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Crystal
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Username: Crystal

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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 12:51 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thumper put the Faulkner bug in my ear and I read Sanctuary. The beginning was a little confusing keeping the characters straight and he’s one of those “you gotta read to the end to figure out what was happening in the middle” kind of writers. I also read Light in August. As much as I hate to say it about the racist, sexist bastard – he could tell a story! Those white folks didn’t give a damn about the yankee white woman until they thought a ni**er messed with her then they were all about protecting their women.

In between those two I needed a break and read Walter Mosley’s Killing Johnny Fry. I don’t what to say about this book. It had enough of a Mosley feel for me to like it [loved the first line of the book – classic Mosley] but the erotica – not so much. They tried to put the noir label on it but I thought it more funny than anything else. Doubt I’ll read any more of his along these lines but I do appreciate him for trying something different.

Then I moved on to Percival Everett. damnedifido is a collection of short stories. As usual some were better than others but I was struck throughout with how regular and down-to-earth the women characters are in the stories as opposed to their fanciful, midlife crisis suffering men. The Appropriation of Cultures was my favorite – brilliantly true. Afraid of the Dark cracked me up too. But I need help with The Devolution of Nuclear Associability” – what the hell is that about? Somebody? Anybody? That Percival is a s-t-r-a-n-g-e fellow!

Now I’m reading his Wounded. I’m about 2/3rds through and I’m surprised at how not unusual the characters are. So far they’re just regular folks [except for the murderer of course] and I love Gus and Zoe! I even like reading about the horses. But I’m waiting for that strangeness to leap out at me.

Waiting in the wings in no particular order: Mosquito-Gayle Jones; The Story of the Cannibal Woman-Maryse Conde; Beloved-Morrison; Blood Colony-Due; The Tempest Tales-Mosley; Never as Good as the Last Time-Walker; Don’t Ever Tell-Massey. With these in my collection and my library card in hand I should be set till the end of the year.
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Libralind2
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 01:05 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Percival is strange. I too thought Killing Fry was different and thinking about it, Mosley has this "thing" about watching folks have sex because he wrote about it in two books. Hummmm..lol I am reading Walter Mosley's Blonde Faith. Im so far off in my reading...I wont catch up until spring.
LiLi
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 02:26 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I'm too wrapped up in the US vs Russia situation in Georgia to care about some fiction.
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Cynique
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 03:30 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

You skurd the Russians gonna get us, chrissie? Don't worry. Motormouth Condoleeza will talk them away.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 03:40 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

You skurd the Russians gonna get us, chrissie? Don't worry. Motormouth Condoleeza will talk them away

(I ain't skurd. They got, by the Pentagon's reckoning, at least 30 warheads targeted in on the St. Louis area (the Boeing plant, Scott AFB, the Mississippi Bridges, The Defense Mapping agency, and other juicy strategic targets, not to mention almost 3 million capitalist dupes) so my agony will be short.

No. Just that I'm googling up stuff on the relative military strengths of the parties, data on the SS 21 missles the Russians just sent in, the positions of US carrier battle groups, strengths of relative US and Russian units, what units are avaiable to the US. Rapid Reaction Force--stuff like that.

Dumping it all in the old mix and trying to see what I come up with.

World War I started with--what? One guy and his wife getting shot? The Sino Japanese War started when 30 guys got shot at?

I ain't worried, cuz all it takes is one trigger happy jerk.
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Cynique
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 03:48 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

And the cold war never got hot because the Russians may be bold but they ain't crazy.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 04:44 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

And the cold war never got hot because the Russians may be bold but they ain't crazy.

(But the Americans are bold and crazy and trigger happy, too. You'd be surprised how many times it almost got hot--by accident. You ever read about the flock of geese that they thought was a bunch of bombers? Luckily they didn't launch no missles but the B-52s were on the way.

I bet they got about 60 warheads zeroed in on Chicago..)
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 04:47 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Pleasant Dreams

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20- mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm
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Cynique
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 05:13 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Worrying about this is not something I dwell on.
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Carey
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 06:32 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello All

Thanks for the heads up on Mosely, Li-Li and Crystal. Mosley is my guy but am old school and when he ventures too far away from his thang I ain't with that. It's like going to my mother's house and find her smoking a blunt, know what I mean. She's mom, she's old enough to do as she pleases but I might talk about it:-).
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Thumper
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Posted on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - 08:09 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hey All,

Crystal: Well, I've had a good time so far with my reading. There's a few books that I've read that I wrote reviews for that I haven't said anything on yet. I am a little behind with the book I'm reading now, The Meaning of Night: A Confession, because the sucker is huge. It's a book I picked up at the BEA years ago, and decided that now I would catch up on my reading. I'm almost finish with it so I got White Rat lined up and then I'm jumping into Light In August.

