Books on the Nightstand discussion
What are you currently reading - October 2010
Tanya wrote: I've just started listening to The Amityville Horror (by Jay Anson; narrated by Ray Porter.) I have to tell you that when I was 11 years old, I read this book and it scared me immediately and scarred me for life.Gack! My parents took me to see the original movie when it came out and was being sold as a true story of flies and demons and seeping bloody walls and Emily the pig and a family running for their LIVES in the middle of the night. I was 9. For the record, never take your 9 year old to see something like that. The book didn't affect me as much when I read it as a teen maybe because this was well after the whole story was debunked.
One of the real victims of the story was Jay Anson himself who was snookered by the Lutz's and somehow never saw any profit from the book. Or that's what I heard on a podcast about it recently.
Vanessa wrote: "Gack! My parents took me to see the original movie when it came out and was being sold as a true story of flies and demons and seeping bloody walls and Emily the pig and a family running for their LIVES in the middle of the night. I was 9. For the record, never take your 9 year old to see something like that. The book didn't affect me as much when I read it as a teen maybe because this was well after the whole story was debunked.
One of the real victims of the story was Jay Anson himself who was snookered by the Lutz's and somehow never saw any profit from the book. Or that's what I heard on a podcast about it recently. "
Did you know it's still being sold as "Non-Fiction?!"
Even though I know it was de-dunked later on, the damage had already been done to my poor little Catholic pysche! I think what I'm experiencing now is a sort of sensory recall.
If you happen to remember what podcast that item about Jay Anson was, I'd love to hear it...
One of the real victims of the story was Jay Anson himself who was snookered by the Lutz's and somehow never saw any profit from the book. Or that's what I heard on a podcast about it recently. "
Did you know it's still being sold as "Non-Fiction?!"
Even though I know it was de-dunked later on, the damage had already been done to my poor little Catholic pysche! I think what I'm experiencing now is a sort of sensory recall.
If you happen to remember what podcast that item about Jay Anson was, I'd love to hear it...
Hmmm...I know Skeptoid did one. Here is the transcript of it:http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4020
No mention of Anson's royalties though. I know the show I listened to had a male and female host and I can't remember what it was. I could be thinking of his suing for royalties for the many film sequels but I thought I had heard he didn't make money off of the book (and also admitted late in life that it was a hoax.) BTW, the second movie which is a prequel scared me more than the first one.
Also, I see the freaky demon pig was called Jodie, not Emily. And despite the story being debunked for many years, the debate is still unsurprisingly alive and well on the nets.
Yesterday I finished Persuader by Lee Child.
This first-person tale is a strong entry in the series. Child's Reacher books can always be counted on for hard-ass action, but this one shows a new hard-boiled artfulness to Child's approach, capturing the bittersweet tinge of tenderness that lies in the heart of every tough guy, and serving up some terse prose that, in a couple of action sequences, will make a fan of the genre laugh with delight.
Here's one: "I caught him with a wild left in the throat. It was a solid punch, and a lucky one. But not for him. It crushed his larynx. He went down on the floor again and suffocated. It was reasonably quick. About a minute and a half. There was nothing I could do for him. I'm not a doctor."
Reacher is at his best when his emotions are engaged. Particularly those emotions that require vengeance, and the dark thrill of taking out the baddest guys. The ones who can't be suffered to live. And that's what we get here. Reacher in full avenging mode.
This first-person tale is a strong entry in the series. Child's Reacher books can always be counted on for hard-ass action, but this one shows a new hard-boiled artfulness to Child's approach, capturing the bittersweet tinge of tenderness that lies in the heart of every tough guy, and serving up some terse prose that, in a couple of action sequences, will make a fan of the genre laugh with delight.
Here's one: "I caught him with a wild left in the throat. It was a solid punch, and a lucky one. But not for him. It crushed his larynx. He went down on the floor again and suffocated. It was reasonably quick. About a minute and a half. There was nothing I could do for him. I'm not a doctor."
Reacher is at his best when his emotions are engaged. Particularly those emotions that require vengeance, and the dark thrill of taking out the baddest guys. The ones who can't be suffered to live. And that's what we get here. Reacher in full avenging mode.
Hi Libby -- I am also reading Ethan Frome, but on my Nook. In chapter 4 at the moment. I chose it for my "banned book" this year. I find it more engaging than I expected. Look forward to hearing your thoughts when you finish.
Reading "Room". I love how the author let us see the world for the first time through Jack's eyes. How so many things we take for granted can be a new experience for someone.
