All Entries Related to "Books"
April 02, 2008
I Married a Suspense Novel
From Boston.com this morning.
Posted by Michael at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2007
Turkey Love vs. No-Spin-Zone Love: A Test
The following are two passages. One is a birding enthusiasts' description of a turkey mating sesson, and one is a sex scene from Bill O'Reilly's novel Those Who Trespass. Your job is to guess which one is which.
I'll put them a click away, so don't click below if you're under 18 or if you frankly expect better things from BunkoSquad (in which case, write me and I'll send you a bonus post about my current pet peeve, which is that gas stations still haven't ditched that 9/10 of a penny baloney).
Passage one:
Most of that time was spent positioning his feet in the "crotch" of the hens wings. It appeared that the Tom was trying to separate the wings for access. Then when he finally had her wings apart she raised her tail showing a dramatically engorged cloaca. Instantly the Tom swept his fan to the side and finished the job in about 3-5 seconds at which point he stepped off of her back and resumed his display!
Passage two:
Ashley was now wearing only brief white panties. She had signaled her desire by removing her shirt and skirt, and by leaning back on the couch. She closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but Shannon's tongue and lips. He gently teased her by licking the areas around her most sensitive erogenous zone. Then he slipped her panties down her legs and, within seconds, his tongue was inside her, moving rapidly.
Give up?
Passage one was the turkeys. Passage two was from the pen of America's loudest pundit. I guessed wrong, too.
(Thanks, as always, to Universal Hub - Boston's number one source for hot turkey-on-turkey action)
Posted by Michael at 12:32 AM | Comments (1)
April 04, 2007
Great Moments in Literary Sequels
Bob the Angry Flower presents Atlas Shrugged, One Hour Later.
(From Ezra Klein)
Posted by Michael at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2006
Where I've Been
Most of my Internet time recently has been taken up with LibraryThing, which is an awesome new tool to let you catalog your book collection online.
I haven't entered nearly enough of my stuff yet for a public unveiling, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to find me on there.
Posted by Michael at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
Living Vicariously
Sometime in the last year, Sooz acquired a copy of This Book Will Change Your Life, a weird-but-funny 365-step self-improvement plan. It looked kind of ridiculous, but I thumbed through it now and then, thinking it might be kind of fun to try.
But now I don't have to. I'll live vicariously through one MDC, who's making his way through the book and keeping a really funny running diary of it. This is a definite must-read.
Posted by Michael at 11:07 PM | Comments (1)
June 16, 2005
Bookmark Now
I just started reading Bookmark Now. It's a collection of essays on the state of writing and reading in the postmodern (or are we on post-postmodern yet?) world, edited by Kevin Smokler. I was going to read it all in order, but I had to skip ahead to read Robert Lanham's satirical love-note to the McSweeneys crowd. I have a twisted love/hate opinion on them; I can't deny that they're taking literature to a cooler place, but it feels so self-congratulatory that it bugs the hell out of me.
(Full disclosure: I have a bit of seething jealousy towards anyone who can sit down and write fiction for 15 minutes straight without getting sidetracked into playing Bubble Struggle for an hour. But that's something I have to work out for myself.)
Anyway, Kevin is coming to Harvard Book Store on July 7th to talk about the book and the future of the book (that's the book writ large, not this particular book...never mind). And Sooz has organized a dinner party afterwards with Kevin; I'll be there and encourage you all to go as well. You can RSVP here. Good conversation and Thai food...there's no downside!
Posted by Michael at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2005
I Love My Bookstore
Working at Americs'a best bookstore has given me a chance to do some incredible things and go to some incredible places. Tonight was one of them.
PEN-New England, an organization of local writers, held a fundraiser at Fenway called "Writing Baseball: Great Writers on the Greatest Game." The main event was a panel discussion with Stephen King, Roger Angell, John Updike, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Lewis. They shared stories about the role of baseball in their youths, the relationship between the game and literature, and some current issues facing the sport today. All in the .406 club with the field as a beautiful backdrop.
And since our store was supposed to sell books at the event, then wasn't - a convoluted saga - my boss Frank and I got complimentary tickets to the reception beforehand. Where I got to get some autographs (Stephen King signed my oft-read tattered paperback "The Shining"), eat some fabulous food, meet owner Larry Lucchino (I think I babbled thanks for last year, but who knows) and...
