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I've been reading a little bit of Dexter Filkins's 'The Forever War'. It's badass. Thursty wouldn't/won't/hasn't/isn't/not currently likes it. I'm not sure what "The Foreve War" is, whether it's supposed to refer to the Middle East, or Afghanistan, or just the world in general. The books starts with a breif prologue where the author is embedded with some marines in Falluja. It's funny how he repeatedly thinks he is going to die as bullets whiz by, and people die around him. The marines make a mad dash across a street despite bullets flying, and he runs with them, despite it being apparent madness, cause what do you do but do what everyone else is doing? He stops mid-flight, then runs back. He is briefly ashamed of his cowardice, but then remembers he is just a reporter. The book then moves to Afghanistan in '98, before 9/11, with the Taliban fully in control, and paints an interesting picture where there is a generation that still remembers the country as it was before the Soviets invaded, and before the Taliban. I guess Kabul was a popular place for toursts then (at least, I think it was Kabul; it could've been another city, but probably not). Apparently a lot of people feared the Taliban, but they feared the lawless times after the Soviets were defeated and before the Taliban took control even more. The book is written in a very unemotional style, sort of like by someone who was shellshocked, or semi-indifferent. It's funny, I think, but I can see how people might find it annoying, like "oh, this guy's so unaffected by all the horrors around him." And he does describe a world of mind-numbing things.

I really enjoyed his description of 9/11. I guess he was back in New York at that time, and his reaction reminded me a little of my own. Unlike him, though, I was surprised by how much Americans thought that 9/11 was the end of the world. I couldn't believe at the time how people thought nobody would ever be able to watch action movies where buildings exploded again. I figured the whole thing would blow over in a couple of months. I'd like to post some excerpts from the book. This is not meant to be any type of copyright infringement, just providing some preview type excerpts:

The Forever War wrote:

Walking in, watching the flames shoot upward, the first thing I thought was that I was back in the Third World. My countrymen were going to think this was the worst thing that ever happened, the end of civilization. In the Third World, this sort of thing happened every day: earthquakes, famines, plagues. In Orissa, on the eastern cost of India, after the cyclone, the dead were piled up so high and for so long that the dogs couldn't eat anymore; they just lay about waiting for their appetites to come back. Lazily looking at one another. Fifteen thousand dead in that one. Seventeen thousand died in the earthquake in Turkey. In Afghanistan, in the earthquake there, four thousand. This was mass murder, that was clear, it was an act of evil. Though I'd seen that, too: the forty thousand dead in Kabul. I don't think I was the only person thinking this, who had the darker perspective. All those street vendors who worked near the World Trade Center, from all those different countries, selling felafel and schwarma. When they heard the planes and watched the towers they must have thought the same as I did: that they'd come home.

The Forever War wrote:

In the glare of the spotlights and the fire I could see several dozen firemen standing atop an enormous slag heap, perhaps eight stories high, of metal and wreckage and I couldn't tell what else. The firemen were pulling things out and peering inside, on their knees, talking to German shepherds. I started a conversation with a fireman who was getting a cup of water. The fireman was maybe in his midfifties, Irish, with a large, square jaw. He didn't look the least bit tired. He had settled down and had a good pace going, I think; he was not as frantic as I imagined he had been a few hours before, when his buddies had died by the hundreds. Maybe he didn't know yet. He said they'd discovered some sort of cavern, an air pocket in the giant heap of slag. They couldn't get in there themselves, the firemen said, so they were sending dogs in, and the dogs had cameras attached. In case there was someone still alive in there. "We're seeing a ot of spinal cords," he said.

The book then moves back to Afghanistan, post 9/11.

The Forever War wrote:

People fought in Afghanistan, and peopled died, but not always the obvious way. They had been fighting for so long, twenty-three years then, that by the time the Americans arrived the Afghans had developed an elaborate set of rules designed to spare as many fighters as they could. So the war could go on forever. Men fought, men switched sides, men lined up and fought again. War in Afghanistan often seemed like a game of pickup basketball, a contest among friends, a tournament where you never knew which team you'd be on when the next game got under way. Shirt today, skins tomorrow. On Tuesday, you might be part of a fearsome Taliban regiment, running into a minefield. And on Wednesday you might be manning a checkpoint for some gang of the Northern Alliance. By Thursday you could be back with the Talibs again, holding up your Kalashnikov and promising to wage jihad forever. War was serious in Afghanistan, but not that serious. It was a part of everyday life. It was a job. Only the civilians seemed to lose.

The last line was a little overly dramatic, I thought. He's betraying his own style. Still, the book so far is entertaining and informative. Maybe I'll post some more excerpts later if I find some really good stuff, but the problem is the whole book is filled with great images like these, so it's hard to decide. There was a bit earler on, in pre-9/11 Afghanistan, about a minefield, and the people who lived near it. One guy would wait each day to see if a goat would walk into the minfield and explode, then gather up the meat and sel it.

