Dave's profile

14 ratings | 14 reviews
avg rating: 4.14

Dave's bookshelves

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Dave is currently reading

	09/01 Dave is currently reading: The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (Paperback) by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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September 06

Dave took the never-ending book quiz.

questions answered:	1507
correct:	858 (56.9%)
skipped:	94
best streak:	20
questions added:	0

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August 28

Dave gave

to:
The Master Planets (Paperback)
by Donald Gallinger (Goodreads author!)

my rating:

read in August, 2008

Dave said: "This book arrived yesterday in the mail and I just finished it this afternoon! I begrudged any interruption of my reading.
This is a riveting novel, although it is not easy to pigeonhole for someone who wants to know, "What's it about?" I...more "

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August 20

Dave read and liked Doni Tamblyn's review of The Master Planets:

"I just don't know where to start with this book. It's huge in scope, deep in concept, beautifully written, and an enormously FUN READ that grabs you from the first paragraph, takes you from WW II to the 1970s rock scene to the modern world of high fi...more I just don't know where to start with this book. It's huge in scope, deep in concept, beautifully written, and an enormously FUN READ that grabs you from the first paragraph, takes you from WW II to the 1970s rock scene to the modern world of high finance, and holds you straight through to a deeply satisfying conclusion. How did Gallinger pull it off, that's what I want to know?

We start out with a tense exchange between Daniel Gilaad, an elderly Israeli ambassador, and Peter Jameson, a handsome, fabulously rich, less-than-ethical New York corporate attorney. The ambassador wants Peter to take part in an event honoring his mother, who had been a partisan fighter in WW II Poland. In the course of the conversation, we begin to see that she had been a rather unique fighter -- and that this "uniqueness" followed her into her new life as a middle-class American wife and mother. We also see glimmerings of how the attorney's own life was twisted by the events that took place many years before he was born.

In the summer of 1973, Peter, a buoyant, handsome, rock wunderkind, had already written two songs -- "The Battle of Britain" and "Oh Laurie" -- that would become rock and roll classics. His band, The Master Planets, was gaining rapt attention across the country for the newness and heat of its music. Then came the suicide of his beautiful and withdrawn mother, and, quickly following, an avalanche of bewildering information about her identity and history as a war survivor. Far from being just another of the innumerable victims of the camps, she had in fact fought with the partisans against the Germans... and exacted retributions of a barbarity rivaling the Nazis' own. She committed numerous acts of bloody revenge. She also saved scores of lives. Shaken by the truth about the woman they thought they knew, Peter's family began to disintegrate. Meanwhile, Peter's talent -- the creative force that had defined, directed, and sustained his life -- suddenly deserted him.

Today Peter Jameson reflects again on the destruction of his family and the dissolution of his dreams. Now a ruthless attorney for international consortiums tied to organized crime, he has embraced his own brand of violence against humanity. The life he lives is far from what he imagined in his exuberant youth, and leaves him with a single, burdensome question: How to reconcile an intimate knowledge of human brutality with the heart's irrational urge to believe again, to desire, to reach out once more toward possibility?

This book is at once an action-based story and a meditation on the costs of violence and revenge. When does self-defense become atrocity, the victim a perpetrator? What happens to us when we cross that line? Spanning five decades in 336 short pages, in beautiful prose that manages to read like a mystery novel, the book explores one man's struggle with a legacy of evil, the search for meaning in the midst of ugliness. It is, simply put, one of the best debut novels I have ever read. Have a look -- you will NOT be disappointed.

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New comment on Doni Tamblyn's review of The Master Planets

Dave wrote: "It sounds like a real page-turner. I've put it on my "To Read" list. I've ordered it from ...more "

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September 01

Dave is currently reading:
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron (Paperback)
by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind
bookshelves: currently-reading

my rating:

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August 06

Dave added a quote:
""Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'" " — Jedi Master Yoda

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Dave added a quote:
"We don't do it for the glory. We don't do it for the recognition... We do it because it needs to be done. Because if we don't, no one else will. And we do it even if no one knows what we've done. Even if no one knows we exist. Even if no one remembers we ever existed." — Kara, Supergirl

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Dave added a quote:
"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell." — Joan Crawford

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Dave added a quote:
"In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. " — Fran Lebowitz

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July 24

Dave gave

to:
Dark Voyage: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Alan Furst

my rating:

recommended to Dave by: Don Gallinger
recommended for: Spy Novel Fans
read in July, 2008

Dave said: "Dark Voyage was my introduction to the fiction of Alan Furst. At first, although I enjoyed the writing style, I was looking for more "plot", then I came to realize that the style helps to provide the plot, in a way. Furst writes in a...more "

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see all 14 of Dave's books »

Dave's favorite quotes

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx

tags: animals, books, dogs, friends, humor

1826 people liked it

"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell."
— Joan Crawford

tags: love

144 people liked it

"In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. "
— Fran Lebowitz

tags: algebra, education, humor, mathematics

22 people liked it

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."
— Mahatma Gandhi

tags: appreciation, life, speed, time

17 people liked it

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
— Freud - Sigmund

9 people liked it

see all of Dave's favorite quotes »

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Dave's friends (2)

	Doni Tamblyn 35 books, 108 friends Friend details Through a friend "Doni is married to my good friend Don, and is one of the very best things ever to happen to him."
	Donald Gallinger 28 books, 46 friends Friend details Through Goodreads, Worked Together "Don and I worked together for many years and discovered a mutual love of DC comics of the Silver Age, as well as similar senses of humor."

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ranking:	553 out of 72656
questions answered:	1507
correct:	858 (56.9%)
best streak:	20
questions added:	0

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