books : offtopik

[AgilisMerlin]

What we are Reading -


http://www.qbd.com.au/products/l/5808/9780340995808.jpg

by John Connolly and Halloween appropriate. Try and chew through it by sunday and pass it on to the family. Got rave reviews

and used for a penny (http://www.amazon.com/The-Gates-John-Connolly/dp/1439172633) - hardcover

and it started with a dot(first page) (http://www.amazon.com/The-Gates-John-Connolly/dp/1439172633#reader_1439172633)

review,

"Irish mystery writer John Connolly tells us about his new spine-tingling and funny bone-tickling thriller for smart teens, THE GATES. And we air an archived interview with magician Alan Kronzek about THE SORCERER’S COMPANION, A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter.
The Gates of Hell Are About To Open, Want To Peek?

It’s that time of year again to turn away from the really scary things, like war, climate change and economic meltdowns to the lighter side of horror. Our first guest today is John Connolly. Best known for his Charlie Parker series, Connolly has also written a number of books that dip into the spookier side of fantasy fiction. One is The Book Of Lost Things, about a young boy who finds the characters in his books have come to life.

Connolly’s newest addition to that genre is THE GATES of Hell Are About To Open, Want To Peek?. He jokingly calls it “a book about satanism for kids” — older kids, ages 12 and up. Grownups can enjoy it too, as I did. It reminded me of my own childhood fantasy favorites, like Edward Eager’s Half Magic, Edward Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix, and the Chronicles of Narnia of CS Lewis.

[sniplet amazon search]

Although THE GATES is in that vein of magical adventure, it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek romp through horror. It also has a smattering of fascinating facts about science and religion throughout.

An intrepid young boy, his spunky dachshund, and a soft-hearted demon named Nurd save the world from an invasion from Hell. It all happens when young Samuel Johnson notices some strange goings-on at a house in the neighborhood, 666 Crowley Road. It’s all the fault of the *Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, which has opened a crack in space-time to let through a very nasty advance party sent by the Great Malevolence himself."

http://www.writersvoice.net/2009/10/its-getting-spooky-out-the-halloween-show/

[Fixed]

I am re reading autobiography of a yogi
I read it in the early 70's , I started again last night
I read it was the one book that Steve jobs kept with him always
Cheers :)

[Fixed]

What we are Reading -


http://www.qbd.com.au/products/l/5808/9780340995808.jpg

by John Connolly and Halloween appropriate. Try and chew through it by sunday and pass it on to the family. Got rave reviews

and used for a penny (http://www.amazon.com/The-Gates-John-Connolly/dp/1439172633) - hardcover

and it started with a dot(first page) (http://www.amazon.com/The-Gates-John-Connolly/dp/1439172633#reader_1439172633)

review,

"Irish mystery writer John Connolly tells us about his new spine-tingling and funny bone-tickling thriller for smart teens, THE GATES. And we air an archived interview with magician Alan Kronzek about THE SORCERER’S COMPANION, A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter.
The Gates of Hell Are About To Open, Want To Peek?

It’s that time of year again to turn away from the really scary things, like war, climate change and economic meltdowns to the lighter side of horror. Our first guest today is John Connolly. Best known for his Charlie Parker series, Connolly has also written a number of books that dip into the spookier side of fantasy fiction. One is The Book Of Lost Things, about a young boy who finds the characters in his books have come to life.

Connolly’s newest addition to that genre is THE GATES of Hell Are About To Open, Want To Peek?. He jokingly calls it “a book about satanism for kids” — older kids, ages 12 and up. Grownups can enjoy it too, as I did. It reminded me of my own childhood fantasy favorites, like Edward Eager’s Half Magic, Edward Ormondroyd’s David and the Phoenix, and the Chronicles of Narnia of CS Lewis.

[sniplet amazon search]

Although THE GATES is in that vein of magical adventure, it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek romp through horror. It also has a smattering of fascinating facts about science and religion throughout.

An intrepid young boy, his spunky dachshund, and a soft-hearted demon named Nurd save the world from an invasion from Hell. It all happens when young Samuel Johnson notices some strange goings-on at a house in the neighborhood, 666 Crowley Road. It’s all the fault of the *Large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland, which has opened a crack in space-time to let through a very nasty advance party sent by the Great Malevolence himself."

http://www.writersvoice.net/2009/10/its-getting-spooky-out-the-halloween-show/


Sounds like a great read for the season I will pick it up

Anybody read more than one book at a time ,
I am reading carte Blanche it is new James Bond novel
And the yogi book , I have Herman Hess ' Siddhartha waiting for me too .
I love reading but I have a hard time with concentration now
Cheers

[jr59]

On the advise of this board, I have a great big pile of Jack Reacher books in front of me.

