Last Book That You Read- Fiction

The uncut edition is great. Bought it for my dad for his birthday this year as he's a big Heinlein fan.

What I wouldn't pay to see STRANGER adapted into a screenplay. Harms?

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I would be delighted if we chose STRANGER as a bookclub selection as a follow-up to LANCELOT. I'm eager to read it.

http://grokking.tribe.net/thread/834e7077-83e8-4ca0-80ef-1d5a004ce659

A post from several years back... I remembered Hanks' longtime interest, but didn't know about Connery's rumored involvement. Daniel Waters is unusual enough to have maybe done some good things with it.

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Why ever not? Nobody's offended by all those men discovering their inner sluts, giving women the same chance would only be fair IMO.

It would have to be an independent production.

Alright. Finally done with DANIEL MARTIN, which was a bit on the long side, but had its fine moments.

I tried reading CARTE BLANCHE, but it didn't grab me. So I'm guessing the next book I read will be one of these few, depending on which one I take of the shelf today: THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr, AMERIKA by Franz Kafka, MONSIGNOR QUIXOTE by Graham Greene, or THE ROCK GARDEN by Nikos Kazantazakis.

Snuff - Sir Terry Pratchett

Re-reading AMERICAN PSYCHO (by Bret Easton Ellis, in case anyone doesn't know) for the first time in twenty years. Is it a museum piece? An embarrassing relic of 1991? Well, no - indeed, it seems surprisingly topical what with the current loathing of greedy bankers, combined with the world's continued depressing fixation on celebrities and bling. It's also still shocking, funny and, above all, brilliantly written. It's perhaps a bit repetitive (although that is, of course, the whole idea) and thus overextended, but it still packs one heck of a punch.

What do you think of the film, Loomster?

I saw it at the cinema when it came out. Do you rate it? From memory, I didn't care for it much. I probably thought it was sorta okay, but definitely nothing more. The book certainly seems overwhelmingly the only way of getting the proper Patrick Bateman experience - it's not like SILENCE or HANNIBAL where you have to pause and think for quite a while about whether the book is superior to the film or vice versa.

Loomis wrote:

Do you rate it?

Not particularly, though I know many folks who do.

ATLAS SHRUGGED

Finally finished it off today. Very interesting premise, very timely...very thought provoking...but entirely too long by half. Book is needlessly wordy, with every action, thought and feeling described in excruciating detail.

Still, after having read it it will now be hard to resist answering people with "Who Is John Galt?" It's like a secret signal among people who have seen the light or taken the red pill.

Loomis wrote:

I saw it at the cinema when it came out. Do you rate it? From memory, I didn't care for it much. I probably thought it was sorta okay, but definitely nothing more. The book certainly seems overwhelmingly the only way of getting the proper Patrick Bateman experience - it's not like SILENCE or HANNIBAL where you have to pause and think for quite a while about whether the book is superior to the film or vice versa.

The funniest part (of many funny parts in the film) was Bateman playing music. He explains at length to one of his prospective victims, how he prefers highly-commercial, 80's Phil Collins, Genesis to the classic 70's Peter Gabriel, Genesis. Figures. The shallow, soulless bastard.

I'm reading Phillip Kerr's THE GRID again (also known as The Gridiron in the U.K.). I read it in 2004. It's one of those books that's too good to read just once. It's dumb fun, as the computerized, ultra-modern, ultra-futuristic skyscraper know as The Grid, starts killing off the inhabitants of the building one by one in ever-increasingly vicious, and inventive, ways. Whether it's killing someone in a locked bathroom by overflowing the sinks and the toilets, or starving a character of oxygen because it dared to light up a cigarette, it's hard to not have a good laugh and a smile when reading this novel about a building's state-of-the-art, self-learning computer system that learns the habits of its inhabitants all too well.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE by Barack Obama. There's so much fence-setting in this one that It's often hard to tell where the man stands (then again, he also often comes across as more of a natural conservative than a liberal). Unsurprisingly, this book comes off as an attempt to be all things to all men, but it is undeniably brilliantly-written, thought-provoking and utterly absorbing - as much a spiritual and intellectual journey as a "political" book. The President can certainly write.

