That's my next one. I loved that book when I was in my twenties, so I am hoping I don't ruin it now. Nice job with the italics, too, buddy.


Yep. Just finished O Pioneers! and nothing much happens--it was about dealing with your past choices, in a way--but the writing just kind of lifts right off the page for me. I can see the characters with one eye, and in the other eye, I see the landscape or setting taking shape. Anywho, nice job, again, with the italics there.

@Jorr and @Seacrest: Can we get these guys a month free of a Gold Membership or something? Ya gotta reward good punctuation.

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Waiting For The Barbarians by Coetzee. A heartwarming story of the Afrikaaners trying to tame their "barbarians", led by a psychotic Colonel Musk.

Holy sh*t! Great book!

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I read this book in the early 90s in an undergrad class. It was a great class--the prof, the books, the other students--and I think that was part of the reason why I have such good memories of the book, but I am halfway through it again, and it's still great. Cather has such a classic style, and I always love her characters.

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I really dig The Professor's House. Have you checked that one out?

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Yeah, that's a super creepy book that is sparsely but powerfully written. It's a great example of Coetzee's early work. I think I prefer Life & Times of Michael K, though.

As much as I like Coetzee, I still frequently return to Nadine Gordimer when I need a fix of ambivalent white South African writing. The Conservationist comes early in Gordimer's oeuvre, but it always does the job for me.

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Coetzee is weird, and it takes me like four times to get untracked in his books, but I always liked him (once I figured out what was going on). His book about Dostoevsky came out during a Dostoevsky class i was taking, so that was fun.

I taught one of Gordimer's books to high schoolers, and they liked it. I never heard of her before reading one of her novels in a class. Wrapping up a unit, Teach said to us at the end of the class, "NG is next," and I just kind of wondered aloud (I mean, I was basically mumbling to myself) if she was referring to "that Gardner chick, or whatever?" Teach looked horrified. I guess I was only twenty, though, and just a clueless moron with a thick accent. Mercy.

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you were 20 in high school? That must've been fun.

No, no, ya got me all wrong! I mean, I was twenty at one point, for, oh, I'd say, a year or thereabouts, but I was already done with high school by then.

Gimme a day or two to confirm for sure (fo sho lol)

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I think a lot of Coetzee's work--Foe, Michael K, Waiting for the Barbarians, Age of Iron, etc--is heavily influenced by French poststructuralism. At times, Barbarians reads like an unpublished Foucault book, with a healthy dose of Lacan or Cixous mixed in. Intellectually, it's an interesting move to make at a time when the South African Apartheid regime was crumbling, and the ANC was rising to power. It's apparent from his writing that Coetzee both wants and fears revolution, making him one of the most ambivalent and enigmatic writers of the past half century.

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I ejected with prejudice Waiting For The Barbarians after three dream sequences. Fuck that.

See what TM said about poststructuralism. I had several false starts reading that book. Once you get rollin', it's like listening to Eddie Rabbit.

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That's really the perfect way to describe reading a lot of Coetzee. I pretty much had the same experience with Michael K & Foe.

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"In Memory of the Utah Stars," by William Matthews (1979)

Each of them must have terrified
his parents by being so big, obsessive
and exact so young, already gone
and leaving, like a big tipper,
that huge changeling’s body in his place.
The prince of bone spurs and bad knees.

The year I first saw them play
Malone was a high school freshman,
already too big for any bed,
14, a natural resource.
You have to learn not to
apologize, a form of vanity.
You flare up in the lane, exotic
anywhere else. You roll the ball
off fingers twice as long as your
girlfriend’s. Great touch for a big man,
says some jerk. Now they’re defunct
and Moses Malone, boy wonder at 19,
rises at 20 from the St. Louis bench,
his pet of a body grown sullen
as fast as it grew up.

Something in you remembers every
time the ball left your fingertips
wrong and nothing the ball
can do in the air will change that.
You watch it set, stupid moon,
the way you watch yourself
in a recurring dream.
You never lose your touch
or forget how taxed bodies
go at the same pace they owe,
how brutally well the universe
works to be beautiful,
how we metabolize loss
as fast as we have to.

