06.15.05
Posted in Books at 5:51 am by Beau
For the past few weeks I’d been hearing about THE summer book to read. It had something to do with vampires but wasn’t an Anne Rice book (emphatically underscored and italicized every time the word ‘vampire’ was used, as if she has a trademark on vampire stories). Of course when I got to San Francisco and actually needed something fun to read, I couldn’t remember the name of the book but how hard could finding THE summer read of the season be? Especially about vampires (and not an Anne Rice book).
Hard, it seems. I had a vague recollection that the book was called “Haunted” however that search only brought up Chuck Palahniuk’s new tome which was not what I was looking for (I’d read a review that cited a bit he wrote concerning a boy in a pool using a vacuum hose rectally and then something, blah, blah, blah…not a good summer read, I thought). So I went to B&N close to the hotel and asked a few of the clerks, using words like, “THE summer read this year, vampires, female author (not Anne Rice), getting good reviews” and yet all I got was blank stares and no help. I Googled those words too and still got nothing and started to believe perhaps I’d just made it up and was actually hearing my subconscious telling ME that I needed to write a great vampire story that would become THE summer read for the season making me the new Anne Rice for the vampire masses. Unfortunately I don’t have one original idea for vampires that hasn’t been done to death (or undeath for those punny punsters out there) so that isn’t a great place to start.
Luckily for me, when all seems lost, insomnia strikes as it did this morning (hello 3am, so good to see you again and so soon) and with nothing better to do then troll around looking at bear porn and reading blogs, I finally found the book I was looking for. At Amazon.com, after two fucking clicks which proves that just going to Amazon.com first solves everything, book-related or not. Of course now that my new term at school has started (Information Systems for Management if anyone is interested) my fun reading days are over until the end of July but still, it’s nice to know I wasn’t making any of it up. The book is called “The Historian” and it’s not by Anne Rice.
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05.26.05
Posted in Books at 10:35 pm by Beau
Bonnie got me with the book meme. And she’s right: I have all kinds of time for this so here goes:
1. How many books have you owned in your life?
I’ve never really counted but I’m sure I have somewhere in the neighborhood of several hundred…probably closer to five hundred. All my selves are overflowing now.
2.& 3. What’s the last book that you bought and read?
I’m putting these together because I read the last one I bought. “Lives of the Popes”. Cliche and obvious, I know, but I was caught up in all the Pope-la these past few months and wanted to know more about them. I’m really looking for the book about all the bad, evil Popes now.
4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
All time favorite book is “Virgin Suicides”. Then I break out into Antrim’s “Hundred Brothers”, Hoffman’s “Practical Magic”, King’s “The Green Mile”, and Lamott’s “Traveling Mercies”.
5. I’m going to save the tags up and redeem them for inappropriate naked blogger pictures.
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10.07.04
Posted in Books at 7:28 am by Beau
Anyone who knows anything about me knows I get totally hard for Augusten Burroughs, author of “Running With Scissors”, “Dry”, and his new memoir, “Magical Thinking”. A good friend actually accosted him at a publishing convention last spring and got an autographed early copy of “Magical Thinking” for me along with a CD of him reading the book. It’s on the shelf next to my bear porn and is interchangeable, for all intents and purposes. My questions to my friend about meeting Ausgusten were never about his writing or that nonsense but always about how he looked and acted. He is the embodiment of the word “humpy” and “snack” and while I’m not into breaking relationships up, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish Augusten’s partner, also humpy and snacky by the way, would go the way of the Dodo. I’m that shallow and jealous. Augusten just makes being mad crazy so fucking sexy. It’s definitely his slant and it’s working just fine for me.
Which is why, since I’ve known he was having a reading and signing in New York last night, I’ve been planning on attending. I didn’t need the autograph and I know what he sounds like reading his stories, but I did want to go and just be that pathetic voyeur. I wanted to watch him and imagine I’m his best friend and I’m the one he calls to bitch and complain. I have room for some fun, humpy best friends like that. That’s why I’m such a doofus to let something like my statistics class best me and keep me from going, preferring to continue my strive for excellence and finish my article analysis paper on profiling the distance learning MBA student. Bo-RING. I missed Augusten for a fucking paper? A paper about nothing? That’s totally, totally wrong.
My only consolation is that in the real world, I’m deathly sure Augusten and I wouldn’t mix. He’s who he is and I who I am and in my mind’s eye, those to worlds don’t seem to intertwine. I have a much better sense of someday becoming good friends with Oprah than I do with Augusten, strange as that sounds. So I’m fine with using him as pornographic fodder and damp daydreams and will maybe catch him on his next tour for the next book. Who knows.
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09.25.03
Posted in Books at 2:03 pm by Beau
Best Book Read in a Long Time: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Accessible, well-written dips into all things science from astronomy, physics, ecology, biology, evolution, and everything in between. But the thing that makes this book SO great is all the great back stories about the scientists making the discoveries. It’s encouraging to know that in most instances, scientists and science in general is all based on assumptions and theories which will ultimately be proved wrong when the next smarter person comes along with new ideas and theories. And the stories about those scientists are hilarious. Really, it’s surprising that a book about such dry stuff can be so engaging. Definitely worth a read.
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05.22.03
Posted in Books at 2:00 pm by Beau
Here’s the skinny about me and the almost obsession with Jordan’s Wheel of Time series: I not only own every one of the ten volumes in hardcover, I also own every one of the available titles, nine right now, in paperback. And not only do I own them in paperback, I own double copies of the first three volumes. The hardcovers sit on the main book shelf with all my Edding’s volumes, King titles, and the other assorted books I like to stare at when I can’t look at the computer screen any longer. The paperback versions are kept in the attic until the yearly reading begins and then I haul them out and store them in a pile on the floor until the reading is done. When I’m at home, I read the hardcovers and when I’m mobile, the paperbacks go with me. I had started the yearly read before I went home to care for Mom but when I got there and finally realized my short trip was going to be a long stay, it was simply easier to go out and buy new paperback copies of a few titles rather then send for them.
Jeff, who really hates how many books I buy and collect, was not aware until I moved back to Bashert that I’d bought new copies and now had doubles. He couldn’t even get his mind around it and I was left alone.
The plus side to buying duplicates for those particular paperbacks was not completely lost on me. I sort of stalled on Book 4, The Shadow Rises, when Mom started getting oogy and the constant spine-cracking and page-flipping when I wasn’t really reading took it’s toll. These huge 800+ page books normally come unglued and split but this one just simple came apart into three solid chunks and page 78 just came off all alone. Then the cover ripped and fell off. So for the last two and a half months, I’ve been carting the whole of the book around, bound up by wide, dirty rubber bands. The whole thing, not just the section I was reading which doesn’t make sense to me other than I’m the kind of person who would collect the hardcover and paperback versions of the same title so I’m going to read a whole book, cover and all, even if it has to be held together with duct tape and ka-ka.
It’s all moot now though, since I finally finished that fucking, God-forsaken door-jamb of a book last night and have moved into Book 5: The Fires of Heaven in which I’ll be enjoying 956 pages of the Lucifer-like Evil One slow-roasting the world in all it’s sweating, drought-inducing fever. Not exactly the timing I’d like going into a summer that promises to be as hot and humid as living on the sun, but if I don’t get through all these so I can finally read the tenth book which came out in January of this year, I’m going to poke my eyes out with a dirty stick.
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