BOOKS THREAD

All the funny shit in and around the front of the book is great. Eggers did lose me a little by trying to get on The Real World.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I loved A Heartbreaking Work. That said, I think it might be like Bright Lights, Big City or Less Than Zero (to a lesser extent) in catching a popular/cultural wave. BLBC and LTZ remain the authors' signature work 20 years later and seem dated. (And I wonder if Infinite Jest will be in the same vein.) Nothing since, not the McSweeney's stuff, not his attempts at fiction, can be mentioned in the same breath as AHWOSG.

I was about to pick up Doctorow's The March, but I remember how I staggered through and disliked Ragtime. Never bothered reading but the odd ELD short story in the NYer thereafter. So instead I picked up Book of Daniel. Never saw the movie, so I was untainted. And, knowing that I'm not much on either period pieces or war stuff, I went with a book of a more recent period (red-baiting of 50s, hippie drop-out of the 60s) and one that's almost explicitly anti-war. And, 100 pages in, it is (lower case) a heartbreaking work, etc.

YHS, etc

 

Charlotte Simmons is a piece of literary genius.

 

Couldn't agree more. This is a fantastic book. The TV series was outstanding too, but they had to condense characters because there are so many in the book. Brilliant stuff and well worth your time.

 

Yesterday I finished My War: Killing Time in Iraq by Colby Buzzell.

Those that read Esquire might remember a couple of stories he wrote a few months back. He's the guy that wrote the popular blog while he was serving near Mosul but had it basically shut down by the Army.

Good read, though might be worth getting at the library or waiting until it comes out on paperback.

I started Jarhead last night. Good so far.

 

One Great Game (if memory serves me correctly) its a book about the first meeting between De La Salle and long beach poly a couple years ago (it was the first ever meeting between the #1 and #2 high school football teams in the country).

 

Make it 11. I started it the other night and got about two-thirds of the way through before my wife got mad and made me turn out the light. Finished it the following night. Great book. Like someone else said, I'm not sure how well the movie would work.

 

Make that 12. I read "The Tender Bar" this week. I'm a crybaby and parts of the book really hit home for me, so by the very end of the book, I was a bit of a mess. When I closed the book, I absolutely loved it, but after thinking about it, there are some things that bugged me. Still, I can't see a movie doing it any kind of justice.

I finished Carl Hiassen's "Lucky You" yesterday and decided to throw in the towel 93 pages into "New York Burning -- Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan." I rarely give up on books, but it took me almost a month to get through those 93 pages.

Next up: Rick Bragg's "All Over But the Shoutin'."

 

Anyone read Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie, by Mark St. Amant?

I'm about half way through it. It's a decent read. Quick read too.

 

just finished praying for gil hodges about the 1955 brooklyn dodgers. it's similar to the koufax book in how it revolves around one game - game 7 of the 1955 series.

 

Ah yes, I remember now.

We didn't really discuss that did we? Of course most book club books don't get discussed.