working my way through Under the Dome still. Trying to take my time, but I keep wanting to read. Great book and IMO so far ranks up there with Stephen King's best novels. Unlike his longer novels like It and The Stand (which I love).... there is no wasted space at all. It is very intense throughout (the first quarter at least). The characters are being developed on the fly.... unlike many other of his novels that you have to read dozens of pages of backstory to get back to the plot.
this book will definitely translate into a mini-series and I would be shocked if we dont see one in the next few years.
Very well said. I feel the exact same way. Just what you want a book to do: I can't wait to get back to it, but I don't want it to end.
So far I would say that I think it ranks up there with his best as well. Characters have always been the strong point of King and he is in fine form here. You are right about there not being wasted space. I think King suffers sometimes from being as popular as he is that there is a lot of wasted rambling in his books sometimes. I was expecting that in this one (since it is so long), but so far it is very engaging. Good development of a lot of characters, making the town come alive, without dragging the story down.
Someone may have already mentioned this but I think Spielberg is going to develop it into a mini-series, hopefully for HBO.
Starting next: David Foster Wallace "Infinite Jest" (in german [since I am german]: Unendlicher Spass)
(it took them many, many years to translate this book to any other language...)
I'm a little "scared" because of the books size (more than 1500 pages in very small letters) and it's a hardcover, not very comfortable to handle, but I heard so many great things about it. And I was told this is a quite fantastic book and once started you can't let go ( that's the problem :arrow: time)
Just finished The Alienist by Caleb Carr for my History of NYC class---can you say looonng!!
Been wanting to read The Time Traveler's Wife, but haven't gotten around to it-- now that I finally have time, I think I'm gonna give it a read!
"Sometimes you find yourself having to put all your faith in no faith."
~not a dude~
2010: MSGx2
2012: Made In America
2013: Pittsburgh, Brooklynx2, Hartford, Baltimore
2014: Leeds, Milton Keynes, Detroit
2015: Global Citizen Festival
2016: Phillyx2, MSGx2, Fenwayx2 2018: Barcelona, Wrigleyx2
Yes they are comic books, no i don't care if you tease me about it
some of the best books are graphic novels...v for vendetta 300 sin city watchmen..and those are the film ones everyone will know and not the best..killing joke is stunning ..plastic forks in my favourite
I've actually read all of those except for plastic forks. i'll have to look for that one!
Charlotte 00 Charlotte 03 Asheville 04 Atlanta 12 Greenville 16, Columbia 16 Seattle 18 Nashville 22
Just picked up House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.
Had to start it right away. I'm only about 100 pages in and it is already one of the most disquieting yet engrossing books I've ever read. I find it really messes with my head and takes over my thoughts and dreams. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. :shock:
1998 ~ Barrie
2003 ~ Toronto
2005 ~ London, Toronto
2006 ~ Toronto
2008 ~ Hartford, Mansfied I,
2009 ~ Toronto, Chicago I, Chicago II
2010 ~ Cleveland, Buffalo
2011 ~ Toronto I, Toronto II, Ottawa, Hamilton
2013 - London, Pittsburgh, Buffalo
I've just finished reading the two books written by Peter Hessler: 'River Town' and 'Oracle Bones'. They were both superb. I've already pre-ordered his third book. In the meantime I thought I'd read this one by John Pomfret. I've just started it, and It looks good, if not a little pessimistic/depressing:
From The Washington Post:
Those of us reporting on China a few years ago believed the big story of the early 21st century would be its transformation from impoverished pariah to economic juggernaut and global superpower. Instead, 9/11 shifted the attention of U.S. media to the Muslim world, and China became, as it had been for most of the previous 500 years, an intricate sideshow. That's a shame, because the massive societal shifts in China -- which form the most fascinating, relevant and important development of the new millennium -- have been steadily pushed off the front pages and opening segments by a flood of stories on the war on terror.
Washington Post reporter John Pomfret's compulsively readable new book on today's China deserves far more attention than that. Chinese Lessons is a rich, first-hand account of modern Chinese history as it was lived and experienced by five of the author's 1981 classmates at Nanjing University. Pomfret was among the first generation of American college students to enroll in exchange programs with Chinese universities in the early 1980s; the New York native grew up to become The Post's Beijing bureau chief and one of the very best reporters covering China throughout the dynamic 1990s, with his writings emerging as the standard by which many of his peers judged their own work. In his hands, the journey of his classmates becomes not just an entertaining and precisely rendered account of a changing China in which consumers' aspirations ratcheted up from bicycles and wrist watches to Audis and flip-phones; it also becomes a splendid human narrative of how fragile souls weather barbaric cruelty, social shifts and the rewiring of a nation.
