The Idiot Board Readers Corner - General Discussion

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I have to come on here and HIGHLY recommend Shit My Dad Says. The most times I've laughed out loud reading a book ever. I've already given it to three people (I've had the book for a little over a week) and everyone has loved it.

If you don't know, it's based off a guy's Twitter account, where he posts quotes that his dad says during the day. The book itself is written like a chronological series of short stories involving the author and his father. After each, there are about 10 quotes that his father says on different subjects. My favorite, On Birthdays "Remember, if it's not whiskey or sweatpants, it's going in the garbage... No this is not a creative time. This is a whiskey and sweatpants time."

I'm going to write more about the other stuff I've been reading later, but I wanted to talk about Shit My Dad Says first. Fucking awesome book.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Just finished "Thank You For Coming: One Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm" by Mara Altman. This lady was 26 and had never had an orgasm before. I was frustrated for her while reading this. Seriously, twenty-fucking-six?! And no orgasm?!

Altman talks about her childhood which included crazy liberal sex-therapist parents and her early experiences in an attempt to figure out what the fuck is wrong with her. She tries all sorts of therapists, coaches, seminars and classes usually resulting in unsuccessful hilarity. Also hilarious: when I first typed out the title I wrote "One Young Woman's Quest for a Dick". But yeah, overall, it was an awesome and funny and definitely worth an afternoon of reading.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Here's a question I've been thinking about, knowing that many of you are readers of a lot of non-fiction. Do you write on your books? Even fiction - do you highlight specific quotations to remember?

The last two non-fiction books I've read I used the space at the end of the chapter to make some bullet points relating to the main points, and the space at the front of the book to list words I need to look up. I won't really be able to judge how well it helps with retention for another while yet, but I thought it'd be worth giving it a try when I hear about people who have all sorts jotted down in the margins.

Anyone else do this?

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

Personally I stay within reach of my laptop and make notes in notepad. I have a specific text document for my quotations, where I found them, what page, what book etc. For the actual book itself its just regular notes, quotations, and other books or references brought up in the book. For unknown words I look them up and also put those in another separate document that I go back to periodically.

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

If a book of mine does not have markings of some kind in it, it either sucked monkey balls or is a unique edition. I've got several London Folio Society editions all with ornate bindings and in a hard slip case. No way in hell am I inking those up. Same with my first editions. My autographed copy of Palahniuk's Haunting might be worth a bit in 30 years. I sit on the can some days and browse through seeing what I marked.

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison. Inside the book are 3 novellas. One is based on the movie and is pretty much as filmed minus the dialogue. Another, actually was the source material for that god awful Kevin Costner movie Revenge; here it's actually a quite adept little story. Vicious, cold, enthralling. The last one called "The Man Who Gave Up His Name" is about a mid-life crisis. I'm on a Harrison kick. Imagine a tumor with a lazy eye, missing teeth, short stubby legs and a massive 3 pack a day habit. That's Harrison. He writes wonderfully about land and the effects of land on the soul, interplaying that with the drama. Very old school dude.

God's Problem by Bart D. Ehrman. Ehrman is a professor of Christianity/history at Chapel Hill. He's completely objective despite being an agnostic. This is the kind of Christian history I enjoy reading (I would have had a degree in it). A man with the same doubts as myself looking at original source material unperturbed by faith or some blind duty to "the cause." The jist of this book is why God allows us to suffer. This isn't like Hitchens or Dawkins, it isn't an incendiary piece, but more of asking the hard questions for those of us with doubts. He totally respects the material. Definitely not a soap box piece. Ehrman looks closely at specific passages of the Bible and dissects them and makes his own argument as well as interpretations. This would normally be pretty futile if the man wasn't one of the foremost Bible scholars in the world. He's read the texts in their original Greek and has been on National Geographic and History Channel programs for his expertise.

On a separate note. Has anyone ever finished a Salman Rushdie book? I tried reading The Satanic Verses. Absolutely beautiful prose; pure poetry, it almost SANG at me. But there's no fucking plot. Over a hundred pages in and not one goddamn thing happened. I just tossed The Ground Beneath Her Feet after 120 pages. Beyond boring. Barely one goddamn word about the actual story. Dude needs an editor sorely.

