Readers Who Love to Read's topics - tribe.net

mystery & suspense writers

2008-06-15T17:39:54Z

who are your favorite mystery & suspense writers?

i heart patricia highsmith, cornell woolrich, dashiell hammett, raymond chandler, david goodis, sebastian japrisot, dorothy b. hughes (especially in a lonely place and ride the pink horse), jim thompson, and lately margaret millar.

pat highsmith is my favorite of all without a doubt. i think strangers on a train is the 20th century crime and punishment. if you read it and like it you are in luck because she wrote a wheelbarrowful of books, and they all entertain and keep you turning pages.

the ripley books are all excellent. she wrote two amazing serial books of stories (the animal lover's book of beastly murder & little tales of misogyny) that manage to take an array of angles at a single topic without being repetitive. the story about the goat in 'animal lover's' would be a good start, but all of them are hoots to read. i like the title of one story in little tales: 'the moveable bed object.'

right now i'm rereading the glass cell, which was the first of her books i ever read, and i remember not being particularly impressed with it at the time. i can see why as it's very flat and grim. still not one of my favorites, but it does have its moments.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

What are you reading these days? Part II

2008-05-20T00:48:21Z

I am not reading anything now. I cant decide so I figure lets have a vote. I will give 5 books I am thinking about and you all chime in and the one with the most thumbs ups is what I read next

the choices are "classics" and a few i hear rather heavy

Homer's The Iliad

Virgil's The Aeneid

Sophacles' Eedipus the King

The Arabian Knights

Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (I have never read Austen and never watched any of the movies based on her books. But I did catch about 20 minutes of the end of Mansfield Park a few nights ago and I was intrigued to finally read something, well maybe read something by her)

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 10 replies

Filth, Fright, Flight

2008-05-14T03:36:22Z

the titles of the last three novels i finished: filth, by irvine welsh, fright by cornell woolrich, flight by sherman alexie. filth was by far the most entertaining, but they all had their moments.

from filth:

-Why did I join the force? I repeat, -Oh I'd have to say that it was due to Police oppression. I'd witnessed it within my own community and decided that it was something I wanted to be part of, I smile.

but this is my question: without utilizing internet searches, how many novels with one word titles that start with "F" can you name?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

What are you reading these days?

2008-05-11T22:49:24Z

Hi Folks,

Things have been pretty dead here. I thought I'd check in and see what everybody's reading these days. Do you read different types of books at different times of the year? Some people have "beach" reading, which is different than "curling up on the couch with a glass of merlot" reading.

Anyhow, let's hear it!

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 93 replies

Tolkien-The Hobbitt

2008-04-29T19:29:34Z

Just wandeing since I just heard Jackson was going ot direct "two" Hobbit movies.

There was just the one book wasnt there? I dont recall a sequel. And if I remember right it was a normal size book, not big enough to be two parts. Granted I havent read it in over 20 years.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

Shakespeare goes digital (X-post)

2008-03-26T20:00:44Z

Why x-posted? It's Shake-freakin-speare!!!

From Reuters via Yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080326/tc_nm/britain_shakespeare_digital_dc

A U.S. and British library plan to reproduce online all 75 editions of William Shakespeare's plays printed in the quarto format before the year 1641.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford and Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC have joined forces to download their collections, building on the work of the British Library which digitized its collection of quarto editions in 2004.

In the absence of surviving manuscripts, the quartos -- Shakespeare's earliest printed editions -- offer the closest known evidence of what Shakespeare might actually have written, and what appeared on the early modern English stage.

The project is designed to make all of the quartos, many of which are only accessible to scholars, available to the wider public.

The process of downloading the quartos will begin next month and take a year to complete.

Online visitors will be able to compare images side-by-side, lay one facsimile on top of the other, search plays and mark and tag the texts.

As well as highlighting more minor differences between copies of the same quarto, the digital database will also make it easier to study the often wide discrepancies between quartos, including some of Shakespeare's most famous lines.

"There will be countless new ways for scholars, teachers, and students to examine the quarto texts, particularly of 'Hamlet'," said Folger director Gail Kern Paster.

"You find out all sorts of things -- about how the copies went through the press, and also about the printing process," she added.

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and collaborated on several more between about 1590 and 1613. He died in 1616.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Talk dirty to me

2008-03-24T00:53:47Z

See the marvelous fashion in which the Orchis Moris, our humble country orchid, combines the play of its rostellum and retinacula; observe the mathematical and automatic inclination and adhesion of its pollinia; as also the unerring double see-saw of the anthers of the wild sage, which touch the body of the visiting insect at a particular spot in order that the insect may, in its turn, touch the stigma of the neighboring flower at another particular spot; watch, too, in the case of the Pedicularis Sylvatica, the successive calculated movement of its stigma; and indeed the entrance of the bee into any of these three flowers sets every organ vibrating, just as the skillful marksman who hits the black spot on the target will cause all the figures to move in the elaborate mechanisms we see in our village fairs.

-Maurice Maeterlink, The Life of the Bee

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Some really good sci-fi....

2008-02-01T15:30:43Z

What Gibson did with 'cyberpunk' for tech lust.....

MARK BUDZ does similar with 'bio' lust .......

Some of the most enjoyable 'hard science',- but not brainiac masturbation- sci-fi i've read in awhile.....

The first i read by him "Till Human Voices Wake Us"..., kinda didn't light my fire.., but the structure and 'layout' of it was catchy, and kept me interested and discovering along the way, wondering if i was right, most of the way thru....

But it's what i'm reading now - "CLAUDE" that is knocking me out.......

Bioengeneering made normal, after devastating 'ecocaust'..... complete with 'circiutrees', 'nanimals' and 'ecotecture'......

'S cool shyt.....

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Orson Scott Card

2007-12-28T01:08:22Z

I have just finished reading his latest book Empire.
It's based on the premise of a civil war between the red and blue states. I found the book to be a pretty good thriller type of story. And what I found interesting is the ramifications of the course our society is going. Card has a statement at the end that I found particularly apropos, regarding the intolerance that political parties feel for folks who don't adhere to the entire party line. After reading the book and finishing the statement, he left me with a great deal to think about regarding the direction of our society.

I've found that while I like entertainment reading, when I end up getting a message from the book, I tend to like the book much better than if it was just fiction as entertainment. So for me, getting the message from the book actually made a decent story line to be a much better story.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 3 replies

Seminal books as a child ....

2007-12-19T07:33:08Z

Don't know quite why it occured to me, but out of the blue i started thinking about what books were the most affecting / captivating to me as a rug rat....
You know... the first books that made u beeeeegggg like u did for nothing else - for just ONE MORE CHAPTER TONITE....!!!!!! PLEEEEEEZE!!!

James and the Giant Peach
Charlie and the Choclate Factory
Stuart Little
Alice Thru the Looking Glass

(Treasure Island too..., but it doesn't fit into the startling point i'm about to make...)

But what hit me outta the blue was how related they all kinda are.....
They're ALL kid alone, out of his(or her) element.....in varying degrees...

Anybody else able to draw parallel about thier faves like that....

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 5 replies

Anyone read any Scott westerfield ???

2007-12-18T22:05:35Z

Seen his "Uglies, Prettys, Specials" trio and am intrigued...
But i hesitate as his stuff is always in the "Young Adult' section.....

Anyone read and liked him....?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Support independant book stores!

2007-12-18T17:45:30Z

I'm not much into the Christmas thing, but I know lots of you are, and I would like to encourage, ask or convince you to buy any of the books you are planning on buying as gifts this year from your local independent book store.

Small bookstores have a much smaller buying power than corporations like Walmart etc., therefore to keep their doors open and give they need to be supported by each and everyone of us "readers who love to read" people, .

It's real, soon small book stores won't be able to keep their doors open if we don't consciously support them.
I don't even want to imagine the day when the only choice I'll have to go and buy books will be Walmart or all the other mega, ugly, cold, noisy, chaotic, neon lighted, exploitive, throat cutting @#$# store.