[quehill]

This:

[MarleyMon]

I'm halfway through the latest novel from Mario Vargas Llosa, The Dream of the Celt, and it is a relentlessly dark tale of colonial exploitation in the Belgian Congo and the Peruvian Amazon during the rubber boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I've been reading his books for 25 years and this is a tough one for its subject, but its a page-turner once you get into it. Its based on an historical character who witnesses and documents the horrors visited on indigenous populations by European gov't. sponsored companies. He later becomes involved in the Irish Easter Rising and the story is told in flashbacks from his prison cell. I'm not anticipating a happy ending.

[45K10]

I'm reading "Che" by Jon Lee Anderson

It has some great insight into the Cuban revolution as well
Very interesting if you are history/biography person

[45K10]

Sounds like a great read for the season I will pick it up

Anybody read more than one book at a time ,
I am reading carte Blanche it is new James Bond novel
And the yogi book , I have Herman Hess ' Siddhartha waiting for me too .
I love reading but I have a hard time with concentration now
Cheers

Siddhartha is one of my favorite books. It was one of those books I thought I would not like but it turned out to be much more than I anticipated.

[monkeybanana86]

...
Anybody read more than one book at a time ...


Yes! Being a slow reader and having a short attention span I always jump from book to book.

Here's my 2012 list:

Triple Agent Joby Warrick
Chike And The River Chinua Achebe
World Without End Ken Follett
Road To Valor Aili and Andres McConnon
We Were Young And Carefree Laurent Fignon (recommended by a forum member!)
No Easy Day Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer
A Visit From The Goon Squat Jennifer Egan

currently reading Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

[PQJ]

I'm halfway through the latest novel from Mario Vargas Llosa, The Dream of the Celt, and it is a relentlessly dark tale of colonial exploitation in the Belgian Congo and the Peruvian Amazon during the rubber boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I've been reading his books for 25 years and this is a tough one for its subject, but its a page-turner once you get into it. Its based on an historical character who witnesses and documents the horrors visited on indigenous populations by European gov't. sponsored companies. He later becomes involved in the Irish Easter Rising and the story is told in flashbacks from his prison cell. I'm not anticipating a happy ending.

That sounds like an interesting read; thanks for it.

Unrelated, but the word 'prison cell' got me thinking about a riveting book I read recently - Shantaram. Tells the true story of an Australian convict who escapes from prison, flees to India, gets involved with the Indian mafia, and ends up fighting with jihadists in Afghanistan. Highly recommended if that's your sort of thing.

[Tony T]

You must be lost, this isn't a LA thread.:cool:

[PQJ]

Classy as always, Phony Baloney. Is it or is it not ironic that you fail to see the irony in your infantile post here?

[Tony T]

Please answer the question.

[Fixed]

On the advise of this board, I have a great big pile of Jack Reacher books in front of me.

He has a new one out it will be on my list too
Cheers :)

[fuzzalow]

These were read during the summer and later. Books read before then, I can't remember.

On China - Henry Kissenger
11/23/63 - Stephen King
God is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens
Boeing vs. Airbus - John Newhouse
The Secret Race - Tyler Hamilton
No Easy Day - Mark Owen
The Oath - Jeffrey Toobin

Currently reading On Saudi Arabia by Karen House

[AgilisMerlin]

love this book

http://www.qbd.com.au/products/l/5808/9780340995808.jpg

excerpt:

In the eighteenth century, a man named Bishop Berkeley claimed that objects only exist because people are there to see them. This led a lot of scientists to laugh at Bishop Berkeley and his ideas, because they found them silly. But according to quantum theory, which is the very advanced branch of physics involving atoms, parallel universes, and other such matters, Bishop Berkeley,may have had a point. Quantum theory suggests that the tree exists in all possible states at the same time: burned, sawdust, fallen, or in the shape of a small wooden duck that quacks as it's pulled along. You don't know what state it's in until you observe it. In other words, you can't separate the observer from the thing being observed."

picked this up at library for 2$

http://geektyrant.com/storage/page-images/607-2.jpeg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1292524312597

review: (http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/reviews/000220.20polk5t.html)



Near the end of this engaging and multifaceted first novel, Benjamin Weaver, the much-put-upon protagonist, worries that he has lost his way: ''I found myself . . . in a labyrinth in which I could not see what lay ahead or even behind. I only knew where I was -- and I was trapped.'' He is not alone. Almost all the other characters are similarly unsure of what's going on around them. And many of those who think they understand turn out to be disastrously wrong.

