What book(s) are you reading?

[Himu]

(Image removed from quote.)

Wow, what a bunch of creepy garbage.  If I put "Warning, Adult Children Play Here" at my work, I hope I get shitcanned.

Basically the story is about a woman who moved to Seattle with her husband who dies.  She gets promoted to lead a group of disgruntled people and was given a strict deadline by her hardass boss to improve morale.  Feeling trapped, a revelatory moment happens when she stumbles across this creepy sounding fish market (does this place even exist?) where every sentence spoken is cringe inducing and probably made up.  In fact, I think the whole story was made up.  So she tries to adopt this extremely cheesy way of management that she witnessed in the fish market, resulting in hard shelled motherfuckers having emotional breakdowns and crying as to why they are such meany doodoo heads to everyone else.  Everything turns around magically in a short order; everyone heaps masturbatory praise over this woman, who now every competitor wants to hire away for a high price.

That last sentence is probably why management wants to adopt this shitty program: it's a way for management to wholly reap the benefits while having their subordinates be all wacky and kooky and crazy and zany.  Then as you sacrifice your dignity to be considered a manchild, your boss gets hired away to your competitor for double the pay.

In the trash it goes!

ahahaha are you serious? This is for "leadership"? Really?

[Groogrux]

Another example of how us white folk will buy damned near anything...

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

(Image removed from quote.)

Wow, what a bunch of creepy garbage.  If I put "Warning, Adult Children Play Here" at my work, I hope I get shitcanned.

Basically the story is about a woman who moved to Seattle with her husband who dies.  She gets promoted to lead a group of disgruntled people and was given a strict deadline by her hardass boss to improve morale.  Feeling trapped, a revelatory moment happens when she stumbles across this creepy sounding fish market (does this place even exist?) where every sentence spoken is cringe inducing and probably made up.  In fact, I think the whole story was made up.  So she tries to adopt this extremely cheesy way of management that she witnessed in the fish market, resulting in hard shelled motherfuckers having emotional breakdowns and crying as to why they are such meany doodoo heads to everyone else.  Everything turns around magically in a short order; everyone heaps masturbatory praise over this woman, who now every competitor wants to hire away for a high price.

That last sentence is probably why management wants to adopt this shitty program: it's a way for management to wholly reap the benefits while having their subordinates be all wacky and kooky and crazy and zany.  Then as you sacrifice your dignity to be considered a manchild, your boss gets hired away to your competitor for double the pay.

In the trash it goes!

ahahaha are you serious? This is for "leadership"? Really?

Yeah, there are some legitimate takeaways of the book but it twists them in such a way as to kill the purpose.  I think the underlining thought is to work with a positive attitude and enjoy your work.  How the book proposed to implement them is so very very wrong.

Another example of how us white folk will buy damned near anything...

The protagonist in this story is a latina.  Which is another underlying lesson of the book: it won't just be white males demoralizing and humiliating you anymore.  Women and minorities are free to share in the fun as well!

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Robert Greene - Mastery

I like Robert Greene.  In spite of the effete handflappers (my new favorite pejorative term for butthurt nerds getting pissed off over insignificant shit) responding to books like 48 Laws of Power (a book cosigned by the likes of Will Smith, Jay-Z, and 50 Cent, among others) like someone took a dump in their cereal, there's a lot of good history lessons and starting points to be gleaned from his books.  Mastery is no different.  It's like Gladwell's Outliers but without the slimy con angle that Gladwell's books contain because Gladwell makes millions of dollars a year on the speech circuit.  Kind of reminds me of Tim Ferriss's books where some of it is sketchy but it is a nice and exciting read.

[Cormacaroni]

Gun Machine - Warren Ellis

Taut little thriller from the Internet's Uncle Warren, with the usual black absurdist humor and occasional info dumps of whatever his Wired RSS feed sent him that day. Not to be taken too seriously but I enjoyed it a lot and think it would make a cracking little film.

[Steve Contra]

(Image removed from quote.)

