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#11
08-06-2005, 05:48 AM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
[ QUOTE ]
Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) - Memoir of this dude growing up as a gay kid with crazy parents and a freakazoid foster family. Excellent. [/ QUOTE ] I read this book because I was in a situation where I had a ton of time to kill and nothing else to do. I thought it was terrible, but I read the whole damn thing because I had nothing else to do. It was fun though that it took place near where I live (amherst and northampton, ma), but that's about it. I'm not much of a literary critic, but the writing seemed nothing special. The molestation stuff just grossed me out of course. This author I've heard compared to David Sedaris, but the only common thing I see is that they're both gay. Sedaris is HILARIOUS. I have a book of short stories by him forget what it's called but it's great. I've rambled on too long, I'm sorry, but bottom line is, this book sucked. B 
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#12
08-06-2005, 07:31 AM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
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The Last Opium Den (Nick Tosches) - About a guy's quest to find a genuine opium den, treks across Asia etc. OK, definitely not great. [/ QUOTE ] Wow I've never heard of this book before you mentioned it, but someone stole my dream! Care to post a review about it? + Did he find one?
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#15
08-06-2005, 11:22 AM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
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Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) - Another award-winning book, set in the midst of a hostage-taking situation with terrorists and, hmmm, hostages. That's really all I know. Again, maybe too serious for me at the moment. [/ QUOTE ] Bel Canto is very, very good. If you're looking for another Liar's Poker, you should definitely have read Frank Partnoy's F.I.A.S.C.O. by now.
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#18
08-06-2005, 01:32 PM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
[ QUOTE ]
Ugly Americans (Ben Mezick) - By the guy who wrote Bringing Down the House about MIT blackjack team, which I thought was great. This book was pretty weak, about hedge fund guys in Japan. Trying to be another Liar's Poker, but fails. [/ QUOTE ] I loved Bringing Down the House too, but I always got the feeling that the story told itself... and that a writer would have needed to try very hard to make that book bad.
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#19
08-06-2005, 02:39 PM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
If you are going to read 'Burroughs', try William S. Naked Lunch
Partial reveiw from link: "He was," as Salon's Gary Kamyia notes, "20th-century drug culture's Poe, its Artaud, its Baudelaire. He was the prophet of the literature of pure experience, a phenomenologist of dread.... Burroughs had the scary genius to turn the junk wasteland into a parallel universe, one as thoroughly and obsessively rendered as Blake's." Why has this homosexual ex-junkie, whose claim to fame rests entirely on one book--the hallucinogenic ravings of a heroin addict--so seized the collective imagination? Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a Tangier, Morocco, hotel room between 1954 and 1957. Allen Ginsberg and his beatnik cronies burst onto the scene, rescued the manuscript from the food-encrusted floor, and introduced some order to the pages. It was published in Paris in 1959 by the notorious Olympia Press and in the U.S. in 1962; the landmark obscenity trial that ensued served to end literary censorship in America. ------------------ This book will make your brain bleed. Of course, I'm reading more morbid and mundane books, just purchased Thomas Jefferson Author of American , by Christopher Hitchens. However, I'm still slogging through The Decline and Fall of the Rome Empire by Gibbon, a very good human comedy, replete with human foibles and imbecilities, and also spiced with marvelous insights by the author. For example: "The religious system of the Germans (if the wild opinions of savages can deserve that name) was dictated by their wants, their fears, and their ignorance. They adored the great visible objects of nature, the Sun and the Moon, the Fire and the Earth; together with those imaginary deities, who were supposed to preside over the most important occupations of human life. They were persuaded that, by some ridiculous arts of divination, they could discover the will of the superior beings, and that human sacrifices were the most precious and acceptable offering to their altars." When human sacrfice enters the plot of the book you are reading you know its ripping good stuff worthy of your time and attention and of absorbing into your worldview. I would suggest that you pepper your reading with a few more old time classics. You would be pleasantly suprised, I predict. -Zeno
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#20
08-06-2005, 02:45 PM
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Re: Books I\'ve read, bought, or might read
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs) - Memoir of this dude growing up as a gay kid with crazy parents and a freakazoid foster family. Excellent. [/ QUOTE ] I read this book because I was in a situation where I had a ton of time to kill and nothing else to do. I thought it was terrible, but I read the whole damn thing because I had nothing else to do. It was fun though that it took place near where I live (amherst and northampton, ma), but that's about it. I'm not much of a literary critic, but the writing seemed nothing special. The molestation stuff just grossed me out of course. This author I've heard compared to David Sedaris, but the only common thing I see is that they're both gay. Sedaris is HILARIOUS. I have a book of short stories by him forget what it's called but it's great. I've rambled on too long, I'm sorry, but bottom line is, this book sucked. B [/ QUOTE ] I actually just read this last week, and I thought it was a great book (aside from the gay sex scenes). I'm not a homophobe, but reading it was a little much. Other than that though the book was extremely funny. How could you not stop from laughing when Dr. Finch thought God was talking to him through his crap?
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