Author Topic: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?  (Read 189154 times)

Offline Scott

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1050 on: July 24, 2012, 11:41 PM »
I finally finished the Millenium trilogy.  I liked them all ok,  the first to me is definitely the best.  I have also watched the Swedish movies and the Fincher version...both are good and neither were as good as the book.

I am currently reading Brsingr and The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1051 on: July 26, 2012, 10:44 PM »
Now reading 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King.



Before vampires became sympathetic characters with their own alternate worlds, complete with vampire coffee shops and vampire politics, they used to be bad guys, scary not sexy, and they preferred wreaking havoc in horror novels rather than exuding tortured sensitivity in YA coming-of-age fiction. Fortunately, we don’t need to go all the way back to Dracula and Boris Karloff to remember those halcyon days: we have Stephen King’s ’Salem’s Lot, from 1975. Oddly, it’s not the vampires that make ’Salem’s Lot great popular fiction. Mr. Barlow, our lead vampire, is no Dracula. He doesn’t even appear until the story is nearly half over, and he is perhaps the most one-dimensional figure in the book (but that single dimension is enough: unadulterated evil). The real main character isn’t a person at all, human or vampire: it’s the seemingly idyllic New England town of Jerusalem’s Lot. King once said that in ’Salem’s Lot, he set out to create “a fictional town with enough prosaic reality about it to offset the comic-book menace of a bunch of vampires.” He did just that by drawing on our universal fear of outsiders, and nowhere is that fear more recognizable than in our traditional image of the New England small town, where insularity itself becomes a defense against incursion by strangers. The stereotypical Yankee, befuddling outsiders with a series of cryptic yups and nopes, may be a comic character from folklore, but he is also a soldier defending his Maginot Line against potential blitzkrieg. And behind the crotchety Yankee’s seeming impregnability, there is the constant fear that one day a stranger will come to town who won’t take nope for an answer. That juxtaposition of prosaic reality against outlandish terror has always been central to King’s technique for scaring his readers. In ’Salem’s Lot, he does it by looking beneath the surface of idyllic New England. We see the pastoral beauty, the close-knit community, and the unpretentious lifestyle, yet from the beginning, we also see the harbinger of something else, something other. The novel begins with a stranger, not Barlow but a writer, Ben Mears, returning to the Lot, where he’d lived briefly as a boy. Mears has come home again not to reclaim his innocence but to expunge his demons—the memory of the body of a man dead for decades, still hanging in the closet of the Marsten House. Mears believes he hallucinated this horrible scene, but he wants to explore why it happened, why this house prompted him to imagine evil. What Mears finds when he returns to the Lot is that the Marsten House is now occupied by another stranger, our Mr. Barlow. As the known gives way to the unknown, King shows how the small-town insistence on maintaining the illusion of tranquility makes easy pickings for a vampire intent on fomenting a little evil. If ’Salem’s Lot were just another old-fashioned vampire novel, it would portray a straightforward struggle between good (people) and bad (vampires). It would not portray the arrival of vampires in the Lot as a kind of supernatural manifestation of the town’s distorted sense of itself. King feels both affection for and anger toward his small town. A part of him wants to see ’Salem’s Lot get its comeuppance, and this part gives the novel a degree of frisson that most vampire stories lack. And yet, in the end, the vampires don’t win, at least not exactly. Yes, Ben Mears pounds a stake in Barlow’s heart, but that isn’t enough. The evil continues to thrive. The town needs its own stake. Writers of every kind—from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Grace Metalious to John Updike to Carolyn Chute—have wrestled with their mixed feelings about the small towns of New England. But it took Stephen King to burn one down.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1052 on: August 22, 2012, 09:58 PM »
Now reading Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, Book 5) by Stephen King. I'm reading this one since it has Father Callahan from 'Salems Lot in it.



