Steven's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 19 Nov 2023 23:33:52 -0800 60 Steven's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Selected Poems 519833 202 Anna Akhmatova 0882331809 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.97 1969 Selected Poems
author: Anna Akhmatova
name: Steven
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1969
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America]]> 2740465 Like the Mayan drifter, the text crosses and extends boundaries. In a variety of narrative voices, poems, and a play, across time, Herrera recounts how the Maya have been invaded by the Spanish, the government, the multinational corporations of the petrochemical industry, and anthropologists. The Maya survive and resist as their numbers dwindle and the forces that mount against them become more powerful.

Inspired by the Maya's resilience, Herrera envisions the disappearance of borders and evokes a fluid American self that needs no fixed identity or location.

]]> 288 Juan Felipe Herrera 1566394821 Steven 0 browsed-collected, to-read 3.50 Mayan Drifter: Chicano Poet in the Lowlands of America
author: Juan Felipe Herrera
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/11/06
shelves: browsed-collected, to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The City in the Middle of the Night]]> 37534907
Humanity clings to life on January--a colonized planet divided between permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other.

Two cities, built long ago in the meager temperate zone, serve as the last bastions of civilization--but life inside them is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a young student from the wrong side of Xiosphant city, is exiled into the dark after being part of a failed revolution. But she survives--with the help of a mysterious savior from beneath the ice.

Burdened with a dangerous, painful secret, Sophie and her ragtag group of exiles face the ultimate challenge--and they are running out of time.

Welcome to the City in the Middle of the Night.]]> 366 Charlie Jane Anders 0765379961 Steven 0 to-read 3.46 2019 The City in the Middle of the Night
author: Charlie Jane Anders
name: Steven
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/10/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Last Year 28220642
Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant.

It's the near future, and the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened.

A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination.

Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.]]> 351 Robert Charles Wilson 0765332639 Steven 0 to-read 3.75 2016 Last Year
author: Robert Charles Wilson
name: Steven
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2016/10/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance]]> 304956
Such illumination extends also to the works of others whom Spicer came to know, including the writers Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Helen Adam, Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, Philip K. Dick, Richard Brautigan, and Marianne Moore and the painters Jess, Fran Herndon, and Jay DeFeo. The resulting narrative, an engaging chronicle of the San Francisco Renaissance and the emergence of the North Beach gay scene during the 50s and 60s, will be indispensable reading for students of American literature and gay studies.]]> 459 Lewis Ellingham 0819553085 Steven 4 4.46 1998 Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance
author: Lewis Ellingham
name: Steven
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2016/04/13
date added: 2016/04/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Tolkien's Gown' and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books]]> 214163 Rick Gekoski 184119929X Steven 3 3.96 2004 Tolkien's Gown' and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books
author: Rick Gekoski
name: Steven
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/08/22
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Entertaining anecdotes from a seller of modern first editions. Of particular interest to fans of Graham Greene.
]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Steven 0 to-read 3.80 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/12/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)]]> 2732977 Henrik Vanger, head of the dynastic Vanger Corporation, is tormented by the loss of a child decades earlier and convinced that a member of his family has committed murder.

The Journalist
Mikael Blomkvist delves deep into the Vangers' past to uncover the truth behind the unsolved mystery. But someone else wants the past to remain a secret an will go to any lengths to keep it that way.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Lisbeth Salander, the enigmatic, delinquent and dangerous security specialist, assists in the investigation. A genius computer hacker, she tolerates no restrictions placed upon her by individuals, society or the law.]]> 538 Stieg Larsson Steven 3 4.15 2005 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Steven
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Worm: The First Digital World War]]> 11396195
The Conficker worm infected its first computer in November 2008 and within a month had infiltrated 1.5 million computers in 195 countries. Banks, telecommunications companies, and critical government networks (including the British Parliament and the French and German military) were infected. No one had ever seen anything like it. By January 2009 the worm lay hidden in at least eight million computers and the botnet of linked computers that it had created was big enough that an attack might crash the world. This is the gripping tale of the group of hackers, researches, millionaire Internet entrepreneurs, and computer security experts who united to defend the Internet from the Conficker the story of the first digital world war.]]> 233 Mark Bowden 0802119832 Steven 2 3.57 2011 Worm: The First Digital World War
author: Mark Bowden
name: Steven
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2011
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/02/22
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Atrociously proofread, but an interesting and absorbing tale of the US team assembled to respond to the Conficker worm.
]]> No One 12141775 The Melancholic Black Sheep, but the subtitle, An Inconvenient Specter, had been crossed out. The specter? Her father’s disabling bipolar disorder. Aubry had long known that she wanted to write about her father; his death, and his words, gave her the opportunity to explain his many absences � even while he was physically present � and to sculpt her memory of him. No One is a fictional memoir in dictionary form that investigates the many men behind the masks, and a unified portrait evolves. "A" describes her father’s adopted persona as Antonin Artaud, the poet/playwright; "B" is for James Bond; and, finally, "Z" is for Zelig, the Woody Allen character who could transform his appearance to that of the people around him. Letter by letter, Aubry gives shape and meaning to the father who had long disappeared from her view.

The whole is a beautifully written, vivid exploration of a particular experience of mental illness and what it can reveal more generally about human experience.
]]> 170 Gwenaëlle Aubry 1935639226 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.55 2009 No One
author: Gwenaëlle Aubry
name: Steven
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/02/22
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Ghost Song 3862720 471 Sarah Rayne 1847373178 Steven 2 3.79 2009 Ghost Song
author: Sarah Rayne
name: Steven
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 2
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date added: 2012/02/06
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]]> Montana Gothic 2709451 209 Dirck Van Sickle 1892323141 Steven 3 4.23 1979 Montana Gothic
author: Dirck Van Sickle
name: Steven
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1979
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/29
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]]> The Chill: A Lew Archer Novel 951794 Ross Macdonald 0786204613 Steven 3 3.50 1964 The Chill: A Lew Archer Novel
author: Ross Macdonald
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1964
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/29
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]]> Among Others 8706185 Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and science fiction, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment.

