Wow, I ran into the author that I wrote about below whose book I loved so much in my local natural food store today! I got excited in the way others might if they ran into Lady Gaga or Obama! I admit that I said nothing memorable or witty. I simply GUSHED! :D

Please Kill Me: The uncensored oral history of punk.
by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCaine

A gigantic book of short erotic fiction.

Currently reading "Start Where You Are" by Pema Chodron, which is a wonderful Buddhist text that benefits from having some background knowledge but is still very accessible if you don't know much about it. Highly recommended - it will enrich you and possibly change your life, whilst NOT being another vague self-help book.

I've always loved fiction, but I learn so much from non-fiction that I find I'm drawn to it more often :)

I'm on a Sookie Stackhouse spree- finished From Dead to Worse, now reading Dead and Gone. I haven't been a big fan of Charlaine Harris' writing- I've mostly stuck with the books because I like the HBO series so much (and things are so whacked out on THAT show right now I thought maybe the books might shed some light...but, um, no.). Anyway, I noticed the writing in From Dead to Worse, and the one after seemed better- the jokes were less forced and less corny, there were more cool pop culture references, and all the characters felt like they fit together a bit more seamlessly. I began to wonder if maybe From Dead to Worse was the first of the book series to be written after the HBO series began, and sure enough, yes...it was. It's almost like Charlaine Harris has seen now seen the edgier style of the show, and has adjusted her writing to match it. Interesting concept, really.

I also finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Fantastic book... validating, at least for this introvert. Lots of details of psychological studies, with a fair amount of neurobiology thrown in, as well as the author's personal anecdotes. If you've ever sat in class getting annoyed by the talkative students who aren't actually adding anything worthwhile to the class discussion, or if you'd like some pointers on how to maximize your own quiet strengths, this book is for you.

Next up: The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, As Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean.

Self Quoting Faux Pas
 

Ok, quoting my own, but who cares, right?

I'm tickled that the library just received a copy of Adrienne Rich's Dream of a Common Language! Heading to the library today to check it out before anyone else. How nerdy am I?

:glasses:

Wow, one of my favorite authors, David Rakoff, a gay humor/political writer (similar to the style of David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs) just died at age 47. I'm so very sad about this. I would not only read his writing but listen to him read it on the radio and on CDs. The death of an author we love is it's own grief, and a deep one at that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/bo....html?emc=eta1

some circus book..its about real magic. Its fiction. Its good. Its new.

I think science will eventually show what seems blatantly obvious to me anecdotally: ECT is cruel, inhumane, an abuse of power and barbaric. I haven't read the book however.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a gear in the pharma machine, essentially a white-collar factory worker. Many folks in the drug industry are excellent, well-intentioned, humane people and are dedicated to alleviating suffering in people and animals.

Many are merely profit-driven, un-ethical, un-regulated, un-supervised evil fucks, however. This also applies to those prescribing drugs, especially psychotropic ones or people who are in any position of power such as doctors, psychiatrists or pscyologists. Many of them get into the field to figure out what the hell is wrong with themselves or people in their families of origin. Sometimes, they seem to realize that they can use what they've learned to manipulate people, as well.

It's pretty common knowledge that doctors and medical staff are legally bribed by drug companies to prescribe and push drugs and that pharma has one of the hugest lobby systems around. Hell, they promote drugs on tv as if they were any other desirable consumer product, like shoes or cars or cell phones.

Sure, it is absurdly expensive to develop good drugs. For one drug, for one tiny part, of one arm of one stage of it's development, it could cost the drug company $40,000 per subject. That's even if the subject decides to drop out of the study part way through.

Total up the cost of development, the cost of advertisng and promotion, the cost of lobbying and the cost of paying for legal bribery and you see it is a complex industrial complex. Thus, we have drugs which indeed cost only .005 cents per pill to manufacture costing consumers $8 each.

Imo both drugs and ECT are way over-used and ECT should be banned outright.

I am currently revisiting one of my favorites, A Confederacy of Dunces by Johh Kennedy Toole. It is perfection.

My copy is falling apart I have had it for so long. Good choice and some great lines in there. "Only she who says she did not chose, is the loser in the end." Love it and enjoy the read.

Katniss

I just started "LZR-1143: Perspectives". It was a free Zombie novel thing download for the Kindle. I'm about halfway through it and the writing is terrible but I can see where it could have been really good. I think it's part of a series but, needless to say, I won't be reading the rest of the series.

Up next, "Ghosty Men: The Strange but True Story of the Collyer Brothers, New York's Greatest Hoarders, An Urban Historical"

why are all the book recommendations from this thread checked out from the library - whyyyyyy?

i'm in wait list purgatory

i was able to snatch up 1q84 by haruki murakami
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg
i'm only 6 chapters in but so far it's very promising

Last week to get a couple more books in before the big finale at the library.

How to be Lost
by Amanda Eyre Ward

Dream of a Common Language
by Adrienne Rich

“The longer I live the more I mistrust
theatricality, the false glamour cast
by performance, the more I know its poverty beside
the truths we are salvaging from
the splitting-open of our lives.

-from "Transcendental Etude”
― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

I was at Powell's Bookstore the other day and found a book that I think will prove useful to me.

I'm reading:

A Monk's Alphabet: Moments of Stillness in a Turning World
(Authored by poet, theologian and Benedictine Monk: Fr. Jeremy Driscoll)


It's a collection of 187 meditations.
I have already read a few of them since I bought the book
and can say that sometimes I find myself thinking about the
proposed subject of thought and find myself wondering in my
own mind: Asking myself if what I have read seems true or
if I have abandoned my own existential existence and considered
adopting a new realm of thought.

