The Book Shelf

[tented]

The goal is to have the release coincide with the 2015 USO.

Good idea. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Riotbeard]

I thought it was closer to being done, when I first posted, but it will be exciting. I think he will bring interesting social context to what Ashe did.

 

[Kieran]

The goal is to have the release coincide with the 2015 USO.

Brilliant! Will get that, Ashe was one of my heroes growing up...

 

[tented]

I thought it was closer to being done, when I first posted, but it will be exciting. I think he will bring interesting social context to what Ashe did.

The goal is to have the release coincide with the 2015 USO.

Brilliant! Will get that, Ashe was one of my heroes growing up...

Someone should do a movie of Ashe's life. How about Chiwetel Ejiofor as the lead?

(OK, I should post this in the film thread, but it came to mind while reading about the Ashe book.)

 

[Kieran]

I thought it was closer to being done, when I first posted, but it will be exciting. I think he will bring interesting social context to what Ashe did.

The goal is to have the release coincide with the 2015 USO.

Brilliant! Will get that, Ashe was one of my heroes growing up...

Someone should do a movie of Ashe's life. How about Chiwetel Ejiofor as the lead?

(OK, I should post this in the film thread, but it came to mind while reading about the Ashe book.)

It's a good idea. To be honest, there aren't many tennis players worthy of a movie, but Arthur Ashe stands out...

 

[DarthFed]

I'm through the first 200+ pages of Book 3 of the Game of Thrones series. I am planning to read up to the point that the show left off at the end of season 3 which is supposed to be about half of the 1100 page Book 3. Season 4 will cover the 2nd half.

Very good reading but they are long books. I thought the 2nd book was kind of boring though the show is anything but. Reading the books gives me more appreciation for the acting and even the writing for the show (main parts of the book are naturally in the show but some of the smaller things get changed). Even the actors/actresses for the bland characters of the book do an excellent job.

 

[Kieran]

Anybody here ever read any Thomas Pynchon? In particular, Mason & Dixon, which has been recommended to me...

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

I just finished reading Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth. What a great guy and a great read. Makes Canadians proud. I was following him on twitter when he was the commander of the ISS and the pictures he took were amazing, and the experiments he did up there were so cool. He made space exploration fun again.

And of course there was the David Bowie cover, coolest video shot in space:

[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo[/video]

clap:clap

 

[Goldenboy]

I recently read the unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo translated by Robin Buss. All in all, ridiculously enjoyable and incredible skill to write something 1250 pages long without it being boring.

Also read Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence (good book but a little too hopeless for me) and Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (absolutely fantastic writing skill on display).

I have a book of Chekhov's short stories on my bookshelf, but I honestly cannot bring myself to read the rest now that I have read the first 4. Incredibly melancholy.

I received a copy of Wool by Hugh Howey a week ago. Has anyone read it? I might get down to it when I have time, which unfortunately looks like February right now.

 

[Kieran]

I recently read Christopher Hitchens demolition job on Clinton. Now, Hitch is often on the wrong side of what I believe, but he's never a bore about it (like, say, Dawkins, or Hawkins, the other guy, whatever his name is). For example, I watched Hitch debate 3 evangelicals on YouTube and I felt it was a little unfair: there should have been 8 of them, to have a chance.

There are books of his I read and I wish he was in the room so I could drop the glove of challenge to the floor. But not this one. The most damaging claims - never denied by Clinton - are the accusations of rape. These are quite gory to read, and a couple of the stories, well, the girls didn't even know the other existed, and yet they told an identical, sorry tale. Hilary's role in "defending" her husband over his philandering/rapes is similarly egregious, and should be enough to keep her from the White House, but unfortunately, most likely won't.

The Clintons make House of Cards seem like a documentary. One chapter where I really applauded Hitch was on the notion of Clinton as the "First Black President", as if ole Bill was a friend to the coloured folks. This one always struck me as odd, and Hitch nails why.

Clinton's decision to execute Rickey Ray Rector - who was so severely mentally handicapped that when "served his last traditional last meal, Rector had left the pecan pie on the side of the tray, as he incoherently explained to his queasy guards, 'for later'," - was a dose of political harsh reality that borders on the criminal.

This is heart-breaking and ugly, and yet the conclusion is drawn that Clinton had this man executed to deflect from the Gennifer Flowers disclosures. It's difficult to read these things, but there were other occasions where Clinton resorted to wanton destruction when faced with his own messy sex life and abuses of position. The reading on how he ordered the El Shifa pharmaceutical company in Sudan is similarly mind-boggling. He ordered the destruction of this plant on the night Monica Lewinsky returned to testify in front of the grand jury.

Had Bush or Blair done something similar, they'd be hounded as "war criminals." Slick Willie rolls on.

