HerdfanWV

Travis McClain

I felt cheated by that when I read it. It's really Tom Verducci's book about Joe Torre's tenure as manager of the Yankees. There are some insights and interesting anecdotes, yes, but on the whole I much preferred Torre's more conversational tone from his previous two books.

As for myself, I just returned from visiting family in Florida the last week and a half. While there, I read Octopussy by Ian Fleming and The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I've been reading one book from each series annually since beginning them, and it was pretty bittersweet to finish Fleming's Bond series. Each of the three short stories could have been part of a larger tale, and it was interesting to read "The Living Daylights" and "The Property of a Lady" after first seeing them incorporated into movie storylines. My favorite of the three was "Octopussy," which I felt harked back to "The Hildebrand Rarity."

A friend turned me onto Burroughs's Barsoom series in '08, and I enjoyed the first two (especially the second, Gods of Mars). I found this likable enough, but rather weak relatively. Virtually absent were the insights into Martian culture that I found so appealing about the previous stories, and it just felt like Burroughs wrote this one with less enthusiasm and inspiration. Still, I'm looking forward to continuing the series next year with Thuvia, Maid of Mars.

MrE

I'm loving the historical fantasy "The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" by Gordon Dahlquist.

Canis Firebrand

Reading this currently:


Finished 1-3 earlier. Will keep on with the series in succession.

lattethunder

I hit the wall halfway through The Passage. I'll get back to it after I finish this:

Drop

Getting to the end of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe.

It's either Oliver Twist or LA Confidental next.

Quake1028

Just Finished


Now Reading
&

Tommy Ceez

BTW, can anyone recommend a NYC equivalent of Bosch? Bonus points if the series started in the 90's like Connely's does

PAG

Just finished:

Geofferson

812crew

How is the Agatha Christie one? Is it a full novel? I love the kindle book price!

Quake1028

It is indeed the full novel. Well worth the 99 cents, that's for sure. It's her 3rd novel ever and the first appearance of Hercule Poirot, you can't go wrong .

Quake1028

meh.

Ginwen

Tracer Bullet

I finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on July 16, 2010 in the trade paperback version of 608 pages which I bought for $14.95 plus 8.875% percent sales tax for a total of $16.28. I put the purchase on my Visa credit card which I will pay off in full in seven days, one day before the due date. It took me approximately one week to read the book from beginning to end. I will not be reading the other two books in the series, which in their American English translations are titled The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Those two novels in their trade paperback versions are 630 and 576 pages, respectively.

Travis McClain

What's your VISA interest rate?

mlemmond

Read

david12

Just finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I wish I had just read Pride and Prejudice because that story was a whole lot better than the zombie stuff that was unnecessarily thrown in. Really great story too.

writer106

Lateralus

Book club book:

Travis McClain

Last night, I started Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Ebert made me feel guilty for not having already read it, so I bought a copy at Half Price Books. He's dropped "the 'n' word" so many times in the first 40 pages that I can only think of Samuel L. Jackson or Mel Gibson doing the audiobook.

Ginwen

movieking

Loved the first 1/3 of The Passage, didn't really like the second 1/3, and the last 1/3 was okay. Splitting my time between two books now:

Drop

Well it's during a time when slavery was still going strong, and Twain had a great ear for dialogue. Huck and Jim's relationship is really one of the greatest ever written. It's what really makes the book so powerful. And the little adventures they go on can be funny and really sad at the same time.

Travis McClain

Yeah, I'm familiar with the era in which Twain wrote. The writing is very authentic. The one thing I've found so far that rang especially true was Pap's diatribe to Huck about school. Pap is illiterate and never went to school, and he resents that Huck has been learning. He insists that Huck's trying to show him up by going to school, and his ego won't have that. It's a very aggressive passage, but even today I see a very strong streak of this in the South. It's sort of the dirty little secret no one wants to admit: Parents--fathers, anyway--don't want to see their children surpass them. Their self-concept rests on being superior and if they find that threatened, they become resentful.

I had this conversation with a friend of mine who taught in one of the most poorly performing counties in the state a few years back. He said he marveled at how many of his students were going to be the first in their families to ever graduate high school. Not college; high school. And he talked about how de-valued education is amongst the parents; some were genuinely proud that their offspring would be the first of their ilk to hold a diploma, but by and large the parents weren't impressed that school was terribly important for their kids. He couldn't understand their dismissive attitude, and refused to accept my assertion about the generational resentment. Of course, he grew up in a supportive home and never had to be around a parent who openly resented his son's scholastic achievements.

All this ran through my mind in the blink of an eye as I read that early chapter about Pap being so convinced that Huck thought highly of himself just for attending school. There are, I'm afraid, still a lot of Paps in the South.