Raised by a half-mad mother who dabbled in magic, Morwenna Phelps found refuge in two worlds. As a child growing up in Wales, she and her twin sister played among the spirits who made their homes in industrial ruins, but her mind found freedom and promise in the science fiction novels that were her closest companions. When her mother tries to bend the spirits to dark ends with deadly results, Mori is sent away and must try to come to terms with what has happened without falling prey to the darkness.]]> 304 Jo Walton 076532153X Steven 3 3.69 2011 Among Others
author: Jo Walton
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Steven 3 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Steven
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias]]> 41138
Kim Stanley Robinson has gathered in this volume Future Primitive bright tales of Ecotopian futures, as well as a few cautionary ones. Writers and poets, from Gary Snyder to Ursula K. LeGuin to Ernest Callenbach himself have contributed their visions, along with many more.]]> 352 Kim Stanley Robinson 0312863500 Steven 0 half-read 3.55 1994 Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Steven
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/21
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]]> Watchmen 472331 Watchmen, the groundbreaking series from award-winning author Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, presents a world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history—the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the Cold War is in full effect.

Considered the greatest graphic novel in the history of the medium, the Hugo Award-winning story chronicles the fall from grace of a group of superheroes plagued by all-too-human failings. Along the way, the concept of the superhero is dissected as an unknown assassin stalks the erstwhile heroes.]]> 416 Alan Moore 0930289234 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.38 1987 Watchmen
author: Alan Moore
name: Steven
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/20
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Science Fiction in the Real World (Alternatives)]]> 633203 256 Norman Spinrad B.S> 0809316714 Steven 2 half-read 3.87 1990 Science Fiction in the Real World (Alternatives)
author: Norman Spinrad B.S>
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1990
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/12/20
shelves: half-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Russian Research Center Studies)]]> 70071 496 Martin Malia 0674015002 Steven 0 currently-reading 5.00 1961 Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Russian Research Center Studies)
author: Martin Malia
name: Steven
average rating: 5.00
book published: 1961
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/12/04
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar (Russian Literature)]]> 9539552 467 Victor Shklovsky 1564784258 Steven 3 4.40 1970 Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar (Russian Literature)
author: Victor Shklovsky
name: Steven
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1970
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/11/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead]]> 535441 Zombie Survival Guide is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now. Fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive, this book covers everything you need to know, including how to understand zombie physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain.

Top 10 Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack

1. Organize before they rise!
2. They feel no fear, why should you?
3. Use your head: cut off theirs.
4. Blades don’t need reloading.
5. Ideal protection = tight clothes, short hair.
6. Get up the staircase, then destroy it.
7. Get out of the car, get onto the bike.
8. Keep moving, keep low, keep quiet, keep alert!
9. No place is safe, only safer.
10. The zombie may be gone, but the threat lives on.

Don’t be carefree and foolish with your most precious asset—life. This book is your key to survival against the hordes of undead who may be stalking you right now without your even knowing it. The Zombie Survival Guide offers complete protection through trusted, proven tips for safeguarding yourself and your loved ones against the living dead. It is a book that can save your life.]]> 272 Max Brooks 1400049628 Steven 2 3.87 2003 The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead
author: Max Brooks
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2011/11/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks]]> 2574748 Those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

From the Stone Age to the information age, the undead have threatened to engulf the human race. They� re coming. They’re hungry.

Don’t wait for them to come to you!

This is the graphic novel the fans demanded: major zombie attacks from the dawn of humanity. On the African savannas, against the legions of ancient Rome, on the high seas with Francis Drake . . . every civilization has faced them. Here are the grisly and heroic stories–complete with eye-popping artwork that pulsates with the hideous faces of the undead.

Organize before they rise!

Scripted by the world’s leading zombie authority, Max Brooks, Recorded Attacks reveals how other eras and cultures have dealt with–and survived� the ancient viral plague. By immersing ourselves in past horror we may yet prevail over the coming outbreak in our time.]]> 144 Max Brooks 030740577X Steven 2 3.80 2009 The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks
author: Max Brooks
name: Steven
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/11/07
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]]> Zoo City 7163862
Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow.

Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives � including her own.]]> 416 Lauren Beukes 0007327684 Steven 3 3.63 2010 Zoo City
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Steven
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/09/17
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]]> Imperium 892246
Imperium begins with Ryszard Kapuscinski's account of the Soviet occupation of his town in eastern Poland in 1939. It culminates fifty years later, with a forty-thousand-mile journey that takes him from the haunted corridors of the Kremlin to the abandoned gulag of Kolyma, from a miners' strike in the arctic circle to a panic-stricken bus ride through the war-torn Caucasus.

Out of passivity and paranoia, ethnic hatred and religious fanaticism that have riven two generations of Eastern Europeans, Kapuscinski has composed a symphony for a collapsing empire—a work that translates history into the hopes and sufferings of the human beings condemned to live it.]]> 331 Ryszard Kapuściński 067974780X Steven 4 4.41 1992 Imperium
author: Ryszard Kapuściński
name: Steven
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2011/09/17
date added: 2011/09/17
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]]> <![CDATA[A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books]]> 791098 A Gentle Madness astounded and delighted readers with stories about the lengths of passion, expense, and more that collectors will go in pursuit of the book. Written before the emergence of the Internet but newly updated for the twenty-first century reader, A Gentle Madness captures that last moment in time when collectors frequented dusty bookshops, street stalls, and high-stakes auctions, conducting themselves with the subterfuge befitting a true bibliomaniac. A Gentle Madness is vividly anecdotal and thoroughly researched. Nicholas A. Basbanes brings an investigative reporter’s heart and instincts to the task of chronicling collectors past and present in pursuit of bibliomania. Now a classic of collecting, A Gentle Madness is a book lover’s delight.]]> 638 Nicholas A. Basbanes 0805061762 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.03 1995 A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books
author: Nicholas A. Basbanes
name: Steven
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/25
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling]]> 7549138 219 BikeSnobNYC 0811869989 Steven 1 3.66 2010 Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling
author: BikeSnobNYC
name: Steven
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 1
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date added: 2011/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession]]> 6251543 Set within the world of rare-book collecting: the true story of an infamous book thief, his victims, and the man determined to catch him.

