What BOOK are you reading right now?

Brilliant - Having lived for 18 yrs in the Chinese community I can attest to the authenticity of her writing; and the film is a 2 kleenex-box weepie!

The Wisdom Paradox
A good friend sent me this book for Christmas as I need all the help I can get for my brain. I may loan it to Dyslexia to read before I get around to it. ---BBB

Clary -- This may have taken place at a showing of the Joy Luck Club. I was with a friend and the theatre was crowded. There was a very large Black man on the other side of my friend. When the scene of the confrontation between the very professional wife and her boor of a husband -- the actor was seated at a table, eating in a rather obnoxious way, while the wife confronted him and fought back tears -- wound down with the husband asking why? The man seated next to my friend said in a very loud voice, "Because you're a jerk." The audience applauded him. My friend hugged him.

How uninhibited! But praiseworthy. I saw it in Hong Kong and the audience was stunned into silence, mostly. And the same day I lost a very lovely pearl and gold brooch in the street outside the cinema.

Then you made someone very happy (if slightly guilt-racked), Clary. I wonder where that piece of jewelry is now?


I started The Bookseller of Kabul, one of eight books I received as Christmas presents. Odd to think of a man deciding to get a second wife and the kind of culture that would condone it. The idea is more than a little off-putting for me. I'm not sure I'll continue to read the book but it is fascinating.

Funny, how we can remember losing jewelry. I lost an earring running up the steps of the Recorders' Court building in Detroit when I was a journalist. It bounced off my shoulder and down the steps then disappeared.

I lost an earring in Berlin on my honeymoon during a wild goose chase to see Nefertiti (which I think is spelled incorrectly). My former husband, who could read German, did not want to look at the guidebook before we went on a series of buses to the museum, which was closed.

Both losses occurred on overcast days with intermittent sprinkles.

Really, Endy?

I'd love to see a photograph of them in action!

Isn't their band called the RockBottom Remainders or something similiar?

Rock Bottom Remainders, exactly right, POM. Olga, here you go -- photos & everything.

http://www.rockbottomremainders.com/band.htm


About that missing jewelry... I remember how sad I was one day to have left my grandfather's gold ring and a rather nice jade ring on the sink in "The Commons" at the University of Washington. I'd been playing contract bridge and must have been the dummy. (Otherwise, why'd I be wandering?) I do remember that I went back within just a few minutes to retrieve them and they were gone... stolen, I should say.

I still miss grandpa's ring and this was at least 3 1/2 eons ago. On that day (like so many others around here) it was overcast and rainy. I sense a pattern developing. Obviously, we should never wear jewelry we 'specially like on gray days. It isn't safe.

I've continued to read The Bookseller of Kabul. It's not too much different, this second wife business, from a man who divorces & marries again, except that wife#1 has to put up with more crap. Still... not nice imho and definitely a repressive society for women. Well -- I guess that's not news. The bookseller is a mildly interesting character but not particularly praiseworthy. Good that he likes books, 'course, but if that's turns out to be his only claim to higher ground, I'll be disappointed.

Thank you, Piffka!

Well, I'll be!!



Just wondering: do "remaindered" books mean the same thing in the US as in Oz? Here that means that they're sold dirt-cheap because not enough people bought them. In other words the books were commercial flops. If so, I like the idea of a band composed of writers who'd call themselves that. They obviously have a sense of humour & don't take themselves too seriously

Read James Patterson's "Judge and Jury" on the cruise in the Caribbean this past week. What made the story more interesting was the fact that the FBI agent and the woman who lost her son goes to Haifa, and they stay at the same hotel where we stayed during our visit at the Dan Panormai Hotel on Carmel Hill last October. Then the story continues down to Ushuaia in Argentina where I've visited twice. Over and above all that, the story was engaging with short chapters, some only two pages long, but kept one engaged with new surprises from one sentence to the next.

Needless to say, I'm now a James Patterson fan.

I read Bill Brysons "Thunderbolt Kid" and Larry McMurty's "Telegraph Days" on my trip this week. T'bolt kid is Bryson getting back doing what he does best, and Telegraph Days was as good as tyhe Berrybender Chronicles. I read McMurty's last one "Loop Group" wow , what a stinker that was. He should pull that one off his resume.

