what about ???
"eating soup with a knife"
and
"up in the old hotel"
I'm rereading Machiavelli's "The Prince" and Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" to finish out my summer reading.
John McPhee "Control of Nature"
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi.
Seriously, Susan Faludi restored my respect for feminism by going beyond the sort of "more the victim than thou" crap that had so alienated me many years prior to my reading of this volume.
"The Yiddish Policeman's Union"
Michael Chabon
usually i don't care for "what if" fiction. even from authors i like. it's usually about crappy ideas like the south winning or hitler winning or some other sickass fantasy trip. this one breaks that mold brilliantly. there's a "what if?" premise, but after that's established it becomes about people. loved it much. read it twice which is unusual again on account of it's a mystery, after you've read a mystery through to the end why bother going back ya know?
check this one out. it saved my summer from pynchon.
I'm reading "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver and "The Game of Life & How to Play it" by Florence Scovel Shinn (again).
"Soon I Will Be Invincible!" by Austin Grossman.
"Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician", by Jeremy Dibble.
Second McPhee's "Control of Nature" -- man vs volcano, man vs the Mississippi River, man vs mountains.
Also his anthology "Irons in the Fire" includes "The Gravel Page" about forensic geology -- an utterly fascinating look at the stories an expert can extract from plain old dirt.
I LOVE John McPhee.
He's the best, the absolute best. One of my favorites of his is "Control of Nature," which is mostly about the futility of man (a third of the book is about water controls around New Orleans). "Annals of the Former World" is his masterpiece, though believers in creationism would despise it. The best part of "Annals" is the section on "Assembling California." It's just so interesting. Who would have thought geology could be that exciting?!
Another recommendation I have, though it's not for a book but rather another recently released piece of media, Springsteen's "Magic." Okay, so it's a record, not a book, but there's few more literary lyricists out there, and the man is on our side of the aisle. This is his anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war record, and by most accounts his best in 23 or even 28 years.
I, too, love John McPhee.
I'm (re)reading The Eustace Diamonds by Trollope, and Bearing Witness: Selections from African American Autobiography in the 2oth Century.
I have a pile of books to read:
Cryptonomicon
I Am A Strange Loop
Counterfeit Unrealities
The War of Art
Anansi Boys
Maybe i will read some of them today.
Yet another vote for Control of Nature. I read the Atchafalaya section year before last, not long before the Flood. More McPhee: Annals of the Former World, which collects many of his articles about North American geology into long essays. Some favorites: in Book 2, "In Suspect Terrain" : The Geology of New York City; The Appalachians and Plate Techtonics; and Origins of Coal. In Book 4, "Assembling California" : The Gold Rush of the 19th Century. Somehow, in McPhee's description the impact of the 'niners on the earth in northern CA is more impressive, and more horrifying, than any similar thing i've read this side of descriptions of mountaintop removal.
Recent headlines have got me looking for the origins of the current dif-fi′culties. Connie Bruck's The Predator's Ball, on Milken's junk bond operation, and James B. Stewart's Den of Thieves, on the related insider trading scandals, have taught me a lot about what people will do, as has Pizzo, Fricker, and Muolo's In$ide Job, about the S&L scandal. (Btw, that is Stephen Pizzo of The Smirking Chimp website.) If you go for mystery novels or film noir, you'll probably love all of them.
I have long wanted to write for the second half of Act II of my screenplay in progress, So Long Seattle, a riff taken from Control of Nature and have the Atchafalaya capture control of the Mississippi, totally fucking over New Orleans. Someone who knew that was going to happen -- the bad guys -- would make BILLIONS having sold NO based stocks short. Heh.
And then that fuck who writes the Dirk Pitt novels and is apparently a total ass to work with (hint: he's named "Cussler") came out maybe five or eight years back with one of his novels finishing right there at the Atchafalaya with big-dicked Dirk saving the day. Aaaaargh. Worse, it was even for Dirk Pitt novels, crappy.
Asshole. Steal my thunder.
(Next time Jesse, you idiot, write faster.)
If you like John McPhee, you will probably enjoy Loren Eisley. I've been rereading his collection "The Starthrower" and having the tears of wonder come to my eyes.
(Hubris--watashi wa hikkosita bakari de, sooji-site, gomi wo nan-bako mo sutte iru...mendokusai naa...)
TomK: one must read american gods before they read about aunt nancys boys.....realy anything by gamin but american gods is a masterpice...yuo are watchign the birth of one of my gernerations greatest authors in those books.
jsut reread patern in the stone...great book o nteh origins and future of computer science.
workign my way through illuminatis again...seemed fittign ocnsiderign the tiems we live in
Seconded for AMERICAN GODS by N. Gaiman. Really great.
ANANSI BOYS - meh....
Halberstam's new book "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" is unleavened brilliance. I'd call it a masterwork but that word has a capstone feel to it that reminds me that we've lost him far too soon.
It makes me sad and frankly furious that I live in a world where there won't be a new Halberstam book out soon. My only comfort is that he and Steve are now sharing a meal and discussing what a colossal tool MacArthur was.
It manages to interweave every aspect of the conflict; from the cold war geopolitcs of the early post-war era, to the bitter internal politcal battles which warped our capacity to accurately read and respond to those challenges, to the conficts among the American officer corps, to the tactics employed on the ground. And he ties it all together with well placed personal anecdotes which hammer home the immeasuable cost of battle.
Like all of Halberstam's work there's deep thread of humanity running through every page. He is ruthlessly honest about the players in that war and yet sensitive as well. He doesn't caricature his villians and that commitment to showing a full picture of who they were only serves to reinforce the magnitude of their mistakes and to remind us that damn fool idiots are universal. MacArthur may have been the principle architect of the disasters of June 1950 and November of that same year, but he was ably assisted, actively or passively, by a broad cadre of officers, journalists, and politicians. Damn fool idiots may even be found in the mirror if we're not careful.
It's as much a primer on management as a work of history.
It's also a handy prequel to Vietnam and Iraq. The foreign policy right was birthed squalling from the corpse of Nationalist China and the same mistakes they made in 1950 they are still making today.
Read it.
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