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