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Oct. 8th, 2005 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omnia_mutanturmail goes out today, postcards to three and cards to two. (i was going to say which ones, but that someone takes the fun out of it).
new book reviewing format, for no apparently reason.
76. Wordfreak by Steven Fatsis This book took me a long time to finish, but it has been accomplished. It's not a particularly diffcult to read book, it's also a book from which it is easy to wander away. the bottom line, competitive scrabble players are a) human and b) crazy. and the way the brain works is neat,and anagrams are fun.
77. Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This book made me a little crazy. It's about a woman, who is probably the last living thing on earth, and her relationship with the inside of her head. It's not about any one thing, it's stream-of-consciousness from a woman with a perpetually altering memory, and i think it might not be as clever as it thinks it is, but the idea of never having any idea which of my memories are true and which ones aren't, and no ability to fact check is more terrifying than the idea of being the last living things. (and if you've ever read this book and remember anything about the style at all, you should check out the amazon review for the book with the title "Wittgenstein's Ex"
78. ambulance girl by Jane Stern. It's not normally I'll pick up a book that's been made into a lifetime movie. but i was fooled by the fact she was a writer for gourmet, i thought it might be interesting. in the last twenty pages of the book, i actually begged the book, out loud, to not go where it looked like it was going. and it went there. and there was much anger on my part.
79. From Hardtack to Homefries by Barbara Haber. This was another one of those books with multiple copies at Raven, so I'm dying to know which class it would have been for. And I saw the author speak on the foodtv tribute to julia childs, and i'm fascinated by the idea of celebrity in the food world. (more fascinated by the idea of celebrity as it relates to Iron Chef America judges, but that's another story altogether). This was pretty densely informational, and I adore it. It's a series of essays by a woman who is the curator of books at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, which is sexy in and of itself, about how cookbooks can relate social histories. Some essays are more interesting than others, but my favorite was certainly "They Dieted for Our Sins: America's Food Reformers" and not just because Sylvester Graham comes from Northampton.
80. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It's pretty whee! though it wasn't as must-not-eat-until-finished-reading as American Gods. But he's still a brilliant, brilliant writer. I think I might just not have been in the mood for a novel that was this particular sort of funny.
81. The Scar by China Mieville. I've only read Perdito Street Station. I've read it a couple times, but that still doesn't make it count as more than one of his books. and now i've read this, and i've ordered another from half.com. Books that contain words I don't know, or words I only almost know but maybe don't so look up anyway, make me exceedingly happy. This had ten. (catafalques, euryhalinic, orthographies, eidolon, bituminous, phoneme, haemophagy, funicular, cacotopic, peristaltic.) (in my defense of my own pride, i guessed most of them right, but it was still exciting to have to look them up to be sure). normally i enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that finishing a book gives me, but in this case it was entirely replaced by sadness that it was over and i wouldn't get to keep reading it.
and i've got nineteen books to go in my goal, which i'm not sure i can finish, though simple math indicates that i've done it in the past. but i need reading-suggestions, I think, since I'm feeling a little stymied.
new book reviewing format, for no apparently reason.
76. Wordfreak by Steven Fatsis This book took me a long time to finish, but it has been accomplished. It's not a particularly diffcult to read book, it's also a book from which it is easy to wander away. the bottom line, competitive scrabble players are a) human and b) crazy. and the way the brain works is neat,and anagrams are fun.
77. Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson. This book made me a little crazy. It's about a woman, who is probably the last living thing on earth, and her relationship with the inside of her head. It's not about any one thing, it's stream-of-consciousness from a woman with a perpetually altering memory, and i think it might not be as clever as it thinks it is, but the idea of never having any idea which of my memories are true and which ones aren't, and no ability to fact check is more terrifying than the idea of being the last living things. (and if you've ever read this book and remember anything about the style at all, you should check out the amazon review for the book with the title "Wittgenstein's Ex"
78. ambulance girl by Jane Stern. It's not normally I'll pick up a book that's been made into a lifetime movie. but i was fooled by the fact she was a writer for gourmet, i thought it might be interesting. in the last twenty pages of the book, i actually begged the book, out loud, to not go where it looked like it was going. and it went there. and there was much anger on my part.
79. From Hardtack to Homefries by Barbara Haber. This was another one of those books with multiple copies at Raven, so I'm dying to know which class it would have been for. And I saw the author speak on the foodtv tribute to julia childs, and i'm fascinated by the idea of celebrity in the food world. (more fascinated by the idea of celebrity as it relates to Iron Chef America judges, but that's another story altogether). This was pretty densely informational, and I adore it. It's a series of essays by a woman who is the curator of books at Harvard University's Schlesinger Library, which is sexy in and of itself, about how cookbooks can relate social histories. Some essays are more interesting than others, but my favorite was certainly "They Dieted for Our Sins: America's Food Reformers" and not just because Sylvester Graham comes from Northampton.
80. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. It's pretty whee! though it wasn't as must-not-eat-until-finished-reading as American Gods. But he's still a brilliant, brilliant writer. I think I might just not have been in the mood for a novel that was this particular sort of funny.
81. The Scar by China Mieville. I've only read Perdito Street Station. I've read it a couple times, but that still doesn't make it count as more than one of his books. and now i've read this, and i've ordered another from half.com. Books that contain words I don't know, or words I only almost know but maybe don't so look up anyway, make me exceedingly happy. This had ten. (catafalques, euryhalinic, orthographies, eidolon, bituminous, phoneme, haemophagy, funicular, cacotopic, peristaltic.) (in my defense of my own pride, i guessed most of them right, but it was still exciting to have to look them up to be sure). normally i enjoy the feeling of accomplishment that finishing a book gives me, but in this case it was entirely replaced by sadness that it was over and i wouldn't get to keep reading it.
and i've got nineteen books to go in my goal, which i'm not sure i can finish, though simple math indicates that i've done it in the past. but i need reading-suggestions, I think, since I'm feeling a little stymied.
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no subject
Date: 2005-10-08 01:26 pm (UTC)what counts as a book for you?
no subject
Date: 2005-10-08 01:39 pm (UTC)really, if you've enjoyed it, at the very least, i'll be curious to read it and find out why you enjoyed it.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-08 03:21 pm (UTC)"Sorcery & Cecilia" by Wrede and Stevermer
"A College of Magics" by Caroline Stevermer (yes, same as above)
no subject
Date: 2005-10-08 10:05 pm (UTC)His neologisms from the Greek are probably less puzzling for you than for me ;-) Someday I'm gonna write my paper about how his use of language works with Freud's essay on the uncanny.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-09 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-12 01:11 pm (UTC)