The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
Hey, What Ya Reading??? A book???
Dagi:
--- Quote ---Here's some great summer reading: Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin.
It's sort of an epilogue to the six, very popular Tales of the City books that he wrote in the 70s and 80s. (The first three were turned into TV miniseries with Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney.) The original stories were written in old-fashioned serial form in the San Francisco Chronicle, one little chapter a day, later compiled into books. I have a beat-up legal file full of clippings that would become Further Tales of the City.
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I loved Michael Tolliver Lives, and the Tales of the City, too, read them one right after the other when I had to stay in bed because of premature labour and needed some light, amusing stuff.
The last book I finished was Maurice, a really great novel written by e. M. Forster many decades ago, about three gay/bi men in England 1914 and their coming to terms with their sexuality (one of the most beautiful love stories I´ve ever read).
Just now I´m reading the Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy, a real classic, and I love the dry humor of Douglas Adams.
I should definitely spend more time reading, and less in front of the computer ::).
Dagi
injest:
"To love without an echo is the death knell of the soul. Foolishly, the soulless body grows anyway, marches into the future without its nucleus, without its self, bonsaied by this echoless love."
Chosen by a Horse
Susan Richards
Kd5000:
I just finished a Japanese mystery set in 17th century Japan. It was called Red Chrysanthemum: A Thriller and was written by Laura Joh Rowland.
She's a good writer and definitely knows alot about Japanese history. Tokugawa Japan seems to have had alot of man to adolescent male sex based on her books! It's usually the villain who engages in this practice. I guess it was common in Tokugawa Japan.
I advise starting from the beginning as starting midway might be confusing. The major characters are the same throughout the books.
I've certainly learned alot about Japanese history from reading her books.
Anybody heard about the THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB movie. Does your bookgroup imitate the characters in Jane Austen novels. Sounds like an interesting concept for a movie ;)
delalluvia:
--- Quote from: injest on July 15, 2007, 10:59:10 am ---I like memoirs and stories of real events...
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Me, too. Ah, found the book about Custer. It's called Son of the Morning Star; Custer and the Little Bighorn. I strongly recommend this book. It's written in a style that I adore. It starts during the battle, then backtracks and sidetracks, telling little backstories about no-name soldiers who survived the peripheral battles but who had trouble later in life, died old and happy in Brooklyn, stories of the natives, their cultures, along with bits and pieces from Custer's life. It's a wonderfully entertaining read.
--- Quote --- By Michaelflanaganf - Being a librarian in the Bay Area I'm aware of a whole plethora of books that came out last year for the 100 year anniversary of the quake - one (which I haven't read) is '1906' by James Dalessandro.
One of my favorite books that takes place in this era in San Francisco is 'The Barbary plague : the Black Death in Victorian San Francisco' by Marilyn Chase. It's about the politics surrounding Bubonic Plague in San Francisco at the turn of the century - particularly regarding the racism towards the Chinese here. And there is a whole world of information about how San Francisco changed due to the plague - there was originally a poultry industry in the South of Market neighborhood that moved north. I was also interested that the endemic plague that exists in the Southwest originally came from this infestation in San Francisco.
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Crack in the Edge of the World is a bit drier than I prefer, but it still has a core of very interesting reading. My favorite little trivia tidbit is how Charles Richter – he of the Richter Scale – was a vegetarian and a nudist and – from all his writings – quite a playboy who had innumerable conquests and ‘varied’ sexual activities.
As a friend of mine said, “Ah, why we love Californians…”
Thanks for the recommendation of The Barbary Plague. Just my type of reading.
shortfiction:
I'm reading Bloodthirsty Bitches and Pious Pimps of Power by Gerry Spence, non-fiction.
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