What are you reading?

[wildernesse]

I've decided to alternate between The Sabbath World by Judith Shulevitz and Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris (finally!) for my next dip into the library stash, plus the two books I am reading for church: From Holidays to Holy Days by Albert Holtz and Longing for Enough in a Culture of More by Paul Escamilla.

[Deadlokd]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Indeed. I am one of the other twelve.

If the book is accurate, you have it slightly off. It is that a lot of unrelated cell lines were contaminated by HeLa. The discovery invalidated years' (and millions of dollars') of research and nearly destroyed the industry. Or maybe you're referring to a more recent contamination. What do I know?

You are right. I should have reread my paper before I posted. From my paper:

The HeLa cell line has been cultured in laboratories across the world to the point where it is estimated that over 60 000 articles have been written using HeLa cells. With that much dispersion it is inevitable that there be some cross-contamination. Capes-Davies et. Al. (2010) estimate that up to 29% of pure cell lines have been contaminated by HeLa cells.

That's a hell of a lot of contamination.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by Deadlokd

You are right. I should have reread my paper before I posted.

Oh, okay, phew! I was like, "Did I just try to correct this guy on his own paper? That's awfully presumptuous of me."

That's a hell of a lot of contamination.

You might even say that was a Hela lot of ...

ow! stop it! why are you hitting me?

[freemonkey]

The Blue Man Dreams the End of Time

Dark, quirky and chilling. I'm liking it.

[ceptimus]

The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut.

This novel is set in post-apartheid South Africa at a hospital that serves a weird deserted town. The narrator is a cynical doctor who has been stationed at the hospital for a while. The story mainly revolves around the events that occur when a young idealistic doctor is posted at the hospital to work alongside our cynic.

The story is gripping. How trustworthy is the narrator? Can we believe what he's telling us? This is one of those books that you continue to think about long after you've put it down.

The book was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2003 and won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the best book from Africa.

[Crumb]

[mulebear]

It took me a couple of tries to get into A Confederacy of Dunces, but I'm glad I finally did. It's an excellent book.

If you've already read the book, and know some of the background, then you'll understand why I had to take this picture during my last trip to New Orleans.



The last trip, by the way, was 2 months before Katrina.

[Ymir's blood]

The Collected Fantasies, Volume 5: The Last Hieroglyph by Clark Ashton Smith

[Nullifidian]

Finals week hasn't quite killed off all my reading for entertainment. I'm re-reading the following book and I'm already halfway through it:



Also, I got this delivered to me yesterday, and I started reading through the introduction at least. It's a huge book, so I'll be at this for a while.



The book has gotten mixed reviews, which one might divide into two camps: those that get it, and those that don't. Those that don't get it complain that what Moore has compiled is a book about lengthy prose fiction, not novels. They are thinking of novels as a cozy, bourgeois domestic fiction and judging his book accordingly, when in fact his book is all about subverting this standard assumption. Others knock him for his polemical approach, when in fact he explicitly stated that he was writing a polemic. At least one online reviewer has claimed that Moore wants to consign believers to "oblivion". I'm not even sure where in the hell that comes in, except for Moore treating parts of the Bible as a work of literary fiction.

In short, Moore seems to have the right sort of people hating him, so that's a high recommendation to my mind. Apparently some reviewer writing for the NYRB hated it, and that's the kind of negative-barometer that I find extremely useful as a guide for something new to read.

[Deadlokd]

I finally finished Stephen Baxter's Evolution. Quite a good book. He told the story of human evolution in a series of short stories based around several of our ancestors and threw in some interesting conjecture about other species as well. He hypothesises that Ornitholestes, a coelurosaur from the Jurrasic Period, developed tools, starting from simple poking sticks and progressing through the millennia to spears and whips. He uses the extinction of the Diplodocus and the ornitolestes large brain pan as reasons.

The links in the human chain were definitely the most fascinating though. For some time I have been thinking of compiling a list of all the species that had to evolve, and the environmental conditions they evolved in, in order to get to humans. This book provides half a dozen links and the conditions in which they lived.

His travels into the future were interesting too. After an extinction event in 2050 humans mainly devolved and the rodents, especially rats, evolved. At one point some 30 million years in the future giant carnivorous rats herded elephantine humans as food sources. 450 million years later, a new supercontinent has dried the Earth out and soon after the last human descendant, a monkey-like creature with only basic self-awareness and no capacity for empathy becomes extinct.

