Author Topic: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?  (Read 192402 times)

Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #570 on: January 20, 2009, 09:09 PM »
Now reading "Into Thin Air : A personal account of the Mount Everest Disaster" by Jon Krakauer.



A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster. With more than 250 black-and-white photographs taken by various expedition members and an enlightening new postscript by the author, the Illustrated Edition shows readers what this tragic climb looked like and potentially provides closure for Krakauer and his detractors.
"I have no doubt that Boukreev's intentions were good on summit day," writes Krakauer in a postscript dated August 1998. "What disturbs me, though, was Boukreev's refusal to acknowledge the possibility that he made even a single poor decision. Never did he indicate that perhaps it wasn't the best choice to climb without gas or go down ahead of his clients." As usual, Krakauer supports his points with dogged research and a good dose of humility. But rather than continue the heated discourse that has raged since Into Thin Air's denouncement of guide Boukreev, Krakauer's tone is conciliatory; he points most of his criticism at G. Weston De Walt, who coauthored The Climb, Boukreev's version of events. And in a touching conclusion, Krakauer recounts his last conversation with the late Boukreev, in which the two weathered climbers agreed to disagree about certain points. Krakauer had great hopes to patch things up with Boukreev, but the Russian later died in a avalanche on another Himalayan peak, Annapurna I. Krakauer further buries the ice axe by donating his share of royalties from sales of The Illustrated Edition to the Everest '96 Memorial Fund, which aids various environmental and humanitarian charities. --Rob McDonald
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Offline Ben

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #571 on: January 27, 2009, 03:52 AM »
If you haven't already, you should read Into The Wild, also by Krakauer. I finally read it last year after seeing the movie, and found it interesting.

I started reading Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo this weekend. Wow.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #572 on: January 27, 2009, 09:46 PM »
I'll check for that tonight when I go to the library.
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Offline Daigo-Bah

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #573 on: January 27, 2009, 11:46 PM »
I'm quickly reading through Fight Club and slowly reading through Return of the King at the same time.
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Offline Nathan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #574 on: January 28, 2009, 01:17 AM »


I'm not sure if I will make it through all of these spinoffs, but I'm starting here and we'll see how it goes.

I'm also rereading the original 03-05 series of Clone Wars novels, and I figured I'd start with this one from January 02 since it sets up a lot of the plot threads for the Separatist crisis and Episode II.



Then for school I've got:

« Last Edit: January 28, 2009, 01:27 AM by Nathan »
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Offline Ryan

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #575 on: January 28, 2009, 06:07 AM »




Werd.

And for fun I'm also reading Blood Meridian:



And I picked up The Watchmen with the intent to read it before the movie comes out, but with 18 ******* credits this semester I doubt that will happen. :-X :'(
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #576 on: January 28, 2009, 09:31 AM »
I think you will like Blood Meridian. It's really well told but really violent. Don't read it if your a horse fan.

I'm on to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.



In 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald announced his decision to write "something new--something extraordinary and beautiful and simple + intricately patterned." That extraordinary, beautiful, intricately patterned, and above all, simple novel became The Great Gatsby, arguably Fitzgerald's finest work and certainly the book for which he is best known. A portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, Gatsby captured the spirit of the author's generation and earned itself a permanent place in American mythology. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's--and his country's--most abiding obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and the promise of new beginnings. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning--" Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual fall from grace becomes a kind of cautionary tale about the American Dream.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #577 on: February 4, 2009, 09:37 AM »
Now really enjoying The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett.



Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.
Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.

Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master.
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Offline Chris M

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #578 on: February 8, 2009, 05:51 PM »
"Lies my Teacher told Me."  I'm only a chapter into it, but it's a book I've been wanting to read for a while.  As a historian by trade and training, I find a ton of the stuff that we read in many books, websites, on the news, or just get out of school textbooks is drastically wrong.  It's interesting to see how in many cases people try to cover up the "bad" things and leave in the "good things".  History is not all nice and tidy as we wish to believe and Americans are not always the great people we make ourselves out to be.  Anyway, I really look forward to getting into this book.

When I'm finished, I think I'm going to be getting into three different books on Motley Crue, "Tommyland", "Dirt", and "Confessions of a Heroin Addict."

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."  Ben franklin


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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #579 on: February 9, 2009, 09:59 AM »
History is always written from the perspective of the conquorers.
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Offline Chris M

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #580 on: February 9, 2009, 10:34 AM »
History is always written from the perspective of the conquorers.

So true.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."  Ben franklin


Embrace the suck.

Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #581 on: February 10, 2009, 11:52 PM »
Finished the Maltese Falcon and on to "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen.



When the pilot of a small, two-person plane has a heart attack and dies, Brian has to crash land in the forest of a Canadian wilderness. He has little time to realize how alone he is, because he is so busy just trying to survive. And learning to survive, to plan on food not just for a day but untiland ifhe is rescued, only begins when he stops pitying himself and understands that no one can help him. He is on his own, without his divorced father, whom he was to visit, or his mother, whom Brian saw kissing another man before the divorce. This is a heart-stopping story: it seems that at every moment Brian is forced to face a life-and-death decision, and every page makes readers wonder at the density of descriptive detail Paulsen has expertly woven together. Poetic texture and realistic events are combined to create something beyond adventure, a book that plunges readers into the cleft of the protagonist's experience.
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Offline JediJman

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #582 on: February 11, 2009, 01:13 AM »


The plot is so predictable.
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Offline Keonobi

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #583 on: February 11, 2009, 09:22 AM »


The plot is so predictable.

Very linear...
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Offline Phrubruh

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Re: JD Book Club: What Are You Reading Now?
« Reply #584 on: February 11, 2009, 09:44 AM »
It looks like JediJman is really stretching his literary bounderies. I hope he can work his way into the classics like Green Eggs and Ham.
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