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Did you get any cool books as a gift?
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Recent Posts
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- Day 11: Harm of Fascist Regime’s Foreign Aid Freeze Comes Into View
- Day 10: The Fascist Regime Blames a Plane Crash on Nonwhite People
I figured there’s a ton of Book Addicts here at the frog pond, share your favorite titles with us!
I was happy to receive Barack Obama’s Memoire, Dreams from My Father.
Also, don’t forget that we have a partnership with Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Any titles bought via a BooTrib link will send some financial help to the site. Thanks for your support!
I fully support & endorse Powell’s. Aside of their blue credentials, their customer service is truly wonderful.
Supporting Powell’s & BooTrib together seems absolutely ideal to me — & I fully intend to do so asap.
We have a book club here, called BooBooks. Hopefully kansas will be along shortly to give details on the next installment for January (and no, I’m not calling you short, kansas) 🙂
Yes. Ahem. BooBooks. I’ll put up a poll this Thursday in the Cafe.
The current, qualified nominees are:
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen
Not One More Mother’s Child, by Cindy Sheehan
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
If you’d like to nominate something else, it’s not too late. But please make sure that it:
is available in paperback from Powell’s and is probably also available in most libraries;
and is non-fiction. (Next time we’ll be doing a novel.) Don’t make me look them up! 🙂
As for the date, I think we’ll probably need to set it for sometime in the first couple of weeks of Feb. to give everybody plenty of time, esp. if it turns out to be a big thickie, like Collapse.
Is it just because I put up your red riding hood pictures that The Wimp Factor is being left out of the list?
I don’t think it’s fair to punish an innocent book for my actions.
Yes, that’s exactly why!
Ooops.
The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity by Stephen J Ducat
Freakonomics should not be on the list, because it’s only available in $26 versions at Powell’s, and we’re trying to keep the cost down. I meant to take that one off and keep Wimp Factor and I got them confused.
Freakonomics is one I would like to read eventually. It sounds tres fun to read.
Ya know, the truth is that a lot of people don’t really want to read novels and a lot of other people don’t really want to read non-fiction. So I’m wondering if we might want to have both a novel and a non-fic every time?
People could read both if they wanted to, or go from one to the other, depending on what piqued their fancy in any given month.
We’d need somebody to take charge on the novel side, ’cause I ain’t doin’ both, and I’m claiming the non-fiction throne, at least for now. (This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t read the novel and participate in the discussion of it, ’cause I probably would.)
If this interests anybody enough to take it and run with it, go for it. If there aren’t any takers, we’ll keep going as is, but I’ll ask again every now and then.
Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird — bought it a few months ago and it finally made it up to the top of the reading stack. Although it’s supposedly directed at writers, there’s some fun stuff that can apply to just about any life direction.
I just bought that for someone for Christmas, and almost grabbed a copy for myself at the same time. It looked entertaining and lighter than my usual reads (a good thing).
I’ve read Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions and Travelling Mercies and enjoyed each one of them.
is on the list — I have a 15% off coupon for entire purchase made one day during February at a local independent bookstore (sorry Boo and Susan — got to keep the local places open too!), so I’m hoping to hold off getting it till then…
Perfect for those moments when you can truly ponder life’s mysteries
Ripleys Believe It or Not – Special Edition 2006
I want it! My favorite moment in Beauty and the Beast (the Disney version) is when the Beast gives Belle a library. And people who knew me told me before I went to see it — you’re going to LOVE the present Belle gets. Ah yes … a girl can dream.
New books? Amazingly I only got one this year — the new PD James mystery. I usually get more. But that’s OK — I have a whole stack of unread books waiting for me.
is from the Library of Congress website. To me, it captured the reason I can get lost for hours in a library.
What’s on the frog’s head?
more frogs?
handcuffs?
black hair with white ones intruding? (oh, that’s me)
which frog?
🙂
I think it’s George Lucas who has a library that would put even the Library of Congress to shame-it’s the most beautiful and gigantic library I’ve ever seen in someone’s house. My sister tore the picture of his library out of a magazine and has it posted on her fridge.
