Friday, January 30, 2009

Friday Randomness

- A great story (via):

 

- Mixing break dancing with yoga (via):

 

- Save the Words – for all the words removed from the dictionary. (via)

 

- I finished reading ‘The Sun Also Rises.’ My first Hemingway. I enjoyed the style of writing, but the story wasn’t terribly engaging to me. Any recommendations from people on other good reading material? We’ve recently decided to disconnect the TV service, so now we have more time for reading. Hooray!

 

- A thoroughly interesting article about Nicholas Taleb. (via)

 

Hope everybody has a great weekend!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Any recommendations from people on other good reading material? We’ve recently decided to disconnect the TV service, so now we have more time for reading. Hooray!"

We don't watch TV either. The local B&N is very spotty on these, I recently went in armed with two "best sci-fi of 2008" lists and found ZERO. But mail order works.

Jonathan Franzen: "The Corrections"

Vikram Chandra: "Sacred Games" and "Red Earth and Pouring Rain"

Roberto Bolano: "The Savage Detectives", plus all the older stuff.

Cormac McCarthy: only the early stuff (pre-1985) (he started writing banal movie scripts)

Alan Furst: any

Terry Pratchett: any

David Foster Wallace: any, though "Infinite Jest" is long it's worth it.

Patrick O'Brien: read 'em all, I guarantee that you'll be annoyed he died when you finish #23.

Thomas Sanchez: "Mile Zero"

Peter Matthiessen: any, but especially "Shadow Country"

Susanna Clark: "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell"

Regional: all of Edward Abbey and Tony Hillerman

Modern Sci-Fi: all of Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, China Mieville, Charles Stross

Decadent fun: any of Carl Hiassen

Well I better stop! But there's so much more...

quilteddogs said...

I guess you need to say what sort of books you like. I don't figure you for a romance reader which is good since I have no recommendations for those except to stay away from them.

TomboCheck said...

Russell - Thanks for the recs. I've read a few of the Patrick O'Brien and thoroughly enjoyed them. The rest sound like an adventure.

QD - I like any type of book that is different. Whether it be a philosophy book that slightly debunks modern societal views, or just a book written from a new/different point of view. Different tones to writing that make them stand out from the crowd.

Pretty much I'll try anything once, as long as somebody says it's good.

Melissa said...

Not a fan of Hemingway. He could write, to be sure, but his stories never drew me in.

I think I told you already to read Sirens of Titan, right? Or anything by Vonnegut, I suppose.

Contact by Carl Sagan might be another good one for you. Maybe.

Love the basketball kid. And the Save the Words site. Interesting.

TomboCheck said...

Melissa - I think you did recommend that to me before. I'll put it on the list. :)

Thanks!