BOOKS THREAD

The Dark Tower series is pretty much the end of the road for me.

I picked up The White Cascade by Krist after all the recommendations on this thread and I'm really not into it. I'm 82 pages in and nothing has happened yet. I know Krist has to throw in the railroad history, but he really needed to break it up a little.

 

Just finished the first book of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series.
For a "teen series", not bad. An easy read and sort of interesting. Also working through Johnny Cash's 2nd bio, man that guy got away with a lot of stuff! He'd never get away with that nowadays with Twitter/Facebook and TMZ.com.

 

I like railroad history, though.

I hadn't seen the book mentioned in this thread, but I guess I missed a lengthy discussion at some point. I'll have to search.

 

I like history in general, but this was so repetitive I wanted to tear my hair out. The book itself was 267 pages without citations. The actual avalanche didn't happen until page 162.
I read this type of nonfiction all the time and this was a huge disappointment.

 

I just finished Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George, about the early days of professional wrestling. I saw it at the Book Nook (a local book store located next door to Montgomery Ward in a mall that has long since been gone) when I was about 8 years old, and my folks wouldn't buy it for me. I found it last weekend at the local library's book sale, and started it that night. It really wasn't worth the 30-something year wait. Just a bunch of random, short stories about rasslin back in the day. There wasn't a lot of cohesion throughout the book.

Oh well....I did pick up a bunch of other stuff at the sale that I can start now.

 

It's interesting you say that, Flip. Going on its inclusion in the Sports Illustrated top 100 sports books, I tracked down a really nice copy on ebay and paid $30 for it (more to get it shipped to Australia).
But I thought it was all over the place.
Happily, I'm getting more bang for my buck from recent purchases Once They Heard the Cheers (by the great, the mighty, the incomparable WC Heinz), Only in America (Jack Newfield) and Among the Thugs (Bill Buford).

 

Just finished "Room" by Emma Donoghue. It's told entirely in the voice of 5-year old Jack who has lived his whole life in Room with his mother who was kidnapped and held captive from the age of 19. Strange and beautiful book that won't quite let go of me.

 

I've read very good things about it. I'm adding it to my list (I think you and I often like the same books.).

 

Let me know what you think of it.

 

I just put it on hold at the library. I'm 117th in line, so it might be awhile.

 

About to start True Grit for book club.

Despite all of us having seen the John Wayne movie version and we're all lining up to see the Coen Brothers version, none of us had ever read the book.

 

Read "Goodbye, Columbus" for the first time in 20 years. Roth was/is a hell of a writer -- some of the reference are obviously very dated, but the story holds up really well.