for school – “The Lucifer Effect”
for fun - “Breaking Dawn” (last book in the Twilight series)
Both good. I’m getting sick of the Twilight thing but have read the first 3 so want to finish it… and the first book is really good but requires more thought (deals with the Zimbardo Prison experiment).
Whatchya got?
I just finished my first book on the list of Pulitzer Prize winners: “Tales of the South Pacific” by Michener. Really interesting.
I’m now on to “Guard of Honor” by James Gould Cozzens. Another WW II story so I should be pretty familiar with life in the military by the time this phase is over with.
I’m a little behind on my schedule of a book a week but I kept falling asleep in my reading nook while reading Michener. Not a comment on his writing but a comment on the comfortable nest I’ve set up and my cats’ insisting on piling on me while I’m there. I bought a bright reading light with a full spectrum bulb that is helping. The crappy weather hasn’t helped either. I do love the silence of the house when the TV is off and nothing is moving. Then, my husband comes home. 
I’m reading a post about what I’m reading right now. ha ha
Rereading Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer, which chronicles the 1996 Mount Everest ascent in which 8 people died.
For fun: Lavender Room
I have a textbook on Medieval and Early Rennaissance History that I have to read for school. It is fairly interesting as far as history textbooks go. We have a research project that is part of this class too, so we will also be reading some primary source pieces from that era at some point. I don’t have the list in front of me, so I cannot elaborate.
For fun I am reading The Children of Hurin which is an off shoot of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarilion. Christopher Tolkien wrote it. I am loving it.
Bernie
Into Thin Air is a great book. For the other side of the story read The Climb by Russian mountaineer Anatoli Boukreev who doesn’t come out looking very good in Krakauer’s book.
Just started Catch 22.
My GF disappeared for about a week due to the twilight series She also said she was over it once she got done with them.
Your school book has a catchy title, whats it about?
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2nd time)
And
The Silmarillion by Tolkien.
I have read ALL of Krakaeur’s writing - books, anything he’s ever written for Outside… good author. If you like his climbing stuff, “Eiger Dreams” is another one. “Under the Banner of Heaven” was also excellent but is not about climbing.
Tell Me Where It Hurts, by Dr. Nick Trout.
Almost done, really good book about a day in the life of an emergency veterinary surgeon.
Highly recommend.
“Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace. I was a little uncomfortable about picking up a book to read shortly after its author killed himself, but in an odd way it seemed like a proper response. The only work of his I’ve read before was the Harper’s essay that turned into the title piece for “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”. It was stupendously good. Infinite Jest is a hell of a book and lends a lot of insight into suicidal and addictive personalities. Its also an indictment of North American culture and our need for entertainment. It also needed to have a lot more ruthless editing before it was published.
Next up “Tales On A Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary”, which should be a proper antidote.
Your school book has a catchy title, whats it about?
Yes, it is a catchy title.
Have you heard of the Zimbardo Experiment (might also be called the Stanford Prison experiment?) 1971 - Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, took a group of college students and set up a mock prison. Some were guards, some prisoners. They were looking at how situational dynamics can make good people do very evil things… and how the people lost individuality as they took on and slipped deeper and deeper into the roles of prisoners and guards. The “guards” started abusing the prisoners… the experiment was cut short before any more psychological or physical harm could be inflicted on anyone.
The book follows that, in present tense, for the week the experiment lasted. Then it goes on to explore some of the torture in Iraq. Concludes with a few chapters about how any one of us could, if put in the right circumstance, torture or seriously hurt others…
Very, very well written. It is a terribly engaging book but also quite hard to read on an emotional level - almost in the way that reading anything about the Holocaust would be. I can only take so much of it in a day, as much as it is sucking me right in. Gotta balance it with the vampire novel 
The class is my ‘Honors Read’ class. For the Honors program, each freshman class enters with a book that is “theirs,” chosen by a group of senior Honors students. Books can be nominated by faculty members or students. We took a list of 21 books and narrowed it down to these 8 to read this semester, then we’ll choose one for the class that enters in fall 2010 –
But, for this week (once a week class, we meet Fridays 2-4:30… awful time but it was the only time that worked for the 8 of us), we each have a book that was a previous Honors read. The name of this one intrigued me and I’d read a bit about the Zimbardo experiment before, so I took it. We have to think about “what makes a good Honors read” and develop some criteria with which to evaluate and choose from the 8 books I listed above.
