The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

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Ult_Sm86
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The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

So I picked up a new book English author Glen Duncan called

"The Last Werewolf".


So far, it's really interesting. NPR's "On the Media" did an interview with him about it asking if it was inspired out of the recent fad with paranormal stuff (such as "True Blood" and "Twilight").

He admits yes and then flatly says no.
More is in the interview, but he basically explains that he was jsut writing a story about a lonely, depressed, guy, and as he was writing it -- it just made more sense to make him a werewolf. And without doing any practical, elongate research (other than watching some old werewolf films! LOL) he designe the rules and reasons for what it's like to live the life of a Lycan.

It's a very interesting interview and so far the book isn't half bad.

I'm also reading Hunger Games for the first time and I'm not enthralled with it yet it's not bad.

Any other titles I should be peeking into? (Besides classics? My stack of Classics-to-Read is a little high right now :shifty )

-Note: Can't find the interview from "On The Media" but I will try to dig it up for you guys.

Until then here's some NPR writings about the book and Glen himself:

The Last Werewolf

[Edited on 31/8/11 by Ult_Sm86]
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The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Ferguson »

Winter's Bone: Now, I know I've talked about this a fair amount but it's the style for me. I'm so very impressed with how the author writes that it actually takes me a moment to remember how much I appreciated the actual story as well. I'm absolutely envious over the stark and frank tone everything is presented in.

And, on a completely different spectrum of language use, The Shadow of the Wind. The writing is just beautiful. There may have been places where the timing could have been handled just a bit better but that could also be a rush to know the story completed, as well. I think I have to reread it in Spanish so I can see how it was originally as well.

Now, for some things I think I must read soon, The Last Werewolf is on the list now.
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Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Winter's Bone was a fantastic movie, so I'd love to read the book. No idea it was based on a novel, hadn't even occurred to me.
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Post by Ferguson »

Indeed it was! Daniel Woodrell is really quite something. I'd recommend most any of his stuff.
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Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Ferg, have you read The Road by Cormac MacCarthy? The book is phenomenal and the movie is a great watch too but unfortunately it follows the book really well. So well that it keeps the very little dialogue that is present in the book. And by very little I mean teenyweeny amounts.


But it's an emotional powerful read.
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Post by Ferguson »

Indeed I have and love both the book and movie (though I did get some crazy side-eye from the people who were watching it with me). The Road is definitely up there as one of my favourites of his.
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Post by steyn »

Yeah, I'm just on a Kelley Armstrong fixation for the moment. Read about 85% of all her 'Women of the Otherworld" book series. Basically if you like supernatural creatures in modern day settings, but find the idea of the guy always saving the day boring, I'd suggest these books.
You can check out her books at KelleyArmstrong.com


[edit] just wanted to add some of the races they have in the books.
Werewolves (humans who can turn into a wolf, rare, normally male, very rare that females are born),
Witches(female magic users, children are always female, hates sorcerors),
Sorcerors (male magic users, children are always male, hates witches),
Necromancers (people with the ability to speak with the dead, even force a spirit into their dead bodies to make zombies, incredibly rare),
Vampires (incredibly rare),
Half-demons (children of demon and female humans, have the ability of their demon father example telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy etc. ),
shaman (people with the ability to astral project)

With rare I mean you have a better chance of walking up to an albino in a busy street than walking up to one of the above mentioned races.


[Edited on 1/9/2011 by steyn]
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Post by Ferguson »

On the subject of fantasy I have to bring up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell where I, again, loved the style of it and the variety of characters it contained. Plus it made the nerdy alternate history lover in me as well as the historian happy with it's footnotes though I can see why they might be irritating to other readers. The first demonstration of magic with Mr. Norrell absolutely sold me on the book and I didn't waiver a bit after that reading it.

You know, we all should get a list of books to read together and actually do the book club thing.

[Edited on 1/9/11 by Ferguson]
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Post by Slarti »

When I was pregnant I started rereading the never-ending saga of "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan (and the guy his family hired after he died).

I literally started reading that series when it started in the 90s. I got the original freebie of "The Eye of the World" when they printed half the book and gave it away as a promo. However, I gave up in college. It got sooo draggy and the main character became increasingly unlikable.

But, I picked one up to read while I had to wait in a doctor's office one day and decided to give it another shot. Currently, I'm only to the third book, "The Dragon Reborn." I'm enjoying the escapism and it's a lot like visiting old friends. We'll see if I still feel the same after a couple more books.

I recently got a subscription to Audible.com for cheap, so I've also been listening to audio books this summer. Good for all that damn driving with my dad's surgery. I downloaded some classics, but honestly I've put them in reserve to listen to zombie apocalypse novels.

I'm halfway through "Dead City," about a zombie outbreak in Texas after a series of Katrina-like hurricanes. It's not bad! It's fast-paced and I really think it'd make a good action movie.

I also recently listened to "Allison Hewitt is Trapped" which was a zombie book written as a blog, from a female point of view. It was also entertaining, though the main character got a bit too Supergirlish at points.