Wow, what a bunch of creepy garbage.  If I put "Warning, Adult Children Play Here" at my work, I hope I get shitcanned.

Basically the story is about a woman who moved to Seattle with her husband who dies.  She gets promoted to lead a group of disgruntled people and was given a strict deadline by her hardass boss to improve morale.  Feeling trapped, a revelatory moment happens when she stumbles across this creepy sounding fish market (does this place even exist?) where every sentence spoken is cringe inducing and probably made up.  In fact, I think the whole story was made up.  So she tries to adopt this extremely cheesy way of management that she witnessed in the fish market, resulting in hard shelled motherfuckers having emotional breakdowns and crying as to why they are such meany doodoo heads to everyone else.  Everything turns around magically in a short order; everyone heaps masturbatory praise over this woman, who now every competitor wants to hire away for a high price.

That last sentence is probably why management wants to adopt this shitty program: it's a way for management to wholly reap the benefits while having their subordinates be all wacky and kooky and crazy and zany.  Then as you sacrifice your dignity to be considered a manchild, your boss gets hired away to your competitor for double the pay.

In the trash it goes!

Pikes?  Yeah, it exists and they do all sorts of wacky shit there.

[Cormacaroni]

Reading the new (!) Tolkien now, The Children of Hurin

I was fearing another one of those posthumous navel-gazing nightmares of appendices and pronunciation guides his son has been putting together for decades, but this one is actually a coherent, linear narrative and all in Tolkien's own words (albeit stitched together from many source texts). I'm enjoying it a lot more than i ever thought i would. I have failed at reading the Silmarillion and such a dozen times, btw - this is not quite so dense or arch as that, 20% in. On the other hand it is definitely in that ballpark of almost mythic high fantasy. Quite a shock after reading the Hobbit a few days ago. Tolkien can be a very powerful writer, and he was writing entirely for himself here so pulled no punches.

[Flannel Boy]

In life?

[Eric P]

I'm reading The Brides of Rollrock Island which is a YA book intended for Teenage girls, but I didn't know that going in.  It popped up in my RSS reader somewhere and it sounded interesting so i requested it from the library only to find that it had this cover:



my initial reaction was 

but as I read the book, it's really fucking haunting and affecting with a series of vignettes which switch from character to character and jump all over time to lay out the relationships of people and the society which springs forth from the premise of the book. 

this, to me, is the best of what fantasy can be.  it takes what you know of society, twists it slightly and then sets it into motion.  it's a series of tragedies which spring from a bitter person made bitter by the circumstances in which she found herself and it's about her revenge on her society as she gives the men exactly what they think they want which inevitably destroys them all.

i have about 100 pages left to go and am absolutely loving it.

[Joe Molotov]

It's a Michael L. Printz Honor Winner, Eric. You think Michael L. Printz would just hands out his honor to any old book?

[Dickie Dee]

New/last Wheel of Time book is out today.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll probably read it

[close]

[Joe Molotov]

22 years and 11,000 pages worth of text.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Past the 5th book.

[close]

[Joe Molotov]

I just started The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner because I saw a character in Mad Men reading it as well. Have to find out about books somehow!

That's the first book that made me feel dumb. My 14 year old brain was not ready for that.

[Great Rumbler]

New/last Wheel of Time book is out today.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'll probably read it

[close]

I'd be all over it if this was 10 years ago and I still in high school.

Edit: Read the synopsis on Wikipedia. The ending was lame and predictable.

[Great Rumbler]

The book that finally broke me [in high school] was Don Quixote. I could not keep up with it at all, too many words that I didn't have a clue about. 

[Joe Molotov]

I just started The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner because I saw a character in Mad Men reading it as well. Have to find out about books somehow!

That's the first book that made me feel dumb. My 14 year old brain was not ready for that.

From what I read about it it relies heavily on stream of consciousness which I very much enjoy, I haven't been this excited to read something in a long time.

One of the main characters is severely distinguished mentally-challenged, and about a 1/3rd of the book is written from his perspective. His thoughts are all jumbled up, and he might be thinking of something that happened 20 years ago and something that's happening right now with no break between them.

