What Are You Reading?

[StaggerLee]

A couple weeks ago I got stuck with nothing to read before a flight and the selection of English books in the Portugese airport was pretty slim, so I ended up getting the "DaVinci Code". I just have a few pages left, but it basically reads like a slick hollywood movie or an idiot's guide to the whole "bloodline of Jesus" thing.

Before that I read "The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture can't be Jammed" by a couple of Canadian philosophy professors named Potter and Heath. Kind of a criticism of left-wing activism written by left-wing activists.

I also read that Bidini book recently and enjoyed it. I want to check out "For Those About to Rock."

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Before that I read "The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture can't be Jammed" by a couple of Canadian philosophy professors named Potter and Heath. Kind of a criticism of left-wing activism written by left-wing activists.

tim- and niffermouse got me that last Xmas, and I enjoyed it - a nice face full of cold water for any time it might be thought that making real counterculture is easy or straightforward (capitalism, in brief, loves its niche-markets, and thrives all the more every time some culture defines itself in opposition to some mainstream and tries to break away). It put very nicely what used to bug me so much about Adbusters mag after they started getting all popular and glossy.

[phorbesie]

since we were discussing this the other day...turns out he admitted to oprah that he lied about events in the book...

Winfrey now says she feels Frey 'betrayed millions of readers' Thu Jan 26, 5:43 PM ET

NEW YORK (AP) - In a stunning switch from dismissive to disgusted, Oprah Winfrey took on one of her chosen authors, James Frey, accusing him on live television of lying about A Million Little Pieces and letting down the many fans of his memoir of addiction and recovery.

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"I feel duped," she said Thursday on her syndicated talk show. "But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers." Frey, who found himself booed in the same Chicago studio where he had been embraced not long ago, acknowledged that he had lied.

A sometimes angry, sometimes tearful Winfrey asked Frey why he "felt the need to lie." Audience members often groaned and gasped at Frey's halting, stuttered admissions that certain facts and characters had been "altered" but that the essence of his memoir was real.

"I don't think it is a novel," Frey said of his book, which had initially been offered to publishers, and rejected by many, as fiction. "I still think it's a memoir."

Thursday's broadcast, rare proof that the contents of a book can lead to great tabloid TV, marked an abrupt reversal from the cozy chat two weeks ago on Larry King Live, when Winfrey phoned in to support Frey and label alleged fabrications as "much ado about nothing."

"I left the impression that the truth is not important," Winfrey said Thursday of the call, saying that "e-mail after e-mail" from supporters of the book had cast a "cloud" over her judgment.

On a segment that also featured the book's publisher, Nan A. Talese of Doubleday, Frey was questioned about various parts of his book, from the three-month jail sentence he now says he never served to undergoing dental surgery without Novocain, a story he no longer clearly recalls.

Winfrey, whose apparent indifference to the memoir's accuracy led to intense criticism, including angry e-mails on her website, subjected Frey to a virtual page-by-page interrogation. No longer, as she told King, was she saying that emotional truth mattered more than the facts. "Mr. Bravado Tough Guy," she mockingly called the author whose book she had enshrined last fall and whose reputation she had recently saved.

Talese and Doubleday were not spared. Winfrey noted that her staff had been alerted to possible discrepancies in Frey's book, only to be assured by the publisher. She lectured Talese on her responsibilities: "I'm trusting you, the publisher, to categorize this book whether as fiction or autobiographical or memoir."

Talese, an industry veteran whose many authors have included Ian McEwan, George Plimpton and Thomas Cahill, told Winfrey that editors who saw the book raised no questions and that A Million Pieces received a legal vetting. She acknowledged that the book had not been fact-checked, something many publishers say they have little time to do.

In a statement issued later Thursday, Doubleday, which initially had called the allegations not worth looking into, said it had "sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished."

The publisher said an author's note was being prepared that will be sent to booksellers to insert into current editions and that any future printings would be delayed until the note is included in the actual book. But no changes in the text are planned and the book will remain classified as a memoir.

Winfrey's words also were harsher than her actions. She did not revoke her endorsement, which would have been publishing's version of the death penalty. Only once before has she turned, relatively mildly, on a book club pick: In 2001, she withdrew her invitation for Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections, to appear on her show after the novelist expressed ambivalence over her endorsement.

Her current choice is Elie Wiesel's classic, Night, a memoir with a concise, literary style that has led some to call it a novel.

Three years ago, Frey stepped up as publishing's latest and baddest bad boy, with tattooed initials on his arm - FTBSITTTD - a defiant and unprintable message. Winfrey's selection made his book a million-seller and Frey a hero to many who believed his story was theirs.

