An FSU Without a Book Thread is Like an FS Event Without Snark

[rfisher]

The cover is pink.

[IceAlisa]

Ok, namedropper ... you know he read it, but do you actually know he enjoyed it? Huh, do you? Ptttpt!

Ah, but it's full of intrigue, honest to skategod palace plots, power struggle, , , , , , and just like, you know, figure skating. How could he not?

[rfisher]

I can say without reservation, the new Nook will never replace a real book. Ever. I'll use it to download those books BAM does not sell, otherwise,

[galaxygirl]

I can say without reservation, the new Nook will never replace a real book. Ever. I'll use it to download those books BAM does not sell, otherwise,

Maybe not completely but it'll make reading War and Peace a hell of a lot easier.

[Nan]

I'm adjusting to my Nook better than I thought I would, but I'm not 100% sold.....yet.

[rfisher]

Maybe not completely but it'll make reading War and Peace a hell of a lot easier.

Never in a million years will I be reading War and Peace. I'll just watch Woody Allen's Love and Death.

[PrincessLeppard]

Maybe not completely but it'll make reading War and Peace a hell of a lot easier.

I have a reader on my iPad, and I've read three books on it. When I read, I like to flip back and verify things. If anyone can tell me an easy way to do that on an ereader, I might be converted. Might.

If find reading on it pretty irritating, actually....

[Artemis@BC]

I have a reader on my iPad, and I've read three books on it. When I read, I like to flip back and verify things. If anyone can tell me an easy way to do that on an ereader, I might be converted. Might.

IKWYM. I don't do a lot of flipping, but I do some. And the book I'm reading right now (Elizabeth George's Believing the Lie) has map that I refer to periodically. And each time I do, I think to myself "I'm so glad I have a paper version of this book!"

But the time I noticed it the most was one of my recent book club reads. When we had our meeting it was very frustrating to not be able to find certain passages that I wanted to refer to.

I believe I read that one of the new updated e-readers (the new Kindle?) had a capacity for making notes etc. Did I imagine that?

[modern_muslimah]

The major e-readers (Nook, Sony, Kindle) have the capacity to make notes and have had that capacity on at least a couple generations of models. I prefer to use my e-reader to read novels and books where I'm not doing a lot of highlighting and note taking. On books where I need to take notes in the margin, highlight and quickly refer to a certain passage, I find pbooks to still be preferable.

[Prancer]

I have a reader on my iPad, and I've read three books on it. When I read, I like to flip back and verify things. If anyone can tell me an easy way to do that on an ereader, I might be converted. Might.

If find reading on it pretty irritating, actually....

I don't flip back very often, but if I am studying something on the Nook, I do use bookmarks and notes. I don't know if that would help much with reading casually and wanting to flip back though. I usually have a pretty good sense of where I was in a book when I read something, so if I do flip back, I drag the page bar back to where I thought I was, and I'm usually no more than a couple of pages off.

I dunno. I haven't come across that one too often.

You can do word searches--tap a word and look for other instances of it in a book. That would be of limited use, but I'd think it would help sometimes.

[galaxygirl]

I have a reader on my iPad, and I've read three books on it. When I read, I like to flip back and verify things. If anyone can tell me an easy way to do that on an ereader, I might be converted. Might.

Oh, I definitely agree with you about that. Reading maps and looking at pictures is difficult too. But I'm thinking about reading W&P and the thought of having to hold it up for the 10-15 years it's going to take me to finish it is making my hands and wrists hurt. I'm going to bookmark the page(s) with the character list and make good use of the search function so hopefully that'll help make up for not being able to flip back and forth.

[rfisher]

I have a reader on my iPad, and I've read three books on it. When I read, I like to flip back and verify things. If anyone can tell me an easy way to do that on an ereader, I might be converted. Might.

If find reading on it pretty irritating, actually....

So far, so do I. It's stuck and won't unstick. I'm taking it back to the store tomorrow.

[John 3 17]

I picked up Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters today for $3! I know people here said it wasn't as good as the zombie Pride & Pejudice but I haven't read that either. Anyway, looking forward to it

-Bridget

[modern_muslimah]

I picked up Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters today for $3! I know people here said it wasn't as good as the zombie Pride & Pejudice but I haven't read that either. Anyway, looking forward to it

-Bridget

My husband brought that for me about a couple of years. I haven't read it though. I want to read the original before I read the zombie version. So maybe I should put that on my TBR list for this year.

[oleada]

I finished reading The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll. It was a decent read. There were some really heart wrenching moments, but I felt like there was so much story there that could have been written better. Today, I was perusing at Barnes & Noble and ended up reading You Have Seven Messages in one sitting. I don't know why, because it wasn't good. It started off decent, but then really trailed off. It's about a girl who finds her dead mother's cellphone and starts suspecting that there's more to her death than she knows. Except, not really. If you are expecting mystery or suspense, there is none. If you want likable characters, there aren't any either. Oh, but there is a really crappy love story. Meh. The best part was the really cool WS Mervin quote before the book started.

I did pick up No One Is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel. I'd heard about it before it came out and it seemed good. The first chapters didn't disappoint. It's so far.