I like this book and I will keep it, too.

http://photo.goodreads.com/books/118...0l/1246045.jpg

the evolution of bruno littlemore: http://benjamin-hale.com/BHale/aboutbook.html

Only Revolutions: A Novel
by Mark Z. Danielewski


I loved House of Leaves, but I'm struggling not to abandon this one. I don't mind going down a rabbit hole, but I prefer to be dragged in or kicked from behind instead of just slowly being bogged down with pockets full of blather.
Sometimes less truly is more.

re-reading
 

Dry--Augusten Burroughs

Honeymoon with Harry by Bart Baker the movie will be out soon !!! It's a good read :) I highly recommend it !!!!!

I read it, loved it, and now I'm listening to the unabridged audio version of it read by Augusten. it's a powerful addiction memoir, mixed with dark humor, and I just love his voice.

I've just finished 'Wicked' by Gregory Maguire

and currently on my nightstand are the following selections:

Italo Calvino, 'Invisible Cities'
Sarah Waters, 'The Night Watch'
A.S. Byatt, 'The Matisse Stories'
Margaret Atwood, 'The Penelopiad'
Jane Hamilton, 'A Map of the World'
Jussi Adler-Olsen, 'The Keeper of Lost Causes'
Alice Hoffman, 'The Doverkeepers'
Carol Birch, 'Jamrach's Menagerie'

some in varying states of started, most accrued from my last trip to the Montague Bookmill ("Books you don't need in a place you can't find" is the tagline)

I'm not sure which to start/re-start next.

Started "Full Dark, No Stars" by Stephen King yesterday morning and just finished. It's classic King with all the creep factor. This one was hard because it was particularly violent in places but still had his famous "catharsis through adversity" thing.

Going to go ahead and get a few pages into "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression" by Andrew Solomon before I nod off.

I love Stephen King I will have to check that one out !!!! Thanks :)

In addition to A Monk's Alphabet (by Fr. Jeremy Driscoll), I came across some other books I had and thought I would read from them again (for pleasure).... I found:

Pilgrim At Tinker Creek (by Annie Dillard)

and

Zen and The Birds of Appetite (by Thomas Merton)

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the summer reading challenge at the library. I ended up winning a raffle of a couple books, and a Bath & Bodyworks gift card. So, now taking a break and giving my eyes a rest (ha - not!). :)

Reading one of the raffle prizes:
Death by Killer Mop Doll by Lois Winston

It's cheesy.

super interesting!
 

[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Whip-Smart-Memoir-Melissa-Febos/dp/0312561024"]Whip Smart: A Memoir[/ame]

Febos's candid, hard-slogging debut about her four years working as a dominatrix at a midtown Manhattan dungeon cuts a sharp line between prurience and feminist manifesto. Having grown up on Cape Cod, Mass., then dropped out of high school before moving to New York City and enrolling in the New School in the fall of 1999, Febos slipped into drug use and needed a way to finance it. An attractive law-school graduate neighbor in her Brooklyn apartment building mentioned that she worked as a domme, and Febos decided to give it a go. She spanked grown men, professionals, fathers, and rabbis, sometimes inserted enemas, sodomized them with dildos, and otherwise verbally humiliated them, all for $75 an hour, plus tips. At first, Febos managed the grueling, unsavory work while high on heroin and cocaine, and gained a tremendous sense of confidence, even invincibility at being able to justify her livelihood as one of the few well-paid acting gigs in this city. In time, she also became addicted to her job; she eventually joined AA to help get clean of drugs, but kicking her addiction to sadomasochism was harder, and in this emotionally stark, excoriating work, Febos mines the darkest, most troubling aspects of human interaction. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Congrat's to you Fancy for winning the reading prize award!


Soon, that book of yours is exactly something I would read:
Febos' journey into slaying her own person dragons is in itself
a courageous act, harrowingly fine tuned to her own complicity.


How excellent the good news is that friends bring! :)

*C h e e r s & Good Morning*

http://adsoftheworld.com/files/image...ffee-72dpi.jpg

It's Even Worse Than It Looks - How the American constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism.

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein


Going to need more zantac for this one.

Just wanted to leave another note here tonight:

I came across Gilbert King (author of: Devil in the Grove) a few months ago when headline news broke across America about Trayvon Martin - who was robbed of his life in a gated community in Florida.

I highly recommend this book and it is a book I am keeping in my growing archive on literature pertaining to Race, Power & Privilege.

For those of you who are interested:

Gilbert King maintains a blog (found here), supplies updates on his FB page and travels to university and college campuses to speak about racism in America and promote his book.

I bought his book this past spring when it became available for purchase out here on the west coast. His book has been reviewed by The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune - as well as authors such as Kevin Boyle, Wil Haygood and Ira Katznelson.

Here's an excerpt about the book, provided by Amazon.com:

Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg

The Castle -Franz Kafka
I don't recommend reading Kafka.... yet I do:|

Vanish - Tess Gerristen

Its part of the Rizzoli and Isles series (although started reading it before seeing the series). They usually follow the same formula but, it works and keeps me reading.

Oooooo. I didn't know there were books. I got into the tv show this summer. Cool.

School is back in session, and all pretense of reading anything even slightly demanding is gone.

Back to comfort food literature.

Currently, The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea.

It may be a bad sign that I am already reading children's literature.

I am very grateful for this forum thread and for all the people who share their reading materials here.

*Thank You*

I'm still working with all the recent materials I have listed and as well, I have been participating more in our community here. Thank You to members here who share about things in their life and your mindset too.

I learn so much from all of you and feel less lonely in life because of your efforts in our community.

-XXXX-

*treats for our book club readers *

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qZmWVY2mBJ...breakfast4.jpg