Goodreads. Also, Not So Good.
Oct. 26th, 2012 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogBook count, including two in progress, is up to 35. Unless I start cheating or really pick up the pace, I'm not going to match last year's one-a-week. These last two are worth a mention, though, for different reasons.
Recommended: Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . which goes through about 2,000 years of Western philosophy at a raucous pace by interspersing the concepts with (mostly) modern-day jokes. My friend Jim loaned it to me when I was visiting Massachusetts in August, and I finally took it to treadmill when the audiobooks ran out and the other recent Bay State rec (see next paragraph) really got me down. The authors, also from Massachusetts, come across as a written-down Philosopher King version of Click and Clack, who, themselves a couple of Chowds, complete the Masschatology.
And then there's Townie : a memoir. This one's about a REAL bunch of Massholes. My sister recommended it, saying, "You'll like it; he's your age." I'm about five chapters in, and I have yet to meet a single redeeming character, see a positively memorable scene, or have any sense of a better life ahead for this guy. In many ways, I've read this memoir already, from about 100 miles to the west: Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors, about HIS dysfunctional broken-home upbringing in western Massachusetts about six years later, complete with the same Central Casting wiggy mother, distant father and weird friends. At least he showed some signs of promise to and in his life in those early years; Dubus just seems to spend the entire book so far getting beaten up, being controlled by his 'rents and influential people in their lives, and engaging in way more bad habits than even I managed to in those years.
It takes a lot for me to give up on a book, but Dubusdude is pushing it now.
Recommended: Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . which goes through about 2,000 years of Western philosophy at a raucous pace by interspersing the concepts with (mostly) modern-day jokes. My friend Jim loaned it to me when I was visiting Massachusetts in August, and I finally took it to treadmill when the audiobooks ran out and the other recent Bay State rec (see next paragraph) really got me down. The authors, also from Massachusetts, come across as a written-down Philosopher King version of Click and Clack, who, themselves a couple of Chowds, complete the Masschatology.
And then there's Townie : a memoir. This one's about a REAL bunch of Massholes. My sister recommended it, saying, "You'll like it; he's your age." I'm about five chapters in, and I have yet to meet a single redeeming character, see a positively memorable scene, or have any sense of a better life ahead for this guy. In many ways, I've read this memoir already, from about 100 miles to the west: Augusten Burroughs's Running with Scissors, about HIS dysfunctional broken-home upbringing in western Massachusetts about six years later, complete with the same Central Casting wiggy mother, distant father and weird friends. At least he showed some signs of promise to and in his life in those early years; Dubus just seems to spend the entire book so far getting beaten up, being controlled by his 'rents and influential people in their lives, and engaging in way more bad habits than even I managed to in those years.
It takes a lot for me to give up on a book, but Dubusdude is pushing it now.
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Date: 2012-10-26 10:52 pm (UTC)That book your sister recommended sounds absolutely terrible, btw. Well, to me anyway.
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Date: 2012-10-26 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-26 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 12:16 am (UTC)I'm trying for 75 this year but doubt I'll make it.