Rare-book theft is even more widespread than fine-art theft. Most thieves, of course, steal for profit. John Charles Gilkey steals purely for the love of books. In an attempt to understand him better, journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett plunged herself into the world of book lust and discovered just how dangerous it can be.

John Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Bartlett befriended both outlandish characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure. A cat-and-mouse chase that not only reveals exactly how Gilkey pulled off his dirtiest crimes, where he stashed the loot, and how Sanders ultimately caught him but also explores the romance of books, the lure to collect them, and the temptation to steal them. Bartlett looks at the history of book passion, collection, and theft through the ages, to examine the craving that makes some people willing to stop at nothing to possess the books they love.]]> 274 Allison Hoover Bartlett 1594488916 Steven 2 3.45 2009 The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
author: Allison Hoover Bartlett
name: Steven
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2009
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/07/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures]]> 304959 290 Jack Spicer 0819563404 Steven 0 half-read 4.58 1998 The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures
author: Jack Spicer
name: Steven
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/07/17
shelves: half-read
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]]> Circling the Drain 122618 208 Amanda Davis 0688179096 Steven 3 3.94 1999 Circling the Drain
author: Amanda Davis
name: Steven
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1999
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/06/21
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It is spooky how this young writer's mortal intimations are reflected through this and her novel Wonder When You'll Miss Me. Cruelly taken by fate foreshadowed, a small airplane crash in 2003 with her family while promoting her second book. Her writing had promise, and was ironically a testament to having survived a particularly turbulent coming of age.
]]> <![CDATA[The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II]]> 37019 416 Aljean Harmetz 0786888148 Steven 3 4.04 1992 The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II
author: Aljean Harmetz
name: Steven
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1992
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/06/15
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Great overview of the film studio system and the ways American films were made in the middle 20th century - a system in which producers were all powerful, directors less so, on the set. Although Casablanca is often viewed as an accidental masterpiece, this book shows how such a system could on occasion produce a great film - even though in this case through a series of extremely unlikely twists and turns.
]]> <![CDATA[Booked to Die (Cliff Janeway, #1)]]> 445593 Turning to his lifelong passion, Janeway opens a small bookshop -- all the while searching for evidence to put Newton away. But when prized volumes in a highly sought-after collection begin to appear, so do dead bodies. Now, Janeway's life is about to start a precarious new chapter as he attempts to find out who's dealing death along with vintage Chandlers and Twains.]]> 394 John Dunning 0743410653 Steven 3 3.89 1992 Booked to Die (Cliff Janeway, #1)
author: John Dunning
name: Steven
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1992
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/06/15
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review:
Cop turned bookseller story. One of the more accurate descriptions I've read of the book trade and its eccentric characters in fiction.
]]> Mary Shelley 425389 256 Muriel Spark 156649236X Steven 0 currently-reading 3.69 1987 Mary Shelley
author: Muriel Spark
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/06/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them]]> 6763627 n+1) will ever forget it. “Babel in California� told the true story of various human destinies intersecting at Stanford University during a conference about the enigmatic writer Isaac Babel. Over the course of several pages, Batuman managed to misplace Babel’s last living relatives at the San Francisco airport, uncover Babel’s secret influence on the making of King Kong, and introduce her readers to a new voice that was unpredictable, comic, humane, ironic, charming, poignant, and completely, unpretentiously full of love for literature.

Batuman’s subsequent pieces—for The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and the London Review of Books� have made her one of the most sought-after and admired writers of her generation, and its best traveling companion. In The Possessed we watch her investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy’s ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin’s wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has one hundred different words for crying; and see an eighteenth-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva.

Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their place in The Possessed. Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence—including her own.]]> 296 Elif Batuman 0374532184 Steven 3 3.72 2010 The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
author: Elif Batuman
name: Steven
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/05/31
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]]> The Mask of Medusa 11361599 127 Roger Caillois Steven 2 half-read 3.73 1960 The Mask of Medusa
author: Roger Caillois
name: Steven
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1960
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2011/05/13
shelves: half-read
review:
recommended by Brunner to PKD. Skimmed but had to return before finishing.
]]> <![CDATA[World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War]]> 8908
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.]]> 342 Max Brooks 0307346609 Steven 3 4.02 2006 World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
author: Max Brooks
name: Steven
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2006
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/04/17
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]]> The Sunless City 6191131 312 J.E. Preston Muddock 0920436560 Steven 0 currently-reading 2.23 2009 The Sunless City
author: J.E. Preston Muddock
name: Steven
average rating: 2.23
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/12
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter: A Rare Bookman in Search of American History]]> 291365 264 Charles P. Everitt 091663812X Steven 0 currently-reading 4.10 1951 The Adventures of a Treasure Hunter: A Rare Bookman in Search of American History
author: Charles P. Everitt
name: Steven
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Final Score 2074300 292 Emmett Grogan 0030140412 Steven 2 3.25 Final Score
author: Emmett Grogan
name: Steven
average rating: 3.25
book published:
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/04/05
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]]> Moxyland 9283734


A frighteningly persuasive, high-tech fable, thisĚýnovel follows the lives of four narrators living in an alternative futuristic Cape Town, South Africa.Ěý An art-school dropout, and AIDS baby, a tech-activist and an RPG-obsessed blogger live in a world where your online identity is at least as important as your physical one. Getting disconnected is a punishment worse than imprisonment, but someone's got to stand up to Government Inc. - whatever the cost.Ěý Taking hedonistic trends in society to their ultimate conclusions, this tale paints anything but a forecasted utopia, satirically undermining the reified idea of progress as society's white knight.