Internal Combustion
I just got my copy of Internal Combusion. I'm aware of the distruction of our public electric transportation systems by some companies, but want an update on the actions of America's criminal class. ---BBB

Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives
By Edwin Black

Editorial Reviews - From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Black (IBM and the Holocaust) spins the history of oil's ascendancy to dominance over the global energy market into a sordid tale of conspiracy, deception and murder. This enthralling book begins in the vast forests of Cyprus, whose wood fueled the ancient Mediterranean, and extends through the Elizabethan era, in which the Hostmen guild of Newcastle exerted political influence by monopolizing the British coal supply.

The central thread of this well-researched book, which draws upon a vast array of archival sources and an extensive list of secondary texts, picks up centuries later with the competition in the American automotive market between electric power and oil-fueled internal combustion. The definitive blow in favor of oil comes with WWI, which prompted increased demand for gas-powered vehicles at the very moment Thomas Edison and Henry Ford aborted plans to develop an affordable electric car. The decades-long "General Motors conspiracy" solidifies the demise of electrically powered mass transit in American cities.

Through it all, Black manages to keep this complex history compelling. By the time the author makes his final, impassioned plea for a bold new solution to the world's energy crisis, he has already made his case with devastating clarity.

Book Description

Internal Combustion is the compelling tale of corruption and manipulation that subjected the U.S. and the world to an oil addiction that could have been avoided, that was never necessary, and that could be ended not in ten years, not in five years, but today.

Edwin Black, award-winning author of IBM and the Holocaust, has mined scores of corporate and governmental archives to assemble thousands of previously uncovered and long-forgotten documents and studies into this dramatic story. Black traces a continuum of rapacious energy cartels and special interests dating back nearly 5,000 years, from wood to coal to oil, and then to the bicycle and electric battery cartels of the 1890s, which created thousands of electric vehicles that plied American streets a century ago. But those noiseless and clean cars were scuttled by petroleum interests, despite the little-known efforts of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to mass-produce electric cars powered by personal backyard energy stations. Black also documents how General Motors criminally conspired to undermine mass transit in dozens of cities and how Big Oil, Big Corn, and Big Coal have subverted synthetic fuels and other alternatives.

He then brings the story full-circle to the present day oil crises, global warming and beyond. Black showcases overlooked compressed-gas, electric and hydrogen cars on the market today, as well as inexpensive all-function home energy units that could eliminate much oil usage. His eye-opening call for a Manhattan Project for immediate energy independence will help energize society to finally take action.

I'm jealous because I work so hard at my thankless teaching job that I have no time to read.

What would you recommend for indolent teens, in SPED classes, who can not read on grade level and can not remember what they read? I'd like some bearable sci-fi stories and short mysteries.

I'll think about the mysteries. Their taste and mine may differ, so it'll take a bit. Remind me how old they are again, Pom..

Hah, I thought of one, but dunno about the effect - Hitchcock had a book of short stories I read once. He didn't write them, just compiled them. I still remember two of them, one about lichen growing on a couple visiting some island... and, if I remember correctly, one was The Lottery, by Jackson.

Probably wrong for your kids. But short stories may be a way to go...

ossobucco -- They're ninth graders but they read at about the fifth grade level. It is difficult to deal with that low level. If they were reading at the fifth grade level in fifth grade, there would be so many great novels for kids that we could read. One their problems is that no one read to them when they were little guys. I know many people weren't read to and came out fine, but, these kids claim they weren't read to at school and I know that lots of elementary school teachers devote a part of each day to reading aloud to the kids.

I hear you, plainoldme.

You need reading material that will grab their attention in an instant (!), with themes that will hit their year nine interests right on the spot (!) .... but written in a way that can be easily understood by students with a year 5 level of reading comprehension.

I wish I knew more about such books. They must exist. But sadly, this is not my field so the best I can offer is sympathy & encouragement!

Good luck!

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

Just finished Tokyo, now im onto Hannibal Rising.

msolga -- THey hate everything. I think it is a tactic they use.