When Pomfret arrived in China shortly after Deng Xiaoping had launched China's free-market-oriented economic reforms, he met his college roommates -- seven perpetually hungry, reed-thin, cotton-jacketed survivors of various denouncements, rustications and "struggle sessions" inflicted on supposed traitors. They generously gave him the bunk next to the window, a prime location in a dank, first-floor dormitory room that was a maze of wet clothes hanging to dry amid a haze of garlic stench. The students whom Pomfret came to know were only just emerging from a long Maoist nightmare: "My classmates snooped on each other, read each other's diaries, feared and suspected one another -- an expression of the deep mistrust they perfected during the Cultural Revolution when they were pitted against their parents, siblings, and friends."
Every Chinese over the age of, say, 45, has a vivid recollection of life under Mao Zedong -- often of the national psychotic episode known as the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao unleashed his Red Guards as he reestablished control in the mid-1960s. Pomfret vividly recounts such stories from his classmates and their families. There is Old Wu (called "old" because he is a year older than Pomfret), the son of a prominent academic, who found out about the murder of his parents from two fellow Red Guards as they giddily recounted it. Or there's Zhou Lianchun, who, as a 15-year-old Red Guard, fanatically denounced his mother in public for three days as a "capitalist" and screamed at her to renounce her "bourgeois sensibility."
The journey of these college roommates through university and into middle age is an easy-to-follow road map through post-Mao China. Chinese Lessons explains so many of the contradictions that one encounters in the country today: A nation that prides itself on family bonds and ancestor worship can also exploit relatives and tear down monuments. Pomfret shows how the cutthroat immorality that pervades so many segments of Chinese society today is rooted in the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. ("Why," he wonders, "did so many stories in China always seem to end with the bad guys getting away, literally, with murder?") Yet once Deng lifted the economic strictures of communism, as immoral as they were, they were never replaced by another ethical code save the "man-eat-man" (the common Chinese translation of "dog-eat-dog") capitalism of modern China.
As a result, China has gone from being one of the most egalitarian societies in the world to among the least. It is a rapidly aging country stricken by widespread and devastating environmental degradation, and the government's first response to epidemics, poisoned water supplies and natural disasters is usually to try to cover up the debacle. Pomfret's sketches of self-serving Chinese officials, bureaucrats and businesspeople will be depressingly familiar to anyone who has worked in China. (Though this was the first time I had read of some Chinese executives' penchant for spending weekends smoking methamphetamine, popping Viagra and bedding prostitutes.) And Pomfret's portraits of contemporary Chinese who enter adulthood with a naive optimism that is soon replaced by heartbreaking cynicism will be maddening to readers who are rooting for China to become a responsible world power. Yet to his great credit, Pomfret's affection for the people he is writing about almost always shows through, which keeps Chinese Lessons from feeling like a polemic; the book's accumulation of acutely observed detail is compelling.
Pomfret ends by positing a notion that will be increasingly discussed in years to come as China's great opportunity for economic growth begins to look more and more like a wasted chance to improve the lives of so many of its people: "The social contract hashed out by Deng -- you can get rich if you keep your mouth shut -- is fraying because too few people have won their share of the bargain." If Pomfret is correct (and I think he is), China will still be the great story of the 21st century -- not because of what has gone right but because of what has gone wrong.
Reviewed by Karl Taro Greenfeld
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post.
after misplacing the eco and houellebecq books i was reading i demolished 4 michael crichton books in the past week and a half. next, prey, state of fear and timeline.
hear my name
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Now reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Liking it so far.
You can't go wrong with that one.
You may wanna read 'The Possessed' & 'The Brothers Karamazov' when you're finished.
I've had it sitting on my shelf for ages and never got around to starting it. Glad I finally did though, definitely makes me want to investigate his other works. Thanks for the suggestions!
"We get these pills to swallow... how they stick in your throat... Tastes like gold..."
Just started Suspect by Michael Robotham. It will take me a while to finish as I usually read before bed and get through about 5 pages a night... :oops:
I gotta get back to reading books in '10. I'm been reading way to many comic books & manga stuff in '09 that you wouldn't believe. Can't promise that i'll stop reading them. It's just, they are so good & fun.
I've been unable to set aside time for reading as much lately. I'm still reading A Confederacy Of Dunces. It usually gives me a good-hearted laugh whenever I read it. I'm almost done...but I don't know what I'll go on to next.
7/2/06 - Denver, CO
6/12/08 - Tampa, FL
8/23/09 - Chicago, IL
9/28/09 - Salt Lake City, UT (11 years too long!!!)