The reason behind all their confusion is that London in the first quarter of the 18th century, when ''A Conspiracy of Paper'' is set, is on the edge of a sea change in values and behavior, in how people see themselves and how they approach the society around them. The South Sea Bubble, the first stock market crash in the English-speaking world, is about to burst, and a whole way of life is about to burst with it.

Established in 1711 for the purpose of controlling trade between Britain and South America, the South Sea Company found itself locked out of its intended market by the Spanish. Rather than fading away once its purpose had evaporated, the company made more and more promises and issued more and more stock until by 1719, the time of David Liss's novel, it had become powerful enough to challenge the Bank of England for pre-eminence, even offering to take on the nation's debt in exchange for issuing still more stock.

So far, this sounds like pretty arcane stuff. What makes ''A Conspiracy of Paper'' so readable is that Liss manages to create a number of arresting side plots featuring everything from the London underworld to boxing to social mores to English anti-Semitism. And all these sketches are populated with a thoroughly mixed bag of characters, varying from the Dickensian to the Orwellian.


James Polk teaches literature at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

lyrics (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Paper-Thin-Walls-lyrics-Modest-Mouse/4BAE5F3D5B5418B948256C540027120C) to song below paperthinwalls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OTms8Son-U)

[bluesea]

I plan to read the whole series...again.


http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8155/masterandcommanderaubre.jpg

[sc53]

This:
The Sisters Brothers
GREAT book! So well written. Now go read True Grit, story and narration in a similar vein.

[MarleyMon]

My Cross to Bear by Gregg Allman
One of my favorite rock voices relates tales of sex, drugs, marriage, rehab and rock and roll. It reveals a lot more than he intended, I'll bet, such as when he writes about relationships with his kids (paraphrasing, but pretty close): "When the judge finds out you are addicted to heroin, well, the child's mother gets to make all the decisions about when you get to see 'em."
Written in an easy going style, not 2 pages go by without some gem - this is the stuff fictionalized (just barely) in Almost Famous.
His relationship with Duane, who died 41 years ago yesterday, is so close and strong - I found it very moving.
I collected their albums starting in the early 70s and saw them live around '89. I loved seeing them later with Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes. I hope to hear Gregg sing live again.
If you are interested in ABB, you will like this book.

[Johnny P]

I just finished Tyler's book. It was very good.


These were read during the summer and later. Books read before then, I can't remember.

On China - Henry Kissenger
11/23/63 - Stephen King
God is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens
Boeing vs. Airbus - John Newhouse
The Secret Race - Tyler Hamilton
No Easy Day - Mark Owen
The Oath - Jeffrey Toobin

Currently reading On Saudi Arabia by Karen House

[AgilisMerlin]

http://img2.imagesbn.com/images/184780000/184785382.JPG

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/02/03/book-review-the-rook-by-daniel-omalley/

http://nationalpostarts.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/omalley-rook.jpg?w=300&h=458

"It would be an incredible mistake to describe Daniel O’Malley’s boisterously imaginative debut, The Rook, as placid, but it shares at least one thing with Fischer’s brilliant game: It understands the value of tweaking established patterns. A genre novel that uses its conventions more like a tub of Lego than a set of instructions, it’s a book of wild imagination and overflowing wit.

We’re thrown into O’Malley’s looping playfulness from quite literally the first line: “The body you are wearing used to be mine.” Given that this is a book about a supernatural spy service, we might expect some sort of body-switching, but it’s actually just amnesia, not that anything O’Malley does is ever really just anything. In a brilliant opening move of his own, he not only upends the usual treatment of amnesia — this is two different people, sharing the same space but not the same time — but also gives us a wonderful twist on the standard “incredible world” entry point of a newcomer learning the ropes: This newcomer is already on the high wire, but she’ll have to learn as fast as we do.

As for the story itself, it is admittedly the one area that isn’t quite as successful at subverting convention. Granted, it blends elements of bureaucratic detective work with eerie action beyond the scope of most spy/inspector thrillers, but the bread crumbs are not particularly hard to follow if you’re paying attention. Still, odds are it’s something you’ll be more than willing to forgive: O’Malley, after all, has to hang his imagination on some kind of framework, and no matter how clever the moves, there’s only so many ways the game can end. It’s a pretty pure and propulsive joy getting there, though."

[DHallerman]

Finally getting around to reading Maphead (http://www.amazon.com/Maphead-Charting-Weird-World-Geography/dp/1439167184), subtitled "Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks."