To my small little charming intimate bookstores
love
mcjb

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

canadian litterature

2007-12-18T17:42:17Z

Is anybody on this tribe reads Canadian Literature?
I'm interested in finding out where Canadian Literature stands in the English speaking world community!
Are you interested?
Are you biased?
What have you read?
Sheer curiosity!

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 8 replies

Terry Pratchett

2007-12-12T15:48:59Z

FYI

http://www.paulkidby.com/news/index.html

:(

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

First Steinbeck

2007-12-04T22:57:28Z

My son is an avid reader. I want to give him his first Steinbeck to read. Which one should he read first at 15?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

you can't judge a book by it's cover...

2007-11-29T07:52:14Z

but i sure hate it when i see a regular book cover replaced with it's "upcoming movie" poster instead.

grrrr. book riot!

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 7 replies

Study: Americans Reading A Lot Less

2007-11-19T18:20:30Z

Reading Skills On The Decline Across Almost All Education Levels, Government Report Says

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/19/national/main3520163.shtml

(CBS/AP) The latest National Endowment for the Arts report draws on a variety of sources, public and private, and essentially reaches one conclusion:

Americans are reading a lot less.

That's according to a 99-page study, "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consquence," released Monday by the National Endowment for the Arts as a follow-up to a 2004 NEA survey, "Reading at Risk," that found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year.

The new study examined data on everything from how many 9-year-olds read every day for "fun" (54 percent) to the percentage of high school graduates deemed by employers as "deficient" in writing in English (72 percent).

"I've done a lot of work in statistics in my career and I've never seen a situation where so much data was pulled from so many places and absolutely everything is so consistent," NEA chairman Dana Gioia said.

The report by the NEA, a taxpayer-funded independent federal agency, is based on reading trends data collected from more than 40 sources, including other federal agencies, universities, foundations, and associations.

Among the findings:

# On average, Americans ages 15 to 24 spend almost two hours a day watching TV, and only seven minutes of their daily leisure time on reading.

# Reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups. From 1992 to 2003, the percentage of adults with graduate school experience who were rated proficient in prose reading dropped by 10 points, a 20 percent rate of decline.

# In 2002, only 52 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, the college years, read a book voluntarily, down from 59 percent in 1992.

# American 15-year-olds ranked fifteenth in average reading scores for 31 industrialized nations, behind Poland, Korea, France, and Canada, among others.

# Money spent on books, adjusted for inflation, dropped 14 percent from 1985 to 2005 and has fallen dramatically since the mid-1990s.

# The number of adults with bachelor's degrees and "proficient in reading prose" dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003.

Some news is good, notably among 9-year-olds, whose reading comprehension scores have soared since the early 1990s.

But at the same time, the number of 17-year-olds who "never or hardly ever" read for pleasure has doubled, to 19 percent, and their comprehension scores have fallen.

"I think there's been an enormous investment in teaching kids to read in elementary school," Gioia said. "Kids are doing better at 9, and at 11. At 13, they're doing no worse, but then you see this catastrophic falloff. ... If kids are put into this electronic culture without any counterbalancing efforts, they will stop reading."

Publishers and booksellers have noted that teen fiction is a rapidly expanding category in an otherwise flat market, but the NEA's director of research, Sunil Iyengar, wondered how much of that growth has been caused by the Harry Potter books, the last of which came out in July.

"It's great that millions of kids are reading these long, intricate novels, but reading one such book every 18 months doesn't make up for daily reading," Gioia said.

Doug Whiteman, president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA), said sales of teen books were the strongest part of his business. But he added that a couple of factors could explain why scores were dropping: Adults are also buying the Potter books, thus making the teen market seem bigger on paper, and some sales are for non-English language books.

"There are so many nuances," Whiteman said. "Reading scores don't necessarily have any relevance to today's sales."

The head of Simon & Schuster's children's publishing division, Rick Richter, saw another reason why sales could rise even as scores go down: A growing gap between those who read and those who do not. Richter considers it "very possible" that the market is driven by a relatively small number of young people who buy large numbers of books. Test scores, meanwhile, are lowered by the larger population of teens who do not read.

"A divide like that is really a cause for concern," Richter said.

The report emphasizes the social benefits of reading: "Literary readers" are more likely to exercise, visit art museums, keep up with current events, vote in presidential elections and perform volunteer work.

"This should explode the notion that reading is somehow a passive activity," Gioia said. "Reading creates people who are more active by any measure... People who don't read, who spend more of their time watching TV or on the Internet, playing video games, seem to be significantly more passive."

Gioia called the decline in reading "perhaps the most important socio-economic issue in the United States," and called for changes "in the way we're educating kids, especially in high school and college. We need to reconnect reading with pleasure and enlightenment."

"`To Read or Not to Read' suggests we are losing the majority of the new generation," Gioia said. "The majority of young Americans will not realize their individual, economic or social potential."

© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Hidden method of reading revealed

2007-09-12T02:58:40Z

From the BBC: http://tinyurl.com/2x2pc5

The mystery of how we read a sentence has been unlocked by scientists.

Previously, researchers thought that, when reading, both eyes focused on the same letter of a word. But a UK team has found this is not always the case.

In fact, almost 50% of the time, each of our eyes locks on to different letters simultaneously.

At the BA Festival of Science in York, the researchers also revealed that our brain can fuse two separate images to obtain a clear view of a page.

Sophisticated eye-tracking equipment allowed the team to pinpoint which letter a volunteer's eyes focused on, when reading 14-point font from one metre away.

Rather than the eyes moving smoothly over text, they make small jerky movements, focusing on a particular word for an instant and then moving along the sentence. Periods when the eyes are still are called fixations.

Crossed eyes

Professor Simon Liversedge, from the University of Southampton, said: "We found that in a very substantial number of fixations that people make when they read, they aren't looking at the same letter."

Instead, the eyes often focussed on different letters in the same word, about two characters apart, he said.

"They could be uncrossed, in the sense that the two lines of sight are not crossed when you look at a word, or alternatively the two lines of sight may be crossed," he added.

The team's results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters.

A follow-up experiment with the eye-tracking equipment showed that we only see one clear image when reading because our brain fuses the different images from our eyes together.

The tests showed that we use the information from both eyes, rather than our brain suppressing one image and only processing the other.

Professor Liversedge said: "A comprehensive understanding of the psychological processes underlying reading is vital if we are to develop better methods of teaching children to read and offer remedial treatments for those with reading disorders such as dyslexia."

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 4 replies

Library book request - Dynamic Belly Dance

2007-08-24T23:43:27Z

Would you like to read a book about the art of belly dancing filled with beautiful photos and illustrations?

If yes, please ask your public library to add to their collection:

Dynamic Belly Dance, The Joyful Journey of Dancemaking and Performing by Ramona
ISBN 978-0-615-13326-3

This book is available to library distributors. If your librarian has questions about availability or needs further info/excerpt/details, go to www.DynamicBellyDance.com

Thanks so much! I'm the author of this new book, and need your help in getting it into libraries.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

a quote i saw today

2007-08-23T00:18:27Z

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
- Logan Pearsall Smith

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

All New and Newish Members...

2007-08-03T16:33:52Z

Welcome to this tribe. I've been a negligent moderator. Thanks for hanging around anyway.