You weren't allowed to actually touch it. Fair enough. If I'd ever developed a curveball, maybe someday I would have earned that right. Some more pics here.
Posted by Michael at 09:36 PM | Comments (4)
May 31, 2005
Summer Reading
A conservative think tank (inasmuch as that term can be used without giggling) has released a list of the 10 Most Harmful Books of the last century and a half. Let's look at some snippets:
1. The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels.
Engels was the original limousine leftist: A wealthy textile heir, he financed Marx for much of his life.
Whereas, as we know, the only acceptable thing for a wealthy heir to do with his loot is hoard it jealously. Like Jesus would have done.
The Manifesto envisions history as a class struggle between oppressed workers and oppressive owners, calling for a workers’ revolution so property, family and nation-states can be abolished and a proletarian Utopia established.
How these guys were able to foretell the NHL strike, I'll never know.
2. Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler.
[Hitler] envisioned...a war against France to precede a war against Russia to carve out "lebensraum" ("living room") for Germans in Eastern Europe. The book was originally ignored. But not after Hitler rose to power.
If I didn't want to meet some FBI agents, I'd point out that one man's "lebensraum" is another man's "spreading peace around the globe". But I don't really think that. This may be the one book that deserves to be on the list.
3. Quotations From Chairman Mao.
In 1966, [Mao] published...The Little Red Book, as a tool in the "Cultural Revolution" he launched to push the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society back in his ideological direction. Aided by compulsory distribution in China, billions were printed.
You know, if [Certain World Leaders] were able to put together a coherent sentence, I could see crowds marching down the street waving copies of [C.W.L.]'s quotations. But as a slogan to live by, I think "We must make a distinction between the enemy and ourselves, and we must not adopt an antagonistic stand towards comrades and treat them as we would the enemy." beats "You're either with us or against us", hands down, any day of the week.
4. The Kinsey Report.
The reports were designed to give a scientific gloss to the normalization of promiscuity and deviancy.
Because the normalization of Victorian-era prudery and shame worked oh so well. And how dare anyone take a controversial idea and slap a "scientific gloss" over it to make a point? Not in the 6,000 years of the history of Earth has anyone been that audacious.
5. Democracy and Education, John Dewey.
In Democracy and Education, in pompous and opaque prose,
Um.
he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking "skills" instead.
For myself, I know I'd have never gotten anywhere if I hadn't memorized the periodic table.
His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation.
Clinton and GWB were born the same year. Presumably, the compilers of the list feel that Bush learned hard knowledge and Clinton learned thinking "skills". Which man got more out of his education? It's a subject that reasonable people will debate Republicans about for generations to come.
6. Das Kapital, Karl Marx.
Forces the round peg of capitalism into the square hole of Marx’s materialistic theory of history, portraying capitalism as an ugly phase in the development of human society in which capitalists inevitably and amorally exploit labor by paying the cheapest possible wages to earn the greatest possible profits.
Yeah, what a nutball.
Marx theorized that the inevitable eventual outcome would be global proletarian revolution. He could not have predicted 21st Century America: a free, affluent society based on capitalism and representative government that people the world over envy and seek to emulate.
Kook. It's like he pictured 21st Century America as a fractured place teetering on the brink of third-world economic disparity, with an out-of-control government that people the world over treat with the respect and fear you'd give an armed junkie. Again...nutball.
7. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan.
Friedan, born in 1921, disparaged traditional stay-at-home motherhood as life in "a comfortable concentration camp",
So long as it's comfortable, what are those dames so worked up about?
...a role that degraded women and denied them true fulfillment in life.
Some women got true fulfillment from being traditional stay-at-home moms. A lot more got true fulfillment from balancing a family and a career. And in extremely rare cases, even today, a few women don't even get to choose -- because their no-good husbands don't earn enough money to support a stay-at-home lifestyle! I've even heard of a woman in New Jersey who doesn't even have a husband! But when it comes to defining a woman's role in society...you can believe the founding president of the N.O.W. But I trust the findings of my local conservative think tank, thank you very much. Particularly since their blue-ribbon panel consisted of fourteen men and Phyllis Schlafly.
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, Auguste Comte.
Comte, the product of a royalist Catholic family that survived the French Revolution, turned his back on his political and cultural heritage...