And this posting has cycling content, since I got the book last year from my bike club, as a prize for doing up good cue sheets.

Are you a map lover?

I certainly am. Can lose myself in maps.

And in my office at home right now, the wall behind me is filled with a map of the county where I live -- great for planning rides (along, of course, with Google Maps).

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQyVShGSCjaw4WPeHDQX5uB07yigyclK IFuPccW_V2QX-VZxAND

[pinkshogun]

Peter Criss, ex drummer of KISS, has a new book out. for those who may want to skip this one i'll give the skinny....Gene often had body odor, Ace excessively masterbated and Paul drew pictures of penises

my favorite book; "Blue Highways" by William 'Least Heat' Moon

[Louis]

Just finished The End of Faith last night. Not sure where I'll go next, probably Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, which I put down about 100 pages in to read the Harris.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51q-NruV7lL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41w6Omm06kL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

[bironi]

I just finished This Wheel's on Fire
by Levon Helm with Stephen Davis

Entertaining history of The Band. I'm a fan.

I requested two from the local library.

Stiles, T. J.
The first tycoon :

The epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt A gripping, groundbreaking biography of the combative man whose genius and force of will created modern capitalism. Founder of a dynasty, builder of the original Grand Central, creator of an impossibly vast fortune, Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt is an American icon. Humbly born on Staten Island during George Washington's presidency, he rose..........

Sanora Babb
Whose Names Are Unknown:

Her novel tells of the High Plains farmers who fled drought and dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers' plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author's firsthand experience. Babb submitted the manuscript for this book to Random House for consideration.............

[MattTuck]

I need to pick up F.A. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom"...


It's been on my list for more than a year, and I just need to buckle down and read it.

[MattTuck]

Just finished The End of Faith last night. Not sure where I'll go next, probably Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, which I put down about 100 pages in to read the Harris.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51q-NruV7lL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41w6Omm06kL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

How was "The End of Faith"?

My parents thought that it was hilarious when they dropped me off for my freshman year at RPI, that they had converted the cathedral on campus into a giant computer lab... Where's your god now? He is apparently now an electron zipping through transistors.

[sc53]

Just finished: Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart. So funny! and sad. Also finished recently: Consider the Lobster, Essays by DF Wallace. Eloquent, unbelievably articulate, funny. Currently re-reading: Suttree, by Cormac McCarthy. One of his best. Weird weird weird down-and-out people.

[johnniecakes]

After working as an engineer 9 hours a day I am not a real deep thinker

[Louis]

How was "The End of Faith"?

OK, but IMO not as good as Hitchens' God is Not Great, but then again, that may be unfair to Harris, because Hitchens was one heck of a writer (and speaker, for that matter).

[oliver1850]

Last book I read was Faulkner's "The Hamlet", 1st book of the Snopes Trilogy. I need to get hold of the other two before I forget everything in the first. I'm slowly working my way through Faulkner, as I did Steinbeck previously. Steinbeck was easier.

[poff]

The Rook was pretty good if you into the British humor and fantasy. I am listening to Luna Marine by Ian Douglas - military Sci Fi. It is OK. Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons will be next.

[esldude]

Stars Rain Down (a Biotech legacy). Basic good sci-fi book by Chris Randolph.

If you are fan of good sci-fi you will probably be happy with it. Kind of book once you get going in it you don't want to put it down.

[pcxmbfj]

Into the third book of Terry Goodkind's "The Seeker" series "Bold of the Fold", kind of a dark Lord of the Rings.

Waiting for the sequel to "The Passage" "The Twelve" by Justin Cronan.

Also reading an Elvis Cole by Robert Crais.

Going to see the movie "The Life of Pi" for comparison to book.

[AgilisMerlin]

Into the third book of Terry Goodkind's "The Seeker" series "Bold of the Fold", kind of a dark Lord of the Rings.

Waiting for the sequel to "The Passage" "The Twelve" by Justin Cronan.

Also reading an Elvis Cole by Robert Crais.

Going to see the movie "The Life of Pi" for comparison to book.


enjoyed this.

outtheDoorforaride-afterfinishinghittingthesekeys

[beercan]

just finished BORN TO RUN - The Hidden tribe of the Tarahumara, damn good read, made me appreciate biking, running, and family much more!

[cash05458]

I re-read Moby Dick every two years or so...am right in the middle of it again...

"who ain't a slave?"

[velotel]

I plan to read the whole series...again.


http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/8155/masterandcommanderaubre.jpg
I've read them 3 times. The last time I read the entire series one after the other as if it was simply one book. That was the best. If he'd written more, I would have read those too.

[samsays]

Reading Shantaram right now. Love it.

