Word. But a great source of parody, as evidenced by the Ayn Rand School for Tots in The Simpsons.



Mrs. Sinclair: "Do you know what a baby is saying when she reaches for a bottle?"
Marge: "Ba-ba?"
Mrs. Sinclair: "She's saying, 'I am a leech'! Our aim here is to develop the 'bottle within'."

Started reading this and then had to give it back. Will need to pick it up again and finish. I like how Abbey was picking apart Thoreau as a hack, even though he was a fan, I think. I need to find it and finish it.

I saw that Monkey Wrench Gang is in pre-production according to IMDB.

Just started











<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h298/mattbot420/51yQY4VWKgL._SS500_.jpg" border="0" alt="Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket"></a>

I'll be interested to know your thoughts on this.

I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 - Alton Brown

A cook book that isn't broken down by meal type or ingredients but by cooking method. How & why to Pan Sear instead of Sauteing or Grilling, Fast vs. Slow cooking, Wet vs. Dry methods, etc.

sounds even more complicated to me. today for dinner i boiled 2 turkey breasts and had some apple juice. that's my kind of cooking.

But what if you Pan Seared the Turkey Breasts & then Baked them in a slow oven? They'd be more flavorful & juicy.

Sounds like a dry read...his Food TV shows are quite a bit of fun, he's kind of the Bill Nye The Science Guy of cooking shows.

I love Bill Nye, and I love cooking and the science behind it, but Alton Brown rubs me the wrong way.

No, it's pretty much like the series, but with less sketch comedy.

Picture of Alton with his Daughter Zoe:

50 pages into it and i'm really enjoying it. so much better than "lolita" or some of his "russian" novels.



how cool's that?! so beautiful!

i'm taking a southern lit class to fill out my schedule, and i'm pretty excited about reading as i lay dying, the road, their eyes were watching god, and a cry of absence for the first time. a lot of people have talked up mccarthy in this thread, and i'm interested to see what his style is like.

do you have a list of required readings for that class? i'm rather curious.

I really want to read The Road. I should start it soon, yes.



Pulled this one off the shelf. Skipped right to the part where they started writing/conceiving the show. These guys broke a fuck ton of ground, they did. I mean, after having my interest in Python fade, and then spending all of high school thus far as a complete Mr. Show fanboy/psychopath, I really start to see just how progressive and intelligent something like Python truly was.

Which Pythons wrote The Pythons? Regardless, looks/sounds fascinating and may be my next read. That or Alice Cooper's Golf Monster.

All of them! Same format as the Beatles Anthology book, if you're familiar with that. Massive coffee-table book, lots of nice, big pictures, and text, text, text! Basically all of the dudes recalling memories from their Python days. Like:

Palin: blah blah blah blah blah paragraph

Eric: blah blah blah blah blah paragraph

Jones: blah blah blah blah blah paragraph

And so on and so on and so on. They work in portions of old Graham interviews and things, too.

That sounds great -- I met Graham and got his autograph at the College of Lake County. He showed a couple of videos that (at the time) hadn't been shown on tv, one was the uncut hi-sterical "Tennis Anyone?" and the other was a Terry Gilliam animated version of the queen using the powderroom where all people at the ball shut up and hear all of her bathroom sounds. Both totalled about 10 minutes. He then opened up for "abuse and questions," which was funny in and of itself. It was right after his book came out.

Ha, oh, man, the "Salad Days" sketch, right? There's a longer version? Amazing. How cool were these guys. I watched the shortened version today. I loved it when I was younger, but today it's even funnier now that I know who Sam Peckinpah is (and worship his films.)

Yes, it was a longer version of "Salad Days," but it's been such a long time that I can't really say what was added.

the Count of Monte Cristo (unabridged) - Alexadre Dumas

Actually, I haven't started it quite yet - clocking in at over 1100 pages, this is a mite intimidating. I've never tried to read a piece of "classic literature" so thick... but I dig the story, and this particular translation's s'posed to be great, so.....

finished this. awesome read.

I LOVE Pnin. What's that one little passage about female Russian professors? I had a professor like that when I was reading Pnin. God such a funny/great book.

I finally started reading this one. How long before the nightmares start?

Have this checked out from the library, but have yet to start it. Curious what you think since generally the opinion on this board seems to be disappointment.

Let me know if I should renew and read, or not waste my time.

So awesome.