Roland of Gilead's quest to save all worlds from evil continues in this fifth installment of King's epic tale, which finds the gunslinger and his companions helping the farmers of Calla Bryn Sturgis fight against the terrifying "Wolves" who threaten to kidnap the Calla's children. Joining them is Father Callahan, who first appeared in King's second book, 'Salem's Lot (1975). Using a low, gruff voice that only Clint Eastwood could equal, Guidall aptly captures Roland's rough-edged character, but it's often difficult to distinguish between the tenors he employs for the book's many male characters. Andy the robot, however, is one character that listeners won't confuse with the others. Wise-guy gunslinger Eddie might compare Andy to Star Wars' C3PO, both in his "complacent, slightly prissy voice" and his lanky, mechanical appearance, but avid listeners will find that the tone Guidall adopts for Andy more closely resembles that of the beloved 1980s toy Speak & Spell. In the afterword, King thanks the narrator of the first four Dark Tower novels, Frank Muller, whose debilitating motorcycle accident in 2001 prevented him from finishing the series. "[A]udio insists you absorb everything," King notes, and in Muller's absence, Guidall does a fine job of bringing this epic tale to life.--udio insists you absorb everything," King notes, and in Muller's absence, Guidall does a fine job of bringing this epic tale to life.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1053 on: August 22, 2012, 11:33 PM »
I happened across a book I read back in school and decided a re-read was in order.  It's a murder mystery by Agatha Christie called "And Then There Were None."  I remembered the setup, but not the ending, so fun to read it again after all these years.  Essentially, 10 people are invited to an isolated island by a mysterious benefactor, then they start dying.  I love the premise of wondering who the killer is, and having your theory shift with each new murder.  Despite being written over 70 years ago, I'd love to see a movie version of this. 
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1054 on: August 23, 2012, 09:51 AM »
Really? You've never heard of this? There has been quite a few movies and tv movies based on that story. There was even a play.  The most famous version of this was "And then there were none" in 1945. Most recently was "Ten Little Indianas" in 1965. There are quite a few others.
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Offline Symposium

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1055 on: August 24, 2012, 04:28 AM »
Yeah Ten Little Indians was the original Amercian book title, as for the original British title......... :o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_then_there_were_none
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Offline Matt_Fury

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1056 on: August 25, 2012, 11:10 AM »
I juzst finished a book entitled "Five Equations that Changed the World: The Power and Poetry of Mathematics"...it delved into how some of the most famous natural phlosophers (Newton, Bernoulli, Einstein, Faraday and Clausius) casme up with their revolutionary equations.

It read more like a history book than a mathematics text, and it was very insightful.
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Offline EpicGon

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1057 on: September 1, 2012, 01:15 AM »
Hi again dear sw fans

I am sharing with you my last podcast,

it is about Spanish writing for universitary level,

focus on the teaching of new comers to University.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-8WFE4Y-p8


If you are studying Spanish, this emission will serve you well.


Thanks for your attention.


Offline JediJman

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1058 on: September 2, 2012, 11:19 PM »
Really? You've never heard of this? There has been quite a few movies and tv movies based on that story. There was even a play.  The most famous version of this was "And then there were none" in 1945. Most recently was "Ten Little Indianas" in 1965. There are quite a few others.

Umm...I did hear about it, as I read it back in high school.  I just didn't remember the ending.  I did NOT know there were a few movie renditions, though I admittedly don't watch much that was made before 1975.  Have you seen either of the movies?  Any good?  I was thinking a modern remake of the story on film would be well received. 
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Offline P-Siddy

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1059 on: September 5, 2012, 07:15 PM »
"A Clash of Kings" by George R R Martin.  Just finished "A Game of Thrones" a week ago.  I have yet to see the series, so I'm happy about that.

Offline Nicklab

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1060 on: September 6, 2012, 03:55 AM »
"A Clash of Kings" by George R R Martin.  Just finished "A Game of Thrones" a week ago.  I have yet to see the series, so I'm happy about that.

The books and the television series have definitely been divergent of one another.  That was more apparent with season 2.  I'm wondering if the next couple of seasons of the HBO series will be more true to the books, since they're going to be stretching book 3 into two seasons of the tv show.
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Offline Mikey D

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1061 on: September 6, 2012, 10:25 AM »
After working my way through all 5 volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, I've read the following:









Now reading:

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Offline Mikey D

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1062 on: September 16, 2012, 09:31 AM »


Highly recommended to anyone who loves the geek culture of the 80s and 90s. 

It's been optioned as a movie and hopefully there won't be any issues with the massive amount of licensing rights they'll need to secure.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1063 on: September 16, 2012, 11:52 AM »
Ready Player One was alot of fun! Would you push to big red button?
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Offline BrentS

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #1064 on: September 16, 2012, 12:14 PM »
My brother strongly recommended Ready Player One as well. I've been trying to get through the Song of Ice and Fire first.