File Science Fiction [ Digital Natives | Corporate Wars | Future | Teenage Riot ]]]> 384 Lauren Beukes Steven 0 currently-reading 3.70 2008 Moxyland
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Steven
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead]]> 671886 215 Alan DeNiro 1931520178 Steven 2 3.57 2006 Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
author: Alan DeNiro
name: Steven
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2011/03/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Best of Everything 8110942 When Rona Jaffe's superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Almost sixty years later, The Best of Everything remains touchingly—and sometimes hilariously—true to the personal and professional struggles women face in the city. There's Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor's office; naïve country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; and Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Jaffe follows their adventures with intelligence, sympathy, and prose as sharp as a paper cut.

]]> 471 Rona Jaffe 0899661300 Steven 3 3.00 1958 Best of Everything
author: Rona Jaffe
name: Steven
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/24
date added: 2011/03/24
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Letters From People Who Hate Me]]> 8349952 40 Steve Almond Steven 2 4.22 2010 Letters From People Who Hate Me
author: Steve Almond
name: Steven
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2011/01/23
date added: 2011/01/23
shelves:
review:
Amusing epistolary series of rants and counter-rants. Touché!
]]> <![CDATA[The Wonder (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)]]> 922043
Ěý

This is the chilling tale of Victor Stott, an English boy born thousands of years ahead of his time. Raised in the village of Hampdenshire, the strangely proportioned young Victor possesses mental abilities vastly superior to those of his fellow villagers. The incomprehensible intellect and powers of the Wonder inspire awe, provoke horror, and eventually threaten to rip apart Hampdenshire.

Ěý

Long recognized as a classic of speculative fiction but never before widely available, The Wonder is one of the first novels about a “superman.� J. D. Beresford’s subtle and intriguing story of a boy with superhuman abilities paved the way for such noted works as Philip Wylie’s Gladiator and A. E. van Vogt’s Slan]]> 297 J.D. Beresford 0803261624 Steven 3 3.44 1911 The Wonder (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)
author: J.D. Beresford
name: Steven
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1911
rating: 3
read at: 2011/01/23
date added: 2011/01/23
shelves:
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precursor to Stapledon's Odd John and Wylie's Gladiator, oh my! Grateful to have stumbled across this copy, abandoned on Mission St.
]]> <![CDATA[The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye]]> 138398 The world we knew is gone.

How many hours are in a day when you don't spend half of them watching television? When is the last time any of us really worked to get something we wanted? How long has it been since any of us really needed something that we wanted?

The world of commerce and frivolous necessity has been replaced by a world of survival and responsibility. An epidemic of apocalyptic proportions has swept the globe, causing the dead to rise and feed on the living.

In a matter of months society has crumbled: no government, no grocery stores, no mail delivery, no cable TV. In a world ruled by the dead, the survivors are forced to finally start living.

Rick Grimes finds himself one of the few survivors in this terrifying future. A couple months ago he was a small town cop who had never fired a shot and only ever saw one dead body. Separated from his family, he must now sort through all the death and confusion to try and find his wife and son.

Edition MSRP: $9âąâą US (ISBN 978-1-58240-672-5)
Printed in USA]]> 144 Robert Kirkman 1582406723 Steven 3 4.27 2004 The Walking Dead, Vol. 1: Days Gone Bye
author: Robert Kirkman
name: Steven
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2011/01/22
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]]> Star in My Forehead 1520244
Night Secret

I have chosen you
among all these stars.

Am awake, a listening flower
in the buzzing bush.

Our lips long to make honey,
our shimmering nights are in full bloom.

From your body's holy spark
my heart lights its heaven.

All my dreams hang from your gold.
I have chosen you among all these stars.]]> 118 Else Lasker-SchĂĽler 0930100883 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.28 1999 Star in My Forehead
author: Else Lasker-SchĂĽler
name: Steven
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Meditations in an Emergency 139871
Frank O’Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara’s untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, "the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.� This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara’s conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, "you just go on your nerve.�
]]> 52 Frank O'Hara 0802134521 Steven 3 4.14 1957 Meditations in an Emergency
author: Frank O'Hara
name: Steven
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1957
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/04
shelves:
review:

]]> The Angel of Darkness 338875 435 Ernesto Sabato 0831703989 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.96 1974 The Angel of Darkness
author: Ernesto Sabato
name: Steven
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/10/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature]]> 397787 256 Alison Lurie 0316246255 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.69 1990 Don't Tell the Grown-Ups: The Subversive Power of Children's Literature
author: Alison Lurie
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/10/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Memories of the Future 5984292
Contents:
Quadraturin
The Bookmark
Someone Else's Theme
The Branch Line
Red Snow
The Thirteenth Category of Reason
Memories of the Future]]> 228 Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky 1590173198 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.91 1929 Memories of the Future
author: Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
name: Steven
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/10/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Russian Debutante's Handbook]]> 210817
TheĚýRussian Debutante's Handbook introduces Vladimir Girshkin, one of the most original and unlikely heroes of recent times. The twenty-five-year-old unhappy lover to a fat dungeon mistress, affectionately nicknamed "Little Failure" by his high-achieving mother, Vladimir toils his days away as a lowly clerk at the bureaucratic Emma Lazarus Immigrant Absorption Society. When a wealthy but psychotic old Russian war hero appears, Vladimir embarks on an adventure of unrelenting lunacy that takes us from New York's Lower East Side to the hip frontier wilderness of Prava--the Eastern European Paris of the nineties. With the help of a murderous but fun-loving Russian mafioso, Vladimir infiltrates the Prava expat community and launches a scheme as ridiculous as it is brilliant.

Bursting with wit, humor, and rare insight, The Russian Debutante's Handbook is both a highly imaginative romp and a serious exploration of what it means to be an immigrant in America.]]> 476 Gary Shteyngart 1573229881 Steven 3 3.56 2002 The Russian Debutante's Handbook
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Steven
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> SS-GB 1265107 1941, and England invaded � and defeated � by the Germans...

