Men D.'s bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 11 Apr 2025 07:29:30 -0700 60 Men D.'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Abroad in Japan: Ten Years In The Land Of The Rising Sun]]> 112278144 Will Ferguson, author of Hokkaido Highway Blues

'Carves a unique path across Japan bringing him into contact with far too many cats, heartening renewal in Tohoku, and even pizza with Ken Watanabe.'
Iain Maloney, author of The Only Gaijin in the Village

'Fascinating, fact-packed and very funny..An excellent and enjoyable read for the Japan-curious. I loved it and learned a lot.'
Sam Baldwin, author of For Fukui's Two years in rural Japan


When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history?

Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures.

Spanning ten years and all forty-seven prefectures, Chris takes us from the lush rice fields of the countryside to the frenetic neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a terrifying North Korean missile incident, a mortifying experience at a love hotel and a week spent with Japan's biggest movie star, Abroad in Japan is an extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the Rising Sun.]]> 298 Chris Broad Men D. 0 currently-reading 4.37 2023 Abroad in Japan: Ten Years In The Land Of The Rising Sun
author: Chris Broad
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family]]> 8568417 303 Dan Savage 1101213329 Men D. 3 4.05 2005 The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family
author: Dan Savage
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/08
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
His voice doesn't translate perfectly from snappy-column-for-knowledgeable-indie-audience to extended-narrative-for-moderate-bookworms format - e.g., think of the difference in tone and rhythm and presumption in the sentences, "I ended up in downward dog" versus "I ended up in downward dog, the yoga pose" - but the book is a fast and fun read nonetheless. I like that he is funny and irreverent and free-thinking but also very conservative in how seriously he approaches the idea of life partnership and commitment.
]]> Shakespeare's Kitchen 8735729 Ilka Weisz has accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, reluctantly leaving her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the instituteOCOs director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza. Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, and Sunday brunches, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of the outsiderOCOs loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other peopleOCOs deaths.
A magnificent and deeply moving work, "ShakespeareOCOs Kitchen" marks the long-awaited return of a writer at the height of her powers.
"]]> 243 Lore Segal 1595585834 Men D. 5 3.30 2007 Shakespeare's Kitchen
author: Lore Segal
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
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review:
I loved this book. I mean, I LOVED it.
]]> Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Men D. 2 Could've been sexier. 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2023/10/18
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review:
Could've been sexier.
]]> <![CDATA[The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)]]> 1024275 An Agatha Award Best Novel Nominee
Named One of the Century's Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

From New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King comes the book that introduced us to the ingenious Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles into his lap on the Sussex downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée, and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. This first book of the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries is full of brilliant deduction, disguises, and danger.]]> 346 Laurie R. King 0312427360 Men D. 3 3.92 1994 The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
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]]> Between the Acts 46105 224 Virginia Woolf 015611870X Men D. 3 3.64 1941 Between the Acts
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1941
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/07/31
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]]> <![CDATA[On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society]]> 78127
Upon its initial publication, On Killing was hailed as a landmark study of the techniques the military uses to overcome the powerful reluctance to kill, of how killing affects soldiers, and of the societal implications of escalating violence. Now, Grossman has updated this classic work to include information on 21st-century military conflicts, recent trends in crime, suicide bombings, school shootings, and more. The result is a work certain to be relevant and important for decades to come.]]> 367 Dave Grossman 0316191442 Men D. 0 to-read 4.08 1995 On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
author: Dave Grossman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Norse Mythology 37903770 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780393356182

Neil Gaiman, long inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction, presents a bravura rendition of the Norse gods and their world from their origin though their upheaval in Ragnarok.

In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin’s son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki—son of a giant—blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.

Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Through Gaiman’s deft and witty prose, these gods emerge with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again.]]> 301 Neil Gaiman Men D. 4 Fun! 4.11 2017 Norse Mythology
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/27
date added: 2019/08/08
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Fun!
]]> Little Fires Everywhere 34273236
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned � from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren � an enigmatic artist and single mother � who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother–daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town � and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .]]> 338 Celeste Ng 0735224293 Men D. 3 4.05 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/10
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves:
review:
Satisfying justice porn novel where the delicious villain Mrs. Robinson gets all of what she deserves. But one pessimistic reader could not suspend disbelief enough to totally buy into a world where poor immigrant women win and rich WASPs suffer.
]]> Our Souls at Night 23602562
In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.

Their brave adventures - their pleasures and their difficulties - are hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer's enduring contribution to American literature.]]> 179 Kent Haruf 1101875895 Men D. 5 3.91 2015 Our Souls at Night
author: Kent Haruf
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/03
date added: 2019/08/08
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review:
Quiet and touching. Why shouldn't old people have feelings. Thanks Anjali for the rec.
]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Men D. 2 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2019/02/18
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves:
review:
Meh. Read this and Eleanor Oliphant pretty close together, so the shut-ins with hearts of gold trope felt boring.
]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naĂŻve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Men D. 5 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/15
date added: 2019/08/08
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Beautiful, thoughtful, and sad.
]]> <![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]> 92303
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Men D. 2 4.17 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
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review:
Listened to an audiobook which was a recording of a performance by LA Theatreworks. I don't remember anything. I think it was a piece of candy.
]]> Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 12126004 Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, women are looking for a little bit of everything: love, lust, someone they can trust. In the bath, at the "toy" store, or in the kitchen, they’re ready to take a chance that could lead to the experience of a lifetime. This year’s guest judge is the Sugarbutch herself: Sinclair Sexsmith, poet, performer, impresario. Mr. Sexsmith has selected work from an international field of authors, from top names in erotic fiction, to outstanding newcomers.

DeJay’s "Never Too Old" proves that an old(ish) butch can learn new tricks, even if it means showing her boxers to an impossibly young salesgirl. Last year's judge, Lea DeLaria, slips between the covers of this year's edition with her story about love...or lust...in an elevator. In "Skindeep," Anna Watson tells the story of a femme who gets to the bottom of her lover’s disappearing acts.

Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 is fully loaded, literary and lustful. Curated by Lambda Award-nominated editor Kathleen Warnock, this volume is long on variety and even longer on beautifully developed characters who are as interesting as they are interested in getting girls.]]> 220 Kathleen Warnock 1573447528 Men D. 1
Am straight now. JK straight erotica is just as bad. Am ace now.]]> 3.86 2011 Best Lesbian Erotica 2012
author: Kathleen Warnock
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at: 2019/03/01
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves:
review:
Once again, embarrassingly bad. I quote: "Pulling her top off, I dove at her white little tits and sucked her hard nipples. They were like candy on my tongue. I loved her tits. If I had two heads, I'd have sucked them both at once." NOT COMEDY! Not intentionally, at least.

Am straight now. JK straight erotica is just as bad. Am ace now.
]]> Absurdistan 70509 Absurdistan and meet outsize Misha Vainberg, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, lover of large portions of food and drink, lover and inept performer of rap music, and lover of a South Bronx Latina whom he longs to rejoin in New York City, if only the American INS will grant him a visa. But it won't, because Misha's late Beloved Papa whacked an Oklahoma businessman of some prominence. Misha is paying the price of exile from his adopted American homeland. He's stuck in Russia, dreaming of his beloved Rouenna and the Oz of NYC.

Salvation may lie in the tiny, oil-rich nation of Absurdistan, where a crooked consular officer will sell Misha a Belgian passport. But after a civil war breaks out between two competing ethnic groups and a local warlord installs hapless Misha as Minister of Multicultural Affairs, our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if a normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century.

Populated by curvaceous brown-eyed beauties, circumcision-happy Hasidic Jews, a loyal manservant who never stops serving, and scheming oil execs from a certain American company whose name rhymes with Malliburton, Absurdistan is a strange, oddly true-to-life look at how we live now, from a writer who should know.]]> 333 Gary Shteyngart 0812971671 Men D. 3 3.32 2006 Absurdistan
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2019/03/08
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves:
review:
Vacuous, and Gary Shteyngart is a little disgusting, but it made me laugh.
]]> <![CDATA[Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine]]> 31434883 No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: she struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding unnecessary human contact, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen, the three rescue one another from the lives of isolation that they had been living. Ultimately, it is Raymond’s big heart that will help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one. If she does, she'll learn that she, too, is capable of finding friendship—and even love—after all.

Smart, warm, uplifting, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

the only way to survive is to open your heart.]]> 336 Gail Honeyman 0735220689 Men D. 3 4.21 2017 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
author: Gail Honeyman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/03/24
date added: 2019/08/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1)]]> 32075671 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062498533 can be found here.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this is a powerful and gripping YA novel about one girl's struggle for justice.]]> 454 Angie Thomas 0062498533 Men D. 4 4.46 2017 The Hate U Give (The Hate U Give, #1)
author: Angie Thomas
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
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]]> Trust Exercise 40046059
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,� two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.]]> 257 Susan Choi 1250309883 Men D. 0 to-read 3.12 2019 Trust Exercise
author: Susan Choi
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Write an Autobiographical Novel]]> 35721123 How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.]]> 277 Alexander Chee 1328764524 Men D. 0 to-read 4.40 2018 How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
author: Alexander Chee
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations]]> 40265834 Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.

The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, "black matter(s)," and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison's oeuvre.]]> 354 Toni Morrison 0525521038 Men D. 0 to-read 4.35 2019 The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
author: Toni Morrison
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)]]> 18116
These thrilling adventures tell the story of Lyra and Will—two ordinary children on a perilous journey through shimmering haunted otherworlds. They will meet witches and armored bears, fallen angels and soul-eating specters. And in the end, the fate of both the living—and the dead—will rely on them.

Phillip Pullman’s spellbinding His Dark Materials trilogy has captivated readers for over twenty years and won acclaim at every turn. It will have you questioning everything you know about your world and wondering what really lies just out of reach.]]> 1088 Philip Pullman 0440238609 Men D. 4
Loved the quiet moments of Mary Malone's anthropological explorations of life in the mulefa world; the rationalist heroes (pear-shaped scientists, lusty witches, cowboy caricatures, nomadic gypsy pariahs); and the antiestablishment, atheistic, and epicurean values (call the last "sex-positivity").

Liked the density and pace of the story; the movements around the multiverse; and the author's epic ambitions. There are a lot of ideas.

The writing serves the plot but isn't glorious in itself. The location descriptions got tedious, while descriptions of manners and emotions were shallow; I look forward to the actors in the TV adaptation adding depth. The plot in the last book felt serialized, like a video game: first this quest, then a side quest, then another and another and another. And though some main characters die, the outcome of the series is never in doubt, so I didn't get a feeling of real risk. These things put together make the series feel targeted to children...which it is, so why am I complaining again??]]> 4.26 2000 His Dark Materials (His Dark Materials #1-3)
author: Philip Pullman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/08/08
shelves:
review:
Total page-turner. I stayed up late several nights in a row to finish this series, something I haven't done in years.

Loved the quiet moments of Mary Malone's anthropological explorations of life in the mulefa world; the rationalist heroes (pear-shaped scientists, lusty witches, cowboy caricatures, nomadic gypsy pariahs); and the antiestablishment, atheistic, and epicurean values (call the last "sex-positivity").