I dredged up the old "Readers" survey for anybody new who'd like to fill it in:

01. How many hours a day do you read?

02. Do you generally read fiction or non-fiction, or a good balance of both?

03. Do you read a lot of magazines or newspapers? Just books? Or a good balance of both?

04. Do you ever listen to audio books while traveling or even at home? Which ones?

05. Do you skim paragraphs or read every single word? If it depends on the type of material, specify.

06. What book(s) do you think everybody should read?

07. What book(s) do you think should be read by no one?

08. What book(s) have you read more than once?

09. What movies made from books do you think are good?

10. Have you ever had someone start a conversation with you based on a book you were reading? Explain.

11. Has your activity on Tribe changed the way you read/write. How so?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 5 replies

A classic Chinese fairy tale

2007-07-23T06:13:26Z

This is a classic Chinese fairy tale. It was said that there is a kind of poisonous grass that causes people to die after eating it. People said that people who died of eating this grass would become ghosts. They could reincarnate only by finding a person who had also died by eating the poisonous grass. A young masn， named Zhu Sheng， went to visit his friend. It was the middle of summer and he was very thirsty. He still had half of his journey ahead of him.Then he spotted a tea house along the road and stopped in for a cup of tea. He eagerly drank the tea that the teahouse owner Ms. Kou brought for him. As soon as he got home he felt a pain in his stomach. He realized that Ms. Kou had given him a cup of tea made with the poisonous grass to benefit her reincarnation. The young man hated her and vowed to get revenge. After his death， he took Ms. Kou back to the nether world. There the two of them got married in the nether world. The young man's mother cried all day long because she missed her son very much. One day，the young man heard the crying of his mother and persuaded his wife to go back to the human world to take care of his mother.The couple worked hard and was comforted and helped the old woman. Though their life was getting better and better， the old woman still did not feel at ease because she knew that her son and daughter-in-law were ghosts. So she pleaded with them to find their replacements. But the young man said："I won't do things lffensive to God and reason.My only hope is to take good care of you and let you live a happy life."S o the couple did their best for the old woman until she died.God was moved by the couple's deeds and then God sent a fairy cart to bring them to heaven. They finally became immortals.

An interesting Chinese fairy tale, I would like to share.
Here's some more stories if you are interested
www.foreignercn.com/index.ph...d_98.html

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

new book store on nob hill

2007-06-28T21:38:04Z

i was so surprised to see this i had to share: while walking to work the other morning i saw a brand new independent bookstore on bush near jones, 1017 bush to be exact, called babylon falling. looks like those stores around 16th and valencia that are always fun to browse through. i'm planning to go there soon and buy something just because, and would encourage anyone else in the neighb' to do likewise.

and since you're there, you can always flow down the hill to kayo books on post @ leavenworth for all your pulp fiction needs (though they're only open thursday to sunday or something like that.) a great bookstore!

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

the type of men valerie solanis had no use for

2007-06-26T17:02:25Z

A few examples of the most obnoxious or harmful types are: rapists,
politicians, and all who are in their service (campaigners, members of
political parties, etc.); lousy singers and musicians; Chairmen of
Boards; Breadwinners; landlords; owners of greasy spoons and restaurants
that play Musak; "Great Artists"; cheap pikers and welchers; cops;
tycoons; scientists working on death and destruction programs or for
private industry (practically all scientists); liars and phonies; disc
jockeys; men who intrude themselves in the slightest way on any strange
female; real-estate men; stockbrokers; men who speak when they have
nothing to say; men who loiter idly on the street and mar the landscape
with their presence; double-dealers; flim-flam artists; litterbugs;
plagiarizerts; men who in the slghtest way harm any female; all men in
the advertising industry; psychiatrists and clinical psychologists;
dishonest writers, journalists, editors, publishers, etc.; censors on
both the public and private levels; all members of the armed forces,
including draftees (LBJ and McNamara give orders, but service men carry
them out) and particularly pilots (if the bomb drops, LBJ won't drop it;
a pilot will).

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

almanac

2007-06-25T18:00:50Z

happy birthday george orwell. as we reread 1984 today, we must acknowledge you as an optimist.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Store Owner Launches Book Burning Protest

2007-06-08T05:55:33Z

Store Owner Launches Book Burning Protest

May 28, 2007 1:01 p.m. EST

Shaveta Bansal - AHN Staff Writer
Kansas City, MO (AHN) - In a bid to protest the decline in the number of users opting for print reading, a used-books store owner in mid-town Kansas City, Missouri, is planning to stage a monthly book burning bonfire. Tom Wayne of Prospero's Books made several attempts to give away thousands of books lying in his warehouse, but after even libraries and thrift shops showed their unwillingness to accept them he decided them to put on fire.

"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today," AP quoted Wayne as saying to the spectators as he staged the first book bonfire outside his bookstore on Sunday.

According to Wayne the decline in demand for print has been increasing in recent years especially with more and more people turning to Internet publishing and other sources of digital media.

"After slogging through the tens of thousands of books we've slogged through and to accumulate that many and to have people turn you away when you take them somewhere, it's just kind of a knee-jerk reaction," he told the AP.

However, Wayne's protest needs a permit from the state. Sunday's blaze was put out by the employees of Kansas City Fire Department saying Wayne needs a permit to burn them.

Wayne said he will get the permit next time and plans to continue with the monthly blaze until his supply - an estimated 20,000 books - is exhausted.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 5 replies

Coffee Table Books

2007-06-02T02:49:59Z

Ok its not really reading all the time with these things. But Jessie Lu's response in "What are you reading" made me think of those huge photography books and books of art.

Do you have a stack of coffee table books?

Did you actually read them, or just glance at the images?

Were they gifted/bought by yourself?

Did you get one just because you thought it was cool and then wonder later, why the f did I buy that?

Whats ya got?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 10 replies

What do you think of a book swap?

2007-05-29T03:57:33Z

I have done it 3 times with cook books rather successfully on the Recipe Exchange Tribe. I am going to do another round of book thinning out and thought maybe people here who may need to get rid of some excess might want to either swap out books, or just stack claims on something someone else has.

Thoughts, ideas?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Class turn to page 23 and tell me

2007-05-16T13:47:51Z

Ok I got this in a friends blog. But thought it may be fun here.

1.Grab the book that is closest to you. (actualy had one in my hands!)
2. go to page 23.
3. Go to the fifth sentance.
4. Post the text of the next three sentences in your journal/post along with these instructions.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
5. Tag five other people to do the same. ( ididnt do this if you have noticed. though I will put it in my blog)

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 15 replies

The 10 Greatest Books of All Time

2007-05-12T01:20:55Z

Monday, Jan. 15, 2007 By LEV GROSSMAN

Let's not mince words: literary lists are basically an obscenity. Literature is the realm of the ineffable and the unquantifiable; lists are the realm of menus and laundry and rotisserie baseball. There's something unseemly and promiscuous about all those letters and numbers jumbled together. Take it from me, a critic who has committed this particular sin many times over.

But what if—just for argument's sake—you got insanely rigorous about it. You went to all the big-name authors in the world—Franzen, Mailer, Wallace, Wolfe, Chabon, Lethem, King, 125 of them— and got each one to cough up a top-10 list of the greatest books of all time. We're talking ultimate-fighting-style here: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, modern, ancient, everything's fair game except eye-gouging and fish-hooking. Then you printed and collated all the lists, crunched the numbers together, and used them to create a definitive all-time Top Top 10 list.

Yes, it would probably still be an obscenity. But it would be a pretty interesting obscenity. And that's what we have in J. Peder Zane's The Top 10 (Norton; 352 pages).

Each individual top 10 list is like its own steeplechase through the international canon. Look at Michael Chabon's. He heads it up with Jorge Luis Borges's Labyrinths. (Nice: an undersung masterpiece by a writer's writer.) He follows that up with by Pale Fire by Nabokov at #2. (Hm. Does he really think it's better than Lolita? Really?) Then with number 3 he goes straight off the reservation: Scaramouche, by Rafael Sabatini. (What? By who?) The whole exercise is an orgy of intellectual second-guessing, which as we all know is infinitely more fun than the first round of guessing.

There's plenty of canon fodder on the lists. Zane, who's the books editor at the Raleigh News & Observer, has done a statistical breakdown of the results, so we know, for example, that Shakespeare is the most-represented author (followed by Faulkner, who ties with Henry James; they're followed by a five-way tie, which you can read about for yourself). But I'm more interested in the dark horses, the statistical outliers, which lay bare the secret fetishes and perversions of the literati. Douglas Coupland puts Capote's unfinished Answered Prayers at number one, blowing right by Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood, too. Jonathan Franzen begins straight up the middle, with The Brothers Karamazov, but turns a sharp corner at #9 with The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, and another at #10 with Independent People by Halldor Laxness. The quintessentially American Tom Wolfe starts by reeling off four French classics in a row. Norman Mailer revives John Dos Passos's out-of-fashion U.S.A. trilogy for his #6 (and shows uncharacteristic forebearance by leaving his own works off the list). And so on. (At times one reads in the knowledge that one is being messed with. There's an outside, screwball chance that David Foster Wallace really reveres C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters above all other books, but I feel comfortable asserting—having read Infinite Jesttwice—that Wallace does not feel that way about Stephen King's The Stand (at #2) or The Sum of All Fears, by Tom Clancy (#10).)