Now I'm going to read this:

Amazon.com: Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic: Terry Jones, Douglas Adams

Man, I remember the days when I'd read up to three books a day. Now I'm struggling to read one a fortnight. What happened to my life?

[Watser?]

I didn't know that was a book, I have played the computer game. Not extensively, a friend of mine had it and we played it a couple of times.

Reading this book now:

I am over 100 pages in and we haven't got to Spain yet, so a lot of it is very general info on early Islam history.

[freemonkey]

Ghostwritten, by David Mitchell. I'm enjoying it.

[Crumb]

[SharonDee]

[Ensign Steve]

I love that book!

[Adam]

John (Let the Right One In) Lindqvist's Handling the Undead. He wrote a zombie book a while back that's only recently become available in the US. I'm liking it a lot so far. It's not a shambling, brain eating zombie apocalypse, its a heart wrenching, "my dead husband is sitting in my kitchen going through the motions of being alive" zombie apocalypse.

[Gonzo]

Working my way through a stack of graphic novels, which is actually VERY IMPORTANT studying.

I've been following the Batman / Batman: Detective Comics series for about 6 months now and am trying to catch up with the story arch surrounding Bruce Wayne's death, occasionally picking up Batman/ Superman and Batman & Robin.

Finished Batman: Heart of Hush which was previous to the death of Batman. Just started Batman: Caocphony which is unrelated to any other series and is written by Kevin Smith and pencilled by Walt Flanagan. So far it's good. Lots of dark humor.

Working towards:
Grant Morrison & Tony S. Daniel's BATMAN R.I.P
Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert's BATMAN: What ever happened to the Caped Crusader?
J Michael Straczynki & Shane Davis' SUPERMAN: Earth One
Mark Millar & Steve McNive's WOLVERINE: Old Man Logan

The last I picked up in hopes of following the newly began Wolverine and Dakken Dark Wolverine series.

[SharonDee]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

I love that book!

So I finished Lovelock a day or two ago and I enjoyed it muchly. Thanks, ES!

Also ... thanks, ES, for giving me yet another book to read whose author is years behind on publishing its sequel.

And now I have moved on to my other book prezzie from the Ensign, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. OMG, junk food is right! It's fun to feel smarter than a novel's protagonists.

The book is a page turner because the guy knows how to write cliffhangers, am I right?!

[Sensi]

currently I'm reading : The Darwin Awards, Countdown to Extinction by Wendy Northcutt

it's hilarious, I recommend it

[wildernesse]

Finished Faithful Place by Tana French and enjoyed it. Just enough give to make you unsure of exactly how it was going to turn out.

[Qingdai]

I am re-reading The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers.

The Stress of Her Regard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I do like the style and detail of his books:

Most of Powers's novels are "secret histories": he uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.

"Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as Powers notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his award-winning 2000 novel Declare, Powers stated,[2]

"I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all."

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by SharonDee

And now I have moved on to my other book prezzie from the Ensign, The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. OMG, junk food is right! It's fun to feel smarter than a novel's protagonists.

The book is a page turner because the guy knows how to write cliffhangers, am I right?!

Yep, I love that about him. He can't write a genius to save his life but he does action super well!

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Adam

John (Let the Right One In) Lindqvist's Handling the Undead. He wrote a zombie book a while back that's only recently become available in the US. I'm liking it a lot so far. It's not a shambling, brain eating zombie apocalypse, its a heart wrenching, "my dead husband is sitting in my kitchen going through the motions of being alive" zombie apocalypse.

Finished and highly recommended.

As a story, it's not as well-constructed as Let the Right One In (for example, Lindqvist relies heavily on between-chapter snippets of interviews and newspaper articles to serve as tell-rather-than-show info dumps and provide context for the story), but I can't think of another piece of fiction I've read recently that does a better job conveying the horror of the fact of death.

I think next up is going to be either Matt Taibbi's Griftopia or else the start of the Dark Tower reread I've decided i"m doing this year.

[wildernesse]

I'm now reading Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent

[ShottleBop]

Currently rereading Terry Pratchett's Small Gods.