Please copy the book despription offa amazon, so everybody can get a picture of what you are reading! Just copy the ISBN numeral code (near the barcode) into the search field and if you do not have an out of print book; it should pop up!

I am currently reading two books as research.

First is Companions and Competitors (A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume 3)
by JOHN P. MEIER

Amazon Says;
No man is an island, not even Jesus, as John Meier writes in Companions and Competitors, the third installment of his four-part series, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. The first volume, an overview of Jesus' background, chronology, and early years, was followed by a second that analyzed Jesus' most important messages and deeds. Here, Meier explains his conviction that "No human being is adequately understood if he or she is considered in isolation from other human beings." He leads readers through the concentric circles of companions (including the followers who became his disciples and apostles) and competitors (such as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans) that shaped Jesus' life in first-century Palestine. Meier, a priest and New Testament scholar at Notre Dame, writes in the engaging, methodical style of an astringently avuncular professor: chapters are carefully outlined, with straightforward headings such as "Points of Comparison and Contrast," "Caveats on Comparisons," and "The Sheer Oddness of Jesus"). His findings, particularly his explanation of "the essentially Jewish nature" of Jesus' relationships, are a valuable addition to the field of Historical Jesus scholarship. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Library Journal
Meier, a Roman Catholic priest and professor of New Testament at University of Notre Dame, as well as president of the Catholic Biblical Association and general editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, here provides the third of a projected four-volume scholarly investigation of the historical Jesus and the context in which he taught and died. The current volume continues the rigorous historian's approach of the preceding volumes, which investigated Jesus' background and early years and the statements and deeds of his public ministry. In this volume, Meier focuses on those around Jesus: the crowds, the disciples, the 12, his Jewish competitors, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Samaritans, the Scribes, the Herodians, and the Zealots. This volume concludes with an integrative chapter focusing on how Jesus' Elijah-like prophetic ministry and the identity he created for his movement set him apart from those around him. Meier also prepares for his final volume, which will focus on Jesus' enigmatic teaching on the law, his riddle-speech in parable and self-definition, and his enigmatic death. Meier's scholarship is detailed and thorough, supported by substantive footnotes that allow the text to read easily. Both a reference volume and a book for leisurely reading, this is essential for academic, theological, and large public libraries. Carolyn M. Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmville, VA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

And Courts, Patrons and Poets (The Renaissance in Europe: a Cultural Enquiry)
by David Mateer

From the Inside Flap
The princely courts of fifteenth-century Italy played a central role in the development of Renaissance art and culture. After a general introduction to the notion of court patronage, this book examines the phenomenon in detail through case studies of artists and musicians working in Milan under the Sforza (Leonardo, Filarete, and Josquin Desprez) and in Florence under the Medici.Later chapters show how humanist ideas were imported from the Continent to Britain, where they were absorbed and ultimately metamorphosed into the glories of Tudor and Stuart poetry and drama. The result is a stimulating study of the position of artists in society and of their changing relation to, and interaction with, their patrons.This volume is the second in a series of three texts designed for the Open University course The Renaissance in Europe: A Cultural Enquiry.--

Blankets by Craig Thompson

From Publishers Weekly
Revisiting the themes of deep friendship and separation Thompson surveyed in Goodbye Chunky Rice, his acclaimed and touching debut, this sensitive memoir recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author's rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity. Skinny, naive and spiritually vulnerable, Thompson and his younger brother manage to survive their parents' overbearing discipline (the brothers are sometimes forced to sleep in "the cubby-hole," a forbidding and claustrophobic storage chamber) through flights of childhood fancy and a mutual love of drawing. But escapist reveries can't protect them from the cruel schoolmates who make their lives miserable. Thompson's grimly pious parents and religious community dismiss his budding talent for drawing; they view his creative efforts as sinful and relentlessly hector the boys about scripture. By high school, Thompson's a lost, socially battered and confused soul-until he meets Raina and her clique of amiable misfits at a religious camp. Beautiful, open, flexibly spiritual and even popular (something incomprehensible to young Thompson), Raina introduces him to her own less-than-perfect family; to a new teen community and to a broader sense of himself and his future. The two eventually fall in love and the experience ushers Thompson into the beginnings of an adult, independent life. Thompson manages to explore adolescent social yearnings, the power of young love and the complexities of sexual attraction with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste. His exceptional b&w drawings balance representational precision with a bold and wonderfully expressive line for pages of ingenious, inventively composed and poignant imagery.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Walkaway by Scott Phillips

