BOOKS THREAD

I'm not reading through 42 pages of postings, so I apologize if this has already been up. Just finished The Last Best League by Jim Collins about the Cape League and thoroughly enjoyed it.
In the last week I've been getting into Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer by James Swanson. Not far enough in to say I love it, but from what I've read so far, it's pretty damn good.

 

I know what you mean. Every sentence is an analogy or a metaphor. And I don't know what the author is thinking that she's not an alcoholic.

I think she's lying to herself just a bit.

 

With a bellyful of red wine, I was admiring a dude's personal library at a recent dinner party when he suddenly pulls down Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones and says, "Here man, take this and keep this, it is unlike anything you've ever read before." Right he was.

They are 17 short stories -- these densely packed bouillon cubes of the human experience, really -- dealing with motifs of time, infinity, mirrors, libraries of the mind, memory, meaning, language, honor, mortality, fate, and so on and so forth. Very good narratives that are better lingered over than read in one take. Not pretentious or hokey, just solid stuff and worth the while, with apparently nothing lost in translation.

 

I've seen this book and even given it what I call the "Barnes and Noble Test" -- picking it up and reading the flaps and the back cover -- twice. Still haven't pulled the trigger, so any and all updates and analysis is greatly appreciated.

 

I'm 3/4 of the way through prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.
It's slow, and remarkably like Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, without the creepy, voyeuristic sex.
Anyone else read this?

 

While both Prep and Charlotte Simmons were in the same vein of angst-ridden existence, Charlotte Simmons, I found, was a lot more dramatically written. Prep was very to-the-point. The only thing that got me about Prep was the super-long chapters, basically each of the four years at boarding school.

 

I'd agree, with the caveat that prep at least seams realisitic. The characters in IACS were simply flat, all good or all bad.
Plus, Wolfe came across as a dirty old man.

 

You haven't read Wolfe's "A Man in Full" yet, have you?

 

If he had combined those books, he could have called it "I Am A Man In Charlotte Simmons."

 

so, am i the only one who has gotten game of shadows? haven't started it yet, i've been occupied, but anyone else start/finish that badboy yet?

also picked up onley's yankees book from the clearance shelf

 

I plan to buy Shadows tomorrow and hopefully I'll be 100 pages into it by nightfall.

 

Has anyone read Rick Reilly's "Who's Your Caddy?"

A friend of mine let me borrow it and I've been reading it nonstop for the past few nights. It's a pretty good read so far.