Maureen’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2009)

Maureen’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

Chris wrote: "I did like the X-Files, at least the first few seasons. And I had read that Morgan and Wong did the first one. I'm just not a horror flick fan, usually. That said, I saw the trailer for #5 and i..."

hmmm. well, if it's ever on t.v. when you're flipping past, you should stop and give it five minutes. i'd loan you my DVD but you are too far away, and i just re-watched the thing last week. :)

i think i'd only loosely classify it as horror. i think it's pretty good suspense, myself. plus, they make john denver the harbinger of doom. :P

Chris wrote: "Heavens, no. I haven't seen #1-4 yet."

did you like the x-files swanny? the first one in the series is by the guys who did some of the best early x-files: glen morgan and james wong. it's the best of the series, but if you like the conceit of the first, you might like the rest of them. i'm actually really bummed i didn't see this last one in the theatre...

i'm going to take a shot in the dark here, and suggest none of you said you wanted to see final destination 5? :P

Shel wrote: "Hmmm.

I got sci fi ---- which is weird because I don't really read sci fi or futuristic stuff.

Ready Player One
By Ernest Cline
"At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, R..."

shel: a friend of mine called me all drunk last night after midnight to complain to me about how much he hated "ready player one". meanwhile, a bazillion others are saying it's a "nerdgasm", and my beloved karen gave it a very high review. so i'll be curious to see what you think. :)

kerry: it sure was a nice little distraction. and i still don't understand how i only got one recommendation when everybody got more. is it because i didn't give them my email address?

Sara wrote: "I'm looking for book recommendations on the theme Community, Utopia, and the Individual for a residency I'm working on. Do any of you have any recommendations? It could be anything, fiction, non-fi..."

hi sara: i was just thinking about a book i read by h.g. wells called Men Like Gods the other day, and the foreword in the edition i have says that it provoked huxley to write brave new world in response. i'm with claudia on this, i have plenty of dystopian, rather than utopian books on my list, and off the top of my head We and This Perfect Day are favourites.

i've also had this non-fiction title on my to-read list for a while now as it was warmly recommended to me: Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community

and not to take away from the brilliance and ingenuity of suggestions in this group but there's a great group called "readers advisory for all" that might also be able to help you. :) http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/4...

hope that helps, and good luck! feel free to come back and say how awesome the zamyatin and levin books are. :P

Mary wrote: "Hey! I"m responding!
I just wanted to say that i neither love nor hate franzen. He's very good at what he does, and i liked a lot of Freedom (i liked the Corrections for the first, oh, 100 pages, a..."

nice to "hear your voice" here, mary. i did wonder if somebody ambivalent about franzen would show up. agreed that there's no need to buy into frazen frenzied fanfare, and who knows what posterity will say? so often i think of poor bulwer-lytton, popular literary hero of his day and think how far he has fallen. :)

hi claudia: modusa27 on words with friends. :)

so much of it is luck of the tiles. i used to play just because i liked looking for arcane words but then the strategizers would crow over me, so i had to harden my heart. but there are still times when i don't have it in me to go for the throat -- i could have played two all-seven tile moves in one of my recent games, but i felt badly so i didn't. :)

Micha wrote: "And now for something completely different:
Mo ~ the Universe seems to be sending me bits of Karen everywhere (that sounds SO much weirder outside of my own head...). I just found her through an abstract review on a book I found lying randomly in the library that I began to read on Monday. I liked her comments on the review[s], so I checked her profile and lo' & behold, she knew you & Ben! So, I wrote her and now you mention her here. What a great and strange world we live in~!

I will try her site and see what I think (not that I don't have a PILE of books on my floor waiting to be read....) ..."

hey micha:

i met karen on goodreads in a similar fashion -- one of my friends here liked a review of hers, which i really liked, and then he liked one of her writings which put it in my newsfeed. she does a weekly sunday adventure of food & frolic column (for lack of a better term), and i ended up reading all the chapters. i can't recommend them enough. they start here: http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...

we became friends and i grew to adore her -- she is my goodreads girl crush and i only wish i didn't have to share her 2000+ other people (i can manage about forty-five).

when i realized i was going to be in new york for ben's reading, i thought it would be lovely if we met in person, so we ended going to the barnes & noble wear she works (jean-paul, our delightful poet turned out to be free and joined us), ben signed copies of his book and we gave her one, and then we all had frozen fruit smush.

her recommendation group is playing into her MA thesis, so it not only benefits you, it benefits her! i have only submitted one request on behalf of a friend (and i didn't really follow the rules -- bad mo!) but i found people to be very responsive and helpful. i plan on making a few recommendations myself as well.

and that is my paean to karen, queen of goodreads. SHE IS THE BEST. please try not to make her love you more than me. :)

hmmm. i tried it, and it gave me only one recommendation, and i don't think i would be all that keen on the book based on the description... maybe it works better for some people rather than others? i sometimes had a tough time choosing the "best" option for myself. :)

of course, it's really interesting to see how people find books like the ones they already liked reading. goodreads has that new recommendation feature, and then there's karen's group where you can say what you like to read and ask for recommendations: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/4....

