Jeannette Walls' nicely written memoir
The Glass Castle is hanging out in my laptop case. I've enjoyed the first few chapters and hope to finish it this week and maybe talk to her about the book for Identity Theory.
I also picked up as a birthday present to myself Reb Anderson's
Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts. Hopefully I'll get to start that soon.
As always I'm reading up on
poker. For now, that reading includes
Ace on the River by Barry Greenstein (one of the most successful and charitable high stakes players) and
Super System 2, and all year long I've been digging my way through a bunch of Cardoza's "Championship" books (like
Championship Omaha,
Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold'em,
Championship Stud, etc.) that are amazingly helpful and have allowed me to continue my existence as a semi-professional player.
One book that's tempting me lately is Lee Martin's
The Bright Forever. Maybe it's just the cover or the title or something. And I got a few books from PublicAffairs recently, like Geoffrey Nunberg's
Going Nucular, which is now out in paperback.
It kind of annoys me that I still haven't finished Susan Orlean's
My Kind of Place because she's a totally kickass writer.
Anyway, I'm hoping to fly to Florida in a couple days, which should give me a chance to catch up on my reading and maybe get some reviews and interviews going for the site.
-Matt Borondy
posted by Matt Borondy at 8/29/2005 11:17:00 PM
I just finished reading two books for a review -
The First Crusade: A New History, by Thomas Asbridge; and
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, by Jonathan Phillips. I highly recommend both - and in fact, I recommend reading both back-to-back.
The First Crusade was, from the point of view of the Christian West, a miraculous victory - against seemingly insurmountable odds, the Crusaders achieved their goal of liberating Jerusalem from the Muslims. The Fourth Crusade was an appalling and shameful failure - crusaders bent on freeing Jerusalem (it had fallen into Muslim hands again in the interim) instead turned on the Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople, raping and murdering their fellow Christians.
Reading both books together allows you to trace the development of the crusading message in the eleventh century to its inevitable and terrible conclusion in the thirteenth - and of course, historical conflicts between Islam and Christianity have an even more pressing relevance today.
-Summer Block
posted by Summer at 8/17/2005 12:10:00 PM
Blue Angel by Francine Prose
This is not something I would normally pick up, but I read a good review of it AND at the beginning of summer I was a little bitter at academia for the selfish reason that I don't have a full time job. So I wanted to relish this book, but the meanness with which Prose treats her own main character made me squirm. I probably won't finish this one.
The Common Sense: What to Write, How to Write it, and Why by Rosemary Deen and Marie Ponsot
I picked this up because it's a composition book (which I teach) written by Marie Ponsot, a poet (which I sometimes fancy myself to be). Unfortunately it reads like a composition book written by a poet. It's not doing so much for me; it's going back on the shelf for now.
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros is a wonderful poet, and if you ever get a chance to see her read, it's a once in a lifetime kind of thing. This novel, though, I could take or leave. I probably will finish it at some point, though, just because it's there.
Feminism and Composition: A Critical Sourcebook by Kirsch et. al.
This summer I did not have the time or money to take a class, but after a year of teaching it, I wanted to read more intellectual stuff about composition. The only reason I put this down is because it's a little intense. I will most likely keep picking it up and putting it down throughout the summer until I am done.
-angie kritenbrink
posted by Angie Kritenbrink at 8/08/2005 10:13:00 PM
A few weeks ago, in
my review of Matt Mason's new book, I was somewhat critical of some old poems he wrote about sex with a little too much self-awareness which perhaps did not benefit from his characteristic temperance.
So then I was proven wrong when I went to
his website and read
"Ode to My Wife's Panties," a bold, sensual and warm poem about:
well, it's about his wife's panties, and it rocks. Just
read it and see how wrong I can be.
-angie kritenbrink
posted by Angie Kritenbrink at 8/03/2005 10:40:00 PM 