The King is a hostage in the tower, the Queen and Princesses have fled to Australia, Churchill has been executed by a firing squad, Englishmen are being deported to work in German factories and the dreaded SS is in charge of Scotland Yard. London is in shock. The very look of daily life is a walking nightmare of German uniforms, artifacts, regulations. There are collaborators. There are profiteers. But there are others working in hope, in secret, and desperate danger, against the invader. And still others are living strangely ambiguous lives â€� none more so than Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer ("Archer of the yard" as the press like to call him), trying to maintain a peculiarly, almost sacredly, British institution under a Nazi chief. Archer has started work on what seems, at first, a routine murder case. But suddenly an SS ł§łŮ˛ą˛Ô»ĺ˛ą°ůłŮ±đ˛Ô´ÚĂĽłó°ů±đ°ů from Himmler's personal staff flies in from Berlin to supervise the investigation, and Archer is plunged deep into an espionage battle for which he is completely unprepared, and where the stakes are incredibly high. "We’re dealing with something that could prove so deadly that not even the Black Death would compare with the consequences", the SS man tells him.

Setting forth on a tight rope trail of violence, betrayal and danger, Archer moves into worlds within worlds of intrigue. The British resistance, wealthy collaborators, high-level scientists, German army and SS factions and vicious rivalry, a beautiful American reporter on assignment for the still-neutral papers back home � these are the players that Deighton's treacherously shifting drama, as it races toward its chattering climax that involves the fate of the King, and of England itself.

ł§ł§â€“Gµţ is fascinating in its premise, utterly authentic and convincing in its detail. It is the most gripping novel we have had from the author of The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, and Bomber. Already, in England, it has become Len Deighton's greatest best seller.]]> 344 Len Deighton 0394504097 Steven 2 3.73 1979 SS-GB
author: Len Deighton
name: Steven
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1979
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/09/08
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Alternate history of Nazi occupation of Great Britain. Recommended by Wm Gibson via his Twitter-stream
]]> Bring the Jubilee 91099 Alternative cover edition can be found here.

Hodge Backmaker lives in twentieth century New York, a city of cobblestones, gas lamps, and ten-storey skyscrapers. In his world, the Confederate South won its independence in the Civil War and North America is divided, with slavery and serfdom still facts of life in the Confederacy and New York a provincial backwater. Bring the Jubilee stands alongside Pavane as science fiction's finest explorations of alternative history.]]> 208 Ward Moore 1857987640 Steven 4 3.72 1953 Bring the Jubilee
author: Ward Moore
name: Steven
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/06/13
shelves:
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]]> You Can't Win 174374 Junky. But it's time we got wise to this book, which is in itself a remarkably wise book - and a ripping true saga. It's an amazing journey into the hobo underworld: freight hopping around the still wide open West at the turn of the 20th century, becoming a member of the "yegg" (criminal) brotherhood and a highwayman, learning the outlaw philosophy from Foot-and-a-half George and the Sanctimonious Kid, getting hooked on opium, passing through hobo jungles, hop joints and penitentiaries. This is a chunk of the American story entirely left out of the history books - it's a lot richer and stranger than the official version. This new edition also includes an Afterword that tells some of what became of Black after he wore out the outlaw life and washed up in San Francisco, wrote this book and reinvented himself.]]> 279 Jack Black 1902593022 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.35 1926 You Can't Win
author: Jack Black
name: Steven
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Life of Pi 4214 460 Yann Martel 0770430074 Steven 3 3.94 2001 Life of Pi
author: Yann Martel
name: Steven
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/05/22
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]]> High Fidelity 285092
Rob does. He keeps a list, in fact. But Laura isn't on it—even though she's just become his latest ex. He's got his life back, you see. He can just do what he wants when he wants: like listen to whatever music he likes, look up the girls that are on his list, and generally behaves as if Laura never mattered. But Rob finds he can't move on. He's stuck in a really deep groove—and it's called Laura. Soon, Rob's asking himself some big questions: about love, about life—and about why we choose to share ours with the people we do.]]> 323 Nick Hornby 1573225517 Steven 3 3.92 1995 High Fidelity
author: Nick Hornby
name: Steven
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/05/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Memoirs 2509775 384 Pablo Neruda 0140111085 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.50 1974 Memoirs
author: Pablo Neruda
name: Steven
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Baudelaire (Everyman Poetry Library)]]> 1165692 128 Laurence Lerner 0460879936 Steven 4 4.27 1999 Baudelaire (Everyman Poetry Library)
author: Laurence Lerner
name: Steven
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Goodbye Look 666865 Ross Macdonald 0006124046 Steven 3 3.00 1969 The Goodbye Look
author: Ross Macdonald
name: Steven
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past]]> 666736 136 Ross Macdonald 0884961699 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.80 1981 Self-Portrait: Ceaselessly into the Past
author: Ross Macdonald
name: Steven
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Dreamrider 6558941 279 Sandra Miesel Steven 0 3.00 1982 Dreamrider
author: Sandra Miesel
name: Steven
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/05/07
shelves: currently-reading, browsed-collected
review:
Always interesting to find a previously unknown book by someone who had a momentary but powerful influence on me when I was growing up.
]]> Gascoyne 6913246 245 Stanley Crawford Steven 3 3.50 1966 Gascoyne
author: Stanley Crawford
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1966
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/05/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inward Journey: Reflections on Ross Macdonald]]> 664234 161 Ross Macdonald 0892969024 Steven 3 3.80 1987 Inward Journey: Reflections on Ross Macdonald
author: Ross Macdonald
name: Steven
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Instant Enemy. 648731 192 Ross Macdonald 0006124038 Steven 2 3.56 1968 The Instant Enemy.
author: Ross Macdonald
name: Steven
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1968
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> The Unholy City 1734006 0 Charles G. Finney 9991248951 Steven 3 3.59 1937 The Unholy City
author: Charles G. Finney
name: Steven
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/24
date added: 2010/01/24
shelves:
review:
Interesting surreal picaresque adventure. One of the source texts for Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, CHRONIC CITY.
]]> Radio On: A Listener's Diary 12359
As a series of impressions and reflections regarding contemporary American culture, and as an extended meditation on both our media and our society, this keenly focused book is as insightful as it is refreshing.