[fistfulofmetal]

i guess u would understand it perfectly then oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

[CajoleJuice]

I started reading The Sound and the Fury at some point this year and didn't get very far.

[Phoenix Dark]

I read the first WoT awhile ago but didn't continue. It was good but I heard too many bad things about the later books to continue

[chronovore]

Listening to Wesley Crusher read John Scalzi's Red Shirts. First chapter is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for Trek nerds.

Going to read some Peter David, maybe review Imzadi, Q-in-Law, or finish up my New Frontier books have him in my thoughts because he apparently had a stroke.  :'(

[Groogrux]

I was on the phone with a DirecTV customer service guy the other day and while we're waiting for stuff to update he starts talking books and what stuff we were reading.  He tried to tell me that the WoT books were just like the Game of Thrones novels in quality aspects and the fact that all the fans thought the author would die before they finished the series.

[Timber]

The Sound and the Fury is so good.

[Phoenix Dark]

It was too distinguished mentally-challenged for me as a teen, and I haven't picked it up since then

[Eric P]

finished Brides which was absolutely amazing and am now reading People Who Eat Darkness which is about some blonde girl who was killed by a japanese guy in the early 00s or something

i may end up just reading the wikipedia articles

[Groogrux]

One of the books for my classes this semester is this:



Has anybody else read it?  It looks completely fucking boring...

[Eric P]

People Who Eat Darkness is ok, but the author only seemed to have access to the family of the victim and the public record, so it's following the efforts of the family somewhat exclusively.  I wish there was a bit more talk of what the Japanese police were doing at the time.  I wish it were a bit more police procedural and less victim narrative.

[Dickie Dee]

Just started The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - a pyschologist takes three institutionalized men that each believe they are Jesus and put them together for a few years and logged the results - I've only just started yet I'm not  sure if he's doing it FOR SCIENCE, for lolz or just because 1950s.

[Phoenix Dark]

Just started The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - a pyschologist takes three institutionalized men that each believe they are Jesus and put them together for a few years and logged the results - I've only just started yet I'm not  sure if he's doing it FOR SCIENCE, for lolz or just because 1950s.

Ypsilanti

book is good too; read it in HS simply due to my city's name being in the title

[Robo]

I'm reading this book called the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  It's about an eloquent Austrian hobo painter who grows up and gives a bunch of government institutions and dignitaries cool names and titles.  Interesting, but unrealistic.

[Dickie Dee]

Hitler's a total Mary Sue

[Robo]

Shirer has some pretty hilariously dated views on homosexuals, ironically enough, continuously referring to them as perverts and deviants and completely ignores their mass persecution by the Nazis.

"No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters.  As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven.  Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him."

"But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers.  Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer.  These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can."

"'I know Esser is a scoundrel,' Hitler retorted in public, 'but I shall hold on to him as long as he can be of use to me.'  This was to be his attitude toward almost all of his close collaborators, no matter how murky their past—or indeed their present.  Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes."

[Cormacaroni]

I'm also reading that - read bits of it years ago in high school but picked it up recently during a Kindle sale. Agreed on the homo talk - it really does equate to evil in his mind, like wearing a black hat in a western. No more need be said!

[chronovore]

I'm also reading that - read bits of it years ago in high school but picked it up recently during a Kindle sale. Agreed on the homo talk - it really does equate to evil in his mind, like wearing a black hat in a western. No more need be said!

Bu.. bu... but wouldn't that mean that so many Boritos are evil, or at least leaning heavily toward evil? At a slanted angle, like they were leaning into an overwhelming wind?

[CajoleJuice]

Yeah, that stuff threw me off. Pretty much everything else in the book is fucking gold, though.

[Cormacaroni]

I'm also reading that - read bits of it years ago in high school but picked it up recently during a Kindle sale. Agreed on the homo talk - it really does equate to evil in his mind, like wearing a black hat in a western. No more need be said!