 

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I'm currently reading a book that I think a lot of people on here would like. It's a totally weird concept, but bear with me. It's called Stiff by Mary Roach, and the whole book is about cadavers. Most of the book is about how they're used in research for practice surgery, safety tests, weapons testing etc, but there's also some history and more scientific chapters. (Sorry I'm being vague, but I'm only halfway through. I'm just enjoying it so much that I can't wait to tell people about it.) The last chapter I finished was about how researchers examine the cadavers from plane crashes and are able to piece together exactly what happened to make the plane go down by the injuries found on the bodies. Right now I'm reading about how the army tests how different bullets impact the body. I've read about the history of body snatching, and the process of embalming. Looking ahead, there are chapters about the scientific search for a soul and an intriguing subhead that says "medical cannibalism and the case of the human dumplings."

I love quirky books like this, and I am pretty morbid sometimes, but I'd be surprised if anyone read this and wasn't totally fascinated by it. I can't remember the last time I learned so much from one book (textbooks included). This book can apply to scientists, people in the medical field, people in the army, cops, investigators, and the simply curious. It can be a bit difficult to read and definitely puts you in an uncomfortable mood, though. I particularly had trouble getting through the chapter about decay and what physically happens to a body when it's left alone to rot, especially since I've had a number of people who were really close to me die. I highly recommend not reading it while waiting for dinner to cook. I read that chapter while doing so and they compared maggots to grains of rice. I was cooking stir fry. It was not a pleasant meal.

The best part is, it's written in an easy, conversational tone so it's not some dull, dry educational tome. It's actually pretty damn funny sometimes.

Anyway, the point is I can't put this book down. You should read it.

 

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The Elephant Vanishes, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. I cannot recommend any of his books highly enough. He is quickly becoming my favorite fiction author. These stories range from 4 pages to 60 pages, all perfectly paced, and not a hard read. The only problem that I had with it was that they were short stories. All of his work that I've read has had me captured to the point that I don't realize it's 5 in the morning and I just spent 8 hours reading, but with the short stories I was disappointed that they ended so soon. This is the third book I've read from him, and in the midst of writing this terrible review ordered 3 more on amazon. The title story was just so funny and poignant I won't even attempt a summary, but two others:

Somewhat spoiler, so I'll tag it:

On Meeting the 100% Perfect Girl One April Afternoon:

Spoiler

4 pages of awesome. You know when you see that stranger pass you on the sidewalk, or at an airport bar, but you never go up to her, and for a little while you may wonder (jerk off) about what might have happened if you had just said hello?

Sleep:

Spoiler

Follows a woman suffering from insomnia. This was one piece that sticks out in my head for pace. I didn't realize it until I was finished reading it, but by the end the sentences were choppy and frantic and felt like the insanity was creeping in. Unbelievable. I always knew you had to pace the story to get the right effect, but I never knew how the perfect use of it could make the reader so much more involved and invested.

A- only downside, like I said, is they're short.



Edit: tags

 

Re: The Idiot Board Book Club

I just finished reading "Snuff" by Chuck Palahniuk. It's about these people involved with a porno movie where an aging porn queen gets fucked by 600 guys in a row.
It's a typical Palanhiuk book, told in first person, with lots of "facts" and a gay/homosexual subplot, and the typical twist ending, which is a total downer, like all of his books.

I liked his books initially (Fight Club, Choke, Invisible Monsters), but they are getting way too predictable now.

I guess I'd recommend it; it's a pretty fast read. I'm going to give it to a friend of mine who I know will enjoy it.

 

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I just finished Moment of Glrory by John Feinstein. It's about the 2003 PGA major championships being won by underdogs. I thought it was a decent and quick read. Relatively short at about 340 pages. I think Feinstein kind of mailed it in as the majority of the book is just a hole-by-hole recount of what happened during the 2003 majors. There's some pretty good insight about the runners-up from each tournament and how they've basically fallen off the face of the golf world (except Chad Campbell). Overall, I'd give it a C+. I enjoyed Tales From Q-School much better.