Throughout Radio On, "Vowell's touch is about as delicate as Teddy Kennedy's after a pitcher of martinis" (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times).]]> 256 Sarah Vowell 0312183011 Steven 3 3.43 1996 Radio On: A Listener's Diary
author: Sarah Vowell
name: Steven
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Disco for the Departed (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #3)]]> 243351
The autopsy provides some surprises but it is his gift as a shaman that enables the seventy-two-year old doctor to discover why the victim was buried alive and, eventually, the identity of his killer.]]> 256 Colin Cotterill 0676978339 Steven 3 4.03 2006 Disco for the Departed (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #3)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Steven
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/16
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dead Man's Brother 4598897
Now the CIA is offering to clear up the murder charge but only in return for a favor: They want Ovid to fly to Vatican City and trace the trail of a renegade priest who has gone missing with millions in church funds. What’s the connection? The priest’s lover, a woman Ovid knew in his smuggling days…]]> 256 Roger Zelazny 0843961155 Steven 3 3.37 2009 The Dead Man's Brother
author: Roger Zelazny
name: Steven
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/16
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Confessions of an Advertising Man.]]> 104173 190 David Ogilvy 0689102151 Steven 3 3.90 1963 Confessions of an Advertising Man.
author: David Ogilvy
name: Steven
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1963
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/10
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves:
review:
Very interesting reflections on the ad business by a peer of the characters in the show MAD MEN.
]]> Overbooked in Arizona 1498183 Book by Samuel Hirsh Gottlieb 95 Samuel Hirsh Gottlieb 0963996614 Steven 2 3.56 1993 Overbooked in Arizona
author: Samuel Hirsh Gottlieb
name: Steven
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/01/10
shelves:
review:
Inadequate as a crime novel, but interesting and unvarnished comments about recognizable figures in the antiquarian book trade.
]]> <![CDATA[The Case of the Duplicate Daughter (Perry Mason, #62)]]> 1439544 194 Erle Stanley Gardner 0345356810 Steven 1 3.75 1960 The Case of the Duplicate Daughter (Perry Mason, #62)
author: Erle Stanley Gardner
name: Steven
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1960
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2009/12/19
shelves:
review:

]]> James Joyce 2006831 Book by Svevo, Italo 68 Italo Svevo 0872860485 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.79 1950 James Joyce
author: Italo Svevo
name: Steven
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1950
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/12/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Curse of the Pogo Stick (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #5)]]> 2251069 256 Colin Cotterill 1569474850 Steven 3 4.09 2008 Curse of the Pogo Stick (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #5)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Steven
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner]]> 87580 272 James Hogg 0192835904 Steven 0 to-read 3.69 1824 The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
author: James Hogg
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1824
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay]]> 1165527
Rarely visited by tourists and barely touched by global village sprawl, Paraguay remains a mystery to outsiders. Think of this small nation and your mind is likely to jump to Nazis, dictators, and soccer. Now, John Gimlette’s eye-opening book–equal parts travelogue, history, and unorthodox travel guide–breaches the boundaries of this isolated land,� and illuminates a little-understood place and its people.

It is a wonderfully animated telling of Paraguay's of cannibals, Jesuits, and sixteenth-century Anabaptists; of Victorian Australian socialists and talented smugglers; of dictators and their mad mistresses; bloody wars and Utopian settlements; and of lives transplanted from Japan, Britain, Poland, Russia, Germany, Ireland, Korea, and the United States. The author travels from the insular cities and towns of the east, along ghostly trails through the countryside, to reach the Gran Chaco of the the “green hell� covering almost two-thirds of the country, where 4 percent of the population coexists–more or very-much-less peacefully–with a vast array of exotic wildlife that includes jaguars, prehistoric lungfish, and their more recently evolved distant cousins, the great fighting river fish. Gimlette visits with Mennonites and the indigenas, arms dealers and real-estate tycoons, shopkeepers, government bureaucrats and, of course, Nazis.

Filled with bizarre incident, fascinating anecdote, and richly evocative detail, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig is a brilliant description of a country of eccentricity and contradiction, of beguilingly individualistic men and women, and of unexpected and extraordinary beauty. It is a vivid, often riotous, always fascinating, journey.]]> 384 John Gimlette 1400041767 Steven 0 to-read 3.84 2003 At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
author: John Gimlette
name: Steven
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flashman (The Flashman Papers, #1)]]> 142458 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780006511250

Coward, scoundrel, lover and cheat, but there is no better man to go into the jungle with. Join Flashman in his adventures as he survives fearful ordeals and outlandish perils across the four corners of the world.

Can a man be all bad? When Harry Flashman’s adventures as the reluctant secret agent in Afghanistan lead him to join the exclusive company of Lord Cardigan’s Hussars and play a part in the disastrous Retreat from Kabul, it culminates in the rascal’s finest � and most dishonest � turn.]]> 323 George MacDonald Fraser Steven 3 4.07 1969 Flashman (The Flashman Papers, #1)
author: George MacDonald Fraser
name: Steven
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/11/08
shelves:
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]]> At the Gentle Mercy of Plants 2983115 89 Hildegarde Flanner 093678413X Steven 3 4.00 1986 At the Gentle Mercy of Plants
author: Hildegarde Flanner
name: Steven
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1986
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/26
date added: 2009/11/08
shelves:
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]]> The Napoleon of Notting Hill 697757 163 G.K. Chesterton 048626551X Steven 2 3.87 1904 The Napoleon of Notting Hill
author: G.K. Chesterton
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1904
rating: 2
read at: 2009/11/08
date added: 2009/11/08
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems]]> 254039 A New York Review Books Original

A master anthology of Russia’s most important poetry, newly collected and never before published in English

In the years before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Stray Dog cabaret in St. Petersburg was the haunt of poets, artists, and musicians, a place to meet, drink, read, brawl, celebrate, and stage performances of all kinds. It has since become a symbol of the extraordinary literary ferment of that time. It was then that Alexander Blok composed his apocalyptic sequence “Twelve�; that the futurists Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky exploded language into bold new forms; that the lapidary lyrics of Osip Mandelstam and plangent love poems of Anna Akhmatova saw the light; that the electrifying Marina Tsvetaeva stunned and dazzled everyone. Boris Pasternak was also of this company, putting together his great youthful hymn to nature, My Sister, Life.

