Posts tagged book

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Posted 10 months ago

Fortnightly Book Roundup: June 6 - June 20

So here’s what I’ve been reading.

I decided that I read too much in a month to keep track of and not enough in one week to care about.  Thus, fortnightly book roundups.  See you in two weeks!

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Posted 1 year ago

Challenge: Accepted

As you can probably tell, I finished the Cannonball Read three months ago and I am still tearing through books at a pretty relentless pace.  It feels great.  But, because I like my greatness to be fully and truly appreciated, I am doing another challenge!  Here it is:

The 20 Under 40 Challenge

The New Yorker published its list of top 20 fiction authors under 40 in June, and I am going to read one book by each of them.  That’s pretty much the long and short of it but if you want to know more you can check out the actual challenge blog here.

You can see the New Yorker’s list here.

I’ll keep a page link on the sidebar of my progress, and post my thoughts of each one.  Wish me luck!

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Posted 1 year ago
Just read:  Popco by Scarlett Thomas “What started off being, ‘Hey, we make this!  Do you want it?’ turned into, ‘If you buy this, you might get laid more,’ and then mutated into, ‘If you don’t buy this, you’ll be uncool, no one will like you, everyone will laugh at you and you may as well kill yourself now.  I’m telling you this because I am your friend and you have to trust me.’  Marketing is what gives value to things that do not actually have any intrinsic value.” (p. 378)

Just read:  Popco by Scarlett Thomas

“What started off being, ‘Hey, we make this!  Do you want it?’ turned into, ‘If you buy this, you might get laid more,’ and then mutated into, ‘If you don’t buy this, you’ll be uncool, no one will like you, everyone will laugh at you and you may as well kill yourself now.  I’m telling you this because I am your friend and you have to trust me.’  Marketing is what gives value to things that do not actually have any intrinsic value.” (p. 378)

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Posted 1 year ago
Just read:   Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman “I remember my dad dismissing the murder [of John Lennon] at supper the following evening, bemoaning the fact that a musician’s death somehow warranted more publicity than the unexpected death of Pope John Paul I.” (p. 4)

Just read:   Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman

“I remember my dad dismissing the murder [of John Lennon] at supper the following evening, bemoaning the fact that a musician’s death somehow warranted more publicity than the unexpected death of Pope John Paul I.” (p. 4)

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Posted 1 year ago
Just read:  Monster Planet by David Wellington “It was easy to forget, sometimes, that 99 percent of the world’s population had died in the first months of the Epidemic.  Surrounded by ghouls and cultists and liches, it was easy to pretend that the world hadn’t been emptied out.  Standing in a parking lot bigger than the village where she’d been born, however, watching the sun gleam from every piece of glass and mirror, Ayaan had been forced to accept it, to accept everything that had been lost.” (p. 217)

Just read:  Monster Planet by David Wellington

“It was easy to forget, sometimes, that 99 percent of the world’s population had died in the first months of the Epidemic.  Surrounded by ghouls and cultists and liches, it was easy to pretend that the world hadn’t been emptied out.  Standing in a parking lot bigger than the village where she’d been born, however, watching the sun gleam from every piece of glass and mirror, Ayaan had been forced to accept it, to accept everything that had been lost.” (p. 217)

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Posted 1 year ago
Somewhere in the twelve-year gap between their meetings she had lost him, he had turned a corner in her memory and disappeared from view. Now he had made another right, and another, and in the labyrinth their paths had crossed again.
Monster Planet, David Wellington (p. 123)
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Posted 1 year ago
Just read:  The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews “I miss you.  I love you.  I won’t forget the important things.”  (p. 85)

Just read:  The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews

“I miss you.  I love you.  I won’t forget the important things.”  (p. 85)

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Posted 1 year ago
Arrow believes she’s different from the snipers on the hills. She shoots only soldiers. They shoot unarmed men, women, children. When they kill a person, they seek a result that is far greater than the elimination of that individual. They are trying to kill the city. Every death chips away at the Sarajevo of Arrow’s youth with as much certainty as any mortar shell battering a building. Those left are robbed of not only a fellow citizen but the memory of what it was to be alive in a time before men on the hills shot at you while you tried to cross the street.
The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway (p. 11)
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Posted 1 year ago
There’s no mini-bar in here, is there? I said, and then flung myself onto the bed and wept like Jesus and was sweetly consoled by my sister’s children there in that shit-ass motel room in the middle of nowhere.
The Flying Troutmans, Miriam Toews (p. 83)