The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I don't even know if it's appropriate to post this here, but since I have no one else to share it with I have to.

Larry McMurtry is going to auction off 300,000 books in what he is calling The Last Book Sale. It sounds like it is going to be quite the event. If you are in Texas I suggest making the trip to Archer City for the auction or any other time to check out Booked Up. I was able to briefly visit last year and I can't recommend it highly enough if you are a book lover.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

Briefly what the book is about: Blink is about the adaptive unconscious. The moment where we can sum up all the data that is before us and make an informed instant decision ('thin-slicing').

Recommend? Every book I have read written by Malcolm Gladwell are all well written, and the case studies not only show the theory being implemented, but are really interesting to read.

Next on reading list: 'Switch' by Chip and Dan Heath

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Legitimately great story, very solid dystopian scifi / cyber punk story, wrapped with so so very many nods to the best of geek culture. Some of the references are subtle, and some are blatant, but it is by far the most comprehensive nod to geek culture from the end of Gen X to the start of Gen Y that I've ever seen. Fantastically well done. If you're geeky enough to think the premise sounds interesting, and old enough to remember and of the 80's - you will fucking love this book. Go read it immediately. 10/10 and easily into my top 5 books released in the last 5 years.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Please delete post of this has been mentioned already elsewhere
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Didn't even know about Robert Greene's book until last week, looking very forward to this:

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastery-Robert-Greene/dp/1846680840" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastery-Robert- ... 1846680840</a>

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Donnie Brasco I was bored one night and watched the movie, when it came to the end and they started telling about what happened to the characters I realized it was a true story based off of the book. Interesting read that takes you inside the Mafia back in the 70's and 80's. Easy read, once in a while it's hard to keep track of characters and some of the sub plots but it doesn't do anything to lessen the book in my opinion. I have a tendency to gloss over details when reading so that might have been why I was unable to follow occasionally, as well as why I didn't mind.

Open Andre Agassi's autobiography. At least for me I felt it took you inside what it is like being a professional athlete and how much media portrayal effects public perception. Really makes you feel like you know the person by reading the book and changes your perspective on all professional athletes a bit because you realize that you only see of them what you are shown and really have no idea what they are like. I've always been an Agassi fan so I may be a bit biased but I thought it did a great job of showing the highs and lows of his life as well as the sacrifices and rewards that come along with being one of the best in your sport.

Born on the Fourth of July I was very indifferent to this book. It is a story that needed, and probably still needs, to be told but I just found myself reading the book for it to end. I don't know if it was the writing or just a story that I think is best told in a different medium but as a whole I wasn't impressed by it.
That is completely separate from my opinion towards Kovic and his story, just to clear that up.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I've finally read a couple of books lately that I think people here might like.

First: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. I am so mad that I've been aware of this book for so long now and waited until two weeks ago to start reading it. I think this is now one of my favorite books. I don't read fiction very often because it's rare that I connect with it, but this completely sucked me in from the first page. Chabon strikes the perfect balance of his language being both beautiful and accessible. It is a long story, but the basic premise is this:

Joe Kavalier is smuggled out of Prague right as WW2 is starting and eventually makes his way to the home of his cousin, Sam Klayman, in Brooklyn. Sam wants to write comic books, and is an excellent storyteller but mediocre artist. Joe is a great artist, and had been training at an art institute in Prague (as well as learning the art of magic and escapistry - a la Houdini - from the teacher who helped him get out of the country). Together, they work as a team creating comic books with their most famous character being The Escapist. Joe is suffering from survivor's guilt and he uses The Escapist to act out his revenge fantasies against the Germans. Joe meets a girl, Rosa, who works for an organization that gets Jewish kids out of Europe, and Joe begins to save up money to pay for his younger brother to come over on the ship, as well as any other kids that he can afford. Of course, Joe and Rosa fall in love. After the tragic climax, things really start to get interesting for all three major characters, but I don't want to spoil any more details. It's an incredible story, though - unique, suspenseful, sad, funny, juicy. It was very hard to put it down, and I'm sad now that it's over.

Before that, I read two of Jon Ronson's books: The Psychopath Test and Them. Ronson falls into one of my favorite categories of authors who write books that are both educational and entertaining. I learned a lot of fascinating things from these books, but they were still page-turners and laugh-out-loud funny at times. The Psychopath Test revolves around the checklist that psychologists use to help diagnose someone as a psychopath, and Ronson explores how the test is used and abused. (One of his undercurrents throughout the book is how he starts to think everyone is a psychopath based on the qualifications of the test.) Overall, it's a journey into madness and the madness industry. You meet a few psychopaths, learn different theories of how psychopathy happens, how the idea of psychopathy was developed and how it has evolved, and how it's attempted to be treated.

