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Sunday, December 2, 2012

What I've Been Reading


The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction  by Alan Jacobs.  Jacobs is a complete and utter nerd, so naturally, I enjoyed his writing.  The book largely discusses why we're interested in reading when there are so many other things to do - check e-mail, text our friends, get on Twitter or Facebook, etc.  He didn't reveal anything particularly groundbreaking, but he suggested that there was a time when we all enjoyed being read to as a child, when we could escape to another reality.  He also suggested lots of different ways to think about reading, including the idea that there are three ways of reading: reading for entertainment, reading for information, and reading for knowledge.  Jacobs likes to savor a good book, write notes in the margins, underline particular passages, etc., and those are things I never did except in college.  But it would be interesting to revisit that method of reading.  Also, I learned a new word: catholic.  I never knew that it could be a lower case word for "a wide variety of things, especially a person's tastes."

Before I Fall  by Lauren Oliver.  Don't ask why I read this, but Before I Fall  is a book geared toward teenage girls.  I'm not giving anything away, but the basic gist of the story is that the narrator - a popular girl in high school - dies in a car accident early in the story.  Much like Groundhog Day, she keeps reliving her final day on Earth, changing little (or big) things here or there in the hopes that she can be released from her purgatory.  It's a quick read, and it's actually pretty well written for being young adult fiction, but I don't imagine many of you will pursue it.

Tell-All  by Chuck Palahniuk.  This is the story of Hazie Coogan, the personal assistant to a famous actress named Katherine Kenton.  Katherine likes to think she's the boss, but it's really Hazie who's pulling all the strings.  Palahniuk's writing style is a little bit annoying; he keeps name dropping famous actors and actresses, which is cute at first but then grows tiresome.  There are elements of Palahniuk's Survivor  and Invisible Monsters  in here, but this book isn't nearly as strong as those two.

Of Mice and Men  by John Steinbeck.  Believe it or not, I never read this when I was in high school or college.  It's one of those books that you feel like you should have read by now, and if not, you're an idiot. Now I have read it; I am still an idiot.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and read it over the course of about two days.  I had heard hints about how it ends, so it wasn't a surprise; but I can imagine that it would be even more powerful if I hadn't been expecting it.  The biggest surprise of the book was that it didn't bore me to death like The Grapes of Wrath  did.

Consider the Lobster  by David Foster Wallace.  I haven't read a ton of Wallace's stuff, but he's sort of hit-or-miss with me.  Some things I enjoy, and some bore me.  This is a collection of essays about various things like John McCain's election campaign, the lobster industry, conservative talk radio, the porn industry's AVN Awards, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  My personal favorite was the long discussion of the morality behind the preparation of lobsters.  The thing I like most about Wallace's is his ability to dig deep into the motivations of authors and people, parsing sentences and words and human actions.  However, don't pick up this book if you're looking for a quick read, because all the footnotes and interjections will slow you down.

Feel free to leave reading suggestions in the comments below.  I'm always looking for things to add my already endless reading list.

16 comments:

  1. Alex Ayres compiled and edited The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain. I've kept it on top of the pile here on my desk for about a month now and scroll through these excerpts from books, letters, speeches etc. for five minutes or so once or twice a day. It's mostly brilliant.

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  2. Timothy Zahn, all 4 of his Star Wars series, most recently Choices of One. He is a great storyteller, who just happens to write sci fi. If you liked the movies, I encourage you to read these, each book is its own movie, a friend who reads all of the star wars books (there are apparently over 100) said to read these as they were far and away the best, and I would have to agree. Great reading!

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  3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. Its title quotes the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1892 short story "Silver Blaze". Haddon and The Curious Incident won the Whitbread Book Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year,[1] the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book.[2] and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.[3]
    The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher's condition is not stated, the book's blurb refers to Asperger syndrome, high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome

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    1. Thanks for the suggestion, Adam. I actually read that (and "A Spot of Bother") a couple years ago, but I did enjoy it.

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  4. DFW note: If you haven't already read them, I'd highly recommend his essays "Ticket to the Fair" (coverage of the Illinois State Fair) and "Shipping Out" (a voyage on a cruise ship).

    I also liked the McCain campaign essay.

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  5. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon. The novel is narrated in the first-person perspective by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy who describes himself as "a mathematician with some behavioral difficulties" living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher's condition is not stated, the book's blurb refers to Asperger syndrome, high-functioning autism, or savant syndrome.

    If your looking for something really different. This is your book.

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  6. As a fellow idiot, I recently read Of Mice and Men for the first time too, and wow. Been going through reading all the books I thought I should have read by now, so I'm on a bit of a sci-fi jag at the moment (usually reading canonical lit with a philosophical track thrown in — apparently for knowledge). Time Machine, Farenheit 451 and HHGG. All really worthwhile, in case you haven't and reintroducing me to reading for entertainment / pleasure… Also starting in on Rushdie for the first time; Midnight's Children, which is gorgeouosly written and an absolute joy thus far.

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  7. Look up Shantaram. I loved this book so much i read it in 2 days.

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  8. It is not easy reading, but Columbine by Dave Cullen(2009) is worth reading. It will really change your perspective on what transpired there and make you realize how many misperceptions there were in the immediate aftermath (and longer).

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  9. What is your favorite (non-fiction) sports book?

    Just finished The Wolverine Way by Doug Chadwick and it was the best nature/animal book I've ever read.

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    1. I don't really read non-fiction sports books very much. I'm not a big fan of biographies. I did like John U. Bacon's "Three and Out" but that's largely because it covered the years when I've been blogging about Michigan football. When I was younger, I really liked "Bo Knows Bo" by Dick Schaap, but it's been a long time since I read that.

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  10. The frustrating thing about "Grapes of Wrath" is that it contains all the same typical Steinbeck themes (struggles of the working class in that era, etc.) of "Of Mice and Men," but it just takes an additional thousand pages to get there.

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  11. Gone Girl by Gilligan Flynn. I read in like 2 days. Very entertaining but not atypical mystery thriller

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  12. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. Keep 'em coming if anybody has more.

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  13. The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher. Excellent series, it starts with Storm Front.

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  14. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon is fabulous. The Brothers K by David James Duncan. Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear. I also agree with the Jim Butcher suggestion

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