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July 13
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Andy
gave
 
to:
The Thirty-Nine Steps (Paperback)
by John Buchan
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in July, 2008
Andy said:
"Intrigue 101. A string of setpieces in which the author seems to be improvising as he goes and in the process inventing the man-on-the-run genre. A million books and movies have gone down this path since, and many of them, let's face it, are better p...more
Intrigue 101. A string of setpieces in which the author seems to be improvising as he goes and in the process inventing the man-on-the-run genre. A million books and movies have gone down this path since, and many of them, let's face it, are better put together and less dated than this bit of ultra-British WWI bathroom reading. (And trench reading.) But Buchan is clearly loving this stuff as he comes up with it, and the reader can't help but enjoy his high spirits, on his own silly terms. For all that the narrator is supposed to be a paragon of Edwardian-masculine unflappability, the book really feels like a child's game of make-believe. I'm sure I would have enjoyed this thoroughly as a child - it's certainly superior to the Hardy Boys.
...less
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May 26
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Andy
read and liked
Beth's
review of American Nerd: The Story of My People:
"An enjoyable and insightful look at nerd culture. A lot of ideas get dropped before they're fully explored, though, and I wish it had been just a bit more scholarly and a bit less anecdotal. Reading this was sort of like reading a very long Slate ...more
An enjoyable and insightful look at nerd culture. A lot of ideas get dropped before they're fully explored, though, and I wish it had been just a bit more scholarly and a bit less anecdotal. Reading this was sort of like reading a very long Slate article -- you feel like you're listening to a friend explore a topic and reach a pretty good but not entirely satisfying conclusion. You want to tell him, "Yeah, great job," at the end, anyway....less
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Andy
gave
to:
Acme Novelty Library #18 (Hardcover)
by Chris Ware
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Andy said:
"I think this may be Chris Ware's best work yet. It's not perfect - not everything works equally well, and in particular his stilted narrator voice still feels pretty awkward to me - but in its unassuming way this is much more ambitious than any of hi...more
I think this may be Chris Ware's best work yet. It's not perfect - not everything works equally well, and in particular his stilted narrator voice still feels pretty awkward to me - but in its unassuming way this is much more ambitious than any of his previous stuff. Loneliness is still the theme but now it's real-life loneliness, and his careful observation is now applied to a convincing character, rather than just to convincing moments in the lives of stylized characters. His virtuosic technique is now so confident that it is actually harder for the reader to pick up on all the layers he has built into the work; they are subtler and it reads much smoother at first glance. But it's as intricate as anything he's ever done, just more mature. Maybe it's not five stars for all time, but it was five stars as I was reading it with constant admiration....less
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May 14
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Andy
is currently reading:
Space Demons (Puffin Story Books)
by Gillian Rubinstein
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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May 16
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Andy
gave
to:
American Nerd: The Story of My People (Hardcover)
by Benjamin Nugent (Goodreads author!)
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Andy said:
"Saw it at the store and immediately knew I had to buy and read it - the topic has always fascinated me and seems an important one, and the tone - "pretty much serious, but" - seemed exactly right.
Nugent's natural mode is somewhere in b...more
Saw it at the store and immediately knew I had to buy and read it - the topic has always fascinated me and seems an important one, and the tone - "pretty much serious, but" - seemed exactly right.
Nugent's natural mode is somewhere in between magazine color writing and sheer bloggy speculation, all of which I find entirely sympathetic, but it prevents him from really driving home any of his conclusions. He's generally content just to suggest connections and offer ideas that have occurred to him. The effect is like having a pleasantly thought-provoking conversation. But I've had pleasantly thought-provoking conversations on this topic before and so was hoping for something slightly more rigorous, which should have been possible even within the bounds of "pretty much serious, but." A lot of promising stuff gets brought up but then seems to slip away prematurely before the discussion gets to really bloom. It's not always clear why he's letting it go.
