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defrog
Because you all really want to know every single book I’ve ever read. JUST FINISHED
Shopping For God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart To In Your Face by James B. Twitchell
Sometimes you find the darnedest things in Christian book stores. I only go in them to keep the bride company, but I do get curious, and occasionally I find something like this. Written by a professor who teaches advertising, Shopping For God is a very interesting take on why Christianity is on the upswing in the US right now, especially as megachurches grow and traditional Protestant church congregations shrink in numbers: basically, it’s all in the marketing. Megachurches succeed because they know how to sell the religious experience – and more importantly, they know how to sell it to guys. The same technique also explains pretty much every religious revival in US history. Fascinating.
JUST STARTED
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
His second collection of short stories. I’ve read just about everything of Murakami’s that has been translated into English, and whether it’s short stories or novels, his writing is almost always spellbinding and surreal, even when he’s describing something mundane. Two stories in, this one seems no different, though the actual stories are a little hit-and-miss so far. Still, it’s anything but dull.
RECENT TITLES
City Behind A Fence by Charles W. Jackson and Charles O. Johnson
The history of Oak Ridge, TN, a city that was essentially built by the US military from the ground up for the sole purpose of developing the uranium and other materials for the first atomic bomb. I read it partly because I’m working on a story that involves building artficial cities, but also because I’ve driven by Oak Ridge probably a hundred times, but never knew its origins lay in the Manhattan Project. It’s written by two UT Knoxville professors, so it reads like an academic paper and gets bogged down in lots of exact numbers, but it’s an interestingly obscure slice of history.
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford by Rob Hansen
A novelized retelling of the Jesse James legend, and something I don’t normally read, as I’m not big on Westerns. To be honest, what piqued my interest was the old-fashioned headline style of the title, and as I didn’t really know much about Frank and Jesse James apart from what Warren Zevon told me, I thought I’d take a chance. Turns out it’s very entertaining and well-written, andat it’s heart it’s really about an obsessed fanboy turned stalker. I don’t know how it compares to other books about Jesse James, or how much of it is legend vs fact, but on its own merits, it’s a good slice of American mythology. The opening chapter describing Jesse alone is brilliant.
Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark
Part of my ongoing education of the pulps via Hard Case Crime. Richard Stark (a.k.a. Donald E Westlake) is something of a legend in the field, so I thought I’d try this one. It didn’t totally knock me out, but it’s a pretty good heist/revenge yarn, and a master-class in concise writing, so it should come in handy for my next NaNoWriMo attempt.
The Girl With The Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block
Another Hard Case title, though I’ll read anything with Block’s name on it. This one is standard grifter fare, complete with femme fatale, but few writers are better than Block at detailing a believable con game. The ending’s a bit of a letdown (hey, I never said Block was flawless), but if nothing else, a major takeaway is how much easier it was in the mid-60s to pull off a con this elaborate in terms of, say, photo IDs.
Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian
If you’ve ever wondered what China was really like in the early 1980s, this is the book for you. Finding himself on the police list as an undesirable, Ma Jian left Beijing and traveled the country, scraping by however he could, and the result is an amazing portrait of life in Communist China – which, as you might imagine, was no fun. The country has changed a lot in many ways since then, but in other ways it hasn’t, so it’s still relevant.
City Behind A Fence by Charles W. Jackson and Charles O. Johnson
The history of Oak Ridge, TN, a city that was essentially built by the US military from the ground up for the sole purpose of developing the uranium and other materials for the first atomic bomb. I read it partly because I’m working on a story that involves building artficial cities, but also because I’ve driven by Oak Ridge probably a hundred times, but never knew its origins lay in the Manhattan Project. It’s written by two UT Knoxville professors, so it reads like an academic paper and gets bogged down in lots of exact numbers, but it’s an interestingly obscure slice of history.
The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford by Rob Hansen
A novelized retelling of the Jesse James legend, and something I don’t normally read, as I’m not big on Westerns. To be honest, what piqued my interest was the old-fashioned headline style of the title, and as I didn’t really know much about Frank and Jesse James apart from what Warren Zevon told me, I thought I’d take a chance. Turns out it’s very entertaining and well-written, andat it’s heart it’s really about an obsessed fanboy turned stalker. I don’t know how it compares to other books about Jesse James, or how much of it is legend vs fact, but on its own merits, it’s a good slice of American mythology. The opening chapter describing Jesse alone is brilliant.
Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark
Part of my ongoing education of the pulps via Hard Case Crime. Richard Stark (a.k.a. Donald E Westlake) is something of a legend in the field, so I thought I’d try this one. It didn’t totally knock me out, but it’s a pretty good heist/revenge yarn, and a master-class in concise writing, so it should come in handy for my next NaNoWriMo attempt.
The Girl With The Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block
Another Hard Case title, though I’ll read anything with Block’s name on it. This one is standard grifter fare, complete with femme fatale, but few writers are better than Block at detailing a believable con game. The ending’s a bit of a letdown (hey, I never said Block was flawless), but if nothing else, a major takeaway is how much easier it was in the mid-60s to pull off a con this elaborate in terms of, say, photo IDs.
Red Dust: A Path Through China by Ma Jian
If you’ve ever wondered what China was really like in the early 1980s, this is the book for you. Finding himself on the police list as an undesirable, Ma Jian left Beijing and traveled the country, scraping by however he could, and the result is an amazing portrait of life in Communist China – which, as you might imagine, was no fun. The country has changed a lot in many ways since then, but in other ways it hasn’t, so it’s still relevant.
Coast to coast,
This is dF
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shopping for god
on 2008-06-28 05:12 am (UTC)i grew up in a small humble church. i loved it. well, things change, i understand that, but that church is now a christian hot spot that caters to the masses. when the church went in that direction i left. the idea of a las vegas style ministry bugged the shit out of me. i go back once in a while with the parents, but i can't bring myself to be a regular attender.
i made a post (http://loissanborn.livejournal.com/31289.html) about this a while back.