It's an excoriating book, and Clinton comes out of it fully as the "draft-dodging, pot-smoking, womanising, lying SOB" that has long been claimed for him. Hilary comes off just as badly...

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

^A different Hitch book alright. As you know, I am a big fan of his other works but this one I did not expect and was amazed by.

 

[Kieran]

^A different Hitch book alright. As you know, I am a big fan of his other works but this one I did not expect and was amazed by.

He wrote it in a few days, apparently, which is envious haste! Once Hitch lines up a suspect, they better know their facts. In fairness, as I said above, there's a lot I disagree with in Hitchens views, and I'm sure there are those who could robustly defend the Clintons, but I found this book to be typically compelling...

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

^A different Hitch book alright. As you know, I am a big fan of his other works but this one I did not expect and was amazed by.

He wrote it in a few days, apparently, which is envious haste! Once Hitch lines up a suspect, they better know their facts. In fairness, as I said above, there's a lot I disagree with in Hitchens views, and I'm sure there are those who could robustly defend the Clintons, but I found this book to be typically compelling...

So I am guessing you don't share his views regarding Mother Teresa, eh?
:lolz:

 

[Kieran]

^A different Hitch book alright. As you know, I am a big fan of his other works but this one I did not expect and was amazed by.

He wrote it in a few days, apparently, which is envious haste! Once Hitch lines up a suspect, they better know their facts. In fairness, as I said above, there's a lot I disagree with in Hitchens views, and I'm sure there are those who could robustly defend the Clintons, but I found this book to be typically compelling...

So I am guessing you don't share his views regarding Mother Teresa, eh?
:lolz:

I haven't read that one yet, but I so far, I haven't found much common ground with him regarding matters of the Church.

 

[Kieran]

Read a couple of short Hemingway books over the last few days. A Moveable Feast, which is an autobiography of his time in Paris in the twenties, meeting guys like Joyce, Picasso, Scott Fitzgerald. A really beautiful book. I dunno why I thought papa would be mean and nasty, but he isn't.

Then The Old Man and the Sea. Seriously, why didn't you's people tell me about Hemingway. I'm scouting more, and then more again...

 

[shawnbm]

If you are into Hemingway now, Brother Kieran, check out The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bells Toll. I periodically return to him, T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound and Robert Frost every now and then. The one great writer I have not read anything by is Walt Whitman, specifically his Leaves of Grass. It is something I have to put an effort into reading, but now I am engrossed in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Spirit of the Liturgy, which is brilliant and thought-provoking (as anything by the emeritus pontiff is).

 

[Kieran]

He's the most readable and spiritual of the modern theologians, Shawn. He brings depth and erudition to everything, and all graced with a beautiful humble spirit. I haven't read that one but I know it's highly regarded.

I'm sourcing those two very books you mention. Do you like Steinbeck? We all love the poster, but I mean the author!

 

[shawnbm]

Yes, the Pope Emeritus is a man blessed with humility and a golden-pen with which he is blessed to be able to convey eternal Truth in beautiful and compelling language. It is a sheer joy to read his words. He is akin to Saint John Chrysostom, only in letters as opposed to oral preaching.

As for another great man of letters, Mr. John Steinbeck, I am familiar with his writings--Cannery Row, The Grapes of Wrath and whatnot. His was important literature in the States during a dire time, and the political "edge" is present in his writings. He wrote plain and with feeling about what he observed and lived through. His books are still standard reading for high school students I would imagine.

Now, do any of these guys (Hemingway or Steinbeck) match up with Wilde, Joyce, Yeats or other great Irish writers? 'Tis difficult to say. You Irish are gorgeous writers in my humble opinion--wordsmiths, in a word. Perhaps it is the Guinness!

 

[Kieran]

Now, do any of these guys (Hemingway or Steinbeck) match up with Wilde, Joyce, Yeats or other great Irish writers? 'Tis difficult to say.

I think they stack up quite nicely! I've been impressed with different things in the great American writers, mainly their economic use of language. Where the Irish are guilty of over-egging things, or maybe better put, they use words with a generous abundance, the American authors like Hemingway and Steinbeck, from what I've read, are more direct, simple - and just as powerful. More so, in some ways. I mean, Grapes of Wrath is a huge and powerful book, but even a small book like Of Mice and Men, plainly told, poetic, and yet it gets me every time.

Ulysses? :huh:

Conflustered after a single page. I know, it's deep poetry and he slits the narrative to shreds and reassembles willy-nilly, but still, I'd rather Mice & Men. Beckett's maybe a rarity in that he'll use one word where seven might do - whereas other Irish writers use seven words where one might have done.

Now, that might be the Guinness... :snigger

As for the Pope Emeritus, sorely missed, but you describe it as it is - a golden pen...

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

^I think Ulysses was written on crack, as opposed to Guinness. I don't know how many times i started reading it and dropped it...