Is there any good literature out there, nonfiction especially, that extols the virtues of The Natural State? I find that I don't know what the real Arkansas is, that I don't even know much about a caricatured Arkansas.

Well, if you don't subscribe to the Oxford American, you need to. It has quite a few literary articles about Arkansas. Donald Harrington is good. Miller Williams for poets. Myra McClarey is a pretty good southern woman writer.

I don't know if I'd want to read something that in depth about it, but I read Travesties by Tom Stoppard which includes Tzara, Lenin and Joyce as characters. It was good.

Now Reading The Shining by Stephen King

That's hilarious, given that I've presented about post humanism at a conference.

Here are a few i read over the summer...

One Very Hot Day: David Halberstam - its a 'fictional' account of one platoons mission in Vietnam. But its basically a compilation of different true situations that Halberstam witnessed while covering the war. Very, very good, my first read from the guy & its no wonder that he's held in such high esteem.

Natchez on the Mississippi: Harnett Kane - a history of a true 'Crossroads of the South' in Louisiana. A very detailed account of the towns history & its impact on history. Must've been a fascinating place to live, Spanish, French, Native Americans, Quakers, slaves all melting together.

Harvey Keitel, The Art of Darkness: Marshall Fine - a bio of one of the grittiest actors to ever live. As one blurb states, 'Keitel is not so much someone who's haunted by his inner demons, as actively in pursuit of them'. A real immigrant success story, parents were Polish Jews who moved here with nothing, he struggled in school, often in trouble... directionless. Joins the Marines & eventually finds his calling in acting. A real American success story.

Coming Apart, an informal history of America in the 60's: William O'Neal - This books been done a million times, but not as good as this. Big book that really dives into the details & tries to make sense of it all. A great read if you're doing research on the times.

The Power & The Glory: Graham Greene - No wonder this guy is hailed as maybe the greatest American writer by so many. Its fiction about a mysterious priest in 1800's Mexico who's on the run during a dustup between the Catholic church & the Mexican state. I've never been a real big fan of most fiction, but this guys prose is so awesome & he weaves his story so well, that i couldnt help but love it. The guy was a genius wordsmith, he crafts words like Rodan crafts marble.

A Man Named Dave: Dave Pelzer - Think your childhood was bad? ha! this guy overcame things that are hard to imagine, things that would ruin many for life. If you need some inspiration during a dark time, pick it up & feel better about it.

Graham Greene was British, but I'm a fan of his too.

Heh, ya it appears you are correct sir. I grabbed the book to be sure, but the quote i had misread says 'there is no better story teller in English (not American lol) today and he is one of the 2 or 3 living novelists who really count' - V.S. Pritchett

:doh!:

We scholarly types tend to get worked up about similar stuff.

You know there's a movie?

V.S. Pritchett isn't American either so what does he know about greatness in the English language? :p

Here's an interesting review of The China Study, including some back and forth with the author.

Spiral Bound -- a collection of essays and poetry by rapper, singer, teacher, writer Dessa Darling (of the Doomtree hiphop collective in Minneapolis)

I think I'm going to delve into Under the Dome.

I'm on that right now - 100+ pages in...

Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology. Edited by Helen Gilbert

Anyone have any suggestions from the History aisle?

I have several books I want to read over break - none of which are historical.

As a history major, I like to at least squeeze in one history book for fun while I'm reading the 10-15 I have to for class during the semester.

Oh, and tops on my non-history list, though none of the brick and mortar stores seem to carry it:

Bud, Inc. - Ian Mulgrew

http://blogcritics.org/books/article...ud-inc-by-ian/

Any particular era or topic?

Not really.

I'd prefer to stay this side of the 13th century.

Other than that, fire away.

Have you ever read a Barbara Tuchman book?

Lawrence of Arabia's Seven Pillars of Wisdom

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Morris

I'm on the last few pages of Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men".

Haven't seen the movie yet, but just devoured the book. Looking forward to reading more of his work.

I'm a history major, too -- at UNI. I love it.

Yep.

Read Tuchman's A Distant Mirror

Could definitely go for some Teddy Roosevelt.

I'm getting my Secondary Ed. certification along with a History major and plan to teach HS History/Psychology/Justice/Econ etc.

I'm enjoying the hell out of it so far, but IMO, it really comes down to your professors - and I've been really lucky.

picked up The Road, always wanted to read it and now with the film coming out thought it would be a good time. Tough but great book. Really made me appreciate my relationship with my son

Main thing for me was the made up story thing with the guy having an aunt or whatever. I was cool with most of the rest of it, but it seems out of place when Matts reactions to the guy making fun with it.


