NVR - What are you reading right now? (Fiction or non-fiction)
Posted by Beans and Greens on May 12, 2007 · Member since Apr 2007 · 169 posts
I'm reading 'Raising Vegan Children in a Non-vegan World' by Erin Pavlina.
I'm curious what everyone else has their nose in at the moment! :)
The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury
Bradbury is the best short-story writer I've ever read.
Read Dandelion Wine. Not short stories as such but very good.
Currently I'm reading The Girl Who Played With Fire. I like it better than the first volume, which was sooo obviously written with a movie script in mind. Choppy editing and all.
I just wish my ebook would tell me what page I'm on of the total so I'd know how much is left. Not with this book, with all of them. I never did finish Isabella Bird because I didn't know how much more of it there was. If I'd known, for example, there were only 20 pages left or something, I might have slogged through it, but I couldn't take much more and it seemed to go on for eeeever. But I hate not finishing a book.
Shulamith Firestone "The Dialectic of Sex".
I agree with a lot of it, but the whole "men can't love, they fall in love with their own narcissism" really pissed me off. I love me some radical feminism, but I can't dig the man-hating, and this is the ONLY example of feminist writing (beyond the SCUM manifesto) that I have ever read that has been seriously anti-man. Don't know if I'll finish it or not.
The final volume in the Milennium trilogy. There's getting to be too much of it...his books could have been cut down, which is suprising for a journalist....and it's getting too darn involved. I will finish it just to see how he gets out of it. But it's starting to go on too long. I begin to think he had a TV series in mind, kind of like "Smiley's People."
I finally finished this. It was decidedly "meh." It seemed to have two endings, like he had finished it and then the editor or someone told him they wanted more. Not at all believable. By the end it was like I was reading a Modesty Blaise/James Bond comic. I only finished it to see how he got himself out of the mess. Disappointing.
Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook
I just finished The Lovely Bones. It was ok..but I thought the dialogue was a bit strange. Maybe it was just my ibook, but I had a hard time telling who was talking during a conversation. Despite the whole heaven thing, it wasn't too bad.
I just finished The Lovely Bones. It was ok..but I thought the dialogue was a bit strange. Maybe it was just my ibook, but I had a hard time telling who was talking during a conversation. Despite the whole heaven thing, it wasn't too bad.
It's not your Ibook, I read it in paper and had the same problem. Sometimes I'd have to count back and see who said what.
One thing I am getting tired of with Stieg Larsson's books is the constant product placement. Did he get paid by Macintosh to advertise their stuff? Or did he just copy the specs off the ads hoping he'd get offered some products?
Summer Crossing by Truman Capote
just finished Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. Am I crazy for not being impressed? I thought it was mildly entertaining, but I don't like stories that are all over a timeline. Disjointed pieces of stories.. I know lots of people love him, but I don't necessarily want to read another one of his books. Going to read Shutter Island next; really liked the movie.
I really like short stories, in part because I do my reading 40 minutes at a time on the train each day. I love David Sedaris, but to each her own.
Currently reading I Am A Cat, by Natsume Soskei. A novel that grew out of one short story. I like it because even though they all go together each chapter can be read as a unit.
Currently reading The Rainmaker by John Grisham
I like the movie and saw the book at a Goodwill so I purchased it. The book is good so far.
Catherine the Great, Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie
Don Quixote by Cervantes, The Lovely Bones, and several other books which I pick up here and there.
I've lived in Spain for 30 yrs and never managed to finish El Quijote. I admire your perseverance.
I'm finally reading Lord of the Rings! I've finished The Fellowship, and now I'm working on Two Towers.
Re-reading Anne of Green Gables and The Hobbit. Nothing like going back to some old comforting favorites.
Just now reading the Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, written by her son. That woman was amazing. She was studying Latin before age 12. I don't mean baby Latin. I mean she was reading Cicero in the original.
I'm wanting to re-read Bodies by (feminist) Susie Orbach. It's been a few years since I've read it but it was such a powerful book. Maybe I should wait until I start reading before I post here? Nahhh..
For those interested - here are some thoughts from Publishers Weekly:
Noted psychoanalyst and feminist thinker Orbach, author of The Impossibility of Sex, Fat is a Feminist Issue and once-counselor to Princess Diana, takes a critical look at the modern notion that "biology need no longer be destiny." Rather than liberating individuals, Orbach contends that this has only made the body another competitive realm for personal achievement: "The individual is now deemed accountable for his or her body and judged by it."
This "obsessive cultural focus" leads to a host of psychological problems, making "body anxiety" as fundamental a threat to the modern psyche as emotional anxiety (leading to self harm, obesity, anorexia, etc.). Body anxiety has also driven the beauty industry to become a $160 billion, fully-globalized industry with customers from the U.S., U.K. and other advanced sector economies traveling abroad for discount reconstruction (Nose jobs in Tehran, eye surgery in Asia).
Orbach provides a rich, nuanced context for the present moment, looking through time and across cultures at (among other topics) child rearing regimes, body-shaping techniques (tattoos, bound feet) and standard mechanical activities like walking. Orbach makes a powerful case that, because people today have been seduced by a one-size-fits all Western (celebrity) body image, we deprive ourselves-body, mind and soul-of the body's most simple pleasures and rewards, up to and including sexual intimacy.
I'm wanting to re-read Bodies by (feminist) Susie Orbach. It's been a few years since I've read it but it was such a powerful book. Maybe I should wait until I start reading before I post here? Nahhh..
For those interested - here are some thoughts from Publishers Weekly:
Noted psychoanalyst and feminist thinker Orbach, author of The Impossibility of Sex, Fat is a Feminist Issue and once-counselor to Princess Diana, takes a critical look at the modern notion that "biology need no longer be destiny." Rather than liberating individuals, Orbach contends that this has only made the body another competitive realm for personal achievement: "The individual is now deemed accountable for his or her body and judged by it."
This "obsessive cultural focus" leads to a host of psychological problems, making "body anxiety" as fundamental a threat to the modern psyche as emotional anxiety (leading to self harm, obesity, anorexia, etc.). Body anxiety has also driven the beauty industry to become a $160 billion, fully-globalized industry with customers from the U.S., U.K. and other advanced sector economies traveling abroad for discount reconstruction (Nose jobs in Tehran, eye surgery in Asia).
Orbach provides a rich, nuanced context for the present moment, looking through time and across cultures at (among other topics) child rearing regimes, body-shaping techniques (tattoos, bound feet) and standard mechanical activities like walking. Orbach makes a powerful case that, because people today have been seduced by a one-size-fits all Western (celebrity) body image, we deprive ourselves-body, mind and soul-of the body's most simple pleasures and rewards, up to and including sexual intimacy.
aww hell yes to all this.
I still haven't read this one. Clearly I need to.
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