This one is coming out soon:
**[SIZE=23px]Fat Chance: **[/SIZE]
Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease by Robert H. Lustig
Are you calling me fat?
just finished The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, wtf
Of Stones and Strength by Steve Jeck is also a good book.
Know the legend, never actually got around to reading it, but I believe there are some abridged versions since the full story gets a little repetitive (woman attracts the monk, others try to warn him, monk doesnāt listen 'cause the woman is attractive, woman ends up being a monster, fight the monster, do it all over again). Pretty sure there are copies online since itās well within the public domain.
I finished the this book two weeks ago and I havenāt read much since.
The End of Men: And the Rise of Women: Hanna Rosin
An excellent book about how are the growing economic power all over the World. Women not only own the majority of the small businesses in China but they are are seeing an entrepreneurial boom in the USA. There are more Women than Men in college in almost every place on Earth except Africa and in even highly patriarchal societies like Korea and Japan women are starting to take over. In fact in Korea, more people who want kids want a girl instead of boy, which is a shock for highly male dominated societies like Korea and most of Asia.
The book focuses on how this happened(Mostly due to the fact the world of tomorrow will be based around communication and empathy, something Women excel at) and that the strengths on Men( Strength, Power) will become more and more obsolete. It goes into the economics of this and how this will change the world as more and more men are becoming stay at home Dads or are having their wives make more money than them.
This can be good or bad depending on how it plays out. For poor families, this will be bad as more and more Women are starting to divorce Men in poorer sections of our nation(USA) and marriage is a rapidly disappearing thing. However, marriage rates still remain high for rich parts of our nation and will be high in the future, marriage is a great way to generate wealth and keep wealth within the family. Also, Men who are married live longer, have more sex and are generally happier.
This is just a summary of the Book but it is so insightful. I truly recommend it. 8/10
More overly simplistic feminist bullshit. If youāre actually interested in this topic, read this, by an actual professor, and not a fucking hack.
In very short terms, women are better at ācommunication and empathyā when it comes to small, close-knit groups, like families, while men are better when it comes to reaching larger, less homogeneous groups. Like armies, or large companies. Guess which one is more valuable in industry? Believe it or not, there are reasons why men, to this day, dominate in the higher echelons of the workplace. Thatās one of them.
Focus-
My favorite writer in high school was John Steinbeck. I have read almost everything by him (my favorite is "The Pearlā), although amusingly enough, not āThe Grapes of Wrathā. A few months ago, I finally read the latter book.
Along with āOf Mice and Menā, itās one of his two worst books that Iāve read. Now, itās still ādecentā by ordinary standards, since after all, itās written by John Fucking Steinbeck. But compared to his usual, incredibly high standard, itās damn disappointing. Far too polemical, dogmatic, and hell, even simplistic. Too much of an āOkies good/dignified, police/landowners evilā mentality, which is one reason why it was so popular, but the same reason itās weak. Even āIn Dubious Battleā, which had a similar theme and was written a year or two earlier, was better executed.
At the same time, itās his only novel which is so overtly political, which, combined with his heavily socialist, pro-union, pro-labor message (popular in the 30s and today), is the reason for its popularity. (Yes, I know there was an Oscar-winning film produced by Darryl Zanuck, directed by John Ford, and starring Henry Fonda, but why did they choose that script to begin with?)
Itās really amusing to compare it to his much later work āThe Winter of Our Disconentā, which is a far deeper, more nuanced dissection of labor and society, and has a very different message.
I just finished *Catās Cradle *by Vonnegut. It was my first Vonnegut book and I was surprised that I really didnāt like it as much as Iād expected. It seemed like an Asimov novel or something, which is by no means a bad thing (even though I think his short stories are generally far superior to his novels), just unexpected. I did still enjoy it though; it was a quick read and I mostly agree with his points, so Iāll give some of his other novels a chance.
Soā¦ Red Country.
Not what I was expecting.
And much the better, for it, surprisingly.
It really is a western, at heart, buried within the folds of a fantasy world.
But this is the most extreme case of low fantasy I have ever read.
There is literally perhaps only one instance of high fantasy, within its pages, and even that is arguable [details=Spoiler] Some might maintain that The Bloody Nine is merely another aspect of Logan, and that he suffers multiple personalities, but I disagree with that. The feeling of hopelessness when he is aware of being taken over, coupled with the grip of freezing cold (per the feel of touching the Other Side), as well as his generally being nearly beating/stabbed/otherwise mauled to death whenever it does take him over. The fact that he gains inhuman strength, and the capacity to endure absolutely absurd amounts of punishment afterwards, and in fact seems grow stronger from the abuse, only further confirms the supernatural nature of it. Logan is a man possessed.[/details].