Should I feel bad I haven't read anything in several weeks? Been too busy (it all started with the anime convention) and it's not like reading is my only hobby. I like anime, to play video games, go to the gym, work on my novel at the bookstore (i'm near the books, does that count for something?) I hate it when so much life happens at once you don't have time for anything else. On the bright side, I got a new phone yesterday. Say what you want about the iPhone, i got a Blackberry and I love it. I don't like touch screens. Give me buttons.Hm. Maybe a prefence in book format runs parralell to that of phones. Kindle or actual book? iPhone or Blackberry? Touch screen or no? Just saying.
@ Vanessa: Hi! I'm not dead! Just busy! lol Sorry to hear you found a book that made you anything but happy. Sadly, there are books like that. I dind't realize it either till I picked up my first lemon. A therapy session was required afterward, much crying and claims of "I didn't think this was even possible! How could this happen?" went on. lol
Tanya wrote: "I've just started listening to The Amityville Horror (by Jay Anson; narrated by Ray Porter.) I have to tell you that when I was 11 years old, I read this book and it scared me immediately and scarred me for life. Now that I'm older, I find I'm no less affected. This morning I was seriously wondering where my rosary beads had got to! "In my teens a group of us from school decided to go to the cinema (a certain recipe for poor viewing choices!). It was Amityville 3D!!!! Thankfully I remember almost nothing.
Vanessa wrote: "Hmmm...I know Skeptoid did one. Here is the transcript of it:http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4020
No mention of Anson's royalties though. I know the show I listened to had a male and female hos..."
Skepticality has a male and female host , Derek and Swoopy. Maybe that is the podcast you listened to.
I had to put down Super Sad True Love Story. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. It was probably the repeated mentions of the dollar being weak against the yuan and giant conglomerations like FordGMContinentalUSAirCreditBank. Yes, the economy's crap, the future's bleak, the author's pretentious; I get it.
Misty wrote: "Should I feel bad I haven't read anything in several weeks? Been too busy (it all started with the anime convention) and it's not like reading is my only hobby. I like anime, to play video games, g..."I think that happens to everyone. There are only so many leisure hours available after work or school. I go through phases where all I want to play casual games or watch movies or knit. I only feel a twinge of guilt when I am going through an extended non-reading phase and my book blog sits neglected.
I finished The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum by Penny Simpson last night and it was very good. It is a strange novel in that time is an odd thing moving fast and unpredictable. I didn't really understand why until the end, though I should have picked up on it earlier. This book was published in 2008 by a small press and while I know I saw a small mention of it in a Advance that was enough to get me intrigued, the book sat on my shelf a year before I got around to picking it up. Set between the World Wars, mostly in Berlin, it is snatches of life from a band of interesting characters, a seven-foot tall female chef who is a Jew, a couple of actors and playwrights, a women who reminds me of Auntie Mame, an Albino, and on and on. It is about there lives and friendships and how they survive from day today with all the scarcity and violence that surround them. It is also about story telling, story-recipes, clock towers, ballads, plays, and more. I like it. Now I'm reading a middle grade novel called Horns & Wrinkles by Joseph Helgerson. I am only 28 pages in and so far it is cute.
I just finished reading This Side Of The Sky last night. I am going to start on something lighter next, Fly Away Home
@Misty you aren't alone with the Blackberry thing. I got mine the same day as you. I had the iPhone and then the iPhone 4 came out and my husband had issues then we changed to another carried and got the Droid X then I had nothing but issues, went through three phones and was approved to switch to Blackberry. Oh I have missed physical buttons.But don't feel too guilty that life has gotten in your way of reading. At least your able to be around books, to bad we aren't able to absorb their stories from simply being around them without listening to the audiobook format.
John wrote: "I had to put down Super Sad True Love Story. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way. It was probably the repeated mentions of the dollar being weak against the yuan and gi..."I definitely felt the same way, although I did muscle through the whole book. Very disappointed, one of those books that I can't believe I paid full price for the hardcover.
I am still working my way through William Sample's Fe Fi Foe Comes and started Ken Follet's Fall of Giants. Both long reads but enjoyable.
Just finished The Fiery Cross yesterday morning, and decided to go on to something totally different for my next book- not in the Outlander series, and back to physical book form rather than e-book... I've started my first Reacher novel, The Enemy, and it is excellent. The prose is quite terse (can prose be described that way, or just people?), much more so than I am used to, and it took me awhile to get used to it, but I am really enjoying it now. It's a nice break from the long stuff I've been reading lately!
