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anomar
09-30-2008, 10:26 AM
Bizzzzzump!

I'm reading 'The Night of the Gun' by David Carr. It's a great drug memoir... it's written by a columnist for the New York Times who used to be a crack addict. About 15 years after he hit rock bottom he travelled around the country, interviewing people he used t hang out with, and discovering that a lot of his recollections about the time are very different... just came out a few months ago.

Ina
09-30-2008, 10:33 AM
I'm reading The Alchemist, i've heard of it for a while so just decided to pick it up the other day.

rozz
09-30-2008, 03:05 PM
Daughters of the North.

Minette
10-02-2008, 01:04 PM
I am re-reading some Isaac Asimov's science fiction magazines from 2001. Either I never read them when they came in the mail or I have forgotten most of the stories so they are new again. I have every issue ever published except six.

I am so incredibly jealous! My mother had a subscription when I was a kid, and I still remember a lot of the stories in great detail. I would happily maim a whole school bus full of especially cute children to get my hands on a complete collection.

I'm reading Scale Development: Theory and Applications by Robert F. Devellis - not exactly a page-turner. ::) Someone want to trade?

Corey
10-19-2009, 11:36 AM
Darkly Dreaming Dexter. Picked it up at Target. It was on sale.

Corey
10-19-2009, 11:37 AM
Bizzzzzump!

I'm reading 'The Night of the Gun' by David Carr. It's a great drug memoir... it's written by a columnist for the New York Times who used to be a crack addict. About 15 years after he hit rock bottom he travelled around the country, interviewing people he used t hang out with, and discovering that a lot of his recollections about the time are very different... just came out a few months ago.


^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

This sounds awesome! I'm putting it on my list.

Corey
10-19-2009, 11:40 AM
I enjoyed Strip City(though it is a bit outdated now). It was the most honest of any of the stripper memoir type books I've read.

I thought it was entertaining. I like Diablo Cody's Candy Girl better. I couldn't believer what kind of asshole managers she worked for>:(

Melonie
10-19-2009, 01:31 PM
In resurrecting an older thread, you reminded me that it's probably time to resurrect a book recommendation ... 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. Even though this book is now more than 50 years old, it has a number of very important things to say about current events and likely future directions.

vmurphy252
10-19-2009, 01:46 PM
^Yeah, but his speech at the end, it's like 60 pages long...

Melonie
10-19-2009, 02:22 PM
here's the 'compressed' version ... 964 words long

(snip)"For twelve years you've been asking "Who is John Galt?" This is John Galt speaking. I'm the man who's taken away your victims and thus destroyed your world. You've heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis and that Man's sins are destroying the world. But your chief virtue has been sacrifice, and you've demanded more sacrifices at every disaster. You've sacrificed justice to mercy and happiness to duty. So why should you be afraid of the world around you?

Your world is only the product of your sacrifices. While you were dragging the men who made your happiness possible to your sacrificial altars, I beat you to it. I reached them first and told them about the game you were playing and where it would take them. I explained the consequences of your 'brother-love' morality, which they had been too innocently generous to understand. You won't find them now, when you need them more than ever.

We're on strike against your creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. If you want to know how I made them quit, I told them exactly what I'm telling you tonight. I taught them the morality of Reason -- that it was right to pursue one's own happiness as one's principal goal in life. I don't consider the pleasure of others my goal in life, nor do I consider my pleasure the goal of anyone else's life.

I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I earn. That is justice. I don't force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man's right to Reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.

You've allowed such men to occupy positions of power in your world by preaching that all men are evil from the moment they're born. When men believe this, they see nothing wrong in acting in any way they please. The name of this absurdity is 'original sin'. That's inmpossible. That which is outside the possibility of choice is also outside the province of morality. To call sin that which is outside man's choice is a mockery of justice. To say that men are born with a free will but with a tendency toward evil is ridiculous. If the tendency is one of choice, it doesn't come at birth. If it is not a tendency of choice, then man's will is not free.

And then there's your 'brother-love' morality. Why is it moral to serve others, but not yourself? If enjoyment is a value, why is it moral when experienced by others, but not by you? Why is it immoral to produce something of value and keep it for yourself, when it is moral for others who haven't earned it to accept it? If it's virtuous to give, isn't it then selfish to take?

Your acceptance of the code of selflessness has made you fear the man who has a dollar less than you because it makes you feel that that dollar is rightfully his. You hate the man with a dollar more than you because the dollar he's keeping is rightfully yours. Your code has made it impossible to know when to give and when to grab.