"In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope," Frey said Thursday on Winfrey's show. "And when I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image."

Frey's career will likely never recover, although so far he has not suffered for sales. His book remained in the top five Thursday on Amazon.com. A second memoir, My Friend Leonard, was in the top 20.

He currently has a two-book deal with Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, with a novel about contemporary Los Angeles due in 2007. The publisher did not have an immediate comment Thursday.

Beyond Frey, and his publishers, stories of suffering may themselves take a fall. Frey's saga comes at a time when the work, and even the identities, of such alleged hard-luck authors as J.T. Leroy and Nasdijj have been questioned. St. Martin's Press recently added a disclaimer to an upcoming book by Augusten Burroughs, another memoirist who has been challenged.

"I think for a while, this will make people careful," said Ashbel Green, a senior editor at Alfred A. Knopf.

"But this question of fact checking is a complicated one. At The New Yorker and Time and Newsweek, you have experienced people who know where to go and what's right and what's wrong. We don't. There's been a traditional dependency on the author."

[Jaimoe]

Currently: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I finished Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way. It's crazy, but funny.

[SolarGarlic]

Well, Im finishing school as well so I have lots to read...but here are the books I am into at this moment (aside from the ecologicalal education articlese that have been engaging me..) :

Bryson's "short history of nearly everything"

Ronald Wright's "short history of progress"

"the conquest of happiness" bertrand russell

"teacher man" frank mcCourt

"handbook of the canadian rockies" ben gadd (AMAZING text containing geology, plants, animals history and recreatino of the rockies...fantabulous.

[Esau]

People of the Deer - Farley Mowat

I just read a ton of Farley Mowat lately..... I just read "A Whale for the Killing"...and had to do it in snippets because it made me so emotional.

Agreed, 'Whale For A Killing' is great, also all three books, 'People Of The Deer', 'The Desperate People' & 'Walking On The Land' all got to me inside, thats why I've been giving all a second (& third for some) read.

Farley is absolutley amazing in my opinion.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Speaking of Mowat, have you read My Discovery of America? It's his account of his being blocked from entering the US by the INS in the mid-1980s - his name had ended up in their "Do not allow into the US" book, as he discovers before getting on a plane in Toronto - for reasons he spends most of the book trying to learn; he suspects from the outset it's because of the tone of his environmental writings, but the real reason is even more remarkable (how's that for a teaser?).

[Rob Not Bob]

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks ... I think that officially qualifies me as a woman

[Birdy]

"The Notebook" - i haven't read the book, but i bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwled my eyes out during the movie

a customer of mine sent me "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" by Toby Young. i've heard both good and bad about this book so i'm pretty anxious to start reading it.

[SevenSeasJim]

The Invisible Man ~ H. G. Wells

[richbass]

Searching for the Sound - PHIL LESH PEOPLE

I know maybe some of you have read it but I started reading it and before I knew it I was half way done. So I have layed it to rest for a bit cause theres nothing like reading it for the fisrt time. You should all buy it, if you don't already have it. Regardless of how much acid and what not he has done, damn this man has a good head on his shoulders.

[Boochawan]

"Suicide Terrorism" - Ami Pedazhur

It's an acadmeic analysis of the history, causes, roots, and social psychology of suicide terrorism. This has been a topic (on a purely academic and political level) that has always intrigued me...looks at it's development as something which began in Lebanon that turned to a world-wide phenomenon.

[LJFH]

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Edited January 27, 2006 by Guest

[LJFH]

Speaking of Mowat, have you read My Discovery of America? It's his account of his being blocked from entering the US by the INS in the mid-1980s - his name had ended up in their "Do not allow into the US" book, as he discovers before getting on a plane in Toronto - for reasons he spends most of the book trying to learn; he suspects from the outset it's because of the tone of his environmental writings, but the real reason is even more remarkable (how's that for a teaser?).

Yeah, I just read that one also....couldn't believe it. Good ol US of A....eh?

hahaha

[Rob Not Bob]

"The Notebook" - i haven't read the book, but i bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwled my eyes out during the movie

I'll readily admit I wept like an infant during the movie too.

[djmelbatoast]

My lady friend made me watch that and I felt robbed of an hour and a half of my life. The only thing that needed to change to make that a Hilary Duff movie was a change in soundtrack.

[bokonon]

The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood. That woman is so warped and can write so well. How any human can be that strange yet that logical boggles my mind.

My mom (in her kindergarten teacher voice) once asked me, "Do you think she does hallucinogenic drugs?".

Yes, yes I do.