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Thread: The Book Discussion Thread

  1. #6626
    Moderator Dead & Messed Up's Avatar
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    Reading bios of Lovecraft and Poe.

    Guys were profoundly fucked up. I learned that Lovecraft's mom grew his hair out long as a toddler and "feminized" him to the point that he occasionally called himself a little girl. To say nothing of his Anglophilia and racism. And Poe was a helpless mooch who wrote his foster father constantly for extra money - always insisting he didn't need it. He also wrote anonymous appraisals of his own work for literary publications. To say nothing of his alcoholism and adoration for his pubescent cousin.

    Both were different in many ways, but they both were raised in foster families, were sickly, died young, saw little success in their lifetimes, and carried an odd mix of overt pride and deep shame. On that last bit, they're probably like many people.

  2. #6627
    Administrator Ezee E's Avatar
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    Anyone read The Last Policeman? Great premise. About 150 pages in.

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  3. #6628
    Producer Lucky's Avatar
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    Haven't read that, but The Third Policeman is good. Just started reading All the Light We Cannot See.

  4. #6629
    Winston* Classic Winston*'s Avatar
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    The Yiddish Policeman's Union is also good.

  5. #6630
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    Atticus Finch is a racist now.

  6. #6631
    Ain't that just the way EyesWideOpen's Avatar
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    Bought my first e-reader. I got a Kindle Voyage in the mail today and really digging it so far. The screen is fantastic.
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  7. #6632
    The Pan Spinal's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting dreamdead (view post)
    Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed is the sort of breezy nonfiction that sneaks up on you in power. A study on how social media platforms have been used to silenced transgressions where the punishment seldom fits the crime, it tracks multiple instances of individuals who thought a funny tweet or private joke would not be monitored and broadcast to countless thousands. In doing so, Ronson tracks how we regulate and overtly delight in shaming others, so that it becomes a public ordeal.

    All of this leads to how difficult it is for these individuals to reclaim their lives and careers after the internet's done shaming them. Some of the material here, on designers fashioning algorithms to privilege innocent returns on Google searches after a public shaming, is quite interesting, and while Ronson's conclusion is difficult on some level--suggesting that it's basically never worth shaming an individual for any small transgression, something that's difficult to translate to teaching where student plagiarism remains sadly high--it's powerful stuff.
    I just finished this book, and I'm not sure I got the same message from it. I thought that the point was that Twitter's danger is that it only knows how to employ a nuclear option, when certain people merely need a little slap. There is no setting for a nuanced scolding and certain people have their lives destroyed over relatively minor offenses.
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  8. #6633
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    "Oh come on, it was ONE FUCKING LION!"

  9. #6634
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    Quote Quoting Spinal (view post)
    I just finished this book, and I'm not sure I got the same message from it. I thought that the point was that Twitter's danger is that it only knows how to employ a nuclear option, when certain people merely need a little slap. There is no setting for a nuanced scolding and certain people have their lives destroyed over relatively minor offenses.
    Indeed. You've captured a more succinct version of my comment. I suppose where I'm most interested in Ronson's book is in the two most interesting sidenotes--how the Bob Dylan accuser feels pity, almost, for taking the fabricated quotes to the attention of the media and destroying the author, and in the notation about estimates of what Google earned when everyone googled Sacco's name to understand the big deal for her transgression.

    There are now three instances of short-lived napalming of lives this year on twitter (Brooklyn fire selfie, Rachel Dolezal, and the Cecil/dentist debacle). In the last instance, I'm fascinated by how long the Yelp reviews will tarnish his reputation or if he's able to petition to get them removed. I don't endorse their actions, but I'm thoroughly fascinated by this notion that online users thrive on this faceless destruction and how it's killing the ability to react to any transgression with nuance and grace.
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  10. #6635
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    I finally started The Streets of Laredo, the final installment of the Lonesome Dove series. It is very good. So much happens between Lonesome Dove and this final chapter, and not just insignificant stuff. The Hat Creek cattle company is dissolved, characters from LD die, get married, and pretty much everything the characters fought so hard far in LD is nothing but a sad, faded memory. Streets picks up about 15 years after LD, and follows the sad and bitter last days of Captain Call, on the trail of a Mexican train bandit, during the final years of the great American West.

