A MetaFilter list of suggested “sprawling post-modern novels”.
Off the top of my head, I have these that are on their list.
delillo’s underworld
infinite jest
house of leaves
Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Ground Beneath Her Feet
Death on the Installment Plan by Celine
Neal Stephenson – Cryptonomicon
The Tin Drum
I’m in the middle of reading:
Secret Societies Handbook
by Michael Bradley
A History of Secret Societies
by Arkon Daraul
And I’m fascinated, especially by the Handbook, because it lists the Bilderberg Group, the Club of Rome and the Council on Foreign Relations; all are real groups that seem to have major influence on world events. Which makes me glad that Wikipedia has a whole section for secret societies.
The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor
by Ken Silverstein
In 1997, teenage Boy Scout David Hahn, who had been engaging in home-brewed science experiments for years in his parent’s backyard in Detroit, Michigan, built himself a functioning model nuclear reactor in his mother’s garden shed. He obtained his many of his materials from household sources like smoke detectors and radium-painted clocks from the 1930s. Alarmed at the amount of radiation his reactor was producing, David tore it down, but eventually he had a random encounter with police who realized what he was up to and called in federal authorities: the FBI, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the EPA, which eventual designated his mother’s home a Superfund hazardous materials site. Silverstein’s engaging tale is an eye-opening, must-read account of both David’s personals science experiment and of the illusive promises and frightening dangers of nuclear power plants.
I can’t help but wonder how different David’s experiments would have been if they have been conducted a mere 7 years later. If he had access to a personal computer and the internet, he might have had better luck with the social engineering he did contacting various labs to obtain materials. On the other hand, he might have had more information about the dangers of what he was doing, which hopefully would have made him more cautious. He also might have had access to other amateur science enthusiasts, who perhaps could have tempered, for better or worse, what he was doing. I think it’s unfortunate that David never found a mentor who could shepherd him into a productive scientific field; he dropped out of community college and spent time in the military, where he seems to be directionless today.
I’ve been meaning to write reviews for all these things for a while, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time. So here are my mini reviews, because I can’t seem to keep up with everything.
All the President’s Men
I watched this movie for the first time this past weekend, and it was excellent. I knew the basics of the Watergate Scandal, but there was a lot I didn’t know, like how far beyond the simple break-in the scandal went. I was most fascinated by (and surprised by) the movie’s accounts of what Donald Segretti called “ratfucking”; the war of illegal dirty tricks waged against the Democratic Party by CREEP, using the secret six million dollar slush fund. Segretti was employed by CREEP to torpedo Democratic candidates in numerous ways, including forging letters and planting fake news stories with the press. Interestingly, Karl Rove was involved in doing some of this illegal work, and it appears he never quit.
Newsfire RSS/XML Feed Reader
I’ve been reading most of my regular news sources and favorite blogs in a piece of software that pulls in RSS or XML syndication feeds and aggregates and organizes them. Because I’m on a Mac, I chose Newsfire, which is one of the more popular readers, but there are numerous Feed readers for the PC as well, many of them are shareware or free. It’s a much easier way to keep track of my favorite websites and to make sure I don’t miss posts by my friends.
The Mermaid Chair
by Sue Monk Kidd
I didn’t enjoy this book as much as her previous book, The Secret Life of Bees. The heroine Jessie Sullivan returns to her childhood home on a tiny island to care for her disturbed mother, who in a fit of religious mania had cut off one of her fingers. While there, Jessie has an affair with one of the monks at the island monastery. I didn’t really buy into the “existential” angst that Jessie is supposedly feeling; the motivation for her affair. I kept wanting to tell her to get over it.
Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
by Ruth Reichl
This was a fun, quick read by Ruth Reichl, who was the food critic for the New York Times for several years in the 80s, before moving on to become a critic and editor of Gourmet magazine. Reichl recounts how she attempted to write restaurant reviews that were useful to regular people by visiting many New York restaurants in disguise to fool restaurant owners, who would otherwise recognize her and give her special treatment that other guests wouldn’t receive. The book is an enlightening insider’s view of both the New York restaurant scene and of The New York Times, as well as an education in fine dining and in gourmet appreciation. There are some great recipes in it, as well. The only thing that bothered me was that Reichl gets a bit too into the disguises she wears at times; she revels in creating characters that seemed to me a bit over the top.
The New York Times has a slideshow of the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince around the world, and when you view it, it becomes apparent that different countries have quite different book covers for the book.
The Australian cover is the one we found online the other day at a rumor site that had a leaked copy of that same image. It actually has some plot points in it.
We were surprised at our release gathering at Barnes and Noble — there were tons of people there, and lots pf people, both children and adults, who were dressed up. I snapped some photos of people who had cool shirts or fun costumes on; eventually I’ll put a photo page together.
I finished reading the new Harry Potter book last night. Throughout the book I had a notion in my head of the answers to two of the mysteries; who the half-blood prince is, and who dies in the book (don’t yell at me about spoilers; the death is commonly known!). I was wrong on both counts, and regarding the half-blood prince, I shouldn’t have been at all. I should have guessed that one right away (and so should Harry and Hermione, frankly.)
I was so certain about both answers, though, that it colored my impression of the book, and I kept telling Stephanie all the way through that “this is my favorite of all of them!” Well when I found out the answers I was surprised, and it did change the way I feel. I was expecting a quite different ending.