Liked the density and pace of the story; the movements around the multiverse; and the author's epic ambitions. There are a lot of ideas.

The writing serves the plot but isn't glorious in itself. The location descriptions got tedious, while descriptions of manners and emotions were shallow; I look forward to the actors in the TV adaptation adding depth. The plot in the last book felt serialized, like a video game: first this quest, then a side quest, then another and another and another. And though some main characters die, the outcome of the series is never in doubt, so I didn't get a feeling of real risk. These things put together make the series feel targeted to children...which it is, so why am I complaining again??
]]> Territory of Light 33871745 Territory of Light is the luminous story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her three-year-old daughter. Its twelve, stand-alone fragments follow the first year of her separation from her husband. The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting and sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, desaturated streetlamps and earth-shaking explosions. The seemingly artless prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful and images remain seared into your retina for a long time afterwards.]]> 122 YĹ«ko Tsushima 0241312191 Men D. 3 3.61 1978 Territory of Light
author: YĹ«ko Tsushima
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/07/18
shelves:
review:
Fragmented chronicle of the first year of a divorce/young single motherhood. Some unforgettable images (the rooftop sea, the drunk on the street), some bracing confessions about her impatience with her daughter (making her daughter sleep in urine-soaked clothes!). Lots of recollections of dreams and anxieties. But you already knew that quiet Asian women had rich inner lives, didn't you?
]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Men D. 5 4.46 2018 Educated
author: Tara Westover
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/07/15
shelves:
review:
Fascinating! Portrait of abusive narcissist father, abusive narcissist brain-damaged brother, enabling mother and sister, crazy f-ing Mormon home-schooling survivalist family. Hard to forget.
]]> <![CDATA[Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)]]> 36336078 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.]]> 248 André Aciman 1786495252 Men D. 4
I liked the voice of the precocious teenager. I liked the voice of the reflective adult at the end. I liked imagining myself getting sunburnt lying next to a pool thinking about music, then fucking a peach. Too bad Armie Hammer was a brutalist and unemotive audiobook reader (but I listened at 2x speed, so ymmv). ]]> 4.08 2007 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)
author: André Aciman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/07/14
shelves:
review:
The reviews for the movie version cleaned the "languid" aisle out of the word store so I can't use the word here.

I liked the voice of the precocious teenager. I liked the voice of the reflective adult at the end. I liked imagining myself getting sunburnt lying next to a pool thinking about music, then fucking a peach. Too bad Armie Hammer was a brutalist and unemotive audiobook reader (but I listened at 2x speed, so ymmv).
]]> Less (Arthur Less, #1) 39927096 You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years now engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes--it would all be too awkward--and you can’t say no--it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of half-baked literary invitations you’ve received from around the world.

QUESTION: How do you arrange to skip town?

ANSWER: You accept them all.

If you are Arthur Less.

Thus begins an around-the-world-in-eighty-days fantasia that will take Arthur Less to Mexico, Italy, Germany, Morocco, India and Japan and put thousands of miles between him and the problems he refuses to face. What could possibly go wrong?

Well: Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Sahara sandstorm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and arrive in Japan too late for the cherry blossoms. In between: science fiction fans, crazed academics, emergency rooms, starlets, doctors, exes and, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to see. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. The second phase of life, as he thinks of it, falling behind him like the second phase of a rocket. There will be his first love. And there will be his last.

A love story, a satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart, by an author The New York Times has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,� “elegiac,� “ingenious,� as well as “too sappy by half,� Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.]]> 273 Andrew Sean Greer Men D. 1 Who cares? 3.61 2017 Less (Arthur Less, #1)
author: Andrew Sean Greer
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2019/07/14
shelves:
review:
Who cares?
]]> Just Mercy 20342617
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly condemned.

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation’s highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.

One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn’t commit. The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching � a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.]]> 336 Bryan Stevenson Men D. 5 4.62 2014 Just Mercy
author: Bryan Stevenson
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/07/14
shelves:
review:
Oh Bryan Stevenson, why can't they all be you?
]]> <![CDATA[Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law]]> 43166269 By the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, an important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our society. Using case histories, personal experiences and his own inviting writing and teaching style, Preet Bharara shows the thought process we need to best achieve truth and justice in our daily lives and within our society.

Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature.
The book is divided into four Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment and Punishment. He shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system, but he also shows how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives.
Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career--the successes as well as the failures--to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action (and in some cases, not taking action, which can be just as essential when trying to achieve a just result).
Much of what Bharara discusses is inspiring--it gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can truly lead us on a path toward truth and justice. Some of what he writes about will be controversial and cause much discussion. Ultimately, it is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system--and in our society.]]> 333 Preet Bharara Men D. 4 4.27 2019 Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law
author: Preet Bharara
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/07/14
shelves:
review:
It's kinda written like a letter to a young prosecutor, but it's best for non-lawyers, I think (though as a lawyer who is not a prosecutor, I found the chapter on confidential sources and the thoughts on law enforcement powers illuminating). A+ for humility, thoughtfulness, and specific stories about specific people.
]]> <![CDATA[All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf]]> 40068068 A wise, lyrical memoir about the power of literature to help us read our own lives -- and see clearly the people we love most.

Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death -- a calamity that claimed her favorite person--she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief.

Smyth's story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf's Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss, and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding novel--and crafts an elegant reminder of literature's ability to clarify and console.

Braiding memoir, literary criticism, and biography, All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.]]> 320 Katharine Smyth 1524760625 Men D. 2 3.79 2019 All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
author: Katharine Smyth
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2019/07/14
shelves:
review:
I stopped after 50 pages. She writes well enough at the sentence and paragraph level, but the subject matters (decline and death of beloved alcoholic father, her feeling of connection to Virginia Woolf, her thoughts on To the Lighthouse) are not compelling enough to overcome one reader's preference for new sketch comedies on Netflix.
]]> <![CDATA[California Public Sector Labor Relations]]> 38487157 California Public Sector Labor Relations brings you the authoritative, comprehensive guidance you need to answer most any question related to public sector labor relations in California in one convenient resource. This comprehensive treatise provides labor attorneys, public sector employee organizations, public sector human resource personnel, and state and local public agency managers with an expert analysis of the statutes, case law, regulations, procedure, and agency decisions -- including PERB -- governing public sector labor relations in California. This single volume offers broad coverage of the employer-employee relationship at all state and local government, public school, community college, and state university. It also provides detailed information â€� ĚýCollective bargaining and organizational rights of public employeesâ€� ĚýThe public employer's duty to bargainâ€� ĚýThe rights and duties of public employee unionsâ€� ĚýStrikes and other concerted activitiesâ€� ĚýEnforcement of public sector collective bargaining agreementsâ€� ĚýEnforcement of public sector labor laws by PERBâ€� ĚýDiscipline, discharge and layoffs

California Public Sector Labor Relations gives practitioners a wealth of insight and expertise accumulated from over 60 authors and editors. This essential work also includes up-to-date integration of case law and statutory developments, and close tracking of regulatory developments.]]> 2434 LexisNexis Editorial Staff 1579110894 Men D. 5 5.00 California Public Sector Labor Relations
author: LexisNexis Editorial Staff
name: Men D.
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2018/10/10
date added: 2018/10/10
shelves:
review:
Already a classic, but the September 2018 edition really takes the cake. It's a substantial reorganization of the treatise into a more logical taxonomy than editions past. I especially enjoyed Chapters 6-7! Spoiler alert: defenses in unilateral change cases are limited!
]]> <![CDATA[Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall]]> 226369 328 Anna Funder 1862076553 Men D. 5 4.20 2003 Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
author: Anna Funder
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2016/07/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Down Under 42876 Alternative cover editions for this ISBN can be found here, here, here and here

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.

Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging; their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this...]]> 398 Bill Bryson 055299703X Men D. 3
Also, I paid $24 AUD for this book because books in Australia are fucking expensive, because they are unread villagers.

Then again, the book was funny and full of interesting stories such as this:

“Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the New York Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.

“It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on the night of 28 May 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance lorry drivers and prospectors, virtually the only people in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a might but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.

“The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn’t fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity, the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

“Then in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo underground, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum’s substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two engineers from the former Soviet Union. The groups avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.

“You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a Prime Minister and is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly this was a place worth getting to know.�
]]> 4.07 2000 Down Under
author: Bill Bryson
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2009/09/21
date added: 2016/04/08
shelves:
review:
Constance and I both read this book on our trip to Australia; she didn’t finish hers in time so I had to spring for a new copy for myself. On the other hand, Bill Bryson is easily excited and on many pages sentences such as "Kingsford Smith was quite possibly the greatest aviator ever to lived," and "The funeral for the pilots of the Kookabura was quite possibly the greatest that Sydney had ever seen" and "This spot was quite possibly the remotest and hottest and driest on the planet, or any planet, ever" and "These people were quite possibly the friendliest living organisms ever to have lived, in life or in anyone's imagination," etc. This formula - X is quite possibly the most Y ever - is the result of Bryson's sloppy, giddy, researchless prose. Things are "quite possibly" superlatives because he doesn't bother to check to see if they actually are. After a while, this tone of endless, groundless enthusiasm grows tiresome and untrustworthy, even though the quips and scenarios remain funny. There's no room in the voice to accommodate the more troubling bits of Australiana, like the slaughter of Aborigines or the widespread racism (and vapidness) of Aussies, even though Bryson makes a stab at covering these issues, he quarantines its unpleasantness and doesn't seem to recognize outside of these chapters that the cheerful friendliness of the white Australians he's meeting might be directed to him only because he fits the Aussie demographic.

Also, I paid $24 AUD for this book because books in Australia are fucking expensive, because they are unread villagers.

Then again, the book was funny and full of interesting stories such as this:

“Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the New York Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.

“It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on the night of 28 May 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance lorry drivers and prospectors, virtually the only people in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a might but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.

“The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn’t fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity, the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

“Then in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo underground, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum’s substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two engineers from the former Soviet Union. The groups avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.

“You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a Prime Minister and is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly this was a place worth getting to know.�

]]> The Partner Track 17286782
In the eyes of her corporate law firm, Ingrid Yung is a "two-fer." As a Chinese-American woman about to be ushered into the elite rank of partner, she's the face of Parsons Valentine & Hunt LLP's recruiting brochures--their treasured "Golden Girl." But behind the firm’s welcoming façade lies the scotch-sipping, cigar-smoking old-boy network that shuts out lawyers like Ingrid. To compensate, Ingrid gamely plays in the softball league, schmoozes in the corporate cafeteria, and puts in the billable hours � until a horrifically offensive performance at the law firm's annual summer outing throws the carefully constructed image way out of equilibrium. Scrambling to do damage control, Parsons Valentine announces a new "Diversity Initiative" and commands a reluctant Ingrid to spearhead the effort, taking her priority away from the enormous deal that was to be the final step in securing partnership. For the first time, Ingrid finds herself at odds with her colleagues � including her handsome, golden-boy boyfriend � in a clash of class, race, and sexual politics.

