The Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku - it's an excellent physics primer in disguise. - Tad - just Tad
Thomas Pynchon 'Against the Day', Bruno Shulz 'The Street of Crocodiles', William Gass 'In the Heart of the Heart of the Country', Kevin O'Donnell 'ORA:CLE' (an old book from my childhood), J.R.R. Tolkien 'The Lord of the Rings' (again), Don Syme 'Expert F#', Stephen Prata 'C++ Primer Plus', Anany Levitin 'The Design & Analysis of Algorithms', Koenig & Moo 'Accelerated C++', Harvey Karp, 'The Happiest Baby On the Block'. Yes. All at the same time. Ask Rochelle. - Akiva Moskovitz
Oh, and a variety of math books, including 'Innumeracy' by Paulos, Polya's 'Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning', etc. - Akiva Moskovitz
Indulging my love of Tudor-related fiction and reading historian Alison Weir's novel "The Lady Elizabeth", which has an interesting take on Good Queen Bess. But also set to re-read one of my faves next "If on a winter's night a traveler...." by Italo Calvino. Just finished "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson. Great book! - Abby Martin
@Abby I was just thinking of buying "The Lady Elizabeth"! Trying to hold off because I have so many other books I need to read, but I might give in and go shopping. Right now I'm reading "The Murder at the Vicarage" by Agatha Christie (again) and a set of Linda Howard novels. - Evangeline
@Evangeline. It's very good. Weir has a nice way with fiction- and she also has incorporated a lot of great sources into the tale. (Better get off- there are sad-eyed and hungry football fans looking at me as if to say- "where is the food." Sigh.) - Abby Martin
"Lynch on Lynch". I've had this book for years and despite being a big David Lynch fan have never got round to reading it until now. So far so good. It's a really good insight into what makes him tick. He seems a lot less bonkers than I was expecting! - Grant Fitzgerald
"Summer Night, Winter Moon" - Jane Huxley. It's good, but not 'block everything else out and read til I'm done' good. - Vicky Pearce
I could come up with a few here, but in recent memory, a book called "Remember When" by Fern Michaels. She was tryng to tackle race and romance at the same time and just FAILED miserably. She doesn't even mention that the male lead is black until a third of the way through the book--and then suddenly that becomes a huge plot point! And it's all about him being in love with a white woman who's spoiled and stuck-up, and then it turns out he's NOT black (what?) and she IS and didn't know it (huh?) and yeah, it just goes downhill from there. - Evangeline
@evangeline: i don't know, but i might have to read that book just based on your description. how can it be THAT bad and yet still have gotten published? i love trainwrecks, figuratively, of course. must investigate. lolz. - .LAGizmoto
I recently tried to read "American Psycho". I didn't even get to the gross parts. The writing was just so awful that I gave up a few chapters in. - Rochelle
I do not remember which one but I actually returned a Walter Mosley book back to Barnes & Noble. It was not one of the mysteries. Only time I ever returned a book. - Ruth Ferguson
@Rochelle American Psycho was one of the few books I actually threw across a room. (Love the film, though.) I remain baffled by Bret Easton Ellis' status in the world of lit. - Heather Cee
Heather, same here. Written like a damned Livejournal. For me, though, it was Anne Rice's 'Queen of the Damned'. When I got to the part where the girl killed her mother with a frying pan because her mother wouldn't let her go out to a concert, I threw the book into the trash. First, and last, time I ever did that. - Akiva Moskovitz
Y'know, I made it as far as Narcissus in Chains (which I didn't finish) before finally realizing reading Laurell K. Hamlilton is an exercise in futility. The only reason I stuck to the series so long was a) Obsidian Butterly = Edward, and Edward = ongoing wish that he'd finally behead Anita, and b) the sex scenes were so hilariously awful that I felt compelled to see just how bad they would get. And man, she did NOT disappoint. My mock button just got tired, I think. - Heather Cee
