No longer reading anything because apparently even though my job consists of sitting here staring into space, I can't read books & I got totally busted last week.
No longer reading anything because apparently even though my job consists of sitting here staring into space, I can't read books & I got totally busted last week.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
I have a terrible case of mucus in the lungs.... I could use an expectorant.
But I mean one of the main themes of HOL is its satire on literary analysis, thus the reason for the pages and pages of footnote citations that you often run across.
Last edited by TheOriginalGrumpySpy; 07-16-2009 at 11:46 AM.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
Well I actually didn't pick up on that until I was told. But I did spend a while reading the pages in a mirror until my roommate walked in on me and told me how ridiculous I looked.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
I'm reading the first Fanatic! book by Henry Rollins. He chronicles and describes each of the songs he played during his "Harmony in my Head" radio show. Definitely not for everyone, but I enjoy it.
The fiery red Torino rolled to the curb, we hit the pavement ready for action.
Just finished "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" by Steig Larsson.
It was... interesting.
Spoiler ahoy!
Just finished "The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World" (good book if you're a fan of random trivia facts), and have started a re-read of Neal Stephenson's "Diamond Age"
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Reading little by little as I find time and I am very much enjoying it.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
I was not aware of this, but I would watch it. I'm early in the book around 1858 when all the characters were building up their character for a spot as President. It really goes in depth covering each member of Lincoln's future cabinet members' life. To think he had brought them together and befriended them and preserved the Union is something I look forward to reading. I did not expect the book to this interesting until it had reached the outbreak of the civil war.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Just finished reading Anansi Boys. It was okay.
Reading: The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.
So far it's funny, but not as great as I'd hoped.
EDIT: It's more about living under Trujillo when he was dictator in the Dominican Republic than Oscar, and I'm more than 1/2 way through it. For a book with a title '... Life of Oscar Wao', there is shockingly little about him thus far except that he's fat and girls hate him. It's more about his mother, Beli, and the shit she faced in the DR under Trujillo. But I'm getting back into the Oscar part, which is good, because Beli is a fucking annoying character.
Last edited by MalReynolds; 07-27-2009 at 03:33 PM.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
I studied in high school, and I'm able to put together most of the spanish in the book. It's mainly slang and a few bits of dialogue.
I've read On Writing before, but it's not super useful. The first part - the bio part - is really fascinating, but the actual instruction part wasn't super awesome. It was more of the same. Know your grammar. Avoid be-verbs. Adverbs suck.
...
Most of his work is chock full of Be-verbs. Most every text is chock full of be-verbs. It's the dumbest fucking rule.
Last edited by MalReynolds; 07-28-2009 at 09:55 AM.
I liked learning how he formulated his books mostly and his bio.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
I'm confued by this recommended avoidance of so-called "be-verbs." Is this in order to avoid overly long compound verbs, which I could understand, or is it to avoid even simple participles that use these verbs? How can you avoid the latter? I suppose you could do so by attaching the descriptors to the descriptee in senctences describing the descriptee's actions: "The man pushed the box. The man was strong." becomes "The strong man pushed the box." Even still, it is an odd rule...
On the other hand, I can't understand what's wrong with adverbs...
Neither can I. I looked it up on Wikipedia, along with Passive Voice, and apparently it became standard after a specific grammar guide, The Writer's Handbook or somesuch that they use to teach grammar, said that they were bad and ineffective. They also say not to use passive voice, although of the four examples they give in the book, only one actually uses passive voice.
Long story short, if a book I write gets rejected because, "Too many be-verbs," then I'll understand, but my storytelling ability has very little to do with how often I use 'was'.
EDIT:
And Togs - I liked those parts of the book the best, too. And the van accident/recovery section, which I counted as separate from his bio for some reason.
Stephen King just hates the overuse of adverbs. It's really a personal preference, but really adverbs are mostly found as dialogue indicators.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
Just started The Jungle by Sinclair.
What is this summer American History assigned reading?
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
No my wife is an English teacher and she will be using the book this year. I havent read it yet, so I figure that I should.
Finished 'Wao'...
There's a lot of history in there, and it's all told from the perspective of young Dominican man, so it's all very... flippant. There's a whole lot of, "If you guessed that Beli just ran away, listening to her abuela? Nigger, please." It made the history kind of odd to read, but it was remarkably well written.
The Oscar parts picked up near the end, and his death was really disheartening. I kept expecting it to be out of left field, or that he would give him his heritage and that would be his 'death'. But no, he gets murdered.
When I finished the book I just sat there for a few seconds and thought about it.
Recommend it.