Such vivid imagery of India.


That sounds like an interesting read; thanks for it.

Unrelated, but the word 'prison cell' got me thinking about a riveting book I read recently - Shantaram. Tells the true story of an Australian convict who escapes from prison, flees to India, gets involved with the Indian mafia, and ends up fighting with jihadists in Afghanistan. Highly recommended if that's your sort of thing.

[learningtoride]

.

[pcxmbfj]

Into the third book of Terry Goodkind's "The Seeker" series "Bold of the Fold", kind of a dark Lord of the Rings.

Waiting for the sequel to "The Passage" "The Twelve" by Justin Cronan.

Also reading an Elvis Cole by Robert Crais.

Going to see the movie "The Life of Pi" for comparison to book.

Finally got to see last night to celebrate my birthday and at my age didn't remember the book all that well but seemed to run true!

Great movie (maybe worth seeing in 3d) and concurred to by my wife.

Any movie with a cat or dog as a main character generally meets the bar for us and this clears it by meters or feet.

Recommend book and movie in either order.

[AgilisMerlin]

http://www.sfsite.com/charlesdelint/coverart/little_orb.jpg

this was/is special








tracks instead of path on musaK lyrics below (bearing on my tracks)

[pcxmbfj]

I'm putting that on my read list.

Here's a fantasy series that's a better than most.

The Vineart War by Laura Anne Gilman who also writes The Retriever Series that is more popular but not as good.

http://www.lauraannegilman.net/whats-in-print/vineart-war/

[AgilisMerlin]

this is an unbelievable series, read it when quite young.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant

http://aardvarkian.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/thomascovenant1-6.jpg

was never the same :eek:

snippet:
"An issue of major importance in the First Chronicles is the question of the reality of the Land. From Covenant's perspective, the Land may well be just a delusion of his disturbed mind; early in his adventure, he gives himself the title of "The Unbeliever." Donaldson goes to great lengths to make this explanation as plausible as any other theory (e.g., Covenant is (to varying degrees) mentally unbalanced, events in the Land seem to parallel his subconscious struggles, his physical condition upon exiting the Land is always exactly the same as his condition upon entering it, etc.). This is the heart of the "Fundamental Question of Ethics" that appears at the very start of the Chronicles, which can be rephrased as "Do one's actions in dreams have any real significance?" Covenant's despicable act early in the first book (the rape of a young woman who befriends him when he comes to the Land) has consequences throughout the story and can be seen as an attempt to test this theory. One interpretation of the First Chronicles sees the reality of the Land eventually 'proven' to Covenant; another interprets Covenant's eventual decision to aid the Land as a realization that, whether the Land is real or not, it matters to him.

Another theme which is covered in both the First and Second Chronicles is that of powerlessness and the freedom that being powerless can bring. In the First Chronicles, Thomas Covenant strives to avoid responsibility for the Land by denying that he has power to control the wild magic in his ring. He spends much of his time getting others, especially Lord Mhoram and High Lord Elena, to assume responsibility for the Earth in his place. In the Second Chronicles, Thomas Covenant discovers the powerlessness that comes from too much power. As his ability to draw upon the wild magic grows, his control over its effects lessens; thus, he becomes a threat to all around him, eventually to the entire Earth. He thus has to battle against his own passions to avoid unleashing the apocalypse contained within himself."

another superb read, my grandmother started me on fantasy with this book, as a young kid was, she finished it and was reading Susquehanna

sword of shannara

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c4Jf1f0LyqY/UA2HC_PnUKI/AAAAAAAAA3c/Y_FHSziIxb0/s1600/The+Sword+of+Shannara.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara

Book impact

snippet:

"The Sword of Shannara sold about 125,000 copies in its first month in print.[41] It was the first work of fiction to ever appear on The New York Times trade paperback bestseller list, and it was there for over five months.[5] This success provided a major boost to the fantasy genre,[42] a fact noted by many critics. Louise J. Winters believed that "until Shannara, no fantasy writer except J. R. R. Tolkien had made such an impression on the general public."[43] The critic David Pringle credited Brooks for "demonstrat[ing] in 1977 that the commercial success of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings had not been a fluke, and that fantasy really did have the potential to become a mass-market genre".[44] Together with Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, The Sword of Shannara ushered in "the era of the big commercial fantasy"[45] and helped to make epic fantasy the leading subgenre of fantasy.[45] Later in their life, The Sword of Shannara and its subsequent sequels were one of the inspirations for the later versions of Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game.[46]