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"Softball at Julia Tutwiler Prison,” by RT Smith (1983)

The pitcher shot her husband
and more than one felon
chatters zealously in the infield.
I come here once a month
with a busload of Episcopalians
to engage the women prisoners
on the dirt diamond of their yard.

They beat us every time,
depending on the hot arm
of a black girl from Wetumpka,
the dangerous base runners
and our reliable errors.
They have mastered this space.

Any shot knocked over the fence,
either fair or foul,
is a ground rules home run here.
Wardens always umpire,
fudging a bit for the visitors.
Irony is in the air.

In today’s late innings
their shortstop has converted
to plug up our infield hole,
just to make things interesting.
They become generous
with the strange taste of winning.

In the makeshift dugout we share
talk runs from gothic novels
to Thanksgiving dinner.
Not a soul mentions escape
or athletic fellowship.

Now with two easy outs gone
in the ninth, I step to bat,
eye on the left field fence,
a smiling girl on the mound.
I have not hit safely all day,
but I want to change it all.

The ball is spinning slow motion.
I swing with every muscle
toward the fallen sun, swing
for guilt and the electric fence,
swing like hell for all of us.

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My son is a reader, he's almost 18. Every year he gets a book or 2 for Christmas. He liked all the popular youth series books. He's liked books by comedians, Jeremy Roenick, Carl Hiaasen, so if anybody has a suggestion I'd love to hear it.

https://www.amazon.com/History-God-000- ... 0345384563

Fantastic book.

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

The Art of War is always a good one for a young person heading to college.

Or Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

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https://twitter.com/DrKenCast

The Beach by Alex Garland. Perfect for anyone 18-24. I was 22 when I read it. Movie is shit. Book is awesome.

And for a graphic novel, Brian Michael Bendis did a cool insider look into the industry with Fortune & Glory. Torso is also great.

Just finished The Picture of Dorian Gray. It had to be absolutely scandalous when it came out. Parts of it were excellent, but I found it to be more of a bloated short story than a novel.

I need fun easy read.

That one has been on my radar for a while. Disappointing review but not surprising. Taking a break from some of the classics and just doing some fun reading of late which has been enjoyable for the most part. What are you going to next?

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Don't let my review dissuade you on Dorian Gray. It does have the virtue of being short. Plus, I think it was originally published as a serial. So, all of the chapters are about 10 to 12 pages and, if you have 20 minutes here and there, you can easily punch one out.

Like you, I'm going to dip into the fun read pool next and read Bill Pennington's biography on Billy Martin. What are you working on now?

Interesting. I like the idea of the short chapters. I bought a 3 book set on Grand Admiral Thrawn who is a major "bad guy" in Star Wars that just hasn't been explained or introduced in the movies as of yet. I believe he will be coming in some of the new series on Disney+. I'm on book two which is based on a mission that he and Darth Vader go on. It's been good but not great thus far.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

I read the Timothy Zahn books when I was in junior high and remember enjoying them. I believe Thrawn was the heavy in those books.

Funny, I read Dorian Gray a few years back and the Thrawn Star Wars stuff in high school.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

"Curt Flood," by Tim Peeler (1988)

try to tell ‘em Curt,
how you crowned their wallets,
climbed courtroom steps
for them,
swallowed that black ball,
a scapegoat out to pasture.
they don’t remember,
can’t remember
the trash you ate,
your greedy headlines,
the slope of your career.

you are a ghost at barterer’s wing,
your smokey gray eyes
are two extra zeroes
on every contract.

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I read them as well but not sure they are considered canon for Star Wars. Remember them being a fun read kinda like there.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith.

First of all, look at that dude's name . . . what a Goddamn Protestant. Good luck getting into heaven, bub.

Anyway, I love reading about cephalopods, and the middle part of this book was good. It doesn't really talk as much about consciousness as I would like, though. The first few chapters were about evolution, and there are no surprises there, just some information. I wanted to hear more about these crazy, funny little creatures!! Some nice insights about them and about how they learn by play and curiosity, but nothing really new and, as I said, not much about consciousness.

Kind of disappointing.

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That's not bad. I usually don't go in for poetry, but that hews pretty close to baseball history.