Amazon.com
Gunther Fahnstiel is an ex-cop with a secret he can't quite remember, which is understandable in an elderly man who's not exactly certain of why he walked away from his Kansas nursing home, either. It has something to do with some missing money, a couple of murders, and a prostitution ring Gunther broke up 10 years ago... or did he? Readers may be confused by the way Phillips handles flashbacks to two different time periods, but they'll like Gunther, who's a complex and mutlidimensional old coot despite his failing memory--or maybe because of it. This darkly funny prequel to The Ice Harvest, Phillips's earlier crime novel, is populated by a cast of interesting and picaresque characters, some of whom make their second appearance here. --Jane Adams--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Phillips turns the image of Kansas heartland virtue upside down in his latest noir thriller set in Wichita's underbelly, in which all the big city problems drugs, prostitution, corrupt cops and psycho killers are present on a somewhat smaller and seedier scale. The year is 1989, and Gunther Fahnstiel, a retired cop in the memory-loss ward of an expensive nursing home, escapes to wander through a Wichita he only intermittently recognizes. His mission: to find a briefcase of money he buried in a rock quarry 10 years before. His wife, Dot, suspects what he's up to, though she doesn't know where he is; what she does know is that the money has already been dug up and spent, on Gunther's care among other things. Gunther's stepson, Sidney, to whom Gunther once gave $12,000 to buy a strip joint, attempts a payback by setting up a reward in the same amount for anyone who finds Gunther. This motivates sleazy Eric Gandy to search for Gunther; Eric is the son-in-law of Sally Ogden, who used to coordinate orgies at the rock quarry. With this information in place, Phillips segues into the book's other time frame 1952 in which readers are treated to first-person narratives by the menacing Wayne Ogden, Sally's husband, as he goes on a crime spree, and the younger Gunther, as he tracks Wayne down. In what's identified as "both a prequel and a sequel" to The Ice Harvest, Phillips pens a story full of blood and bad attitude.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

I just finished 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed by Melissa P

From Publishers Weekly
A scandalous bestseller in her native Italy, Melissa P.'s avowedly autobiographical novel recounts a Sicilian schoolgirl's erotic adventures. "I want love, Diary," she writes just before her 15th birthday. "I want to feel my heart melt, want to see my icy stalactites shatter and plunge into a river of passion and beauty." Love may be hard to find, but sex waits at every turn, and Melissa seldom says no. In calmly vivid prose, she describes the varieties of experience, beginning with her introduction to oral sex: "I now had it before my eyes, it smelled male, and every vein that crossed it expressed such power that I felt duty-bound to reckon with it." This same sense of duty mandates sex with a woman, sex with an older man, sadomasochistic sex, group sex. Although her mother tells an ill Melissa a fable about a princess, Melissa tells herself no fairy tales—and therein lies the odd, potent purity of these pages.

Product Description:
An instant blockbuster in Italy where it has sold over 700,000 copies, and now an international literary phenomenon, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is the fictionalized memoir of Melissa P., a Sicilian teenager whose quest for love rapidly devolves into a shocking journey of sexual discovery. Melissa begins her diary a virgin, but a stormy affair at the age of fourteen leads her to regard sex as a means of self-discovery, and for the next two years she plunges into a succession of encounters with various partners, male and female, her age and much older, some met through schoolmates, others through newspaper ads and Internet chat rooms. In graphic detail she describes her entry into a Dante-esque underworld of eroticism, where she willingly participates in group sex and sadomasochism, as well as casual pickups. Melissa's secret life is concealed from family and friends, revealed only in her diary entries. Told with disarming candor, Melissa P.'s bittersweet tour of extreme desires is as poignant as it is titillating. One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed is a stunning erotic debut, a Story of O for our times.

I just finished 'Middlesex: A Novel'
by Jeffrey Eugenides, I'm not sure what I'm going to read next yet.