One thing Sanderson said in his blogs is that he knew there was no way that he could do this and not screw it up if comparing it to RJ himself, but he ended up deciding that he was a good candidate to note screw it up as much as most others that tried to do it would have. I think he managed to meet that goal, and I still like what he did for the flow of the story...I didn't have spots where I got lost fromt he story amongst all the discriptions of things around them.

Yeah, it also made me think how easy we have it in this country really, and how much more difficult the world could become.

Check out Blood Meridian, The Road, or Child of God. The Border Trilogy and The Orchard Keeper are also decent.
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I actually liked 'All the Pretty Horses' best of CM's work. I've read The Road, No Country for Old Men, Child of God, and 1/2 of Blood Meridian thus far.

I liked how AtPH was a fusion of cowboy austerity and Austenian 'that's the way the world works' desperation.

The Aunt's explanation of why he'll never get the girl could have come from the pages of Sense and Sensibility, and yet the male characters feel like compatriots of the characters in NCfOM.

A real man's chick-lit.

Think what you will about salon.com's politics, they're excellent when it comes to culture. Here's their picks of the decade in fiction and non-fiction. Some good stuff on this list:
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_mil...ade/print.html

The best books of the decade
A tribute to the fact and fiction we couldn't put down and wouldn't stop talking about in the 2000s

By Laura Miller

Dec. 10, 2009 |

We'll spare you the overly ambitious sweeping statements. This has been a rocky decade, to say the least, and as many writers showed us just after the Sept. 11 attacks, we often can't formulate our best thoughts about traumatic events until much, much later. If anything, looking back over the past 10 years of Salon's books coverage, what's most striking is the durability of fiction and memoir; the novels and autobiographies we were talking about in 2000 still feel important today, while the bloom tends to fade faster from the nonfiction of the moment.

For that reason, the nonfiction on this list steers away from the most avidly trend-setting treatises (Malcolm Gladwell, we're looking at you!) in favor of definitive accounts of current events, penetrating histories and explorations of perennial human concerns. As for fiction, the most exciting thing to emerge in the 2000s has been the integration of genre elements into literary fiction: You no longer have to choose between good writing and good storytelling. But if the preceding two decades have seen the dismantling of the tyranny of rigorous realism, there are still masters (like Mary Gaitskill) working in that vein, and following it into rich new territory. The following lists are presented in chronological order.

FICTION

"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon
Two nice, mid-20th-century Jewish boys go to work in the nascent comic book industry, where the dreams and nightmares of the real world manifest themselves in the extravagant guise of entertainment for children. This buoyant tragicomic adventure story remains one of the most persuasive and gorgeously written depictions (and vindications) of the way popular culture transfigures our lived experience to become the modern-day equivalent of myth and folklore.

"The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen
The Lambert clan tries to figure out a way to live honorably in a world of leveraged buyouts, pharmaceutically engineered moods, dot-com scams, mix-and-match lifestyles and the cult of Christmas. In this saga of a befuddled Midwestern family, Franzen manages to achieve something remarkable and possibly unprecedented: a merciless satirical look at contemporary life that's also fundamentally generous and human.

"John Henry Days" by Colson Whitehead
A hack journalist gets hired by a travel Web site to write up a festival celebrating the folk hero John Henry. This brilliant, restless novel is about what happens when a cynical, opportunistic, media-steeped product of the Information Age collides with the mythic dignity of America's past. The fact that both the hero and the freelancer are black only complicates and enriches this novel's wit.

"The Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem
A boy named Dylan comes of age in a bohemian household as one of the few white kids in 1970s Brooklyn. To the smooth and sinewy beat of the era's soul soundtrack, this is a bruised paean to the author's hometown, a meditation on American boyhood and a cautionary tale about the folly of trying to escape your past.

"Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke
Capacious, digressive, amply footnoted and very original, this is a classic historical novel -- only the history it's based on is (almost) entirely fantastic. Set in the early 19th century, it describes a Britain where magic was once a fairly common practice and is still the subject of serious scholarly study. With Austenian elegance and glorious imagery, Clarke describes the professional rivalry between the two eponymous master magicians; the result is nothing less than pure sorcery.

"Magic for Beginners" by Kelly Link
It's almost impossible to choose between this collection and Link's galvanizing 2001 debut, "Stranger Things Happen." Her exquisite stories mix the aggravations and epiphanies of everyday life with the stuff that legends, dreams and nightmares are made of, from pop culture to fairy tales. Some of these pieces are very scary, others are immensely sad, many are funny and all of them are written in prose so flawless you almost forget how much elemental human chaos they contain.

