For those looking for a good read.

[treysolid]

BTW, I highly recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  It's by Michael Chabon.  I was looking for The Yiddish Policeman's Union but couldn't find it.  Maybe next time.

[ChiComCat]

BTW, I highly recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  It's by Michael Chabon.  I was looking for The Yiddish Policeman's Union but couldn't find it.  Maybe next time.

That guy had some stories on This American Life awhile back.  Very funny

[steve dave]

http://www.kickasstorrents.com/kindle-books-collection-t4866963.html

[Cire]

I despise reading books.

[Stevesie60]

Everything is Illuminated was pretty good, but I really think the second book by Jonathan Safran Foer was the tits.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  rough ridin' incredible.

This. Last summer I found EL&IC online for $3 each, so I bought 5 copies just so I could always be lending it out to people. It's the best book I've ever read, and it's not even close.

[Trim]

goEMAW.com

[sys]

I was looking for The Yiddish Policeman's Union but couldn't find it.

read it.  bored the eff out of me.

[turns_cats_trashy]

goEMAW.com

Another free read on the nook 

[steve dave]

Everything is Illuminated was pretty good, but I really think the second book by Jonathan Safran Foer was the tits.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  rough ridin' incredible.

This. Last summer I found EL&IC online for $3 each, so I bought 5 copies just so I could always be lending it out to people. It's the best book I've ever read, and it's not even close.

They both sound like pieces of crap

Harry Siegel, writing in the New York Press, described Everything is Illuminated as:

an admixture of shtick and sentiment, the most self-involved work about the Holocaust since Maus, with all the gravitas of Robin Williams' Jakob the Liar. I understand how a young man could write such a book, but not why he would have it published, and certainly not how it could be acclaimed as marking the arrival of a major new talent. [2].
In a Huffington Post article entitled "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers", Anis Shivani sees the work as "harmless multiculturalism for the perennially bored" and claims that "a more pretentious 'magical realist' novel was never written."[3] A reviewer from The Prague Post laments that the book misrepresents the history of Jews in Ukraine and that the factual history of the massacre at Trochenbrod "...stands in a sharp contrast to claims made in the book." [4]

Critical response towards Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been generally less positive than for Foer's first novel; John Updike, writing for The New Yorker, found the second novel to be: "thinner, overextended, and sentimentally watery", stating that "the book’s hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its verbal drama"[1]. In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani claimed that:

While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard.[2]
Kakutani also stated the book was "cloying" and identified the unsympathetic main character as a major issue. Harry Siegel, writing in the New York Press bluntly titled his review of the book "Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False: Why the author of Everything Is Illuminated is a fraud and a hack," seeing Foer as an opportunist taking advantage of 9/11 "to make things important, to get paid"[3]. Anis Shivani made similar claims in a Huffington Post article entitled "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers", wherein he claims that Foer "Rode the 9/11-novel gravy train with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, giving us a nine-year-old with the brain of a--twenty-eight-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer"[4].

[Poster formerly known as jthutch]

I have been reading about a book a night most of them from the magic school bus series.  They are not bad anyone else read these? Sometimes I let my son read them to me.

[SkinnyBenny]

They both sound like pieces of crap

wrong

John Updike, writing for The New Yorker, found the second novel to be: "thinner, overextended, and sentimentally watery", stating that "the book’s hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its verbal drama"[1].

wrong

In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani claimed that:

While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard.[2]

wrong

[Stevesie60]

They both sound like pieces of crap

wrong

John Updike, writing for The New Yorker, found the second novel to be: "thinner, overextended, and sentimentally watery", stating that "the book’s hyperactive visual surface covers up a certain hollow monotony in its verbal drama"[1].

wrong

In a New York Times review Michiko Kakutani claimed that:

While it contains moments of shattering emotion and stunning virtuosity that attest to Mr. Foer's myriad gifts as a writer, the novel as a whole feels simultaneously contrived and improvisatory, schematic and haphazard.[2]

wrong

Yeah, more like John Up-DYKE.  AMIRITE!?!?

[CHONGS]

just got done with snow crash, pretty damn entertaining.  now reading lucky jim.

[chum1]

This is the funniest thing I've read in quite a while.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/01/v-fullstory/1992746/dave-barrys-2010-year-in-review.html

[06wildcat]

I highly recommend James Clavell's Asian saga if you want to just buy six books and be good for a year. Also helps to keep a piece of paper and a pen handy if you have trouble remembering the characters and their different relationships.

Christ.  That does not sound fun to me.  Is the rough ridin' story any good?  Samauri's graphically killing dudes and stuff?    Just trying to figure out the valuee add, here.

It's just a warning to dumbasses who can't remember crap. The stories are excellent and usually have between 40-70 characters with 10-15 main characters in each. The six books take place from feudal Japan through the mid-20th Century and, with the exception of two, revolve around a British trading company and its interactions in Asia (mainly Japan).

The real problem is that some ancestors of the minor characters pop up in later books so unless you have a really good memory you miss the connections. Not relevant to any of the stories, just an added bonus.

Clavell also wrote the screenplay for "The Great Escape" FWIW.

[DQ12]

Motion to make this the official book thread.

Went to Barnes and Noble today.  Got an LSAT prep book, "The Picture of Dorian Grey," "Paradise Lost" and "The Jungle." 

Loved the first second half on The Jungle. Then it was all about politics. I'm getting ready to start "All the King's Men" or "Sometimes a Great Notion". Very excited.

fyp.

Just finished it.  Really enjoyed the book in its entirety.  The whole thing is pretty gut wrenching and entertaining especially when you consider the historical context. The last forty pages were basically socialist propaganda, but I kind of got a kick out of it.  Totally would have been a socialist if I were a meat packer at the turn of the century.
 

[Stevesie60]

Motion to make this the official book thread.

Went to Barnes and Noble today.  Got an LSAT prep book, "The Picture of Dorian Grey," "Paradise Lost" and "The Jungle." 

Loved the first second half on The Jungle. Then it was all about politics. I'm getting ready to start "All the King's Men" or "Sometimes a Great Notion". Very excited.

fyp.

You should definitely read "All The King's Men" if you want a political read.