It was a transforming moment—not just for Russian but for world poetry—but a short-lived one. Within little more than a decade, revolution and terror were to disperse, silence, and destroy almost all the poets of the Stray Dog cabaret.]]> 168 Paul Schmidt 1590171918 Steven 3 4.10 2006 The Stray Dog Cabaret: A Book of Russian Poems
author: Paul Schmidt
name: Steven
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/08
date added: 2009/11/08
shelves:
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]]> Nosferatu 382948 216 Jim Shepard 0803293461 Steven 3 3.61 1998 Nosferatu
author: Jim Shepard
name: Steven
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/11/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finding George Orwell in Burma]]> 79793
Over the years the American writer Emma Larkin has spent traveling in Burma, also known as Myanmar, she's come to know all too well the many ways this brutal police state can be described as "Orwellian." The life of the mind exists in a state of siege in Burma, and it long has. But Burma's connection to George Orwell is not merely metaphorical; it is much deeper and more real. Orwell's mother was born in Burma, at the height of the British raj, and Orwell was fundamentally shaped by his experiences in Burma as a young man working for the British Imperial Police. When Orwell died, the novel-in-progress on his desk was set in Burma. It is the place George Orwell's work holds in Burma today, however, that most struck Emma Larkin. She was frequently told by Burmese acquaintances that Orwell did not write one book about their country - his first novel, Burmese Days - but in fact he wrote three, the "trilogy" that included Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four . When Larkin quietly asked one Burmese intellectual if he knew the work of George Orwell, he stared blankly for a moment and then said, "Ah, you mean the prophet!"

In one of the most intrepid political travelogues in recent memory, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent traveling through Burma using the life and work of George Orwell as her compass. Going from Mandalay and Rangoon to poor delta backwaters and up to the old hill-station towns in the mountains of Burma's far north, Larkin visits the places where Orwell worked and lived, and the places his books live still. She brings to vivid life a country and a people cut off from the rest of the world, and from one another, by the ruling military junta and its vast network of spies and informers. Using Orwell enables her to show, effortlessly, the weight of the colonial experience on Burma today, the ghosts of which are invisible and everywhere. More important, she finds that the path she charts leads her to the people who have found ways to somehow resist the soul-crushing effects of life in this most cruel police state. And George Orwell's moral clarity, hatred of injustice, and keen powers of observation serve as the author's compass in another sense they are qualities she shares and they suffuse her book - the keenest and finest reckoning with life in this police state that has yet been written.]]> 295 Emma Larkin 0143037110 Steven 3 3.95 2004 Finding George Orwell in Burma
author: Emma Larkin
name: Steven
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/26
date added: 2009/11/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Thirty-Three Teeth (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #2)]]> 243350 238 Colin Cotterill 156947429X Steven 2 3.99 2005 Thirty-Three Teeth (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #2)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Steven
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2009/11/08
date added: 2009/11/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Coroner's Lunch (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #1)]]> 243353
When the body of the wife of a prominent politician comes through his morgue, Siri has reason to suspect the woman has been murdered. To get to the truth, Siri and his team face government secrets, spying neighbors, victim hauntings, Hmong shamans, botched romances, and other deadly dangers. Somehow, Siri must figure out a way to balance the will of the party and the will of the dead.]]> 257 Colin Cotterill 1569474184 Steven 3 3.96 2004 The Coroner's Lunch (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #1)
author: Colin Cotterill
name: Steven
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/11/05
shelves:
review:

]]> The Brief History of the Dead 30072
The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end.

Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out.

Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.]]> 252 Kevin Brockmeier 1400095956 Steven 3 3.68 2003 The Brief History of the Dead
author: Kevin Brockmeier
name: Steven
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/26
date added: 2009/10/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Loved One 1240106 176 Evelyn Waugh 0613033868 Steven 2 3.73 1948 The Loved One
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: Steven
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1948
rating: 2
read at: 2009/10/18
date added: 2009/10/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1)]]> 78411
I'm sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe. From the very first page of this book when the children are at the beach and receive terrible news, continuing on through the entire story, disaster lurks at their heels. One might say they are magnets for misfortune.

In this short book alone, the three youngsters encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast.

It is my sad duty to write down these unpleasant tales, but there is nothing stopping you from putting this book down at once and reading something happy, if you prefer that sort of thing.

With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket]]> 162 Lemony Snicket 0439206472 Steven 2 4.02 1999 The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #1)
author: Lemony Snicket
name: Steven
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/10/13
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review:

]]> Pieces of Life 3960740 173 Mark Schorer 0374232806 Steven 2 3.50 Pieces of Life
author: Mark Schorer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories]]> 255371
Canon Alberic's scrap-book --
The mezzotint --
Number 13 --
Count Magnus --
Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad --
The treasure of Abbot Thomas --
A School story --
The rose garden --
The tractate middoth --
Casting the runes --
The stalls of Barchester Cathedral --
Mr Humphreys and his inheritance --
The diary of Mr Poynter --
An episode of cathedral history --
The uncommon prayer-book --
A neighbour's landmark --
A warning to the curious --
Rats --
The experiment --
The malice of inanimate objects --
A vignette]]> 400 M.R. James 0192837737 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.21 1911 Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories
author: M.R. James
name: Steven
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1911
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Calibre .50 6913269 153 Robert Sheckley Steven 2 currently-reading 3.38 1961 Calibre .50
author: Robert Sheckley
name: Steven
average rating: 3.38
book published: 1961
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Kronk 1931108
It seemed that Gabriel Crome and his elegantly hippy girl friend had the answer—a new, highly communicable disease with the property of inhibiting aggression. And oh boy! was it fun to communicate!

But Gabriel had reckoned without the finely honed irony of whatever Prankster it is who governs human affairs.

