Book Learnin’

Posted on March 19th, 2007 in Family & Friends, Books by losbrushes

While we like the same types of movies, TV shows, and music, my husband and I don’t have a lot of overlap in the books we read. Some friends of ours have come up with an interesting project that allows one to appreciate the tastes of the other: each year they read one book at the other’s request.

This is a great idea and we intend to do this one day, but not while I’m in graduate school. Instead, we have a new project: The Intellectual Devotional. Like many devotionals, this book contains 365 daily inspirations, but this one is purely intellectual in content.

Each day of the week covers a different topic:

  • Monday = History
  • Tuesday = Literature
  • Wednesday = Visual Arts
  • Thursday = Science
  • Friday = Music
  • Saturday = Philosophy
  • Sunday = Religion

I picked it up for $10 at Half Price Books. Seemed like a harmless investment on a book that normally costs around $23. Our plan is to read one each evening and discuss. Hopefully we’ll uncover some new interests and learn a little along the way.

We start tonight. Wish us luck.

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Summer Book Club Update

Posted on July 1st, 2006 in Books, Television by Los Brushes

One goal I have for this summer is to read all books mentioned on the TV series Lost. While I don’t normally get that into television, this seems like a noble goal considering that the reading list is quite good.

Since my first post about this we have discovered even more books mentioned on the show, including Giglamesh and Stephen King’s The Stand.

As of today, here’s where I stand from my original list:

DONE

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle - I had read this the first time around when I was about nine years old, and it was just as entertaining this time around.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume - My husband described this one as like reading the literature of space aliens when you are a 35 year old man.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding - I just finished this one today. I had read this in high school but didn’t remember muct of it. This one started slow for me, but then got very interesting and I couldn’t put it down.

Turn of the Screw by Henry James - May I never read Henry James again. James’ style of prose is too tedious for me, and my husband felt the same.

An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge by Christoper Sergel - Short and interesting

Lancelot by Walker Percy - This one was mistakenly left of my original list even though we had already bought it. This is a psychological book that still has me wondering what is real.

TO GO

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(For a complete review of each completed book, please visit my husband’s blog. I’m not even going to try to steal his thunder.)

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Summer Book Club

Posted on May 28th, 2006 in Books, Television by Los Brushes

Earlier this year my husband and I caught the Lost bug. Neither one of us watch a lot of television, as we both have little free time and prefer movies. But we had heard a lot about the show and began DVRing Season 2 as we watched Season 1 on DVD.

We ended up watching the entire first season in four days.

As Season 2 drew to a close, we knew we’d miss what had become our Wednesday night routine: Leave work at a decent hour, grill something from Whole Foods’s meat counter, let the DVR catch the first 15 minutes of the show, then promptly begin watching around 8:15 so we could forward through all of the non-Lost-related commercials.

So we decided to start a two-person book club. We rarely read the same books…. I’ve gone the low-brow route over the years. My bachelor’s degree is in English, which made me not even pick up a book for at least a year after graduation, and following business school I have found myself liking magazines more and more.

But we noticed throughout Lost that there are several book references, and Sawyer is often shown reading books found in the wreckage of the plane. Wikipedia not only gives a nice overview of the show, but also of the significance of the literature.

So we decided to read them over the summer, and try to figure out what the hell is going on. Here’s our new summer reading list (in no particular order):

 

  1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle;
  2. Watership Down by Richard Adams;
  3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume;
  4. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien;
  5. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum;
  6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky;
  7. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll;
  8. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad;
  9. Lord of the Flies by William Golding;
  10. Turn of the Screw by Henry James;
  11. An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge by Christoper Sergel; and
  12. Bad Twin by Gary Troup (written specifically for the show).

We’ve read some of these before, and we’ll use those as a cocktail hour for the brain after reading some of the denser books. This seems like plenty to keep us busy this summer, but after Wednesday’s season finale it looks like we also have to add Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. Damn… hard to read authors who were paid by the word….

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