While we're all in the library...
Jan. 29th, 2003 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tzikehA few more book questions for all of you - stuff I'm excited to hear the answers to.
Book you keep meaning to read that always gets bumped to second place by new purchases: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. GAH! Must. Read. Book.
Book you put down halfway through and never got back to: The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. Huge mother of a book. It was really interesting, I was reading it on a plane to California, I slept on the return trip instead of reading, and just never got back into it. Somehow in the intervening years I lost my copy, and that's damned hard to do. It's the size of a good dictionary!
Book you love and can never convince anyone else to read: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I try to explain how it's about thought and philosophy and language and creativity and invention, and the reaction I get is invariably "But, it's math!"
Book you'll never read no matter how many people tell you you should: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Family comedy-dramas don't really interest me, be they movies, television shows, or books. No matter how well-crafted they are, I just don't care for them much.
Children's book that no one else remembers except you: This category's a toss-up - either Lizard Music by D. Manus Pinkwater, or Bob Fulton's Amazing Soda-Pop Stretcher by Jerome Beatty Jr. Oh, or T.A. For Tots (and Other Prinzes) by Alvyn M. Freed.
Children's book everyone seems to have read that you've never read / heard of: That book about the balloons and diamonds and Krakatoa.
Terrific book, terrible movie: The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Jeez.
Book you loved on first reading which on subsequent readings wow, not so much: Sadly, it has to be A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I know, I know - blasphemy! But - what can I say. I re-read it very recently and found it boring, overwrought, and simplistic. And I LOVED this series as a pre-teen. Read the first three over and over.
Most Overrated / Overhyped Book or Author, in your opinion: Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It was fine and all, but jeez, the hype surrounding that book - critics were running out of superlatives!
Most Underrated / Misunderstood Book or Author, in your opinion: Hannibal by Thomas Harris. ::looks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cesperanza for support on this one::
So. Thoughts?
Book you keep meaning to read that always gets bumped to second place by new purchases: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. GAH! Must. Read. Book.
Book you put down halfway through and never got back to: The Quincunx by Charles Palliser. Huge mother of a book. It was really interesting, I was reading it on a plane to California, I slept on the return trip instead of reading, and just never got back into it. Somehow in the intervening years I lost my copy, and that's damned hard to do. It's the size of a good dictionary!
Book you love and can never convince anyone else to read: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I try to explain how it's about thought and philosophy and language and creativity and invention, and the reaction I get is invariably "But, it's math!"
Book you'll never read no matter how many people tell you you should: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Family comedy-dramas don't really interest me, be they movies, television shows, or books. No matter how well-crafted they are, I just don't care for them much.
Children's book that no one else remembers except you: This category's a toss-up - either Lizard Music by D. Manus Pinkwater, or Bob Fulton's Amazing Soda-Pop Stretcher by Jerome Beatty Jr. Oh, or T.A. For Tots (and Other Prinzes) by Alvyn M. Freed.
Children's book everyone seems to have read that you've never read / heard of: That book about the balloons and diamonds and Krakatoa.
Terrific book, terrible movie: The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Jeez.
Book you loved on first reading which on subsequent readings wow, not so much: Sadly, it has to be A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I know, I know - blasphemy! But - what can I say. I re-read it very recently and found it boring, overwrought, and simplistic. And I LOVED this series as a pre-teen. Read the first three over and over.
Most Overrated / Overhyped Book or Author, in your opinion: Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It was fine and all, but jeez, the hype surrounding that book - critics were running out of superlatives!
Most Underrated / Misunderstood Book or Author, in your opinion: Hannibal by Thomas Harris. ::looks to
cesperanza for support on this one::So. Thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 06:30 am (UTC)Most Underrated / Misunderstood Book or Author, in your opinion: Hannibal by Thomas Harris. ::looks to cesperanza for support on this one::
Well, I'm not cesperanza, but I really liked this book--almost as much as the first two. I liked that Hannibal/Clarice went the romantic path, the way of the monster. I can't really *get* why people didn't go for that. :) At the denouement, I was sort of weepy. And femoral arteries and Florence and emeralds oh my.. come on. EMERALDS.
More commentary later after work stops breathing down my neck.
hee
no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 01:24 pm (UTC)And for Hannibal:
I liked that Hannibal/Clarice went the romantic path, the way of the monster. I can't really *get* why people didn't go for that. :)
Amen, sister. ;)
Emeralds!!