7 thoughts on “Always look on the bright side of life.

  1. capnkjb

    Books are indeed pretty awesome. Would you like to hear about some ones I’ve recently enjoyed? Too bad, because I am going to tell you anyway.

    The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. He pretty much rips into pseudoscience of many kinds, as well as ignorance and laziness. Thoroughly enjoyed it, well worth it.

    Enlightened Racism, by Sut Jhally and Justin Lewis. A book about a study done on audience reactions to the Cosby Show, it reveals that while simple overt racism may be somewhat on the way out, a more insidious type of subtle racism is pervasive, and is rooted in the blindness of Americans to class issues. I got this on a deep discount at a book sale (same with the Sagan book), and oh MAN it was an excellent, scathing read. DANG it was a fabulous book.

    All Creatures Great and Small, by James Herriot. I’d only ever seen episodes from the BBC series, and reading this book gave me such nostalgia. Quite outside of that, however, is the fact that it is a fantastic book. It has become one of my favorites, despite the occasionally annoying lapses of sentence structure.

    Killing Time, by Caleb Carr. The dude is very good at historical novels; he sucks at sci-fi. As I understand it, it was meant to be a serial in TIME Magazine, but even so, it just isn’t very good. Seriously, this was one of the first times in a long while I have read a book and gone “dang, I actually did not enjoy myself”. It has a stupid deus ex machina ending, too (for the most part). Read The Alienist or The Angel of Darkness instead.

    I have been reading a couple others but those are the most recent!

    Reply
    1. tsgeisel

      I like the premise of Killing Time a lot more than I like the execution of it. The idea of historical hoaxes is both scary and fascinating.

      But, yeah, the ending sucked big donkey dildos.

      Reply
      1. capnkjb

        Yeah, the idea of historical hoaxes and such is pretty cool. It’s just that it got totally lost in all the inane fakey techno crap. In addition, what is with the dude’s obsession with having brilliant crippled recluses as his “heroes”? And did she have to be wearing a painted-on bodysuit and be really hot and also an assassin? WTF where did this plot come from oh man am I glad I did not pay full price

        Reply
      1. capnkjb

        It wasn’t a recommendation so much as “these are the books I have read recently”. You can take it as a “don’t read this! recommendation” instead, if you like 🙂

        Reply

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