Middlesex: A Novel
Amazon.com
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:


Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description:


"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974. . . My birth certificate lists my name as Calliope Helen Stephanides. My most recent driver’s license...records my first name simply as Cal."

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City, and the race riots of l967, before they move out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.

Kohl said:

My Mum's been raving about it and has leant it me to read. Did you enjoy it?

JDINTERACTIVE said:

Very much. The story is great (although slow in some parts) but the writing/narration is amazing.

Amazon doesn't post a descrition of what I'm reading
Down East Detective


Found it in an antique store though it is not an antique book.
Apparently the author married someone from my town and that is why the antique store felt the need to carry it.

The author went thru old police files from maine in the twenties thirties and fourties. She fictionalized the characters, but left the stories real. Unfortunatly a lot of real life crimes just end with no real resolution. So it is taking some time to get myself thru this.

The Affair of the Poisons : Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV

by Anne Somerset



Product Description:

The Affair of the Poisons, as it became known, was an extraordinary episode that took place in France during the reign of Louis XIV. When poisoning and black magic became widespread, arrests followed. Suspects included those among the highest ranks of society. Many were tortured and numerous executions resulted.

The 1676 torture and execution of the Marquise de Brinvilliers marked the start of the scandal which rocked the foundations of French society and sent shock waves through all of Europe. Convicted of conspiring with her adulterous lover to poison her father and brothers in order to secure the family fortune, the marquise was the first member of the noble class to fall.
In the French court of the period, where sexual affairs were numerous, ladies were not shy of seeking help from the murkier elements of the Parisian underworld, and fortune-tellers supplemented their dubious trade by selling poison.

It was not long before the authorities were led to believe that Louis XIV himself was at risk. With the police chief of Paris police alerted, every hint of danger was investigated. Rumors abounded and it was not long before the King ordered the setting up of a special commission to investigate the poisonings and bring offenders to justice. No one, the King decreed, no matter how grand, would be spared having to account for their conduct.

The royal court was soon thrown into disarray. The Mistress of the Robes and a distinguished general were among the early suspects. But they paled into insignificance when the King's mistress was incriminated. If, as was said, she had engaged in vile Satanic rituals and had sought to poison a rival for the King's affections, what was Louis XIV to do?

Anne Somerset has gone back to original sources, letters and earlier accounts of the affair. By the end of her account, she reaches firm conclusions on various crucial matters. The Affair of the Poisons is an enthralling account of a sometimes bizarre period in French history.

Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey

Phenomenon: Keirsey and Bates's Please Understand Me, first published in 1978, sold nearly 2 million copies in its first 20 years, becoming a perennial best seller all over the world. Advertised only by word of mouth, the book became a favorite training and counseling guide in many institutions -- government, church, business -- and colleges across the nation adopted it as an auxiliary text in a dozen different departments. Why? Perhaps it was the user-friendly way that Please Understand Me helped people find their personality style. Perhaps it was the simple accuracy of Keirsey's portraits of temperament and character types. Or perhaps it was the book's essential message: that members of families and institutions are OK, even though they are fundamentally different from each other, and that they would all do well to appreciate their differences and give up trying to change others into copies of themselves.
Now: Please Understand Me II

For the past twenty years Keirsey has continued to investigate personality differences -- to refine his theory of the four temperaments and to define the facets of character that distinguish one from another. His findings form the basis of Please Understand Me II, an updated and greatly expanded edition of the book, far more comprehensive and coherent than the original, and yet with much of the same easy accessibility. One major addition is Keirsey's view of how the temperaments differ in the intelligent roles they are most likely to develop. Each of us, he says, has four kinds of intelligence -- tactical, logistical, diplomatic, strategic -- though one of the four interests us far more than the others, and thus gets far more practice than the rest. Like four suits in a hand of cards, we each have a long suit and a short suit in what interests us and what we do well, and fortunate indeed are those whose work matches their skills. As in the original book, Please Understand Me II begins with The Keirsey Temperament Sorter, the most used personality inventory in the world. But also included is The Keirsey Four-Types Sorter, a new short questionnaire that identifies one's basic temperament and then ranks one's second, third, and fourth choices. Share this new sorter with friends and family, and get set for a lively and fascinating discussion of personal styles.
[Edited 12/31/04 6:16am]

Next up, Dorian Gray!