There are several lifetimes' worth of promising literary leads here—544 books in all. An 85-page appendix providing enlightened summaries of all the works mentioned is worth the price of admission all on its own. But to get you started, here, in all its glory, is the all-time, ultimate Top Top 10 list, derived from the top 10 lists of 125 of the world's most celebrated writers combined. Read it and— well, just read it.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
The Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Chekhov
Middlemarch by George Eliot

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 10 replies

HHmmmmm -

2007-04-25T04:14:48Z

So 'Readers Who Love To Read'....

Um..., as opposed to readers who... ah... don't...?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 4 replies

The Napkin Project

2007-04-18T08:18:21Z

http://www.esquire.com/fiction/napkin-fiction/napkinproject

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

The Self Shelf

2007-03-23T21:58:15Z

It's the wacky new bookshelf that looks like a book, so it appears you have a stack of books against the wall, floating by themselves:

http://www.firebox.com/product/1538

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

Donating Magazines and Books

2007-03-21T03:59:10Z

cross post

Generally I drop magazines off at the public library. Do you have any charities that you donate them too?

Books, I either give to a friend if I know they will like it, sell on Amazon or Ebay if I know I can get a decent buck out of it, otherwise its the public library.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

Seriously conflicted......(depressed about an finishing a dead authors LAST book....)

2007-02-23T04:33:15Z

Anybody else go thru this......?

Even when an author is NOT dead( like Octavia Bulter is ,as of late this year....)- i sometimes get VERY conflicted about actually FINISHING a really,REALLY good book, if i haven't been able to 'put it down'.......

If it's the kind of story that i actually THINK about when i'm NOT reading it..., and i 'can't wait to get back to it'... i have actually felt rather sad 4 a few days afterward........
I've drawn out finishing a good book for WEEKS...........

And NOW- since this is Octavia's LAST EVER(yeah- i can always go back and re-read, true... still not same...)........ I'm SOOOOOOOOO conflicted about finishing it....... I've FORCIBLY stopped myself from reading further for 3 nites in a row...... I'm finding excuses NOT to read it................

There's no more after this,man............. I'm sad.

Shyt. Hate it when cool people die early.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 9 replies

Damn Newbies!

2007-02-18T01:12:27Z

The more things change...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRjVeRbhtRU

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

The Gutenberg Bible

2007-02-11T17:25:43Z

When I worked at Doubleday Book Shop in San Francisco, back in the early 90s, other bored employees and I would occasionally crank call various book shops in town and ask if they had the Gutenberg Bible in stock. They'd invariably end up checking their microfiche to find the ISBN (unless they were REALLY high tech and actually had computerized databases), and then they'd come back and say, "I'm sorry, I can't find that in our system."

Only once did someone say, "Ha ha. Very funny."

About the Gutenberg Bible:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_bible

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Sailor on Horseback

2007-01-13T04:19:54Z

today is the birthday of jack london, the socialist with a houseboy. born 1876 in san francisco.

jacklondon.com has links to many of his works. i got to reread the sea wolf and martin eden on company time.

anyone ever been to valley of the moon? state park that has the ruins of his house and a neat museum which includes call of the wild editions in about 40 languages.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 3 replies

Literary Eccentricities

2007-01-12T17:38:05Z

Яεηdall the Thrillionaire! posted this on another tribe and it's lotsa fun:

http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/11/literary-eccentricities/

"Little Mermaids" and "Thumbelina" author Hans Christian Andersen was so intensely afraid of being buried alive that he left a note by his bed each night that read, "I only appear to be dead." Andersen was right to feel anxiety around sleeping, incidentally: In 1875, he died as a result of injuries sustained falling out of bed."

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Reading Plays

2007-01-10T05:25:54Z

Do you read plays for pleasure? What about screenplays?

Which ones?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 4 replies

I had forgotten

2007-01-03T03:30:06Z

about this Tribes early beginnings until I looked all they way through the gallery. Oh for the days of when it was The BUttmonkey Tribe and The Mime Tribe (or was it how to kill a mime tribe?)

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 5 replies

2006 Top 10 Us Out of Print Books

2007-01-02T22:07:31Z

According to Bookfinder.com:

Top 10 US out of print books of 2006

We spend a lot of time looking at demand trends for out of print books. Per our research, the following are the top 10 most sought-after out of print books in America in 2006:

1. Sex (1992) by Madonna
A perennial favorite, the pop icon’s first book, featuring erotic photos, Vanilla Ice cameos, and more
2. Football Scouting Methods (1963) by Steve Belichick
Legendary college football scout’s playbook used by coaches and players to develop winning game plans
3. Touch Me Again (1978) by Suzanne Somers
The ever so cleverly titled sequel to Touch Me, Ms. Somers’ first collection of poetry. (Yes, that Suzanne Somers.)
4. Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words (1975) by Johnny Cash
His original autobiography, and the source for the hit film Walk the Line
5. Treasury of Great Recipes (1965) by Mary and Vincent Price
Some of the best recipes from world-famous restaurants redesigned for the amateur kitchen. (And yes, that Vincent Price.)
6. The Principles of Knitting (1988) by June Hemmons Hiatt
Methods and techniques of hand knitting, the ultimate resource
7. The Lion’s Paw (1946) by Robb White
An enduring children’s adventure story
8. The Secret of Perfect Living (1963) by James Mangan
An early source book about positive mind control using affirmations (“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me”). This book just came back into print on December 1, clearly a wise move on the part of the rights holders.
9. Once a Runner: A Novel (1978) by John L. Parker, Jr.
Cult classic about the sport of running; the sequel, Again to Carthage, is expected soon
10. One Way Up (1964) by John F. Straubel
Chronicles the history of helicopter development

http://journal.bookfinder.com/#a000296

Weird list! Beyond the Price cookbook (which I think I actually have, boxed away somewhere), I can't imagine wanting any of these, certainly not enough to search for them. Different strokes, I guess...

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 4 replies

Waited most of last year....

2007-01-02T18:03:51Z

..for her last novel to come out in paperback....

And it was WELL worth the wait. Hurts tho to think that this will be the LAST new thing i'll ever be able to read from her.... 'FLEDGLING' is turning out to be just about the most original, enjoyable, well written 'vampire' tale i've read since the baroque over-drama of Anne rice....

It's s stunning talent to be able to say so much about HUMAN inter-relations( and race and gender, and 'difference'...), when using such fantastic elements as beings from other planets, or vampire lore....

I implore all her fans who havent yet- to pick up a copy.....

Enjoy the whole New Yaer of new stuff to read...

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Wife Dressing

2007-01-01T04:07:59Z

Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being a Well Dresssed Wife (With provacative notes for the patient husband who pays the bills) by Anne Fogarty. 1959.

great thrift store find which i'm passing on to the next couple i know who gets married. here are a few gems:

I've explained my feelings about old shoes; add to that decrepit hats for the rain. Rain can be pretty romantic. Why look like a drowned scarecrow when you can be a touch of sunshine on a dark day in perky rainwear?

The wife plays an increasingly important rolee in the advancement of her husband, especially in big industry and the professions...In any social situation, remember that you are an appendage of your husband, Adam's rib that was separated from him to form woman and now spiritually returned to his side.

Wife-dressing is like a military exercies. Yhou must develop your survival instincts and be fully prepared to meet both the expected -- and the unexpected. What you're aiming for is a combination of self-containment and mobility. You want adaptability in what you're wearing and freedom of movement. You can have all these advantatges at your fingertips by carrying a tote-bag -- which I sincerely believe is the best thing that's happened to women since the vote.

If you've become addicted to dark stockings or tights, be careful not to look like a Charles Addams heroine. The "beatnik" bit is wonderful for sloppy, slushy days, but should not be allowed to take over.