Percival Everett is one of my favorite authors. I have his The Water Cure around here somewhere. I plan on reading that one soon. if I had none that you was interested in him, I would have recommend you start with God's Country. It's hilarious.

I'm going to have to play a serious catch up on Mosley. I have not read any of his later non-Easy Rawlins novels. I'm going to have to dedicate a whole month to do that. The last non-Easy book I read of Mosley was years ago with RL Dreams (I think that's the title). I loved that book. I wonder if Mosley is going to keep writing his Fearless series?
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 11:52 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I have not read any of his later non-Easy Rawlins novels. I'm going to have to dedicate a whole month to do that.

Do "The Man in My Basement"

It ain't that I have quit reading, I'm reading a lot of non fiction that explains how we got in this mess--

And I'm reading biographies

Moanin' at Midnight (Howlin Wolf) by Segrestand Huffman
Escaping the Delta (Robert Johnson) by Elijah Wald
Willie Nelson by Joe Nick Patoski
Julius Caesar by this German guy
Woodrow Wilson by John Dean
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Crystal
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Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 12:27 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hey Guys - first off a big OOPS on my part. The name of the Walker book is Never As Good As The FIRST Time. Sorry!!!

Thumper - I've read several of Everett's books: American Desert, Erasure, Glyph. I don't recall God's Country so I'll give it a try along with The Water Cure. I HOPE Mosley keeps the Fearless series going but I haven't given up on Easy yet. It's possible . . .

Carey - I don't think you're old enough for Killing Johnny Fry. It's kinda nasty.

Chris - Good Work. You know we count on you to keep us informed of the error or our ways and the errors of our past - ever vigilant!

LiLi - I know huh. I totally believe that stuff about Mosley writing in the nude!
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Carey
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Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 - 12:58 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello Crystal

In the movie "Life" Martin Lawrence asks Eddie Murphy a question. I think everyone that has seen the movie knows the line I am talking about *LOL* and it's my reply to your post as why I can read Killing Johnny, just fill in the blanks. Martin asks Ray(Murphy) "why you talk that way?". Eddie replies, "cause __ __ ______ __ __!" *wink*
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Yvettep
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Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 01:14 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

As a result of recent discussions here, I picked up Tracey Price-Thompson's "Black COffee." I also started a book on Frank Lloyd Wright and his Taliesin Fellowship--what a wild, talented...and freaky bunch!

Almost finished with Jose Saramago's "The Double." I read his book "Blindness" a few years back and it left me stunned for days. This one is much slower going, as its weirdness is a lot more nuanced. I like the challenge of reading it, though--paragraphs that last for pages, some rough patches due (likely) to less than adequate translation to English, and the discipline of following who is saying who. (There are only two kinds of punctuation mark in the whole book: commas and periods!)

Crystal and Thumper, I tried reading "Glyph" a while back and had troubke getting into it. I enjoyed "Wounded," however, so maybe I will give it another shot.
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Yukio
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Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 07:51 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

finish up Palace Counsel
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Libralind2
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Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008 - 09:56 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Crystal...LOL I was like "what is UP Mosley..?"
LiLi
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 04:15 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I'm still in the throes of my short story mania and along with those mentioned in that thread, I have been REALLY enjoying the collected stories of both John Cheever and William Trevor.

An essay in Poets & Writers got me interested in Andre Dubus and all I can say about that one is WHOA. Pick up his Selected Stories at once; I bought that and Dancing After Hours on the strength of the P&W piece and am so glad I did. Here is the essay!

http://www.pw.org/print/490619?destination=content/art_reading_andre_dubus_we_do n%20t_have_live_great_lives

I also found a great collection by Thomas Glave called Whose Song and Other Stories last week - a tough read but very provocative and rewarding.

That's what I love about short stories, I can jump from book to book and just marvel at them all. William Trevor's collection is 1260 pages so I read that one at him before bed. LOL
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 12:01 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Dubus sucks.

