Book thread

[Richie Allen]

Just finished this and it was great. I highly recommend it.

[heyzeus]

Has anyone else started the new Jonathan Franzen novel, "Freedom?"

Also, a long shot: Has anyone else read "2666" by Roberto Bolano and can tell me what it all means?

Yes, I've read it. No, I can't tell you what it means. Hell, even the New Yorker book club people couldn't really say what it means, simply that it was powerful and disturbing. I liked it, but the middle 400 pages are very, very difficult. The New York Times columnist spent most of his article talking about art and Bolano as a writer while mentioning that 2666 is a "capstone" and that Bolano is bold and unflinching.

It probably needs a disclaimer: Don't read 2666 if you have recurring tendencies of sadness or depression. Parts of 2666 will stay with you in waking nightmares; consult your doctor before reading 2666.

Okay, I feel a lot of relief. I'm about 70 pages from the end of this 900 page book and I don't feel any closer to an understanding of how all of its various parts interrelate, or what the overall message might be other than "the world is a cruel, uncaring place."

For those who are interested, the book is loosely about the hundreds of rapes and murders in Ciudad Juarez of young women who work in the maquiladoras. Most of them were never solved or really ever investigated. There are about 400 pages of the book that retell, in great specificity, the details of maybe 150 of these murders.

Basically, this book has [expletive] my dreams for several months now. It's amazing, really.

[JackofDiamonds]

Has anyone else started the new Jonathan Franzen novel, "Freedom?"

Also, a long shot: Has anyone else read "2666" by Roberto Bolano and can tell me what it all means?

Yes, I've read it. No, I can't tell you what it means. Hell, even the New Yorker book club people couldn't really say what it means, simply that it was powerful and disturbing. I liked it, but the middle 400 pages are very, very difficult. The New York Times columnist spent most of his article talking about art and Bolano as a writer while mentioning that 2666 is a "capstone" and that Bolano is bold and unflinching.

It probably needs a disclaimer: Don't read 2666 if you have recurring tendencies of sadness or depression. Parts of 2666 will stay with you in waking nightmares; consult your doctor before reading 2666.

Okay, I feel a lot of relief. I'm about 70 pages from the end of this 900 page book and I don't feel any closer to an understanding of how all of its various parts interrelate, or what the overall message might be other than "the world is a cruel, uncaring place."

For those who are interested, the book is loosely about the hundreds of rapes and murders in Ciudad Juarez of young women who work in the maquiladoras. Most of them were never solved or really ever investigated. There are about 400 pages of the book that retell, in great specificity, the details of maybe 150 of these murders.

Basically, this book has [expletive] my dreams for several months now. It's amazing, really.

That, and, if you're poor, you don't exist.

[StatmanCrothers]

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

[The Third Man]

I read the first section of 2666 - the part about the writers, or whatever, so I didn't get to the brutal stuff. Then I had to return it to the library so I haven't picked it back up yet, I may grab it when I'm back home next weekend.

[Adrian Wapcaplet]

Concur on Bill Bryson--I'm a little over halfway through The Lost Continent, and it's made me laugh out loud constantly. Also enjoyed Mother Tongue and A Short History of Everything. Haven't read Thunderbolt Kid, but they did a stage version of it at the Des Moines Playhouse last year, and it rocked.

I was impressed by the beauty of Roberto Bolano's writing in 2666, but was ultimately disappointed for the following reason:

[SHOW]

I prefer books with endings.

I've read some great baseball books this summer, including Dan Epstein's Big Hair and Plastic Grass, Emma Span's 90% of This Game Is Half Mental, and a collection called Top of the Order, in which 25 writers contribute short essays about their all-time favorite players. (It's an interesting collection. Buzz Bissinger writes about Pujols, someone else writes about Lou Gehrig, but many of the others are quite unexpected and thus entertaining: Mookie Wilson, Michael Jordan, Crash Davis, and Neifi Perez, to name a few.)

A friend recently noticed all the Kerouac books on my shelves and brought me one I didn't have: Gerald Nicosia's biography Memory Babe. So that's next on my list along with James Ellroy's memoir, The Hilliker Curse.

[Jocephus]

just finished this, great read, very informative

[SHOW]

[Adrian Wapcaplet]

Forgot to mention this one: Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He does some interesting experimental stuff with pictures and typography in this one, but it's integral to the story and doesn't distract from the read. I recommend it.

[2nd Timer]

Has anyone else started the new Jonathan Franzen novel, "Freedom?"

It hasn't lived up to a Time magazine cover after 150 pages.

[cardinalkarp]

For those that enjoy reading baseball books I just finished "The Bullpen Gospels". It was a really entertaining book about life in the minor leagues from a relievers point of view. It dips into a few other non baseball related issues & is really a nice, easy book to read and like I said is really entertaining.