    I love this series so much. If Streets ends up being great, this might be the strongest book series I know of. While Lonesome Dove is heralded as the masterpiece, and I agree, there are some days when I think that Comanche Moon is actually better.

    Anyhow, it feels good to back in McMurtry's vision of the west.

  11. #6636
    i am the great went ledfloyd's Avatar
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    I read the first Last Policeman book. It was decent, but something about Winters prose-style doesn't fully engage me the way I typically get involved in mystery novels. I started the second one, and I don't know if I'm going to finish it.

  12. #6637
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    I didn't think that McMurtry could get more bleak than he was with Comanche Moon, but I was wrong.

    Damn.

    Streets of Laredo is down right dark.

    It's also fucking great.

  13. #6638
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Streets of Laredo continues to be remarkable, proving that the LD series is probably the greatest series I've ever read.

    Two chapters have stood out thus far: chapter 13, which deals with Pea Eye leaving his family to work with Call again, and chapter 16, which deals with Famous Shoe's walk to the edge of the world where the birds roost. Each of these could probably be ripped from the book and read as masterful short stories. McMurtry's language is completely unlike any other author I've read. It is written with the rhythm and cadence of an epic poem, built with deceptively simple prose that cuts straight to the heart of the matter, reflecting the nature of the characters in its directness and frankness. He also writes about gore and violence better than any other author I've read, dealing with each in a way that leaves me sick and disgusted, in a way that doesn't glorify, but condemns and reveals the evil nature of humanity at its worst.

    Anyone here who loves epic and powerful fiction needs to read Lonesome Dove, and then continue on with the other books. McMutry is a national treasure - enjoy him while he's still around.

  14. #6639
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    God, this book!

    I read Lonesome Dove, and thought it was the best thing ever. Then I read Comanche Moon, and thought it was just as good if not better. And now Streets of Laredo, which is also just as good if not better.

    What a remarkable achievement.

  15. #6640
    I'm in the milk... Mara's Avatar
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    I haven't been keeping up with reporting on the books I've read this year, but Fun Home was freaking amazing.
    ...and the milk's in me.

  16. #6641
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Streets of Laredo, by Larry McMurtry, is one of the saddest, most gut-wrenching, most heart-breaking works of fiction I've ever read. McMurtry has been called the greatest anti-sentimentalist to ever write western fiction, and this book solidifies that title. This is a book about the end of the west told not with they mythical and poetic vision of Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, but with the cold, hard and pragmatic vision of a group of men and women who lived hard and rough lives in a time and place that cared little for the sanctity of human life. And once again McMurtry has populated his book with two of the greatest, most purely-evil, most despicable villains to ever grace the printed page: Joey Garza and Mox Mox. The men and women who are at once the victims and heroes of the story are left psychologically and physically battered and broken, at best, dead and mutilated at worst. Although, perhaps, it is those who lived who got it the worst.

    The Lonesome Dove series has proven to be the greatest work of fiction I've ever read. I cannot recommend these books enough. For fans of westerns, there is no question. Read them. For fans of American genre literature, there is no questions. Read them. For fans of straight lit, there is no question. Read them. They are powerful statements, and powerful works of fiction brimming with beautiful prose and characters and situations that I will long remember, and will be re-read a multitude of times during the rest of my years.

  17. #6642
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    I started reading a book that is scaring the hell out of me: Remembering Satan, by Lawrence Wright (author of the book on Scientology, Going Clear).

    It's not scary because of anything supernatural - far from it. It's scary because of how easily false accusations can utterly destroy a human life. That is a very, very real fear of mine, and this book, a journalistic look at one of the most famous cases of the satanic panic hysteria found in American in the '80s and '90s, perfectly illustrates just how unfathomably easy it is.

    It details the bizarre case of Paul Ingram, a husband, father, and sheriff officer in Olympia Washington, and how was - completely out of the blue, and falsely - accused of satanic cult actions and sexual abuse by his two daughters and son, accusers who went on to accuse multiple members of the community. What's most fascinating - and scary - is how easily the accused confess to the crimes, even though they had absolutely no memory of doing any of it, and there is absolutely zero evidence. Their whole basis for doing so is shockingly simple: Ingram believed that his daughters would lie about something so horrible, so he must have done it, and then repressed the memory. Multiple times he sits and listens to the graphic details of how he and his buddies continuously raped and abused his daughters and son - details completely fabricated based on other repressed memories and a prophecy from a church youth leader - and rather than deny them, he says that it must be true. He must have done it, because why would his family lie about such things?