"Smart, incisive, and fast-paced, THE PARTNER TRACK is a sparklingly readable look at the inner workings of a Wall Street law firm -- from the vantage point of a brainy, beautiful and self-doubting Asian-American associate. Wan has the remarkable ability to make you feel as if "you are there" -- inside the law firm, inside protagonist Ingrid Yung's head. I did not want to put this book down." –Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of "QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"

"A wholly engrossing behind-the-scenes look at real life behind the pomp, power and prestige of a high-powered law firm that wants to still play by a 1950s rule book." –Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus, co-authors of "Citizen Girl"

"Hell hath no fury like Helen Wan's savvy heroine in this terrific debut. We all know women like Ingrid Yung: the well-educated over-achiever who does everything right to ensure a long, productive journey on a lucrative career path. But what happens when someone blows up the path? The Partner Track is a delicious, satisfying read for anyone who has fantasized about getting the better of the boss, the ex-lover, the corporate powers that be--or all three. Ingrid Yung has done it for all of us." –Kristin van Ogtrop, editor of REAL SIMPLE

"Behind Helen Wan's wit and sparkling prose is a poignant and at times, painfully honest tale of loyalty, ambition and sacrifice. Funny, fragile, sometimes bold, often unsure, Ingrid Yung is one of those unforgettable heroines that you actually miss, like a dear friend, when the story’s over." –Ann Leary, New York Times bestselling author of "The Good House"

"What a terrific debut novel. Ingrid Yung is a fresh, funny, and fearless heroine. Her razor-sharp wit and keen observations of gender, race and class politics in corporate America make THE PARTNER TRACK an entertaining, engrossing and ultimately deeply compelling read." –Cristina Alger, author of "The Darlings"

"The Partner Track is a marvelous story about female ambition and power, about betrayal, identity, and the conflict between self-interest and desire. In short: all the big, human stuff. Read it." –Alison Clement, author of "Twenty Questions"]]> 304 Helen Wan 1250019575 Men D. 0 to-read 3.73 2013 The Partner Track
author: Helen Wan
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eleanor and Park 15795357
Bono met his wife in high school, Park says.So did Jerry Lee Lewis, Eleanor answers.I’m not kidding, he says.You should be, she says,Ěýwe’re 16.What about Romeo and Juliet?Shallow, confused, then dead.I love you,ĚýPark says.Wherefore art thou,ĚýEleanor answers.I’m not kidding,Ěýhe says.You should be.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986,Ěýthis is the story of two star-crossed misfits—smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try. When Eleanor meets Park, you’ll remember your own first love—and just how hard it pulled you under.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 336 Rainbow Rowell 1250031214 Men D. 4
Note: Park is obviously written by a person who is not a second generation immigrant. The parts of Park that are Korean read like someone watched a couple Margaret Cho sketches and then used pidgin phonemes to construct a(n implausible) romantic history for Park's parents. And the most significant manifestation of Park's ethnicity is his insecurity about his masculinity. But the problem is that that's what white people think is the most significant manifestation of Asian men's ethnicity because that is the stereotype that white people repeat most often to themselves. What about Park trying to communicate with his immigrant mom? What about the assumptions people make about Park's familiarity with martial arts? I realize this book isn't an exploration of the second generation immigrant experience but without a plausible telling of that experience Park's character lacks depth.

]]> 4.08 2012 Eleanor and Park
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/16
date added: 2014/12/19
shelves:
review:
Read this in the same week as Fault in Our Stars and am somewhat sick of the conventionally-unattractive wry girls trope. But that fatigue did not really prevent me from paging through this book furiously on the train, wanting my commute to last longer so I'd know what happened. Oh, teens. I could read about your heady romances all day long.

Note: Park is obviously written by a person who is not a second generation immigrant. The parts of Park that are Korean read like someone watched a couple Margaret Cho sketches and then used pidgin phonemes to construct a(n implausible) romantic history for Park's parents. And the most significant manifestation of Park's ethnicity is his insecurity about his masculinity. But the problem is that that's what white people think is the most significant manifestation of Asian men's ethnicity because that is the stereotype that white people repeat most often to themselves. What about Park trying to communicate with his immigrant mom? What about the assumptions people make about Park's familiarity with martial arts? I realize this book isn't an exploration of the second generation immigrant experience but without a plausible telling of that experience Park's character lacks depth.


]]> <![CDATA[Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly]]> 33313 A deluxe, annotated edition of Kitchen Confidential to celebrate the life of Anthony Bourdain, featuring new photo inserts

Over two decades ago, the New Yorker published a now infamous article, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,� by then little-known chef Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain spared no one’s appetite as he revealed what happens behind the kitchen door. The article was a sensation, and the book it spawned, the now iconic Kitchen Confidential, became an even bigger sensation and megabestseller. Frankly confessional, addictively acerbic, and utterly unsparing, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business.

Fans will love to return to this deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade, laying out Bourdain’s more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine. Including a handwritten introduction and annotations done by Bourdain about a decade after the book was originally published, this edition also features previously unpublished photos to accompany the now-classic text.]]> 312 Anthony Bourdain 0060899220 Men D. 4
Reasons to cringe: balance of self-effacement and -aggrandizement is not quite right. Loving descriptions of male co-workers' dick jokes could be put in paragraph list form thus becoming fact section of complaint alleging sexual harassment, hostile work environment; "but chicks are cool and do it too!" addenda just makes him seem like a clueless pig, not a fun jokey guy.

Zipped through it in two nights. Fun read. Grain of salt for inevitable memoir problem of fascinating source material and fun voice that leaves skeptical reader wondering how much of an asshole everyone else thinks this lovable guy is.
]]> 4.17 2000 Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
author: Anthony Bourdain
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2014/12/14
date added: 2014/12/19
shelves:
review:
Reasons to read it: For the description of the culture of restaurant kitchen workers. For the healthy amount of detail about the job of a chef. (I especially appreciated the chapter that steps through the myriad tasks a chef must complete, often simultaneously, during the day, from morning planning to hectic dinner service to getting drunk with your asshole coworkers afterward.) For vivid, punchy, often funny writing.

Reasons to cringe: balance of self-effacement and -aggrandizement is not quite right. Loving descriptions of male co-workers' dick jokes could be put in paragraph list form thus becoming fact section of complaint alleging sexual harassment, hostile work environment; "but chicks are cool and do it too!" addenda just makes him seem like a clueless pig, not a fun jokey guy.

Zipped through it in two nights. Fun read. Grain of salt for inevitable memoir problem of fascinating source material and fun voice that leaves skeptical reader wondering how much of an asshole everyone else thinks this lovable guy is.

]]> Gone Girl 21480930 560 Gillian Flynn 0553418351 Men D. 1
The movie adaptation was fantastic, probably because it did not require the viewer to read through unbearable inner voices.]]> 4.05 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/01
shelves:
review:
One of those books to throw across the room because the writing is so treacly. Two voices, both despicable!

The movie adaptation was fantastic, probably because it did not require the viewer to read through unbearable inner voices.
]]> <![CDATA[Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile]]> 17349121 An unvarnished and uncensored account of quotidian life in the NFL from one of the best writers to ever play in its ranks

The NFL is the most popular sports league in America-and the most damaging to its players. Degenerative brain conditions, early onset arthritis, bad knees, hips, shoulders: such is the glory that awaits the retired veteran of the NFL-as well as the terrible pensions and imminent financial ruin for the majority that lack college degrees. But for the millions of NFL fans, the average NFL player is faceless; his pain and suffering virtually invisible.

Nate Jackson was a receiver at tiny Division III Menlo College, on the coast of California. Talented enough to sign as a free agent with the 49ers, he then played for six seasons with the Denver Broncos, bouncing from the practice squad to the active roster and eventually a starting spot-a player barely holding on to a career in the pros, like the majority of his fellow players.

As he traces the arc of his career, Jackson brings to light the story of hundreds of everyday, "expendable" players whose lives-unlike those of their superstar colleagues-aren't captured in high-definition. From scouting combines to training camps, off-season parties to game-day routines, this remarkably written memoir-funny, candid, controversial, and artful-is an unforgettable look at life in the NFL, and the real lives of young men risking their bodies, and ultimately their lives, to play pro football.]]> 243 Nate Jackson 0062108026 Men D. 4
Gives insight on the details I wanted to know: what does it feel like for a low-ranked prospect on the day of the NFL draft? How do you get an agent? How much do you have to eat? What do the athletes do when they are injured? What do they do at night in the hotels when they're traveling? How do they interact with the groupies after the games? How does it feel to be tackled by a 300-pound man? How does your body recover from daily choreographed violence?

Like many memoirs, it suffers from having no narrative arc. It's a collection of episodes accumulating into a 8-year NFL career. But lives don't have narrative arcs, and the episodes are interesting enough by themselves.

Recommend you borrow from your library. It's good, but not worth the cost of a new book. ]]> 3.85 2013 Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile
author: Nate Jackson
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/26
date added: 2014/12/01
shelves:
review:
He's a good writer, really funny, and not a douchebag. Immediately makes it the best athlete memoir I've read.

Gives insight on the details I wanted to know: what does it feel like for a low-ranked prospect on the day of the NFL draft? How do you get an agent? How much do you have to eat? What do the athletes do when they are injured? What do they do at night in the hotels when they're traveling? How do they interact with the groupies after the games? How does it feel to be tackled by a 300-pound man? How does your body recover from daily choreographed violence?

Like many memoirs, it suffers from having no narrative arc. It's a collection of episodes accumulating into a 8-year NFL career. But lives don't have narrative arcs, and the episodes are interesting enough by themselves.

Recommend you borrow from your library. It's good, but not worth the cost of a new book.
]]> The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Men D. 3
Liked: the simplicity of the story (the romance starts immediately and the focus is the relationship between the two); the authenticity of the romantic connection (i.e., based on good conversation, shared sense of humor and analytical bent, mutual care); the skepticism about religious and social conventions relating to terminal illness and taking care of dying people.

Disliked: Kaitlyn (nobody speaks or acts like that); the Dutch author character (his actions in the last part of the book verge on caricature).

Would not read again but would recommend for a few hours of free time.]]> 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars
author: John Green
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2014/12/01
shelves:
review:
It took half the book to shake the feeling that the protagonists' voices were inauthentic (too sarcastic, too articulate even for teenage pretentiousness) but I eventually bought into it. While the book did not cause full adult tears to fall from my eyes, I did feel a burning sensation in my nostrils for the last 50 pages.

Liked: the simplicity of the story (the romance starts immediately and the focus is the relationship between the two); the authenticity of the romantic connection (i.e., based on good conversation, shared sense of humor and analytical bent, mutual care); the skepticism about religious and social conventions relating to terminal illness and taking care of dying people.

Disliked: Kaitlyn (nobody speaks or acts like that); the Dutch author character (his actions in the last part of the book verge on caricature).

