Posts tagged as:
A small but mighty group of tough-minded individuals finally worked our way through Thomas Pynchon’s new monster over the last few months. I think we’ve now settled on a pace that works for us, and even more importantly, we’ve selected our book for the next few meetings. I’d like to extend the reading group invitation [...]
{ 2 comments }
This is one of my secret books. You know, one of those surprises you find and then covet. Just listen to the opening paragraph. In the attic where the rain touched the roof softly on spring days and where you could feel the mantle of snow outside, a few inches away, on December nights, A [...]
{ 0 comments }
3 months, that’s how much of my life Thomas Pynchon’s new novel “Against the Day” absorbed in the reading; months representing times of complete mental pre-occupation (and often, truth be told, confusion) blocking most other artistic pursuits, certainly the ability for me to read other fiction. In the end, was it all worth it? Absolutely. [...]
{ 0 comments }
Several folks have been asking me to put together one of these “top 10″ lists for a while. The whole exercise was significantly more challenging than I thought it would be. I tried to use each author only once. Please feel free to post you own “top 10″ lists in the comments. I’d love to [...]
{ 2 comments }
There is an absolutely fascinating article in the New Yorker related to Google’s Book Scanning/Search project and the pending furor over the copyright issues that this project is bringing to light. The results of this debate will have an impact on how you and I, dear readers, can expect to be able to find and [...]
{ 0 comments }
Last night several folks got together to discuss the first 242 pages of Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day.” It was a lovely meeting of bright minds, yielding numerous insights which will certainly help us as we lumber forward. A big shout out to the intrepid souls accompanying me in the journey through this [...]
{ 0 comments }
</center> The big book approacheth! If you weren’t able to figure out my little graphical hint in last week’s post, the first big book we’re going to read as a group on “The Puget News” is Thomas Pynchon’s new 1,120 page monster, “Against the Day”. It’s being released a week from today and has a [...]
{ 1 comment }
November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), the month where thousands of aspiring novelists take advantage of the seasonally poor weather (especially here in the Puget Sound), trade in their self-censoring generally overly-judgmental attitudes, and focus purely on the production of writing a novel – no matter how bad it is. Hellbent on the production [...]
{ 0 comments }
James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of famed American science fiction writer, Alice Sheldon, a writer most famous for exploring the perceived differences between male and female authorship and who committed suicide in 1987. I recently picked up The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2,” a collection of work intended “explore and expand our notion [...]
{ 0 comments }
This slim volume on the history of operating system development, written in 1999, is way more entertaining than the subject would seem to indicate. Using vivid metaphor, Neal compares each of the major OSes to car dealerships selling and marketing the following vehicles: Microsoft Windows 95 = station wagon Microsoft NT = hulking off-road vehicle [...]
{ 0 comments }
