43 posts tagged “books”
Of course if that did happen, they may have rethink the horizontal stripes. Not that I'm afraid of them! I No sir, not me! They wouldn't me blink once, but I'm just thinking about my stubby brothers-in-chunk. They can't carry that look like I can. I got the length to balance 'em out.
Having my illusions shattered, I needed something of a pick-me-up and Steve Hely's How Became a Famous Novelist is definitely that. It is like a hilarious how-to guide for any would-be writer who contemplated selling his soul to feed the public the pap that they're craving.
After receiving news about his ex-girlfriend's looming nuptials, the novel's protagonist decides to become a famous novelist in order to take the spotlight away from her and her manly Australian fiance on their big day. He comes up with a couple rules before cranking out his bestseller, The Tornado Ashes Club. I want to quote them all but here are a few that I especially liked:
Rule 5: Must include a club, secrets/mysterious missions, shy characters, characters whose lives are changed suddenly, surprising love affairs, women who've given up on love but turn out to be beautiful.
Rule 12: Give readers versions of themselves, infused with extra awesomeness.
Rule 10: Main character is miraculously liberated from a lousy job.Rule 6: Evoke confusing sadness at the end.
Reading
The narrator kind of reminds me of Joe Pitt from Huston's other books, just a little less hard-boiled but a bit of an ass just the same. Still it is an entertaining read and got to find out why he has an aversion to buses.
Listening to . . .
I discovered King Britt and Sister Gertrude Morgan through True Blood (whose music department is doing a heckuva of job this season.) This album is ambient dance music meets Sunday morning praise service. Even more entertaining are the unadorned version of these tunes of Sister Gertrude's Let's Make a Record, but this remixed version makes for good walking music.
Here's my favorite remixed track that I usually queue up when I got a hill trying to stare me down.
Seeing (and saw)
I saw LeAnn Rimes last week at the Wolf Trap. The weather wasn't as nightmarish and brutally humid as it was last year when I went there to see Donna Summer. It was a cool night full of cool music country-- and classical! She was performing with the National Symphony orchestra. I wasn't too excited about the pairing, but the tickets were free. However LeAnn and the NSO meshed pretty well and it was an entertaining night.She sounds just as good in person as she does on her recordings.
Saw Bruno. There a few laugh out loud moments, but it was a bit of a disappointment. On Da Ali G my favorite segments with Bruno were when he was taking the piss out of the fashion and entertainment industry. There some of that here but not enough. And I don't if exposing America's homophobia. It seems more like he's exposing people's (surprisingly high) threshold for dealing with bullshit. For example, I think I may have had a similar reaction that one hunter had when Bruno kept pestering him in the middle of the night and trying to get into his tent. It had little to do with the fact that Bruno's gay and more to do with the fact that he is an un relenting pest.
Both Bruno and Terminator: Salvation were disappointments. Here's hoping Harry Potter (seeing it tomorrow) doesn't disappoint.
Trying to Avoid
Flamin' Hot Funyuns! *drool* Damn you litterbugs! I wouldn't have known this existed, if someone gave a hoot and didn't pollute. I went walking around the lake and saw an empty bag of these along the path. Of course, I could've picked up the bag and searched for a trashcan, but didn't. I was too afraid that before I had the chance to find one. I would've ripped open the bag and licked out the crumbs.
(or 2nd, if you count his Star Trek appearance) and this it. I'm really eager to see a project with Tyler Perry's name attached to it.
Save for the end, where it got a little too talky, I really liked this book. Dark, brutal and violent, it's like the anti-Twilight. It centers on Joe Pitt, a vampyre that's chosen to walk his own path rather joining up with one of the many warring vampyre cliques that populate the Manhattan shadows. Already Dead and Twilight do have one thing in common. Like Bella and Edward, Joe and Evie, his lady love, have commited themselves to chasity (with a few work arounds here and there). Eve is reluctant to take it all the way because of her positive HIV status and Joe is reluctant, unbeknownst to Eve, because of the vyrus that's turned him into a vampyre. There are three more books in the series and I'm eager to read them all.
I've sort of quiet on the book front because having the digital reading has sort of changed my reading habits. I used to be one-book man who read one book at time and then moved onto the next. Now that ability to carry over hundred books around without installing a bookshelf on my back, I'm sort of all slutting it up. Hopping from book to book. Loving and leaving them until I'm ready for more. So here's a list of the few I'm reading now.
I picked these two up after my "event." While I was willing to accept the physical transformation, I wasn't quite ready for the spiritual transformation that usually goes along when one (especially in my family) experiences a life altering event. So I bought these two to keep my religious skepticism intact. Jesus Freaks is disturbing in its look at what "the voice of God" convinces people to do. The Good Book has given me a greater appreciation of the Bible and convinced to read it a bit myself, especially wacky stories like the one about the two sisters getting there father drunk and having there way with him.
Now that I've gone digital, I decided to clear up my bookshelf a bit and make space for the books that taken residence on the top of my chest and beneath my side table. I'm still debating whether I want the local librarian or second hand book buyer silently judging my taste in books(Patti Labelle's Lite Cuisine, hmm you sure you don't want to hold on to that one? ) After what I found in one of my books, I'm leaning more towards altruism. I was flipping through the pages of Capote and pondering whether watching to movies on his life was all I needed to know about him or did I need to read six-hundred pages about his life as well, when I found a piece of money folded in the pages. For a moment, I thought it was one of the autographed two-dollar bill that M. Emmitt Walsh handed out when he did "All My Sons" down at my old job. I'd lost mine and figured that I finally found it, but no. It wasn't Jefferson looking at me when I unfolded the bill. Not even Hamilton, which is the most I can imagine misplacing and not missing much. It was frigging Ben Franklin! A hundred dollar bill! *pause for another praise break/stroke. Halleju-- N'arm!* Now . . . once upon a time M and I, along with the rest of the country, were far more better than we are today, but I don't recall a time when loosing a hundred bucks wouldn't warrant tearing apart our apartment and a car to find. The Halcyon days weren't that damned golden. Of course, I was listening to the Talking Head's "Once in Lifetime" when I made the discovery. I guess that was Fate's way of saying, "Fucker, flip through Tennessee William's Memoirs all you want, that ain't happening again." Love you, Tru.
I woke up around noon on Friday. To hell with Black Friday. Every Friday is Black Friday. Well, if you want to look beyond the skin color, then it's every other Friday. Payday. Me wanting a bunch a stuff that priced pretty decently, but I can't afford anyway. So the only sale I hit this years was a preview sales at Borders on Wednesday. And my big gets were:
On sale for $19.99.
And:
There were a couple of others gets I shouldn't have got pockets journals, calenders, a Family Guy trivia game for a friend and Book number 19:
Haven't really listened to him since he left terrestrial radio, but I've always been a Howard Stern fan and love me some self-destructive Artie Lange.
In addition to being a preview sale, this was a going-out-of-business sale for my local Borders. So I think it's time for me to find my library card and see about a digital reader. I'm thinking about a Sony, since it's the cheapest and there's a about a three month wait for Amazon's Kindle.