I haven't started this one yet, but I am expecting my blood pressure to go up.

Renew and read...better yet, BUY. (i've only remembered one disappointed reader here...???)

Pavane - Keith Roberts

An early Alternate History novel (1968) in which Queen Elizabeth I is assassinated by a Catholic zealot in June 1688 and the Spanish Armada succeeds in invading & subduing Britain, which allows the Catholic Church to subdue the Netherlands and later the Lutheran Germanies, leaving the Church Regnant & Militant in charge of the known world. The stories begin in the late '60s, where the Church limits technology to early steam traction & mechanical semaphore communication systems and enforces a Feudal system via Papal edict & Military might, but there're mutterings of rebellion & hidden use of forbidden technologies like Electricity...

I'm about 100 pages into The Remains of the Day. Tell me this gets better. I can't tell at this point if I'm bored w/ it because Never Let Me Go set such high expectations or if it really isn't that good.

I haven't read it (ROTD), but the movie certainly didn't go places.

I'm deeming it a terrible novel. Just under a hundred pages to go and it is now more a test to see if I can get through it. There was a 10 page stretch where it got mildly interesting - but I still haven't recovered from the part about purchasing the best polish for silverware.

Sounds like one of those novels that is boring on purpose...it's difficult to write ironically boring and still be interesting (Lawrence Sterne got away with it a lot in Tristram Shandy )

got a few more books from my favourite Routledge Classics:

The System of the World - Neil Stephenson

Yet another 5 LB tome (900 pages! Nearly 3000 for the entire Trilogy!) in the "Baroque Cycle," Neil Stephenson's fictionalized rumination on the rise of the Industrial Age through the eyes of Isaac Newton's College Roommate. Stephenson pulls together the birth of Steam Power, the arguments over who invented Calculus, the ideas behind Babbage's Difference Engine, the arguments & wars held over European Royal Succession, the rise of Newspapers, and a metric tonne of many of the bits & bobs that helped jumpstart our modern age.

I want the Tshirt:

That Stephenson series gave me the same problem Mason & Dixon, Vollman's Seven Dreams series and Barth's Sot-Weed Factor did...the Olde Englishe speech was so damned dry...

Joe Meno - Hairstyles Of The Damned
A $4.95 pick at Powells on Lincoln. The first novel that I've finished in a long time, and in one day too, thanks to nine hours on airplanes. It's an entertaining and easy read, fun in places, but ultimately it left me a bit unsatisfied. I wanted the characters to be a little deeper, and the humor to be a little funnier. Kudos for vivid use of the far south side Chicago setting. It felt like home, just 12 years later.

i'm joining a book club :D thnx to hott grrl

Anybody else here read literary journals? McSweeney's, Tin House, Ploughshares, The (fill in the blank) Review?

i don't
what are they about?

They're books of short fiction, poetry, essays, interviews, art, etc. usually published quarterly. I figured at least a few people in this thread would be into them. At least McSweeneys.

If you're a fan of short fiction, I'd check out the (usually small) literary journal section of your local bookstore. I highly recommend Tin House. High quality literature and at only $20 for an annual subscription (4 issues) it's an incredible deal.

The Pushcart Review.

I read the anthologies. I can make time to read those once a year or so. Usually they're pretty good if they're not self-concious modern fiction.

Am really curious about this:


Especially pictures like this:

Been meaning to read this for years.

Finally started it last night.

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is up for the on-going One Book, One Chicago reading series. So far, lurid stuff...boring commentarial notes in-between scenes from Miller. As far as I have gotten (35 year-old John Proctor getting propostioned by 16 year-old Abigail...high schools actually run this play????), I'm not terribly impressed.

Seems to me more important for its historical value than its actual enjoyability.

Wanna bet it's being requested by 35YO English teachers who've worn out their copies of "Don't Stand So Close To Me"?

finished this
i remember reading MacIntyre for an ethics class and it was rather interesting. but this book was rather bad. couldn't stand his approach to the subject. he crammed so many things into these 260 something pages. cut and paste, cut and paste. it was really hard to follow.

Listened to the book on tape. Awesome.

So, I'm still reading House of Leaves and this is the first time I've ever needed two bookmarks for one book. Crazy!

What about Choose Your Own Adventure Books.

Some might also find two bookmarks necessary for Pale Fire.

Great book. Been meaning to read House of Leaves.