Chat With Ernest Cline: Author of Ready Player One

The following is a chat held on goodreads.com with author Ernest Cline. Cline has gained recent notoriety for his novel Ready Player One (which has become a favorite of many PHBC members). From time to time goodreads will hold interactive chats with various authors. To see upcoming author chats you can go to their blog at http://www.goodreads.com/blog.

Watch live streaming video from goodreads at livestream.com

Free Book Alert! Connor Westphal #1

Local author and PHBC interview subject (http://pleasanthillbookclub.blogspot.com/2009/07/interview-with-local-authors-penny.html) Penny Warner is releasing he latest book (Dead Body Language) free for download on Amazon.com. The offer is only good for 6/28 and 6/29, so act fast.

Below is a brief description of the novel from Warner's website:
When deaf reporter Connor Westphal moves to the California Gold Country town of Flat Skunk to publish her own weekly newspaper, she doesn't expect a
murder to be her first headline.

But she's discovered a body lying
on top of a grave instead of it in.

With the help of her hearing-ear signal dog, Casper, her TTY telephone, and her ability to see what others only hear, Connor investigates the mysterious death,
while trying to avoid a cemetery plot of her own.

Support your local authors!

Click the link to amazon.com to download the book:
http://www.amazon.com/LANGUAGE-Connor-Westphal-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00865SOFO

For more information on Penny Warner you can visit her website below:
http://www.pennywarner.com/

PHBC Milestone Alert!

With our July book selection, the Pleasant Hill Book Club has reached book choice number 50! From the Hobbit (#1) to Communion (#50), the book club has read a lot of great books, a lot of ok books, and even some down right garbage ones.

A brief recap of some standout choices:

Books of the Year:
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Cat's Cradle
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Water for Elephants
(Some honorable mentions go to City of Thieves, The Hunger Games, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

Worst Books of the Year:
You Remind Me of Me
Dumbest Generation
Watership Down
The People of the Book
(Some dishonorable mentions go to Dangerous Days of Daniel X, Then We Came to the End, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and The Little Book)

Books read before their movies were released:
Watchmen
Hunger Games
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Water for Elephants
(soon to add The Hobbit, Ender's Game, and Before I Go to Sleep)

Shortest Title:
Dry

Longest Title (Not including post colon):
The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse

Most Read Author:
John Le Carre

Books that are a part of a series:
Dangerous Days of Daniel X
Hunger Games
The Hobbit
When Gravity Fails

Books on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die List:
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
The Handmaid's Tale
The Time Machine
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Moviegoer
Cat's Cradle
Watchmen
The Hobbit

Books on the Pleasant Hill Book Club 67 Books to Read Before You Die List:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Sex Lives of Cannibals
Lamb
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Hunger Games
Me Talk Pretty One Day
City of Thieves
The Time Machine 




For more on the number 50: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_%28number%29

July Book of the Month: Communion: A True Story by Whitley Strieber

Via Goodreads.com

On December 26, 1985, at a secluded cabin in upstate New York, Whitley Strieber went siding with his wife and son, ate Christmas dinner leftovers, and went to bed early.
Six hours later, he found himself suddenly awake...and forever changed.
Thus begins the most astonishing true-life odyssey ever recorded -- one man's riveting account of his extraordinary experiences with visitors from"elsewhere..". how they found him, where they took him, what they did to him and why...
Believe it. Or don't believe it. But read it -- for this gripping story will move you like no other... will fascinate you, terrify you, and alter the way you experience your world.

Had to share this

Super Cool!

Google is taking another huge step in becoming the savior of the World's languages and ideas. They have begun a project designed to record all of the World's dying languages. It is a pretty amazing project and worth a look. If you know someone who could help in their quest, please forward this along.

 Explore here: http://www.endangeredlanguages.com

 

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter the Movie

I went to the 9:45am (yes, am) showing of Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter in 3D and here are some notes I came away with.

