What are you reading?

[SR]

Something for Kurt Vonnegut fans..

BOOK REVIEW

And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
SCARRED WRITER
BY DAVID SILVERBERG

If you’re curious about what demons plagued Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat’s Cradle author Kurt Vonnegut, Charles J. Shields’s bio of the mercurial and troubled writer is required reading.

Though it’s been five years since Vonnegut died, And So It Goes is the first official biography.

Shields knows how to get to an author’s core, having profiled Harper Lee in Mockingbird. Using the same kind of exhaustive research, he reviewed more than 1,500 letters and interviewed Vonnegut as well as dozens of relatives and friends.

An Indiana boy raised in a German-American home, young Vonnegut craved attention, feeling alienated from his constantly warring parents. His brother Bernard got hooked on science and won over Mom and Dad, giving rise to a resentment Vonnegut never really let go of. But Bernard also got him curious about science and engineering.

Vonnegut’s Cornell days, his stint as a Second World War infantryman and the devastating Dresden bombing that later surfaced in his best-selling Slaughterhouse-Five are related in brisk, well-crafted prose. It’s eerie to read how that Dresden scar ran so deep that Vonnegut felt little closure even after completing the book.

The bio keeps the intrigue coming in the stories of two ex-wives who seem to withhold nothing. As salacious as those tales are, the more telling details emerge from Vonnegut’s views on creative writing and sharing stories he wants the world to hear.

The best parts of And So It Goes examine the ways his real-life drama bled into his fiction, something his fans may always have suspected but could never know for sure – until now.

I bought this over 6 months ago and read 20 pages before it got lost other things. I hate it when that happens.....I also had plans to see his lecture here in LA with Lizwiz just a month or so before he dies. Bummer/

[zdilla]

I just began 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' by Nietzche! it's one i do want to finish. i don't know if im up for the read right now. but am re-reading also 'The Unknown Matisse' biog by Hilary Spurling.

[Larry B.]

Great, very informative and entertaining book. As a fan (and sometimes an obsessive) of efficiency, it's giving me a lot to think about.

There are hardcover and Kindle editions, should you be interested (and you should): http://www.amazon.com/Cybernetic-Revolu ... 659&sr=8-1

[mockbee]

"In the Empire of Genghis Khan....."

It is an excellent book. Only wish I had someone to discuss it with........;)

[blackcoffee]

written by a guy who was in the band Shudder to Think--a band I don't think I ever listened to....

his website: http://nathanlarson.net/2011/01/nathans ... ance-2011/

[Matz]

[farrellgirl99]

and

[farrellgirl99]

i just finished this in a couple of hours. a pretty fascinating read.

It was a tale of loss and recovery, of courage and sorrow, of horror and inspiration. Tania Head’s astonishing account of her experience on September 11, 2001—from crawling through the carnage and chaos to escaping the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby of the burning south tower to losing her fiancé in the collapsed north tower—transformed her into one of the great victims and heroes of that tragic day.

Tania selflessly took on the responsibility of giving a voice and a direction to the burgeoning World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, helping save the “Survivor Stairway” and leading tours at Ground Zero, including taking then-governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and former mayor Giuliani on the inaugural tour of the WTC site. She even used her own assets to fund charitable events to help survivors heal. But there was something very wrong with Tania’s story—a terrible secret that would break the hearts and challenge the faith of all those she claimed to champion.

[chaos]

i just finished this in a couple of hours. a pretty fascinating read.

It was a tale of loss and recovery, of courage and sorrow, of horror and inspiration. Tania Head’s astonishing account of her experience on September 11, 2001—from crawling through the carnage and chaos to escaping the seventy-eighth-floor sky lobby of the burning south tower to losing her fiancé in the collapsed north tower—transformed her into one of the great victims and heroes of that tragic day.

Tania selflessly took on the responsibility of giving a voice and a direction to the burgeoning World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, helping save the “Survivor Stairway” and leading tours at Ground Zero, including taking then-governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and former mayor Giuliani on the inaugural tour of the WTC site. She even used her own assets to fund charitable events to help survivors heal. But there was something very wrong with Tania’s story—a terrible secret that would break the hearts and challenge the faith of all those she claimed to champion.

There was a program on TV recently about that woman. I am surprised she is still living in NYC. She cannot possibly feel safe with all of the crap she pulled.

[chaos]

Posted on Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly

Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College, presents a biting, scattershot indictment of undergraduate education at America's flagship university. The curriculum, he contends, is a crazy quilt of courses that leaves students clueless as to what they should learn and why. Professors are ivory tower eggheads fixated on their narrow subspecialties and incapable of offering guidance about academics, career or character. And students, coddled by parents and plied by administrators with parties, pubs and concerts, remain dependent and infantilized instead of growing up. Lewis spares no one-least of all recently ousted Harvard President Lawrence Summers, a "bully" whose administration combined "arrogance" with "lack of candor" and "chaotic lurching"-and probes rarely-examined academic fundamentals (his comments on the meaninglessness of grades are especially incisive). Unfortunately, his remedies, like a sketchy proposal for general education courses, are vague at best. And while he deplores Harvard's failure to articulate "what it means to be a good person," his discussion of date rape-concluding that women should be encouraged to "move on" and "rise above severe trauma"-is an ethical muddle. Provocative and insightful, Lewis's call for an intellectually and morally coherent education does a much better job of raising important questions than answering them.

[perkana]

The author wrote the Wallander books which I have never read nor scene the tv series (Swedish or the one with Branagh) So far so good...

[Hype]

I haven't really bothered with that Gareth Evans book I was going to read this summer. Instead I'm reading ridiculous amounts of stuff for a paper I'm working on that should cause a stir in the tiny community of scholars that work on the thing I work on. (I want to subtitle it: "Why everyone hitherto has been wrong, except me; or why you should give me tenure.")

This is some of it. And some of some of it is online (legally) for free:

http://archive.org/details/philosophyofspin033315mbp



Etc.

[Larry B.]

I think you might like Spinoza.

[Hype]

I think you might like Spinoza.

Huge understatement.

[Bandit72]

I'm reading this. No idea why it's taken me so long to even get it either.

[farrellgirl99]

i just finished reading these two:

[blackcoffee]

and I'm reading Animal Farm for the first time with my 6th grade daughter to supplement whatever she's doing in school as it doesn't seem to be rigorous enough

[SR]

Team of Rivals

Still.

[mockbee]

Annapurna Maurice Herzog

Still............


I'm terrible at committing to a book. I only read two of them all the way through in college.

I have about five right now that are halfway done.

[Essence_Smith]

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and this:



Fuck a James Bone I always liked the Saint...plus Roger Moore played him before Bond...sad that the last thing they did with that franchise was that meh movie in the 90's with Val Kilmer...

[Larry B.]

and I'm reading Animal Farm for the first time with my 6th grade daughter to supplement whatever she's doing in school as it doesn't seem to be rigorous enough

If any golden comments come up, please share?

I reckon that book can be a true landmark in a kid's life.

[crater]

I was looking through some boxes in the garage and found one full of my Dragonlance books. It's been years since I've read those things, so I'm starting again with this one. I wrote on the first page the dates I first started and finished it 12-Oct-90 - 24-Oct-90.

[chaos]

This arrived today from amazon:

[Warped]

The author wrote the Wallander books which I have never read nor scene the tv series (Swedish or the one with Branagh) So far so good...

I read all the Wallander books as well as some other novels by Mankell (including the one you mentioned here) and i loved them all. He's not my fave swedish author though - that title goes to Hakan Nesser.

[nausearockpig]