On the third book in Kim Stanley Robinsons's Mars Trilogy, Blue Mars. Really digging the realistic approach to the process of colonizing another planet.

Just started reading The Passage. So far it's perty neat.

KingVoyeur wrote:

On the third book in Kim Stanley Robinsons's Mars Trilogy, Blue Mars. Really digging the realistic approach to the process of colonizing another planet.

I need to re-read the Mars books. I remember liking them, but I don't remember most of the details.

I've been pecking away at A.J. Jacobs's The Know-It-All for a while.  I read John Dies at the End a couple weeks ago.  I read the Emails from an A**hole book some months back.  I read some stories from The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century pretty recently.  I started rereading Moorcock's Elric stuff in the newly repackaged editions.  His prose is way more purple than I remembered it.  I'm currently cherry picking from The Novel 100.

I been readin' books with pichers, too.  I reread Marvel Superheroes: Secret Wars pretty recently, and started rereading Crisis on Infinite Earth.  I read the first volume of Cat-Eyed Boy and the first volume of The Herbie Archives.

I'm too wrapped up with dissertation writing at the moment to commit to anything that isn't a quick read or episodic.  I look forward to being able to start tackling longer books, again.

Is that that same dissertation you were working on back in the Excelsior days???

Yep.

I am working on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, so far it is failing to make me care.

Any suggestions for a suitable book to propose at my next book club meeting?

What qualities would make a suitable book, in your opinion?

400 pages or less is preferable.

Also, somethign that could provoke a discussion, one incorporating more than "this book sucked because".

We have done, "Lovely bones", "Alchemist", "Maltese Falcon", "After the Quake" and such.

Hustler.

I recommend (links to Google Books and Gutenberg versions where possible):

Trilby, George du Maurier (Google Books)
Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome (Gutenberg)
At Swim-Two-Birds, Flann O'Brien
The Loved One, Evelyn Waugh
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson (Google Books)
Civil War Stories, Ambrose Bierce
Horso, Beau Watkins
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Is Sex Necessary?, James Thurber & E.B. White
The Confusions of Young Törless, Robert Musil
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut

I suppose that's a healthy mix. 

Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss
The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Merry Tales, Mark Twain
Horso, Beau Watkins
Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein
Candide, Voltaire
Fahrenheit 451,Ray Bradbury
Job, Robert A. Heinlein

Thanks, some good stuff there. Getting college students to a) be interested in reading and b) Read, is proving a difficult task. So I might avoid some of the older texts for fear of scaring the noobs.

As current acting president of said book club I do have full power to mandate that the members read Horso.

I wonder how many kids nowadays have missed out on The Never Ending Story? I might toss that in as a possability.

I think I recall Winesburg, Ohio being compared to Stuart Dybek's work, if i'm correct this intrigues me. I could be mistaken, my Rhet/Comp classes all kind of swirled togather.

Heinlein's Job looks good, and could balance out our reading of The Alchemist. I felt it was a good book, but a bit too preachy, especially since one of our most active members is an athiest.

Jack S. Pharaoh wrote:

Jack makes a thread about booky-wooks.

I haven't read it yet, but, based on Jack's thread description, perhaps we should be talking about this:

My Booky Wook by Russell Brand

atrejub wrote:

I haven't read it yet, but, based on Jack's thread description, perhaps we should be talking about this:
My Booky Wook by Russell Brand

Good call.  Haven't read that one, but I like the title.  As far as Raven-Guy's book club, I couldn't think of much, but Michael Shaara's 'The Killer Angels' is a very good book, and a pretty easy read, I think.  It's about the battle of Gettysburg, so is historically educational.

Right now, among other things, I'm re-reading Anne Applebaum's "Gulag," about the vast prison system that existed in Soviet Union from 1917 till the end. Excellent book.

What a shame, to find out that Anne Applebaum was a staunch neocon who thought that invading Iraq was just a wonderful idea.

Feet of clay, and all that sort of thing.

There are few things I know with absolute certainty, but one of them is that you absolutely should NOT read Horso by Beau Watkins.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Toole

The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

I haven't read Moers' other books that take place in the same universe as Bluebear, but I really need to. Has anyone else?

I have a picture of myself as Ignatius Reilly up on Facebook. I'm not sure if it's visible to everyone. It's pretty hideous, but I like it.

Yay, Captain Bluebear! I used to watch the television show when I was a kid.

That might be the most frightening thing I have ever seen.

It was less frightening than the rest of my childhood.

Did I mention that I was refugee?