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and the Fountainhead. She's awful. Like a 13 year old who reads the first chapter of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and thinks they figured out the Good Life. - Mark Trapp
The Sound and the Fury - do not like Faulkner. - AJ Kohn
Oooh, Rand is a good one. And as long as we're slaying sacred literary cows here, I could write essays on how much I hate Hemingway. - Heather Cee
The Bible? JOKE oh crap im gonna fry - Geoff Schultz
I tried Atlas Shrugged, too ... it was gawd-awful. Only managed the first chapter or so. And for another sacred cow, I actually finished The Crying of Lot 49, but hated it; I never managed to make it through Pale Fire. - Nathan Rein
Snow by Orham Pamuk. How the hell did that win the Nobel Prize for Literature?! Was reading it for a book club and almost slit my wrists. This was the same book that the moderator ran out of the room crying because no one liked it. - Far
I don't like most 'classics'. Dickens, Faulkner, Hemmingway... - Akiva Moskovitz
Geoff: Watch for lightning storms in your area. :D - Ron
And God threw forth lightning to smite the pita Geoff, PEW PEW PEW. - Geoff Schultz
I never remember bad books. Well maybe my high school calculus book? ;-) - Michael Tefft
"Memnoch the Devil" by Anne Rice. It was complete and utter pish. - Grant Fitzgerald
"A Tale of Two Cities" - i get it's a classic but oy! can it be any more boring. I still try to go back to it but life is to short and there are other classics that are more engrossing. - Anna Lynn M.
@Heather Cee, @Akiva I just cannot finish any Hemingway. It puts me to sleep, no matter what it is. - Evangeline
@Nathan I love Atlas Shrugged because it's the only book where you can find 100 pages of uninterrupted monologue. How on earth did she think that was a good idea? - Evangeline
@Heather Cee the Anita Blake books are so terrible now, but I can't resist them. I think I still keep hoping that they'll get better, even though I know they'll only get worse. - Evangeline
@Grant I still think that book was Anne Rice's attempt to see if we'd buy a book with her name on it despite it having no real point/plot/substance. - Evangeline
Agree with Grant- Memnoch was....a ridiculous waste of time. And I really like her stuff generally. - Abby Martin
Wow, I thought I'd be the only one who thought of Ayn Rand. I could not get through a tenth of that book. I don't even remember which one it was. It may have been Fountainhead. - MiniMage
interesting most unliked books are those which are assigned reading. Is this why? wondering...Wanted to like Proust, but could not penetrate time barrier. - terra210
I have a 'condition' where no matter how bad (think Attack of Killer Tomatoes) the movie or book I HAVE to finish it.. so I've finished all the bad books I've ever started.. even War and Peace, the Scarlett Letter and even American Psycho..... urgh.. what a waste of time - Kim
...Of Mice and Men. It bored the crap out of me. There's more but that's the first one I thought of. - Heather
I had any inkling of literary appreciation destroyed by very poor English Lit teachers so I just cannot read any book written more than 60 years ago. The worst is Thomas Hardy's Mayor Of Casterbridge - a book about a man who committed a murder before the start of the book, who then goes on to live a boring, quiet life in another town. Page after page of mediocrity, the end. - Andy Murdoch
Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh. Threw it in the trash. Felt bad about throwing away a book. Picked it out again, skipped a few pages, and managed to finish it. - Thomas Brox Røst
I started Reading Dickens Oliver Twist years ago. Put it down after the first few pages - never made head or tail of it. - Roberto Bonini
oh, just remembered that tolsoys Anna karina was too confusing. but i'm tempted to go back and try again. - Roberto Bonini
Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell. This guy just repeats himself over and over. If I don't get your point after your 3rd attempt at shoving it down my throat, I definitely won't get it on the 23rd attempt. - Gabriel N.