"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kath, a seemingly ordinary British girl, goes to a special boarding school where she and her friends are groomed for a special fate while enjoying and suffering the loves and betrayals that come to young people everywhere. This odd, heartbreaking novel unfurls age-old conundrums about what it means to be a person; about the grievous sin of treating anyone, however unexceptional, as the means to an end; and about the unfathomable future that awaits each and every one of us.

"Veronica" by Mary Gaitskill
A model with a fluorescent, dirty past winds up as a nobody with hepatitis who cleans offices for cash and dwells on her memories of an unlikely friendship with an older woman who died of AIDS. There's nothing feel-good about "Veronica," but this novel is so alive, so streaked with colors and spiked with sharp edges, that reading it is almost a tactile experience. It's a perfect, slicing portrait of a sad, once-beautiful woman who doesn't want -- or deserve -- our pity, but who ultimately earns our compassion.

"On Beauty" by Zadie Smith
Conservative black Brits of Caribbean descent move in down the street from a leftish, mixed-race family in an East Coast college town. In Smith's hands the classic fodder of academic satire becomes miraculously endearing and sympathetic, a tale of two families that explodes with vitality, curiosity, enthusiasm and love for human beings and the perplexing situations they get into.

"Person of Interest" by Susan Choi
In this Hitchcockian tale, an undistinguished Midwestern math professor finds himself the object of rumors and suspicion when a more celebrated colleague is killed by a mail bomber. A nuanced consideration of what it means to fit in, and of what we owe to the people around us, "A Person of Interest" eschews obvious answers. At once a tragedy of character and a tale of suspense, this novel is a seamless integration of the political and the personal, beautifully written and impeccably unsentimental.

NONFICTION

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers
Even if you haven't read Eggers' memoir about raising his younger brother after the deaths of their parents, you've felt its effect. An entire literary generation fell under the spell of Eggers' playful, ingenious, self-reflective style (and that was only the beginning of a brilliant career as an author, editor, teacher, collaborator and all-around impresario). Often mischaracterized as merely "ironic," that voice found a fresh, exhilarating way to approach life's devastating truths without succumbing to knee-jerk pathos or solemnity.

"The Battle for God" by Karen Armstrong
A year before Muslim extremists brutally invaded the awareness of every Westerner, Armstrong, a former nun, published this essential, lucid consideration of the fundamentalist mind-set and its roots. During a decade when the conversation about religion has degenerated into pointless duels between screeching polemicists, she has brought a measured, open-minded wisdom to questions of faith and its place in the modern world.

"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
At the suggestion of an editor, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich attempted to live for two years on the wages of the average unskilled American worker. She worked as a waitress, maid and Wal-Mart clerk, shacking up in dives and dining on fast food, in an effort to find out how America's working poor make it. Her answer: A lot of them don't. If her efforts to suggest remedies are often rebuffed by her own subjects, her visceral dispatches from the ragged fringe of the American dream remain indispensable.

"The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq" by George Packer
A political liberal covering the Iraq war for the New Yorker, Packer initially supported the invasion as a way to rid the world of a bloody dictator but later came to view it as a wasted opportunity. The result of his reporting is among the most measured, thoughtful and self-examining of the many books on the conflict, taking in not only the theorists who justified it, but also inexperienced soldiers, frustrated reformers, the worried and grieving home front and ordinary Iraqis. Anyone looking for a better, deeper, broader understanding of the war will find it here.

"The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright
Six years after Sept. 11, Wright produced the definitive account of the terrorist attacks and how they happened, from the fanatics who conceived and orchestrated the plot to the intelligence agencies that failed to anticipate and thwart it. He developed an expertise on the subject so deep that in time those same agencies tried to utilize him as a source and even tapped his phones. Yet for all the knowledge that went into "The Looming Tower," it reads as sleekly and compellingly as a top-notch thriller.

"The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals" by Michael Pollan
Inexhaustibly inventive and imaginative, Pollan jazzes up what could have been a dreary jeremiad about the "industrial food chain" by inviting us to view the modern American diet as the triumph of a South American grass that can currently be found in every processed food: King Corn. From the scientist who transformed the world by synthesizing nitrogen fertilizer to a calculation of just how much oil goes into "making" one conventionally raised steer (about a barrel), there's an observation to blow your mind on nearly every page of this hugely influential exploration of what we eat.

"Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel
This graphic memoir is an investigation of Bechdel's childhood, spent in the ornate Victorian house that her father obsessively restored and maintained. After she came out of the closet to her parents at 19, her mom delivered a return whammy: Bechdel's father had a lifelong history of affairs with men, including teenage boys. Not long after, he died under ambiguous circumstances. Bechdel's years of drawing a serial comic strip have honed her ability to convey oceans of feeling in a single image, and the feelings are never simple; "Fun Home" shimmers with regret, compassion, annoyance, frustration, pity and love.