Readnponder wrote: "Hi Libby -- I am also reading Ethan Frome, but on my Nook. In chapter 4 at the moment. I chose it for my "banned book" this year. I find it more engaging than I expected. Look forward to hearing yo..."I didn't know Ethan Frome had been banned. When you finish let me know, because I have some thoughts that would be spoilers for anyone who hasn't read the whole book. At first I didn't think I'd finish because the beginning is so slow but I persevered and am glad I did.
Callie wrote: I definitely felt the same way, although I did muscle through the whole book. Very disappointed, one of those books that I can't believe I paid full price for the hardcover. If I had paid for the book, I probably would have worked my way through the rest of it. Luckily it was a library book, so I was much more willing to just take it back and move on to something else.
Misty wrote:@ Vanessa: Hi! I'm not dead! Just busy! lol Sorry to hear you found a book that made you anything but happy. Sadly, there are books like that. Hey! No worries, I didn't think you were dead :)
White Noise isn't the first lemon I have read. I was kind of afraid I wouldn't like it. It was a book club pick so I was being a team player. We'll have a spirited discussion at least. I know one other member hated it the first time he read it and he's STILL reading it again for book club.
(thanks to the likes of Goodreads and Amazon tho, I read much fewer lemons these days. If I see several bad or mediocre reviews, I am much less likely to select the book.)
Esther wrote: Skepticality has a male and female host , Derek and Swoopy. Maybe that is the podcast you listened to.Just when I think I'm the only one that knows those shows.
I kind of think it wasn't Skepticality but I don't remember what show it was. I don't listen to that show often, just because it's so long.
Vanessa wrote: "Esther wrote: Skepticality has a male and female host , Derek and Swoopy. Maybe that is the podcast you listened to.Just when I think I'm the only one that knows those shows.
I kind of think..."
I don't listen to Skepticality a lot but I listen to several podcasts made by their friends.
When Derek had his brain meltdown the podcast was mentioned constantly so I tried it when he got better.
I do like both Derek and Swoopy's voices which is very important to me if I'm going to be regularly listening to them for an hour or so.
I'm currently reading Nam Le's first offering, "The Boat" - a collection of short stories. If the rest of the stories are as poetic and thought-provoking as the first, I'm in for a real treat!
I finished A Loyal Character Dancer. I didn't like it as well as the first book in the series because the clunky dialog started to bug me a bit. Nevertheless, I learned so much about China and how the Chinese view Americans. I'm really on a kick with mysteries set in foreign locales. I think I can thank Dragon Tattoo for this. I'm now reading a lesser known Steinbeck called The Moon Is Down. It's propaganda he volunteered to write for WWII under the auspices of the OSS but it's really thoughtful and well-written. It's the story of an unnamed country (probably Denmark or Norway) that is conquered by a suspisciously German army (although they also are not called by name.) It got a lot of flack when it was published in 1942 because Steinbeck made many of the conquerers sympathetic and ordinary people. Which was exactly the point of course.
The book was a huge hit in occupied Europe and sales from it were used to fund resistance movements in France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. I had no idea until I read that in the preface. It's a shame that story is largely forgotten.
@Vanessa - there is no sin in not finishing a book. I feel bad when I don't finish one for my book club, but my reading time is too precious to waste on something I don't enjoy. Just keep telling yourself "Life is too short to read books I don't like." It helps with the guilt.I had a long weekend and so I grabbed The Hunger Games and snuggled up on the couch. Well, my long weekend turned into an obsession. I finished The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Couldn't put them down. The warnings about not picking those up unless you have nothing to do is right! I will be picking up Mockingjay after work. Also, wanted to say if it wasn't for BOTNS and this forum I would have never picked these up, thinking it's not what I typically would read or enjoy, but I have enjoyed immensely. So thank you, thank you, thank you!
The Hunger Games did distract me from my library books which are due soon and I can't renew - as other people have holds on them, so I gotta get moving on these... The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors: A Novel, Villain, and The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise: A Novel. But I am pretty sure there will be nothing that can get in my way of starting Mockingjay tonight.
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About halfway through The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and have to have Snow Flower and the Secret Fan read for my library's book discussion next Tuesday. Since I'm parked in the library all day trying to get support for our upcoming levy, I'm hoping to get a lot of reading done in between "customers".
I'm about half way through reading Sena Jeter Naslund's latest book, Adam & Eve. Each of her books are different, and I'm surprised at her latest subject matter. The main character's husband is an astrophysicist who has discovered that a planet is very likely to have life. He dies on about the third page. His widow ends up transporting a case with a codex that purports to contain evidence that the book Genesis has different versions written by more than one person. However she crashes her plane and is nursed by a man who calls himself Adam and the area they are in is an isolated part of the Middle East with abundant fruits and vegetables. It bothers me that she wonders if the codex is comprised of scrolls, because a codex is a bound volume, definitely not a scroll. So I wonder if Naslund herself is unaware of the definition of a codex.