I also thought there was way too much unresolved at the end of it; more so than in any of the others, and I hate that; it’s one of my pet peeves of sci-fi fantasy series novels, that they don’t wrap everything up from one book to the next so you’re left hanging for the release of the next book. If you’re going to do that, just write one big book, instead of chunking it up into pieces. My mind is littered with the half-way points of fantasy series that I gave up on in disgust because they insisted on dragging everything out for the cash from one more mass-market paperback. (Robert Jordan, I’m talking to you!)
In the case of Harry Potter, I’ve never felt like that with any of the rest of the books, and this series doesn’t follow any other sci-fi fantasy genre clichés, either, which makes them enjoyable to read. I know that the next book is the final one, and there’s no way I would miss it.
I’ve had the Kelly Link short story collection “Stranger Things Happen” on my to-buy list for quite some time, and for one reason or another have never gotten around to purchasing it. Now she’s written another short story collection (Magic for Beginners), and to help promote it, has made the previous book available for free download under the Creative Commons license. Extremely cool.
Scott tagged me with this book meme that’s going around, and now I have to tag others.
1. Estimate the total number of books you’ve owned in your life.
I *think* I have about 3,000 books in my current library. Probably double that for what I’ve owned over my lifetime. I took a picture of my wall-to-wall bookcase in my living room so you could see my current library.
2. What’s the last book you bought?
Most of my recent acquisitions have been for the two book clubs I’m in or for work-related stuff. I haven’t bought many books solely for myself because I’m trying to read through what I have on my shelf first.
3. What’s the last book you read?
I’ve been keeping track of everything I read since 1997, so if you want the complete list, go here.
5. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
This is incredibly hard; I love so many books It’s hard to choose.
5. Tag 5 people!
Jen, Mike, Brent and Jim from IndyScribe, Rachel, and MJ. I’d tag more, but I don’t want to use them all up before these guys can tag someone.
Aw, man. I suspected when we were reading Ender’s Game for my book club that mormon Orson Scott Card was a conservative nutjob. Turns out he is indeed: he actually writes an article attempting to rehabilitate the Sith and the dark side, claiming that the Jedis are the force of evil, not Darth Vader. That sucks majorly.
Check out more on the rehabilitation of Darth Sidious and other Right-winger’s attempts to trash the Jedi.
D’oh! After reading on, I gather that Card has written several homophobic articles and essays — googling found me some of them. Fuck. Crap, I wish I hadn’t actually purchased his stupid paperback now. That’s seven bucks I inadvertently gave to a bigotted moron.
Now I don’t feel so bad for making fun of the fucking Mormons and their sideshow religion. If you read “Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith” by Jon Krakauer, you’ll discover a history of Mormonism and of the fundamentalist aspects of the religion — and you discover how easily “mainstream” Mormons slip over into radicalism because of the nature of the religion.
Part of what you learn of their history is that the “founder” of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, was basically a P. T. Barnum character; a shyster con man of a sort that was common in the 1800’s. Like many other snake oil salesmen and salvation show types traveling around, (think of the HBO series Carnivale and you get an idea of the type) he made up his own religion that was part entertainment carnival and part self-serving graft. Smith was actually convicted of running con jobs at one point. He concocted a story about an Angel (named MORONI, no less!) burying golden tablets under a rock, wrote his own side-show version of the bible, and took his story on the road, collecting heaps of cash along the way.
Unlike other con men, though, he accidentally became successful. Unfortunately before he could get out with the cash, he started believing his own hype. In a brazen move, he decided that a young girl he was lusting after should be his second wife, and re-wrote his own religion to allow him to have multiple spouses. Needless to say that was popular with the guys, and he ended up with a bunch of people following him around; people who kept getting into trouble with people over land and territory. Nothing to do but move them out west. And thus from one guy’s wayward penis, an entire nutjob religion was born. And you thought Clinton’s inability to keep it zipped was a problem.
All this makes Card’s criticism of the “Jedi religion” extremely funny:
It’s one thing to put your faith in a religion founded by a real person who claimed divine revelation, but it’s something else entirely to have, as the scripture of your religion, a storyline that you know was made up by a very nonprophetic human being.
The Broom of the System
David Foster Wallace
I read this for my book group, so I’m not going say much about it before we meet to talk about it, because the first rule of book group is “don’t talk about the book before book group.” But as far as David Foster Wallace goes, I wasn’t all that impressed.
The Sticklepath Strangler (Medieval West Country Mystery)
by Michael Jecks
I picked up this paperback mystery based on the cover, which was really kind of fun and looked somewhat like the Bayeux Tapestry. I learned my lesson about not judging a book by the cover, because the book itself wasn’t great. It’s a murder mystery set in a medieval village, and while the idea of that is interesting, the plot dragged on too long and the murders were pretty gruesomely described, which I think might have contributed to some of my nightmares after surgery. Not the best book to read in the hospital.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
by Paul Jordan
I remember reading about the Seven Wonders when I was a kid, so I ordered this book recently to learn more about them. I didn’t realize that it was the Greeks that determined which architectural feats were classified as “the seven wonders” and that their choices were based on their limited knowledge; other great architectural and artistic achievements (like the great wall of china) would probably have made the cut had the Greeks known about them. The book covers each “wonder” and what we know about it today, including recent archeological excavations of some of the sites.
Misfortune
by Wesley Stace
A pleasant historical fiction novel about a boy who is rescued as a baby from a trash heap by a rich lord, and who is raised as the lord’s next heir — as a girl. An odd, charming novel that was a nice light read.