George R.R. Martin: A Storm of Swords

Amazon.co.uk Review:

The third volume of his six-volume fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire, A Storm of Swords continues Martin's vigorous account of the civil wars which follow the death of King Robert, the usurper who deposed a dynasty gone mad and dangerous, and the judicial murder by his widow and heir of Ned Stark, the man who made him king. The surviving Stark children are scattered--Robb leading revolt in the North, Arya learning hard lessons as she treks through the war zone, Sansa an observer of court intrigue, crippled Bran heading towards a sorcerous destiny, Jon engaged in desperate defence of the icewall against barbarians and worse things. Daenerys, pretender and ruler of dragons, is building an empire elsewhere. And characters we have thought of as villains, notably Jaime Kingslayer, are developing belated consciences ... Martin keeps on upping the ante of violence and betrayal in this compelling saga of a fantasy middle ages soiled with blood and mud; his economic use of magic and his fascination with complex characters make this the sword-and-sorcery series for people with adult taste. As the series proceeds, his writing gets ever leaner and sharper, the evocation of the magical ever more sinister. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Synopsis:

Split into two books for the paperback, the third volume in George R.R. Martin's superb and highly acclaimed epic fantasy A Song of Ice and Fire continues the richest, most exotic and mesmerising saga since The Lord of the Rings. The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud, and winter approaches like an angry beast. Beyond the Northern borders, wildlings leave their villages to gather in the ice and stone wasteland of the Frostfangs. From there, the renegade Brother Mance Rayder will lead them South towards the Wall. Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown in the Kingdom of the North, but his defences are ranged against attack from the South, the land of House Stark's enemies the Lannisters. His sisters are trapped there, dead or likely yet to die, at the whim of the Lannister boy-king Joffrey or his depraved mother Cersei, regent of the Iron Throne. And Daenerys Stormborn will return to the land of her birth to avenge the murder of her father, the last Dragon King on the Iron Throne.

Kohl said:

I likes it a lot, it was very well written and enjoyable.

Almost 10 orgers read...books!

Amazon!...erm Amazing!

I generally frown on reading, as I feel it's bad for you. That said, someone did get me the following for Xmas and I, grudgingly, made my way through it:

Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, as Told By Its Stars, Writers and Guests

This oral history of NBC's Saturday Night Live is the juiciest treasure trove of backstage gossip, sex and drugs since The Andy Warhol Diaries. With almost three decades' worth of memories from cast members, celebrity hosts, writers, crew and network execs, readers get first-hand reports (often contradictory) on the volatile, competitive, grueling and often drug-fueled process of creating a weekly, 90-minute, live comedy show. While the cast and writers changed over the decades there were two constants: the universal loathing of guest host Chevy Chase and the power of producer Lorne Michaels ("I think he picked the right profession," assesses Jane Curtin, "because he gets to lord over people who want to kneel at his feet and he doesn't acknowledge them-which makes them work harder."). Regulars like Dan Aykroyd, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Billy Crystal, Bill Murray, Al Franken, Martin Short as well as guest hosts like Tom Hanks, Penny Marshall, Alec Baldwin, Carrie Fisher, Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin contribute sterling anecdotes that are alternately hilarious, touching, upbeat and scathing. With the exception of Eddie Murphy (who's positively portrayed), virtually the only missing voices are of those who have passed away (the editors use only interviews conducted for the book and not vintage interviews with John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman or Chris Farley). Scandals, infighting and plenty of showbiz dirt make this a guilty-pleasure page-turner from start to finish.

langebleu said:

One of the GREATEST pieces of comic fiction I've EVER READ!!!!! I bought this for two of my friends as a Christmas gift last year. It's such an accurate portrayal of first love. It broke my heart.

I'm reading "The Demon" by Hubert Selby, Jr. Here's something a guy on Amazon wrote...


