Hawaii Stories Book Club, or Eh, What You Reading?

Basically, this is the thread to discuss what's on everyone's reading list this summer. And we're not talking Big Literary Books or anything like that - just, well, whatever it is you're reading that you can recommend - or not, depending on how you feel.

Right now, in between my usual "reading" (ahem: Hawaii Stories, Advertiser, Chic Happens, E!Online, and Fametracker, plus back issues of Allure and Lucky), I picked up a copy of The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. I've read the phenomenal reviews for this book, and was heartened to see this come out at paperback (even though I got my copy 20% off at Borders Ward Center). The concept of the book revolves around the coexistence of humans and plants - and most importantly, our role in helping plants thrive and reproduce on the planet. The book centers on four domesticated plants (apple, tulip, cannabis, and potato) and the four different "desires" they inspire in humans (sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control) - and it poses a few questions on our role in the cultivation of these plants. Namely: Are we the propagators of these plants, or are the plants using us? And if we are being used, are we humans, as animals, no more than bumblebees? (Hopefully I'll find some answers as soon as I get into this book...)

And, of course, this being summer, I've also been plowing through all sorts of semi-cheesy bodice-ripping romance novels at the State Library. (Ahem ahem, Jayne Ann Krentz and Julie Garwood, ahem ahem...) Plus, since I did get that Harry Potter issue of Entertainment Weekly (thanks for the heads-up, Vivi!) I might start getting into those books too, as well as the Tolkien trilogy.

BTW, the same day I got the Pollan book, I also ran across a collection of Philip K. Dick stories called Minority Report and Other Stories. Hmmm.

Comments

You read Fametracker too? Boy. (Jen's addicted. It's like crack.)

I used to read all the time. Free time becomes pretty scarse with kids in the house. Or RoadRunner cable internet access, for that matter. Now, I read about two to four mass-market paperback novels a year... and always in one sitting each, somewhere between Honolulu and another Pacific Rim destination at 30,000 feet.

(That is, I can only really read when I travel for work.)

The last book I read, between HNL and NRT, was Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha."

I was surprised by how much I liked it. A fairly convincing view of a woman's life in old Japan, considering the author is a fairly well-off white male. (In fact, I wonder if that fact is a large part of the appeal.)

Not a short book, nor a fast moving one (I wonder how the upcoming movie adaptation will fare?), but even tough I'm not often a fan of extensive descriptions (I read most of Jean Auel's "Cave Bear" series, but skimmed a lot of it), I barely put it down.

My coworker happily read it on the trip back, and liked it too.

The book I want to read — though I know it's hardly "Moby Dick" — is "The Nanny Diaries." Either that or I'll re-read "The Sum of All Fears" (presuming by then I've seen the movie on video).

My playwriting instructor is forcing me to read "King Lear" and "A View From the Bridge," but other than that, this summer I'm reading a nice mixture of trash (i.e. "Good In Bed" by Jennifer Weiner, back issues of Cosmo) and all that stuff I never got around to read while everyone else was reading it: "High Fidelity," "Angela's Ashes," and everything by Haruki Murakami, which is putting me to sleep because he writes a really boring love story (aside from "Dance Dance Dance," and I wouldn't call that a love story, though you might.)

Recommendations (if you want to take recommendations from someone who owns five Ray Bradbury books but has only read half of each, and has about three anthologies of Southern short stories and I hate Southern literature, and who tried to read "Memoirs of a Geisha" while running on the treadmill and consequently started to hate the book by association): anything by Nick Hornby (I read "How to be Good" and "About a Boy" before "High Fidelity" and they're all worth your time) and Helen Fielding, although both authors will have you thinking with a British accent; also, "Saint Maybe" by Anne Tyler which I recommend anyway and always, because I read it all the time.

P.S. Back issues of Cosmo are always entertaining -- for him or her.

Not reading anything right now. I'm much too busy writing, RPing, and chatting on the computer, as well is taking my Summer Session Japanese class. I'm such a online addict right now, and yes, it started when we got the Road Runner conection in. I always figure, "It's online as soon as the computer starts up, might as well do some stuff..."

I figure once I'm done with my class, I'll be able to read. I've got the rest of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series to get through (after getting hooked on Red Mars during a Spring 2002 ENG class). I also have the His Dark Materials series lined up. I'm not going for heavy reading this summer... :)

Just finished Richard Bach's Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (a really excellent book) and now working on One. After reading Illusions all of the weird incidents that happened in my life finally made more sense (it wasn't weird, I just doubted my will power.)

Prior to that I read Sudden Fiction, a collection of short-short stories as part of my ENG102 class last year -I especially liked Gregory.

Other books I've read this past 5 years (yea, it takes me a while to get around to finishing them) that I recommend:
Inner Revolution - Robert Thurman
Inventing Reality - Michael Parenti
Democracy for a Few - Michael Parenti
There's Nothing Wrong With You - Cheri Huber

And Finally:
Last Chance to See by the late, great Doug Adams.