When I visited my campus as a senior in HS, I sat in on this very class to see what an Honors class was like. I am thrilled to be in it now - it’s an honor to be one of 8 students who are choosing a book for an entirely new honors freshman class. It was incredibly hard to even get into this class in the first place; it’s immensely popular…
So I’ll read those other 8 books over the semester - I’ve read the Poisonwood Bible. Going to be a heavy semester of reading! But that’s ok. One of them - Persepiolis - is a graphic novel (“comic book” style). They’re quite varied as you can see. Should be fun.
Oh I have to write a bunch of book reviews too…
Infinite Jest is a hell of a book and lends a lot of insight into suicidal and addictive personalities.
fiction? nonfiction?
sounds good… I have an “addictive personality…” it’s manifesting itself in triathlon right now (better than drugs or alcohol!)
I agree that Krakauer’s writing is pretty good. Enjoyed Thin Air, Banner of Heaven, and Into the Wild. Of course, I’ve been under the impression for a while that he himself is kind of an egotistical jerk - an impression that was strengthened somewhat when I saw him in a documentary on mountaineering in Antarctica.
In general, I’m having trouble maintaining the attention span required for actual printed books. I have, however, gone back to browsing a couple of books by William Bunting - a great New England historian who lives, in fact, in the Skowhegan area. (Runs an excavation company, of all things.) His two volume A Day’s Work is great reading for those who enjoy history and have short attention spans. The books are laid out as old photographs on one page, with long (and sometimes meandering) captions on the facing page. Nice to be able to jump around in the books and read for however long you want without having to keep track of where you were. Plenty of obscure details, so it’s almost always like reading it for the first time. Anyway, it’s always cool to find old pictures of places you know, especially if you’ve only just discovered them since the last time you flipped through the books.
I have, however, gone back to browsing a couple of books by William Bunting - a great New England historian who lives, in fact, in the Skowhegan area. (Runs an excavation company, of all things.)
Am in SkowTown right now - my parents’ house - never heard of that guy though, or his company.
Oh yeah, I read through the current issues of Bicycling and Outside the other day too. I read voraciously. But there’s not much else to do when it is too cold and snowy to be outdoors
Poisonwood Bible was excellent, too. Kingsolver, I think, did better with the varying first-person method of telling the story than most authors.
Russell Banks did all right with this style in The Sweet Hereafter, and though it was worth the read, I think that Atom Egoyan’s film adaptation of the story gave it much more depth and beauty.
(Great soundtrack, too - Sarah Polley singing acoustic covers of several songs, including a great adaptation of “Courage” by The Tragically Hip.)
**One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2nd time) **
AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! Why on earth would you read it twice? I cannot think of anything more overhyped with less reason than that piece o’ postmodern caca. (Nobel Prize notwithstanding) If you want something from the same basic timeframe and area, at least Castaneda had peyote as a good excuse.
Just finished “The Making of Chef”, by a journalist who likes to cook who went to the Culinary Institute of America and really learned what is to be a cook. Very interesting. I started rereading “The Catcher in the Rye,” one of my favorite books of all time. Next on the list is going to be “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure,” by Paul A. Offit, MD. It is essentially about the ridiculous hysteria that has arisen over vaccinations and autism, largely because of idiots like Jenny McCarthy, and people like Oprah Winfrey and Larry King, who gave her a national soapbox to spread her “message.”
Spot
Kill Bin Laden
.
“The Ten Faces of Innovation” by Tom Kelley.
**One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2nd time) **
AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!! Why on earth would you read it twice? I cannot think of anything more overhyped with less reason than that piece o’ postmodern caca. (Nobel Prize notwithstanding) If you want something from the same basic timeframe and area, at least Castaneda had peyote as a good excuse.
Ahab’s Wife might qualify as even more overhyped. Ugh. Wish I could get a refund on the hours I spent on it. At least The Simpsons gave it some well-deserved ridicule.