All in all, it is a refreshingly interesting take on the genre, utterly hilarious at times (Temple and Cosca in particular, had my sides hurting with laughter), and a brilliant character study of both of its principle characters, as well as the myriad secondary ones.
I highly recommend it.
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āOf Mice And Menā was fucking brilliant, and George is one of the greatest souls to have ever been born(e) upon a page.
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MAKE IT HAPPEN MICHAEL BAY
Iām not sure how to respond against such intelligent, deep reasoning. I consider āOf Mice and Menā to be a decent book, quite well-written, but judged against the rest of Steinbeckās amazing work? You may as well be comparing a good local In Nā Out to a 3 Star Michelin restaurant. Hell, even if you compare āOf Mice and Menā to Steinbeckās other shorter works, like āThe Red Ponyā or his short stories in āThe Long Valleyā, it comes out being massively worse.
As for George, he is a mentally retarded yet gentle being. There, I completely explained him in five words. While he serves his purpose in the story, I donāt consider such banally simple characters to be anything remarkable. Have you read other Steinbeck works, especially from his early period? (1929-1940?) What did you think of something like āTortilla Flatā or even āThe Cup of Goldā? Is there a novel he wrote during that time you would rank below āOf Mice and Menā?
I find one reason people praise āOf Mice and Menā is that itās the only Steinbeck work they have read, or one of two. And yeah, by itself, itās a decent, enjoyable little storyā¦itās just so much worse than everything else the guy wrote.
When I donāt have time to read, I listen to audiobooksā¦and I donāt know how this happened, but Samuel L. Jackson was chosen to read the not-so-childrenās book Go The F*ck To Sleep. Awesome, but short.
Good read
Which Bond would you reccomend the most?
It really depends on what you like in Bond. Flemmingās books are argued to be horribly written. I still enjoyed them but the shit was over the top sometimes. Gardnerās 50/50 on either a great book or a total bore but his Bond is more akin to Daltonās. And Benson did the Union trilogy (Never dream of Dying, Doubleshot, and the man with the Red Tattoo) which was very good.
Check out Kingsleyās Amisā book too as well as Sebastian Faulksā Devil May care.
Basically look at which movies you like best in terms of settings because the books are all very reminiscent of their time periods. If I had to recommend though Iād tell you to read the Flemming ones to get the real story behind Bond as well as to see all the different paths between the movies and books.
I will second this question. I have read all the Fleming Bonds, and one of the Gardner books (āScorpiusā, which was fucking atrocious), but have never checked out anything by Benson. Is he any good?
Edit- Nevermindā¦
Iām still reading Atlas Shrugged. Holy shit, this book is dense. Verbose, too. I guess it shouldnāt surprise me since Rand was a philosopher. That said, I agree with a lot of what this book is saying and has given me a better work ethic. I hope the ending doesnāt ruin it for me.
Spoiler
Some asshole already ruined the ending of the book for me when I said I was in the middle of reading the book. He says he didnāt spoil everything but from what Iāve read shortly after he opened his mouth I can now put the pieces together on where itās going. What a dick.
Theyāre not necessarily poorly written. Theyāre potboilers. By that standard, theyāre strictly conventional. Fleming is not going to change your life with artful prose. Heās not an exceptional writer, but heās a hell of a storyteller.
I have a soft spot for Live and Let Die. Itās one of the shorter ones, but itās a scrappy little thriller, and thereās some unintentional humor in that itās a snapshot of an Englishmanās opinions of America circa the 1950s.
And itās substantially better than the movie that it was adapted into.
Yes, agreed.
Flemingās Bonds were nothing more than fun pulp crime novels. They were meant to be entertaining, forgettable paperbacks, nothing more. I would even say they were targeted more for young adults back then; Fleming is the same guy who wrote āChitty Chitty Bang Bangā, after all. Itās the same reason why I love the early films and especially Roger Mooreās interpretation of the character (playing him with a wink and a nod) and think the recent movies going for ādarkā and āgrittyā are so dumb.
āLive and Let Dieā is definitely one of his best; āOn Her Majestyās Secret Serviceā was a lot of fun too, as was āMoonrakerā. (The latter very different than the film version)