Post a book you're reading

Post Reply New Topic

I loved this snippet from Sally Bowles.

"You must remember I'm a woman, Christopher. All women like men to be strong and decided and following out their careers. A woman wants to be motherly to a man and protect his weak side, but he must have a strong side too, which she can respect... if you ever care for a woman, I don't advise you to let her see that you've got no ambition. Otherwise she'll get to despise you."
"Yes, I see... And that's the principle on which you choose your friends - your new friends?"
She flared up at this: "It's very easy for you to sneer at my friends for having good business heads. If they've got money, it's because they've worked for it... I suppose you consider yourself better than they are?"
"Yes, Sally, since you ask me - if they're at all as I imagine them - I do."
"There you go, Christopher! That's typical of you. That's what annoys me about you: you're conceited and lazy. If you say things like that, you ought to be able to prove them."
"How does one prove that one's better than somebody else? Besides, that's not what I said. I said I considered myself better - it's simply a matter of taste."

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy; page 109/400
(The Presidents--with emphasis on the Kennedy family--were my special interest for much of my childhood, so I figured I'd read/listen to this one and hopefully become interested again. I'm terribly lost without a long-term special interest. I'm worried that I won't finish before I have to turn it back in to the library. Maybe I'll buy it; birthday is coming up.)

Earth Abides, was okay, ish. Bits of it were good (the ecology stuff), bits of it were okay (the protagonist's journey and some of the survival bits) and some of it was brain-hurtingly annoying ("here are the simple-minded descendants of Negro(TM) sharecroppers, offering up scraps of cotton to their departed gods..." ) made doubly peculiar by the author deliberately challenging racist attitudes elsewhere in the book.

Now reading Why the Allies Won, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

I'm rereading Grass by Sherri s. Tepper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_%28novel%29

I was distracted the first time i read it but i'm really enjoying it this second time around.

Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer

http://www.amazon.com/Tropic-Cancer-Hen ... 0802131786

I recommend it for those of you who have a smutty taste in high literature.

speed of dark by elizabeth moon. i finally found it. was beginning to doubt its existence.

A Maze of Death (1970) by Philip K. Dick

Plot summary from the back: "Fourteen strangers came to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that planet whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers found that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations."

Why the Allies Won, Richard Overy; it was interesting and seemed well reasoned, but as there were a few factual errors I couldn't trust the conclusions too much.
Now Of Men and Monsters, William Tenn, which is surprisingly un-shit for its vintage.

I'm trying to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

It's the first book I've tried to properly read in weeks/months, and my brain is protesting. Plus I need new glasses.

Big Dead Place (2005) by Nicholas Johnson

This is probably the only book about Antarctica that includes the phrase "enema loving dick licking f**kwad." It's a memoir of the author's time at the McMurdo research station, and it's hilarious to learn what kind of crap goes on there. This quote sums it up well: "I have never heard of one returnee who finally quit because it's the world's highest, driest, coldest or whatever. People leave because of the BS." Also, "If Antarctica has an as*hole, McMurdo is it."