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How to Be Single
by lz in Reading Archive on 28Jun2009
Sometimes you can skip the beach and still read beach books. This book was yet another guilty pleasure I read in a few hours this weekend; the thermometer in San Francisco crossing 80 degrees seemed to give me leeway to read mindless drivel. It caught my eye as I wandered...
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Oh my. This book has rocketed to the top of my favorites list. Barbery has blown me away with words that reach deeply into my heart, squeeze that organ tightly, wrap it with silk and throw it a delightful party. The book is told from the perspective of two journal...
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She'll Take It
by lz in Reading Archive on 27Jun2009
Ridiculously awful book that features the ravings of a shoplifter/actress whose penchant for implausible actions is astounding. The book is so patently obvious, Melanie steals to relieve stress, is an aspiring actress with a gorgeous model roommate Kim, she gets a temp job at a law firm where she falls...
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The Instinct Diet
by lz in Reading Archive on 26Jun2009
A very cheerful book by an honest to goodness nutritionist, Susan Roberts, who's been doing research at Tufts for the past 20 years. Roberts gets into some basics of nutrition, with emphasis on fiber intake for weight loss (it makes you feel more full). She breaks down the five instincts,...
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Getting a Grip
by lz in Reading Archive on 17Jun2009
I was drawn to Monica Seles' autobiography as a curiosity-- what happened to that tennis legend who seemed to drop out of our sight completely? In 1993 she was stabbed in the back by a deranged fan of Steffi Graf's, who ended up getting only probation and no jail time....
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I read most of this gorgeous book of Egyptian tales before falling asleep at the repetition and dull English translation. When I began to catalog this for the blog, I found the original translator's plea for attention on Amazon: As the translator of Children of Gebelaawi, I cannot decently comment...
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Possibly the worst book I've ever read cover to cover. Usually I drop these kinds of ridiculously awful books after a few pages, but I quickly skimmed this one as part of a research effort on Mars Inc. Beyond basic editing flaws (a couple grammatical errors), the awfulness extends to...
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Hodgkinson makes it seem easy to simply quit your job, take up gardening and squat in an unused building foraging for free scraps thrown away by the mega-supermarkets. The less you want, the less money you need, the less of a need to work there is. He writes and produces...
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Sag Harbor
by lz in Reading Archive on 12Jun2009
I have a special affection for Colson Whitehead, having followed his career from The Intuitionist (which still lingers in my mind whenever I see an Otis elevator), through the less enjoyable John Henry Days and The Colossus of New York, and on the upward swing of quality, Apex Hides the...
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It is exhausting to read these bios of self made men who approach life like the Tasmanian Devil, whirling away and wringing every last drop from it. Quincy pulled himself up and out of the house he shared with his father, and seven siblings, sharing a cot in a closet...
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Why does reading philosophy hurt my head? Regardless, the effort for this book is worth it, as the hurt head also helps to heal hurt heart. What follows is a varied collection of thoughts on love, its absence, the object and subject of love. Barthes relies heavily on The Sorrows...
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More deep dish deliciousness from the fiction aisle. Greene seems to be a writer's writer, starting out the book with the killer first line: A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. Basic...
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Lush Life
by lz in Reading Archive on 27May2009
I luxuriated into this 450 pager like slipping into a bath, holding my breath with each page turn, letting the words sweep me away into the world of NYC crime, fast dialog, cop talk, victim confusion, drugs, beatdowns, hopelessness. It is a relief to return to fiction after the wacky...
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The Awakening
by lz in Reading Archive on 25May2009
"Remember the children!" gasps her friend immediately after a child birth scene described as "torture" by Edna Pontellier. I figured this to be the turning point, where Edna would re-embrace her own family, lover Robert be damned. Instead, Edna stumbles back to her cottage, sits on her porch processing the...
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Son of the Baskin-Robbins founder, John Robbins turned his back on the family business, built a cabin on a remote island near Vancouver, started researching nutrition and natural foods. Chalk another book up into the "meat kills people and the environment" column. The American diet's focus on hamburgers and fries...
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Breaking news: meat is bad for you, for the planet, for the universe! Meat takes a ton of energy to feed and bring to maturity, making it a net negative for the environment (lots more calories expended to create meat than what meat brings to the table calorie-wise). Lappe shares...
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