Too bad. It looked like such a winning propisition, what with spawning the French Revolution and all. He developed the idea of
"positivism," in which man alone, through scientific observation, could determine the way things ought to be.
NEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRDDDDD! What has scientific observation ever done for anyone, anyhow?
9. Beyond Good And Evil, Freidrich Nietzsche.
Nietzsche argued that men are driven by an amoral "Will to Power," and that superior men will sweep aside religiously inspired moral rules, which he deemed as artificial as any other moral rules, to craft whatever rules would help them dominate the world around them.
Change "superior men" to "power-hungry hobgobllins" and change "sweep aside religiously inspired moral rules" to "selectively interpret and cite religiously inspired moral rules". Then read that passage again.
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes.
Keynes was a member of the British elite--educated at Eton and Cambridge...
NEEEEERRRRRRDDDDDD!
FDR adopted the idea as U.S. policy, and the U.S. government now has a $2.6-trillion annual budget and an $8-trillion dollar debt.
It's important here to remember that FDR was President until last Tuesday.
Among those just missing out on the Top Ten were Charles Darwin, Ralph Nader, Margaret Mead, Frantz Fanon and Rachel Carson. Would you want to have lived in a world where any of their ideas were taken seriously? Me neither.
Other takes on this list from Pandagon and Boston Dreams. And Brad DeLong and Down With Absolutes and Mark in Mexico and A Beautiful Soul and Schrodinger's Cat.
Posted by Michael at 11:31 PM | Comments (5)
March 28, 2005
How To Win Friends And Influence People
Step 1. Be a representative of a small publishing company.
Step 2. Contact an online book reviewer, and ask if she'll write something about a book you've published. When she says she can't promise she'll like it, proceed anyway.
Step 3. Wait for the review. Uh oh, it's bad:
Leah’s Way is a perfect example of crucifiction, ignoring plot and character development in favor of beating readers over the head with a religious message. Which, to put it another way, means it’s just plain bad.
Step 4-5-6. Launch a series of emails at the reviewer. Accuse the reveiwer of Christian-bashing,
And, unbeknownst to you, it helps us when "politically correct, hate anything Christian" liberals choose sides as you have done in the culture wars. By the way, we're winning.
rip the reviewer's personal life,
You're so inconsequential that it is like you simply don't exist. Don't bother responding. I won't bother reading your response, and you'll have your attention hoping nature's worst nightmare come true--you'll be ignored. Enjoy the rest of your miserable life.
and, while you're on a roll, break out the nukes.
You picked on Leah's Way solely because your biases predispose you to hate it. That's not a critic, that's a propaganda machine like Goebbels was under Hitler.
Step 7. Profit.
Kudos to Steph for not going ballistic back at the rep, and thanks to Bookdwarf for sending me here.
Posted by Michael at 04:43 PM | Comments (1)
March 21, 2005
It's Here!
My Dad was a pained Red Sox fan for the first 95% of his life. While convalescing from surgery a couple of years ago (the surgery was unrelated to his Red Sox pains) he decided to put together a book explaining said pain. I believe it was to be entitled Why The Red Sox Never Win. He finished it at the beginning of 2004.
However...as you may remember, recent events changed that particular picture, meaning my Dad had to undertake some serious rewriting. So he did. And today, he finally got to put a copy of that book, now entitled The Possible Dream, in my hand. It will be getting onto local bookstore shelves soon, and as soon as I have a verified link to buy it online, you'll get that too. He's got a website that will have more information.
Congratulations.
Posted by Michael at 01:01 AM | Comments (3)
March 09, 2005
Book Reviews
It's been too long since I've laughed hysterically at anything I've read online. Thank you to World o'Crap for breaking that drought with their Christian Book Club roundup. Funny funny stuff.
Posted by Michael at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2004
Faithful
It's been a long time since I've stayed up way too late reading...especially when I already know how the book ends.
But there I was at 3:00 this morning, clutching my just-finished copy of Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King, reminiscing about the glorious events of October, marvelling at the way these two gents brought it all back to life, wishing pitchers and catchers reported tomorrow.
The book's like a baseball season. The regular season has its highs and lows, and there are some forgettable spots, but just like The Team (henceforth capitalized; whenever you see "The Team" in this space, you can rest assured I'm talking about the 2004 Red Sox), the authors cranked it up a notch when the postseason rolled around.