Would not read again but would recommend for a few hours of free time.
]]> Bossypants 9418327
She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.]]> 283 Tina Fey Men D. 3
Also into things I am not by nature curious about but appreciate because of the funny storytelling: her high school summer camp experiences, her father, driving to Youngstown on Boxing Day. Enough moment-to-moment wit to keep reading, but no lasting impressions.

As funny as expected. Guffawed a few times. Worth two hours on a Thursday night.]]> 3.97 2011 Bossypants
author: Tina Fey
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/18
shelves:
review:
Offers insight into things I'll never experience but am curious about: acting and writing comedy for television, auditioning for SNL, impersonating (and meeting) Sarah Palin, and getting trussed up for a photo shoot.

Also into things I am not by nature curious about but appreciate because of the funny storytelling: her high school summer camp experiences, her father, driving to Youngstown on Boxing Day. Enough moment-to-moment wit to keep reading, but no lasting impressions.

As funny as expected. Guffawed a few times. Worth two hours on a Thursday night.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 15783514
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 181 Neil Gaiman 0062255657 Men D. 3
Gaiman knows how to communicate the feeling of gemĂĽtlich after a scary episode. The scenes in the Hempstocks' kitchen were my favorite. But the book gets only three stars because there is no real sense of danger or doubt about the protagonist triumphing. ]]> 4.00 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/16
shelves:
review:
The solid unflorid prose makes the supernatural elements believable - kind of like a Miyazaki movie that gets the details of facial expressions right. I appreciated the mystery and inventiveness.

Gaiman knows how to communicate the feeling of gemĂĽtlich after a scary episode. The scenes in the Hempstocks' kitchen were my favorite. But the book gets only three stars because there is no real sense of danger or doubt about the protagonist triumphing.
]]> <![CDATA[Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)]]> 10335308
Perhaps you want to know what Mindy thinks makes a great best friend (someone who will fill your prescription in the middle of the night), or what makes a great guy (one who is aware of all elderly people in any room at any time and acts accordingly), or what is the perfect amount of fame (so famous you can never get convicted of murder in a court of law), or how to maintain a trim figure (you will not find that information in these pages). If so, you've come to the right book, mostly!

In Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy invites readers on a tour of her life and her unscientific observations on romance, friendship, and Hollywood, with several conveniently placed stopping points for you to run errands and make phone calls. Mindy Kaling really is just a Girl Next Door - not so much literally anywhere in the continental United States, but definitely if you live in India or Sri Lanka.]]> 222 Mindy Kaling 0307886263 Men D. 3 3.86 2011 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
author: Mindy Kaling
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:
Tasty piece of candy, easy to read. Consistent, funny, self-deprecating voice. Very reasonable.
]]> <![CDATA[We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves]]> 16176440
Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, Lowell, Rosemary and her unusual sister Fern. Rosemary begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. “Until Fern’s expulsion...,� Rosemary says, “she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her.� As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

In We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date—a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.]]> 310 Karen Joy Fowler 0399162097 Men D. 3 3.70 2013 We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
author: Karen Joy Fowler
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:
Novel does well with the story trope in which a wry, smart, somewhat dark narrator offers observations on a more spectacular person than herself. The twist was surprising and the story was satisfyingly novelistic. This would be a four-star review but the scene of pivotal violence in the final chapters of the book didn't hit as hard as I wanted to be hit.
]]> The Bone People 460635 The powerful, visionary, Booker Award–winning novel about the complicated relationships between three outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage.

“This book is just amazingly, wondrously great.� —Alice Walker

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes: part Maori, part European, asexual and aromantic, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family.

One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor—a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession.

As Kerewin succumbs to Simon’s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality.

Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where indigenous and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge.

Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.]]> 450 Keri Hulme 0140089225 Men D. 4 4.05 1984 The Bone People
author: Keri Hulme
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:
Deft writing and POV shifting. Believable curmudgeon has heart believably melted. Results are heart-melting.
]]> <![CDATA[A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)]]> 10572
It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Here is the second volume in George R.R. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R.R. Martin stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.]]> 1009 George R.R. Martin 0553381695 Men D. 3 4.42 1998 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 Men D. 3 4.44 1996 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:
Watched the TV show first. Book is plodding and repetitive in comparison. Exciting events lack exciting writing. But three stars for commitment to world- and history-building, and for creating the Tyrion and Arya characters.
]]> Invisible (Rough Cut) 6345193 “One of America’s greatest novelists� dazzlingly reinvents the coming-of-age story in his most passionate and surprising book to date

Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster’s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Three different narrators tell the story of Invisible, a novel that travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from Morningside Heights, to the Left Bank of Paris, to a remote island in the Caribbean. It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers.”Ěý±Ő±�> 308 Paul Auster 0805090800 Men D. 4 3.75 2009 Invisible (Rough Cut)
author: Paul Auster
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/12
shelves:
review:

]]> O Pioneers! 18652347
O Pioneers! tells the story of the Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants in the farm country near the fictional town of Hanover, Nebraska, at the turn of the 20th century. The main character, Alexandra Bergson, inherits the family farmland when her father dies, and she devotes her life to making the farm a viable enterprise at a time when other immigrant families are giving up and leaving the prairie. The novel is also concerned with two romantic relationships, one between Alexandra and family friend Carl Linstrum and another between Alexandra's brother Emil and the married Marie Shabata. - from Wikipedia]]> 125 Willa Cather Men D. 4 4.15 1913 O Pioneers!
author: Willa Cather
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/14
shelves:
review:

]]> How to Be Black 12959743 254 Baratunde R. Thurston 0062003216 Men D. 0 to-read 3.87 2012 How to Be Black
author: Baratunde R. Thurston
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Kindred 60931 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 288 Octavia E. Butler 0807083690 Men D. 2 4.30 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1979
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2014/02/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School in Paris]]> 2629425
The unforgettable New York Times best-sellingĚý journey of self-discovery and finding one's true calling in life

Kathleen Flinn was a thirty-six-year-old middle manager trapped on the corporate ladder - until her boss eliminated her job. Instead of sulking, she took the opportunity to check out of the rat race for good - cashing in her savings, moving to Paris, and landing a spot at the venerable Le Cordon Blue cooking school.

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the funny and inspiring account of her struggle in a stew of hot-tempered, chefs, competitive classmates, her own "wretchedly inadequate" French - and how she mastered the basics of French cuisine. Filled with rich, sensual details of her time in the kitchen - the ingredients, cooking techniques, wine, and more than two dozen recipes - and the vibrant sights and sounds of the markets, shops, and avenues of Paris, it is also a journey of self-discovery, transformation, and, ultimately, love.]]> 278 Kathleen Flinn 0143114131 Men D. 1 3.64 2007 The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School in Paris
author: Kathleen Flinn
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2007
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2014/02/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Persepolis. The story of a childhood (Persepolis, #1)]]> 9516
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.]]> 153 Marjane Satrapi 037571457X Men D. 4 4.27 2003 Persepolis. The story of a childhood (Persepolis, #1)
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2010/05/31
date added: 2013/12/26
shelves:
review:
A funny and honest child's perspective on the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. The illustrations are quite simple but artful enough to seem like a true representation of a child's imagination, e.g., the image of a person "cut to pieces" by torturers looks like an action figure separated at the joints, antiseptic but still very scary. It is not a highly structured narrative but a sequence of anecdotes and details, highly believable, very vivid.
]]> <![CDATA[Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (Persepolis, #2)]]> 9517 Persepolis, heralded by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day," Marjane Satrapi dazzled us with her heartrending memoir-in-comic-strips about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Here is the continuation of her fascinating story. In 1984, Marjane flees fundamentalism and the war with Iraq to begin a new life in Vienna. Once there, she faces the trials of adolescence far from her friends and family, and while she soon carves out a place for herself among a group of fellow outsiders, she continues to struggle for a sense of belonging.

Finding that she misses her home more than she can stand, Marjane returns to Iran after graduation. Her difficult homecoming forces her to confront the changes both she and her country have undergone in her absence and her shame at what she perceives as her failure in Austria. Marjane allows her past to weigh heavily on her until she finds some like-minded friends, falls in love, and begins studying art at a university. However, the repression and state-sanctioned chauvinism eventually lead her to question whether she can have a future in Iran.

As funny and poignant as its predecessor, Persepolis 2 is another clear-eyed and searing condemnation of the human cost of fundamentalism. In its depiction of the struggles of growing up--here compounded by Marjane's status as an outsider both abroad and at home--it is raw, honest, and incredibly illuminating.]]> 187 Marjane Satrapi 0375714669 Men D. 4 4.22 2001 Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (Persepolis, #2)
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/03
date added: 2013/12/26
shelves:
review:
The same charming voice as Persepolis. This time the focus is not a small child's understanding of a historic, violent revolution, but an Iranian teenager's alienation in an unwelcoming Europe. This book didn't do anything to help me overcome my dislike of Europeans.
]]> Play It As It Lays 428 Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil - literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul - it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
]]> 231 Joan Didion 0374529949 Men D. 3 "What for."
"I want you out there."
"It's all gone, you said so yourself."
"All right," said Carter. "Stay here and kill yourself. Something interesting like that."
Carter and BZ and Helene left for the desert. Maria found a doctor who would give her barbituates again, and in the evenings she drove.

Und so weiter for 214 pages.

Apropos description from the book jacket: "a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s . . . the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that both blisters and haunts the reader . . . disturbing . . . stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose." Almost apocalyptic in tone.

The plot exists to move along the episodes of ruination. Useless/crazy actress, mean/crazy ex-husband director, affairs with people in the industry, custody battle for institutionalized child, abortion, Las Vegas and Los Angeles as vast inhumane purgatoria, saying mean things, physical violence one is too numb to defend oneself against, suicide. Of course the book ends in death.

I found pleasure in admiring the writing for its control and precision, but halfway through I stopped wanting to be "blistered" and "haunted." The next book I read is going to "titillate" and "tickle."]]> 3.94 1970 Play It As It Lays
author: Joan Didion
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/07/07
shelves:
review:
"You told me you'd come," Carter said.
"What for."
"I want you out there."
"It's all gone, you said so yourself."
"All right," said Carter. "Stay here and kill yourself. Something interesting like that."
Carter and BZ and Helene left for the desert. Maria found a doctor who would give her barbituates again, and in the evenings she drove.

Und so weiter for 214 pages.

Apropos description from the book jacket: "a ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s . . . the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that both blisters and haunts the reader . . . disturbing . . . stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose." Almost apocalyptic in tone.

The plot exists to move along the episodes of ruination. Useless/crazy actress, mean/crazy ex-husband director, affairs with people in the industry, custody battle for institutionalized child, abortion, Las Vegas and Los Angeles as vast inhumane purgatoria, saying mean things, physical violence one is too numb to defend oneself against, suicide. Of course the book ends in death.

I found pleasure in admiring the writing for its control and precision, but halfway through I stopped wanting to be "blistered" and "haunted." The next book I read is going to "titillate" and "tickle."
]]> <![CDATA[Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater]]> 6449638 The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough after decades of wrestling with his weight

Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and hungry, always and endlessly hungry. He grew up in a big, loud Italian family in White Plains, New York, where meals were epic, outsize affairs. At those meals, he demonstrated one of his foremost qualifications for his future career: an epic, outsize appetite for food. But his relationship with eating was tricky, and his difficulties with managing it began early.

