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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 4:08 pm 
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badrogue17 wrote:
Just finished World Without End by Ken Follett.


Not a bad album by The Mighty Lemon Drops, either.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:23 pm 
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The Prince of Frogtown, by Rick Bragg.

Pretty good book. Bragg wrote an earlier memoir in which he just buries his father--the guy was a no good, violent drunk--but revisited his father's life after he developed a relationship with his step-son. The chapters rotate between Bragg trying to learn how to be a father to a step-son who is not a rough and tumble male like the Braggs were and Bragg taking a closer look at his father, who becomes much more sympathetic in this book.

Bragg came from northern Alabama. His parents lived in a neighborhood built by the mill that employed them, a sort of ghetto in the town of Jacksonville filled with the roughest and wildest men you ever heard of. Bragg gets you to sympathize with them, though, because the mill chewed them up and sickened them, everyone else looked down upon them, and they were so isolated that they never even had aspirations of getting out. It's interesting to see him grow more tolerant of his step-son and eventually develop a loving, fatherly relationship with him as he hears some surprising, and humanizing, stories about his own father from his father's old friends.

I enjoyed it, though it got a little confusing in the beginning and I had to go back and re-read some.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:34 pm 
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Sounds like a good theme for a movie to those who don't really enjoying reading books

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:47 pm 
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Been on a Bobby Knight kick lately. Reread Season on a Brink and Knight: My Story. Trying to find my old copy of Playing for Knight by Alford.

Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy.

Was given The General Vs. The President (MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of War) by HW Brands . I look forward to starting that one soon .

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:48 pm 
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RFDC wrote:
Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy.

It's very bad.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:49 pm 
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Curious Hair wrote:
RFDC wrote:
Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy.

It's very bad.

in what way? I am only a couple chapters into it

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:07 pm 
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RFDC wrote:
Curious Hair wrote:
RFDC wrote:
Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy.

It's very bad.

in what way? I am only a couple chapters into it

Its main argument seems to be that Appalachians are poor and uneducated because they haven't pulled themselves up by the bootstraps like the author did, and that it's more or less as simple as that.

Sarah Jones (herself an Appalachian as well) is pretty instructive: https://newrepublic.com/article/138717/ ... ue-america

Quote:
Vance’s influence has been everywhere this campaign season, shaping our conception of what motivates these voters. And it is already playing a role in how liberals are responding to Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, which was accomplished in part by a defection of downscale whites from the Democratic Party. Appalachia overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and Vance has since emerged as one of the media’s favorite Trump explainers. The problem is that he is a flawed guide to this world, and there is a danger that Democrats are learning all the wrong lessons from the election.

Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the white working class. Vance’s central argument is that hillbillies themselves are to blame for their troubles. “Our religion has changed,” he laments, to a version “heavy on emotional rhetoric” and “light on the kind of social support” that he needed as a child. He also faults “a peculiar crisis of masculinity.” This brave new world, in sore need of that old time religion and manly men, is apparently to blame for everything from his mother’s drug addiction to the region’s economic crisis.

“We spend our way to the poorhouse,” he writes. “We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.”

And he isn’t interested in government solutions. All hillbillies need to do is work hard, maybe do a stint in the military, and they can end up at Yale Law School like he did. “Public policy can help,” he writes, “but there is no government that can fix these problems for us … it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

Set aside the anti-government bromides that could have been ripped from a random page of National Review, where Vance is a regular contributor. There is a more sinister thesis at work here, one that dovetails with many liberal views of Appalachia and its problems. Vance assures readers that an emphasis on Appalachia’s economic insecurity is “incomplete” without a critical examination of its culture. His great takeaway from life in America’s underclass is: Pull up those bootstraps. Don’t question elites. Don’t ask if they erred by granting people mortgages and lines of credit they couldn’t afford to repay. Don’t call it what it is—corporate deception—or admit that it plunged this country into one of the worst economic crises it’s ever experienced.

No wonder Peter Thiel, the almost comically evil Silicon Valley libertarian, endorsed the book. (Vance also works for Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management.) The question is why so many liberals are doing the same.


More here as well: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hill ... appalachia

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:18 pm 
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I think the book works as a memoir rather than any kind of larger meditation on the plight of meth-addled hilljacks.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 11:22 pm 
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Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
I think the book works as a memoir rather than any kind of larger meditation on the plight of meth-addled hilljacks.

Beat me to it. I am not really reading the book for answers to the problems of the world.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:06 pm 
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Curious Hair wrote:
RFDC wrote:
Curious Hair wrote:
RFDC wrote:
Currently reading Hillbilly Elegy.

It's very bad.

in what way? I am only a couple chapters into it

Its main argument seems to be that Appalachians are poor and uneducated because they haven't pulled themselves up by the bootstraps like the author did, and that it's more or less as simple as that.


Thats not what the book argues at all.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 12:15 pm 
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Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
I think the book works as a memoir rather than any kind of larger meditation on the plight of meth-addled hilljacks.

I really don't like Vance as a political thinker....a cultural one, maybe. I liked the memoir. But I saw him on CNN a few times and read a few of his interviews, and he can tell you some people act and identify and vote a certain way, but he's got nothing new or innovative to say about what we should do and why. He reminds me a little of the pre-shitlib Michael Moore: talented as a filmmaker, less talented politically.

Not sure about you guys, but I connected with Hillbilly Elegy a lot, too, so it was a fun read. A Well-Spoken Black Man once told me that the funniest thing about whites in the US is how they always try to portray other groups of whites as either elites or hillbillies. (Which is weird, because the hillbillies in the Chicago area live in Burbank [and formerly in St. Denis parish]. Everyone knows that.)


