Jim's profile

67 ratings | 68 reviews
avg rating: 3.72

Jim's bookshelves

read (68)
currently-reading (5)
to-read (22)
humor-and-irony (21)
this-is-england (21)
fantasy-and-sci-fi (11)
mysteries (7)

history (6)
travel (5)
religion (5)
politics-and-political-economy (5)
politics-spies-and-conspiracies (5)
literary-canon (4)
sort-of-historical-fiction (4)

social-issues (3)
the-writing-life (3)
poetry (3)
biography-and-memoir (3)
punk (3)
philosophy (2)
weep-for-the-trees-it-took (2)

it-is-football-dammit (1)
quests (1)
nosh (1)

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Jim is currently reading

	07/24 Jim is currently reading: Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks (Target Doctor Who Library, No 155) by John Peel bookshelves: currently-reading, fantasy-and-sci-fi	my rating:
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	07/24 Jim is currently reading: I Am Jackie Chan : My Life in Action (Hardcover) by Jackie; Yang, Jeff Chan bookshelves: biography-and-memoir, currently-reading	my rating:
	Jim said: "A nice guy who can do backflips and kick ass. " add a comment
	07/12 Jim is currently reading: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (Hardcover) by Tony Horwitz bookshelves: currently-reading, history, travel	my rating:
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Jim's recent updates (rss)

July 24

Jim is currently reading:
I Am Jackie Chan : My Life in Action (Hardcover)
by Jackie; Yang, Jeff Chan
bookshelves: biography-and-memoir, currently-reading

my rating:

Jim said: "A nice guy who can do backflips and kick ass. "

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Jim is currently reading:
Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks (Target Doctor Who Library, No 155)
by John Peel
bookshelves: currently-reading, fantasy-and-sci-fi

my rating:

add a comment

Jim gave

to:
This Is Your Life: A Novel (Paperback)
by John O'Farrell
bookshelves: humor-and-irony, this-is-england

my rating:

read in July, 2008

Jim said: "The book begins as Jimmy Conway is about to go on stage to do his stand-up routine before a live TV audience. There has been a lot of "buzz" generated over Jimmy, Britain's best new comic talent. He does have one problem: he has never done ...more "

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July 12

Jim is currently reading:
A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (Hardcover)
by Tony Horwitz
bookshelves: currently-reading, history, travel

my rating:

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Jim marked as to-read:
The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back (Hardcover)
by Andrew Sullivan
bookshelves: politics-and-political-economy, to-read

my rating:

Jim said: "Andrew Sullivan once said that he was politically conservative so that he could be radical in the other aspects of his life. "

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New comment on kkurtz's review of An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

Jim wrote: "Atkinson's Long Gray Line (an account of the West Point class of '66) is worth a look, too. "

(see all 2 comments)

July 11

Jim read and liked Brendan's review of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War:

"In Confederates in the Attic, journalist Tony Horwitz explores the ways in which the Civil War is still present in Southern culture.

I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on ...more In Confederates in the Attic, journalist Tony Horwitz explores the ways in which the Civil War is still present in Southern culture.

I was a Civil War re-enactor in junior high and high school, and I particularly appreciated his chapter on that very strange hobby: "A Farb of the Heart." (Farb, by the way, is re-enactor slang for all things inauthentic.)

I've not always been impressed with Horwitz's books (I thought Baghdad without a Map to be particularly slight), but here he really nails it. For instance, he perfectly captures the cliquishness of re-enacting: the overweight, middle-aged farbs wearing second-hand work boots and puffing innocently on Marlboros; the hardcores who feel "that crowds of spectators interfered with an authentic experience of combat"; the civilian sutlers, nurses, and Lee & Lincoln impersonators; the few embittered ex-Real Deal guys who like to massage their tattoos and grouse, "Just like the real military -- a continual fucking screw-up" -- everyone distrusting everyone else.