When he was named the restaurant critic for the New York Times in 2004, he knew enough to be nervous. He would be performing one of the most closely watched tasks in the epicurean universe; a bumpy ride was inevitable, especially for someone whose writing beforehand had focused on politics, presidential campaigns, and the Pope.

But as he tackled his new role as one of the most loved and hated tastemakers in the New York restaurant world, he also had to make sense of a decades-long love-hate affair with food, which had been his enemy as well as his friend. Now he’d have to face down this enemy at meal after indulgent meal. His Italian grandmother had often said, "Born round, you don’t die square." Would he fall back into his worst old habits? Or had he established a truce with the food on his plate?

In tracing the highly unusual path Bruni traveled to become a restaurant critic, Born Round tells the captivating story of an unpredictable journalistic odyssey and provides an unflinching account of one person’s tumultuous, often painful lifelong struggle with his weight. How does a committed eater embrace food without being undone by it? Born Round will speak to every hungry hedonist who has ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband, and it will delight anyone interested in matters of family, matters of the heart, and the big role food plays in both.]]> 354 Frank Bruni 1594202311 Men D. 3
**TIP: Read pages 1-50 to get the sense of his story, then skip to the last section of the book. Entertainment factor goes up exponentially when he leaves the "And then...and then.." section of his biography (ages 16-35) and comes head food critic for the New York Times. Wearing wigs to trick the staff at fancy restaurants? Staying in shape while eating sometimes three restaurant dinners per night? Now THAT'S a story.]]> 3.68 2009 Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater
author: Frank Bruni
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/06/12
shelves:
review:
Chuckles, then finger-drumming. Move things along, fat boy.

**TIP: Read pages 1-50 to get the sense of his story, then skip to the last section of the book. Entertainment factor goes up exponentially when he leaves the "And then...and then.." section of his biography (ages 16-35) and comes head food critic for the New York Times. Wearing wigs to trick the staff at fancy restaurants? Staying in shape while eating sometimes three restaurant dinners per night? Now THAT'S a story.
]]> From Bauhaus to Our House 41001 128 Tom Wolfe 055338063X Men D. 1
Things that offend Wolfe: architects that aren't simply sketchers for the design ideas of their wealthy clients; new ideas; change. Yes, some of the artists and architects of the early 20th century were pretentious blowhards. Some of what was avant garde was also impractical. There is a way to critique this without throwing it all away. Why categorically dismiss the simplicity of modern design in favor of the same old quoins and trim and ornamentation?

As it is, Wolfe just reads like an uptight aristocrat passing his class insecurity through a filter of sarcasm, or a young person who expresses extreme viewpoints as forcefully as possible, to avoid the intellectual rigor required to see nuance.

Also, it's pretty clear that his indiscriminate anti-anti-bourgeois rants come from the wrong side of the food chain - from nobility, not from the people.

This was one I threw across the room after 50 pages.]]> 3.78 1981 From Bauhaus to Our House
author: Tom Wolfe
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1981
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2012/06/12
shelves:
review:
Does NOTHING satisfy you, sir??

Things that offend Wolfe: architects that aren't simply sketchers for the design ideas of their wealthy clients; new ideas; change. Yes, some of the artists and architects of the early 20th century were pretentious blowhards. Some of what was avant garde was also impractical. There is a way to critique this without throwing it all away. Why categorically dismiss the simplicity of modern design in favor of the same old quoins and trim and ornamentation?

As it is, Wolfe just reads like an uptight aristocrat passing his class insecurity through a filter of sarcasm, or a young person who expresses extreme viewpoints as forcefully as possible, to avoid the intellectual rigor required to see nuance.

Also, it's pretty clear that his indiscriminate anti-anti-bourgeois rants come from the wrong side of the food chain - from nobility, not from the people.

This was one I threw across the room after 50 pages.
]]> <![CDATA[The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human]]> 12743473 why?

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.

Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?

Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy� than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.

But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.]]> 248 Jonathan Gottschall 0547391404 Men D. 3 3.65 2012 The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
author: Jonathan Gottschall
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/05/29
shelves:
review:
Fun but forgettable. About the level of rigor of a Malcolm Gladwell book, but only about 40% as entertaining. Thesis: people like to tell stories. Discuss.
]]> My Darling, My Hamburger 128091 Two couples,
One year that will change their lives.

Liz and Sean, both beautiful and popular, are madly in love and completely misunderstood by their parents. Their best friends, Maggie and Dennis, are shy and awkward, but willing to take the first tentative steps toward a romance of their own. Yet before either couple can enjoy true happiness, life conspires against them, threatening to destroy their friendships completely.]]> 163 Paul Zindel 0060757361 Men D. 2 3.64 1969 My Darling, My Hamburger
author: Paul Zindel
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1969
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/05/22
shelves:
review:
Probably provocative and revolutionary for its time, but it's no longer its time. A young adult fiction book involving premarital teenage sex, drinking, sexual assault, reproductive choices, published 1969. Fast read that I'll never read again.
]]> <![CDATA[How to Win Friends & Influence People]]> 4865
Since its release in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 30 million copies. Dale Carnegie's first book is a timeless bestseller, packed with rock-solid advice that has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.

As relevant as ever before, Dale Carnegie's principles endure, and will help you achieve your maximum potential in the complex and competitive modern age.

Learn the six ways to make people like you, the twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking, and the nine ways to change people without arousing resentment.]]> 288 Dale Carnegie Men D. 1 Didn't work. 4.22 1936 How to Win Friends & Influence People
author: Dale Carnegie
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1936
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2012/05/19
shelves:
review:
Didn't work.
]]> Bend Sinister 142529
The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic.ĚýĚýWhile it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. ĚýProfessor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man.ĚýĚýIn a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.]]> 192 Vladimir Nabokov 0141185767 Men D. 4 3.82 1947 Bend Sinister
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1947
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2012/05/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance]]> 11674050 Fields draws on leading-edge technology, cognitive-science and ancient awareness-focusing techniques in a fresh, practical, non-dogmatic way. His approach enables creativity and productivity on an entirely different level and can turn the once-tortuous journey into a more enjoyable quest. Fields will reveal how ]]> 240 Jonathan Fields 159184424X Men D. 2 3.88 2011 Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance
author: Jonathan Fields
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/05/14
shelves:
review:
So dull I don't remember anything about it.
]]> <![CDATA[Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama]]> 11566956
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was a pop culture and literary phenomenon. Now, a second thrilling tale of filial sleuthery, this time about her mother: voracious reader, music lover, passionate amateur actor. Also a woman, unhappily married to a closeted gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel's childhood . . . and who stopped touching or kissing her daughter good night, forever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf. It's a richly layered search that leads readers from the fascinating life and work of the iconic twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, to one explosively illuminating Dr. Seuss illustration, to Bechdel’s own (serially monogamous) adult love life. And, finally, back to Mother—to a truce, fragile and real-time, that will move and astonish all adult children of gifted mothers.]]> 290 Alison Bechdel 0618982507 Men D. 3 3.71 2012 Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama
author: Alison Bechdel
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/05/13
shelves:
review:
Same Alison Bechdel humor, neuroticism, and intelligence, but not as compelling a narrative as Fun Home. In fact, not much narrative at all. Disjointed psychobabble and extended quotations from primary texts is more like it. Confusing to follow the drawings as they move between spaces and times. Too bad.
]]> Bird Cloud 8684088
Proulx's first work of nonfiction in more than twenty years, Bird Cloud is the story of designing and constructing that house—with its solar panels, Japanese soak tub, concrete floor and elk horn handles on kitchen cabinets. It is also an enthralling natural history and archaeology of the region—inhabited for millennia by Ute, Arapaho and Shoshone Indians� and a family history, going back to nineteenth-century Mississippi riverboat captains and Canadian settlers.

Proulx, a writer with extraordinary powers of observation and compassion, here turns her lens on herself. We understand how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness, with shelves for thousands of books and long worktables on which to heap manuscripts, research materials and maps, and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time. Bird Cloud is magnificent.]]> 234 Annie Proulx 0743288807 Men D. 1 3.13 2011 Bird Cloud
author: Annie Proulx
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2012/05/13
shelves:
review:
Oh my God she is so tiresome and unlikeable. I have loved Annie Proulx's work. Close Range. Heart Songs. But WTF is this? An old lady complaining that she blew too much money on a ridiculously sited mansion on a remote Wyoming cliff. OF COURSE your stupid expensive Brazilian tile isn't going to be the reddish earth-tone that you want! Call your architect in the middle of the night and complain! Cry me a fucking river!
]]> Among the Thugs 33460 320 Bill Buford 0679745351 Men D. 5 4.13 1990 Among the Thugs
author: Bill Buford
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/05/13
shelves:
review:
Fascinating portrait of male violence, often racist. Can't shake the persistent feeling that Bill Buford wants vicarious masculinity for his Operation Iraqi Freedom-esque embedded reportage about it - even his later stuff, like reporting on Mario Batali or pig slaughter experimentation, feels like the author wants you to admire his ballsiness. But barring that, it's a really interesting look at unbelievable crowd mayhem.
]]> <![CDATA[The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For]]> 3189884
For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down� (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form.

Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel�) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis.
Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends -- academics, social workers, bookstore clerks -- fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents.

Bechdel fuses high and low culture -- from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory -- in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”]]> 392 Alison Bechdel 0618968806 Men D. 5
I learned after I finished the book (at 6pm) that Alison Bechdel was doing a reading two miles from my house that night at 7:30pm. M. and I raced over and I got her to sign my copy. <3]]> 4.44 2008 The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For
author: Alison Bechdel
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2012/05/01
date added: 2012/05/13
shelves:
review:
Stayed home from work to read this in one sitting. Works as a drama, a comedy, a history of LGBT politics and fashions, art. Loved in particular how this group of queers constructed a long-lasting community that you can see over the decades. Mo broke up with Harriet in an awful way in 1994? They're laughing over coffee in 2005 about it.

I learned after I finished the book (at 6pm) that Alison Bechdel was doing a reading two miles from my house that night at 7:30pm. M. and I raced over and I got her to sign my copy. <3
]]> Essays of E.B. White 394616 384 E.B. White 0060932236 Men D. 5 4.31 1936 Essays of E.B. White
author: E.B. White
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1936
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2012/05/13
shelves:
review:
Simple, compelling, funny, kind. You want him to be your friend. Doesn't matter what he's writing about - Strunk, the country, the city, an old Ford. Always rewarding to read.
]]> Slant 11517617 220 Timothy Wang Men D. 1
I really wanted to like this book more but it ended up being one of those that I threw across the room in disgust because of the writing.]]> 3.71 2011 Slant
author: Timothy Wang
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2011
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2012/01/26
shelves:
review:
Gay? Asian? Nerdy college in Cambridge? So promising! But in execution so terrible. "He was hot. Would he look at me? I stumbled and dropped my coffee. How embarrassing! But then another hot guy helpd me, so it was okay"-type tweener diary writing. The description of the first time the protagonist has sex with a man is at once overshare and not enough detail to be interesting. It takes extra effort to make sex UNINTERESTING to read about!