He can talk the talk, but he can't walk the walk.

Sharky wrote:

He can talk the talk, but he can't walk the walk.

Correction: He can talk the talk, but the Republicans will die first before allowing him to walk the walk. ;)

Obama is America's own Tony Blair. A charismatic snake oil salesman.

Loomis wrote:

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE by Barack Obama. There's so much fence-setting in this one that It's often hard to tell where the man stands (then again, he also often comes across as more of a natural conservative than a liberal). Unsurprisingly, this book comes off as an attempt to be all things to all men, but it is undeniably brilliantly-written, thought-provoking and utterly absorbing - as much a spiritual and intellectual journey as a "political" book. The President can certainly write.

Back at Christmas of 2006, one of my cousins was telling me about Barack Obama. She was 18 at the time, and I had already heard of him....I mean, I knew of him, and she was telling me that she was doing a college paper on Obama....so I asked her what was it about him that everyone was so impressed by. I hadn't really paid any attention to him at all up to that point. I knew he'd taken over, I think, for Congressman Ryan out of Illinois at that point.....I knew he'd given a speech at the Democratic National Convention back in 2004...I think by that point he may have already been in the U.S. Senate or was about to go in....I'd heard of his books...knew he'd been on Oprah...but just hadn't paid any attention.

So I asked her what was everyone talking about...what made Barack Obama so special and great. It was a legitimate question...there was no agenda. I really wanted to know what it was about him that everyone was responding to. Well, she couldn't really explain to me why she liked him, or what he stood for, or what he'd accomplished. She just kept talking about how he inspired her. How? Why? So I asked again. This was over dinner at The Cheesecake Factory with a bunch of other people. Well, she started to get frustrated at me, or herself, or the questions, and I looked up at her mother and her mother just sort of shook her head slightly at me, as if saying 'You really don't want to go there.', and then my cousin started getting all teary eyed and emotional and then started crying, and it was right then that I knew that I was dealing with something about Obama and/or his admirers (at least one of them) that wasn't quite right.; I guess she thought that I was mocking him or attempting to humiliate her, and at that point I just let it go and didn't pursue the questions any further.

But 2 years later I would come to understand her reaction when I watched the way millions of people gave themselves over to an emotional response to Barack Obama as he campaigned for President. I can't say he ever inspired me or moved me, and I'm already more sick to death of him at 3 years into his presidency than I ever was of George W. Bush or Bill Clinton at the same stage of their time in office, but I at least understood that my cousin's response to Obama was not singular. She was not alone. She wasn't the only person who dropped all pretense of objectivity and logic and rationality and simply gave herself over to a feeling.

My opinion of Obama then and now has largely remain unchanged: he was a construct...an idea...a movement......people projected on to him their own thoughts and feelings. One writer said Barack Obama was "sort of a god", and another remarked that becoming President was a "step down" for Barack. I remember one magazine had a cover of Obama ripping open his shirt to reveal a Superman costume underneath. The fawning, ass-kissing, deification of Barack Obama crossed over from admiration to scary cult worship. As reality has since hit the fan, some of that luster has finally come off, and a lot of people are beginning to understand that he's hardly different from all the other politicians, so expect 2012 to be the Mother of All Dirty Campaigns. Plenty of mud-slinging, negativity, ballot-stuffing, get-out-the-dead-voters, scare-tactic political shenanigans coming from both sides, and we'll all see that Barack Obama isn't above getting his hands dirty to engage in some good, old-fashioned class warfare rhetoric and hate-mongering.

Sharky wrote:

Obama is America's own Tony Blair. A charismatic snake oil salesman.

At least he's a much better writer than Blair. I was looking at Blair's autobiography the other day. The prose is simply horrible.

Did Obama actually write his memoir? Or was it ghostwritten, as the majority of these things are?

Yeah. Even Stravinsky's was.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if it was sourced to the same guys who did his speeches.