Topic: Reader's Nook

[Autumn]

How is it that everybody else's days are far longer than mine?

You do too much.

[goldshirt*9]

We live in a Time Warp , with a jump to the left

[6pairsofshoes]

chrisT.  you are so naughty, even though that's true.

My day, yesterday, sucked.  I was not feeling well.  Ate lunch, fell asleep and kept sleeping, when I woke up I felt bad and had chills.  This bummed me out to no end as I had so much to do and got nearly nothing accomplished.  The ringing in my ears suggests it was some kind of a bug and I have a little remaining.  I slept unusually late today, too.  It's weird. 

I'm reading Rupa Gulab's Girl Alone (Penguin Books).  It's a coming of age novel by a young Indian woman and is filled with stories of romance, failed prospects, and job experiences in the ad industry.  It's fluff, really.  I have no idea how it came into my possession.  Somebody may have put it out on the sidewalk (as is common around here) in a box.  I get a great number of free books that way, and I pick up stuff that looks interesting.  This book's price tag on the back says that it cost 225 Rupees.  That's amazing.  It traveled all the way from India to my home in the states.  I read it before I go to sleep at night and it's sort of a quiet way to relax.  I would not recommend it except for youngish women, its intended audience.  It's got a sort of Sex and the City vibe.

[smokester]

Don't fret, dear, size isn't everything.

Thanks, I needed that.

On topic: I actually bought Lamb after you'd mentioned it (it looked right up my street) and I plan to read it very soon.  But don't quote me..

[tarascon]

Re-read some Lovecraft last week and am now reading China Mieville's Embassytown.

[ohcheap1]

Don't fret, dear, size isn't everything.

chrisT.  you are so naughty, even though that's true.

Besides the fact that six communicates and christ posts you guys should be pals if ever you meet. Bring your spouses, theyll have alot to talk about. Ha!!

[Nobby]

Currently on:
Warm Bodies = Isaac Marion

Then will follow with:
We Need to Talk About Kevin = Lionel Shriver

[Beatrix]

I have a bet that "We need to talk about Kevin" is a good read.

[tarascon]

I have a bet that "We need to talk about Kevin" is a good read.

It is. But not a happy sort of novel.

I'd like to say more about China Mieville...
Embassytown is a well-written, thoughtful book. I'm having great fun with it so far... it's about a human colony on an alien planet which functions as an embassy for ET. The main ET's are a race (Ariekei) who--even more than other sentient species--think in metaphors and similes and for whom all other language is merely noise; even those humans who are adept at "speaking" Ariekan have a difficult time making the Ariekei hear them as the content is not in the language itself but in the conscious intent behind the language. I can't imagine what someone who's not familiar with the thinking about language and meaning since Saussure (a linguist and semiotician) will make of this novel. I find it challenging and the novel demands a close read.
Mieville is an author who began with straightforward fantasy/science fiction and has developed into a writer who's doing a neat job of approaching the social, gender oriented story-telling of Samuel Delany & Ursula LeGuin. In The City & The City, Mieville crossed genres by writing a police procedural about an urban space composed of two separate cities which occupy the same space but not the same area. Our hero has a gruesome murder to solve. The cities are entirely two different cultural and social spheres and the citizens--though perhaps only feet apart--do not "see" each other. To do so is an social error... even a crime. In this case the map is not equal to the territory.
Mieville is doing what the best science fiction has always done which is to make us think about our own (Western) culture. I look forward to what this author has to bring us in the future.

[6pairsofshoes]

I've got a copy of Perdido Street Station.  Do you have an opinion on that--is it worth reading?   I'm unfamiliar with this author.

Happily, I got rid of Girl Alone last night.  It wasn't a good book, but it was such a fast read that inertia got me through it before I was annoyed enough to put it down.

Next:  return to Merleau-Ponty and the Cogito chapter of Phenomenology of Perception.  This book is like calasthenics for your brain.  It was one of two PhD dissertations he wrote back in 1945.  I feel like a drooling idiot compared to people like that who think so deeply about the nature of the world.  If only I had that kind of sustained and disciplined ability to analyze things...

[tarascon]

I've got a copy of Perdido Street Station.  Do you have an opinion on that--is it worth reading?   I'm unfamiliar with this author.

Next:  return to Merleau-Ponty and the Cogito chapter of Phenomenology of Perception.  This book is like calasthenics for your brain.  It was one of two PhD dissertations he wrote back in 1945.  I feel like a drooling idiot compared to people like that who think so deeply about the nature of the world.  If only I had that kind of sustained and disciplined ability to analyze things...

I read that a few years ago and enjoyed it. It's fairly straight stuff compared to his latest.
And, as you know, I read a lot of Merleau-Ponty (and pro/con critiques about him) and, of course, his magnum opus Phenomenology of Perception.

[Nobby]

That's a Star Trek : Next Gen reference
for anybody who did not know 

I thought of that also 

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darmok_%28episode%29

[tarascon]

^ That's the Star Trek episode, right? Yeah, I did think of that--it's one of my favorite Next Generation episodes.

I should add that my saying how I'd read Merleau-Ponty above was not a gratuitous atta boy to me. I neglected to mention that, in the same way Embassytown is about semiotics, The City & The City is about perception and how we are taught to process what we see (or do not see). The way we perceive the world around us is a learned response and not only a function of biology. Mieville plays with that concept and extrapolates upon it.

[ohcheap1]

I have a bet that "We need to talk about Kevin" is a good read.

The movie was INCREDIBLE  so the book most likely adds several stars to that.

[tarascon]

The movie was good and--for me--more engaging than the book was, actually. To explain why would be a spoiler for folks, so... let's just say that the suspension of disbelief was not possible for me.