Angora and other fluffy knits can be perked up with an overnight stay in the refrigerator -- inside a plastic bag of course. When you put them on, you'll be 'real cool' in more than the jazz sense.

Not having a mink coat is hardly a tragedy...There's nothing rattier looking than poor pelts...Racoon, rabbit, and moleskin -- and their brother skins -- have been appearing in exciting bags, hats, lap robes as well as conventional coats and jackets...The best mink coats are made of the backs of minks, while "mink bellies" make up the bulk of mink linings for both men's and women's coats. The tails are used for trimmings and the throat or "gill," which has a harlequin-patterned texture, finds its way into many fashion items -- including an enormous mink gill tote given me by my husband.

After all, white-against-white is what made Homer Winslow [sic] famous and it's one of my favorite texture combinations.

Once the Fasten-The-Seat-Belt sign has been turned out and the plane has leveled off, go to the ladies' room and take off the dress you want to have fresh on arrival. Give it to the stewardesss, who will hang it up. Change into something comfortable and cozy -- it's usually cold up in the air -- such as a wool smock or some loose coveralls that will allow you plenty of leg and body movement.

Tissues and hankies each have a separate function. Tissues for utility; hankies for coquetry.

Most of my adult life I've been lucky enough to have an eighteen-inch waistline, which I'm convinced is because of the cinch, or wide, tight belts I've always worn. The theory is very much akin to the old Japanese tradition of binding feet to keep them small.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 3 replies

A Christmas Memory

2006-12-09T03:14:32Z

A Christmas Memory

~by Truman Capote

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable—not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather!"

The person to whom she is speaking is myself. I am seven; she is sixty-something, We are cousins, very distant ones, and we have lived together—well, as long as I can remember. Other people inhabit the house, relatives; and though they have power over us, and frequently make us cry, we are not, on the whole, too much aware of them. We are each other's best friend. She calls me Buddy, in memory of a boy who was formerly her best friend. The other Buddy died in the 1880's, when she was still a child. She is still a child.

"I knew it before I got out of bed," she says, turning away from the window with a purposeful excitement in her eyes. "The courthouse bell sounded so cold and clear. And there were no birds singing; they've gone to warmer country, yes indeed. Oh, Buddy, stop stuffing biscuit and fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat. We've thirty cakes to bake."

It's always the same: a morning arrives in November, and my friend, as though officially inaugurating the Christmas time of year that exhilarates her imagination and fuels the blaze of her heart, announces: "It's fruitcake weather! Fetch our buggy. Help me find my hat."

The hat is found, a straw cartwheel corsaged with velvet roses out-of-doors has faded: it once belonged to a more fashionable relative. Together, we guide our buggy, a dilapidated baby carriage, out to the garden and into a grove of pecan trees. The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard's legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek; it has its winter uses, too: as a truck for hauling firewood from the yard to the kitchen, as a warm bed for Queenie, our tough little orange and white rat terrier who has survived distemper and two rattlesnake bites. Queenie is trotting beside it now.

Three hours later we are back in the kitchen hulling a heaping buggyload of windfall pecans. Our backs hurt from gathering them: how hard they were to find (the main crop having been shaken off the trees and sold by the orchard's owners, who are not us) among the concealing leaves, the frosted, deceiving grass. Caarackle! A cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milk-glass bowl. Queenie begs to taste, and now and again my friend sneaks her a mite, though insisting we deprive ourselves. "We mustn't, Buddy. If we start, we won't stop. And there's scarcely enough as there is. For thirty cakes." The kitchen is growing dark. Dusk turns the window into a mirror: our reflections mingle with the rising moon as we work by the fireside in the firelight. At last, when the moon is quite high, we toss the final hull into the fire and, with joined sighs, watch it catch flame. The buggy is empty, the bowl is brimful.

We eat our supper (cold biscuits, bacon, blackberry jam) and discuss tomorrow. Tomorrow the kind of work I like best begins: buying. Cherries and citron, ginger and vanilla and canned Hawaiian pine-apple, rinds and raisins and walnuts and whiskey and oh, so much flour, butter, so many eggs, spices, flavorings: why, we'll need a pony to pull the buggy home.

But before these Purchases can be made, there is the question of money. Neither of us has any. Except for skin-flint sums persons in the house occasionally provide (a dime is considered very big money); or what we earn ourselves from various activities: holding rummage sales, selling buckets of hand-picked blackberries, jars of home-made jam and apple jelly and peach preserves, rounding up flowers for funerals and weddings. Once we won seventy-ninth prize, five dollars, in a national football contest. Not that we know a fool thing about football. It's just that we enter any contest we hear about: at the moment our hopes are centered on the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize being offered to name a new brand of coffee (we suggested "A.M."; and, after some hesitation, for my friend thought it perhaps sacrilegious, the slogan "A.M.! Amen!"). To tell the truth, our only really profitable enterprise was the Fun and Freak Museum we conducted in a back-yard woodshed two summers ago. The Fun was a stereopticon with slide views of Washington and New York lent us by a relative who had been to those places (she was furious when she discovered why we'd borrowed it); the Freak was a three-legged biddy chicken hatched by one of our own hens. Every body hereabouts wanted to see that biddy: we charged grown ups a nickel, kids two cents. And took in a good twenty dollars before the museum shut down due to the decease of the main attraction.

But one way and another we do each year accumulate Christmas savings, a Fruitcake Fund. These moneys we keep hidden in an ancient bead purse under a loose board under the floor under a chamber pot under my friend's bed. The purse is seldom removed from this safe location except to make a deposit or, as happens every Saturday, a withdrawal; for on Saturdays I am allowed ten cents to go to the picture show. My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of oldtime Indian cure, including a magical wart remover.

Now, with supper finished, we retire to the room in a faraway part of the house where my friend sleeps in a scrap-quilt-covered iron bed painted rose pink, her favorite color. Silently, wallowing in the pleasures of conspiracy, we take the bead purse from its secret place and spill its contents on the scrap quilt. Dollar bills, tightly rolled and green as May buds. Somber fifty-cent pieces, heavy enough to weight a dead man's eyes. Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles. Nickels and quarters, worn smooth as creek pebbles. But mostly a hateful heap of bitter-odored pennies. Last summer others in the house contracted to pay us a penny for every twenty-five flies we killed. Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven! Yet it was not work in which we took pride. And, as we sit counting pennies, it is as though we were back tabulating dead flies. Neither of us has a head for figures; we count slowly, lose track, start again. According to her calculations, we have $12.73. According to mine, exactly $13. "I do hope you're wrong, Buddy. We can't mess around with thirteen. The cakes will fall. Or put somebody in the cemetery. Why, I wouldn't dream of getting out of bed on the thirteenth." This is true: she always spends thirteenths in bed. So, to be on the safe side, we subtract a penny and toss it out the window.

Of the ingredients that go into our fruitcakes, whiskey is the most expensive, as well as the hardest to obtain: State laws forbid its sale. But everybody knows you can buy a bottle from Mr. Haha Jones. And the next day, having completed our more prosaic shopping, we set out for Mr. Haha's business address, a "sinful" (to quote public opinion) fish-fry and dancing cafe down by the river. We've been there before, and on the same errand; but in previous years our dealings have been with Haha's wife, an iodine-dark Indian woman with brassy peroxided hair and a dead-tired disposition. Actually, we've never laid eyes on her husband, though we've heard that he's an Indian too. A giant with razor scars across his cheeks. They call him Haha because he's so gloomy, a man who never laughs. As we approach his cafe (a large log cabin festooned inside and out with chains of garish-gay naked light bulbs and standing by the river's muddy edge under the shade of river trees where moss drifts through the branches like gray mist) our steps slow down. Even Queenie stops prancing and sticks close by. People have been murdered in Haha's cafe. Cut to pieces. Hit on the head. There's a case coming up in court next month. Naturally these goings-on happen at night when the colored lights cast crazy patterns and the Victrolah wails. In the daytime Haha's is shabby and deserted. I knock at the door, Queenie barks, my friend calls: "Mrs. Haha, ma'am? Anyone to home?"