You know that you can't give away everything and starve yourself. You've forced yourselves to live with undeserved, irrational guilt. Is it ever proper to help another man? No, if he demands it as his right or as a duty that you owe him. Yes, if it's your own free choice based on your judgment of the value of that person and his struggle. This country wasn't built by men who sought handouts. In its brilliant youth, this country showed the rest of the world what greatness was possible to Man and what happiness is possible on Earth.

Then it began apologizing for its greatness and began giving away its wealth, feeling guilty for having produced more than ikts neighbors. Twelve years ago, I saw what was wrong with the world and where the battle for Life had to be fought. I saw that the enemy was an inverted morality and that my acceptance of that morality was its only power. I was the first of the men who refused to give up the pursuit of his own happiness in order to serve others.

To those of you who retain some remnant of dignity and the will to live your lives for yourselves, you have the chance to make the same choice. Examine your values and understand that you must choose one side or the other. Any compromise between good and evil only hurts the good and helps the evil.

If you've understood what I've said, stop supporting your destroyers. Don't accept their philosophy. Your destroyers hold you by means of your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, and your love. Don't exhaust yourself to help build the kind of world that you see around you now. In the name of the best within you, don't sacrifice the world to those who will take away your happiness for it.

The world will change when you are ready to pronounce this oath:
I swear by my Life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man,
nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine. "(snip)

from

vmurphy252
10-19-2009, 02:25 PM
I didn't say I didn't get it, just that it's so LOOONNNNNGGG... ;)

JayATee
10-19-2009, 02:47 PM
What are YOU currently reading? :)

The Mysts of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

vmurphy252
10-19-2009, 02:57 PM
Still haven't read that...

Have you done the Pendragon Cycle by Mary Stewart? I love those.

Also, the Taliesin/Merlin/Arthur books by Stephen R Lawhead...

JayATee
10-19-2009, 03:03 PM
^ No I haven't. I want to though very much considering how in love with the book I am. If you haven't read it and you're into King Arthur you absolutely should. Its fantastic.

Christyismyalias
10-19-2009, 03:56 PM
I love this thread.. I'm on Amazon adding to my wishlist as we speak :) Thanks for all the new material!
*Update: Just spent nearly 100 bucks on new books! lol.. Ill be set for a while! Thanks for the inspiration SW!


Right now I'm finishing 'Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion" by Izabella St. James. It's basically a tell all about all the things you'd want to know about what really goes on.. I liked it. I skiped through all the boring stuff and just read the dirt :)

I'm now starting "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" by Jenna Jameson although I've read so many bits and pieces while sitting in the bookstore before I actually got the book that I've probably read it already lol..

DesuvsDeath
10-19-2009, 04:06 PM
Rereading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.
Which really isn't a good book at all unless you've already read "American Gods".

vmurphy252
10-19-2009, 04:47 PM
^Haven't read American Gods for a long time but I read this a few months ago and liked it pretty well...

Mr Hyde
10-19-2009, 06:53 PM
I usually read 2-3 books at a time but the last really good book I read wasone I finished a few months ago, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I highly reccomend it but if you read it, be prepared for a very emotionally draining book.

DesuvsDeath
10-19-2009, 07:20 PM
^Haven't read American Gods for a long time but I read this a few months ago and liked it pretty well...
I love the way he writes...
Even if he's writing something wildly unrealistic... It's written in a painfully realistic way that can be really uncomfortable to read. Especially if it's something you can relate to.
I like that reading something can have that sort of effect on me.

Shy_Guy
10-19-2009, 09:11 PM
Rereading Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys.
Which really isn't a good book at all unless you've already read "American Gods".

Haven't read American Gods, but still seemed to really enjoy the "Boys." Stardust and Coraline are better as movies, though. And saying that is almost blasphemy for me, but for those books it's true. Could be because he's really a graphic novelist at heart.

Shy_Guy
10-19-2009, 09:14 PM
In resurrecting an older thread, you reminded me that it's probably time to resurrect a book recommendation ... 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. Even though this book is now more than 50 years old, it has a number of very important things to say about current events and likely future directions.

Ayn Rand . . . good philosopher, piss-poor writer.

Melonie
10-19-2009, 11:59 PM
Ayn Rand . . . good philosopher, piss-poor writer

no argument from me on that fact ! That's why I'm hoping that Randall Wallace's screenplay for the supposedly upcoming 'Atlas Shrugged' film will keep the philosophy but do away with the novel's 'readability' problems



The Mysts of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Have you also read Marion's last Avalon series book 'The Forest House' ... a prequel set much earlier in time ( second century Britain during the Roman occupation ) ?

