Posted on 02/11/2003 9:49:20 PM PST by Utah Girl
One of the books that I was force-fed in high school was 'Earth Abides'. It is set in the forties or fifties in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco area, which happens to be where I live.
It is an interesting look at society and human nature. I keep a copy around, and still drag it out from time to time to re-read. It is kind of weird seeing the Seventies written about as the distant future.
Jack London wrote a similar work as well, IIRC.
I wasn't a disciple and I was already on the varsity track and cross country teams by the time I got any of his writings on running, but I will always remember the Jim Fixx runner's diary which I used diligently to record all my practice, race times, weight, etc. etc. every day. I still have it around somewhere for nostalgia, though as an old man I can only look in wonder at what I used to be able to do every day in high school.
I won't let my husband go alone, although truthfully, I'm worse. But we always leave with at least an armful of hardbacks.
I have received as gifts several book from Oprah's club and didn't enjoy any of them very much. I HATE fiction in which people live miserable lives, although if it's a true story, somehow it's ennobling and inspiring I suppose:-)
Anyway, one of the books was Icy Sparks. I finished it, but don't read it. Miserable, horrible people!
I'm sorry, I tried to fight it, but enquiring minds want to know (call it morbid fascination).
WHY???!!!
Evanovich and George both have new books coming out in July, Evanovich's (To the Nines) was supposed to be released on June 15 but the publisher delayed it a month because there is a new Harry Potter book coming out in June.
Elizabeth George also published recently a book of short stories which are very good. She is an excellent British historian, having studied there and she lives there part of the time as well.
I also like Sue Grafton-her latest was one of the better ones in the alphabet series.
It will be a treat to get another Deaver book featuring Lincoln Rhyme-he usually only does him every other year. Long before CSI and CSI-Miami we enjoyed Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, CSIs extraordinaire!
Every 10th or so scene involved that cement truck-bomb, on its way to DC.
Then the book was over, and the cement truck just... ?????
It was just dropped! Must have been 75 pages spent on that sub plot, and it just went away! POOF! Like Clancy forgot it! Incredible.
In that book he wrote of a dieting scheme involving drinking Scotch on the Rocks and doing an elaborate calculation on how much energy was expended in melting the scotch and the ice inside the stomach to prove that it would work.
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And every day, I'm eternally grateful that this theory doesn't apply to Irish whiskey. |
You can look it up.
You have to get into the rhythm of it, almost in a trance. It's hard work. I tackled it a half dozen times before I got all the way through.
I prefer Dubliners and to a lesser extent, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In these works Joyce is accessible and his prose is wonderful.
But Finnegan's Wake is inpenetrable. To my ears it is a series a psychotic klang phrases and nonsense noises. I cannot digest more than a page or three at a sitting. I have neither the patience nor the decades to waste finding a way to enjoy it.
One of the greatest closing paragrphs ever written, from Dubliners: The Dead
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
((( Shudder )))
I actually read that one cover to cover. Was that a best seller? I can't believe it? But then, of course, I can't belive Bill Clinton was elected president - what do I know?
On the other hand, I did read The Bell Curve cover to cover in 1994. That was a real eye opener. There's been nary a day since that I haven't seen some connection to human behavior and its relation to I.Q. scores as posited in that book.
I think that Vineland is one of those books that people, who fancy themselves placed much farther to right on the bell curve than they actually are, read and pretend that they understand. They're probably the same people who voted for Bill Clinton and encouraged those who are placed on the left side of the bell curve to do the same.
Gustav Freytag.
(Hands free. No pencil or pen.)
'The Fires of Spring' - James Michner
'Tales of the South Pacific' - James Michner
'Dandelion Wine' - Ray Bradbury
'Papillon' - Henri Charriare
'The Count of Monte Cristo' - Alexandre Dumas
'Trinity' - Leon Uris
'Exodus' - Leon Uris
'Flags of our Fathers' - James Bradley
'Goodbye Darkness' - William Manchester
The Bounty Trilogy - Nordhoff & Hall
'In the Heart of the Sea' - Nathaniel Philbrick
'The Grapes of Wrath' - Steinbeck
'East of Eden' - Steinbeck
'Of Mice and Men' - Steinbeck
'Call of the Wild' - Jack London
'Captains Courageous' - Kipling
'West with the Night' - Beryl Markham
'Slaughterhouse Five' - Kurt Vonnegut
'Sirens of Titan' - Kurt Vonnegut
'The Liars Club' - Mary Karr
'Cold Mountain' - Charles Frazier
'Confederacy of Dunces' - John Kennedy Toole
'Catch 22' - Joseph Heller...
....that's all for now....
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