Moira wrote: "Aww, the Franzen hate here sort of warms the cockles of my black, wizened heart. I dragged through about fifty pages of Corrections and after that said Never again, I don't care whose talk show he ..."

ha! it is nice to see that not everybody loved it, isn't it? i remember when i first read and loathed it many people were really angry about my inability to enjoy it as much as they had. meanwhile, i was angry at the book, and practically flung the door open and shouted "out! out of my house!" when i finished and was able to toss it aside (well, honestly? out. one of two books i've thrown in the garbage in the course of my life). i was pretty sure i was going to hate it fifty pages in, but i was annoyed enough to stay the course until the end so i could feel entitled to my irritation. :P

Adrian wrote: "Before sinking into the tar pits, at least one of the dinosaurs, Norman Mailer, sniffed at the new meat and found The Corrections a bit rancid.

Mailer on Franzen"

what a great link, adrian. now i want to read that norman mailer book. i keep saying i am going to read one, and maybe i'll start here. i love the nouveaux riches analogy. :)

i think mailer nailed him, and is actually quite generous, all things considered even if he says he's not keeping his hopes up. i've avoided this thread because i think it's pretty clear by now that i have no use for franzen, and had no desire to read another book by him after the corrections because i not only didn't care about these people, i was annoyed by them and their lives, and how little pay-off there was for me after so many pages. if you're going to make me hang around for hours, you'd better charm the pants off me. or give me some meat to chew on. something!!!

Neil wrote: "I love August Wilson, got the chance to chat with him a couple of times at the Mecca cafe in Seattle. . . . and Mo you have heard of him, I mentioned him in my Fiction Files questionairre thingy ..."

i have such a poor memory! i must have asked you on facebook because when i went back and looked all i could see was me begging you to tell us about this:

"Byron (I had once decided that I was his reincarnation until an odd experience at Mesolonghi taught me otherwise)"

i still need to hear this story, and i need to hear it desperately.

neil & esp. brock (:P) could you guys talk a little about wilson's writing and what makes it so great? are the plays proletariat? comedies? are they like ibsen? or john patrick?

does anyone get the sense that brock loves august wilson? i've never heard of him so i can't talk about him. :)

Slowrabbit wrote: ...
if need be, i am certain the Black Angels could kick Sendak's ass.

but, that said, i kind of enjoy his grumpy old man routine. maybe he tried some soup recipe he found on GOOP and it left him gassy. "

ha! i was hoping somebody would mention miss paltrow's nickname and life-improving newsletter. :P

Adrian wrote:"Very suspicious behavior! The moderators are getting too big for their britches. I'm sure Maurice Sendak won't be at all pleased when I e-mail him about this incident.
"

if coffee-scented sendak were here i would have just snorted him. i am bequeathing you the title of King of Funny Forever (or KOFF). KOFF Adrian the First. :)

a united front of KOFF and Sendak would be a joy to behold. i hope gwyneth paltrow invites you over to patch things up. :P

i thought emma was a pretty good movie, but i'm not sure ms. paltrow really had to stretch for that performance since her life pretty much mirrors the novel, right? miss woodhouse: privileged fusspot of a devoted daddy's daughter managing other people's lives? :P

i don't really care about her either way, i just think it's funny that he finds her so horrifying. my favourite comment was the one about rushdie. maurice sendak is certainly brazen, and i tend to love that in a person. plus, he acknowledge he's crazy. :)

whoopsie! some posts got deleted by mistake. adrian, can you please come back and be funny again? patrick, you too? :)

yep, he's a lovely crazy person, and i am sure he even tastes like coffee. (i worry what might happen when patty gets wind of this: between the possible birding on his property and coffee essence, she might swoon. or wander onto his property. :)

always a proponent of freebies, i thought i'd post this for you guys (from the twitter):

Contest! Tweet your guess for who'll win the Nobel Prize in Lit to @doubledaypub before tomorrow's 7am annc. Winner gets 5 free books.

:)

he's featured in the guardian and hilariously skewers rupert murdoch and a few other targets as well. :)

intro paragraph to whet your appetite...

Maurice Sendak: 'I refuse to lie to children'
At 83, children's author Maurice Sendak is as productive – and angry – as ever. Roald Dahl? Glad he's dead. The US right? Schnooks. Life? Awful. Emma Brockes gets an earful...



http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/...