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:45 am 
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Bumping this thread thanks to Hatchet's reminder.

Sci-Fi rec's for beginners. What you guys got?


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 11:52 am 
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Ugueth Will Shiv You wrote:
Bumping this thread thanks to Hatchet's reminder.

Sci-Fi rec's for beginners. What you guys got?


Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favs.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:12 pm 
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Ugueth Will Shiv You wrote:
Bumping this thread thanks to Hatchet's reminder.

Sci-Fi rec's for beginners. What you guys got?


What kind of Scifi you looking for?
Surprisingly Tek Wars is a good series to read. Wheel of time is really good if you are into Military scifi(Agroup of ships form mid 21st century goes back in time to 1942).
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:33 pm 
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Ugueth Will Shiv You wrote:
Bumping this thread thanks to Hatchet's reminder.

Sci-Fi rec's for beginners. What you guys got?


Sci-Fi: The Expanse series

Fantasy: Mistborn

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:06 pm 
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Wool by Hugh Howey. Not really Sci-Fi in the traditional sense, but it's a post apocalyptic Dystopian novel. Very good.

I haven't read it, but The Expanse by James A. Corey (who is actually two people neither named James) is supposed to be great as well.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sat Feb 10, 2018 9:04 pm 
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Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sat Feb 10, 2018 9:23 pm 
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Not science fiction but the Best American Short Stories series will never let you down unless it's the Junot Diaz one. Finally starting 2017 today.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sat Feb 10, 2018 11:36 pm 
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If you like/don't mind steampunk, the Clockwork Century novels are great. Boneshaker is the first book.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:08 am 
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Went with Altered Carbon. About 30% done and really enjoying it so far. Not the biggest fan of the writing style but the dialogue is "normal" enough to relate to.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 9:22 am 
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Blood and Money by Thomas Thompson.

It's a 1976 true crime book set in Houston. Revolves around the tale of the daughter of a Houston oilman who died in 1969 under mysterious circumstances while under the care of her plastic surgeon husband. Not usually my choice of genre but it's a good read.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Sun Feb 11, 2018 10:07 am 
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Ugueth Will Shiv You wrote:
Went with Altered Carbon. About 30% done and really enjoying it so far. Not the biggest fan of the writing style but the dialogue is "normal" enough to relate to.



Started this as well after i finished the show.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 7:48 am 
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Finished up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. It was good but not great. And at over 500 pages maybe a bit bloated. I could see this being made
into a movie at some point. I am about halfway through 1776 now and have found it to be extremely interesting.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 10:40 am 
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Request:

Any books or personal essays that deal with someone's first time seeing a band. I'm trying to write something, and it's just not coming together, and I'd like to find some models or just get some inspiration. If you know of anything like this, lemme know.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 10:58 am 
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tommy wrote:
Request:

Any books or personal essays that deal with someone's first time seeing a band. I'm trying to write something, and it's just not coming together, and I'd like to find some models or just get some inspiration. If you know of anything like this, lemme know.


The first time I saw the Descendents,
they were the fastest band I'd ever seen.
No one in the crowd really cared for them;
we were waiting for The Alley Cats to play.
After a couple months I heard Kabuki Girl
on Rodney On The ROQ late Sunday night.
That was enough for me,
I hopped the bus
to Licorice Pizza,
and bought
my all-time favorite record.

The next time I went to the Whiskey.
It was D.O.A. with Millions of Dead Cops.
The latter band played faster than I could believe,
but the songs sounded the same - it kinda sucked.
'Cept John Wayne was a Nazi.
And Joey Shithead was a drunk.
And John Macias beat some hippie to a pulp;
'cause having long hair was a mistake.

The third time I went to the hospital:
I needed thirteen stictches in my head.
I managed to catch about six songs of Ill Repute,
then some suicidal threw me into a post.
My girlfriend started to cry, 'cause we had to leave
before D.R.I. played 50 lousy songs.
MY blood-stained shirt smelled of clove cigarettes;
but it sure looked pretty cool after a wash!

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:33 pm 
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Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
tommy wrote:
Request:

Any books or personal essays that deal with someone's first time seeing a band. I'm trying to write something, and it's just not coming together, and I'd like to find some models or just get some inspiration. If you know of anything like this, lemme know.


The first time I saw the Descendents . . .

Ha! Nice! I really don't like California punk, but these guys are alright. Funny dudes.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:07 pm 
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Blood Meridian. I think Hatchetman mentioned this a while ago, and I'd read it in college, so I thought I'd pick it up again.

My lord, it's more violent than I remember. It's like Europe-during-WWII violent and slightly more depressing. Hard to put down, though.


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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:10 pm 
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Perhaps this is old school but I just read And Then There Were None. Knocked it out in something like 100 minutes or so, not a hard read.
Quite entertaining!

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:36 pm 
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Darkside wrote:
Perhaps this is old school but I just read And Then There Were None. Knocked it out in something like 100 minutes or so, not a hard read.
Quite entertaining!

We have over 50 AC books, can get them all done in two hours and they are all pretty good.

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 Post subject: Re: Books
PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:42 pm 
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Darkside wrote:
Perhaps this is old school but I just read And Then There Were None. Knocked it out in something like 100 minutes or so, not a hard read.
Quite entertaining!

Yeah, she's a lot of fun to read...


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