@Jenn. Yes, I do agree it's ok to quit a book (especially when you just HATE it.) I really did want to try to finish it for book club but I had to content myself with thumbing through the SparkNotes instead. Although even the fact that there are SparkNotes for "White Noise" kind of outrages me. Book club will be lively this month :)I finished Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down which was extraordinary. It's a piece of propaganda he volunteered to write for the OSS in WWII but it's so much more than that. Apparently it was sneered at by critics in this country but in Europe it was beloved. The sales of it funded resistance efforts in occupied Denmark, Norway, France and the Netherlands. The story of the book is as inspiring as the book itself.
Now I'm reading The Monkey House which is a sort of literary mystery set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. I picked it because Martin Cruz Smith raved about it and I just got off of a kick reading his Arkady Renko novels.
I just finished The Pillars of the Earth and The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time. I can't believe that I have had Pillars sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years before I actually picked it up. What a great story!!! It took a long time to finish, but it was well worth it.
Tanya wrote: "I've just started listening to The Amityville Horror (by Jay Anson; narrated by Ray Porter.) I have to tell you that when I was 11 years old, I read this book and it scared me immediately and scarred me for life. Now that I'm older, I find I'm no less affected. This morning I was seriously wondering where my rosary beads had got to!"
I finished it THE AMITYVILLE HORROR yesterday. The opening of the book (a letter from a priest) had me take a deep breath; but by the end, it was hard for me to remember why I had been so severely traumatized by the book. Well, yeah, I was 11 years old. And a devout little Roman Catholic. And I happily thought the eczema on my hands was the beginnings stages of stigmata... But still! Tonight I'm going to watch the 1979 movie. Soooo, when I next write about how I'm waking up at 3:15 every morning again, you can remind me of what a brave grown-up cynic I posed as the night before!
I finished it THE AMITYVILLE HORROR yesterday. The opening of the book (a letter from a priest) had me take a deep breath; but by the end, it was hard for me to remember why I had been so severely traumatized by the book. Well, yeah, I was 11 years old. And a devout little Roman Catholic. And I happily thought the eczema on my hands was the beginnings stages of stigmata... But still! Tonight I'm going to watch the 1979 movie. Soooo, when I next write about how I'm waking up at 3:15 every morning again, you can remind me of what a brave grown-up cynic I posed as the night before!
Callie wrote: "Just finished The Fiery Cross yesterday morning, and decided to go on to something totally different for my next book- not in the Outlander series, and back to physical book form rathe..."Finished Reacher, and it did not disappoint. I'll definitely be grabbing more of these in the future. The end was a surprise to me, and I didn't see most of the twists coming, which is unusual for me- I often ruin books for myself by guessing the ending way ahead of time (for example, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane).
I also recently finished The Mists of Avalon: Book 4: The Prisoner in the Oak, and it makes me a little sad to leave this audio behind. I enjoyed the story overall, there were parts that were slow and characters that drove me crazy, but that's bound to happen over the course of a story this long. I thought it was very well told, although it seemed to end a bit abruptly.
On audio I have just started The Quickening, and I am super excited to get into this story. There's little that I enjoy more than a good pioneer tale, and this looks to be right up my alley.
I haven't decided what to read next on my nook, although I have 2 contenders, and they are very different... The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements or Room. Probably one, then the other!
Just loved A Thousand Cuts, a novel about bullying among students in school and among adults at work. The writing is transcendent, edgy, fresh, and familiar at the same time. Highly recommended.
I just finished Tigana by Guy G. Kay and then Tanith Lee's Electric Forest. Tigana was the better of the two, I'm not so sure of the 'gimic?' ending in Electric Forest. I am now reading Dawkins' The Greatest Show, Dolly and the Singing Bird by D. Dunnett and Macbeth in anticipation of the opera Mon. night which is in anticipation of a group read of D.Dunnett's King Hereafter - her Macbeth from her research. The Singing Bird is also for a group read of all the Johnson Johnson mysteries by Dunnett.I thought I would read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo next but I can't face carrying it (1200 pgs) and my laptop and etc to work every night on my bicycle. It will have to wait for vacation next month.
I've just finished The Girl Who Played with Fire Millennium 2. I think it was even better than #1 and I am looking forward to reading #3 soon.I have just started Incarceron which is YA. It is told from two POVs.
One a young man trapped in the living prison called Incarceron.
