myst

Reading "The Art of a Beautiful Game" by Chris Ballard. Not as good as the reviews made it sound.

Next up is "The Book of Basketball" by Bill Simmons

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D-Wade is worth the price of admission.

Coatesvillain

Great book that was a little rough around the edges. The parts about the Mom sorta dragged everything else down as it became more entrenched in reciting and retelling history than telling her story in the context of it.

My favorite parts were about the sister. She was easily the strongest character in it, and was so easy to relate to. I can't wait to see what Junot Diaz has next because I'm sure he'll be even more confident as a writer.

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They have muffin in common
Breakfast at Timothy's 1
Featuring: Cocaine 80's, The Internet, J*Davey, The Antlers, Ford & Lopatin, Fol Chen, ::M∆De::In::Heights::, SBTRKT.
Breakfast at Timothy's Archives
Slow Motion Animatronics

Coatesvillain

Now Reading:

Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

This is probably the oddest/funniest thing I've read all year. I don't even have a sure grasp of what's going on but when something happens I can't stop laughing. I've gotten the "crazy look" from people because of the laugh, but I can't help it.

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They have muffin in common
Breakfast at Timothy's 1
Featuring: Cocaine 80's, The Internet, J*Davey, The Antlers, Ford & Lopatin, Fol Chen, ::M∆De::In::Heights::, SBTRKT.
Breakfast at Timothy's Archives
Slow Motion Animatronics

Geaux Tigers

I agree that the parts about the mom were the slowest but I think they helped in clarifying why she was so rough and after seeing how big of a baby Oscar is you begin to soften your perspective on her because she is so tough. I think he could've done without the enormous footnotes. Including a little more historical detail within the narrative would've been a better way then breaking it up so many times.

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles

Hakeem

Yeah this sounds good. Ordered it.

Hakeem

This wasn't very good, apart from the Russell vs Wilt sections. Simmons makes the mistakes he always does, claiming that stats are meaningless while relying heavily on raw pts/rbd/ast numbers for his arguments, overemphasizing team success, and getting confused about whether in ranking players he's talking about how good they were (what he claims is the basis of comparison) or how they will be remembered (what, in his arguments, it mostly seems to be about).

Plus, many of the jokes are ripped off from his columns, but because he's trying to appeal to a wide base, he often has footnotes explaining the jokes, which kind of ruins the effect. Also, several of his takes are very predictable based on what he has said in his columns before.

And the writing is just bad. You feel he banged the pages out without reading over them again, the text rife with mistakes in spelling in grammar, bad syntax and factual errors.

Still enjoyable and interesting in parts, though. You have to give him credit for his passion and ambition, and at times his stuff is genuinely entertaining.

Cam*Ron

My business plan.

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That's The Story!!!

Make Money With Cam*Ron!!!

R-Star

Not a book.

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Geaux Tigers

I read:

Wise Blood by Flannery O'connor and didn't like it at all.

The Unvanquished by William Faulkner and liked it alright.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy and liked it the most but still miles away from CM's best work. Lester Ballard is one seriously freaky character though. Second to Judge Holden in Blood Meridian on the CM creepy scale.

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles

R-Star

Have you read All the Pretty Horses? I couldn't get into it.

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R-Star

Between the Assassinations - by Aravind Adiga - Picked it up since I loved White Tiger so much. I highly expect this to fail my expectations though.

Ender in Exile - Orson Scott Card - Read Enders Game half a year ago and loved it. I'll get to this after Between the Assassinations, I hope it grips me like Enders game did.

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Geaux Tigers

I read it and I enjoyed it. It's an a-typical McCarthy novel as there is very little violence and very little of the typical Southern Gothic themes of the grotesque. I suggest reading one of his works set in Appalachia. Those novels are much more what I would call classic McCarthy. Aside from Blood Meridian his border novels all lack a little something for me.

Child of God is a very short read. I read it in one day so it isn't much of a commitment either. I will probably start on Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy sometime in the next few days.

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles

Hakeem

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.

Fantasy novel written in the '40s, it's the first in the Gormenghast trilogy. It's about several people who live in a giant castle in something like medieval times (is all fantasy medieval?), in a strict heirarchical society obsessed with adhering to arcane rules and performing senseless rituals.

I'd never read fantasy before, and didn't think much of the genre. But this is seriously good, with characters that are bizarre almost to the point of caricature yet somehow very real and believable. The pace is slow and parts of it are painfully dated, but the writing is beautiful. Really a staggering work of imagination and technical brilliance.

Tom

Plague of the Dead The Morningstar Strain

They on to Mr. Shivers.

Geaux Tigers

I literally said "Now let's see which creepy zombie **** Tom is reading now" before entering this thread.

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"Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana."

"As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite."

"If we're defending, come see the trophy, it's in our trophy case. We're not defending it; it's there."

- Les Miles