Bu.. bu... but wouldn't that mean that so many Boritos are evil, or at least leaning heavily toward evil? At a slanted angle, like they were leaning into an overwhelming wind?

well 'evilbore' was your first clue Sherlock

[ZephyrFate]

I'm struggling through Forever Peace. Definitely nowhere close to as good as The Forever War.

[chronovore]

I'm also reading that - read bits of it years ago in high school but picked it up recently during a Kindle sale. Agreed on the homo talk - it really does equate to evil in his mind, like wearing a black hat in a western. No more need be said!

Bu.. bu... but wouldn't that mean that so many Boritos are evil, or at least leaning heavily toward evil? At a slanted angle, like they were leaning into an overwhelming wind?

well 'evilbore' was your first clue Sherlock

So, the "bore" part is similar to "drilling"?

[Eric P]

for a book I deemed "only ok" I've managed to read the hell out of it.  I am 20 pages from the end of People Who Eat Darkness and it's a fairly fascinating case.

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

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

[Cormacaroni]

i swear, i just saw the pic and thought 'T EXP book', looked to my left and lolled

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

 

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Double post up in this bitch!!!



Decided to buy it after reading this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/books/review/going-clear-lawrence-wrights-book-on-scientology.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

and seeing this picture:

[Joe Molotov]

Double post up in this bitch!!!

(Image removed from quote.)

Bout to start reading that too, I'm pumped.

[Dickie Dee]

oooooooooh, that look's good

[Eric P]

has anyone read the President's Vampire books by Farnsworth? They sound somewhat amazing

http://www.pornokitsch.com/2013/01/new-releases-red-white-and-blood-by-christopher-farnsworth.html

Red, White and Blood (2012) is the third installment in the adventures of Nathaniel Cade, the President's Vampire. Cade is, well... exactly what the title says: a vampire sworn to obey the US President. This is the result of a blood oath impressed upon him by Marie Laveau during the tenure of Andrew Johnson.

Cade lives in a secret chamber underneath the Smithsonian, and with the aid of his human handler, Zach Barrows, he fights all the dark and forbidding nasties that conventional operatives cannot. His previous adventures have seen him come to blows with Osama-the-Lizard-Demon and zombie Nazi super-soldiers animated by Victor Frankenstein. Plus a shadowy occult cartel (or two).

It is all exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.

In Red, White and Blood, Cade's up against his oldest foe: The Boogeyman. (Stop laughing.) The Boogeyman is something like The Saint of Killers, something like the anti-Christ and something very much like Jason from Friday the Thirteenth. He's an ancient spirit, worshipped by back-alley Satanists and corporate conspirators alike. Every generation or so, he arises - taking a mortal host and going on a killing spree.

The Boogeyman is a meta-entity straight out of a (good) Wes Craven film. Phones die around him. The weather is always stormy when he appears. Luck always runs his way. He's never dead the first time (or the second) and he'll always kill the sexually active first. There are rules he must obey, but the game's hugely broken in has favour. Fortunately, he's always stuck to low-profile targets and he's always been out-fought by Cade.

That is, until now.

This time, The Boogeyman's picked one doozy of a target: the President himself. Cade and Zach's first impulse (once Zach stops laughing) is to lock down the President. Keep him safe in the White House and far away from homicidal demon-gods. Except the President refuses: it is election season and he's getting hammered. His advisors say he needs to go on the road, and President Curtis would rather get re-elected than hide under the bed. Much to our heroes' chagrin, President Curtis packs up the family and goes on a trip around the Midwest... coincidentally, The Boogeyman's favourite stomping ground.

Cade and Zach need to stop The Boogeyman before he carves up the President and his family. But The Boogeyman has some friends of his own...

Again, this is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds.

[Cormacaroni]

YOU FIRST

[Cormacaroni]

also, JOE MOLOTOV BOOK

[Eric P]

I'm currently reading Iron Curtain; The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 which takes a look at how the Soviets used varying degrees of totalitarianism to impact East Germany, Poland and Hungary.  She uses these three lands not because of their similarities but rather because of their differences to highlight how Soviet control was implemented at different times.  Even the introduction was fascinating and this ties into and references Bloodlands, a very deep and depressing book about everyone that Hitler killed to the East of Germany and everyone Stalin killed to the west of Russia a book I had previously read on the same subject.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

i have Blood Oath requested through my library

[close]

[Joe Molotov]

Why is it my book? 

