What book are you reading?

JonnyPistachio wrote:

I was thinking i was the only one who thought this. Thank god! Ithought da vinci was okay, it was a quick read...but I tried Angels and Demons later, and I swore i was reading the same damn book. I got about 80 pages into it and realized what a shitty recipe written book it was. He shhould've just called DaVinci code something like "Angels & demons - RE-EDITED!"

rrivers wrote:

I thought I was the only person who was not a Da Vinci coda fan. I put it down halfway through and never finished it. The short chapters, lack of any character development, and fast pace I found very annoying. What I like about reading (the ability to really flesh out characters and get inside what characters are thinking and what their motives are) was completely absent from that book.

Just my opinion. Every one I know who has read it has loved it so more power to those who enjoyed it.

Tremor Andronicus wrote:

Yeah, I loved survivor and FC. Stopped reading his stuff after choke and invisible monsters were such let downs. Cool guy though, met him in NYC a few years ago.

Restless Soul wrote:

That's a good book! Neil Gaiman is fantastic.

I'm in the middle of "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman which is about the gods of immigrant America and what happens when people forget about them.

Byrnzie wrote:

I'm reading 'Trickster Makes this World' by Lewis Hyde

The Trickster is a mythological or archetypal character found in stories throughout the world. The best known in Western myth are Hermes and Loki. In this fascinating study, Lewis Hyde gives equal time to the Native American Coyote, the Chinese Monkey King and India's Krishna. At first glance, these characters are merely pranksters; humorous, sometimes annoying and occasionally dangerous ne'er do wells who disrupt the normal flow of things. As the title of this book suggests, Hyde believes tricksters are much more than this. He makes a convincing case that tricksters are essential in both preserving and transforming societies. Without their disruptions, cultural stagnation would result. He points out that tricksters can either help to maintain the status quo or bring about radical transformation. An example of the former case is illustrated by carnivals such as Mardi Gras, where social customs are predictably and temporarily ignored or reversed. This allows people to vent their frustrations and unleash their inhibitions before returning to normal life. Hyde mentions the abolishionist Frederick Douglas as an example of the more radical sort of trickster who brings about permanent change. Within the institution of slavery, slaves were allowed one week of freedom and revelry. Douglas was not satisfied with this; he wanted to completely overhaul the status quo and indeed helped to accomplish this. 'Trickster Makes this World' describes the antics of both actual (e.g. Douglas, the artist Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg) and mythic (e.g. Hermes, Coyote, Krishna) tricksters. This, of course, suggests a worldview similar to that of Joseph Campbell and others, who see the mythic as the foundation of real life. This book isn't easy reading; Hyde has a trickster-like style of zig-zagging his way all over a very expansive intellectual terrain. It doesn't so much make a case or present an argument as suggest a way of seeing the world. At the center of this worldview is not the all-powerful Zeus, but the slippery messenger/thief/trader Hermes (or one of his counterparts). Getting back to the provocative title, Trickster does not make the world in the conventional way (as the God of the Bible, for example). Rather, he (tricksters are usually male, an issue Hyde devotes a chapter to exploring) remakes and readjusts the world in which he finds himself. This is arguably a task as important as creation itself, or an essential part of creation.

soulsinging wrote:

so true. the movie was only so-so, but the book was phenomenal.