Footsteps. The door opens. Our hearts overturn. It's Mr. Haha Jones himself! And he is a giant; he does have scars; he doesn't smile. No, he glowers at us through Satan-tilted eyes and demands to know: "What you want with Haha?"

For a moment we are too paralyzed to tell. Presently my friend half-finds her voice, a whispery voice at best: "If you please, Mr. Haha, we'd like a quart of your finest whiskey."

His eyes tilt more. Would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too. "Which one of you is a drinkin' man?"

"It's for making fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking. "

This sobers him. He frowns. "That's no way to waste good whiskey." Nevertheless, he retreats into the shadowed cafe and seconds later appears carrying a bottle of daisy-yellow unlabeled liquor. He demonstrates its sparkle in the sunlight and says: "Two dollars."

We pay him with nickels and dimes and pennies. Suddenly, as he jangles the coins in his hand like a fistful of dice, his face softens. "Tell you what," he proposes, pouring the money back into our bead purse, "just send me one of them fruitcakes instead."

"Well," my friend remarks on our way home, "there's a lovely man. We'll put an extra cup of raisins in his cake."

The black stove, stoked with coal and firewood, glows like a lighted pumpkin. Eggbeaters whirl, spoons spin round in bowls of butter and sugar, vanilla sweetens the air, ginger spices it; melting, nose-tingling odors saturate the kitchen, suffuse the house, drift out to the world on puffs of chimney smoke. In four days our work is done. Thirty-one cakes, dampened with whiskey, bask on windowsills and shelves.

Who are they for?

Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share is intended for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year. Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've ever had taken). Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops.

Now a nude December fig branch grates against the window. The kitchen is empty, the cakes are gone; yesterday we carted the last of them to the post office, where the cost of stamps turned our purse inside out. We're broke. That rather depresses me, but my friend insists on celebrating—with two inches of whiskey left in Haha's bottle. Queenie has a spoonful in a bowl of coffee (she likes her coffee chicory-flavored and strong). The rest we divide between a pair of jelly glasses. We're both quite awed at the prospect of drinking straight whiskey; the taste of it brings screwedup expressions and sour shudders. But by and by we begin to sing, the two of us singing different songs simultaneously. I don't know the words to mine, just: Come on along, come on along, to the dark-town strutters' ball. But I can dance: that's what I mean to be, a tap dancer in the movies. My dancing shadow rollicks on the walls; our voices rock the chinaware; we giggle: as if unseen hands were tickling us. Queenie rolls on her back, her paws plow the air, something like a grin stretches her black lips. Inside myself, I feel warm and sparky as those crumbling logs, carefree as the wind in the chimney. My friend waltzes round the stove, the hem of her poor calico skirt pinched between her fingers as though it were a party dress: Show me the way to go home, she sings, her tennis shoes squeaking on the floor. Show me the way to go home.

Enter: two relatives. Very angry. Potent with eyes that scold, tongues that scald. Listen to what they have to say, the words tumbling together into a wrathful tune: "A child of seven! whiskey on his breath! are you out of your mind? feeding a child of seven! must be loony! road to ruination! remember Cousin Kate? Uncle Charlie? Uncle Charlie's brother-inlaw? shame! scandal! humiliation! kneel, pray, beg the Lord!"

Queenie sneaks under the stove. My friend gazes at her shoes, her chin quivers, she lifts her skirt and blows her nose and runs to her room. Long after the town has gone to sleep and the house is silent except for the chimings of clocks and the sputter of fading fires, she is weeping into a pillow already as wet as a widow's handkerchief.

"Don't cry," I say, sitting at the bottom of her bed and shivering despite my flannel nightgown that smells of last winter's cough syrup, "Don't cry," I beg, teasing her toes, tickling her feet, "you're too old for that."

"It's because," she hiccups, "I am too old. Old and funny."

"Not funny. Fun. More fun than anybody. Listen. If you don't stop crying you'll be so tired tomorrow we can't go cut a tree."

She straightens up. Queenie jumps on the bed (where Queenie is not allowed) to lick her cheeks. "I know where we'll find real pretty trees, Buddy. And holly, too. With berries big as your eyes. It's way off in the woods. Farther than we've ever been. Papa used to bring us Christmas trees from there: carry them on his shoulder. That's fifty years ago. Well, now: I can't wait for morning."

Morning. Frozen rime lusters the grass; the sun, round as an orange and orange as hot-weather moons, balances on the horizon, burnishes the silvered winter woods. A wild turkey calls. A renegade hog grunts in the undergrowth. Soon, by the edge of knee-deep, rapid-running water, we have to abandon the buggy. Queenie wades the stream first, paddles across barking complaints at the swiftness of the current, the pneumonia-making coldness of it. We follow, holding our shoes and equipment (a hatchet, a burlap sack) above our heads. A mile more: of chastising thorns, burrs and briers that catch at our clothes; of rusty pine needles brilliant with gaudy fungus and molted feathers. Here, there, a flash, a flutter, an ecstasy of shrillings remind us that not all the birds have flown south. Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitchblack vine tunnels. Another creek to cross: a disturbed armada of speckled trout froths the water round us, and frogs the size of plates practice belly flops; beaver workmen are building a dam. On the farther shore, Queenie shakes herself and trembles. My friend shivers, too: not with cold but enthusiasm. One of her hat's ragged roses sheds a petal as she lifts her head and inhales the pine-heavy air. "We're almost there; can you smell it, Buddy'" she says, as though we were approaching an ocean.

And, indeed, it is a kind of ocean. Scented acres of holiday trees, prickly-leafed holly. Red berries shiny as Chinese bells: black crows swoop upon them screaming. Having stuffed our burlap sacks with enough greenery and crimson to garland a dozen windows, we set about choosing a tree. "It should be," muses my friend, "twice as tall as a boy. So a boy can't steal the star." The one we pick is twice as tall as me. A brave handsome brute that survives thirty hatchet strokes before it keels with a creaking rending cry. Lugging it like a kill, we commence the long trek out. Every few yards we abandon the struggle, sit down and pant. But we have the strength of triumphant huntsmen; that and the tree's virile, icy perfume revive us, goad us on. Many compliments accompany our sunset return along the red clay road to town; but my friend is sly and noncommittal when passers-by praise the treasure perched in our buggy: what a fine tree, and where did it come from? "Yonderways," she murmurs vaguely. Once a car stops, and the rich mill owner's lazy wife leans out and whines: "Giveya two-bits" cash for that ol tree." Ordinarily my friend is afraid of saying no; but on this occasion she promptly shakes her head: "We wouldn't take a dollar." The mill owner's wife persists. "A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. That's my last offer. Goodness, woman, you can get another one." In answer, my friend gently reflects: "I doubt it. There's never two of anything."

Home: Queenie slumps by the fire and sleeps till tomorrow, snoring loud as a human.

A trunk in the attic contains: a shoebox of ermine tails (off the opera cape of a curious lady who once rented a room in the house), coils of frazzled tinsel gone gold with age, one silver star, a brief rope of dilapidated, undoubtedly dangerous candylike light bulbs. Excellent decorations, as far as they go, which isn't far enough: my friend wants our tree to blaze "like a Baptist window," droop with weighty snows of ornament. But we can't afford the made-in-Japan splendors at the five-and-dime. So we do what we've always done: sit for days at the kitchen table with scissors and crayons and stacks of colored paper. I make sketches and my friend cuts them out: lots of cats, fish too (because they're easy to draw), some apples, some watermelons, a few winged angels devised from saved-up sheets of Hershey bar tin foil. We use safety pins to attach these creations to the tree; as a final touch, we sprinkle the branches with shredded cotton (picked in August for this purpose). My friend, surveying the effect, clasps her hands together. "Now honest, Buddy. Doesn't it look good enough to eat!" Queenie tries to eat an angel.