There's the phenomenon of way too many people (including yours truly) wanting to be Confederate: "When I play Northern, I feel like the Russians in Afghanistan," a guy from freaking New Jersey explained. (This was pre-9/11, of course. Would he now say that he feels like the Marines in Fallujah?) There's the usual griping over who has to die in battle. There's the mind-blowing romanticization of everything, right down to Hello: "It's an era lost that we're trying to recapture," a woman washing clothes in a tub told Horwitz. "Men were men and women were women. It was less complicated." When a guy ambles past and says, "Evening, ma'am," the woman practically faints at how Gone with the Wind it all is. "See what I mean? No one's that polite in real life any more."

This is where re-enacting starts to make me cranky. What's the matter with these people?! People are still polite! And today, we get the added bonus of NOT mowing each other down by the hundreds of thousands on backyard battlefields!

One objection to what I found in Horwitz: An accountant from Connecticut who was nevertheless "fighting" for the South argues, "We're not here to debate slavery or states' rights. We're here to preserve the experience of the common soldier, North and South." That's mostly true, but the guys in my unit debated states' rights endlessly. They honestly believed the North was wrong. They honestly believed the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. This was hard to take, even in junior high school. "I hate to call it a hobby," continues the accountant, "because it's so much more than that. We're here to find the real answers, to read between the lines in the history books, and then share our experience with the spectators."

Real answers? There's a mystical element to re-enacting that I just don't get. These guys -- the hardcore ones, anyway -- know their history chapter and verse. But it's micro-history. They know their shirt buttons. The real answers -- whatever those are -- can't be found in shirt buttons I don't think....less "

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July 09

Jim gave

to:
Crime (Paperback)
by Irvine Welsh
bookshelves: weep-for-the-trees-it-took

my rating:

recommended to Jim by: A mortal enemy
recommended for: Anyone who likes over-rated fiction
read in July, 2008

Jim said: "Truly dreadful! If you're expecting the brilliance of Trainspotting, forget it. It was more like a really bad parody of Ian Rankin.

DI Ray Lennox from Edinburgh goes on holiday to Miami with his fiancee Trudi. Lennox is emotionally shredde...more "

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July 07

Jim is currently reading:
A Stolen Season (An Alex McKnight Novel)
by Steve Hamilton
bookshelves: currently-reading, mysteries

my rating:

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June 29

Jim gave

to:
May Contain Nuts (Paperback)
by John O'Farrell
bookshelves: humor-and-irony, this-is-england

my rating:

read in June, 2008

Jim said: "A satire on obsessive middle class parenting. Alice and Dave are over-informed and under-critical, adopting every faddish theory on child-rearing devised by so-called experts. Alice reads books like Feng Shui Your Brain and The Karma Accountant ...more "

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see all 68 of Jim's books »

Jim's favorite quotes

"Look, PETA! If God hadn't wanted us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so darn tasty!"
— Stephen Colbert

tags: colbert, report, the

9 people liked it

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views."
— Tom Baker (4th Doctor)

tags: doctor, who

3 people liked it

"We aren't particularly talented. We try harder!"
— Joe Strummer

tags: the-clash

2 people liked it

"Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry."
— Scroobius Pip

2 people liked it

"The meaning of life is life itself."
— Bob Geldof

tags: the-boomtown-rats

1 person liked it

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Jim's groups (recent posts)

The Library of Carsus — 12 members — last activity 05/04/2008 01:48PM
A group for fans of Doctor Who books: Virgin New Adventures, Virgin Missing Adventures, BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, BBC Past Doctor Adventures, Targ...more

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Jim's friends (11)

	Jennifer 145 books 10 friends
	Punk 431 books 58 friends
	Matthew 213 books 7 friends
	Andy 410 books 12 friends
	Saphira 40 books 6 friends
	Polly 5 books 3 friends
	kkurtz 514 books 219 friends
	Tracey 333 books 353 friends
	Bayshore 53 books 1303 friends
	Joel 68 books 7 friends
	Holly 12 books 11 friends

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