I would set my adventure story in an imaginary world, a vast, sprawling, mythical world like that of Tolkien, filled with magic that had replaced science and races that had evolved from Man. But I was not Tolkien and did not share his background in academia or his interest in cultural study. So I would eliminate the poetry and songs, the digressions on the ways and habits of types of characters, and the appendices of language and backstory that characterized and informed Tolkien's work. I would write the sort of straightforward adventure story that barreled ahead, picking up speed as it went, compelling a turning of pages until there were no more pages to be turned.[15]

Being his first novel, he admits that he was very influenced by The Lord of the Rings when writing it, but that he has evolved his own signature since then:

Tolkien approached it as an academic, and he was writing it as an academic effort, not as popular fiction. I’m a popular fiction writer, that’s the way I approached it. And I think that you’re right, too, about the fact that I was heavily under the influence of Tolkien when I wrote Sword of Shannara and it shows in that particular book. But I’ve really gotten a long way away from Tolkien these days and not very many people come up to me any more and say, “Well, gee, you’re writing an awful lot like Tolkien.” They don’t say that any more.[16]

Brooks also made decisions about his novel's characterization and use of magic when composing his work, saying that the magic "couldn't be dependable or simply good or bad".[2] Also, he wanted to blur the distinctions between good and evil, "because life simply [doesn't] work that way."[2] Lastly, he wanted to ensure that readers would identify with his protagonist, Shea, which he accomplished by casting Shea as "a person simply trying to muddle through".[2]"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/94/Sword_of_shannara_hardcover.jpg

if any have read this series, have not seen this pictures in decades and cannot remember if these were foldouts like initial picture above: enjoy

http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/pp180/deslilypics/deslilypics2/deslilypics3/deslilypics4/sword3.jpg

http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/pp180/deslilypics/deslilypics2/deslilypics3/deslilypics4/sword4.jpg

http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/pp180/deslilypics/deslilypics2/deslilypics3/deslilypics4/sword5.jpg

http://i409.photobucket.com/albums/pp180/deslilypics/deslilypics2/deslilypics3/deslilypics4/sword6.jpg

she lived all over the world and read countless books, yet at the end of her life she introduced me to reading fantasy.

[djpfine]

I recently read Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood (http://www.amazon.com/Norwegian-Movie-Edition-Vintage-International/dp/030795062X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354441989&sr=8-1&keywords=norwegian+wood) and thought it was terrific.

[Brucer]

Just finished reading this book by Dave Eggers about an unemployed IT specialist sent as a consultant to Saudi Arabia to set up a demonstration project that never gets off the ground. Deceptively simple style with some provocative implications.

[AgilisMerlin]

Just finished reading this book by Dave Eggers about an unemployed IT specialist sent as a consultant to Saudi Arabia to set up a demonstration project that never gets off the ground. Deceptively simple style with some provocative implications.

will be the next. thanks

found this interesting http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/books/review/a-hologram-for-the-king-by-dave-eggers.html?pagewanted=all

snippet:

"Where is our new-millennium Norman Mailer? It’s startling, 50 years on, to look back at the work of Mailer in the 1960s — from “The Presidential Papers” to “The Armies of the Night” — and see such unabashed ambition, such reckless audacity and such a stubborn American readiness to try to save the Republic from itself and bring it back to its original promise. Mailer’s very titles — “Advertisements for Myself,” “An American Dream” — told us he was on a mission, committed to the transformation of country and self, and even as he gave himself over to unremittingly private (and epic) meditations on God, the Devil, cancer and plastics, he was also determined to remake the civic order. He ran for mayor of New York City, he tried his hand at directing movies and in 1955 he helped start an alternative weekly known as The Village Voice. Part of the exhilaration of Mailer was that he cared so ravenously even when he failed; he was shooting for the moon even when he shot himself in the foot.

/

The vast empty spaces of the desert stand, of course, for the holographic projections that now determine Alan’s (and America’s) destiny, while Saudi Arabia, a puritan kingdom where everyone seems to be boozing on the sly, is the perfect Other that constantly confounds and defeats its New World visitors. In the long, empty days Alan befriends a penguin-shaped young Saudi who tools around in a 30-year-old Caprice and sports Oakley sunglasses above his handmade sandals (he once spent a year in Alabama); he meets lonely expats and looks in on an embassy debauch where a man in a spacesuit is “feigning weightlessness.” Every detail perfectly advances a vision of American aspiration at a time of economic collapse and midlife crisis: just two floors below a gleaming condo in the desert that speaks for the virtual future that the Saudis (and Americans) are counting on is another room where 25 foreign laborers are squeezed into a tiny space, exchanging blows over a discarded cellphone.