anything by joyce carol oates, a novelist of the unquiet mind - Gregory Lent
Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove collaborated on an alternate history novel called "The Two Georges" that was amazingly, painfully awful. I read an extra 100 pages after I wanted to quit, just to see if it could get worse. It did. - Rob Sterling
I've got a 4 y.o. boy and 22 month old girl. They've made me very conscious about how I talk about Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy. - Hutch Carpenter
Easy problem. Santa is real as long as you believe in him regardless of what anyone says. The moment you express doubts about his existence he no longer brings you toys. We had that conversation ONCE with Avynn and it settled the issue. - Tad - just Tad
Sitting a my desk at home. Bronx, NY. Overlooking the Hudson River Ship Canal and Inwood/Manhattan. I can see trains every so often too. - Tamar Weinberg
My cats just want me to leave the backdoor open at all times. This way, they can lay across the threshold and be both in and out at the same time. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
My stupid dog believes that there's a secondary exit out of the bathroom and she gets really distressed when you're in there with the door open. - Tad - just Tad
Solving a Rubik's cube is nothing compared to understanding the logic of cats. Maybe we should crowdsource & explain life while on the way:) Ours is running from the same playbook! - Roney Smith
Is there a sink in there? www.catsinsinks.com - Jay Tannenbaum
“Lindsay and I were both seriously just discussing planning a "for real" FriendFeed User Convention in Phoenix in April 2009. If we set it for a weekend and made the cost as small as possible, who would seriously entertain coming?”
We would be willing to fund flights and hotel stays for at least 2 or 3 FF luminaries who we'd con into giving presentations. - Tad - just Tad
I'm surprised no one has chimed in on this... Personally, I'd be interested, but April is a busy month as it includes my anniversary & my mother's birthday. - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
I would think hard about it, would probably not know for sure till closer. It would depend on who all was going too. - Geoff Schultz
“Just saw the MSFT commercial for the first time. Gates and I are the same age. Man he got old lookin'?! Even my wife agreed I look better ... I'm good for at least a week :)”
I wish I could PAY people only 5 cents to play with my toy. Oh - you mean my flickr toy... - Tad - just Tad
I'm not refreshing. I still can't get rid of some of the images burned on my brain from the other night. - Trish R
Ha! Trish, that's why I have that warning up at the top. I've seen some horrible stuff myself. - Tad - just Tad
My old toy was the a page that showed the 50 most recent photos posted on LiveJournal. Compared to that, everything on Tad's Flickr Toy is like puppy dogs and ice cream. - Rochelle
Nice! This sounds like something I'd do..."Then after I got out of the bathroom 2 hours later, I realized I had the wrong bottle. And I still had a headache!" - David Cook
Why, why, WHY are you not filming your life for the rest of us? - Evangeline
I just really have to ask: did you swallow a suppository, or did a caplet go where no caplet has gone before? - Stupid Blogger (aka Tina)
Thank you for my daily requirement of laughter. - Paul via twhirl
Hate to disappoint but none of the above happened. While I was taking some actual Tylenol (well, okay, a store brand acetaminophen), and while looking at the astonishing array of bottles in the cabinet ('how in the HELL do we have so many bottles in here?'), the thought just came up. - Akiva Moskovitz
LOL Akiva...this reminds me when I was taking muscle relaxers instead of my cold medicine...dang, did the same mix up with birth control pills and my allergy meds. or when my husband was cleaning the windows with bug spray instead of glass cleaner. - faboo mama
Yeah, I guess I should qualify that as meaning IN ADDITION to other necessary qualifications. - Trish R
Not at all. Persoanlly, for instance, I tNot at all. Persoanlly, for instance, I thought Reagan was a very powerful speaker. Wanting it all in a President is not wrong ... hought Reagan was a very powerful speaker. Wanting it all in a President is not wrong ... but push comes to shove I'll take someone I can trust over someone who speaks well. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
@l0ckergn0me: tip: it is not meant for eating ;) - Joni Moilanen
LOL @ ALL THE GUYS LIKING THIS HAHAHAHHAHAHA - Mona N.