I really wanted to like this book more but it ended up being one of those that I threw across the room in disgust because of the writing.
]]> Blue Nights 10252302 Ěý
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana’s wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana’s childhood—in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. “How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?� Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.
Ěý
Blue Nights—the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, “the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning”—like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.]]> 208 Joan Didion 0307267679 Men D. 3 3.92 2011 Blue Nights
author: Joan Didion
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2012/01/26
shelves:
review:
Decent, but I liked this book better the first time I read it, when it was called "The Year of Magical Thinking."
]]> Metropolitan Life 927916 177 Fran Lebowitz 0525155627 Men D. 2 3.81 1978 Metropolitan Life
author: Fran Lebowitz
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1978
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2012/01/26
shelves:
review:
Saw the movie about Fran Lebowitz. Her delivery makes her aphorisms a lot funnier. In print, not that thrilling.
]]> Juiced 7533489 When Jose Canseco burst into the Major Leagues in the 1980s, he changed the sport � in more ways than one. No player before him possessed his mixture of speed and power, which allowed him to become the first man in history to belt more than forty home runs and swipe more than forty bases in the same season. He won Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player, and a World Series ring.

Canseco shattered the mold of the out-of-shape baseball player and ushered in a new era of superathletes who looked like bodybuilders, made outrageous salaries, and enjoyed rock-star lifestyles. And the ticket for this ride? Steroids. Behind the gaudy stats and the glamour of his public life, Canseco cultivated a secret just about everyone in MLB knew about, one that would alter the game of baseball and the way we view our heroes forever. Canseco made himself a guinea pig of the performance-enhancing drugs that were only just beginning to infiltrate the American underground. Anabolic steroids, human growth hormones � Canseco mixed, matched, and experimented to such a degree that he became known throughout the league as "The Chemist." He passed his knowledge on to trainers and fellow players, and before long, performance-enhancing drugs were running rampant throughout Major League Baseball. Sluggers scooping up pitches at their ankles and blasting them out of the park, pitchers cranking fastballs inning after inning � Canseco showed the players how to customize their doses to sculpt the bodies they wanted, and baseball as we know it was the result.

Today, this issue has crept out of the closet and burst into the headlines as players balloon to herculean proportions andhundred-year-old records are not only broken, but also demolished. In this shocking memoir, Canseco sheds light on a life of dizzying highs and debilitating lows, provides the answers to questions about steroids that millions of fans are only now beginning to ask � and suggests that, far from being a passing trend, the steroid revolution is only a taste of things to come.

Who's juiced? According to Canseco's authoritative account, more than you think. And baseball will never be the same.

]]> 290 José Canseco 0641846657 Men D. 2 3.00 2005 Juiced
author: José Canseco
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2011/03/01
shelves:
review:
Entertaining and skimmable. Interesting for its perspective on high times in the major leagues, the modest struggles of minor league players. Madonna sitting in his lap; his divorces and time in jail. What he has to say about steroids: everybody's doing it, so teach people to do it well and baseball will be more entertaining as a result; plus, my nuts shrank but I still look good. A classic example of a totally untrustworthy narrator - I can't believe somebody was paid to ghostwrite this and still couldn't come up with a more confiding and likable voice! His narcissistic personality disorder shines here. Too bad, because it makes it easy to discount his thoughts on racism in baseball, which are probably legitimate, as the ravings of a defensive paranoiac. He dishes on Mark McGwire, whom he believes only rose to heroic status (before he revealed his steroid use) because he was a white good ol' boy. I loved the gossipy insults - McGwire had an ugly face; Giambi exploded with roids; Tony LaRussa was cold and unloved in the dugout. Well worth the $.01 I paid on Amazon.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset (The Hunger Games, #1-3)]]> 7938275 1155 Suzanne Collins 0545265355 Men D. 5
And like C. said, this strong independent girl is a YA character I can get behind.

Thought the third book was a little episodic. Too many climaxes, none of them climactic. Still, I read like I might die if I didn't.]]> 4.49 2010 The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset (The Hunger Games, #1-3)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/01
date added: 2011/01/05
shelves:
review:
Like S. said, riveting. The pace, the plot. Total candy.

And like C. said, this strong independent girl is a YA character I can get behind.

Thought the third book was a little episodic. Too many climaxes, none of them climactic. Still, I read like I might die if I didn't.
]]> <![CDATA[Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner]]> 87632
Ultramarathon Man answers the questions Karnazes is continually asked:

- Why do you do it?
- How do you do it?
- Are you insane?

And in the new paperback edition, Karnazes answers the two questions he was most asked on his book tour:

- What, exactly, do you eat?
- How do you train to stay in such good shape?]]> 295 Dean Karnazes 1585424803 Men D. 3 3.99 2005 Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner
author: Dean Karnazes
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/11/28
shelves:
review:
Not as good as 50/50 because it's not as focused. That book was Karnazes' memoir of doing fifty marathons in fifty days. This is his first memoir, of becoming a long distance runner. Don't care about the high school cross-country coach, don't care about his professional successes. I liked the running anecdotes, e.g. ordering pizza to be delivered to the side of a highway and falling asleep while running, etc. Took about two hours to skim. Nice way to kill a few hours.
]]> A Passage to India 45195 A Passage to India compellingly depicts the fate of individuals caught between the great political and cultural conflicts of the modern world.

In his introduction, Pankaj Mishra outlines Forster's complex engagement with Indian society and culture. This edition reproduces the Abinger text and notes, and also includes four of Forster's essays on India, a chronology and further reading.]]> 376 E.M. Forster 014144116X Men D. 5 I fucking love this book. 3.69 1924 A Passage to India
author: E.M. Forster
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at: 2010/11/11
date added: 2010/11/11
shelves:
review:
I fucking love this book.
]]> Goat: A Memoir 281221
A searing memoir of masculinity, violence, and brotherhood, Goat provides an unprecedented window into the emotional landscape of young men and introduces a writer of uncommon grace and power.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 224 Brad Land 0812969685 Men D. 3
This book was the first thing that came up when I Googled "frat memoir," so I bought it for a penny on Amazon. Well worth the money. Land has a strong, unique voice that expresses dread well. And what dread - the subjects of the memoir are his abduction and assault by car jackers, his attempt (and failure) to join a frat at Clemson, and the death of a fellow fraternity pledge. He does well with writing terse, "masculine" prose both at the sentence and the paragraph level. I took notes on technique.

"Masculine" is in scare quotes because it doesn't describe the character Land builds up. What I didn't expect was for a protagonist in a frat memoir to be a sensitive, romantic pussy who cries a lot and wants girls to save his life. I don't mean that in any insulting way, but I do think the author's voice isn't quite as masculine as its form declares it to be. For example, Land can't take the hazing, so he quits. He doesn't write very memoiristic. There isn't reflection nor a wiser, older perspective. He writes in present tense. So like a good man-writer like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy, he sticks to the facts and lets the readers use the author's choice of facts to deduce the emotions behind the narrator. But I wanted a little more guidance from the author. Did he connect the violence of his car jacking to the violence of the frat hazing? Or could he just not stick out the hazing because he was too artsy fartsy? I think he means to imply the former, but my suspicion believed the latter. Especially because the violence of the frat hazing is voluntary and not even that violent. He gets called names, they slap him and punch his head, they throw footballs at his head, not much more than the stuff we've all heard about before. Cry me a river, pantywaist! It's weird how I've read a bunch of memoirs recently where I feel skeptical of the author's self-representation . . . I think there might be something wrong with me.

This glum Camus is the opposite extreme of an ecstatic asshole's celebration of college whoredom (like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell), and now I am in the market for an ordinary person's frat memoir - not too chauvinist, not too morose, but just average and descriptive. I want somebody like my friend's friend to write a frat memoir; I would really like to know more about what an average boring joe thinks of his average boring frat.]]> 3.13 2004 Goat: A Memoir
author: Brad Land
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2010/11/10
shelves:
review:
A friend's friend was president of his frat in college. He freaks out every time you say "frat." He is a long-necked geek who laughs like Professor Frink on the Simpsons. He says, "You can't abbreviate that way. Would you call your 'country' a . . . ?"

This book was the first thing that came up when I Googled "frat memoir," so I bought it for a penny on Amazon. Well worth the money. Land has a strong, unique voice that expresses dread well. And what dread - the subjects of the memoir are his abduction and assault by car jackers, his attempt (and failure) to join a frat at Clemson, and the death of a fellow fraternity pledge. He does well with writing terse, "masculine" prose both at the sentence and the paragraph level. I took notes on technique.

"Masculine" is in scare quotes because it doesn't describe the character Land builds up. What I didn't expect was for a protagonist in a frat memoir to be a sensitive, romantic pussy who cries a lot and wants girls to save his life. I don't mean that in any insulting way, but I do think the author's voice isn't quite as masculine as its form declares it to be. For example, Land can't take the hazing, so he quits. He doesn't write very memoiristic. There isn't reflection nor a wiser, older perspective. He writes in present tense. So like a good man-writer like Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy, he sticks to the facts and lets the readers use the author's choice of facts to deduce the emotions behind the narrator. But I wanted a little more guidance from the author. Did he connect the violence of his car jacking to the violence of the frat hazing? Or could he just not stick out the hazing because he was too artsy fartsy? I think he means to imply the former, but my suspicion believed the latter. Especially because the violence of the frat hazing is voluntary and not even that violent. He gets called names, they slap him and punch his head, they throw footballs at his head, not much more than the stuff we've all heard about before. Cry me a river, pantywaist! It's weird how I've read a bunch of memoirs recently where I feel skeptical of the author's self-representation . . . I think there might be something wrong with me.

This glum Camus is the opposite extreme of an ecstatic asshole's celebration of college whoredom (like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell), and now I am in the market for an ordinary person's frat memoir - not too chauvinist, not too morose, but just average and descriptive. I want somebody like my friend's friend to write a frat memoir; I would really like to know more about what an average boring joe thinks of his average boring frat.
]]> Eat, Pray, Love 19501
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned thirty, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want—a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be.

To recover from all this, Gilbert took a radical step. In order to give herself the time and space to find out who she really was and what she really wanted, she got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world—all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, and with the help of a native guru and a surprisingly wise cowboy from Texas, she embarked on four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. She became the pupil of an elderly medicine man and also fell in love the best way—unexpectedly.

An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society’s ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.]]> 368 Elizabeth Gilbert 0143038419 Men D. 3
October 2010. Tried again. It was much better this time and I flew through it. I liked her; great, warm, confiding voice. Scenes (especially re: food) are vividly, funnily written. Clever and educational without being condescending. Skipped the swamiji and spirtuality stuff all together, didn't care.