Also, Marion's collaborator Diana Paxson has recently come out with 'Ravens of Avalon' ... which is a pre-prequel to 'The Forest House' and which is arguably the best work of historical fiction of the entire Avalon series ! ( it covers the revolt led by Queen Boudicca in wonderfully speculative detail ).

I recently completed both, and was fortunate enough to have started reading 'Ravens of Avalon' first, followed by 'The Forest House' ( which is set some 20-30 years later)

Melonie
10-20-2009, 12:09 AM
and now for something completely different ...

'The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television ' by Evan Schwarz tells the (sad) story of Philo Farnsworth ... the inventor of television ... and how 'Corporate America' managed to thoroughly screw him over.

devilkitty
10-20-2009, 11:32 AM
[


I usually read 2-3 books at a time but the last really good book I read wasone I finished a few months ago, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy. I highly reccomend it but if you read it, be prepared for a very emotionally draining book.I agree. I don't remember exactly what it was about. I just remember it being depressing and
lonely.

Mr Hyde
10-20-2009, 12:56 PM
[

I agree. I don't remember exactly what it was about. I just remember it being depressing and
lonely.

It was basically about the end of the world, and a father and son who try to keep surviving after a disaster has killed all natural life on earth (ie there is a permanent cloud of ash around the planet, so nothing grows, and all wildlife has died out, so what few people are left survive by either finding canned food, or cannibalism). It's brutal but nearly poetic in its imagery and the story is gripping. It won the Pulitizer Prize. The author also wrote "No Country for Old Men."

mvivian
10-21-2009, 02:02 AM
Which book??? He is one of my favs ;D !!

I am reading The Secret. I had several people recommend that I read it. I thought it might be a little to hippie dippie for me...but I kinda of like what the book gets at.
I always feel like I have to justify myself when I read DHL because of the hippie dippie overtones, but so much of his stuff is great (and well before his time).

I really loved "The Virgin & the Gypsy", even though it will set your hippy alert off. I also really like all his writings about his travels in Italy.

Other reading: "Three Cups of Tea" was great.
"Suite française" by Irène Némirovsky. Written during WWII. I believe she died in one of the camps (gas chamber?), but the writing is heartbreakingly beautiful. Great analysis about the effects of the war/invasion of France by the Germans on the ordinary people of France. It was supposed to be a series of five inter-relatd stories, but she only did two. Sad to think of the three she didn't get to.

Aside: check out paperbackswap.com to see if you have books others want & if they have books you want. It's pretty cool when it all works out.

Eric Stoner
10-21-2009, 11:20 AM
I finished "Havana Nocturne" about how the Mob took over Cuba and then lost it all to the Revolution. I'm almost finished with "Runaway Dream" about Springsteen's "Born To Run" Album with a lot of analysis about both the lyrics and the music. Not just for "Boss-heads".

devilkitty
10-21-2009, 01:16 PM
It was basically about the end of the world, and a father and son who try to keep surviving after a disaster has killed all natural life on earth (ie there is a permanent cloud of ash around the planet, so nothing grows, and all wildlife has died out, so what few people are left survive by either finding canned food, or cannibalism). It's brutal but nearly poetic in its imagery and the story is gripping. It won the Pulitizer Prize. The author also wrote "No Country for Old Men."
I went back last night and started re-reading it. It is a really good book.

stressed
10-22-2009, 10:08 PM
i have read all 12 books of the Left Behind series
working on the Regime now

Pretty_Penny
10-22-2009, 10:40 PM
right now:

The Death of Bunny Monroe by Nick Cave

J.D.
10-24-2009, 02:42 PM
Just finished My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. It definitely wasn't one of my favorite books, kind of cheesy.

I really loved The Alchemist. I'm starting on The Universe in a Single Atom about the Dalai Lama.

fast tan77
10-26-2009, 01:07 PM
The Iceman - Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer

Xiomara
10-26-2009, 05:33 PM
Unconditionally Single by Mary B. Morrison. Her Honey series is great.

firemaiden04
11-02-2009, 03:02 AM
The Wideacre trilogy by Philippa Gregory, who also wrote The Other Boleyn Girl and other Elizabethan era novels. This trilogy is not from that same era, though they are still historical.

If you want a fucked-up story that will keep you awake at night...this is it.