Link to Skywalker Ranch tour
Scroll down to the library photo (and giggle over the fact that Reagan wanted a tour, but was refused- you go George!)…
thank you for that link.
I could almost forgive Lucas for episodes 1 and 2 if I could use his library!
yes, doesn’t that just make you want to cry and beg him to let you visit his library? That is the picture my sister has on her fridge.
When I was a kid, my dream was to grow up and live in the local public library branch near my house. It was a fairly modern building with really high ceilings and all glass on two sides. So it was really full of light and cheerful and, of course, full of books. A few years go they built a new building and the old building was put up for sale. I considered buying it — but I had nothing to put into it.
Library dreams are good…I used to have that same dream when younger…now I’m considering (seriously) having my ashes scattered around a library-any library would do really.
I wore a ‘Skywalker Ranch’ T-shirt for years & had no idea it had anything to do with George Lucas. I thought it was a drug reference.
We had a spectacularly beautiful day here in NC. Carolina blue skies, temps in the mid-sixties, and a soft wind.
The kids and I went to see a couple of old friends you might recognize.
Maybe you need a closer look?
Nice pictures. Where at in N.C.? I lived in Charlotte a million years ago and went to Mecklenburg(I think)High for a year.
Wow. What truly lovely pictures those are, SN. Looks like you’ve had an absolutely wonderful day.
Can’t say I don’t envy you the warm, bright weather either 😉
Do I remember correctly that you’re in the Raleigh area? I lived for a while in & around Asheville, but I’m almost sure you’re not there, going by the weather.
I’m afraid I must be spectacularly dense; I can’t place your friends at all.
Hi, WW, I’m in Raleigh, and those guys are Andy Griffith and Opie from the old Andy Griffith show. Even though he’s not from Raleigh, but elsewhere in NC, they erected this statue a year or so ago. We thought it was really funny running in to them when we were just walking through a park where we’d never been before.
I love Asheville, so much more liberal as well as beautiful.
Asheville is a truly great place; I had a wonderful time there (’93-’01) & I’m sorry I haven’t been able to return. I understand it’s grown & changed enormously in recent years. The change I witnessed even while I lived there was quite astounding. In ’93 I believe there was only one coffee house downtown (Bean Streets).
Thanks as well for the clue on the statues. Here I was thinking ‘literary’ but couldn’t come up with any fishin’ writers from Raleigh 😉
My family figured out long ago that the thing to do when gift-giving time rolled around (Christmas or birthday) was to give me money that I could spend on books. I’ve got six or seven en route right now.
No fair Manny…I’m trying to tear myself away from the computer for awhile and rest and you had to go and mention books.
My sister got me one hardback-a book about bush-‘Unfit Commander’ and 12 paperbacks. Iris Johansen and Kay Hooper and Kasey Michaels new book. She also just happened to buy her own presents which gee guess what was another 10 or 12 books I think.
Books are all over our house. Andrew got a ton of beautiful books and I got two books. A Chinese cookbook with beautiful pictures of different regions of China and the latest book by Al Franken – The Truth: with jokes.
Hi, my name is wilderness wench & I’m a book addict.
I absolutely love books. I love what they offer me, I love owning them, looking at them & touching them. I want as many around me as possible.
Ergo, gift books: throughout the few years I’ve spent at my current domicile I’ve been very, very fortunate to attain entire collections of abandoned & neglected books, many out of print. Each and every book has been a gift of enormous value to me.
Thankfully, I now have space to store them all. However, as I’m projecting a move to much smaller quarters this spring, I may very well have to decide to abandon them another fate. I’m not looking forward to it, to say the least.
I love books.
Oh WW — abandoning your books? Don’t you have some kids or pets you could abandon instead? Or … think outside the box. Do you REALLY need a kitchen? Couldn’t you use that space for books? I’m sure if we all gave this some thought we could find a way for you to keep the family together.
🙂
Thanks for your thoughts, maryb — a very sad situation, ’tis true. Alas, the new domicile will likely be a 16′ geodesic dome. I’m talkin’ no extra space at all.