Stewart O'Nan's account of Game 7 against the Yankees -- wow. I'm going to put it up there as one of the best pieces of sportswriting, if not any writing, I've ever read. Check this:
I'm behind home with Steve as we nail down the last outs. We don't even need our closer. It's 10-3, and no one can hit a seven-run homer. Jeter looks sick. A-Rod and Sheffield have both gone 0-for -- complete and total justice. It's like the Sox have walked through the Stadium driving stakes through every single ghost's, vampire's and Yankee fan's rotten, cobwebby heart. It's quiet and the upper deck is half-empty. The Yankees are cooked, and their fans can't believe it. In the biggest game ever played in this rivalry, the Red Sox have beaten the Yankees at home, by a touchdown, on Mickey Mantle's birthday, At one minute after midnight, the start of a new day, when Sierra grounds weakly to Pokey Reese, and Pokey flips to Doug Mientkiewicz (so simple!), the most expensive baseball team in history is history.
And we're sorry, George, but that's more than half a billion dollars you've spent...for nothing.
Come on now: Who's your Daddy?
Diamondbacks. Angels. Marlins. Red Sox.
It's like Papa Jack says: ain't nuthin' for free. SOMEBODY got-ta pay. And, Yankee fans, the one you just bought has a lifetime guarantee.
At two-thirty in the morning, when the cold November rain that Axl sang about is battering on your window and your apartment's heated to an unworldly temperature...goose bump city.
Posted by Michael at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2004
Fahrenheit 451
A church in Iowa was denied a permit to have a book-burning. Yeah. Here in 2004.
Posted by Michael at 10:37 AM | Comments (2)
April 23, 2004
Another One Bites The Dust
Sooz directed me to this post by the Accordion Guy, an out-of-towner who expresses the dismay and sadness many of us Bostonians feel about the demise of Avenue Victor Hugo, one of the last great used bookstores (or, in French, bouquinistes - see, you do learn something every day) in the Hub. He also includes the text of a list of the 12 Reasons for the death of independent bookstores all over the place. Go read it, it's fascinating and achingly true.
The Accordion Guy asks what the state of independents is. Here in Boston, the erstwhile Athens of America, we're down to about a double handful. Of course, my favorite is the Harvard Book Store, which had been my favorite even before they started paying me to spend my whole day there. For purely-used-books, we have the Brattle, McIntyre & Moore, and Rodney's, plus a handful of smaller joints that I'm often pleasantly surprised to stumble into.
The one thing Boston and environs has going for it is the number of independent niche stores. We have, in Harvard Square alone, Grolier's for poetry, the Globe Corner for maps and travel, Schoenhof's for foreign literature, Curious George for kids, Revolution Books for the seething left, James and Devon Gray for antiques, Pandemonium for sci-fi, and maybe a couple others I forgot. So it's not completely bleak...here. In the rest of the country, I fear bookstore browsing is going the way of so many of the things that make life interesting. And it's just sad. But I hope it makes you want to come to Cambridge and do a little shopping.
Posted by Michael at 10:23 PM | Comments (1)
February 24, 2004
Books
Some background: a few years ago, the Modern Library came up with a list of its 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. That inspired my predecessors at Harvard Book Store to make their own top 100 list, which is now being updated. They asked us all for a handful of titles that have amused, informed or changed us in one way or another.
Me being me, I sent off a list and immediately started second-guessing myself. Each day since then, I've thought of two or three titles I missed. But I have a website, so I can do my own list (just 20, not 100; I don't think you or I could get through that):
(PS - the links all go to order pages on the H.B.S. website. Don't be afraid to pick up a couple!)
20. Ball Four, Jim Bouton. I picked this up in high school because I heard it was the first baseball book to tell it like it is from a player's perspective. Following Bouton's 1969 season with Seattle and Houston, even 15-year-old me could see that this was a special sports book.
19. The Waste Land and Other Poems, TS Eliot. I'm not a big poetry fan, but T.S. speaks to me somehow. "The Hollow Men" is my favorite.
18. The Iowa Baseball Confederacy, W.P. Kinsella. Field of Dreams, my all-time favorite sports movie, is based on Kinsella's Shoeless Joe. I liked this book better, but can't picture a movie based on it. The story, of a rip in space and time that allows the Chicago Cubs to play an infinite game against a team of all-star hayseeds, is magical and beautiful.