Pros
- There were actually 5 other people in the audience
- Not the Godfather, but it was fun, lots of gore, big teeth, and presidential kung fu axe play
- The actor who plays Lincoln looks like a young Liam Neeson. That's more of an observation than a pro or con, but I like Liam Neeson, so I put it in this category

Cons
-Not surprising, but very different from the book
-Lots of new characters
-Left out the whole motivation of the Vampires for moving to America and seeking out a country of their own
-You do not need to see it in 3D.No special 3D scenes
-My favorite part about the book was that (besides the Vampire stuff) the book was historically accurate. There were just Vampire explanations to actual historical events. Definitely not the case in the movie.
-The ending is different!Another very cool thing I liked about the book was the end. There was no need to change it. Why they did, we may never know.
-There is no after-the-credits scene. Not a horrible thing, it was just annoying to sit through the credits.

My final recommendation, while the movie will probably win EVERY Razzie Award for 2012, it was still fun and worth seeing.

If you were on a deserted island...

and could only have three books to read for the rest of you life, what would they be? (not including religious texts).

Answer in the comments section.

New Edition to My Library

My parents came to visit from Arizona this weekend and gave me a great gift. A 1979 illustrated version of the Martian Chronciles by Ray Bradbury.

Below are some of Ian Miller's illustrations. There are probably just over twenty of these throughout the book.





"And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, ... which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient me carried clouds of metal insects and electronic spiders into battle."
-Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles 

Another Three Panel Book Review

To see more visit: http://www.sfgate.com/columns/threepanel/archive/

The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury by Neil Gaiman

soundcloud.com/neilgaiman/the-man-who-forgot-ray-bradbury

please follow the link

June Book of the Month: Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson

I couldn't find a good description on goodreads or amazon, but I did find a trailer. Yes, a trailer.

RIP Ray Bradbury

Another legend has died. Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and my personal favorite book of all time The Martian Chronicles has died today 91.

I'll be re-reading some of my favorite stories of his over the next few days.

More to come.

New Addition to the PHBC Must Read List

I just finished reading The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga and immediatly decided it was worthy of adding the the PHBC list of books to read before you die ( http://pleasanthillbookclub.blogspot.com/p/phbc-must-read-list.html).

Below is a description of the book from amazon.com:

-The white tiger of this novel is Balram Halwai, a poor Indian villager whose great ambition leads him to the zenith of Indian business culture, the world of the Bangalore entrepreneur. On the occasion of the president of China’s impending trip to Bangalore, Balram writes a letter to him describing his transformation and his experience as driver and servant to a wealthy Indian family, which he thinks exemplifies the contradictions and complications of Indian society.

The White Tiger recalls The Death of Vishnu and Bangkok 8 in ambition, scope, and narrative genius, with a mischief and personality all its own. Amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, this novel is an international publishing sensation—and a startling, provocative debut.-

http://www.amazon.com/The-White-Tiger-A-Novel/dp/1416562605/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1338760418&sr=8-1

The Bathroom Muse by Charles Simic

via nybooks.com/blog

The Bathroom Muse

Charles Simic

If you are like me, you must always have something to read in the bathroom. Anything will do. A reporter once told me about spending the night in the home of an ex-president. Being in desperate need to read something, he set out to find a book or a magazine and to his astonishment, wherever he went in that huge seaside mansion, he could not find a single thing to read, not even a Chinese takeout menu or a flyer for a bake sale at the local church. Lately, as I’ve discovered, there has been an attempt to remedy this. An anthology called Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is widely available and describes itself on the Amazon website in these words:

At last…Here it is…The book you’ve been waiting for! No more frantic searches at the last minute for that perfect magazine article. No agonizing choices between light reading and the serious stuff. This little volume has it all: entertainment, humor, education, trivia, science, history, pop culture…and more! And it’s even divided by length—you can spend a minute with the Quickies, relax with Normal-Length articles, or really get comfortable with Long Items.