The subtitle of Them is Adventures With Extremists. I think it was a coincidence, at first, that Ronson kept creating or accepting assignments where he'd spend a significant amount of time with various extremists: David Icke, the leader of an attempted revolution to overthrow Britain and make it an Islamic society, the leader of the KKK who was trying to revamp their image. But as he spent more time with them, he began to notice a pattern. Practically every extremist group shared the same belief: that there was a small group of people who controlled everything that happened in the world. For most of them, these people were Jews, for others they were reptilian aliens. So, Ronson sets out on a mission to try and figure out who these people could be and where it is that they hold their meetings, continuing to meet with all these crazy characters along the way. There are car chases, death threats, sneaking into secret meetings, espionage, and terrorist plots, but even without all of the action movie-esque flash it still would've been intriguing enough on its own just to get such an inside look at these organizations and people you hear about but can't quite believe. And it, too, somehow manages to be very funny, which helps avoid that eye-roll-inducing feel of your usual investigative/exposé type writing.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Read No Easy Day a few days ago. Meh. There are far better and more interesting SEAL books out there, and it was basically a retelling of information that's already been endlessly regurgitated by the media.

I'd say pass on it until you find it in a used book store.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just finished High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby. The writing is good and there are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments, but for the most part I was pretty underwhelmed. The protagonist is kind of annoying and kind of a loser, and kind of made me want to scream most of the time. Wasn't as good a book as I was expecting it to be.

I also recently read How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby which I actually really enjoyed. Sure, it's a novel about affairs and divorce, which it pretty over-done at the moment. Other than being able to relate about complacency and boredom of marriage - I appreciated it for different reasons. He writes the book from the perspective of a middle aged female, which at first I struggled with, but eventually liked. An easy and entertaining read, for sure.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Stop Stealing Dreams by Seth Godin. Seth is the founder of Squidoo.com and sold a company of his in the early 2000's to Yahoo for $30 million if I remember correctly. Anyway, this is a manifesto in which Seth discusses the outdated education system of the United States and why it no longer works for the type of economy we have today. While he doesn't pose a ton of ideas about how to transition into a new education system, he does an excellent job of critiquing the current system. This was one of the best things I have read in a long while. Although it's not perfect and is only a starting point (which Seth admits), this is an absolutely fantastic read. It can be downloaded for free from squidoo.com.

http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/04/updated-new-editions-of-stop-stealing-dreams.html

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Ender's Game 1&2: Solid sci-fi with some pretty wild predictions considering Card wrote it in 1985. The best part of this kind of sci-fi is that the plot holes are not gaping and Card does a fantastic job of making real characters live in fantastic situations. This made me kind of excited for the movie, as I think the action sequences will be stupendous (think the no-gravity scene in Inception). I'll pick up the third one later this month, and I'll probably ride the series out to the end, because it's just that well done.

False Economy by Alan Beattie: Another pop econ book that meshes the major historical events of the world with the economic factors that lie underneath. He examines, among other things, why Africa doesn't grow cocaine (instead of just smuggling it to Europe), and the economic history of colonization in the 18th and 19th centuries. His analysis and explanations are wordy, but sound. It's nothing groundbreaking, and if anything it's boring for someone who has read a dozen of these books before, or taken a decent economics course. Still, if you liked "Guns, Germs and Steel" this is a great counterpart that describes economic history.

Hell's Angel-Hunter S. Thompson. Goddamn, no one does it like HST. This has to be the most vibrant, quotable, and colorful book I've read in months, if not ever. I love the MC culture, and since Sons of Anarchy is back, I thought this would be a great compliment. Turns out, it stands up well on it's own as stellar writing, with a voice and viewpoint like no one else. Seriously, read this to see what one external maniac observes in a gaggle of maniacs and enjoy.

