New! Reading Anything Thread 2.0

[indianasmith]

THE JEWISH-JAPANESE SEX AND COOK BOOK AND HOW TO RAISE WOLVES by Jack Douglas

   For the second time this year, I saw a book title on Instagram that looked so bizarre I simply had to look it up on Amazon and see if it was real - and, when I found it was, I promptly ordered a copy!  However, unlike the one about the Weasel and the Meat Shed, this one was actually an entertaining read - the story of a well-known comedian, his Japanese wife Reiko, their two children, and his pet wolf, Wolf. Also, it's about his hard-drinking neighbors, fellow members of the Ecology Society, finding a mate for his wolf, a lovelorn doctor, a pet mountain lion named P***ycat, and a sojourn to the wilderness of Northern Canada.  The book was written in the late 70's and is very dated, but if you can get past the language of fifty years ago and the pop culture references to Marcus Welby and the Beatles, it's a funny, satirical, entertaining read.
SPOILER: No actual sex takes place in the book, although there is a great deal of cooking and wolves.

[indianasmith]

WAR by Bob Woodward - Woodward is America's premiere Presidential journalist, and has an uncanny ability to get folks on both sides of the aisle to open up to him.  This book is a riveting account of the Biden administration's responses to global crises, from the Afghan withdrawal to the Israeli war on Hamas.  Lots of up-close details from inside players and quite a few surprises along the way.  Well-written and easy to follow, WAR is an excellent study of the diplomatic and historical crises faced by the Biden administration.

[lester1/2jr]

Unholy Order - This was like a decent 2 part early law and order episode. The Unholy Order is an Opus Dei type organization that gets involved in illicit South American shenanigans and tries to cover it up. The author obviously knows the police procedural thing, but its limited in what it offers.

The Tourist - I liked this one better. It's a spy novel that talks about the tension between the CIA and Homeland Security post 9-11 and the seemingly contradictory actions that go on, where we end up supporting terrorists and that kind of thing. The dialogue reminded me a bit of American Psycho: funny, off the cuff, and everyone drunk or been awake all night kind of vibe. I'll probably read at least the next one in the series (of 4).

[Neville]

After a reading slump I've picked up a couple of interesting novels.

The first one is a crime novel by Ed McBain called Guns. It has everything I like in this kind of literature: a direct style, violence, good dialogue... and the plot, that deals with the aftermath of a botched robbery, keeps going into places I find unexpected. I MUST get more stuff by this author, who seems to use a number of pennames.

The secondd one is Breat Easton Ellis' The Shards. It's what you may expect of him: superficial, overlong, overtly sexual and violent here and there... yet after a while I found myself hooked to it, and not just because of the plot, which is pretty loose. I don't think it's the masterpiece critics are saying, and I've enjoyed his other books much more, but still I liked it more than I had anticipated.

[chainsaw midget]

I read Dark Harvest, which apparently not only has a movie out based on it, but that movie has a few sequels of decreasing quality. 

I also read The Halloween Tree.  Ray Bradbury.  Those two put me in a nice Halloween mood this season. 

 

[lester1/2jr]

Paul and Jesus by James Tabor - first book I've read by this guy. So far it's been about 2 things

1. Paul did not seem to like the other apostles very much

2. He had a different take than they did  about Jesus' resurrection

I think ultimately the author doesn't like Paul.

edit:

Paul deserves credit for spreading Christianity beyond Jews, who didn't much like it and would soon be wiped out/ dispersed anyway, but his take on the whole thing was pretty wacky.

edit 2 -

Tabor is kind of unfair in that he cherry picks the worst/ weirdest stuff that Paul says, but the fact remains that he still said it. Paul's ego and dismissive attitude towards Jesus' disciples probably should have relegated him to the dustbin of history, but non Jewish inflected Christianity ended up winning out and thus, so did he.

His thing about Jesus having a post crucifixion "spiritual body" is very much at odds with Christian's beliefs about Jesus' resurrection and his belief that the world was about to end was unfounded. Having insomnia is cool because you can read pretty in-detail stuff like this book!