9/03/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 1
9/04/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 2
Just finished The Scarpetta Factor, patricia Cornwell. Love her books. Will have to start from the beginning of the series again, until I find something else to interest me. I have read all the criminology and justice related ones at the local library, so might have to try some other libraries.
Reading 2004
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016 Fenway 2, 2018 MSG 2022 St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023 MSG 2024, MSG 2024 Philadelphia 2024
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."
Comments
Very well said. I feel the exact same way. Just what you want a book to do: I can't wait to get back to it, but I don't want it to end.
So far I would say that I think it ranks up there with his best as well. Characters have always been the strong point of King and he is in fine form here. You are right about there not being wasted space. I think King suffers sometimes from being as popular as he is that there is a lot of wasted rambling in his books sometimes. I was expecting that in this one (since it is so long), but so far it is very engaging. Good development of a lot of characters, making the town come alive, without dragging the story down.
Someone may have already mentioned this but I think Spielberg is going to develop it into a mini-series, hopefully for HBO.
(it took them many, many years to translate this book to any other language...)
I'm a little "scared" because of the books size (more than 1500 pages in very small letters) and it's a hardcover, not very comfortable to handle, but I heard so many great things about it. And I was told this is a quite fantastic book and once started you can't let go (
Interesting start...
Been wanting to read The Time Traveler's Wife, but haven't gotten around to it-- now that I finally have time, I think I'm gonna give it a read!
~not a dude~
2010: MSGx2
2012: Made In America
2013: Pittsburgh, Brooklynx2, Hartford, Baltimore
2014: Leeds, Milton Keynes, Detroit
2015: Global Citizen Festival
2016: Phillyx2, MSGx2, Fenwayx2
2018: Barcelona, Wrigleyx2
i'm reading waiter rant, by steve dublanica... the front of the house side of that story
I've actually read all of those except for plastic forks. i'll have to look for that one!
Charlotte 03
Asheville 04
Atlanta 12
Greenville 16, Columbia 16
Seattle 18
Nashville 22
Had to start it right away. I'm only about 100 pages in and it is already one of the most disquieting yet engrossing books I've ever read. I find it really messes with my head and takes over my thoughts and dreams. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. :shock:
2003 ~ Toronto
2005 ~ London, Toronto
2006 ~ Toronto
2008 ~ Hartford, Mansfied I,
2009 ~ Toronto, Chicago I, Chicago II
2010 ~ Cleveland, Buffalo
2011 ~ Toronto I, Toronto II, Ottawa, Hamilton
2013 - London, Pittsburgh, Buffalo
so...
right now I'm reading a Star Wars book. Dark Lord the rise of Darth Vader. :?
so sue me, I'm a star wars geek.
"To question your government is not unpatriotic --
to not question your government is unpatriotic."
-- Sen. Chuck Hagel
and
Shantaram by Gregory Harris
Or you can come to terms and realize
You're the only one who can't forgive yourself
Just started reading Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Kloserman.
I give it two snaps and a circle!!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=769776790&n=2
I'm on page 650 and loving it!
michael j fox
From The Washington Post:
Those of us reporting on China a few years ago believed the big story of the early 21st century would be its transformation from impoverished pariah to economic juggernaut and global superpower. Instead, 9/11 shifted the attention of U.S. media to the Muslim world, and China became, as it had been for most of the previous 500 years, an intricate sideshow. That's a shame, because the massive societal shifts in China -- which form the most fascinating, relevant and important development of the new millennium -- have been steadily pushed off the front pages and opening segments by a flood of stories on the war on terror.
Washington Post reporter John Pomfret's compulsively readable new book on today's China deserves far more attention than that. Chinese Lessons is a rich, first-hand account of modern Chinese history as it was lived and experienced by five of the author's 1981 classmates at Nanjing University. Pomfret was among the first generation of American college students to enroll in exchange programs with Chinese universities in the early 1980s; the New York native grew up to become The Post's Beijing bureau chief and one of the very best reporters covering China throughout the dynamic 1990s, with his writings emerging as the standard by which many of his peers judged their own work. In his hands, the journey of his classmates becomes not just an entertaining and precisely rendered account of a changing China in which consumers' aspirations ratcheted up from bicycles and wrist watches to Audis and flip-phones; it also becomes a splendid human narrative of how fragile souls weather barbaric cruelty, social shifts and the rewiring of a nation.