The other a wealthy young girl living in a distant future where the King has declared that Time has stopped and everyone must live as in the 17th century with technology hidden behind the scenes. Her father is the warden of Incarceron.
So far it is living up to my expectations which were high.
Right now I'm reading Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins and Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. I'm really concentrating more heavily on Skeletons at the moment. It's so graphic and horrifying but so well written that I'm having a hard time staying away from it!
Tanya wrote:I finished it THE AMITYVILLE HORROR yesterday... Tonight I'm going to watch the 1979 movie. Soooo, when I next write about how I'm waking up at 3:15 every morning again, you can remind me of what a brave grown-up cynic I posed as the night before! I saw part of that recently on some channel. I have to say the 8 year old Catholic school girl inside of me told me to close my eyes and keep flipping channels. But the adult skeptic prevailed. Barely. As it turns out, it's pretty cheesy now though (don't bother with the Ryan Reynolds remake which is dreadful.)
I finished The Monkey House and wrote a long review and hit some random key on my laptop and erased it. BLARG! The book was a real eye-opener about life in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. Tragic and grim needless to say. Fullerton has an oddly poetic way of describing the different types of arms fire. (btw, does it bug anyone else when a book set in the past doesn't provide dates? Or when it doesn't have maps? I think these might just be weird fetishes of mine.)
I hatched a plan mid-year to read some of the novels that were seemingly omnipresent on adult book shelves when I was a kid that I for whatever or no reason never picked up. So next up is Ragtime.
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Next up - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
The library's reserves are starting to gang up on me - I have Sh*t My Dad Say [book:Why We Hate the Oil Companies, One Day, A Journey: My Political Life, Ape House and Juliet waiting for me.
Eric wrote: "Yesterday I finished Persuader by Lee Child.This first-person tale is a strong entry in the series. Child's Reacher books can always be counted on for hard-ass actio..."
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not Jack Reacher."
Maybe I've been watching too many Star Trek episodes.
Eric wrote: "Yesterday I finished Persuader by Lee Child.
This first-person tale is a strong entry in the series. Child's Reacher books can always be counted on for hard-ass actio..."
I am listening to 2 audiobooks:Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett;
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich.
I am reading Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan.
Regarding recent recommendations I intend to read in the near future:
Room by Emma Donoghue;
Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly.
at the moment im reading a chick lit book,jane green swapping lives its good so far but only half way into it
I tried reading Ragtime but I didn't really like it. There are also lots of scenes that struck me as...I hate to say it but kinda pervy? I don't mean sex scenes, I mean weird stuff including a fair share of voyeurism. I checked through the reviews and no one else mentions this; in fact, everyone else seems to love the book. Oh great, it's just me. So now I'm reading God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. It's been sitting on my shelf for a while and I felt like it wanted to be picked up. I also am reading Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway which is Cherie Currie's memoir (she was the lead singer of the Runaways, hence the title.)
Vanessa wrote: "I tried reading Ragtime but I didn't really like it. There are also lots of scenes that struck me as...I hate to say it but kinda pervy? I don't mean sex scenes, I mean weird stuff in..."I didn't make it through Ragtime, either. I did read Homer and Langley, which was better, but not all that great. I found his writing to be rather cold.
I finally finished The Woman in White and I really loved this one. And now I'm moving on to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and also The Witches of Eastwick
The Unquiet by John Connolly. So far, so good. Only 50 pages in though. Typical Charlie Parker stuff.Just finished The Stand. Pure excellence.
Melissa wrote: I didn't make it through Ragtime, either. I did read Homer and Langley, which was better, but not all that great. I found his writing to be rather cold.Yeah, something about his style didn't excite me. And the stuff I found offputting was making me not want to open the book. I'm ok with flipping through to the end and moving on. I don't know if I really want to read more Doctorow now (although I always kind of wanted to read Billy Bathgate.)
Flora, Witches wasn't one of my favorites but I do love me some John Updike.
Books on the Nightstand
Books mentioned in this topic
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (other topics)And Then There Were None (other topics)
Jurassic Park (other topics)
Superman: Earth One (other topics)
Freedom (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
John Connolly (other topics)Suzanne Collins (other topics)
Chris Bohjalian (other topics)
Emma Donoghue (other topics)
Will Christopher Baer (other topics)
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I've just started listening to The Amityville Horror (by Jay Anson; narrated by Ray Porter.) I have to tell you that when I was 11 years old, I read this book and it scared me immediately and scarred me for life. Now that I'm older, I find I'm no less affected. This morning I was seriously wondering where my rosary beads had got to!