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Book A Week in 2010 - Week 48


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Today is the start of book week 48 and the quest to read 52 books in 52 weeks. Where are you in your quest? Mr. Linky is all set up on the 52 books blog and ready for you to link to your reviews.

 

52books blog - What happens when we combine U and V. Five more weeks ya'll. How's it going? Are you ready to do it all over again in 2011

 

What are you reading this week?

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In the midst of reading: #64 - The Dean's Watch, by Elizabeth Goudge. This is the first book I've read by this author. I'm only on page 104, but it has been a page turner so far. The characterization is tremendous; the insights eye-popping at times in their relevance and *commonness*. I am eager to pursue the lives of these people - and in fact, as soon as I post this response, I am putting my nose back in that book and blanketing myself in the unfolding story!

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I started 2 books this week.

 

So far, I'm laughing my way through Little Green Men:

 

"In Christopher Buckley's hilarious fourth novel, Washington, D.C., is naturally enough a place of sex, lies, and videotape. Unfortunately for Little Green Men's pundit protagonist, John Oliver Banion, it is also the HQ of Majestic Twelve, a very, very covert government project. Since "that golden Cold War summer of 1947," MJ-12 has had a single mission--to convince taxpayers that space invaders are constantly lurking below what's left of the ozone layer. "A country convinced that little green men were hovering over the rooftops was inclined to vote yea for big weapons and space programs," the author thoughtfully explains.

 

 

 

But one disgruntled operative wants out. Nathan Scrubbs is fed up to the back teeth with the art of alien abduction--not to mention his cover as a Social Security flunky--so when his request for a transfer is quashed, he drunkenly decides to take it out on ubiquitous ultra-prig Banion, who happens to be on TV at the time. The ensuing high-tech kidnap, at Maryland's Burning Bush Country Club, is only one of the thousands of convulsively funny scenes in Little Green Men. Not that the novel isn't a skewed morality play of some sort: as Banion comes to believe in Tall Nordics and Short Ugly Grays, he is quickly removed from every A-list in town. But oddly enough, social and political disaster turns out to be as liberating as the finest alien probe. Let's just say that long before Banion and Scrubbs have a close encounter at the Millennium Man March on Washington, this Beltway barrel of monkeys attains a truly extraplanetary level of amusement."

I've also (just barely) started 1491, a book I've been wanting to read ever since it came out quite a few years ago.

 

 

"Starred Review. In a riveting and fast-paced history, massing archeological, anthropological, scientific and literary evidence, Mann debunks much of what we thought we knew about pre-Columbian America. Reviewing the latest, not widely reported research in Indian demography, origins and ecology, Mann zestfully demonstrates that long before any European explorers set foot in the New World, Native American cultures were flourishing with a high degree of sophistication. The new researchers have turned received wisdom on its head. For example, it has long been believed the Inca fell to Pizarro because they had no metallurgy to produce steel for weapons. In fact, scholars say, the Inca had a highly refined metallurgy, but valued plasticity over strength. What defeated the Inca was not steel but smallpox and resulting internecine warfare. Mann also shows that the Maya constructed huge cities and governed them with a cohesive set of political ideals. Most notably, according to Mann, the Haudenosaunee, in what is now the Northeast U.S., constructed a loose confederation of tribes governed by the principles of individual liberty and social equality. The author also weighs the evidence that Native populations were far larger than previously calculated. Mann, a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and Science, masterfully assembles a diverse body of scholarship into a first-rate history of Native America and its inhabitants."

 

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Yes, please keep this thread going. :)

 

I'm re-reading Harry Potter #4 - it'll be a while before the movie comes out here and I hope that I'll be done with 7 by then. I've read them all, but don't remember all the details. I don't want to be confused when we see #7. ;)

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How's it going? Are you ready to do it all over again in 2011

 

Look, I just wouldn't know what to do with myself if I didn't! My entire weekly routine would fly right out of the window if I couldn't open up this thread on a Monday morning!

 

I've discovered another series by the same chap, Boris A(something I forget right now) and am getting into those. I also gave up on a book about book and library burning. So full of history, I really wanted to read it. It was so darn depressing, though, I didn't make it past chapter one after trying for a month.

 

Rosie

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I read Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason. I had to cut and paste the author's name. I liked it, but it was too slow for my sil--it was mistakenly called a thriller, which it is not. He's an Icelandic author, and that funny looking d is a type of th that is softer than the one in the word "the." For once, it wasn't a ya novel.

 

Yes, please keep this going for 2011.

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Today is the start of book week 48 and the quest to read 52 books in 52 weeks. Where are you in your quest? Mr. Linky is all set up on the 52 books blog and ready for you to link to your reviews.

 

52books blog - What happens when we combine U and V. Five more weeks ya'll. How's it going? Are you ready to do it all over again in 2011

 

What are you reading this week?

 

 

 

I have not done very well with this, but I plan to do better next year, as a matter of fact i'm going to the library today and will try to participate these next five weeks.

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Five more weeks ya'll. How's it going? Are you ready to do it all over again in 2011

 

What are you reading this week?

 

Yes, I am ready to do it again - it is great to get so many ideas from others! I am hoping for a Kindle for Christmas so that I can read even more!

 

Last night I put reviews up for The Outsiders, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and Saving Max. I have the rest waiting in the wings.

 

I am currently reading Shop Class as Soulcraft:An Inquiry into the Value of Work. Here's a preview:

 

Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls manual competence, the ability to work with ones hands. According to the author, our alienation from how our possessions are made and how they work takes many forms: the decline of shop class, the design of goods whose workings cannot be accessed by users (such as recent Mercedes models built without oil dipsticks) and the general disdain with which we regard the trades in our emerging information economy.

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I am currently reading Shop Class as Soulcraft:An Inquiry into the Value of Work. Here's a preview:

 

Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls manual competence, the ability to work with ones hands. According to the author, our alienation from how our possessions are made and how they work takes many forms: the decline of shop class, the design of goods whose workings cannot be accessed by users (such as recent Mercedes models built without oil dipsticks) and the general disdain with which we regard the trades in our emerging information economy.

 

That sounds like an interesting book. How are you liking it?

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That sounds like an interesting book. How are you liking it?

It's pretty good. It's not an easy read - lots of dense passages that I have to read a few times to absorb. He is bringing up some interesting correlations between working in the trades (as a job or hobby) and the ability to sustain attention & problem solve in addition to looking at how people value what we make with our hands. It's good stuff.

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