Thank Bastet that the kitties are little!
Most likely I’ll be completely unable to abandon the books & rent out storage space ’til I can create my own.
A geodesic dome huh? Well, you had to make it difficult. But never fear. We’ll think of something. I’m heading out to a party for a couple of hours — but I’m sure a bright idea will come to me. I’m very creative when it comes to storing books. I’ll be back.
Thank you, dear. Any ideas are appreciated — as you see, I don’t have many.
I’m heading out, too. Enjoy the party!
How about under the bed storage? Ottomans or tables that have storage hidden inside?
I didn’t mean to throw myself in the middle of the conversation, but I can’t bear to read about abandoned books.
Yo Tribbles
Doin’ my best B&B imitation here…the perils of living in paradise…Ha!. Dealin’ w/ the “couch surfers” most of the week so Tribtime is seriously curtailed.
At least they’re getting a dose of nice weather and a pretty decent sunset tonight.
later
Peace
Pinks on blue. The perfect sunset.
I need to get some shots of our desert sunsets sometime, perhaps when the days stretch alittle longer. Thanks for sharing!
Some of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen were in northern NM and Ariz. Ours tend to very short lived, whereas, the ones I’ve seen down there last a much longer time and morph thru some amazing colors.
ps: hopefully my composite skills will improve…I got Photoshop Basics for ChrsKwanHanaSol…look out! :{)
Peace
That is gorgeous, dada…
a slightly used December edition of Playboy….and I’m damned sure it was the mailman….his eyes were rather glassed over ; )
peace all….
I just hope the pages weren’t stuc…..nah…ain’t goin’ there. :{)
Peace Bro
nahhh, but heavily wrinkled….LMAO..
peace bro….and a Very Happy New Year for ya.
One of my sisters gave me an autographed copy of Al Franken’s, The Truth, With Jokes. He signed it To Katiebird (not my real name), Love Al Franken.
This is one generous sister, by the way — she bought a copy for all 7 of her sisters & brothers!
Have you started it? I am already half-way through the book. I just finished the chapter about DeLay. I had to put it down or my head was going to explode.
There’s a programming problem that is sometimes causing the advertising links to “go bad.”
The links I use are auto-generated, and I test them. But there’s something in the Scoop software, I am at this point guessing, that zaps bits of code OUT of the auto-generated ad links. (Parts of the link code such as &offerid or &type get zapped out of the link, and end up at the top of the left column.)
Until our programmer can take a good look at this mysterious behavior, will you alert me if a link goes bad? I’ll grab a new version of the link, and substitute it. Thanks so much.
OK!
Will do…BTW, did you catch “Countdown” tonight? Keith totally smacked down John Gibson — got to grab the transcript tomorrow, it’s a definite keeper. 🙂
(Posted my thoughts in Boo’s Worst Comments of 2005 front-pager…)
Oh, just noticed something:
“&subid&offerid&type” (without quotes) is showing up in the right hand column, between the “user’s” page box and the ads — wonder if that’s a Scoop glitch that’s affecting the link boxes…
My family knows I am a book addict but they’re too intimidated to pick out books for me (well, they have no way of knowing what I already have), so they tend to give me Borders gift certificates instead. Though this year, I had a wishlist set up on Amazon to give them ideas. So far this year the big goodie was Dressing a Galaxy: the Costumes of Star Wars, which is a hefty coffee-table book with tons of color photos. (I love the costumes from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, etc. — I must confess to a few hobbies that have very little to do with contemporary American politics…)
One can never have too many books. One can, alas, have insufficient bookcases, or apartment space for same. I will need to do some re-arranging of things this year to make room for some more bookshelves somewhere….
I have found a virtuous solution to this problem. Every so often I take the books that I feel the least attached to and give them to my public library.
Sometimes the books end up as part of the library collection; sometimes they go to the libraries book sale. Either way I help the library and other people and then I can feel very good when I go and buy more books to fill the newly available space.
If there is an AIDS hospice or womens’ shelter in your community, they are always happy to get books. Many of the hospice patients are well enough to read, and have long days to fill, and women working to make new lives frequently take educational courses to help them, and can benefit from reading in different ways.