[Fergus]

Just started something called Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers.



Ok, I know, just by the title alone: Pure bullshit gossipy smut.

But it's good! And by that, I mean surprisingly well-written (take a bow, Mr. Bower's ghostwriter! ). Compared to Hollywood trash by folks like Spoto or Porter, it's friggin' Shakespeare.

Seems this guy Bowers was a gas station attendant in Hollywood right after WWII and used his wide circle of friends, both male and female, to cater to the sexual needs of Hollywood's most elite stars, both male and female. In doing so, he became rather good friends with many of them, like George Cukor, Kate Hepburn, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Vincent Price, etc.....

Some dish:

Spoiler

Tracy and Hepburn romance? Pure myth. She was haughty and made him feel insecure. She had horrible skin and liked Bowers to send her up fresh-scrubbed, All-American girls. Tracy would have horrible booze benders (which has been well documented in other bios) during which Bowers would comfort him, both in and out of the sack....nothing hardcore and Tracy was usually too trashed to accomplish much....

Ready for this?

Spoiler

Vivien Leigh, while in town filming "Streetcar", hooked up with Bowers numerous times at Cukor's house. And she was WILD. However, her bipolar disorder was already in full swing and after a night of amazing sex, she'd toss him out of Cukor's house the next morning racked with guilt for cheating on Larry! (Who was himself having threeways with buxom blondes and well-hung studs!)

One of the most surprising stories?

Spoiler

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor! Bowers called him "Eddy" and said he was the most expert fellatio-giver in the history of mankind. Wally didn't care, she was too busy with the girls Bowers would recruit! Usually, the Windsors would pair off with members of the same-sex after watching a half dozen young guys and gals get it on in a sort of tableaux.

.

Now, can Bowers be believed? Who the hell knows, but its unlike any gossipy dish I've ever read!

WAIT, I almost forgot! Bower's very first A-list Hollywood trick? Drumroll please:

Spoiler

Walter Pidgeon! MR. Miniver himself!

I'm gonna need to read something quaint and cozy by Jean Plaidy or Angela Thirkell after this one, oy.........

ETA: A NYTimes article about the book.

Good god, I need to get a life on Saturday nights.......

[Holley Calmes]

Oh-I believe all of that wild sex stuff about Edward and Mrs. Simpson and all.... If it isn't true, it should be.

My three favorite books?

-A Hero of Our Time
-The Three Musketeers
-Tale of Two Cities

OK, not girlie. I always wanted to be D'Artagnan. I have a collection of all of Dumas-except Monte Cristo is missing. There are perhaps 25 books...Dumas aspired to write a history of France in a series of novels...I won't call them historical novels. Many of them are really fun to read.

These were mostly magazine seriels. And there are 6 "Three Musketeer" books: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, Ten Years Later, Louise de La Valliere,The Vicompe de Bragelonne. ( I have no clue how to spell Vicompte.) In the last of them, "The Man in the Iron Mask," Dumas got in trouble because he got stuck on the chapter where he had to kill off Porthos, the big Musketeer dude, in battle. He had fashioned Porthos on his own grandfather, a huge mulatto officer who fought for Napoleon....and whom he dearly loved. He couldn't bring himself to kill Porthos off, so he dallied until threatened with non-payment. At least that's the way I've read it, and it makes a good story. This collection is dear to me because they were printed in 1910. Such a treasure! The illustration plates are incredible. Maybe not the world's greatest literature, but I love them. I will pit D'Artgnan against any other hero out there for heart and spirit. In fact, I can't find a heroine who suits me at all except for Harriet Vane perhaps.

[LilJen]

I like Joan Didion's writing quite a bit, although I usually come across a book and think "Oh, Didion. I should probably read this" more than "I must read Didion's newest book the second it comes out."

The Year of Magical Thinking, which is about her wretched year of grieving after her husband died, is one someone in your field might find interesting. Her daughter was in a serious medical crisis at the time Didion's husband died, and so she was caring for her daughter while mourning. She writes about her grieving process as if she's observing it more than experiencing, which is odd at first but effective in many ways, and she reflects on medicine and human health, among other things, throughout the book.

I'd agree. it's the only book of Didion's I've read, and I found her style a bit detached. But what a helluva story. Terrible, terrible year.

Just finished The Help. Which everyone but me has read, no doubt. I am sure if I see the movie I will be reduced to a slobbering sobbing mess by the end.

On a whim, I picked up The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Oldie but goodie from childhood that I hadn't read in years. I would LOVE for dd to read it, but if I so much as suggest it she'll be sure to NOT read it. Just her nature (because I suppose she's already figured out that I'm not cool; plus she's ornery)

[LilJen]

Now that Hugo has scored 11 Oscar noms, I hope you all will read The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It's such a wonderful tale & epitomizes the word "enchanting."

Totally excellent book--agreed.

[Erin]

I finished Mockingjay this evening. It was pretty meh. I didn't find it induced teeth-gnashing or book-throwing (perhaps because my expectations were so low after the comments here), but I didn't really enjoy it like I did the first two.

I'm trying to figure out what my next book should be, I need lots of reading for the travel to Colorado Springs for 4CC, as my flight schedule is terrible.