Also listened to "Day by Day Armageddon" which is written in journal format by an actual member of the military. It started out as an online-only novel and I read most of it back in the day, like 10 years ago. It's not perfect, but it's written to be a journal, so it's okay. It's very entertaining, and somewhat more plausible than a lot of the zombie lit out there.

[Edited on 1-9-2011 by Slarti]
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The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Slarti have you read the Zombie Autopsies?

I wanted to read it but when I breezed through it at Borders I was sketchy. The style seems fun but it seems sort of predictable, which I suppose is the downfall of Zombie stories. Hence why I don't read/watch a lot of them. They get old (IMO).

But I am going to get it once it drops to 70% or less in the store. At that point I won't mind spending the money.
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Slarti »

Again from my Audible, I'm now reading "Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Teabagging of America." It's exactly what you think, and ....wow. I'm only a chapter in, and while I didn't think it was possible for me to think less of Beck before.... wow. Just, wow. The book definitely uses his own tactics to spin it the other way, but when you realize that it helps balance it out.
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by JSherlock »

I am reading nothing but school books. However.

Gwendolyn Brooks:

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.


http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433 <--Has Gwendolyn saying why she wrote the poem also her reading it.

The simplicity of this poem hit me like a ton of bricks, so to speak. I immediately could see everything from the pool players' perspective as well as an outsider's. It's so simple yet so elegant. I'm in the process of finding more of her poems.

As for books... Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff is brilliant. So informative about the general way life went on in the Ancient World, and really depicts Cleopatra as a woman, not an idealized and romanticized idea. It dove-tailed a great documentary I saw, which I've forgotten the name of, but the main historian/Egyptologist said something that has stuck with me since: Cleopatra was a strong woman who didn't kill herself for shame and for fear - but as a woman who would not yield to the power of Man and Rome. It was her last f-u to Rome and Octavuis/Julius. :D
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

I read the Dogs of Babel. The book is well written but there's a lot of floaty, dreamy, "How awesome would it be if people really loved eachother this much" in it. I can't describe exactly what I mean, other than the relationship of the main characters is a hyperbole of the best relationship you can think of off the top of your head. Completely over the top. Unti the moments when it's not, but even then, the two can turn to eachother and start apologizing after. Bit over dramatic too.

Also, the female character reminds me a tad of Bella Swan. Even her flaws are impressive, there's nothing really too awful about her. She's the woman every woman would want to be. Artistic, emotional, fun, creative, impulsive, (albeit random), and she loves dogs not cats. It came off, especially by the end, as the author (Carolyn Parkhurst) really super imposed the things she either wishes she was/thinks she is into the character.

Beautiful, fun, riveting, tragic, love story yes. But my favorite part of the book is the dog.
It's got a lot of weird parts ini t too though, but that's okay. Apparently the movie was slated for late 2012 but now it's coming out later than that. Steve Carrel is starring in it. The story is not humorous, at all, and is in fact quite depressing so I'm hoping this is going to be a shining moment for Carrel to show he can act.

And JS, I gave my G/F Cleopatra for her birthday back last May I still don't think she's read it. She said it was hard to get through the first few chapters but she loves everything Egypt so I was really confused.
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by JSherlock »

Ult_Sm86 wrote:And JS, I gave my G/F Cleopatra for her birthday back last May I still don't think she's read it. She said it was hard to get through the first few chapters but she loves everything Egypt so I was really confused.
It's very densely packed, almost like a textbook, really. And not all of it is specifically about her. It's got information about the politics,the science,the mathematics, etc. etc. of the time, so I can see why a lot of people who just want to juicy details might get bored.
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Ult_Sm86 »

Well it wasn't just that she was looking for the "juicy details", she actually said pretty flatly that the writing style was very flat and scientific with almost no attempt to create a story narrative around her. Which the G/F also then spun around and said she understood why that might be the case because this isn't like an autobiography or biography written about someone who is either still alive to even dead within the last century or two, this is someone so far back in human history, she's sort of an icon for a time period. So you have an entire time period of information to sort through, sort of hard to build story when you're sorting so much info. I guess?
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Re: The New & Improved Book Club (Remastered in 3-D)

Post by Saint Kurt »

JSherlock wrote:I am reading nothing but school books. However.

Gwendolyn Brooks: THE POOL PLAYERS SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL

The simplicity of this poem hit me like a ton of bricks, so to speak. I immediately could see everything from the pool players' perspective as well as an outsider's. It's so simple yet so elegant.
Gwendolyn Brooks was the poet laureate of Illinois. When I was a kid she came to our class and read that poem. I think that was in like ... 1978. I was 7 and I didn't know what a poet laureate was. She read a number of poems and we kept giggling and squirming. Then she read that one and everything clicked. I think it was the splitting of the word "We" onto a separate line and the use of Jazz as a verb. It was like, I totally got it. (Not just what the poem was trying to say, but how poetry was supposed to work on the listener.)

Another poem that I really latched onto was A Martian Sends a Postcard Home by Craig Raine:

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.



I really loved "Haunted Apparatus" as a way to refer to a cat and used the name for various things over the years (high school garage band, college art collective, technology startup that never got off the ground...)

-e
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