how is this sexy? i'm pretty kinky but this i don't get i'm with chris JELL-O anyday. - Caroline
"like" as in funny as hell, not "like" as in floats my boat. :) - Chris Martin
If my wife sees this, I like this only for the discussion... ;) *whistles innocently* - Joni Moilanen
Joni we ought even discuss it somewhere with glass of beer in Tapiola or Sello ;) * whistles innnocently too* - silpol
Let's hope this video doesn't surface when one of the girls goes for a job interview! - Mark O'Neill
Soulhuntre may well be a little embarrassed by this stuff surfacing, but hey, it's not so bad. At least the guy has desires and tastes that lean in a relatively inoffensive direction. I mean, it could have been much, much worse. Imagine if he'd been into donkey-tractor-fencepost porn, or vegetable-snuff? - Slippy Lane
@Slippy Lane - I do appreciate the concern, but no I'm not at all embarrassed by this stuff. If I was I wouldn't have favorited it. I DO understand how the Youtube / Friendfeed connection works :) There will be days when my I will favorite a fair number of "Import car models" in a row and others where it's all "Celestial Navigations" videos - chicks wrestling in KY is just plain amusing :) - Soulhuntre
lol, my comments are more in response to other peoples' comments than to your own favourites, Soulhuntre - but you have to agree, the slew of regurgitated YouTube faves from unlikely sources is an amusing occurrence, no? Incidentally, this has now become a meme! - Slippy Lane
Soulhuntre you seem to understand quite well i like your style - Cecil Sandus
@Slippy Lane - absolutely! I have since followed some of the links and found out about the issue happening. That IS goign to mess some folks up I suspect :) - Soulhuntre
Yeah, we could be seeing it on the news in a few days or so: "Video site problems responsible for a spate of friendfeeders' divorces." - Slippy Lane
@Noah David Simon - sorry for nuking your comment, but this is not a thread about Iraq :) For those who are curious as to the story Noah linked to - his FF entry on it is linked at the end of this comment - go discuss it there, keep this thread to perving about slippery chicks. http://friendfeed.com/e/005b02... - Soulhuntre
@Noah David Simon - I'm trying to be a mellow guy here and not get into a moderation thing - but your being fairly abrasive. Thanks for the art links, but chill out or go back to your own threads. To the other readers, since I can't block someone from posting in my threads that I know of, you probably should block him on your own if you need to. - Soulhuntre
we on the same team. support the chicks in JELLO... and our troops - Noah David Simon
@Soulhuntre - I've seen evidence of such behaviour from Noah and one other person elsewhere. I say moderate freely then block. - Slippy Lane
the blame game... I'm not going to moderate my opinions. I support America... I support JELLO wrestling. if you don't support those issues then I am not surprised that you would block me - Noah David Simon
"“So Sambo beat the bitch!”
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively." - Jason Toney via Bookmarklet
"people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s Aboriginal people as “Arctic Arabs”"..... holy shit! - Ňicķ
i know dick and sharon, met them at my local dem. party meeting. i don't know the author of this piece. i want to believe it's true, but there's sooooo many alarm bells ringing. the la times is full of political articles of unnamed sources, so grain of salt with that. i'd hold the same for this one. - faboo mama
In the end, it won't matter anyway. Most of the people that would be offended aren't voting for her anyway and people that *should* be offended and are already for her will say it's bull no matter what. - Rahsheen
Well, it's just tough to know what is really true. I mean, I do not like Palin *at all* but ... I don't want to jump on something and then find it's not true. I wouldn't be surprised if she said this, but we need real proof. You know, her on an open mic by mistake or something. Her politics are enough to turn people off (on both sides) IMO. - AJ Kohn
AJ, I agree with you. Her politics are the yuck and that's point enough. I love that she's a part of this election cycle, though, just because all the news/gossip about her is so random. The last week has been such a comedy of errors for the Republican Party that I just have to post about it. Really, when was the last time you saw an article start with "So Sambo beat the bitch"? This is comedy gold right here. - Jason Toney
She's a creationist activist and she believes that the war in Iraq is directed by God. That's enough kooky for me. - Tad - just Tad
There is lots about Palin to disagree with legitimately - but the flat out insanity of the press this last week is comical. The number of rumors, smears and jsut purely invented crap thrown at her has been simply amazing. As for the article in question the LA Progressive is about as credible as "The Daily Kos". - Soulhuntre
