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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 1:32 am 
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"Please Kill Me-an oral account of punk". Pretty much an oral account of the New York scene. The Toronto scene,"Treat Me Like Dirt" basically copied it's format.


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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 9:20 pm 
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farang wrote:
"Please Kill Me-an oral account of punk". Pretty much an oral account of the New York scene. The Toronto scene,"Treat Me Like Dirt" basically copied it's format.


Hmm. I'll have to check them out.

Ever seen "The Other F-Word"? Good documentary on punk fathers.


And Jay- good recommendation on A Walk in the Woods. Good mixture of comedy, fact, history, etc. Shame the most amusing/annoying person they encountered was so early in the trip though.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Mon Mar 17, 2014 11:26 am 
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Jamie McLennan's book "Best seat in the house" is pretty damn funny. Random stories from his playing days, or as he says, days of sitting on the end of the bench. Good one is when he used to keep food in the gap between his knee & the top of the leg pad, covering it with a towel. Starter got hurt & he got thrown in, forgetting to remove the towel, and the gummibears he'd been eating. Towel fell off after he'd made a few saves and Sean Hill yelled at the ref that the fans were throwing stuff on the ice. hahahaha. No gummibears fell out though. That would have been awesome.

I'm not done with it yet, but 4 pucks so far. Edit- Book shows how once again, the Isles have really sucked as an organization and as people. McLennan got meningitis during a summer. Isles had either planned to let him go already, or decided that the meningitis would keep him from being able to come back at all, or as an effective goalie. Only Darcy Regier called him to see how he was doing. No coach, trainer, owner, other player... WTF is wrong with that team? It's been like 25 years of shit like that.


"The Making of Slap Shot" audiobook was okay. It's about half movie stories, half hockey. Too much cinematic background for my tastes, and not enough hockey. Dave Hanson's book had way better off-set prank stories, but this book gives lots more info on reasons things happen in the movie. Far more of it was based on fact than you'd ever guess. If I had known former NHL ref Paul Stewart had been a minor league enforcer, I'd forgotten it. He was team mates with Goldie Goldthorpe (Ogie Ogelthorpe is based on him), and fought him at a party. Crazy stuff. I'd give it 3 pucks. Narrator didn't know how to pronounce the French Canadian names, and took a bird shot approach, trying different ways at various points in the book, so he could say he got it right at least once. But really, Laviolette pronounced Laviolay? Come on. No, really now, come on. Just one example.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 8:39 am 
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Listening to http://www.audible.com/pd/Sports/A-Season-in-Time-Audiobook/B00BR34PRI. Holy shit is the narrator awful! I'm no Francophone, but this guy apparently never listened to a hockey game or heard that French exists. Says things like Vincent "Damp-house", Patrick Roy (rhymes it with boy, joy, oi...), Sergei Savard. Seriously? Sergei???? Russian-French-Canadian? This man should be publicly tarred and feathered for the massacre he makes of so many great hockey names.

Decent book besides the horrendous narrating, even if the Isles section is very limited. Shit-ton of background info on Leafs & Habs. I expected the Habs storyline since they won the cup that year. I guess the author is a Leafs fan. Lots of info on Mario & Gretzky's injuries/illnesses that year. Makes you appreciate what they went through.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 10:02 am 
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Chris18 wrote:
Listening to http://www.audible.com/pd/Sports/A-Season-in-Time-Audiobook/B00BR34PRI. Holy shit is the narrator awful! I'm no Francophone, but this guy apparently never listened to a hockey game or heard that French exists. Says things like Vincent "Damp-house", Patrick Roy (rhymes it with boy, joy, oi...), Sergei Savard. Seriously? Sergei???? Russian-French-Canadian? This man should be publicly tarred and feathered for the massacre he makes of so many great hockey names.

Decent book besides the horrendous narrating, even if the Isles section is very limited. Shit-ton of background info on Leafs & Habs. I expected the Habs storyline since they won the cup that year. I guess the author is a Leafs fan. Lots of info on Mario & Gretzky's injuries/illnesses that year. Makes you appreciate what they went through.


Habs fan, I believe. I have his Plante book and this one. Haven't read Greatest Game.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 11:45 am 
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Okay, Habs fan who pandered to Leafs fans in this book. :lol:

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:08 pm 
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Chris18 wrote:
Okay, Habs fan who pandered to Leafs fans in this book. :lol:


He's Canadian, and the Leafs and Habs were huge stories during that season.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:23 pm 
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Bosc wrote:
Chris18 wrote:
Okay, Habs fan who pandered to Leafs fans in this book. :lol:


He's Canadian, and the Leafs and Habs were huge stories during that season.


Of course he's Canadian. Americans don't write hockey books. :lol:
But if that author is a Habs fan, he must have wanted to seriously beat down the narrator. Brutal!

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 4:23 pm 
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Was on page 238 of Gone Girl yesterday afternoon. Finished the whole 400+ page book that night.

Holy shit what a bleak, disturbing mindfuck of a book. Supposedly the David Fincher adaptation will veer a bit in the third act (which is of course where the book goes from dark to WTF-levels of twisted) so I'm curious as to where they go with it.

I need some apocalyptic sci-fi to cheer me up. This psychological thriller shit is bringing me down.