17. Our Dumb Century, The Onion Staff. The Onion turns its hysterical eyes on the 20th Century. Try and count how many "trials of the century" there were, or how often France surrendered.
16. Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich spends a year working crummy jobs for crummy pay to see how people do it, and if there's any hope for the working destitute. I was ready not to like it -- it must be nice to have the luxury of throwing in the towel and running back to your real life -- but she tells the dismal life stories of her coworkers with real empathy and understanding. This book confirmed why I'll never give Walmart a nickel.
15. The Tripods Trilogy, John Christopher. I'm a sucker for stories of disaster and post-apocalyptic landscapes; this one was my first and favorite. A young boy, knowing that he'll soon enter an adulthood of slavery to a race of invaders, runs away instead to seek a Resistance. His encounters with the shattered world of the past make for a very clever story.
14. Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott. I have a friend who hates Anne Lamott, so don't tell her that this is the book that's most inspired me to want to try to think about being a serious writer.
13. The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce. I wish this turn of the century had a chronicler as wicked, mean and honest as Mr. Bierce.
12. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl. Horrible, horrible things happen to horrible, horrible children. What more could you ask for?
11. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood. In the world of the future, a brutal theocracy has taken over America. Women like the protagonist are stripped of their identities and forced to breed children for the infertile ruling class. Buy it while it's still fiction.
10. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole. Ignatius Reilly is a bombastic blowhard with lots of big ideas and no real skills. Turn him loose on New Orleans and watch absolute comic genius ensue. The fact that this, maybe the best American novel of the century, was so snubbed by publishers that the author killed himself over the rejection -- well, that says something.
9. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain. It's kind of hard to pick a favorite Twain book, but here you go. See my earlier comments about Bierce.
8. The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson. Bryson's other travel books -- he's done Britain, Europe, Australia and the Appalachian Trail -- all probably should be on the list as well, but I decided to be fair to all the other authors and pick my favorite. He is a hilarious, amiable, everyman traveling companion; his observations are by turn poignant, thoughtful, and oh-my-god-you-have-to-read-this-part funny. I'd follow Mr. Bryson just about anywhere.
7. The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde. Nobody has ever combined social criticism, plot-twising and overall impertinence the way Wilde did. But you knew that.
6. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger. A cliche? Maybe. But everyone who read it in high school, convinced that there was more to life than the dreary sameness of high school, desperate for confirmation that someone else was out there feeling the same isolation and confusion, knows why this book still gets to me a little.
5. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland. Maybe when you write a book about disaffected Microsoft peasants who leave to start their own software company, it becomes dated the second the ink is dry. Maybe the novelty of email and twentysomething entrepreneurs wore off between the hardcover and first paperback editions. But please don't dismiss this as a product of the past; this book has some of the most permanent, real, vibrant characters I've ever read. And dammit, I'm man enough to admit I cried a little at the end.
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. The tale (this and its four sequels) of Arthur Dent, rescued from the Earth just before it's destroyed, is partly an epic tale of interplanetary adventure. It's also a framework for Adams to go on countless digressions about -- yes -- life, the universe, and everything. And it's all hilarious in a very British way. I don't know if I can fully trust anyone who's not a Hitchhiker's fan.
3. A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn. A real high school would either supplement or (better yet) replace their standard US History textbooks with this essential retelling of the nation's story by the people who really created it. Reading this book made me suspect everything the powers-that-be ever told, or will tell, me.
2. 1984, George Orwell. Now more than ever. Our here, Winston Smith, tries desperately to find some escape from a political system designed to crush and bury any individualism or thought. I'm not the first to suggest that the world of Big Brother looks closer now that it did even in the heyday of totalitarianism. But if the shoe fits... (Incidentally, the John Hurt movie version of this is perfectly faithful to the book and incredibly well-done. Check it out.)
1. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne. Part of me wishes I could claim that my all-time favorite book was something deep, thoughtful and weighty. But I can't claim that with a straight face. This book, about a remorseless 15-year-old hell-bent on winning the girl of his dreams, is absolute comedy gold on every single page. In fact, I may start it again tonight.
Already, I feel like I could have expanded the list - no Vonnegut? Mark Leyner? Kafka? James Morrow? Dave Barry? Good points all. But screw it. At this time, these are my favorites. That's why I put it on the Web and not on stone tablets.
Posted by Michael at 12:48 AM | Comments (2)