A lot of people in that article not willing to go on record with their names for fear of "retribution" which smacks of BS to me. - TDavid
I am sure you could fnd lots of folks in any town ready to talk smack about any political figure. It jsut shows you that the bell curve applies to popularity, too :) - Soulhuntre via twhirl
The real problem is that it becomes hard to determine when to trust. Think about baseball's steroid scandal. You discount all of those great accomplishments, but some of them are real. Yet, you just can't be sure. And you don't always like the guy who tells the truth (yeah, I'm looking at you Jose Canseco). - AJ Kohn
True enough - you have to consider the sources and the attributions. The National Enquirer is trying to push a Palin affair story long after even the most rudimentary fact checking shows it to be bullshit. You have to take agenda into account. - Soulhuntre via twhirl
@Soulhuntre: I don't disagree, particularly on the affair crap. However, just because someone has an agenda doesn't mean they're not right - just like my Jose Canseco example. His agenda was to make money but he also happened to be right. - AJ Kohn
Soulhuntre, I'm a fan of the gossip because of it's comedy but I don't really think it should have a place in real political discourse. It distracts us from the legitimate issues. The problem with Sarah Palin -- and why so many people are going this route -- I think is we're being asked to believe she's a legitimate candidate. She simply isn't. There is nothing national or global about her political life nor has she shown any desire for it to be. The whole situation is absurd. - Jason Toney
soulhuntre, what rumors and smears has the press written about palin? i've yet to see them and I read a ton of papers a day. i'd like to say that i know you've defended the obamas against the rumors and smears they've had to put up with, but i've seen you regurgitate so many of them that i know it's untrue. - faboo mama
@faboo mama - I suppose it will depend on who you define as "The Press". If you count The Enquirer and Andrew Sullivan then the list is going to be fairly long. It will be easier for you to just start with this link as it names a number of specific publications, the rumors / smears and whether they retracted it. http://explorations.chasrmarti... - Soulhuntre
@faboo mama - as for Obama, I have been active with a number of topics - but they are pretty well documented. This includes his associations with Wright and Bill Ayersm the registration problems in the DNC primaries, the forgery his campaign passed off as a birth certificate and the problems with his Chicago record. - Soulhuntre
Each of those stories has good documentation behind them and int he case of the most "smear like" (the birth certificate) i make it clear each time that I am sure he IS a US citizen and that I am not questioning that but rather why his campaign pushed a forgery when the real one should be so easy. I don't think its a bad question. - Soulhuntre
@AJ Kohn - sure, heck the Enquirer was right about Edwards - but that doesn't mean I am going to buy into their articles about bigfoot :) - Soulhuntre
@Jason Toney - it is completely possible for good folks to disagree about her legitimacy as a candidate. I happen to think her record (thin as it is) is superior to Obama's so i figure if he is acceptable as a President I'll take her as a VP :) But at least that is a reasonable basis for a discussion - the absurd and (as has been shown) trivially easily disproven stuff about Palin is just making the press look bad. - Soulhuntre
@jason I'm so glad to hear you actually say OUT LOUD that her very presence in this process is absurd. I feel totally knocked off balance by the fact that so many people are acting like this is legitimate and she is somehow comparable in caliber to Obama. She's not. She's absurd in the way that George Bush is absurd, and she has even less experience and less substance than he has. - Lainie
Lainie, How is she not comparable in caliber to Obama? No one has ever shown what his accomplishments are. He continues to cite his running his presidential campaign as his experience to be president. That's like saying just because I wrote a resume for the job of neurosurgeon I am therefore eligible for a job in the medical field. Palin has *actual* executive experience. Obama has none whatsoever. So, I've come to the conclusion that Obama's followers think he is qualified just because he says he is. - Gregory Pittman
I dunno... House and Senate time for Quayle. 10 years total before his nomination as VP. - Michael W. May via twhirl
http://amundsen.com/politics/t... - I followed up a hunch and did some 'Google-ing' on a simple theory - that Sarah Palin's nomination for Republican Vice Presidential candidate did not come out of nowhere. That it was, in fact, a long-term project by a small team of determined, savvy political operators. I was a bit surprised by what I found - and how easily and quickly I found it. - MikeAmundsen