 

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This is the problem I have with Palahniuk. You can only read maybe three of his books before he gets old. I think I've read five, and kept believing that "this time, it'll be different." But he really just writes the same book over and over again. The last book I read, I literally threw it across the room in anger.

I've had a couple of conversations about "What's your favorite Palahniuk book?" and I think it's a pointless conversation. The only thing that matters is what order you read them in. The first ones I read were Lullaby and Diary, and I really liked them. But I'm positive that if I read them after another one or two of his books that I would hate them.

He makes me so mad.

 

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I can't agree more with this. While his stuff doesn't make me angry, it's been a slow downhill slide. I love Fight Club. Survivor and Invisible Monsters were good. Choke is my favorite and then it just slowly starts going downhill. Everything from Haunted on is just meh.

 

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Just read my first book by Terry Pratchett;

Making Money-

The story of Moist Von Lipwig, the heroic Postmaster of a fantasy town in Discworld, who takes over the Royal Mint, a backwards institution still on the gold standard. In the process, he has to deal with the expectations of the local despot, Lord Vetinari, the family that has traditionally controlled the bank and wants him dead, the Lavishes, as well as the strange chief cashier, Mr. Bent, in addition to the natural opposition to his crazy new methods.

The book, in addition to being very funny, is also smoothly, clearly written, with one situation and set of characters flowing naturally into the next. However, there are also ideas and observations in the story that are interesting and unexpected, giving the the novel an unexpected amount of intellectual depth.

Overall, I was quite impressed; it was a very good book. I will definitely check out more from Terry Pratchett.

 

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Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

This is a book about unconscious mental processing and snap judgements. It's very interesting, but it's example-driven and the author doesn't really present a lot of psychological research (probably because there isn't much out there). The main theme of the book is how too much information causes us to bog down and make poor decisions, citing examples such as the Millennium Challenge, doctors diagnosing chest pains and firefighters. Basically, our mind processes information without our knowledge and it creates feelings that make us comfortable or uncomfortable, attempting to force us to act. And using a technique called "thin-slicing" we can perfect our snap decision making based on accepting ONLY useful information (for example in diagnosing whether or not someone is having a heart attack there are 3-5 measures that are useful to 95% accuracy, the rest are only risk factors that confuse the doctor if he takes them into account). It's extremely fascinating, pretty short and well worth reading.

 

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Columbine by David Morse. Very, very engrossing. I've seen some criticism on it but everything he cites appears to be backed up, so I'm inclined to believe him. The book relates the actual events as well as the aftermath, but also provides a highly detailed portrait of the killers, drawing from research done by an FBI psychiatrist. Interestingly, it turns out most of the "reasons" for the killings popularized by the media were total bullshit.

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. Granted, I was more looking for a psych profile of Manson when I picked this up and it turned out to be a story of the Manson trial primarily, but still a very good read. A lot of the stunts the Manson Family pulled off besides the Tate-LaBianca murders were completely ludicrous. Must-read for anyone interested in American pop culture.

My Life Among the Serial Killers by Dr. Helen Morrison. Quite interesting. As with Columbine, Dr. Morrison challenges typical notions of what drives serial killers-essentially she claims the triggers people typically associate (abuse as a child, relationships with parents, etc) are all bullshit, and given the hundreds of hours she's spent interviewing serial killers she makes a pretty convincing point. Definitely helps put the term "serial killer" into perspective, whether you buy her theories or not. Gruesome at times (look up Gilles de Rais) but definitely worth reading if, like me, you're fascinated by the dark places in the human psyche.

Tell-all, Chuck Palahniuk. Ugh. The story is vaguely centered on old-school Hollywood. You can see the twist coming from a mile off, I honestly wouldn't even recommend it to Palahniuk fans. Read it if, like me, he's one of your favorites and you want to read everything regardless.