in for Webster Groves, where he grew up.

Agreed on it being his best, mostly I think because it's a funny book. His two more recent books take themselves too seriously.

*if you want to read something bad but interesting but still really bad, his first novel, 27th City, is about St. Louis. Kinda. In it, a descendant of Gandhi becomes chief of police in St. Louis and she and her friends use sexual coercion and blackmail to reunite the city and county and create some sort of totalitarian dictatorship, and a property scheme of some sort. If that sounds like a mess, it is!

I have 27th City on my "to read" list, but I always seem to find something else I'd rather read.

If you're a St. Louisan, it's interesting, because it's rooted in the unique political landscape of the city. A lot of famous figures and businesses are obviously represented. But it's also a terrible novel. There's a reason he's disowned it. I don't blame you for always having something else higher up on your list.

I'm reading Purity now. It's not very good, just like Freedom wasn't. At some point, he became a very obvious writer. Nothing resonates as true, or compelling from a character standpoint. Everything's cloaked in several layers of remove. Irony really is the shackles of youth!

[heyzeus]

Just finished Purity by Franzen. It should be retitled "A Mess From A Middle Aged White Guy Who Loves Birds But Hates the Internet and Women."

[go birds]

Harper Lee died