After weaving and ribboning holly wreaths for all the front windows, our next project is the fashioning of family gifts. Tie-dye scarves for the ladies, for the men a homebrewed lemon and licorice and aspirin syrup to be taken "at the first Symptoms of a Cold and after Hunting." But when it comes time for making each other's gift, my friend and I separate to work secretly. I would like to buy her a pearl-handled knife, a radio, a whole pound of chocolate-covered cherries (we tasted some once, and she always swears: "1 could live on them, Buddy, Lord yes I could—and that's not taking his name in vain"). Instead, I am building her a kite. She would like to give me a bicycle (she's said so on several million occasions: "If only I could, Buddy. It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have. Only one of these days I will, Buddy. Locate you a bike. Don't ask how. Steal it, maybe"). Instead, I'm fairly certain that she is building me a kite—the same as last year and the year before: the year before that we exchanged slingshots. All of which is fine by me. For we are champion kite fliers who study the wind like sailors; my friend, more accomplished than I, can get a kite aloft when there isn't enough breeze to carry clouds.

Christmas Eve afternoon we scrape together a nickel and go to the butcher's to buy Queenie's traditional gift, a good gnawable beef bone. The bone, wrapped in funny paper, is placed high in the tree near the silver star. Queenie knows it's there. She squats at the foot of the tree staring up in a trance of greed: when bedtime arrives she refuses to budge. Her excitement is equaled by my own. I kick the covers and turn my pillow as though it were a scorching summer's night. Somewhere a rooster crows: falsely, for the sun is still on the other side of the world.

"Buddy, are you awake!" It is my friend, calling from her room, which is next to mine; and an instant later she is sitting on my bed holding a candle. "Well, I can't sleep a hoot," she declares. "My mind's jumping like a jack rabbit. Buddy, do you think Mrs. Roosevelt will serve our cake at dinner?" We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes my hand I-love-you. "Seems like your hand used to be so much smaller. I guess I hate to see you grow up. When you're grown up, will we still be friends?" I say always. "But I feel so bad, Buddy. I wanted so bad to give you a bike. I tried to sell my cameo Papa gave me. Buddy"—she hesitates, as though embarrassed—"I made you another kite." Then I confess that I made her one, too; and we laugh. The candle burns too short to hold. Out it goes, exposing the starlight, the stars spinning at the window like a visible caroling that slowly, slowly daybreak silences. Possibly we doze; but the beginnings of dawn splash us like cold water: we're up, wide-eyed and wandering while we wait for others to waken. Quite deliberately my friend drops a kettle on the kitchen floor. I tap-dance in front of closed doors. One by one the household emerges, looking as though they'd like to kill us both; but it's Christmas, so they can't. First, a gorgeous breakfast: just everything you can imagine—from flapjacks and fried squirrel to hominy grits and honey-in-the-comb. Which puts everyone in a good humor except my friend and me. Frankly, we're so impatient to get at the presents we can't eat a mouthful.

Well, I'm disappointed. Who wouldn't be? With socks, a Sunday school shirt, some handkerchiefs, a hand-me-down sweater, and a year's subscription to a religious magazine for children. The Little Shepherd. It makes me boil. It really does.

My friend has a better haul. A sack of Satsumas, that's her best present. She is proudest, however, of a white wool shawl knitted by her married sister. But she says her favorite gift is the kite I built her. And it is very beautiful; though not as beautiful as the one she made me, which is blue and scattered with gold and green Good Conduct stars; moreover, my name is painted on it, "Buddy."

"Buddy, the wind is blowing."

The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till we've run to a Pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too). There, plunging through the healthy waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like sky fish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and peel Satsumas and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down sweater. I'm as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize in that coffee-naming contest.

"My, how foolish I am!" my friend cries, suddenly alert, like a woman remembering too late she has biscuits in the oven. "You know what I've always thought?" she asks in a tone of discovery and not smiling at me but a point beyond. "I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when he came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'11 wager it never happens. I'11 wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are"—her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone—"just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes."

This is our last Christmas together.

Life separates us. Those who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go.

And there she remains, puttering around the kitchen. Alone with Queenie. Then alone. ("Buddy dear," she writes in her wild hard-to-read script, "yesterday Jim Macy's horse kicked Queenie bad. Be thankful she didn't feel much. I wrapped her in a Fine Linen sheet and rode her in the buggy down to Simpson's pasture where she can be with all her Bones...."). For a few Novembers she continues to bake her fruitcakes single-handed; not as many, but some: and, of course, she always sends me "the best of the batch." Also, in every letter she encloses a dime wadded in toilet paper: "See a picture show and write me the story." But gradually in her letters she tends to confuse me with her other friend, the Buddy who died in the 1880's; more and more, thirteenths are not the only days she stays in bed: a morning arrives in November, a leafless birdless coming of winter morning, when she cannot rouse herself to exclaim: "Oh my, it's fruitcake weather! "

And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

A Brief Dictionary of American Superstitions

2006-11-17T06:25:57Z

man, was this a score. chock full of fun facts and malarky. this is a 'specially abridged edition' published in 1965, but a lot of the entries are obviously older than that.

among the things i learned was that mesmer was a man, and that hunch comes from the french superstition of rubbing hunchbacks for luck.

a few tidbits:

Among baseball players, it is a sign of good luck to see a load of empty barrels. A ball player will doff his cap upon seeing such a sight. Good luck is attracted by rubbing the head of a Negro bell-hop. To prevent bad luck, a ball player will spit in his hat at the sight of a cross-eyed woman.

A person with a dimple in his or her chin or cheek will never commit murder.

Say the Lord's Prayer backwards and you will see the Devil.

To get rid of freckles go to a brook, catch a frog and rub him alive all over your face.

Pathetic fallacy: This fallacy is common to superstitions. It implies that an object or an animal suffers from the same reactions and emotions as a human. A golf stick is thrown to the ground in anger because "It is bad."

If a baby sucks its thumb it will grow up to be hideous.

If a live fuzzy caterpillar is sewn into a cloth sack and hung by a cord around the neck, this will alleviate the horrible illness of whooping cough. This superstition persisted until quite recently.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

Re-reading "Count Zero" ......

2006-10-02T22:19:51Z

William Gibson....

Having trouble finding new stuff to read..... Well theres some stuff out there i'd like 2 read, but i hate hardcovers, and always wait 'till it's availble in trade paperback.........

So i've had 2 resort to re-reading stuff i first read in teen years...... And even tho i have the WORST memory ever-i for some reason have never liked to re-read stuff i like..., dont know why....

Can't stand watching re-runs either........

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 3 replies

Bios Autobios

2006-10-01T22:05:18Z

I love reading them. Do you have any biographies or autobiographies you would suggest, of you think someone would enjoy even if its out of their realm of interest.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 15 replies

Mad Dog's Pile

2006-09-29T21:16:39Z

finally finished all my miscellaneous reading so i could attack a stack of nine novels, reading them concurrently to look for: structure, strange coincidences, similarities and differences.

tried to make as eclectic a stack as i could, given my predilictions.

i ended up with:

michael chabon summerland. highly recommended young adult baseball fiction. that cat can write.

peter carey theft. australian writer that i've heard good things about. one of my more 'highbrow' selections, i believe it's about art forgery.

nicholas baker vox. always wanted to read one of his, though now that
i've started to i'm not so sure.

lawrence block the thief who couldn't sleep. i'm liking him better and
better as i read more of his work, and i haven't read any of his thief
who couldn't sleep novels.

michelle chalfoun roustabout. young woman's novel about being a circus
roustabout. seems like it's going to be bastard out of carolina meets
carnavele (the t.v. series).

eddie muller the distance. if you've gone to the film noir fest, you
know eddie muller, 'the czar of noir.' the guy doesn't hate himself, but
he sure does know a lot about it. i'd read the second of this series,
shadow boxer, narrated by a san francisco boxing writer in the 1940s
(which is what eddie's dad was), but this one is far superior. hate to
say it, but it's pretty good. atmospheric. it was in my backpack for a
couple days, so i'm farther along in it than in some of the others.

murakami norweigian wood. i'm a fan. this one seems like it won't be
as far out as a wild sheep chase of hard boiled wonderland and the end
of the world, both of which i loved, but, again, i've just started it.
happened to read his first two in order, so now i'm going
chronologically, even though i know it means i won't be reading wind up
bird chronicles or kafka on the shore for a year or so. he is a very
entertaining writer.

matsumoto points and lines. japanese mystery. first chapter was good
set up.

dannie martin the dishwasher. he's a con who wrote for the chronicle while he was in the joint, and got in a lot of trouble with the prison authorities for doing so. i read his other
novel, in the hat, which was very interesting. first chapter of this one is a very realistic sounding narrative of a guy's first day out of prison after 14 years. nothing like experience. my copy is a little tacky cause i'd been keeping it by the kitchen sink to crack myself up.

has anyone read any of these? opinions?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

Man in the High Castle.. & weirdness

2006-09-03T15:05:19Z

Hi all --

Yesterday I finished PK Dick's A Scanner Darkly, great ending, and went on to start reading his 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle (while waiting for the library to get A Canticle of Liebowitz). This book by Dick deals with what the USA could have become if the Germans and the Japanese had defeated the Americans in WWII. It's rather interesting, very imaginative, and creates a world that is somewhat implausible yet contains great truths and insights about psychology and human nature. I've already read four chapters, and that's superfast for me.