Yet even at home, we come to see, Alan has been living in a house for sale where he’s taken for a “ghost”; he’s run out of money to pay his daughter’s college bills, and the only one who has ever fought for him is his “constantly cruel ex-wife.” Over a long career working for Fuller Brush and Schwinn bicycles and a dozen others, he’s somehow encouraged the outsourcing of manufacturing that has led to both him and his country becoming redundant. In Florida, he eats from vending machines, and in his home in suburban Boston he watches old Red Sox DVDs again and again. At the book’s opening, his neighbor Charlie, who’s recently discovered transcendentalism and speaks (as Mailer might have) of “grandeur and awe and holiness,” walks into a lake to his death. In Alan’s America, even Walden Pond has become a cesspool. "

in the middle of about 3 right now. bouncing back and forth :banana:

[AgilisMerlin]

i read this book, when i was quite young, and got me into tracking deer. Unbelievable book.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0425101339.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

"Tom Brown, Jr. began to learn hunting and tracking at the age of eight under the tutelage of an Apache elder, medicine man, and scout in Toms River, New Jersey, and is the author of 16 books on nature. Recently, he was the technical advisor on The Hunted, a major motion picture starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio Del Toro. In 1978, Tom founded the Tracker School in the New Jersey Pine Barrens where he offers more than 25 classes about wilderness survival and environmental protection."


fragile - full - yes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNQAMY8UlOs) 33:11"

[xjoex]

I am reading R.A. Salvatorre's Dark Elf series. so far, it is a great story. I'm 4 audiobooks in now. I love these types of stories for long cold rides on the mountain bike in the winter.

I also have been enjoying Brent Weeks Night Angel trilogy.


-Joe

[AgilisMerlin]

. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faerie_Tale)


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Feist_-_Faerie_Tale_Coverart.png

open up (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FSZXNRfFts)

[AgilisMerlin]

during a family party tonight, my wife wrapped me this:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SSulNT3gEBw/TUFPCHUyTAI/AAAAAAAAtRM/i1GNmVBp6UE/s1600/Autobiography+of+Mark+Twain%252C+UCal+Press+cover. jpg

flipped open earlier page 365, (bout' halfway through the book)

February 16, 1906
________

WORK, WORK, SAYS McALL

_________

Tells of His Last Cigar in a talk wih His Son.

special to The New York Times

Lakewood, Feb 15. - John A. Mcall felt so much better to-day that he had a long talk with his son, John C. McCall, and told many incidents of his career.

"John," he said to his son, "I have done many things in my life for which I am sorry, but I've never done anything of which I feel ashamed.

"My counsel to young men who would succeed is that they should take the world as they find it, and then work-work!"

Mr. McCall thought the guiding force of mankind was will power, and in illustration he said:

"Some time ago, John, your mother and I were sitting together, chatting. I was smoking a cigar. I liked a cigar, and enjoyed a good, quiet smoke. She objected to it.

"John,' said she, 'why don't you throw that cigar away?'
"I did so.
"'John,' she added, 'I hope you'll never smoke again.'

"The cigar I threw away was my last. I determined to quit then and there, and did so.

That was exactly thirty four year ago."


review

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Mark-Twain-Complete-Authoritative/dp/1441778438

[Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and other editors of the Mark Twain Project]

''I've struck it!'' Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. ''And I will give it away--to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.''

Thus, after dozens of false starts and hundreds of pages, Twain embarked on his ''Final (and Right) Plan'' for telling the story of his life. His innovative notion -- to ''talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment'' -- meant that his thoughts could range freely. The strict instruction that many of these texts remain unpublished for one hundred years meant that when they came out, he would be ''dead, and unaware, and indifferent,'' and that he was therefore free to speak his ''whole frank mind.''

