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joseph
Posts: 5024
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 4:24 pm

Re: Books Thread!

Post by joseph » Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:04 pm

sweet. i didnt know he had a book.

buck rotten
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Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:17 pm

Re: Books Thread!

Post by buck rotten » Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:21 pm

Just came out. The book did, anyway.
It's hard to pray with broken hands

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Potter
Posts: 700
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 1:21 am

Re: Books Thread!

Post by Potter » Sat Dec 19, 2009 9:46 pm

My holiday to read list.

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Shit about oceans and the birds that inhabit the oceans and more shit like dat.

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Millions of years before the Age of Dinosaurs, an environmental cataclysm annihilated 90 percent of all plant and animal life on the planet. In this lost world that was swept away 250 million years ago, the ferocious lizard-like Gorgon was the T. rex of its day. In this remarkable journey of discovery deep into Earth’s history, Peter D. Ward, one of the world’s most recognized authorities on mass extinctions, examines the strange and mysterious fate of this little-known prehistoric animal and its contemporaries—the ancestors of the turtle, the crocodile, the lizard, and eventually the dinosaur. Based on more than a decade’s research in South Africa’s Karoo Desert, Ward’s groundbreaking work offers provocative theories on the mass extinctions of the past and confronts the startling implications they hold for humanity’s future on the planet.
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Thom
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Joined: Thu Nov 01, 2007 3:03 pm
Location: Des Moines

Re: Books Thread!

Post by Thom » Mon Dec 21, 2009 2:05 am

The last few days I have been reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I just picked it off the nebula awards list. So far it has not disappointed.

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Shane
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Location: Iowa City

Re: Books Thread!

Post by Shane » Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:17 am

I just finished Freakonomics. It was pretty enjoyable. It's presented in a way that makes it accessible to people who don't want to be bogged down in statistical nonsense and the topics are interesting enough to allow for the occasional detour into academia. It's a good read for anyone interested in things like correlations and debunking conventional wisdom. Now I am going to read the sequel, Super Freakonomics.
Joey Chaos wrote:Shane's gonna find out the hard way.

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Potter
Posts: 700
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 1:21 am

Re: Books Thread!

Post by Potter » Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:07 pm

Shane wrote: Freakonomics.
I've always wandered why we carry 15 copies of that book at the Downtown Public Library. I just need to read the fucking thing. I have a strange aversion to the titles with more than 2 copies in the library. I really need to get over it.
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tama
Sweet Tits
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Location: Tama / Iowa City

Re: Books Thread!

Post by tama » Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:56 pm

I'm reading Moby Dick for the 2nd time this year and it is the best book ever written. I also have this book checked out: Herman Melville's Picture Gallery: Sources and Types of the Pictorial Chapters of Moby-Dick by Stuart M. Frank and it is pretty amazing. This is probably my favorite picture in it.
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In Moby Dick there are 3 chapters that just describe various depcitions of whales and that book compiles all the pictures and lets you see them. Too bad it is out of print or else I would buy it.
Slow is the new loud.

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robdigi
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Location: bedford-stuyvesant, brooklyn zoo
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Re: Books Thread!

Post by robdigi » Thu Dec 31, 2009 8:37 pm

Finished reading Asterios Polyp today...

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It's very design-y in its layout (but only so far as to compliment the story), so while physically it's a huge book, it was a quick read and left me wanting more... but it's pretty much perfectly constructed. The writing keeps you interested by jumping back and forth between past and present at just the right pace, and the art is amazing with what it does with a small color palette. Every character is drawn in a different style that accentuates their personality (not as distracting as it sounds). Contains lots of unpretentious and genuinely interesting philosophical content and it lacks the typical irony you get with most similar "indie" comics.

There's a preview of a few pages here:

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 ... ml#photo=1
All that's missin' is the retired band teacher with the self-inflicted gunshot wound!
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