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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 3:18 pm 
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Reading the 2nd book in the "Divergent" series. Like "The Hunger Games" it plays with some interesting concepts, but man, it's a tough read because it's written so a 5-year-old can understand it. Do all YA novels have to be THIS dumbed down? I may have to just snag another Catherynne Valente novel to re-learn what truly lush, ornate, beautifully-written prose looks like.


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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Fri Feb 27, 2015 1:52 pm 
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Av-merican wrote:
Was on page 238 of Gone Girl yesterday afternoon. Finished the whole 400+ page book that night.

Holy shit what a bleak, disturbing mindfuck of a book. Supposedly the David Fincher adaptation will veer a bit in the third act (which is of course where the book goes from dark to WTF-levels of twisted) so I'm curious as to where they go with it.

I need some apocalyptic sci-fi to cheer me up. This psychological thriller shit is bringing me down.

Hopefully that book is better than the movie.

I've read quite a few books lately. 1984, Blood Canticle and Old Man And The Sea......I am torn between Brave New World and the one below next

Try this out for apocalyptic sci-fi:

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0988 ... UTF8&psc=1

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 3:21 pm 
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I got the audiobook of Derek Boogard's story, Boy on Ice. Very sad, and just amazing how NHL team doctors prescribe sleeping pills & painkillers by the dozens. Even opposing team doctors, who obviously have no idea if a player already has a prescription did it with him. He also failed several drug tests while already in the rehab program, yet wasn't punished and kept on getting pills from doctors. He wasn't himself according to family & friends for a good year before he ODed. It was tough to catch all of the pill numbers since I was driving while listening, but there are descriptions of his prescriptions of 30 ambien one day, 40 a week or two later. Stories of him buying prescription pills from people illegally, at up to $60/pill, and flying from MN to NY to get them. Some people thought he signed with the Rangers because he knew he had a good connection in NY already.

There are several stories in the book about how he & other enforcers take sleeping pills the night before a game in which they know they'll have to fight. It's not so much that they are afraid of the general pain of a normal fight, but they all know they are easily replaceable and afraid of taking or throwing the one punch that breaks a cheekbone or knuckle that has them replaced with another enforcer.

There are some interesting stories, like after he broke Fedorek's cheek bone & Fedorek wound up on the Wild with Boogard. Everyone in the lockerroom was pretty tense about how their first meeting would go. Fedorek broke the ice, turning to Boogard & saying "would you mind switching lockers with me? I don't really like you on my side with the cheekbone you broke."

All in all, it's a fascinating but depressing book.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 3:50 pm 
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Finished Jim Bouton's Ball Four, a hilarious read. Might have to see about getting his second book "I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally".

Finished a few other hockey books. Getting caught up a bit on the pile I had waiting to be read.

I picked up the first of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - The Colour of Magic. Looking forward to it.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 3:53 pm 
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Bosc wrote:

I picked up the first of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series - The Colour of Magic. Looking forward to it.


Somehow I skipped that one, but I've read probably 90% of the series. Great stuff!

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Fri May 06, 2016 10:13 am 
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Currently reading River Horse by William Least Heath-Moon and it's fantastic, as recommended by Nick Offerman in Paddle Your Own Canoe(also a great read).

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2016 2:35 am 
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Downloaded The King in Yellow for free, hopefully will finish before True Detective pops up in the Netflix queue.


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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2016 12:16 pm 
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Currently listening to Johnny Rotten's 2nd autobiography, Anger is an Energy (first one, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, was exclusively Sex Pistols related, this is mostly after the Pistols). Very good stuff in there. He's funny because he hates pretentious people, but is pretentious, and admits it, and hates himself for it, yet still lauds himself as having invented this, that and anything else. :lol:

Need to be careful with this as an audiobook. This morning I started my car at a gas station with the windows rolled down and the narrator said "you fucking cunt!" quoting Rotten. Whoopsie! Sorry lady just trying to fill your gas tank. Wasn't me, wasn't directed at you...

The narrator gets some serious points off though. He's supposed to kind of sing a few lines of songs and doesn't even get the tone right. I'd be fine with not matching Rotten's voice, that'd be hard. But the tone and such? Come on! How can you read a Johnny Rotten book and not know how the songs go???

Bosc- what did you think of Colour of Magic? I'm not a huge fan of the early Discworld books. Not enough humor in them for me. The later books are great.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2016 12:26 pm 
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Chris18 wrote:
Bosc- what did you think of Colour of Magic? I'm not a huge fan of the early Discworld books. Not enough humor in them for me. The later books are great.


I liked it. Kind of took me a while to finish it, though, so I will likely re-read it. I think I can get the Kobo version from the library of the second book in the series so I'll give that a read for sure.

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2016 12:34 pm 
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Bosc wrote:
Chris18 wrote:
Bosc- what did you think of Colour of Magic? I'm not a huge fan of the early Discworld books. Not enough humor in them for me. The later books are great.


I liked it. Kind of took me a while to finish it, though, so I will likely re-read it. I think I can get the Kobo version from the library of the second book in the series so I'll give that a read for sure.


Cool. When your kid gets older, the Tiffany Aching series is great! Started them with our 7 year old this year. She loves the Feegles. And who wouldn't?

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 Post subject: Re: Book review thread
PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2016 9:24 pm 
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My wife already spoiled the new Harry Potter book on me. :x

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