[quote]I’ve got my head in “Highways to a War” by Christopher Koch. It’s a fiction based on fact account of photographers and journalists in Vietnam and Cambodia from the mid 1960s to the mid 70s. Quite good - there’s not nearly enough written about those guys.
[/quote]
That is a great book, full of pathos.
I am reading Tales from Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin now.
I like to read books before going to see their movie versions.
Just finished World War Z…awesome
Now I’m in the the middle of M. Moorcock’s The Dreamthief’s Daughter…welcome back Elric but keep that f**king nasty ass sword out of my face.
Has anyone read this?
amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de … R&v=glance
It’s a very popular book. Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly has to say:
[quote]Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls “our national eating disorder” (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It’s a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You’ll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.
Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: “The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world.” All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. “[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of… well, precisely what I don’t know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven’t yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly.”
Pollan’s narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald’s lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.
Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of “big organic”; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he’s foraged and hunted.This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn’t preachy: he’s too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He’s also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow’s-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I’m not convinced I’d want to go hunting with Pollan, but I’m sure I’d enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota.[/quote]
I’ve just finished reading The Hours and I absolutely adored it. One of those books that completely absorbs you and alters your perspective on everything around you. I devoured it, and now that I’m finished I might be forced to go and devour Mrs Dalloway - again…
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
excellent book so far
Public Enemy #2: An All-New Boondocks Collection
Not that new since it was published in 2005, but entertaining nonetheless.
Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie. Only about 40 pages in, but it’s been good so far.
I’ve recently hit the book bonanza, as smell the glove, chewycorns, Dr. Evil and JDSmith have all lent books to me… I’m currently reading this:
Hannibal Rising- Harris.
Teacher man- Frank McCourt.
Both are crap.
The Dogs of Babel Very unusual, interesting story, at times moving. I generally agree with the two reviews on the linked page, including the flaws listed.
A quick read, and worthwhile.
Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”. It’s a great, hard-hitting, entertaining argument against the popular delusion that god exists, peppered with quotations from various scientists, philosophers, and authors.
A summary of it can be found here.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Conrad Black’s massive Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom…extremely detailed.
The Intelligent Investor, by Benjamin Graham
River Out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins.
A gentler book than The God Delusion;
not as story-driven as The Ancestor’s Tale.
Scott’s Diary of his Antartic expedition.
There was a program on SBS (Australia) recently which recreated the race between Scott and Amundsen for the South Pole. It was strange that the contemporary Scott team had to be air-lifted to safety well after the Amudsen team were snuggled up in the hotel bar.
Scott’s diary is fascinating and well worth the read. I believe there are a few versions knocking about, I went for the Oxford edition.
Anyone have any suggestions as to a book on hiking the Appalachian Trail? I know there are several out there, but don’t know which to get. I’m interested in one that would tell a personal story as well as give factual info on hiking the trail. Thanks.
Bodo
[quote=“Bodo”]Anyone have any suggestions as to a book on hiking the Appalachian Trail? I know there are several out there, but don’t know which to get. I’m interested in one that would tell a personal story as well as give factual info on hiking the trail. Thanks.
Bodo[/quote]Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods” is a very entertaining read, and perhaps more thoughtful and heartfelt than his other books, good though those are too.
It does contain a fair bit of background information about the AT, though as you’d expect from Bryson it’s more of a personal story than anything else.
Thanks for the suggestion JSax.
Bodo
Bakhtin’s The Dialogic Imagination.
So far it’s pretty dry.