"The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman
How would the earth be changed if the human race simply and suddenly vanished? Weisman uses this startlingly elementary question and its fascinating answer to suggest just how artificial our grip on the planet has become. Within days, subway tunnels would flood and collapse, subdivisions would be shattered by frozen pipes and devoured by mold and termites. For some reason, this doomsday scenario is more thrilling than depressing; it beguiles us into doing what often seems beyond our power -- picturing a much healthier planet and considering a less drastic way to get there.

"Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood" by Mark Harris
Film critic Harris takes the five nominees for the best picture Oscar of 1967, and uses them, and the stories behind them, as lenses to examine the tectonic changes that were taking place in the movie industry and American society as a whole. "Bonnie and Clyde," for example, embodied the birth of a hip new internationalism, and "The Graduate" spoke for youth culture and its romantic discontents. This is criticism at its best, well- and widely informed, with an enlightening fact, anecdote and insight on virtually every page.

"The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective" by Kate Summerscale
Part true-crime narrative, part cultural history, Summerscale's exploration of a notorious case of child-murder in 1860 is above all an inquiry into our culture's lasting and seemingly all-pervasive fascination with detectives and detective stories. Her hero is one of the very first investigators at the newly formed Scotland Yard, who inspired such writers as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Summerscale uses the mystery to crack open not only the allure of the detective as a fictional diviner of guilt and innocence, but also the curious details and ugly truths about everyday family life concealed behind the most respectable facades.

Let me know if it's worth reading. Especially if it's on par with Duma Key.


I'm reading World War Z. Gotta find time to read a good chunk of it.

Loved World War Z.

Is his follow up worth getting? (Survival guide)

I've only thumbed through it. A lot of kids really like it, because it's more of a survival manual type thing. It tends to appeal to adolescents more because it has diagrams and such. Reads more like a practical text than a novel. That hooks a lot of reluctant readers in more than the huge chunks of texts that novels hold.

That being said, I haven't actually sat down and read through the whole thing. More skimming than anything.

It by Stephen King

I'm a sucker for anything he writes.

Just picked up the following:

102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Approximately 1500 pages should keep me busy over winter break.

Simply Einstein: Relativity Demystified.

I already know all the cocktail party stuff about relativity, but this delves deeper into philosophical issues of space and time.

Excellent book.

Probably going to finish it in the next couple of hours. I've really enjoyed it. His character-building skills never fail to amaze me.

I'm about to start Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy.

Yeah, I didn't realize until after the fact that I picked up 2 Pulizer winners, TLT being one of them.

Reading The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Really, really enjoying it so far. The premise sounds a little juvenile or simplistic, but it's really good.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...103670_pf.html

Below is a good review of the book, but it does offer some details on the book's premise. Not anything out of the ordinary for a book, but if you like to be totally surprised, don't read it. I'll just say that the book involves a brilliant high school senior mildly obsessed with a book series called the Fillory novels (somewhat analagous to the Narnia books). He's about to head off to an Ivy league school when he finds out that magic is real and he's been accepted into a college of magic. It then turns into a sort of grown up Harry Potter series.

IN-N-OUT BURGER: A behind-the-counter look at the fast-food chain that breaks all the rules By Stacy Perman.

Over the Christmas break, I'm hoping to find time to read the final installment of the Underworld USA trillogy, "Blood's a Rover" by James Ellroy.

Kind of surprised no one else has mentioned it in this thread.

B. Dalton is going out of business, so everything was 40% off. For $35, I picked up

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt - H.W. Brands

The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright

The Odyssey - Homer, translated by Robert bundle of sticksles

Poetics - Aristotle, translated by Malcolm Heath

The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. DuBois

Finished The China Study and now quickly reading Grisham's Ford County before picking out a more substantial read.

Is it readable for a dumbass like me?

I know a passing bit about science, and a good bit of psychology from an organizational behavior perspective.
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Has anyone read Tad William's Otherland series? I'm halfway through the first one (City of Golden Shadow) and it's pretty good cyber sci fi so far.

Currently "Chancellorsville" by Stephen Sears. Just finished Landscape Turned Red, about Antietam, by the same author.

I have. However, it has been a while and I don't remember a lot of it. I do remember it was pretty good but very long.

2 Biographies on 2 comedians:

http://allieiswired.com/wp-content/u...last-words.jpg

and Harry Thompson's book on Peter Cook...