But I finished the book wondering if her fervid desire to make people like her - she kind of talks about this in the book, how likeable she is, how likeable she sees herself as being - meant she hid the truth from the reader in service of her narrative. For example: how does she go from her husband to David? She hems, haws, and writes in euphemism and drops distracting images, but ultimately suggests that she left her husband for this new man - but she never comes out and says it! If the book is supposed to be a confessional, starting with her emotional disarray and ending with her enlightenment, why hedge? Why not just confront whatever shame there is in admitting she left her marriage? I thought this was curious. It made me skeptical of her spiritual transformation, but it didn't temper my enjoyment of her writing that much.

]]> 3.64 2006 Eat, Pray, Love
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/11/10
shelves:
review:
May 2009, I bought this book, read 20 pages, threw it down. The voice was too cute.

October 2010. Tried again. It was much better this time and I flew through it. I liked her; great, warm, confiding voice. Scenes (especially re: food) are vividly, funnily written. Clever and educational without being condescending. Skipped the swamiji and spirtuality stuff all together, didn't care.

But I finished the book wondering if her fervid desire to make people like her - she kind of talks about this in the book, how likeable she is, how likeable she sees herself as being - meant she hid the truth from the reader in service of her narrative. For example: how does she go from her husband to David? She hems, haws, and writes in euphemism and drops distracting images, but ultimately suggests that she left her husband for this new man - but she never comes out and says it! If the book is supposed to be a confessional, starting with her emotional disarray and ending with her enlightenment, why hedge? Why not just confront whatever shame there is in admitting she left her marriage? I thought this was curious. It made me skeptical of her spiritual transformation, but it didn't temper my enjoyment of her writing that much.


]]> Rat Bohemia 258627 Rat Bohemia is an expansive novel about how one can cope with loss and heal the wounds of the past by reinventing oneself in the city.

Rat Bohemia won the Ferro-Grumley Award for Lesbian Fiction and was named one of the �100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels of All Time� by the Publishing Triangle.

]]> 226 Sarah Schulman 0525937900 Men D. 1 3.90 1995 Rat Bohemia
author: Sarah Schulman
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1995
rating: 1
read at: 2010/10/01
date added: 2010/10/10
shelves:
review:
The book is about one hundred 2-3 page "chapters" from the POV of various characters living in New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Primary concerns here are AIDS, death, sickness, filth, rats, decay, emotional confusion, youth, outre culture . . . I think. I can't be sure, because I found the book almost unreadable. Its value as a cultural artifact does not redeem its uninspiring, boring writing.
]]> <![CDATA[Dyke Drama: Your Guide to Getting Out Alive]]> 786623 232 Leslie Lange 1555838936 Men D. 1 3.46 2004 Dyke Drama: Your Guide to Getting Out Alive
author: Leslie Lange
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2004
rating: 1
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/10/04
shelves:
review:
Terrible, boring, stupid. Gave me hope about breaking into the lesbian publishing market because this book, which somebody published, is terrible, boring, and stupid.
]]> <![CDATA[Box Lunch: The Layperson's Guide to Cunnilingus]]> 449652 Rare book 144 Diana Cage 1555838499 Men D. 2 3.98 2004 Box Lunch: The Layperson's Guide to Cunnilingus
author: Diana Cage
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2004
rating: 2
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/10/04
shelves:
review:
An okay book, I guess, if you're an amateur.
]]> <![CDATA[Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion]]> 28815
You'll learn the six universal principles, how to use them to become a skilled persuader—and how to defend yourself against them. Perfect for people in all walks of life, the principles of Influence will move you toward profound personal change and act as a driving force for your success.]]> 320 Robert B. Cialdini 006124189X Men D. 4
While reading this book, I had to set it aside often to consider (1) the many ways I had been duped in the past and (2) how I could apply these techniques of persuasion to the dupes in my life. For example, I tried one such technique (reciprocation) to get S. to go for a jog with me: I brought her a glass of water while she was reading, thus giving her an unwanted gift that she felt psychologically obliged to reciprocate, and then said, "Can I ask a favor of you? Will you come running with me?" She later said she hadn't felt like running, but when I phrased it like she was doing me a favor, she felt more inclined to come. Voila! The book works!]]> 4.21 1984 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
author: Robert B. Cialdini
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/10/04
shelves:
review:
I've really gotten into pop psychology books lately. This one was exactly what I wanted: insight into persuasion from both an academic psychology perspective (lots of summaries of sometimes outrageous psych experiments, like those conditioning little boys to find toy robots immoral) and a marketing perspective (descriptions of persuasian/compliance tactics from car salesmen, Hare Krishna solicitors, advertisements).

While reading this book, I had to set it aside often to consider (1) the many ways I had been duped in the past and (2) how I could apply these techniques of persuasion to the dupes in my life. For example, I tried one such technique (reciprocation) to get S. to go for a jog with me: I brought her a glass of water while she was reading, thus giving her an unwanted gift that she felt psychologically obliged to reciprocate, and then said, "Can I ask a favor of you? Will you come running with me?" She later said she hadn't felt like running, but when I phrased it like she was doing me a favor, she felt more inclined to come. Voila! The book works!
]]> Nowhere Man 152833 - Observer

'His language sings...I should not be surprised if Hemon wins the Nobel Prize at some point'
- Giles Foden.

In Aleksandar Hemon's electrifying first book, The Question of Bruno" Jozef Pronek left Sarajevo to visit Chicago in 1992, just in time to watch war break out at home on TV. Unable to return, he began to make his way in a foreign land and his adventures were unforgettable. Now Pronek, the accidental nomad, gets his own book, and startles us into yet more exhilarating ways of seeing the world anew.

'If the plot is mercury, quick and elusive, sentence by sentence and word for word, Aleksandar Hemon's writing is gold'
- Times Literary Supplement

'Downbeat but also hilarious, while the writing itself is astonishing'
- Time Out

'Hemon can't write a boring sentence, and the English language is the richer for it'
- New York Times

'Sheer exuberance, generosity and engagement with life'
- Sunday Times]]> 256 Aleksandar Hemon 0330393502 Men D. 4 3.73 2002 Nowhere Man
author: Aleksandar Hemon
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/01
date added: 2010/09/20
shelves:
review:
I didn't understand what was happening until the end. I *still* didn't understand when I got to the end. It hits an interesting compromise between short story collection and novel; it is a couple of discrete stories, told by different narrators with somewhat similar voices, all about Jozef Pronek, the eponymous man. Themes recur but don't become clear until the end. The language is great. The characterizations of Chicago life seem too caricatured at times. Overall, worth a read, possibly a reread some point in the future.
]]> <![CDATA[Best Lesbian Erotica 2004 (Best Lesbian Erotica Series)]]> 28612 220 Tristan Taormino 1573441821 Men D. 1
AND! I chose this book because it was the most- and best-reviewed entry on Amazon under lesbian erotica. For SHAME!]]> 3.46 2003 Best Lesbian Erotica 2004 (Best Lesbian Erotica Series)
author: Tristan Taormino
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2003
rating: 1
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/09/16
shelves:
review:
This book makes me want to be straight. How atrocious that this is the sexiest lesbies could get in 2004! Tip: it is better when read aloud, with a French accent, to your girlfriend, who is lying on a riverbank in a bikini and eating three kinds of grapes. Also, it is made funnier if you add the sentence "And then I had diarrhea on the bed" at the end of each lovingly crafted, politically meaningful, perfectly unerotic paragraph.

AND! I chose this book because it was the most- and best-reviewed entry on Amazon under lesbian erotica. For SHAME!
]]> <![CDATA[The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk]]> 33449 143 Al Ries 0887306667 Men D. 1 4.05 1993 The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk
author: Al Ries
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1993
rating: 1
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/09/16
shelves:
review:
Stupid, simplistic, contradictory, dated. "Motorola made a big mistake thinking people would one day make phone calls by video. Who wants to look at somebody while talking to them???" I bought this after the Old Spice guy viral videos took off - I was impressed by the marketing minds behind that one. If you're looking for marketing minds, or really minds of any kind, I recommend you look elsewhere.
]]> <![CDATA[Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship]]> 46681 I Love You, But I Don't Trust You), an international bestselling author and world-renowned therapist, draws on years of counseling experience to lead readers through relationship ambivalence. A careful line of 36 questions and self-analysis techniques designed to get to the heart of relationship and marriage problems.Ěý This straightforward and practical advice is designed for newer and older relationships, and presents a plethora of information and experience in a clear, concise manner.]]> 304 Mira Kirshenbaum 0452275350 Men D. 4 4.14 1996 Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Help You Decide Whether to Stay In or Get Out of Your Relationship
author: Mira Kirshenbaum
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/09/16
shelves:
review:
Only the second self-help book I've read and the first I've finished. The mere fact that I read this book says less about my relationship than about my interest in finding vocabulary to talk about my relationship.
]]> Slouching Towards Bethlehem 424 The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, decades after its first publication, the essential portrait of America—particularly California—in the sixties.

It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

It contains Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That".]]> 238 Joan Didion Men D. 5 4.20 1968 Slouching Towards Bethlehem
author: Joan Didion
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/09/13
shelves:
review:
She is mean and conservative and she hates her subjects. The writing is near perfect.
]]> Stumbling on Happiness 56627 � Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight?
� Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want?
� Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it?

In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to mis-conceive our tomorrows and mis-estimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.]]> 263 Daniel Todd Gilbert 1400077427 Men D. 4
Contrary to O's belief, as she sat on my bed shaking her head at me, this is not a self-help book but a psychology book written for a pop audience. Think Oliver Sacks, but funnier.]]> 3.82 2006 Stumbling on Happiness
author: Daniel Todd Gilbert
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2010/08/13
date added: 2010/09/13
shelves:
review:
A pleasure to read and remember. Ostensibly its an exploration of the psychology of happiness, but it doesn't feel very coherent because the structure of the book is: 1) hypothesis statement (e.g. people have an easier time processing highly traumatic events than mildly traumatic events), 2) summary of a psych experiment upholding that hypothesis (subjects return to a good mood faster when rude researchers tell them they are mediocre them rather than when they witness rude researchers telling other people they are mediocre), and 3) application of the conclusion to a life situation (so it's easier to forgive a friend who insults you than one who insults your mother). The author then repeats this structure two hundred times, so you read a lot of interesting tidbits about psych experiments, but it never coheres into a portrait of happiness as the title promises. But who cares, the interdisciplinarity, humor, and subject matter make this very readable.

Contrary to O's belief, as she sat on my bed shaking her head at me, this is not a self-help book but a psychology book written for a pop audience. Think Oliver Sacks, but funnier.
]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Men D. 4 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/05
date added: 2010/07/08
shelves:
review:
I really cared about the characters and I cried! Lots!
]]> <![CDATA[Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson]]> 6900
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying of ALS - or motor neurone disease - Mitch visited Morrie in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final 'class': lessons in how to live.]]> 210 Mitch Albom Men D. 2 4.19 1997 Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
author: Mitch Albom
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death]]> 193755 Elle, suffered a massive stroke that left him completely and permanently paralyzed, a victim of "locked-in syndrome." Where once he had been renowned for his gregariousness and wit, Bauby now found himself imprisoned in an inert body, able to communicate only by blinking his left eye. The miracle is that in doing so he was able to compose this stunningly eloquent memoir, which was published two days before Bauby's death in 1996 and went on to become a number-one bestseller across Europe.

