So earlier today I finished reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, via dailylit. Then I coincidentally got emails saying I need to watch this youtube video that directly relates.
posted by kristin at 1:33 AM

Paul Levinson's The Silk Code is inventive. I can't said I'd ever read another SF novel that included Neanderthals, bioengineering and the Amish.
posted by kristin at 2:43 PM

True Notebooks is the account of time Mark Salzman spent teaching writing classes in a juvenile detention facility. Fascinating. Also interesting is how well this correlated with a journal article I had to read for class recently which was a case study of the tutor/tutee relationship between someone helping with literacy and an inmate.

Labels: books, memoir, reviews, writing

posted by kristin at 9:37 PM

Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits isn't a book I can do justice to in a few sentences. It takes place over decades, has fascinating characters, and has some weird things happen. At the core it's a book about the relationships within a family, but it's so much more.

Labels: books, LatinAmerica, magicalrealism, reviews

posted by kristin at 9:35 PM

Jayne Ann Krentz's Falling Awake was the romance I read for my Book Lust class. It's romantic suspense featuring lucid dreaming. Not bad actually. She's not the absolute most beautiful writer ever, but the writing didn't get in the way and the plot was interesting enough to keep me up reading.

Labels: booklust, books, review, romance

posted by kristin at 9:33 PM

After reading about the controversy surrounding Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls I needed to see it for myself. I got part 1 from the library last week and read it. It's nicely done and is indeed rather explicit. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it's basically a pornographic graphic novel starring Alice (of Wonderland), Wendy (from Peter Pan) and Dorothy (Oz). I say pornographic only in that there's a lot of explicit sex and since it's a comic book the reader can't really skim over those sections without missing most of the story.

Labels: books, graphicnovels, novels, review

posted by kristin at 4:19 PM

Getting Stoned with Savages is J. Maarten Troost's follow up to The Sex Lives of Cannibals. After returning to D.C. and getting normal jobs, Maarten and his girlfriend realized they want to be back in the South Pacific. This time they head to Vanuata and Fiji. Not quite as good as the first, but fun.

Labels: books, non-fiction, review, travel

posted by kristin at 4:17 PM

Since I was having trouble writing an annotation for Orson Scott Card's Sarah for work I decided to just read the book rather than trying to rely on reviews. It's a novelization of the Biblical story of Sarah (wife of Abraham). It wasn't bad, but I prefer his science fiction.
posted by kristin at 4:15 PM

Awhile back I bought First Meetings by Orson Scott Card, a trio of short stories/novellas set in the Enderverse. It's not a long book, but I enjoyed it. The third piece, which I hadn't realized, was actually not a new one, but the original short story version of Ender's Game which I hadn't read before. It's been awhile since I've read the novel, so I can't pinpoint exactly how much it changed (other than getting a lot longer) between the short story and novel.
posted by kristin at 4:12 PM

Since Vonnegut died I've started rereading his books. So far I've finished Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan and Canary in a Cat House. So far they're living up to my expectations. Next up: Mother Night.
posted by kristin at 4:10 PM

Unlike in her other graphic novels, Marjane Satrapi doesn't appear as a character in Chicken with Plums. It focuses instead on a relative of hers, who has decided to die since he can't find pleasure anymore in his music.
posted by kristin at 4:08 PM