When Pomfret arrived in China shortly after Deng Xiaoping had launched China's free-market-oriented economic reforms, he met his college roommates -- seven perpetually hungry, reed-thin, cotton-jacketed survivors of various denouncements, rustications and "struggle sessions" inflicted on supposed traitors. They generously gave him the bunk next to the window, a prime location in a dank, first-floor dormitory room that was a maze of wet clothes hanging to dry amid a haze of garlic stench. The students whom Pomfret came to know were only just emerging from a long Maoist nightmare: "My classmates snooped on each other, read each other's diaries, feared and suspected one another -- an expression of the deep mistrust they perfected during the Cultural Revolution when they were pitted against their parents, siblings, and friends."
Every Chinese over the age of, say, 45, has a vivid recollection of life under Mao Zedong -- often of the national psychotic episode known as the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao unleashed his Red Guards as he reestablished control in the mid-1960s. Pomfret vividly recounts such stories from his classmates and their families. There is Old Wu (called "old" because he is a year older than Pomfret), the son of a prominent academic, who found out about the murder of his parents from two fellow Red Guards as they giddily recounted it. Or there's Zhou Lianchun, who, as a 15-year-old Red Guard, fanatically denounced his mother in public for three days as a "capitalist" and screamed at her to renounce her "bourgeois sensibility."
The journey of these college roommates through university and into middle age is an easy-to-follow road map through post-Mao China. Chinese Lessons explains so many of the contradictions that one encounters in the country today: A nation that prides itself on family bonds and ancestor worship can also exploit relatives and tear down monuments. Pomfret shows how the cutthroat immorality that pervades so many segments of Chinese society today is rooted in the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. ("Why," he wonders, "did so many stories in China always seem to end with the bad guys getting away, literally, with murder?") Yet once Deng lifted the economic strictures of communism, as immoral as they were, they were never replaced by another ethical code save the "man-eat-man" (the common Chinese translation of "dog-eat-dog") capitalism of modern China.
As a result, China has gone from being one of the most egalitarian societies in the world to among the least. It is a rapidly aging country stricken by widespread and devastating environmental degradation, and the government's first response to epidemics, poisoned water supplies and natural disasters is usually to try to cover up the debacle. Pomfret's sketches of self-serving Chinese officials, bureaucrats and businesspeople will be depressingly familiar to anyone who has worked in China. (Though this was the first time I had read of some Chinese executives' penchant for spending weekends smoking methamphetamine, popping Viagra and bedding prostitutes.) And Pomfret's portraits of contemporary Chinese who enter adulthood with a naive optimism that is soon replaced by heartbreaking cynicism will be maddening to readers who are rooting for China to become a responsible world power. Yet to his great credit, Pomfret's affection for the people he is writing about almost always shows through, which keeps Chinese Lessons from feeling like a polemic; the book's accumulation of acutely observed detail is compelling.
Pomfret ends by positing a notion that will be increasingly discussed in years to come as China's great opportunity for economic growth begins to look more and more like a wasted chance to improve the lives of so many of its people: "The social contract hashed out by Deng -- you can get rich if you keep your mouth shut -- is fraying because too few people have won their share of the bargain." If Pomfret is correct (and I think he is), China will still be the great story of the 21st century -- not because of what has gone right but because of what has gone wrong.
Reviewed by Karl Taro Greenfeld
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
You can't go wrong with that one.
You may wanna read 'The Possessed' & 'The Brothers Karamazov' when you're finished.
I've had it sitting on my shelf for ages and never got around to starting it. Glad I finally did though, definitely makes me want to investigate his other works. Thanks for the suggestions!
I'm moving on to either
'Beautiful Losers' - Leonard Cohen;
'A Storm Of Swords' - George R. R. Martin or
'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' - Milan Kundera
Anyone read any of these?
6/12/08 - Tampa, FL
8/23/09 - Chicago, IL
9/28/09 - Salt Lake City, UT (11 years too long!!!)
9/03/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 1
9/04/11 - East Troy, WI - PJ20 - Night 2
quite hard to read
Albany 2006 Camden 2006 E. Rutherford 2, 2006 Inglewood 2006,
Chicago 2007
Camden 2008 MSG 2008 MSG 2008 Hartford 2008.
Seattle 2009 Seattle 2009 Philadelphia 2009,Philadelphia 2009 Philadelphia 2009
Hartford 2010 MSG 2010 MSG 2010
Toronto 2011,Toronto 2011
Wrigley Field 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Brooklyn 2013 Philadelphia 2, 2013
Philadelphia 1, 2016 Philadelphia 2 2016 New York 2016 New York 2016 Fenway 1, 2016
Fenway 2, 2018
MSG 2022
St. Paul, 1, St. Paul 2 2023
MSG 2024, MSG 2024
Philadelphia 2024
"I play good, hard-nosed basketball.
Things happen in the game. Nothing you
can do. I don't go and say,
"I'm gonna beat this guy up."