Read Steinbeck's short story collection.
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Cynique
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Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 12:32 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Be sure and give us a mini review of "Palace Council", Yukio. Reading it is on my to-do list and I'd be interested in hearing your opinion of this latest Stephen Carter tome.
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 02:09 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Chris don't like NOmuhfuckinbody!!! LMFAO! What didn't you possibly like about Dubus? Please share. I love him. Read that piece, see if you can't appreciate him a little more, or tell me what you think of it.

Who DO you like? Give me a list of your favorites!

I'm on my way to the bookstore now, I'll see if they have Steinbeck's.
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Chrishayden
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Posted on Friday, August 22, 2008 - 03:19 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Who DO I like? Well, I like you, Nom.

Lets see. Thousands and thousands.

On this list I don't like everything each of these people wrote, but they all did at least one thing that was good. It would take me too long to sit down and list each work they did.

Off the top of my head, Homer, Pindar, The Eddas, Shakespeare, Dickens, Gregory Lewis, Mary Shelley, Melville, Whitman, Alexandre Dumas, De Maupassant, Baudelaire, Twain,O Henry, Freidrich Nietzche, Robert Lewis Stephenson, Stephen Crane, TS Eliot, Mencken, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, WEB DuBois, Olaf Stapledon, H.G. Wells, Robert E. Howard, Hart Crane, Chester Himes, Ralph Ellison, Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Kola Boof, Iceberg Slim, Donald Goines, Greg Tate, Paul Beatty, Sapphire, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Steven Barnes, Octavia Butler, William Gibson, Charles Stross, China Mieveille, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Frank Miller (some), Alan Moore, Junot Diaz, Cornel West, Will Eisner, Toni Cade Bambara, Patrick Chamoiseax, Ben Okri, Shirley LeFlore, Eugene Redmond, K. Curtis Lyle, Percy Wells, Hari Skye Campbell, Barbara Tuchman--

I know I missed a bunch but I think if you read any of those you would enjoy them.

Short stories I find most authors are uneven--I like short stories they wrote, not all of them.
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 06:33 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

True. That's quite a list off the top of your head! I see some I haven't read. What about Jeffrey Renard Allen? I got my hands on an advance copy of HIS story collection due out next month; he wrote Rails Under My Back, which was a BIG novel published about 7 years ago. Junot gave the collection a really nice blurb!
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Thumper
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Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 07:52 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello,

Nom: What a coincidence, I was just thinking about Allen today as I searched Amazon.com. I was looking at a movie in my library and looked up and saw the binding for Rails Under My Back and wondered what had happened to Allen. I loved the book. It was a big sucka. I did not see any listing for him except for Rails. Too bad. Maybe he has another mammoth book on the way.
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 07:58 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Thumper, here's the link his new book Holding Pattern, it's 256 pages according to this. My copy has 229 and ten stories. :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Holding-Pattern-Jeffery-Renard-Allen/dp/1555975097/ref=sr_ 1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219535765&sr=1-3
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Thumper
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Posted on Saturday, August 23, 2008 - 08:06 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello,

Nom: How did you do that? I put in Allen's name and only came back with Rails. I am too damn happy over this. I'm ordering my copy right now. Thanks!
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 08:13 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

LOL I just typed in "holding pattern allen" and it came right up - I guess because I knew the title of the collection. Amazon is strange sometimes, you'd think that would come up first under an author's name because it's new!

Let me know when you get and start it so we can discuss! :-)
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Steve_s
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Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 08:48 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

The library where I live had a copy of Rails Under My Back until a few months ago when they deleted it before I had a chance to read it.

The only AA books I've read recently are:

Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual by Jerry Gafio Watts. Scathing, I loved it.

Soul On Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, which I read with a discussion group.

I dig Roy Eldridge, but not necessarily Roi/Eldridge. Anyway, it's interesting that the women I discussed it with, were reluctant to take Cleaver at his own word that he was a rapist, so I had to throw some excerpts at them from: William Jelani Cobb, Jerry Gafio Watts, and David Hilliard. I also quoted Florence Forbes on Cleaver, though not on the subject of rape.

Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe - Two hilarious, albeit highly politically incorrect journalistic pieces, the first one dealing with the Panthers on the take in Park Avenue penthouses, including Leonard Bernstein's.

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill - A post-9/11 New York novel set in the immigrant subculture of the sport of cricket. It contains allusions to The Great Gatsby.

