Letters to the Editor
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I, a female, have enjoyed T.C. Boyle
When I was in my early 20's I read "Worlds End" while camping in the Adirondaks and enjoyed it thoroughly. Have also read "Wellville" and "Rivenrock" (while living in between Ventura and Santa Barbara, so I had a local connection) and found them good fun.
Tom Robbins has also be an entertaining read (although I haven't read him in decades and used to live in Washington, so appreciated the local references).
My deal breaker would be if a date found anything meaningful in "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coehlo. I was in a book group once where one member enthusiastically recomended this book as "life changing" and "her guide for living." What an awkward discussion that was! The other seven or eight readers in the group found it absolutely cringe-worthy.
Friends have told me I am the only female they know that likes Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude." Any other female Lethem fans out there?
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Also...
Got a laugh out of Boyle's short story "Ike and Nina" which I heard on "Selected Shorts" one day while heading home from a cold war history class...
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AKA
Yes, I remember well when I would come upon a beautifully written passage, concisely constructed and reverberating with significance--from a dolt whose previous work, written in class, right in front of me, was barely readable. And then I had to decide how to approach the student, without making accusations but to get her to acknowledge that someone helped her. This was before the days of the internet, which I'm sure compounds the problem.
It's been a while. I stayed home to raise my kids for 12ish years and have gone back slowly to different kinds of teaching positions, landing now as a substitute for K-12. Today I was in a kindergarten helping kids write the letter "Y," so it's a bit of a different thing going on now! But I love the kids and always ask them provocative, critical-thinking questions that it's clear they don't get regularly. I could write a book about my experience dealing with public education, and in fact I think I will.
btw, Did you read THE HISTORY OF LOVE? I'd be interested in your opinion. It really moved me. I'm decidedly unsentimental in real life, but occasionally I get taken in by a book that I later--with the nudging of snobby reviewers?--am embarrassed about. I think this is the real deal but wouldn't mind the erudite opinion of you or any other salon reader who's read the book.
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Randites are short on real-world knowledge about loss and struggle, to boot.
Most people who are "in to" Ayn Rand are quite young, often in college (like HRC was when she like Rand). Thus they are likely to be tiresome in the way so many college-aged, earnest people are tiresome whether they be Objectivists or Socialists or whatever.<
As well, they generally know nothing about life beyond the academic/well-off-economic bracket they grew up in. They spout this crap because they've never lost a job or been sick or been poor and they want to distinguish themselves from life's "losers." Randism is a philosophical blankie for gruesomely-insecure people who think superiority equals strength.
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Sad to say, doppelganger
but I've actually read THERE'S A BOY IN THE GIRLS' BATHROOM.
Also DEEP SURVIVAL. If you liked that one, maybe you'd like TOUCHING THE VOID. Have you read it? If not, it's a case where the film is better than the book. Really. You should see it. The overused "harrowing" actually applies.
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And I figure anyone who is a Danielle Steel fan...
...well, I'd be checking that date for vital signs, not to mention any signs of minimal sentience. :)
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I wish I'd read Ayn Rand.
I wouldn't feel so left out.
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Jeebus, Manos99
Are you capable of anything besides two sentence hit and runs? "The hands of fate" my ass.
On my bookshelf you'll find a cat bed, a cat, dry cat food, and fur, but in my backpack you'll find "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and "World War Z."
This whole topic is purely for fun, fellow Broadsheeters, so don't take it seriously. Bravo to Sarah Hepola for manipulating us all into participating in it.
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@SandraB
>Friends have told me I am the only female they know that likes Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude." Any other female Lethem fans out there?<
Yep. GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC is one of my favorite books.
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Durian Joe
I loathed READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN. Just loathed it. I thought it was tedious and scattered and overbearing and dry as a bone and just plain unreadable. I bought the hard cover for a book club and was so disgruntled about it that I donated it right to the library.
And yes, to whomever said this was a fun thread. It's nice to play again. (Instead of fighting on the political threads.)
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LOL, lateagain.
I thought it was tedious and scattered and overbearing and dry as a bone and just plain unreadable.
I thought it was just me!
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@ lateagain
On the History of Love. I haven't read it. I did read a bit on line:
When I came to America I knew hardly anyone, only a second cousin who was a locksmith, so I worked for him. If he had been a shoemaker I would have become a shoemaker; if he had shoveled s*** I, too, would have shoveled. But. He was a locksmith.
Notice what she does with the sentences. That lone "But" in the middle, followed by "He was a locksmith" which one can imagine almost trails off, almost a resigned sigh rather than speech. She is authoritative in her sentences and makes her own cadence.
I might read it if I come across it in the library or the used book store. I like the close third person. I get the feeling that this about someone who knows he has never been in control of his life.
I have so many books. I laughed earlier when someone posted and said people sometimes asked if he had read ALL those books. When I die, I won't be caught up. Buying books is like an illness with me, so I try to stick with what can find at the library or on the cheap.
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@ deering
I have known lots of people with of working class or of working class origins get enthused about Rand. She is an escape for people. Let's face it, life is often bleak and people like to feel that if they are just smart enough or work hard enough that whatever hole they inhabit can be left behind. People I knew who liked Rand wanted to imagine that they were special people. I did too. But I wasn't really special people at all.
In Reason Magazine there used to personal ads that would read: "John Galt seeks Dagny." It is fantasy. I did once run for state office as a libertarian, but didn't win. I don't like the libertarian right wing economics, but I do like the libertarian, left wing let-me-have-my-pot, own-your-own-body part. Rand despised it. She thought it was disgusingly libertine, but she made an exception for her own randy behavior with a boy toy.
It seems to me that people are always struggling to get away from who they were. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be ashamed of who I once was or what I once read.
I will always oppose a draft and I don't want to hear any of that national service crap. Therefore, the philosophy did have some lasting influence upon me. I just grew up and learned not to judge people so harshly if they did not succeed. Materialist philosophies always have something of a lip curl to them.