Stacia Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 Jenn, thanks for your ComicCon update. I figured you were probably hanging out there some! I always love your updates from there. Cool to see your signed page from the Lovelace & Babbage book. It's one I had on my radar from someone at Goodreads -- you'll have to give us a review once you read it. I saw The Infiltrator tonight. It was a decent movie, quite good acting. (Probably 3 to 3.5 stars out of 5, imo.) The overall story wasn't as smooth as it could have been, but it's still a fascinating look at going undercover to do business with some very dangerous people. I think it also shows that to be good undercover, you have to truly befriend/like some of the people, really create a human connection (at least with the ones that aren't just entirely violence-crazed), yet be willing to take the personal hit & walk away from that in the name of doing good/getting the job done. Goes along w/ my various cartel-related reading & movies of the past year or two. I think my viewing was enhanced by reading The Sound of Things Falling (an excellent fictional book I read earlier this year) because that book & this movie both focus on the early rise of cartels in Pablo Escobar's time. Also, the movie tied in w/ some of my other reading this year, the non-fiction book Narconomics because both focus on the money trail related to the drug trade. The Infiltrator (the movie) is based on a book by the undercover agent himself (which I bought earlier this week & look forward to reading). 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 Jenn, I also enjoyed hearing of your ComicCon adventures and hope that you'll boldly get to go where you want tomorrow. ** I enjoyed this BookRiot piece, and I even learned a new word, misandrist. ~ 9 Book Awards I Would Appreciate Seeing by Constance Augusta Zaber "Let’s not lie about it, we’re all drawn to the shiny stickers on the covers of books that have won someone’s award. Personally I’m more likely to pick up a book if it has a gold sticker on it even if I don’t know what it’s about, which means that I’m consistently picking up books that don’t ring my bells. Sure, a committee made up of five white men named Dave, a white woman who teaches at a college in the Midwest, and Oprah, may have picked this book by a white man named Dave who teaches at a college in the Midwest as their favorite fiction for the year (I KNOW this isn’t how book awards are awarded, please don’t send me nasty tweets, I’m fully aware book prizes are all awarded by a guinea pig named Bridget.) but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be up my alley...." Regards, Kareni 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 Jenn, I also enjoyed hearing of your ComicCon adventures and hope that you'll boldly get to go where you want tomorrow. ** I enjoyed this BookRiot piece, and I even learned a new word, misandrist. ~ 9 Book Awards I Would Appreciate Seeing by Constance Augusta Zaber "Let’s not lie about it, we’re all drawn to the shiny stickers on the covers of books that have won someone’s award. Personally I’m more likely to pick up a book if it has a gold sticker on it even if I don’t know what it’s about, which means that I’m consistently picking up books that don’t ring my bells. Sure, a committee made up of five white men named Dave, a white woman who teaches at a college in the Midwest, and Oprah, may have picked this book by a white man named Dave who teaches at a college in the Midwest as their favorite fiction for the year (I KNOW this isn’t how book awards are awarded, please don’t send me nasty tweets, I’m fully aware book prizes are all awarded by a guinea pig named Bridget.) but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be up my alley...." Regards, Kareni I now know what misandrist means too! I enjoyed the 9 awards. Since I am now living with dc's who have immersed themselves in marketing classes lately I hear all sorts of funny comments and teens with wise voices telling me not to believe the hype. For years when faced with a shelf full of the unfamiliar I have tended to cheer (and buy) if one of the products has the little royal warrant seal. They make fun of me but at least I figure that product meets someone's approval! :lol: Jenn totally agree with Kareni, hope you and your ds manage to boldly go to the front of what I am sure will be one of the longest lines ever seen at comic con! 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 Jenn, hope you got access to Trek Hall. Thanks for the update on your summer fan foray! Last night was enough to finish the Waugh correspondence, and like Stacia I've launched into J.-K. Huysman's decadent novel À Rebours. Middle girl this summer read both Poe's Pym and Wilde's Dorian Gray, the former of which Stacia told us is referenced in À Rebours, while the latter gives it a page-long encomium without mentioning its name. ("His eye fell on the yellow book that Lord Henry had sent him...") I confess to not remembering Wilde's tribute, but it's been a quarter of a century. MG also ran into Pym in Edinburgh, at the Surrealist exhibit hosted by the National Gallery. See this Magritte? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_to_be_Reproduced#/media/File%3APortrait_of_Edward_James.jpg Look closely at the book on the mantel. It's everywhere. From the translator's note: Huysman's style, which [Léon] Bloy described as 'continually dragging Mother Image by the hair or the feet down the worm-eaten staircase of terrified Syntax' ... 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 Kareni, thanks for that post. It had a couple of funny links attached to, one that picks the perfect summer book for you, and one that has classics titled like Friends episodes. Pretty funny. I, too, was a cranky reader yesterday. I really enjoyed Warlock Holmes at first, but by the end of the first story it was getting a little tedious. I decided to put it aside and try The Girls, which I had just picked up from the library after a long hold. It was a disappointment. What the heck does the author have against complete sentences?? At least a third of each paragraph was made up of trailing fragments of what was meant to be figurative language, descriptors, or something, but were really just annoying distractions. Half of them started with "Like" and trailed off into contorted and pretentious similes that added nothing to the story. I'm mad, because I sense there is an interesting plot in here somewhere, but for the life of me I can't even unearth it. Unless somebody tells me this was a fabulous book that I shouldn't miss, I'm going to let it go. I don't need reading that makes me grumpy and annoyed. Finally, I started reading Glory O'brien's History of the Future, recommended by Stacia. I'm liking it, it's a good YA book for the upper end of that age spectrum - tough, interesting narrator. Some plot holes, but I can live with it. Whew! Oh, and I listened to Why Read Moby Dick, which made me want to read Moby Dick . . . kind of. I have to confess that part of my reason for avoiding this book is I really think that whales are fabulous and amazing creatures and I don't really want to read a whole book focused on slaughtering them and cutting them up. Kind of like you wouldn't give a horse lover a book about a glue factory, KWIM? But, I guess this is a cultural hurdle I will have to get over at some point. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted July 23, 2016 Share Posted July 23, 2016 (edited) There is no end of great quotes from À Rebours: And when the movements of the woman he was mechanically caressing suddenly dispelled these memories and her words or laughter brought him back to the present reality of the boudoir, then his soul was swept by tumultuous emotions: a longing to take vengeance for the boredom inflicted on him in the past, a craving to sully what memories he retained of his family with acts of sensual depravity, a furious desire to expend his lustful frenzy on cushions of soft flesh and to drain the cup of sensuality to its last and bitterest dregs.Time to dig out the Baudelaire.... Edited July 23, 2016 by Violet Crown 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathleen. Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 I read "King Lear" by Shakespeare - it was so much better than I remember from high school. My 10yo read "Among the Meadow People" by Clara Dillingham Pierson; we just discovered this series and love it. ☺ 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stacia Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 Oh, and I listened to Why Read Moby Dick, which made me want to read Moby Dick . . . kind of. I have to confess that part of my reason for avoiding this book is I really think that whales are fabulous and amazing creatures and I don't really want to read a whole book focused on slaughtering them and cutting them up. Kind of like you wouldn't give a horse lover a book about a glue factory, KWIM? But, I guess this is a cultural hurdle I will have to get over at some point. I have exactly the same reason as my main reason for not wanting to read Moby Dick. I'm not sure, realistically, I will ever get over my mental hurdle of it, regardless of the cultural weight of this work. I often have a hard time in general with animals (excluding humans) in books. ... Well, except for the talking gecko. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethel Mertz Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 Just saw a New Yorker cartoon with 4 middle-aged women who had just robbed a bank in a get-away-car. One woman turned to the others and said: "And to think we started as a book group!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted July 24, 2016 Share Posted July 24, 2016 :lol: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted July 24, 2016 Author Share Posted July 24, 2016 link to week 30 - please continue conversation in new thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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