Hi - great question! I sporadically read from several books in my "learning bag" but will say I never finish any of them :-/

- 100 Poems from the Japanese (Rexroth, translator)
- First Things First (Covey)
- Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (Borg)
- The Power of Myth (Campbell)
- Fingerprints of the Gods (Hancock)
- Archie and Mahitabel (Marquis)
- Hyperspace (Kaku, I've been on chapter 5 for 2.5 years and now I hear this theory is giving way to other very cool ones)

For fun: The Last Samurai by Joyce Dewitt
Due to cinematic obligation: The Hobbit
Due to work: Shark Trouble by Peter Benchley

Nick Hornby rocks!

I can't seem to commit to reading novel-length fiction anymore. I get self-conscious about the amount of time I spend getting lost in a plot. If I could, I'd probably catch up on some Asian-American literature. Or maybe crack open that copy of Neil Gaiman's American Gods I received back in Christmas.

Oooh. Books. I am a book fiend, though of late I've been sucked into comics, and I'm not sure you all would let me count those. :)

In the non-comics reading world, I've been reading:

• Slightly Single by Wendy Markham. This is a light, quick read, and very reminiscent of Bridget Jones' Diary.
  
• Chosen Prey by John Sandford. Big tough Minneapolis detective Lucas Davenport chases a serial killer. Twelfth in a series.
  
• Delayed Diagnosis by Gwen Hunter. Southern ER doctor tries to figure out who has been hurting her friends and community.
  
• Juxtaposition by Piers Anthony. Yes, yes, Piers Anthony. Shush. :)
  
• Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family by Yoshiko Uchida. A first-person narrative from a woman whose family was 'evacuated' from San Francisco to Tanforan and then Topaz during World War 2.
  
• Into Thin Air by John Krakauer. The story of the perilous climb of Mount Everest in 1996 that left eight people dead.
  

In the comic world, I compulsively read the entire Strangers in Paradise series by Terry Moore until I ran out. I've also been reading Barry Ween, Boy Genius, about a foul-mouthed genius 10-year old. I read Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson on a trip to Chicago, and enjoyed it quite a bit.

For those who are really bored, I try to review the things I'm reading / watching / listening to (though I've been horribly lax in anything but the 'reading' category) on my web site. I'm missing a few of my latest reads, but the books and comics sections are mostly up to date.

Wow. Lots of babbling! Sorry about the length.

meri, if you like the Krakauer Everest book, read his "Into the Wild," about the kid who died in Alaska a few years back.

Sadly, my list seems to expand rather than contract. I finished the London book, but have now added "Ghost Soldiers" by Hampton Sides.

Thanks for the pointer. I'll be sure to check it out. As to the whole "list expanding" thing... Well, perhaps a picture is called for. (That is my 'books to read' bookshelf. The entire thing. Yeesh.)

Yeesh, indeed! Harry Potter in hardback, no less! ;)

Meri,

Do you really keep all your Giant Robots in a specific thingamajig?

Yeah, it's one of the few magazines that I keep around, so it's easy to do. The fact that the thingamajig is labeled is a testament to the fact that I go through spurts of neurotic cleaning, and I happened to buy a P-Touch during one of them. :) I have a shelf of National Geographics, too.

Hrm. How do other people who keep magazines store them? I just tried to think of I what I would be doing with them if they weren't in a magazine rack, and couldn't come up with anything.

Meri, if it's any consolation, I've been trying to organize my magazines, too. I used to have labeled cardboard thingamajigs to organize them, but I lost those while I was moving around. I gave up eventually, since I do end up cutting up my magazines to make new posters or collages (they are fashion magazines, after all...)

Many folks I know who subscribe to National Geographic line them up like books, so they clear out shelf space. Any sort of open, stackable plastic containers might work, too.

Yeah, I tend to be pretty hard on most of my magazines, too. Cutting them out for articles, fonts, images, all sorts of random things. Giant Robot and National Geographic are the only magazines I actually manage to hold onto faithfully, though. I'm not even sure why Giant Robot rates such treatment. Maybe because it's one of the few magazines about Asians I can find. :)

Haven't read much books over the summer and it's almost over!

I should finish "Dune" one of these days.

"Party of one" by Anneli Rufus, "The Loner's Manifesto", it's a good book,

Too often, loners buy into society’s messages and strive to change, making themselves miserable in the process by hiding their true nature—and hiding from it. In Party of One , Anneli Rufus delivers a long-overdue argument in praise of loners. Assembling evidence from diverse arenas of culture, Rufus recognizes loners as a vital force in world civilization rather than damaged goods who need to be "fixed." A compelling, morally urgent tour de force, Party of One rebuts the prevailing notion that aloneness is indistinguishable from loneliness, and that the only experiences that matter are shared ones.

I don't feel like "damaged goods" that needs to be "fixed" because this book shows that being alone and apart allows a person to think and grow without constant interjections from people who need to talk through the empty spaces of silence.

A very good book to read if alone for the holidays and are feeling "guilty" about not being with friends and family" A great antidote for the "holiday blues" songs that insist a person must be "somewhere with people" in order to be "happy", (by society's standards")

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