AVALANCHERS ~ View topic

Member Joined: 17 Feb 2010 Posts: 484

Michael Blanding - The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink

I'm totally reading "Barbarian Lord Awesome Graphic Novel of Awesomeness" by some awesome dude called Matt right now ...

... in my head Sad

Wildcard, Bitches... Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 861

Guest

Gladwell's 'What the Dog Saw'.

A collection of articles, and his style is much the better for the form. Well worth reading.

Wildcard, Bitches... Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 861

Wilson's "Cosmic Trigger"

Guest

Recently read Danny Baker's memoir up until the early/mid 80s, "Going to Sea in a Sieve". Wonderful book, full of charm and derring-do, but it really does make you feel sad for living in such relatively bland times. No question that adventure was that much bolder but a generation or two ago.

Assimilate:A Critical History of Industrial Music by S. Alexander Reed

Wildcard, Bitches... Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 861

Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K Dick - Lawrence Sutin

Wildcard, Bitches... Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 861

Carl Hiaasen-Bad Monkey

The genius of weirdo Florida crime thriller does it again...at his black comedic best..

Black Fez Manifesto-Hakim Bey

I'll never escape Joined: 07 Jul 2011 Posts: 1491

He has been around forever...he has always gotten very high praise...sharp humour and never a slow or dull moment...I probably would have had you start with another book only because there is a long line of conceptual continuity running through his work...recurring characters and what not...but luckily this one is outside of that...but if you like it I will recommend a few,if you care enough...

Wildcard, Bitches... Joined: 08 Jul 2008 Posts: 861

Member Joined: 10 Sep 2006 Posts: 11897 Location: istanbul

Re-reading this. Extremely funny.

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Two very different but equally brilliant books.

dunno if anyones mentioned this before but ive just read
Ready player one by ernest cline
its quite funny an geeky an full of references to the 80s and early 90s when i was growing up

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Guest

I recommended Saunders' 'Tenth of December' earlier in the thread. Wonderful writer.

Anyone interested in some of him at his finest; here's a link to The Semplica-Girl Diaries.

Member Joined: 18 Dec 2013 Posts: 3

Souled American: How Black Music Transformed White Culture

The most comprehensive history of American music I have ever seen/read, covering everything from work songs, to blues, to jazz, to R&B and soul, etc.

I will have to go through it a second time and make a list of all the music that's referenced and search around to find as much of it as possible and create a massive playlist.

Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon:Laurel Canyon,Covert Op's and the Dark Side of the Hippie Dream by Dave McGowan

Torment Saint:The Life of Elliott Smith by William Todd Schultz

listened to the audio book of "the book thief" while driving on holiday with the kids. it made me cry. also started on "ender's game", found it interesting that coincidentally both of them featured a section on Hitler's power through words.

Member Joined: 22 Oct 2014 Posts: 15

I'm reading now a biography of Ernesto "Che" Guevara by Pacho O'Donell

Let's resurrect this thread!

I finally managed to fight my way through all 900-odd pages of "The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet" by David Kahn. While it's way out of date, there was some good stuff - mainly after trudging through about 700 pages of military history and operational details. He certainly wasn't very complimentary about the early days of the NSA...

Now started "Pan" by Knut Hamsen, which I think is going to shape up into something beautiful.

alan moore's "lost girls". it's rather rude.

life after life by kate atkinson enjoying it so far

Member Joined: 06 Sep 2006 Posts: 7685

Enjoyed this one a good deal.

The main character seems, superficially, to have been drawn from James Vance, who destroyed his face with a shotgun back in '85.

Here's the publisher's description:

"Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move. Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tunneling toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds in reverse until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy."