The new thread about books we're reading...

[YojimboMonkey]

I'm reading The Crook Factory by Dan Simmons, which is a suspense novel centered around Ernest Hemingway chasing Nazi spies in Cuba during World War II.  It's not as weird as Dan Simmons novels are prone to get, not yet anyway.  Competently written of course, enough to keep me reading, but hasn't quite grabbed me the way a suspense novel ought to yet.  Of course, I'm only about 1/4 the way through it, and it has been picking up.  We'll see.

Up next, I thought I ought to read some more Cormac McCarthy since all I've read is Blood Meridian and The Road, so I'm gonna check out All The Pretty Horses.  Also a book of short stories by Philip K. Dick.

[joseph scott]

Dude, I clicked yr link, and...I too made a record with Mister Hissong. Cuh-razy! I bet we know lots of the same people, though I am from Tucson and not Phx. Well, not recently.

Y'all, Mike Hissong, by the way, is a pretty awesome engineer who lives in AZ when he's not out with The Locust. Boy can ProTools!

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, Mike did two records for us and I did two albums worth of solo stuff too. We both lived in new york at the same time for a while, too. We actually have a song on our record called His Song, which is named for his genius. I lived in AZ from 95-01 - if you ever came to Modified at that time you probably saw me.

Andrew - yeah, Hissong is a sound guy. I don't listen to Locust so I don't know if he records their records too.

[Lindsay With An A]

tonight i started reading john fante's 1933 was a bad year. man, i love fante but i haven't read anything of his in so long. picking up this book tonight was like hearing the voice of a long-lost friend. it's great. his prose is so simple but so poetic. buk was right.

[Greg Nog]

I thought I ought to read some more Cormac McCarthy since all I've read is Blood Meridian and The Road, so I'm gonna check out All The Pretty Horses.

After reading No Country For Old Men, I found a fun game to play was "Who's my favorite McCarthy psychopath?"  The Judge and Chigurh are really neck-and-neck.

[lastbubble]

Just sped through The Sleeping Father, by Matthew Sharpe. Kind of like George Saunders doing The Corrections. There wasn't a single character that I liked, but I still cared about them. I'm so jazzed I'm thinking about moving right on to his next one, Jamestown.

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm reading "rules of prey" by john sandford. it's actually the book my book club ("my" in the sense of "i'm the store's liaison for them, and they meet when i'm working", not in the sense of "i'm really actually in this book club") is reading this month, and i try to read their books so i can participate in the discussion, since they sit right next to the desk and i will generally throw in comments even if i haven't read the book. anyway, i didn't start this book until last night, and now i'm really sorry, because it's awesome and i haven't a prayer of finishing it before the meeting tonight. which is a bummer because it'll get spoiled for me. but i may just finish it anyway--it's a really good detective novel, and i do love those.

[elpollodiablo]

[Wally]

Miles, they are two awesome books in your hands right there.

[jebreject]

i finished homicide last night/this morning.  i'm glad i read andrew's copy, 'cause the afterward is pretty crucial.  anyway, i liked it, though i thought the corner was quite a bit better.  the best thing about homicide was kind of seeing some of the inspiration for the wire.  the "when it came time for you to fuck me" conversation, snot boogie, all that.  also the connection between the two books, andrea perry.  anyway, a lot of it still feels like simon trying to find his voice, and i think there's not really as coherent a point as in the corner or the wire, though the camaraderie of the police was an amazing thing to be able to be let in on, and one of the greatest things about the book was how it made the police feel especially human--which for a bomb-throwin' anarchist like myself was pretty important.  you can see how homicide and the corner are sort of two sides of the same coin, and that coin is what's portrayed so accurately on the wire.

anyway, starting the road today.

[Good Intentions]

Miles, they are two awesome books in your hands right there.

What did you think of On Violence, Dom? I've been cheerleading that thing for years.

[RavingLunatic]

I'm definitely gonna pick up that book called The Second Mind, which is all about the brain-gut connection and all the nerve/neurotransmitter receptors in the gut. They had the author on The Colbert Report today. I have really bad and chronic digestive problems, and I have first-hand experience of this stuff. The pain I get is not extraordinary, but it makes me feel horrible in a way that pain in any other area of my body would not. The prescription pain pills I've been using for the last 7 months have pretty much kept me from being seriously depressed for most of that period. 

I think I'm gonna have to order it from my local library though, as the Allen County Public Library doesn't seem to have it.

[davy]

holy shit.

how fucking good is phillip pullman! i just finished his dark materials yesterday and i'm still reeling.

he takes all the classic elements of a great fantasy epic, trims all the fat, adds beautiful prose, and then USES THESE ELEMENTS TO WRITE A KID-FRIENDLY TRILOGY ABOUT A WAR AGAINST GOD!