That’s good of you Andi, I’ve taken them to Salvation Army before. But, I’ve always felt funny about dragging them into work with me, so I’ve never donated them to the library.
That’s an idea — since a lot of the books I don’t have shelf space for are fiction paperbacks (romance, mystery, fantasy, horror, science fiction, historical, bestsellers, children’s). Some of them have been in boxes for years… one of the things on my To Do List for 2006 is to thin out that collection somewhat.
Has everyone left?
I left but just came back. Where’s everybody else?
and solve all our shelving problems. It’s hard to do idle chitchat when someone has come along and promised to put an end one to one of the most perplexing problems of the universe.
Yeah, well I may have bit off more than I can chew here. A Geodesic Dome! Can’t even cover the walls with shelves. I’m thinking that the only solution is to get rid of all the furniture and use the books as furniture. Maybe a few cushions on the piles of books shaped like divans and a feather bed on top the pile of books thats the base of the bed. Wadda ya think?
I’d probably be inclined to go back to my student poverty days and decorate in early milk crates.
I’d probably just bite the bullet, pay for storage and cut back on other non-essentials to pay for it (like food, heat,)
I must admit, with all this FBC silence, I have been able to grade a number of papers.
Is it at times like this that you wonder why you don’t teach kindergarten?
Yes, until my husband (who teaches kindergarden) tells me stories about bathroom accidents.
I’ve been stirring up trouble in real life. I think it’s worked out ok though. I had to order something from Target Online, it doesn’t seem available at any local store. A puffy jacket. For our daughter.
where everybody went have gone.
I can talk and watch — but the tribute film of old tina — oh yeah!
MaryB, it’s very disorienting to be talking to you here, when sitting on the couch next to me is my daughter, MaryB.
And, as soon as I get used to it, she’ll go back to St. Louis, and my confusion will start all over again (don’t you live there?)
OOps. Yes. Nice to know there is another MaryB in St. Louis!
but I’m back. What part of St. Louis does your daughter live in?
University City
in my email — I’m not going to stay up. I’ll have to work my way to staying up till midnight by staying up a little later each night.
And so to bed.
(snort) I knew you couldn’t do it.
So much for trading quips (sigh)
It must be nice that she only moved to St. Louis and not clear across the country. So you can see her more often? Although — I have a good friend and some family members in KC and I never seem to get over to visit them. My bad!
We talk on the phone a lot. But we haven’t been to St. Louis since she’s been there.
We’re hoping to go in February or March, but something always comes up. So, I’m not counting on it.
It’s just nice having her here now!
Queen Latifah singing to Tina — you’re missing it. And Robert Redford is singing along up in the balcony(and they really aren’t showing what’s his name — W).
don’t know if Susan still wants us to let her know if we buy something by clicking through the itunes link. But I just decided that I had to own some Tina Turner.
I got two wonderful books from Gooserock. One is
“The Best of Chief Dan George” who is one of my favorites.
The other is “Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island
—a Cruising Guide”…to keep the dream alive, he said.
I’ll say it’s alive all right. I got him the very same book last Xmas.
Do you think this duplication is significant?
I keep looking for signs that we’ll make it up north one of these years…..permanently.
Clearly significant — but I’m not sure of what.
Are you sure it was duplication and not regifting?
i like this one:
too bad it doesn’t exist
at least for a bit — rewatching tonight’s Countdown on the DVR; Keith was totally on tonight. 🙂 (Repeat starts in about 10 minutes, I think…)
About to get ready for bed…want to get a lot of cleaning done tomorrow (that I didn’t get done today)…
Cleaning doesn’t sound like something to look forward to. Maybe you can put it off tomorrow too. Your floors don’t have to be clean enough to eat off of unless you are planning to have a picnic 🙂
I’ve got a couple of large boxes I was waiting to unpack till after we got the new bed…plus some assorted junk I need to sort through before the first of the year…
the Wednesday Cafe before heading for bed…so feel free to turn out the lights and lock up before you turn in, ManEE…