Car Guys and Bean Counters-Bob Lutz. This guy is a car company exec who wrote a book about his time at GM, most recently. It's short, incredibly biased, and tries a little too hard to paint the dismissed execs as "fallen heroes who never stood a chance". Still, he does explain in good detail the organizational and managerial cluster-fuck that was GM in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. He also makes a good case for why GM may never recoup the lost prestige and reputation that companies like Toyota and Ford now seem to enjoy. His arguments avoid the typical vilification of the labor unions, and makes a strong case for why the lack of a social welfare system hurt major US industries when they competed against Japan and Germany (compounding "legacy costs" for things like health care and pensions), how low gas prices actually hurt the US, and how GM escaped bankruptcy with a solid plan of action. Overall, if you follow the car industry, it gives you the insight of a "lifer" and how the US big 3 can recover forty years of lost ground.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just finished this as well a few days ago. I'll give a +1 to what Scootah said. Hands down one of my favorite reads to date in this genre of books.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. This is a chef's expose and it's a decent one. Fast, funny and full of French food phrases that are impossible to know. He paints a good picture of how chaotic and fun it is to be a chef at his level and gives some decent, if short advice for any foodie thinking of entering a food industry. He also goes through the obligatory drug phase and tells some wild highlights of travelling (doesn't mention the show No Reservations), cooking in shitholes and talks about his mentors admirably. Fun to read, but be warned: he does not tell you how to cook a damned thing. He mostly talks about how scandalous the staff he works with is.

The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Stephen Pinker. Goddamn, is this man interesting. This 1000-page monster is a detailed psychological and sociological study of the decline of violence in society. He makes dozens of examples from the decline of spanking to the ban of capital punishment to the strange absence of inter-state war and expounds upon the Leviathan theory of international politics. It's REAALLLLY fucking well-researched, with charts, graphs and notes taking up almost a fifth of the length of the book. This is on par with Guns, Germs, and Steel in terms of explaining wide social trends easily, reliably and well. I seriously recommend this, as it will change your outlook on the world we live in.

Linchpin, by Seth Godin. This is a short, motivational piece that flips the script on the trend of industrial revolutionary labor practices. The idea is that we are approaching a shift in labor markets that requires unique people to fit perfectly in their organizations, instead of breaking down jobs into actions that you can train monkeys to accomplish. It's short, passionate and inspired, and he makes a few very valid points. I don't think we are approaching an "artistic revolution", in the traditional sense, but then....Tucker Max exists and doesn't have to work at Kinko's, so why not. Worth a read, bonus points for not being long-winded.

I Drink For a Reason, by David Cross. Cross is one of my favorite comedians, and his book does not disappoint. It's a stream of consciousness type collection of blog posts that is just fun to read. He provides stellar one-liners, ("a shit that looked like a Fallujahan battlestation"), insightful rants about hippies, mysticism and religion, and general weird observations. Also quick, fun and worth the money.

Ender's Shadow Series by Orson Scott Card-This would have changed my life as a teenager, and it pisses me off that I read it at 28. However, for sci-fi, it's quite good. It puts a sci-fi spin on geopolitics, interpersonal relationships and Card is really good at what he does. Even at it's most far-fetched, it's not completely bonkers. I enjoyed this better than the series featuring Ender by far, mostly due to the more realistic philosophical aspects present here. These books are not short, but hard to put down. The characters are supremely fascinating and do a good job of surprising your expectations. It holds up well over time, considering the "Ender-verse" was created in 1986.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns is very, very good. Good enough that when I got home from work I ignored everything else and read it till it was finished. Robyn Hobb described it as 'dark and relentless', and she's not wrong, it's about as dark as fantasy gets. The first page verges on challenging to read, and it manages to get worse from there. There are scenes that make GRR's red wedding look like a picnic complete with teddybears. The sequel, though... King of Thorns is so good it defies description. I can't decide whether Lawrence mastered his craft, or his understanding of humanity, or if the book just follows the main character at a more interesting stage of his life, but it's just unreal. The protagonist is the most compelling character this side of Kvothe, and the fact that I'm mentioning this book in the same sentence as In The Name of the Wind should tell you how good it is. The writing isn't as 'literary' as ITNOTW, although there's no denying the man can turn a phrase. Beg, borrow, or steal it. Today.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I'm gonna be traveling quite a bit soon, and when I'm enroute I like to read things like The Stand or 11/22/63- not Stephen King books but that sort of pop-fiction, engaging story type thing, nothing too heavy or academic. It seems to pass the time well.
I looked through this thread and while there are a lot of suggestions I don't really know what to pick up that's similar to the above, so if you guys have any ideas let me know. Genre doesn't really matter, nor standalove vs series, just a lot of "let's pass the time."

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I have (shamefully) not read The Stand or 11/22/63, but I think Justin Cronin's The Passage and the sequel (which I haven't been able to get to yet) would fit the bill nicely.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just started the Dark Tower series, and I highly recommend it. The first one came off as kind of like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" in style and tone (or like a depressed, Paolo Coehlo on acid), but the second (I'm halfway through it) reads a lot more like King's other stuff. I will probably breeze through this series, and wait for the movie, but so far, it's pretty damned good.