Selby is just about the best author I have ever read. His books speak to me and make me believe what each page says more than any other author. There is a fundamental, and somewhat un-nerving, realism to his books that makes them highly uncomfortable reading, but it is this discomfort which makes me come back to his books again and again. Last Exit To Brooklyn blew me away, with it's picture perfect description of desperate, (an perhaps a little extreme) cases of inner-city slum-type living, and the psychological effects it can have upon it's street dwellers. Requiem For A Dream carried on a nasty, horrid-tasting tale of drug-related woe that Trainspotting could only begin to thinly paint. And now I've read The Demon, and this is another gut-wrencher, ready to pull you under life and show you how it REALLY works.
The Demon focuses on Harry White, a young, high-flying office worker in a successful Manhattan firm, who basically spends his days working hard, travelling hard (he has to journey from his parents' place out of town to work and back every single day), and seducing hard, because Harry's favourite hobby is to pick up strange women (especially if they're married - it adds to the excitement), and then basically dump them right after he's had his fun. The book goes on to show how Harry derives an almost narcotic-like craving for women, and begins to pick up just about anyone on his lunch hour, take them to a motel, and then try to get back to work on time. The futility of his carnal desperation soon takes it's toll on his work-load, and he finds himself getting torn between 'Broads' and potential promotion.

As time goes by, it seems that Harry grows up somewhat. He gets married to a lovely girl he knows called Linda, who mentally captured him by not sleeping with him 'til they were married, thus becoming a sort-of 'chase' for Harry to find irresistable. But even through the wonders and beauty of this marriage, Harry finds himself uneasy at work, on his lunch break, and even at home. So, he wanders the streets of New York and the deep, dark depths of his psychological make-up to find new and exciting ways to fulfill his constant craving for elation, excitement, adrenaline and even terror.

The way in which the story is paced, and the way that Selby has set the story out so that it can swing from one scene of absolute horror to a beautifl, emotional journey is immense. The writing is so bafflingly simple that this, itself, provides the most starkly human quality of all. There is no complex meaning to the way Harry feels, and even if there is, trying to figure it out is futile. The mind of the character is set. No pacing, no adjustment brought on by psychological help. He is what he is, and this will shock you for being to frank. It's like looking through someone's eyes, and that's why it's so good.

I highly recommend this book. No, I dare you to read this book. How does that sound?

PANDURITO said:

Oh dear, should i confess that I work in a public library?

Kayleigh said:

Hi Kayleigh, I'm 9s ...

The Mystery Of Capital - Hernando de Soto.

Amazon.com
It's become clear by now the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism in most places around the globe hasn't ushered in an unequivocal flowering of capitalism in the developing and postcommunist world. Western thinkers have blamed this on everything from these countries' lack of sellable assets to their inherently non-entrepreneurial "mindset." In this book, the renowned Peruvian economist and adviser to presidents and prime ministers Hernando de Soto proposes and argues another reason: it's not that poor, postcommunist countries don't have the assets to make capitalism flourish. As de Soto points out by way of example, in Egypt, the wealth the poor have accumulated is worth 55 times as much as the sum of all direct foreign investment ever recorded there, including that spent on building the Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam.
No, the real problem is that such countries have yet to establish and normalize the invisible network of laws that turns assets from "dead" into "liquid" capital. In the West, standardized laws allow us to mortgage a house to raise money for a new venture, permit the worth of a company to be broken up into so many publicly tradable stocks, and make it possible to govern and appraise property with agreed-upon rules that hold across neighborhoods, towns, or regions. This invisible infrastructure of "asset management"--so taken for granted in the West, even though it has only fully existed in the United States for the past 100 years--is the missing ingredient to success with capitalism, insists de Soto. But even though that link is primarily a legal one, he argues that the process of making it a normalized component of a society is more a political--or attitude-changing--challenge than anything else.

With a fleet of researchers, de Soto has sought out detailed evidence from struggling economies around the world to back up his claims. The result is a fascinating and solidly supported look at the one component that's holding much of the world back from developing healthy free markets. --Timothy Murphy --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description:
"The hour of capitalism's greatest triumph" writes Hernando de Soto, "is, in the eyes of four-fifths of humanity, its hour of crisis." In The Mystery of Capital, the world-famous Peruvian economist takes up the question that, more than any other, is central to one of the most crucial problems the world faces today: Why do some countries succeed at capitalism while others fail?