The second miracle is that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is less a record of affliction than it is a celebration of the liberating power of consciousness. In a voice that is by turns wistful and mischievous, angry and sardonic, Bauby tells us what it is like to spend a day with his children; to imagine lying in bed beside his lover; to conjure up the flavor of delectable meals even as he is fed by tube. Most of all, this triumphant book allows us to follow the flight of an indomitable spirit and to share its exultation at its own survival.]]> 132 Jean-Dominique Bauby 0375701214 Men D. 1 4.00 1997 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
author: Jean-Dominique Bauby
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1997
rating: 1
read at: 2010/05/30
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:
Other than evidence that the human intellect/desire to create/communicate is indomitable, I'm not sure what this book gives me. I didn't really like the man.
]]> Black Hole 38333
As we inhabit the heads of several key characters—some kids who have it, some who don't, some who are about to get it—what unfolds isn't the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it, or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself—the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying, Black Hole transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it—back when it wasn't exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird.

To say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin…]]> 368 Charles Burns 037542380X Men D. 4 3.85 2005 Black Hole
author: Charles Burns
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2010/06/20
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:
A hypnotic story about being a fucked up teenager. A sexually-transmitted plague turns its teenage victims into skin-sloughing, tail-growing monsters, but this is merely a premise, not a gimmick. The illustration style is not especially creative, but it is distinctive and it works - the author's inventiveness isn't in the panel-to-panel sequence of action, but in the circular way he tells the story, referencing images over and over, foreshadowing, using flashbacks, shifting perspectives. Thank you, Caleb and Raj.
]]> City of Thieves 1971304
By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.]]> 258 David Benioff 0670018708 Men D. 2 4.28 2008 City of Thieves
author: David Benioff
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2010/06/25
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:
A soulless but fun buddy-quest yarn. The author is a screenwriter and he does cheeky banter, high-impact action sequences, and pacing very well, but when the cheerful hero dies, who gives a shit? Sorry to spoil the book for you, but you see it coming anyway, and you will also say who gives a shit?
]]> <![CDATA[Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form]]> 60116 Understanding Comics, a massive comic book that explored the inner workings of the worlds most misunderstood art form. Now, McCloud takes comics to the next level, charting twelve different revolutions in how comics are created, read, and preceived today, and how they're poised to conquer the new millennium.

Part One of this fascinating and in-depth book includes:




The life of comics as an art form and as literture
The battle for creators' rights
Reinventing the business of comics
The volatile and shifting public percptions of comics
Sexual and ethnic representation on comics
Then in Part Two, McCloud paints a brethtaling picture of comics' digital revolutions, including:




The intricacies of digital production
The exploding world of online delivery
The ultimate challenges of the infinite digital canvas]]> 256 Scott McCloud Men D. 3 3.91 2000 Reinventing Comics: The Evolution of an Art Form
author: Scott McCloud
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2010/06/13
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:
This book supplements but does not update Understanding Comics. It considers broader questions about the industry (how big commerical comics houses squeeze out creativity, how publishing generally is dying, how minorities are not represented in comics' readership and authorship, etc.). As with the first book, the author's strength here is his skill in taxonomy, which allows him to break down a murky subject into discrete themes (he calls these twelve "revolutions"). Only three stars, not because there is anything specifically wrong with the book, but because it was far less interesting to read about the business of comics rather than the mechanics of the genre.
]]> <![CDATA[Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art]]> 102920 222 Scott McCloud Men D. 5 4.00 1993 Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
author: Scott McCloud
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/10
date added: 2010/06/30
shelves:
review:
Great textbook, really got me thinking about the genre. One of my favorite things is the author's definition of art as a caveman sticking out his tongue and going "PBLLLTTT!" to a saber tooth tiger he has just run off the edge of a cliff. He also does a good job whittling this broad statement about art/creativity down to a cumbersome but thoughtful definition of comics: "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the reader." From here, he considers what comics comprises: single panel comics like Family Circus? (No sequence there.) Sequential images without words? Triptychs? Really interesting stuff.
]]> <![CDATA[Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again]]> 29434
A journalist's provocative, spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent undercover will transform the way we think about what it means to be a man

Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o'clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 11 1/2 shoes—a perfect disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism that's destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.

With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a high-octane sales job taught her the gut-wrenching pressures endured by men who would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically sealed as a men's therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent ended her journey astounded—and exhausted—by the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn't an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent's surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.]]> 290 Norah Vincent 0670034665 Men D. 2 3.39 2006 Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again
author: Norah Vincent
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2010/05/31
date added: 2010/06/01
shelves:
review:
Fact to editorial ratio is all wrong in this book. Norah Vincent should've stuck to a literal recollection of the experiences she had while dressed in men's clothing. The book fails when she tries to analyze her experiences. She concludes that masculinity is a constant, vigilant performance scrutinized and corrected by other men, but doesn't consider that this might just be the conclusion of somebody's whose masculinity is premised on deceiving others. Her fishy logic with respect to her analysis of gender unfortunately made me unable to trust her description of her experiences, and at times I thought she was making the whole thing up. It's two stars, not one, because it gave me feelings of curiosity and outrage followed by boredom, not simply boredom alone.
]]> The Archivist 482964 326 Martha Cooley 0316158461 Men D. 2 3.43 1998 The Archivist
author: Martha Cooley
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at: 2010/05/17
date added: 2010/05/20
shelves:
review:
Serious, boring, and clearly from the '90s (fixation on post-war New York culture, jazz, T.S. Eliot). Skipped the portion of the book written in first person from the journal of a mad woman, but maybe I would've liked it more if I had had the patience to read that part.
]]> Good Morning, Midnight 144073 176 Jean Rhys Men D. 0 to-read 3.92 1939 Good Morning, Midnight
author: Jean Rhys
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Line of Beauty 139087
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends.

Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.]]> 438 Alan Hollinghurst 0739464469 Men D. 0 to-read 3.76 2004 The Line of Beauty
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eureka Street 156234
Brilliant, exuberant, and bitingly funny, Eureka Street introduces us to one of the finest young writers to emerge from Ireland in years.]]> 396 Robert McLiam Wilson 0345427130 Men D. 0 to-read 4.22 1996 Eureka Street
author: Robert McLiam Wilson
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Fine Balance 5211
The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.]]> 603 Rohinton Mistry 140003065X Men D. 0 to-read 4.38 1995 A Fine Balance
author: Rohinton Mistry
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Acme Novelty Library, Issue 19, 2008: Rusty Brown, Part 3]]> 3059163
The penultimate teen issue of the ACME Novelty Library appears this autumn with a new chapter from the electrifying experimental narrative “Rusty Brown,� which examines the life, work, and teaching techniques of one of its central real-life protagonists, W. K. Brown. A previously marginal figure in the world of speculative fiction, Brown’s widely anthologized first story, “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars,� garnered him instant acclaim and the coveted White Dwarf Award for Best New Writer when it first appeared in the pages of Nebulous in the late 1950s, but his star was quickly eclipsed by the rise of such talents as Anton Jones, J. Sterling Imbroglio, and others of the so-called psychovisionary movement. (Modern scholarship concedes, however, that they now owe a not inconsequential aesthetic debt to Brown.) New surprises and discoveries concerning the now legendarily reclusive and increasingly influential writer mark this nineteenth number of the ACME Novelty Library, itself a regular award-winning periodical, lauded for its clear lettering and agreeable coloring, which, as any cultured reader knows, are cornerstones of any genuinely serious literary effort. Full color, seventy-eight pages, with hardbound covers, full indicia, and glue, the ACME Novelty Library offers its readers a satisfying, if not thrilling, rocket ride into the world of unkempt imagination and pulse-pounding excitement.
]]> 80 Chris Ware 1897299567 Men D. 4 4.44 2008 The Acme Novelty Library, Issue 19, 2008: Rusty Brown, Part 3
author: Chris Ware
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/04/21
shelves:
review:
More spare Chris Ware. Consistently bleak, lonely, weird, embarrassing, and captivating. Thanks R.
]]> Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic 38990 232 Alison Bechdel 0618477942 Men D. 5 4.12 2006 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
author: Alison Bechdel
name: Men D.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2010/04/21
shelves:
review:
Various readers of this this week have opined to me that the use of genre is too conventional and the allusions to literature are clumsy, but the author is intelligent and likeable and the story is well-told. What's wrong with a straightforward good yarn?
]]> <![CDATA[Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned]]> 4291946
In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily try to reassemble themselves. His version of America is touched with the seamy splendor of the dropout, the misfit: failed inventors, boozy dreamers, hapless fathers, wayward sons. Combining electric prose with savage wit, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned is a major debut, announcing a voice we have not heard before.]]> 238 Wells Tower 0374292191 Men D. 2
The author is good at casually dreadful situations: divorces, family feuds, teenage jealousy, immobility from old age, unhappiness. Somehow they don't become sinister, which is good because he doesn't do sinister very well (e.g. the child molestation sequence in the circus story, in present tense, feels cliched). Wish I hadn't heard the author tell a funny story about his life on the radio because I don't like thinking about where the author's biography matches his fiction. I liked the unexpected story about Vikings at the end. Overall, decent.

Is this the first book I've finished in 2010? Damn.]]> 3.88 2009 Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned
author: Wells Tower
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2010/03/03
date added: 2010/03/16
shelves:
review:
Bought this at the Albany train station after taking the bar exam; train got slowed in a white-out blizzard so I read almost the entire book on that ride.

The author is good at casually dreadful situations: divorces, family feuds, teenage jealousy, immobility from old age, unhappiness. Somehow they don't become sinister, which is good because he doesn't do sinister very well (e.g. the child molestation sequence in the circus story, in present tense, feels cliched). Wish I hadn't heard the author tell a funny story about his life on the radio because I don't like thinking about where the author's biography matches his fiction. I liked the unexpected story about Vikings at the end. Overall, decent.

Is this the first book I've finished in 2010? Damn.
]]> <![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami Men D. 3
Also, I liked the cheap design on the hardcover, a yolk-colored background with the title in red capital letters, with more kerning and blurring on every successive letter of the word "Running," and then a tiny trimmed photo of Murakami as a 30- or 40- something running along.]]> 3.87 2007 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Men D.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2010/03/15
date added: 2010/03/15
shelves:
review:
Borrowed this from Ruth when I went over for tea. Quick and easy to read. Murakami's style comes through but feels less enthralling when he's not writing weird fiction. It is pleasing that the experience of reading the book mimics the author's description of running: you trot along for 200 uneventful pages without any particular goal in mind but in the end you realize that all these mundane footfalls add up to a lot of distance. Yuck, sorry I just wrote that sentence.

Also, I liked the cheap design on the hardcover, a yolk-colored background with the title in red capital letters, with more kerning and blurring on every successive letter of the word "Running," and then a tiny trimmed photo of Murakami as a 30- or 40- something running along.
]]>