CHILDREN READING ABOUT DEICIDE WITH BIG SMILES ON THEIR FACES!

what balls this guy has! and now they're making a big-time movie of the first book, the golden compass, and it's going to have all manner of superstar actors in it (sam elliott, kevin bacon, nicole kidman, daniel craig, etc), and people thought that harry potter was fucking controversial?

wait 'til the churchgoers get a load of this.

[davy]

in case i didn't make it clear, that series is one of the absolute best things i've read in years.

[heather marie]

they had this for $6 new at barnes & noble the other day and i tried to get richard to buy it but he's a cheap ass. or really, has a gigantic stack of books next to his bed that he has to finish soon.

[dumbfish]

I joined the club yesterday, and am now on p 300 of Cloud Atlas.  That means it's good.

[auto-da-fey]

I just finished Bohemian Los Angeles, which turned out to be less of a queer community study than a fairly ambitious attempt to locate the birth of American identity politics in my very own neighborhood of Silver Lake, where communists, artists, and queers all collectively helped generate a notion of an inherently politicized interior essence between 1920 and 1950. I think there's a bit of overreaching involved in the argument, but it's still a commendable book.

Now I'm not sure what to read next. Old 50s SF is tempting me, but I have a big stack o'nonfiction I need to work through.

[Andrew_TSKS]

holy shit.

how fucking good is phillip pullman! i just finished his dark materials yesterday and i'm still reeling.

he takes all the classic elements of a great fantasy epic, trims all the fat, adds beautiful prose, and then USES THESE ELEMENTS TO WRITE A KID-FRIENDLY TRILOGY ABOUT A WAR AGAINST GOD!

CHILDREN READING ABOUT DEICIDE WITH BIG SMILES ON THEIR FACES!

what balls this guy has! and now they're making a big-time movie of the first book, the golden compass, and it's going to have all manner of superstar actors in it (sam elliott, kevin bacon, nicole kidman, daniel craig, etc), and people thought that harry potter was fucking controversial?

wait 'til the churchgoers get a load of this.

i've been saying this for months now. BUT apparently all of the religious stuff will be removed from the movies (hint: they will probably suck). that said, kids will still be checking out the books as a result of them, which is still nice and subversive.

they had this for $6 new at barnes & noble the other day and i tried to get richard to buy it but he's a cheap ass. or really, has a gigantic stack of books next to his bed that he has to finish soon.

i saw that same deal at barnes and noble a few months ago and jumped on it. unfortunately, i still haven't read the book. i'll get to it soon, though.

[Greg Nog]

I joined the club yesterday, and am now on p 300 of Cloud Atlas.  That means it's good.

Oh, yeah, so this is great, by the way.  I'm happy that so many people on LPTJ have been reading this!  It's like the whole Book of Common Prayer Book-Club thing, only the unplanned Book-Club's gotten even more participants.

[guavacris]

Dark Cosmos by Dan Hooper.

I wanted dark matter/energy to blow my mind but I'm halfway through and finding this kinda tedious. It's an easy read and I want more in-depth science action. You guys have any recommendations? I'll trade them for random office supply sculptures. They're heavy on paper clips but occassionaly involve mechanical bits picked up off the street.

[Greg Nog]

I dunno if you're more into physics-type stuff, but as far as bio goes, I really liked Richard Dawkins's "The Ancestor's Tale".  It's basically the story of human evolution, working backwards down to single-celled life forms.  It's great!

[titus a.]

they had this for $6 new at barnes & noble the other day and i tried to get richard to buy it but he's a cheap ass. or really, has a gigantic stack of books next to his bed that he has to finish soon.

I opened the cover and on the front matter saw the words 'ethical calculus'.  About then I decided to go see if I could find something else.

[elpollodiablo]

You wanna qualify that statement or just let it hang out there like a big turd

[SPACERACE]

The new Haruki Murakami is shaping up to be pretty terrific. It's not like a bold new world or anything for him, but it's solid all over.

iawtc

[titus a.]

You wanna qualify that statement or just let it hang out there like a big turd

On Googling, it was actually 'moral calculus'.  And I think that phrase hangs out there like a turd enough without me brownin it up and makin it smell like deuce.

I don't know though maybe his approach to ethics will open new doors in my mind and be the best thing I've read all year, I wasn't trying to judge by that comment and I may still get to it, I'm pretty pressed for time right now though, and I need to budget and if you're going to use the term 'moral calculus' you're going to just have to live with being a little lower on my time budget.

Edit: Instead of getting that, I got my first China Mieville book.  You like him, Miles?

[Andrew_TSKS]

i'm not miles, but i like mieville quite a bit. i think i've said that on here before, though.