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/...CLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Waylon Jennings' autobiography

Have you ever read George Jones' autobiography? It is hilarious and profoundly sad. Here's an AMAZING excerpt:

I'm about to start reading my favorite annual anthology's release for this year: Best of Food Writing 2009.

I'm just about to finish up The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan.

Now, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with Richard K. Morgan, but for those of you who've read his Takeshi Kovacs books, you're familiar with the more...hardcore aspects of his writing. His stories are dark and dystopian, graphically violent and sexual. And The Steel Remains is no different. Except for one thing: this time around his protagonist is homosexual. So it's dark epic fantasy with probably the most agressive language (his characters may say '****' more times in a page than you'd see in an entire Joe Abercrombie novel, which, if you're familiar with Abercrombie, is saying something) and graphic hardcore homosexuality.

It's well-written, as all of Morgan's work is, and the world and characters are very well fleshed-out, but with the graphic man-on-man scenes, I found it to be really, really (,really, really, really) difficult to read at times. We're talking cringe-worthy, and I'm somebody who's always considered myself to be very open and tolerant sexually. But with that said I think I'll keep going with the series once the sequel hits. I'd recommend it to anybody who thinks they can handle the graphic parts, but think they should get a fair warning going in...

Just started reading Abercrombie's fourth novel, Best Served Cold, need to finish up The Vor Game by Bujold and I'm about to start reading Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

finish Where Men Win Glory last night about the Pat Tillman debacle. Disgusting what this country's army and government did to attempt to cover it up.

Almost done reading "Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. This is a fascinating book about the 1893 World's Fair and our country's first prolific serial killer who preyed on young women before and during the fair.

I know we had a "Villain" thread, but I don't think anyone ever mentioned H.H. Holmes as a villain. From reading this book, H.H. Holmes certainly deserves to be mentioned as one of the most prolific, if not the most terrifying serial killer in our country. He killed his victims and sold their cadavers to doctors and universities. That's one way to get rid of your victims. Damn.

The book was a National Book Award finalist and deservedly so...

Just picked-up Connie Willis' latest, Blackout, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it. It's the first in a two-novel series described as:

Bout to start Plato's Symposium for the 3rd time.

Finished Chuck Klosterman's latest collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, last night.

Finished reading "the way of the peaceful warrior" by Dan Millman.

Going to read another one of his books called "The Life you were born to Live."

Millman = Castaneda rippoff...


p.s. Charlie Castaneda = rippoff...

Thats funny. I also have a degree in History and have strongly considered getting my teaching credential to teach history.

Finishing up, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/06...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg


Also picked up the following books:

"Russka" by Edward Rutherfurd.

http://maritaj.eu/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Russka.jpg


"The Monuments Men"

http://www.minnesotaalumni.org/s/111...ighquality.jpg

Also, re-reading:

The Great Gatsby
The Count of Monte Cristo (Awesome book)
1776

Also have a bunch of Jeff Shara books.

Being a history major, I keep collecting books. :)

I'm reading about our future....

The Russian Century: A History of the Last Hundred Years

The Shack

I've read Michael Shaara's book, The Killer Angels. Excellent book if you're a history buff. Michael is Jeff's brother.

Hunger Games both books - Loved 'em.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians the Lightning Thief (because of the movie) - Sucked. Flattest characters I've ever seen. Movie should be good. I think he thought all he had to do was have Greek Mythology and it'd suffice.
World War Z - liked it. Didn't have a central narrative so I didn't latch on, which is also kinda a plus too. Yeah, I'm weird.

Now reading:
Altar of Eden by James Rollins
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Lovely Bones

Ya, I read "The Killer Angels". Great book. I also read the other books on the civil war era by Jeff Shara.

I grabbed the ones on WWI, WWII and the American revolution.
Should keep me pretty busy.

Very good and engaging reads.

I recently finished reading "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts. Amazing. Possibly the best book I've read!

Dale Carnegie's book about how to win friends and influence people.

Bill Bryson is a spectacular writer.

Odd Hours by Dean Koontz

Two nights ago, I finished Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. I think McCann is extremely gifted and this type of book is right in his wheelhouse.

The book is set in NYC circa 1974. The charcters are incredibly rich, particularily Corrigan, a Catholic priest living out the early days of liberation theology.
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I just finished that one a couple weeks ago. an enjoyable series of books I think.

reading The Terror by Dan Simmons

just finished LAMB by Christopher Moore

now starting Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

I've been wanting to read that. Is it worth the 1200-page investment?

The book is amazing, as is the movie. The rest of his stuff is awesome too. No Country was the first book of his that I read, and I went out and bought every single one after that.

Just finished:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41E95Y1K45L.jpg

Just started:

http://dicampbell.files.wordpress.co.../whatbook2.jpg