Wants to read The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
book
Rated Autobiography 6/10
My feelings about Morrissey are conflicted, for a lot of reasons, and I wasn't surprised to find this book kind of insufferable. Very little about the process of making music, tons and tons of petty passive-aggressive score-settling that I think is supposed to be "delicious" but is actually kind of sad. Also, there are no chapter breaks; it's like a seven-hour monologue. Still, somehow glad I read it.
Rated A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) by George R. R. Martin (2-May-2006) Paperback 8/10
GRR Martin blazes new trails in introducing you to characters, getting you to identify with and root for them, getting you invested in their plans, and then messily thwarting those plans. He also enjoys tormenting you with having characters act upon information you know to be untrue, or fail to discover information that you know would help them. <br/><br/>Great fun, really.
Rated How Did You Get This Number: Essays 6/10
Very nicely written, and Crosley is charming and a great observer, though these essays don't quite close the deal for themselves - you might be left asking "so what?" A quick and pleasant read.
Rated Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity 8/10
Very striking - journalism that reads like a novel. A few years in the lives of families living at the edge of subsistence in a slum in Mumbai, right behind the airport and luxury hotels that symbolize a rising global upper class. Boo, the author, mostly removes herself from the story and narrates from the perspectives of her protagonists as they deal with poverty, corruption, religious conflict and their efforts to carve out a space for themselves. Beautifully done.
Wants to read The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth
Rated A Dance with Dragons 8/10
a blast, although it suffers a little from the fact that it's (a) interminable thanks to a lot of GRRM's writing quirks (b) overshadowed by the knowledge that even though it's interminable, it still won't actually *end*, and the next book is who knows how far off.<br/><br/>
Rated A Common Pornography: A Memoir 8/10
Everyone has stories, brief anecdotes relating to our history. Our memories are at once humorous and heartbreaking, some retold again and again, some kept private forever. In <i>A Common Pornography</i>, Kevin Sampsell gathers his stories and assembles them into an atypical memoir, and the results are both intimate and intriguing.<br><br>Sampsell’s descriptions of the people he encounters are perfect in their spareness. He has a way of making a person clear within two sentences that might take other writers two paragraphs. I also appreciate his candor when it comes to more private moments, moments most people would hesitate to share at all, but still had an effect on their lives. From near-wordless encounters with other men to nights spent alone, he details his search for affection in a very real, honest way.<br><br>(Full review can be found at <a href="http://glorifiedloveletters.blogspot.com/2010/04/common-pornography-by-kevin-sampsell.html">Glorified Love Letters</a>.)
Edited 86d ago
Rated A Wrinkle in Time 8/10
Ah! Finally I have read the book that pretty much everyone read as a kid, and I somehow never picked it up. (I was probably too busy with R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike, tbh). Enjoyed this a lot, and I enjoyed how this edition gave some additional facts about L'Engle and the genesis of the book itself.
Edited 86d ago
Really delightful book by a theoretical particle physicist about some of the latest developments in science, especially the Large Hadron Collider in Europe - but sine it's a couple of years old there have been some developments since then. Especially useful as a window into how scientists think about problems. If I had any reservations it's that some of it is really well above my head ore super-technical and I had to skim it - there are certain things about particle physics I'm just never going to really understand with my limited scientific/mathematical background although Randall is very game to try and explain genuinely weird stuff like super-symmetry and very small extra dimensions.
Wants to read The Unknowns by Gabriel Roth
Rated 21st-Century Yokel 10/10
I loved this immensely. More thoughts soon.
Edited 86d ago
Rated The Spirit of Aikido 8/10
not the best writing but a good quick intro to the history and principles/practices of aikido.
Edited 86d ago