What's weird is that today I received an email from a friend of mine who said, out of the blue, not knowing anything about my reading, that she once had a college professor (also the advisor for her major) who had been an officer in the Navy during WWII. In her words, "he told a class one day that he knew for a fact that our Navy was much more damaged than had ever been released to the press. In those days, without Internet and embedded reporters, it was much easier to keep secrets. Anyway, he basically said that the Navy was just about done in, that if Japan had landed, they could have taken Hawaii without too much trouble, and that he considered Roosevelt a genius for continuing the War the way he did." (She also sent pictures to help me understand this paragraph.)

Needless to say, I found this bit highly astounding insofaras I'm reading a book about the effects of a WWII defeat on the USA.

I asked her why the Japanese didn't land and take Hawaii and she answered that "given the state of communications and the lies that our administration got out right away, even our own people and the Japanese did not know our Navy was so hurt." She went on to say, "Philosophically is that a good reason to tell a lie???? I suspect it is and I have always felt that not all lies are bad." Interesting.

Live is so strange. Synchronicity...

Sue

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 6 replies

The Bottle Imp

2006-08-20T03:04:50Z

I've always enjoyed Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp" (1893) and similar "Monkey's Paw"-like cautionary tales in which a person is granted wishes, which come at a great, often horrific, price. I guess the Faust stories would fall into this category as well.

And what else?

Here's "The Bottle Imp":
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/bottlimp.htm

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Douglas Coupland

2006-08-20T02:45:32Z

I've been aware of him for years (I don't live in a hole) but never read him. Thanks to his 'blog' at New York Times online this month, I'm warming up. (Good marketing strategy.)

An excerpt:

I find a stifling homogeneity in most fiction. I walk into a bookstore and look at the shelves filled with thousands of doubtless worthy novels — beautifully crafted, nicely honed and all of that — novels of love, loss and redemption and … in my head I feel as if I’ve walked into a Broyhill furniture showroom. I feel like I’m looking at countless dark-stained colonial-style bedroom suites, and endless arrays of pickled-maple empire dining sets, with no spindle left unturned, every buffed surface dreaming of a shot of Pledge. What I’m seeing is undoubtedly fine furniture. It’s just not …new furniture. And I’m not saying that the bulk of novels out there aren’t art — they are — they’re just not modern art. They don’t point out anything new or the possibility of anything new. I mean, it’s also pretty hard to imagine a beautifully rendered canvas of mallard ducks in the Museum of Modern Art. Or a watercolor portrait of Anne Hathaway.

http://coupland.blogs.nytimes.com/

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

How do you keep your bookshelves

2006-07-27T22:03:54Z

I usually in the past have grouped books on the shelves by genre and author. I kind of thought it was a bit anal. But this way I was able to find exactly what I was looking for if I wanted to re read something or needed to pull a book for a friend to borrow.

After some recent rearranging everthing is hap hazard now (except for the hard bound books I am getting from my mother that she gets from a 100 greatest books of the month club which are all on their own shelf since they are larger then the "average bear") and my gaggle of 300 or so Star Trek paperbacks (sshhhh dont moan too loudly)

Do any of you group the books, alphabetize, group according to size or hard back or soft cover. Of just keep piling them in a stack on the floor. (I ran out of shelf space so they are stacking up on the bookcase behind my couch and on the old rocking chair.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 16 replies

Jonathan Safran Foer Everything is Illuminated

2006-07-27T22:03:12Z

"It is only Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. She gets terrible farting in the car because it has neither shock absorbers, nor struts, but if we roll down the window she will jump out, and we need her because she is the Seeing Eye bitch for our blind driver, who is also my grandfather. What do you not understand?"

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 0 replies

Lulu in Hollywood

2006-07-15T23:31:16Z

I've finally gotten around to reading "Lulu in Hollywood" by Louise Brooks. She's an excellent writer. I find it fascinating how she cuts through yet perpetuates her own myth in these two sentences:

''I would watch my mother, pretty and charming, as she laughed and made people feel clever and pleased with themselves, but I could not act that way. And so I have remained, in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhumane executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to the truth in order to free whatever is good in them.''

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 3 replies

Book Smell

2006-07-05T16:42:59Z

The smell of old books is so intoxicating. Its one of my favorite smells in the world.

I wish there was such a thing as an air freshner that smelled like Old Paperbacks.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

Do You Write in Your Books?

2006-07-05T12:42:45Z

I can't do it. When I'm reading, I like to have a notebook nearby so I can scribble notes in it, but I can't bring myself to write in books. What about you?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 14 replies

Gogol-Tiney Survey

2006-06-25T10:28:40Z

Spencer, now 8, started reading the first Harry Potter book last May or June. Now he's starting on the fifth one. He reads WAY more than I do these days. I'm going to make a special effort to read more in the coming days. I really miss it.

Anyhow, here's an 11-Question reading survey for all you Gogol-tineys:

01. How many hours a day do you read?

02. Do you generally read fiction or non-fiction, or a good balance of both?

03. Do you read a lot of magazines or newspapers? Just books? Or a good balance of both?

04. Do you ever listen to audio books while travelling or even at home? Which ones?

05. Do you skim paragraphs or read every single word? If it depends on the type of material, please specify.

06. What book(s) do you think everybody should read?

07. What book(s) do you think should be read by no one?

08. What book(s) have you read more than once?

09. What movies made from books do you think are good?

10. Have you ever had someone start a conversation with you based on a book you were reading? Please explain.

11. Has your activity on Tribe changed the way you read/write. How so?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 16 replies

Have You Taken the Survey?

2006-06-20T06:59:53Z

For all you newer members, here's a survey (from when the tribe was temporarily called the "Gogol-tineys":

http://tribes.tribe.net/readerstribe/thread/e9cf2445-6fd7-41e9-8638-c594202cf293

You will not be asked to join a cult or non-profit organization if you take this survey, not will you be rated. It's just for fun.

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 1 reply

Chronicles of Narnia

2006-06-17T18:54:25Z

someone just invited me to a new tribe on the books (the movies are fare game as well I believe) so i said I would help drum up buisness. So it anyone is interested STOP ON BY!!!!!!!! (was that enegetic?)

http://tribes.tribe.net/narnia

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 2 replies

Vlad the Pedophile

2006-06-04T19:00:14Z

I'm reading "Lolita" for the first time, chosen mostly because I've always heard what a great book it is (#4 in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels). I really like Nabokov's writing style but I have to say his ability to get into the mindframe of a pedophile is pretty creepy.

Also it's a weird book to read as an adult woman because he is so disgusted by full grown women. I was reading it at the playground while my son was playing and I felt like I had to hide the cover or else the other moms would form a vigilante mob and drive me out of the park.

I like the book, but for these reasons it's hard to get completely absorbed. Has anyone else here read this one? Does anyone know much about Vlad and his...er...preferences?

posted in Readers Who Love to Read - 19 replies