[chronovore]

Finished Scalzi's Redshirts. It was quite good, though the last 1/3 of it felt too long, a bit philoso-wankery, and self-indulgent. By the time it wrapped up entirely, I saw where it was going, and the book's meaning is good, relevant, and a little bit overly hammered home. Wheaton's reading of the book is perfect, and his casting as a formerly-loathed-character-turned-beloved-geek is a stroke of genius.

Currently listening to the first Dresden Files book, Storm Front. It's a first-person, urban fantasy noir novel, following the first-person format of those old crime novels to a T, so it's not clear if all the sexy ladies in it are because Jim Butcher is sexist, or if the character Harry is just prone to only noticing pretty women, or if Butcher is just following that particular noir trope without updating it for modern times. This is read by James Marsters of "Buffy" fame, and he does quite well with the material.

[Eric P]

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/jim-butcher-chauvinist-and-talentless-stunning-combo/



I was getting depressed reading about Eastern European Totalitarianism, so I started to read Blood Oath, the first book in The President's Vampire series.  I'm only 80 pages in but aside from a literal Magical Negro it's not really offensive

[Joe Molotov]

I'm shocked that a book called Storm Front could be offensive.

[Beezy]

Not a book, but I basically spent my whole weekend reading The Walking Dead comics. All of them. I caught up to the current issue at about 2:30 am this morning. I might read the two novels about the Governor because there's nothing else out there until the next issue or the TV show comes back.

I'm hooked.

[Joe Molotov]

Going Clear is a great book, and it's given me a new found respect for L. Ron Hubbard. I'd always just assumed he was a two-bit Sci-Fi writer turned religious huckster who was in it for the cash, and certainly that was part of it, but I wasn't giving enough weight to the likelihood that he was also batshit crazy. And quite the horndog too, banging all kinds of impressionable young tail, hanging out with a sex cult, marrying his second wife while he was still married to his first, trying to marry a third wife while he was still married to the second. Also he was convinced that his frequent masturbastion was causing him to go blind and insane, but instead of not doing it, he tried to hypnotize himself into believing that it wasn't true. An hero.

I'm about half-way through the book, just finished up the Hubbard-era, and it's now moving into the Miscavige-era. Backstabbery a-go go!

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

Yeah I finished it last night.  A great read and had to lol at all of the stuff about Travolta being gay.  Looks like Scientology was convinced he was a homo from day one.

[Cormacaroni]

I think Eric P might well like that 'new' Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin. I found it quite gripping and there is a very EB-friendly twist in there.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

wincest!

[close]

Decided to go the full hog and read this giant one-volume hardback of LOTR I got years ago but never cracked. I used to read LOTR at least once a year but it has been about 12 years since I last read it. It's already amazing how much the films have shaped my perception of the characters...I can hear Ian McKellen's voice in my head now when Gandalf says something. Inevitable I suppose

[Groogrux]

I read all of the way to RotK and couldn't read past the part in the spider's cave.  For some reason, I just lost interest.  I tried going back after watching the movie, but still couldn't do it.  Loved the Hobbit and the rest of the Rings trilogy though. 

Never could stand to read the Simarillian though.  Something about it just bored me to tears...

[Dickie Dee]

The Simarillian is a bit of a slog, even if it does cover some great stories. The Creation story in the beginning in mesmurizing though.

[Eric P]

I think Eric P might well like that 'new' Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin. I found it quite gripping and there is a very EB-friendly twist in there.

on the one hand i'm interested in it because it's a retelling of an already existing legend

on the other hand i've never enjoyed anything by tolkien i've ever tried to read

[Eric P]

and that President's Vampire book is ridiculous.  I'm surprised it hadn't been turned into a movie.  it's near perfect pulp escapism