Book Talk discussion

What?!?

Yeah, he gave the great Mr. Connolly only 3 stars, can you believe it?

He'll be kicking babies next......

Currently reading .

I'm reading The Burn Palace
And 14

Thinking of taking up meth abuse?

It is the "in" thing.

Extreme white trash dieting.

I remember when then "in" thing used to be having teeth.

Kealan(and Jon and others), have you ever seen Cocaine Cowboys? It's still free for Prime Members on Amazon, I think.

I heard bad things about the second one, but the first one is incredibly good.

Kealan wrote: "Currently reading METHLAND: THE DEATH AND LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SMALL TOWN. Progress is slow, not because it isn't good, but because I'm reading it for research purposes."

Meth use is on the upswing locally.
At the high schools...

Marc wrote: "Kealan(and Jon and others), have you ever seen Cocaine Cowboys? It's still free for Prime Members on Amazon, I think.

I heard bad things about the second one, but the first one is incredibly good."

I haven't, Marc.
When I was in therapy for my social anxiety, I wound up in a substance abuse group. After hearing the horror stories firsthand (and some of them still give me nightmares) I avoid watching that sort of thing....

So when you say you are reading it for research, does that mean we can look forward to a tweaking meth head in your fiction at some point?

I avoid torture porn and child-endangerment stories because of my family's background as foster care givers, Jon. My mother is a social worker and she avoids any movie with violence in or with unhappy endings or any real conflict because she sees that at work every day and if she dosed herself up on it at home too it would be just too much. I can sympathize. Some of the pictures I've seen of meth heads were toe-curling gross and sad.

I can't say I've seen that sort of thing from cocaine, not exactly. It just tended to turn people into even more self-absorbed buttholes than they started out as.

Marc wrote: "I avoid torture porn and child-endangerment stories because of my family's background as foster care givers, Jon. My mother is a social worker and she avoids any movie with violence in or with unh..."

Coke does make people more self-absorbed.
And it tends to make unstable ones really unstable.
Crack cocaine combines the physical effects of meth with the sociopathic personality changes of coke.

Inbreeding and meth.....the Honey BooBoo story?!?

Can't wait to read it, Kealan.

Reserve me a copy. Kin absolutely rocked.

CHRIS!

Kealan wrote: "Charlene: It's for the KIN sequel."

*gasp* I can't wait!

I know a lot of people whose lives were ruined by their addiction to cocaine. It's sad.

JON!!!

Are you snowed in?

CHRIS!!!

YES!

They closed the major roadways to rescue stranded motorists.

UPS just dropped off my copy of KIN.

Kealan wrote: "Charlene: It's for the KIN sequel."

YES!!! SWEET!!!

Ah, to read KIN again for the first time.....the nightmares...the insomnia....the bed wetting....good times.....

Isaac wrote: "UPS just dropped off my copy of KIN."

OMG, I envy you, Isaac. Reading KIN for the first time.
:)

Gee, I feel like I won the lotto. This is all happening so fast. I usually don't chat with the author on the first book. I'm not that kind of girl. Actually, I'm not a girl at all.

Glad to have you join our group. It can get weird in here but we have fun.

Looks like he fits right in. :)

Weird?
Here?
When?

Yes.
And everywhere.
Always.

Would you prefer eccentric?

I prefer baked ziti.

What about the hazing?

Now I'm scared.

It's funny how meth has been around for so long without being a big deal, but then suddenly it became a crisis. I'm not sure what caused the cultural transition.

I blame Heisenberg's blue stuff.

Easy access would be my guess.

Any idiot can make the stuff, so it's cheap.

And it's about the only thing still made in the USA....

WHO IS ... the Batman?

I mean ... the Coon?

I mean ... Heisenberg?

Some German?

Around here it's high school girls.....

When I was a kid college students and run of the mill dopers were taking meth, and it wasn't a serious or pervasive problem at all. I don't think I knew anyone who got obsessed with it. That "take it once and you're hooked for life" business is as over the top as the anti-marijuana frenzy was.

But I hung for the most part with the people who did downers like pot and hash and honey oil and LSD and shrooms than people who did barbiturates or PCP. And there were the valium takers, who were mostly very purposeful in doing it and restricted. I knew a few heroin addicts, and two of my brothers were heroin addicts to

o, but that's on the downer side of the divide too. The coke people I knew were mostly the disco ducks, and back then it was too expensive for most people except as an occasional treat. Coke used to be much more expensive back then. Even the hint of it could get 30 people trying to cram into an apartment's bathroom because they probably couldn't afford it themselves and didn't know when they'd see it again.

Where I grew up, it was coke, pot and angel dust.
Pot and angel dust being the main problems.
Where I live now, it's high school kids on heroin and Oxycntin. Mostly girls.

Prescription pills are a big deal out here now with middle school to high schoolers. Mostly, stolen from their parents and passed around.

Pot, crank (meth) and mushrooms were big when I was in high school. Coke was around too but crank was a lot cheaper. The only thing I have never seen a problem around where I grew up was heroin and crack. Had to drive a half an hour to go to Oakland or San Francisco to see that sh*t.

They just busted a doctor who had an office next door to Massapequa High School.
He wrote 9 Oxy prescriptions for some kid who OD'ed.

Pills are a big problem. There are plenty of doctors available to write scripts for just about anything. OCD meds are big around here because they are basically just speed. Not that the people who need them are taking them, just housewives who want to lose weight so they take their kids prescriptions.

P.S. I hope they nail that POS doctor.

You and me both, Bill.

Wow heavy drug discussions! Pot and Coke were big when I was a teen, but as Marc said, it was pretty damned expensive to do Coke, so we didn't see it that often. Hallucinagins were big in some circles, but I only tried LSD and Mescaline once each and that was enough. I met a woman that was stuck in a retirement home for life because she tripped so much in the 60s that she scrambled her brains permanently.It was enough to keep me away from that stuff.

My brother also hung with some big time dealers and users and heroin was not off the table. It was just too hard core for me-I wanted to have fun not get dead.

So I am reading Hides right now and am halfway through it and loving it. It reads so well and easily that before I knew it, it was almost 2 am. I also wonder if it was because I was reading on my back-lit Kindle Fire instead of a regular book by candlelight. usually I read for about 1/2 hour before I start to drift off but last night I read for 2 hours. I'll have to remember that the light could be a problem when I need to get up early the next day.

But back to Hides: I get the feeling that there was a real tanning factory in Dungarven, Kealan. Is that the case or did you just research background for the book? I have read before about the smell permeating from them and I just can't imagine living near one, much less working inside one. And I never read about maggots being an issue but damn, I can see how it would be! *shivers*

I bet you're glad you've got a talent good enough to make a living on! I have been in the position of having to take whatever job was available in the past and I can't imagine having to work in a tannery.

I like your description of the main street area-it sounds like a lovely place to visit. The description reminds me of many of our water towns on the east coast like Mystic, CT with its tall ships, private boats, and fishing trawlers, seafood restaurants and a teeming Main St. filled with cool and quaint shops to explore. I think I'd be right at home in Dungarvan. :)