Book thread

[Radbird]

The Plot Against America is the Roth book you're referring to, right Luke?

[lukethedrifter]

That's it.

[Jocephus]

what...is...book?

[heyzeus]

Apparently, I do a lot of weird things.

I just started Consider the Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction and essays. The title story is truly, twistedly hilarious. Gourmet magazine sent Wallace to cover an annual lobster festival in Maine, expecting him to write about the delicious culinary offerings. Instead, he gets bored covering the festival and devotes about 15 pages to a scholarly study of whether lobsters can feel pain, and therefore if it is ethical to boil them alive.

He was a true contrarian genius.

[lukethedrifter]

Apparently, I do a lot of weird things.

That may be true. However, my Glenn Beck loving co worker is the sort of guy who [expletive] about the government and subsidies and handouts- and as it turns out, Jews- yet is one of the laziest, wants only to do what he wants to do not what the job calls for, weasels I know. I think he views himself as some sort of Working Man's Intellectual except in the world of modern Conservatism you can't call yourself an intellectual.

[Freed Roger]

Non-fiction/history - The Big Burn by Timothy Egan is a good read. about a huge forest fire 1910 fire in the Bitterroots. sounds hardly worthy of a whole book, but the author's style keeps the story moving/interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Burn-Teddy-R ... 0618968415

This guy also wrote "Lasso the Wind" - which was pretty good non-fiction/history too.

[JackofDiamonds]

Apparently, I do a lot of weird things.

I just started Consider the Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction and essays. The title story is truly, twistedly hilarious. Gourmet magazine sent Wallace to cover an annual lobster festival in Maine, expecting him to write about the delicious culinary offerings. Instead, he gets bored covering the festival and devotes about 15 pages to a scholarly study of whether lobsters can feel pain, and therefore if it is ethical to boil them alive.

He was a true contrarian genius.

Have you read The Girl With Curious Hair? I have Consider the Lobster on my desk, the last of my DFW anthology marathon, but I am finishing up with aforementioned now. There're some crazy pieces in there.

[heyzeus]

Apparently, I do a lot of weird things.

I just started Consider the Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction and essays. The title story is truly, twistedly hilarious. Gourmet magazine sent Wallace to cover an annual lobster festival in Maine, expecting him to write about the delicious culinary offerings. Instead, he gets bored covering the festival and devotes about 15 pages to a scholarly study of whether lobsters can feel pain, and therefore if it is ethical to boil them alive.

He was a true contrarian genius.

Have you read The Girl With Curious Hair? I have Consider the Lobster on my desk, the last of my DFW anthology marathon, but I am finishing up with aforementioned now. There're some crazy pieces in there.

Haven't attempted The Girl With Curious Hair yet, but I got Brief Interviews with Hideous Men for Christmas, so it's on my list. The first piece in Consider the Lobster, about the porn convention in Vegas, is eye opening and wonderful. I miss Wallace already.

[JackofDiamonds]

Apparently, I do a lot of weird things.

I just started Consider the Lobster, a collection of David Foster Wallace's nonfiction and essays. The title story is truly, twistedly hilarious. Gourmet magazine sent Wallace to cover an annual lobster festival in Maine, expecting him to write about the delicious culinary offerings. Instead, he gets bored covering the festival and devotes about 15 pages to a scholarly study of whether lobsters can feel pain, and therefore if it is ethical to boil them alive.

He was a true contrarian genius.

Have you read The Girl With Curious Hair? I have Consider the Lobster on my desk, the last of my DFW anthology marathon, but I am finishing up with aforementioned now. There're some crazy pieces in there.

Haven't attempted The Girl With Curious Hair yet, but I got Brief Interviews with Hideous Men for Christmas, so it's on my list. The first piece in Consider the Lobster, about the porn convention in Vegas, is eye opening and wonderful. I miss Wallace already.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is phenomenal. My favorite piece has to do with a pop quiz on ethics or morality or psychology, I don't remember which, being revised as it's written by the professor with caveats and corollaries.

[StatmanCrothers]

i'm re-reading the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold because there's a new Miles Vorkosigan book coming out this year ... (she's written a couple of other series since the last Vorkosigan book)

start with "Shards of Honor" or the 2-in-1 called "Cordelia's Honor"

she's grown into an incredible writer now, and I was a little shocked going back to the first book, at how clunky the opening paragraphs are. It gets better pretty quickly, and the characters and situations are top-notch.

the original books were not written in chronological order--if you'd read them in the order published, you'd be jumping forward and backtracking, but I believe the new one is not an "insert" it will come last (latest) in the story arc as well as being the latest written.