But oh well. The historical perspective he offers is certainly intriguing, and the analyses he offers are sensible and thoughtful. I was continually delighted to find myself reading these things in, you know, a real book that someone put out there in the world. The issues that he brings to the table are exactly the ones I would want in a book about nerds. The chapter analyzing and dismissing nerd chic (or, as he has it, "fake nerds") was particularly invigorating. So were the excellently remembered personal stories. Most of all, his willingness to write in a "pretty much serious" way about intangible cultural standards (i.e. his spectrum of racism extending from animal-like to machine-like) is extremely satisfying. Yes, I wanted more and deeper. But the book was, as it stands, a pleasure.
On the cover are frames containing various nerd artifacts - pocket protector, inhaler, etc. On the back is "calculator." Seeing that the very tiny display of the calculator was on and glowing in the photo, I told my girlfriend, "it really ought to say BOOBLESS." We then looked closer and realized that it was just barely possible to make out the digits - and that they DO in fact say "BOOBLESS." I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. Thank you, cover artist!
In a sense I am here bragging. This is nerdy of me.
Not to mention dropping the fact that I have a girlfriend. I so totally have a girlfriend....less
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May 05
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Andy
gave
to:
All Quiet on the Western Front (Mass Market Paperback)
by Erich Maria Remarque
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Andy said:
"A high school standard but I can't imagine I would have understood this fully in high school and I'm glad nobody assigned it to me then. A gruelingly painful, mournful book. The writing is resolutely unpretentious and yet incredibly effective in its ...more
A high school standard but I can't imagine I would have understood this fully in high school and I'm glad nobody assigned it to me then. A gruelingly painful, mournful book. The writing is resolutely unpretentious and yet incredibly effective in its descriptions both of battle and of states of mind. I'm not really sure how he pulls it off. The portrait of a man feeling irredeemably divorced from his past and his future is heartbreakingly vivid. If literature is meant to offer us experiences that we will never otherwise have, this confrontation with the nature of war and of mortality seems a very important experience to have. I can understand why teachers think high schoolers should be put through it. But when I was in high school I was immune to most kinds of empathetic experience; it would have been easy for me to read this and "get the gist" without feeling anything like the blow to the gut that I felt this time. But clearly the blow to the gut is the author's intention, because he is trying to change the world. Thanks to his superb craftsmanship this is a very respectable effort in that department, and what could be more moving than that?...less
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March 13
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Andy
added:
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (Paperback)
by Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell, Robert Hass
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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Andy
gave
to:
The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm Or Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays (Paperback)
by Lee Laura Hope
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in March, 2008
Andy said:
"Once again, stung by a book being exactly what it looked like but not, despite my hopes, delightfully so. It just was. The romance of a movie business still in its embarrassing off-the-cuff infancy ("This cow will make a fine scene for one of ou...more
Once again, stung by a book being exactly what it looked like but not, despite my hopes, delightfully so. It just was. The romance of a movie business still in its embarrassing off-the-cuff infancy ("This cow will make a fine scene for one of our moving picture plays!"), rendered in pure Bobbsey-Twins-grade cardboard, certainly has its charm, and I'm sure that the next time I see a movie from that era, I'll be reminded of the pluck and idiotic naivete of the Moving Picture Girls. But all things considered, this is a long book....less
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February 26
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Andy
gave
to:
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Paperback)
by Marjane Satrapi
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in February, 2008
Andy said:
"An episodic childhood memoir in comics not that different from a lot of other childhood memoirs in comics out there, except that the author grew up in Iran. I have a hard time with memoirs generally - the fact that "it's all true" is freque...more
An episodic childhood memoir in comics not that different from a lot of other childhood memoirs in comics out there, except that the author grew up in Iran. I have a hard time with memoirs generally - the fact that "it's all true" is frequently the excuse for a lack of worthwhile insight. The book is executed with talent, but I feel like what I was able to take away from it was generic childhood stuff done more acutely elsewhere, plus history of Iran stuff I would rather have read in truly journalistic form. But you know what? I wouldn't have. Because it has pictures in it, I and a lot of other people read this book. Good for Marjane Satrapi....less
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February 10
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New comment on Beth's review of
La Maison de Rendez-Vous and Djinn
(see all 2 comments)
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