In strong opposition to the popular view that success is determined by cultural differences, de Soto finds that it actually has everything to do with the legal structure of property and property rights. Every developed nation in the world at one time went through the transformation from predominantly informal, extralegal ownership to a formal, unified legal property system. In the West we've forgotten that creating this system is what also allowed people everywhere to leverage property into wealth. This persuasive book revolutionizes our understanding of capital and points the way to a major transformation of the world economy.

Still Dostoyevsky's 'The Idiot'. So far I've read the back cover. Twice.

... can't be bothered with the amazon thing.
[Edited 12/31/04 20:16pm]

Kohl said:

Great book! I read it summer 2003, and loved every second of it. I know people that took a long while to get through it, but I read it straight through in 4 or 5 days. I've recommended or loaned it to at least 5 people and all but one loved it (and even she liked it).

Currently reading I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. I've been reading it for three weeks, because I've not had much free time From Barnes & Noble (Amazon had some long timeline with no description):

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Dupont University - the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition... Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a wide-eyed, bookish freshman from a strict, devout, poor and poorly educated family in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump her towering academic achievement every time." As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite - her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Gellin, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus - she is seduced by the heady glamour of acceptance, betraying her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different and the exotic allure of her innocence.

Fauxie said:

Then you have no place on this thread!

Hop, hop, back to my bed.

Anyways, it's nice to see the desriptions; which makes it easier to figure out what you are all reading!

I always find bookcases and cd collections reflect a person's personality, at least a bit.

I can't do this!!!

How do you find the Amazon review? All I can see is Customer Reviews. I fucking hate it when I can't find what I'm looking for on the fucking internet.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!

BinaryJustin said:

Some books don't have one, you can use a customer review if you want to. Just write yer own if need be.

And chill; it's just a new year...

HamsterHuey said:

Okidoki.

Call Her Miss Ross - J Randy Taraborrelli

She was Motown's brightest star, the one with guts enough and ambition enough to make her dreams come true, no matter where they took her. Rules that apply to others have never applied to Diana Ross. She won't let them.

CALL HER MISS ROSS goes behind the footlights and stage facade, behind the broad smile and beautiful voice, for an exclusive look at the real Diana. J. Randy Taraborrelli has interviewed over 400 people and uncovered stories that have never been told before. The ultimate control maven, she became the star of The Supremes without giving Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard a second throught, but also gave them both money when they ended up broke; self-centered, she dated newlywed Smokey Robinson on the sly in order to get more work at Motown; fiercely devoted mother of five, she gives her children anything they desire; impossible employer, she insists that everyone call her "Miss Ross"; insecure star, she demands complete control over every record, every movie, and every performance, no matter what the result.

Her triumphs and tragedies, her virtues and vices, her lovers and enemies -- here's Miss Diana Ross as she's never been seen before.

"Enjoyable . . . A marathon bitchfest."

The War of the Flowers - Tad Williams

A masterpiece of the imagination, THE WAR OF THE FLOWERS is a truly epic novel that once again pushes the boundaries of fantasy fiction into new and unexplored territory. In the great city, in the dimly lit office of an impossibly tall building, two creatures meet. Gold changes hands, and the master of the House of Hellebore gives an order: 'War is coming. The child must die.' In our own world, a young man discovers a manuscript written by his great uncle. It seems to be a novel - a strange fairytale of fantastic creatures and magical realms. But it is written as a diary ...as if the events were real ...as if his uncle had journeyed to another world. For the young man, the fantasy is about to become reality.


What a refreshing fantasy novel, bringing in all the things we love about fantasy; fairies, dragons, pixies and magic combined wonderfully with modern day issues of politics, the class system and war. All this revolving around a wonderful main character who is the classic unintentional hero. A lovely and funny tale of a down and out guy whose life is transformed to something spectacular. And isn't this really what we love? No bold knights or unpronounceable names. Tad Williams is a true master, his words keep you guessing right until the end. Please, read this book it is fantastic!
[Edited 1/1/05 7:48am]

Whateva said:

Nice to see someone else reads fantasy too