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski - One of the finalists for the National Book Award, it's about an American anthropologist of Dutch-Thai ancestry imprisoned in Thailand for killing and American missionary.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami - I find it inspiring, but it's not clear to me why it would interest nonrunners.

A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties by Suze Rotolo, the girl on the cover of Bob Dylan's 1963 album, "Freewheelin'." Nice book, I learned a lot from it.
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Thumper
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Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 08:50 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hello,

I can't wait to get my copy either. *big smile* I went on his publishers site yesterday and notice that Allen has some book readings and all coming up to promote his book, http://www.graywolfpress.org/. So if any of you are nearby and have the time, you may want to drop in and give him some support. *smile*
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 09:37 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Steve - Netherland sounds really interesting and I loved Unaccustomed Earth. Especially the epigraph that starts the book off. I forget who the quote is by. It's just perfect for that collection.

Thumper - Graywolf also publishes some amazing writing guides - I *love* Charles Baxter's new book on subtext and also Burning Down the House. I saw the new edition the other day, but it only has two or three new essays that I will be reading in the store. LOL

Brining the Devil to His Knees is also good, published with other teachers in the Warren Wilson writing program.

http://www.graywolfpress.org/component/option,com_phpshop/page,shop.browse/categ ory_id,bf8108ff1901b3e2f2376627dd7f8c0d/

That title gets its name from Chekhov, found in one of his letters:

Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with great pleasure…Either I am a fool and a self-conceited person, or I am a being capable of becoming a good writer; I am displeased and bored with everything now being written, while everything in my head interests, moves, and excites me—whence I draw the conclusion that no one is doing what is needed, and I alone know the secret of how it should be done. In all likelihood everyone who writes thinks that. In fact, the devil himself will be brought to his knees by these questions.

http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Devil-His-Knees-Fiction/dp/0472067745

Good stuff!!!
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Sunday, August 24, 2008 - 09:44 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Ah, Nathanial Hawthorne - remembered it just as I finished posting. LOL

"Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn out soil. My children ... shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."
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Steve_s
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Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 - 01:07 am:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Hi Nom-de-plume, There's another literary Allen, have you read her short story collection? This Kirkus review is very complimentary and makes it sound like something I should read:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Place-between-Stations/Stephanie-Allen/e/9780 826214447/

Netherland has been receiving accolades and was recently nominated for the longlist of 13 novels vying for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. It's also relatively short read.

Thanks for the quote, now I remember the origin of the Lahiri title. Reviewer Liesl Schillinger interprets it to mean that "the place to which you feel the strongest attachment isn’t necessarily the country you’re tied to by blood or birth: it’s the place that allows you to become yourself. This place, she quietly indicates, may not lie on any map."
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Steve_s
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Post Number: 373
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Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 02:42 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

I ordered both books by Jeffery Renard Allen, Holding Pattern and Rails Under My Back.

Here's a review of Rails by John Freeman, president of the National Book Critics Circle:

http://www.citypages.com/2000-02-09/books/night-train/

Here's the publisher's description of Holding Pattern:

http://www.graywolfpress.org/index.php?option=com_phpshop&page=shop.flypage&prod uct_id=261

Although I'm not a big fan of the magical realist style, "surreal dreamscape" I can do :-)
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Nom_de_plume
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Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 - 08:10 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Steve, I'm not a big fan of it either, but I will see what this brotha does with his. I hadn't heard of the other Allen and her book wasn't available so I'll have to Marketplace it soon. Thanks!

I JUST came from The New School, I stopped in to see what was poppin with their writing program and Jeffrey Renard Allen is on faculty there! He also moderates fiction forum nights and will be reading from his work at one of them. I can't wait!

On September 10th, the authors will be Eisa Nefertari Ulen, author of Crystelle Mourning, and Michael Thomas, author of Man Gone Down. I am so there. I haven't read Ulen's book but I read Man Gone Down when it first came out almost two years ago and was thrilled to learn that it had been selected as one of the TEN best books of the year by the NYT. That's a great book.

Allen will be reading from his own work on the 15th. I can't believe this isn't up on the site yet; I picked up a Public Program pamphlet which has several other events listed including a discussion on Lolita on the 27th.
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Steve_s
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Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - 02:00 pm:   Delete Post View Post/Check IP Print Post    Ban Poster IP (Moderator/Admin only)

Sounds good. Chapter 5 of Man Gone Down has got to be one the best literary pieces about running I've ever read. I think there may be even more; I'll have to search the novel to find it.

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