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?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
more books!
Date: 2003-01-29 11:01 pm (UTC)And -- you're not wrong, you know. But I still love A Wrinkle in Time anyway.
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Date: 2003-01-29 11:28 pm (UTC)Quick thought --
Most Underrated / Misunderstood Book or Author, in your opinion: Hannibal by Thomas Harris.
I totally agree with this. Yes, I can tell that it was hastily written and sloppily edited in parts. Still, I was riveted by it, I could readily believe Starling's disillusionment 10 years down the line, and it totally made me want to go to Florence.
mmm. books.
Date: 2003-01-30 05:11 am (UTC)E. is a big fan of Pinkwater, so while I never read him as a kid, I've read basically his collected works now. :-) I started with Lizard Music, which you're right, is totally lovely and not near well-known-enough. Have you read Uncle Boris in the Yukon and Other Shaggy Dog Stories, his book of storylike essays (for adults) about dogs?
I've tried Godel, Escher, Bach at least three times. Each time I love it at the beginning; start reading slower and slower; and then get totally bogged down and stop. It's like some kind of weird event horizon that I can't get past. But I totally accept that it's fantastic -- I expect everyone in my local circle of geek friends has read it multiple times, E. included.
Re: mmm. books.
Date: 2003-01-30 05:41 am (UTC)-J
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Date: 2003-01-30 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 06:25 am (UTC)I love this book!! I found an old hardcover in the used book store about 15 years ago, and I've been trying to foist it off (for reading purposes only--give it back! give it back!) on friends ever since I read it. And reread it. It's one of those super open-it-anywhere-and-read books.
And it's only partly about math. :)
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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
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Date: 2003-01-30 11:07 am (UTC)Re: more books!
Date: 2003-01-30 01:14 pm (UTC)Yeah - it's weird. I mean, I still think of them as great and wonderful books, but also not, at the same time. Reading Wrinkle recently was a real downer. C'est la vie.
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Date: 2003-01-30 01:17 pm (UTC)The movie went the wrong way.
Re: mmm. books.
Date: 2003-01-30 01:19 pm (UTC)But you made it through The Simarillion this year. After that, GEB is cake! ;)
And you used the phrase "event horizon" properly, so you are excused.
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Date: 2003-01-30 01:21 pm (UTC)You are seriously the only other person I know of who has read it.
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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!!
no subject
Date: 2003-01-30 01:26 pm (UTC)