Has there ever been any survey conducted among those who lock themselves in the bathroom inquiring how they spend their time? Do they read, smoke, talk to themselves, think things over, say their prayers, or just stare into space? If not, how come? All those lights burning in bathrooms late at night in large and small cities must indicate someone is doing much more in them than just answering the call of nature. Wives slipping away from husbands who snore, husbands kept awake by their wives grinding their teeth, or just plain old insomniacs, they seek a refuge, a quiet place to read and meditate. With all the surveillance that dozens of government agencies and countless private companies are subjecting every American to, I would not be surprised if they are not already tearing down the veil of secrecy from these late night activities and have a certain dentist in Miami, a farmer in Iowa, a showgirl in Vegas, and thousands of others around the country closely monitored to determine the level of threat they and other bathroom readers may be posing to our country that may require congressional action once their findings are made public.
 
Did our Founding Fathers read while sitting on their chamber pots? In my childhood in Serbia, when outhouses were common in the countryside and toilet paper was regarded by ordinary folk as a decadent luxury, the pile of old newspapers we kept in there provided not only the necessary substitute, but also inviting reading material, which supplemented my education and entertained me. It used to be a common experience, and most likely still is in some homes, that if a child or a grownup was missing and could not be found, someone was sent to knock on the bathroom door. We’ve all had family members who spent inordinate amount of time on the potty or lying in a tub filled with water reading magazines and novels, until a small line had formed outside the door, each of us as impatient to relieve ourselves as to find out what the last occupant, looking guilty, had been reading in there.

As a guest in homes of strangers, I have discovered bathroom libraries that took my breath away by their size and intellectual pretensions. It was unclear to me whether Plato’s dialogues in original Greek, together with Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel were there to impress the visitor, or in the case of another fellow who had a pile of memoirs by ex-presidents going back to Reagan, to make him laugh. I can’t say that I’ve encountered a whole lot of poetry in bathrooms, even in the homes of poets, though I’ve come across many an anthology. Would reading one of Hamlet’s soliloquies or John Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” in such a setting be unbecoming? I don’t know. I’ve heard of people reading the Bible on the toilet, which even for an unbeliever like me came as a shock. Even more appalling to me was the discovery, in a famous art collector’s bathroom, of a painting of the Madonna and the Child, either by some highly competent imitator of Raphael—or perish the thought!—by the master himself.

As for my own reading preferences, I gravitate toward works of reference like Halliwell’s Film Guide, The Guinness Book of World Records, Dictionary of Philosophy, and Farmers’ Almanac. But in an emergency I’ll read about Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon being distant cousins and whether Emma Stone would rather kiss Ryan Gosling or Andrew Garfield in People magazine. Once, at what seemed to me like the world’s most boring dinner party, it occurred to me that a prolonged visit to the can might alleviate my tedium. However when I got there and found one of those modern bathrooms the size of Grand Central Station, there was nothing to read except some pages of instructions in minuscule print inside a box of cough syrup, which I studied thoroughly in no rush to return to my hosts and their guests. Of course, if there’s nothing to read, one can always pass the time mulling over whether to buy a companion for the one goldfish in the aquarium at home or ponder whether the universe is finite or infinite. Kidding aside, I’m convinced that a lot of serious thinking has always been done in bathrooms, and that it is an irreparable loss to humanity that the names and ideas of these philosophers are not known.

No doubt Pascal was right when he said that most evils in life arose from “man’s being unable to sit still in a room.” Puffy-eyed and wrapped in a vintage bathrobe, grandpa shuffles in stocking feet past his granddaughter and son, letting out a groan, since both are too busy to notice him as they stare intently into the screens of their phones. He knows that history is against him; that he may belong to a species about to become extinct, the one relying on printed matter destined to be relegated in the future to the Smithsonian museum, where a replica of someone like him sits on the can with his pants lowered reading a newspaper, while puzzled visitors pass by, a few of them bending over with curiosity to read the brief accompanying description about the reading habits of their ancestors. On the other hand, the old man could very well be wrong and technology in the future will happily address this human need and provide a new generation of e-readers and iPhones especially designed for use in bathrooms, public toilets, and other such disreputable places.

April 17, 2012, 12:35 p.m.

 

New Twist on an Old Joke

Q: What's black and white and not as read (red) as it used to be?

A: A newspaper

har har