As the Raven quoth, 'KRONK.']]> 189 Edmund Cooper 0340162171 Steven 2 3.64 1970 Kronk
author: Edmund Cooper
name: Steven
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1970
rating: 2
read at: 2009/09/26
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky]]> 1892562
A major influence on American poets of the twentieth century, Mayakovsky's work remains fascinating and urgent. Very few English translations have come close to capturing his lyric intensity, and a comprehensive volume of his writings has not been published in the past thirty years. In Night Wraps the Sky, the acclaimed filmmaker Michael Almereyda (Hamlet, William Eggleston in the Real World) presents Mayakovsky's key poems--translated by a new generation of Russian-American poets--alongside memoirs, artistic appreciations, and eyewitness accounts, written and pictorial, to create a full-length portrait of the man and the mythic era he came to embody.]]> 304 Vladimir Mayakovsky 0374281351 Steven 4 4.25 2008 Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky
author: Vladimir Mayakovsky
name: Steven
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/26
date added: 2009/09/26
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank]]> 4021383 560 Christopher Miller 0061686360 Steven 2 3.64 2009 The Cardboard Universe: A Guide to the World of Phoebus K. Dank
author: Christopher Miller
name: Steven
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2009/09/26
date added: 2009/09/26
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]]> The Dolphins of Altair 6815085
. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people - a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore, but indelibly etched in the minds of others - the dolphins of Altair.

Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers - willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . . .]]> 188 Margaret St. Clair Steven 3 2.88 1967 The Dolphins of Altair
author: Margaret St. Clair
name: Steven
average rating: 2.88
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/09/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence]]> 49423 ]]> 256 Geoff Dyer 0865475407 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.04 1997 Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling With D.H. Lawrence
author: Geoff Dyer
name: Steven
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust]]> 294459 Miss Lonelyhearts

Miss Lonelyhearts was a newspaper reporter, so named because he had been assigned to write the agony column, to answer the letters from Desperate, Sick-of-It-All, Disillusioned. A joke at first; but then he was caught up, terrifyingly, in a vision of suffering, and he sought a way out, turning first here, then there—Art, Sex, Religion. Shrike, the cynical editor, the friend and enemy, compulsively destroyed each of his friend’s gestures toward idealism. Together, in the city’s dim underworld, Shrike and Miss Lonelyhearts turn round and round in a loathsome dance, unresolvable, hating until death�

The Day of the Locust

To Hollywood comes Tod Hackett, hoping for a career in scene designing, but he finds the way hard and falls in with others—extras, technicians, old vaudeville hands—who are also in difficulty. Around him he sees the great mass of inland Americans who have retired to California in expectation of health and ease. But boredom consumes them, their own emptiness maddens them; they search out any abnormality in their lust for excitement—drugs, perversion, crime. In the end only blood will serve; unreasoned, undirected violence. The day of the locust is at hand…]]> 247 Nathanael West 0811202151 Steven 4 3.90 1939 Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
author: Nathanael West
name: Steven
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Human Front & A Writer's Life]]> 362810 Ken MacLeod 0575075058 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.46 2001 The Human Front & A Writer's Life
author: Ken MacLeod
name: Steven
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Queue 254272 The Queue, is a sly comedy about the late Soviet "years of stagnation." Thousands of citizens are in line for . . . nobody knows quite what, but the rumors are flying. Leather or suede? Jackets, jeans? Turkish, Swedish, maybe even American? It doesn't matter if anything is on sale, you better line up to buy it. Sorokin's tour de force of ventriloquism and formal daring tells the whole story in snatches of unattributed dialogue, adding up to nothing less than the real voice of the people, overheard on the street as they joke and curse, fall in and out of love, slurp down ice cream or vodka, fill out crossword puzzles, even go to sleep and line up again in the morning as the queue drags on.]]> 198 Vladimir Sorokin 093052344X Steven 3 3.65 1984 The Queue
author: Vladimir Sorokin
name: Steven
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/08/16
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review:
Amusing, minimal, and lusty. Lekker!
]]> <![CDATA[Wayward Reporter: Life of A.J. Liebling]]> 147662 368 Raymond A. Sokolov 0916870634 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.73 1980 Wayward Reporter: Life of A.J. Liebling
author: Raymond A. Sokolov
name: Steven
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D.H. Lawrence (Abacus Books)]]> 963993 Used Book 211 Anthony Burgess 0349104417 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.06 1985 Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D.H. Lawrence (Abacus Books)
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Steven
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell]]> 2175354 337 Ken Russell 0553078313 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.81 1989 Altered States: The Autobiography of Ken Russell
author: Ken Russell
name: Steven
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist]]> 145119 The Shymkent Declarations, the anti-tourist seeks out the dark, lost zones of our planet, eschewing comfort, embracing hunger and hallucinations, and always traveling at the wrong time of year. In Lost Cosmonaut, Kalder visits locations that most of us don't even know exist -- Tatarstan, Kalmykia, Mari El, and Udmurtia. He loves these places because no one else does, because everyone else passes them by.

A tale of adventure, conversation, boredom, and observation -- occasionally enhanced by an overactive imagination -- Kalder reveals a world of hidden cities, lost rites, mail-order brides, machine guns, mutants, and cold, cold emptiness. In the desert wastelands of Kalmykia, he stumbles upon New Vasyuki, the only city in the world dedicated to chess. In Mari El, home to Europe's last pagan nation, he meets the chief Druid and participates in an ancient rite; while in the bleak industrial badlands of Udmurtia, Kalder searches for Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, and inadvertently becomes a TV star. An unorthodox mix of extraordinary stories woven together with fascinating history, peculiar places, and even stranger people, Lost Cosmonaut is poetic and profane, hilarious and yet oddly heartwarming, bizarre and even educational. In short, it's the perfect guide to the most alien planet in our cosmos: Earth.]]> 288 Daniel Kalder 0743289943 Steven 0 currently-reading 3.53 2006 Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist
author: Daniel Kalder
name: Steven
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/07/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]>