    Absolutely wild. If I was reading this as some Stephen King story, there is no way in hell I'd believe that some one would be as stupid as Imgram, as easily manipulated. But here it is, in all its true life detail and factual evidence. Originally the pieces were serialized in the New Yorker. The book collects all of the parts.
    Last edited by D_Davis; 08-31-2015 at 06:22 PM.

  18. #6643
    Super Moderator dreamdead's Avatar
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    In the middle of Zadie Smith's NW and David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The former has an interesting visual experimentation akin to Dos Passos's USA trilogy, trying to capture the vernacular of the commoner, but Smith is more attuned to psychology than Dos Passos ever was in that epic.

    Just finished "The Depressed Person" from Wallace, and that was a bravura piece extolling, and indicting self-pity and the wallowing of excess guilt at the hands of the title character. The asides and repetitional phrasings grew from a chuckle, to a grin, to being wholly impressed with how Wallace turns emotions around through his recursive structure. That and the diving board story are the wonderful pieces so far.
    The Boat People - 9
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  19. #6644
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Just got Mary Doria Russell's Epitaph: a Novel of the O.K. Corral.

    Sounds like it's going to be incredible.

  20. #6645
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Epitaph is incredible so far. A large portion of the first 100 page are from the POV of Josephine Marcus, later to become Earp's wife. It's great to see these parts of the story from her perspective.

    Russell's writing is mostly fantastic. She has a great ability to turn a catchy and witty phrase.

  21. #6646
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    After finishing Lawrence Wright's Remembering Satan, and getting almost 1/2 way through Going Clear the past few days, I'm completely enthralled by this author's ability to report a story in such a no-nonsense, straight to the point way. Every single page of Going Clear is simply overflowing with information, and yet it never becomes cumbersome or overbearing. I did a year-long independent study of Scientology back in the late '90s when the all of their documents were first beginning to appear on line, and so there isn't a lot of new information in the book (at least not yet), but Wright details it all with clarity, and meticulously orders it all so it makes a narrative sense.

  22. #6647
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Going Clear is fantastic. Absolutely frightening and informative, and infinitely interesting on a number of levels.

    And now onto Danielewski's The Familiar Volume one.

    Holy shit.

    There will be 26 volumes more of this?

  23. #6648
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    115 pages into The Familar: Volume One.

    Far more difficult-to-decipher than House of Leaves, and a lot of the language is purposefully obtuse, with some being written in pidgen, and some in Singlish.

    It is an absolutely gorgeous book. Heavy as a brick, brimming with color and style. It's a real joy to hold, even though it can be tricky to find a comfortable reading position in places like the public bus.

    I'm choosing a quick read my first time through, not bothering with looking up the meanings of the Chinese and Hebrew writing, nor am I looking up the definitions of foreign words. I'm simply reading to get understanding from the context, and after I'm finished I'll go through a FAQ to read translations and what not.

    So far, I'm totally down with reading two of these year. Word is, Danielewksi has the first 10 volumes finished, so he's totally on schedule to release at least 2 volumes a year for the next 12 years.

  24. #6649
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Familiar Volume 2 arrived today.

    Volume 3 due next Summer.

    Thumbing through volume two, it looks like Xanther goes on a crazy journey.

    Got about 1/4 left of volume 1. The main story surrounding Xanther and her parents is great. Love it. About half of the other PsOV are OK, and a couple of them I can't stand. Luckily, the ones I can't stand are the shortest. Not only are they hard to read, but they are really, really boring. Looks like those characters also also minor parts in volume 2, thank god. I still don't really know what's going on, or what the larger narrative is. Although there are a couple of threads that seem to be tying things together - at least some of it.

  25. #6650
    What is best in life? D_Davis's Avatar
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    Started Dave Cullen's Columbine.

    Hard to read and utterly haunting.

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