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Mark Twain is his own greatest character in this brilliant self-portrait, the first of three volumes collected by the Mark Twain Project on the centenary of the author's death. It is published complete and unexpurgated for the first time. (Twain wanted his more scalding opinions suppressed until long after his death.) Eschewing chronology and organization, Twain simply meanders from observation to anecdote and between past and present. There are gorgeous reminiscences from his youth of landscapes, rural idylls, and Tom Sawyeresque japes; acid-etched profiles of friends and enemies, from his "fiendish" Florentine landlady to the fatuous and "grotesque" Rockefellers; a searing polemic on a 1906 American massacre of Filipino insurgents; a hilarious screed against a hapless editor who dared tweak his prose; and countless tales of the author's own bamboozlement, unto bankruptcy, by publishers, business partners, doctors, miscellaneous moochers; he was even outsmarted by a wild turkey. Laced with Twain's unique blend of humor and vitriol, the haphazard narrative is engrossing, hugely funny, and deeply revealing of its author's mind. His is a world where every piety conceals fraud and every arcadia a trace of violence; he relishes the human comedy and reveres true nobility, yet as he tolls the bell for friends and family--most tenderly in an elegy for his daughter Susy, who died in her early 20s of meningitis--he feels that life is a pointless charade. Twain's memoirs are a pointillist masterpiece from which his vision of America--half paradise, half swindle--emerges with indelible force. 66 photos and line illus. (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* In explaining his dissatisfaction with his early attempts to write his life story, Mark Twain blamed the narrowness of the conventional cradle-to-grave format: “The side-excursions are the life of our life-voyage, and should be, also, of its history.” This volume—the first of three—makes public autobiographical dictations in which Twain unpredictably pursues the many side-excursions of his remarkably creative life. Embedded in a substantial editorial apparatus, these free-spirited forays expose private aspects of character that the author did not want in print until he had been dead at least a century. Readers see, for instance, a misanthropic Twain consigning man to a status below that of the grubs and worms, as well as a tenderhearted Twain still grieving a year after his wife’s death. But on some side-excursions, Twain flashes the irreverent wit that made him famous: Who will not delight in Twain’s account of how, as a boy, he gleefully dons the bright parade banner of the local Temperance Lodge, only to shuck his banner upon finding a cigar stub he can light up? But perhaps the most important side-excursions are those retracing the imaginative prospecting of a miner for literary gold, efforts that resulted in such works as Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. A treasure trove for serious Twain readers. --Bryce Christensen --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

[AgilisMerlin]

bought a few of these for family and friends. Started it a couple days ago. Now into a handful at once.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GP7YATfCADI/ToZjnQXZs0I/AAAAAAAAB4o/CAbg0xXNQrg/s1600/thoseacross.jpg

http://books.google.com/books?id=HLIO1zNqt10C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[AgilisMerlin]

popped out for another book tonight

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/gene-wolfe-peace-review

on the last pages of rook, so will bite into this tomorrow

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60213.Peace

http://jacketupload.macmillanusa.com/jackets/high_res/jpgs/9780765334565.jpg

[AgilisMerlin]

back/cover

[AgilisMerlin]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ujzo3QJa_9E/URXZX7A6hFI/AAAAAAAAEAI/Z3_G-7IK_k0/s1600/16192379.jpg


Daylight come
Daylight go
How far will it reach?
Ain't nobody know

And when the dawn breaks
The cradle will fall
And down will come baby
cradle and all

And now I know you need the dark
Just as much as the sun
But you're signing on forever
When you ink it in blood

A.E.I.O.U, A.E.I.O.U
I use the state of the art
Technology
Suppose to make for better living
And a better human being
We got our wires all crossed
The tubes are all tied
And I'm straining to remember
just what means to be alive.

A life worth living
Find More lyrics at www.sweetslyrics.com
Now you can feel it in your chest
Building like a little birds
Just building up the nest
And you build it up strong
And you fill it up with love
And you pray for good rain
All from the Lord above

A.E.I.O.U, A.E.I.O.U

I use my state of the art
Technology
Now don't you forget it
It ain't using me
'cause when the power goes out
I got other means...
'cause when the power's goin out
I hear the power's going out
I mean it the power's going out
I really mean it the power's going out

[AgilisMerlin]

http://angryrobotbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Sixty-OneNails-rev-144dpi-197x300.jpg

http://angryrobotbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Sixty-OneNails_front_72dpi1.jpg

[AgilisMerlin]

just bought this, showed my wife and told her i bought it for her :eek: She laughed

http://www.iain-banks.net/lib/PlayerofGames.jpg

1st page.

1

Culture Plate

This is the story of a man who went far away for a long time, just to play a game. The man is a game player called "Gurgeh." The story starts with a battle that is not a battle, and ends with a game that is not a game.

Me? I'll tell you about me later.
This is how the story begins.

Elements of the game:



The game consists of a number of minor games, such as card games and elemental die matching, which allow the players to build up their forces for use on the game's three giant boards (in order; the Board of Origin, the Board of Form, and finally the Board of Becoming) and a number of minor boards.

The game uses a variety of pieces to represent a player's units (military, resource or even philosophical premises). Some of the pieces are genetically engineered constructs, which may change form during the game according to their use and environment. These respond to their handling by a player and appear difficult to understand — at one point in the book Gurgeh is encouraged to sleep while holding some of the more important pieces so he can better understand them in play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games