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I just started Will Herme's Love Goes To Buildings On Fire. I don't know why I waited so long. I'm really enjoying it so far. It covers just about everything that was happening music wise in NYC from '73 to '77. You get the Rock scene at Max's and CBGB's, the birth of hip hop, minimalist composers, poets, glam, salsa, Jazz revisionist, and more all in a seemingly chronological time line. Its a fun read if you're like me and love music history.
Um yes please. I don't know how this one fell through the cracks. I'll be picking it up tomorrow. Thank you sir.
An article in the NYT about new books coming out this fall from big authors.
If anyone in Nashville is interested, Michael Chabon will actually be at our downtown library on Oct. 2 for Salon@615. I'm strongly considering heading over there before the David Byrne/St. Vincent show at the Ryman.
^ Great article! Thanks for the link! I haven't been keeping up w/my fiction new releases, so I had no idea that some of my favorite authors (Ian McEwan, T.C. Boyle, Sherman Alexie) all have new stuff coming out. YAY!!!
Post by Dave Maynar on Sept 5, 2012 17:37:27 GMT -5
I picked this up at the library today. It is book 2 in the series. Book 1 was great. James S. A. Corey is a pseudonym for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who have collaborated with George R. R. Martin.
Post by billypilgrim on Sept 12, 2012 11:50:18 GMT -5
I LOVED Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, the DFW bio by D.T. Max. I loved it so much that I was considering rereading Infinite Jest (DFW said he thought it would have to be read twice). Fortunately, there are so many new books by great authors that I can't really justify going back to IJ. Maybe someday. But for now, on to Junot Diaz!
Post by mizvalentine on Sept 12, 2012 15:00:26 GMT -5
Just finished this one...it was phenomenal. If you don't know the story, Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Baltimore who died at Johns Hopkins from cervical cancer. They cultured her cells and they became an immortal cell line called HeLa that's been a key component of cellular research ever since. The book follows her family's fate and touches on many issues of race, class and ethics in medical research... really really interesting (and also made me really angry a number of times).
Just finished this one...it was phenomenal. If you don't know the story, Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Baltimore who died at Johns Hopkins from cervical cancer. They cultured her cells and they became an immortal cell line called HeLa that's been a key component of cellular research ever since. The book follows her family's fate and touches on many issues of race, class and ethics in medical research... really really interesting (and also made me really angry a number of times).
This is one of the best books I've read in past few years. I recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.
Mizv, I bet you were like me and you couldn't put it down!
This is one of the best books I've read in past few years. I recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.
Mizv, I bet you were like me and you couldn't put it down!
Its true!! Totally compelling and well written...I can't believe its her first book. Rumor is she got one of the largest-ever advances on a first non-fiction book, and it seems to have been well deserved.
BTW I meant to mention, Amazon is publishing The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist in their original serial form so if you have a Kindle they deliver the sections weekly.
What'd you think of Savages? I read it a couple weeks ago and was frustrated with it not living up to its potential.
I felt the same way. Good ideas, some good dialogue and turns of phrase, but he just gets too cute for his own good and I ended up groaning and sighing a lot while reading.
OK, to all you folks who gushed & raved about The Art of Fielding, I ask: at what point will this book becoming as engrossing as you promised? I'm halfway through it, but it just isn't doing it for me yet. The names (really? Westish College? Lev Tennant? ugh!) are cheesy, the plot hasn't grabbed me, and the author's heavy-handed use of compound adjectives annoyed me from the first chapter.
Granted, his writing is tight enough, and I suppose the characters are developed sufficiently or I would've tossed it aside three chapters in. Still, it hasn't yet merited the glorious dust jacket accolades given by other, more accomplished authors.
I'm on a book-reading frenzy. Just finished "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth. It's the second book in the series, and I enjoyed it much more than the first book. It's a YA series so the characters get on my nerves a bit, but it was a quick read and not terribly bad.
Next up to the new book from S.J. Bolton. This is her fourth novel, and I really enjoyed her first three. Looking forward to this one.
What'd you think of Savages? I read it a couple weeks ago and was frustrated with it not living up to its potential.
I felt the same way. Good ideas, some good dialogue and turns of phrase, but he just gets too cute for his own good and I ended up groaning and sighing a lot while reading.
So, more of a library book and less of an order it book? I was thinking of reading this next.
I started getting caught up on Terry Pratchett's Discworld books in March or so, and I just finished the...what, thirty-fifth one? They're so much fun, and so well-written. I was saddened to learn that he has early-onset Alzheimer's.
I felt the same way. Good ideas, some good dialogue and turns of phrase, but he just gets too cute for his own good and I ended up groaning and sighing a lot while reading.
So, more of a library book and less of an order it book? I was thinking of reading this next.
Yes, if you are going to read it, go with the library. There's nothing about it that would make me want to re-read it later. Also, it is short, so you shouldn't have trouble finishing it in the time alloted by your library.
OK, to all you folks who gushed & raved about The Art of Fielding, I ask: at what point will this book becoming as engrossing as you promised? I'm halfway through it, but it just isn't doing it for me yet. The names (really? Westish College? Lev Tennant? ugh!) are cheesy, the plot hasn't grabbed me, and the author's heavy-handed use of compound adjectives annoyed me from the first chapter.
Granted, his writing is tight enough, and I suppose the characters are developed sufficiently or I would've tossed it aside three chapters in. Still, it hasn't yet merited the glorious dust jacket accolades given by other, more accomplished authors.
TELL ME IT GETS BETTER!?!
Hmmm - I'd like to say it gets better, but I was very conflicted on this book. At times it reminded me of a college lit paper with cutesy devices (like the weak double entendre scene where he's listening outside the gym). And the complete lack of homophopia throughout a sports-themed book was refreshing but totally unrealistic. Other times, the book reminded me of early Chabon or Updike with the tightness of some of the writing and the way characters were developed.
Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it did get better as it went along - it's pretty good for a first novel, but I also agree that it was probably not worth the super high accolades it received. One of the ways I review a novel is: after I'm done do I wonder what happens to the characters. With this one, yes, I did think about what would be next for some of the main characters. I will try his next one, as I think he will improve novel over novel.
OK, to all you folks who gushed & raved about The Art of Fielding, I ask: at what point will this book becoming as engrossing as you promised? TELL ME IT GETS BETTER!?!
... it's pretty good for a first novel, but I also agree that it was probably not worth the super high accolades it received.
^ OK, that's reassuring! Thanks!
Now you've got me thinking about fantastic first novels. Maybe that's why I'm hypercritical about this one. It doesn't seem in the same league as some of these debut novels (from the last decade or so) that I simply could not put down:
Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Jeffrey Eugenides - The Virgin Suicides
Joshua Ferris - And Then We Came to the End
Arthur Golden - Memoirs of a Geisha (I'm biased; he's a local boy & a former boss's son!)
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Khaled Hosseini - The Kite Runner
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake
Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus
Chuck Pahlaniuk - Fight Club
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated
Donna Tartt - The Secret History
Neither Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao nor Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections made my list despite their critical praise. And so far, Chad Harbach doesn't seem poised to join the list, either. But I'll keep pluggin' along. Maybe he'll surprise me.