First part of this vacation, I read Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden. It's a tale told in first person from two perspectives: (alternating each chapter which was really confusing at first) Annie Bird, a Cree trapper in Northern Ontario who searches for her missing sister through the mysterious urban cities she's never been to before and Will Bird, a legendary local bush pilot/hunter who is recuperating from an accident in a comatose state in a hospital, and the uncle of Annie. Both use each other as a confessional that causes them to relive the major issues they've had in their lives, exploring the tension and drug abuse on the reserve where they live, the status of city indians, or the Anishnabe, and how the abuse each of them has faced in their lives shaped their choices. It's a touching story of attempted redemption and family ties in harsh environments, told in writer's voice that mimics the speech patterns of the cities and people where the story takes place (mostly Moosonee, and it's a pretty accurate voice).
The other book I read was World Without End by Ken Follet, which was pretty much a waste of time. It was just a vast soap opera set in a well researched historical background that briefly held my interest for some of the political manoeuvring, but all in all was a pretty boring grind for the 1,000 pages it weighs in at.
Next up is an old collection of short stories from Guy de Maupassant, so we'll see how I handle that.
Physics of the Impossible
An absolutely fascinating novel about the kinds of things that we think are impossible today (force fields, time travel, faster-than-light travel, parallel universes) and shows how we are actually working toward these things. It explains how today we are starting to do very basic/fundamental steps of the processes that will allow us to do/create these things in the coming decades or centuries.
The problem: You have to have a very high understanding of physics and abstract principles. The book starts you off baby-stepping you through the old world ideas of physics, bringing you through Newtonian physics, then like Maxwell's/Dirac/Faraday, Einstein/Schrodinger/Boltzmann and the quantum/wave-particle duality, to sting theory and the 11 dimensions it proposes. You need a PhD in physics to fully understand what's going on in the book. I can say I'm more educated then most in Physics, and admittedly I was lost in parts (Particularly the theory that the universe may only consist of one electron darting back and forth through time to compose everything we see. Or the idea of our inflating universe.).
I'd recommend it if you enjoy Sci-Fi, Non-fiction, or just plain science fun. Just be prepared.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
From my knowledge of physics, I can say that they probably weren't saying that the universe is composed of one electron darting all around, but rather there was probably the suggestion that the wavefunctions of all electrons are entangled with each other, so that there is one giant multi-electron wavefunction that spans the universe. Because their wavefunctions are interfereing with each other, no electron has a seperate identiy from other electrons. However, this uber-wavefunction would still be a multiparticle wavefunction, since a multi-particle wavefunction is fundamentally different from a single-particle wavefunction.
At any rate, I can appreciate books like the ones you're talking about, TOGS, and what they are attempting to do, but it's dangerous to describe physics by analogy, as it is really only understandable in terms of equations. This is especially true with more abstract physics concepts such as QM. For example, I read Brian Greene's book about String Theory some time ago, and I got little out of it in the end even with my physics background (though at the time I wasn't finished with my BS). As someone said about "physics by analogy" books, you understand something, but you don't understand what that is.
I do agree with you, however, in that basic math and physics concepts will help your understanding go a long way.
I'm currently reading The Little Book of Bees by Karl Weiss. I got it for free by signing up to a Springer publications mailing list at a physics conference, but it's actually a pretty nice little read. For exampe, I learned that with the exception of a single specices of beetles, there's only two orders of insects that have true social behavior, one with bees, wasps, and ants and the other with termites, and only 15% of bees are social.
in other news i cant wait until i get my new glasses so i can actually read again
having to blow up internet forums to max font size to read is frustrating
Just picked up The Road by McCarthy and Naked in Dangerous Places by Cash which is a travelogue.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
I enjoy travel literature, but, sometimes I get into books late.
Catcher in the Rye for example I didn't read until 2 years ago. A book I should have read while I was still a starry eyed high-schooler. I didn't like it, in fact, I hated the book. Holden was such a little bitch that complained and ended up where he started.
On The Road is like one of those books that people tell me to read. I know it put the Beat generation on the map and is like the epitome of some travel books, but I should have read it so long ago that I don't really have any interest in it. It's the hype that's stopping me. Who knows, one day I may pick it up to see what the fuss is all about, but until then I enjoy the books I read now.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
Holden was a bitch, but that's why Catcher in the Rye was actually good. It's about identity and finding your place in the world, about seeing the world and life as a game and a system of it's own accord, but nobody inside the game/system sees it for what it is. This is why Holden's an outsider. It points out a couple of the cruel realities of life, and at the same time points out the flaws in Holden's character without having the character be aware of them, or absolving him of responsibility or consequence because of his poor choices. There's so much that's actually good in the book, but it's something you reall need to ponder about for a while, because, I completely agree, it's a really easy book to hate the first time through. But it's literature, and you can't read it like a fluff novel, you have to read it as literature.
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