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Jazzfanz Bookclub

True confessions. A couple of weeks ago, I finally read John Stockton's book "Assisted." I'm ashamed that it took so long and should beg forgiveness.

It was an entertaining read. A knock on the book has been that it didn't "tell all" about teammates and opponents, but that has never been his style and would ring false. I miss him.
 
JazzGal said:
I read "Ready Player One" over the weekend. What a fun read! While I'm not a gamer and was not familiar with most of the games mentioned, I really enjoyed the 80's pop culture blast from the past. I'm excited to see the movie now.
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I can't wait to see what Speilberg does with this film, and generally speaking I hate pg-13 stuff. If the movies any good i'll definitely read the book. I'm really not a big 'summer-blockbuster' type of person but I really like some of the subtle things he does, like character introductions.

The book behind the Tom Cruise video game style movie, Edge of Tommorow; All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka is really damn good.
 
I was going to try to read some books in February for Black History Month and in March for Women's History Month, but I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped and am trying to atone for it in April. The ones I read:

"The Hate U Give" is a YA novel by Angie Thomas about teenagers growing up in an urban USA city. It was beautiful and raw and heartbreaking and emotional. I had to rely on Urban Dictionary to understand a lot of the cultural terminology. There is so much I take for granted in my white middle class life.

"We Should All Be Feminists" is a very short book compiled from a TedX talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. It should be mandatory reading for the entire world. Some of my favorite quotes:

Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.
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We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.
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The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations...What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender?
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Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.
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We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much time telling girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons. All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.
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Gender matters everywhere in the world. And I would like today to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.
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Okay, obviously I could quote the whole thing. I loved it that much.
 
I finished the audiobook of "Matilda" last night. I somehow never read the book or watched the movie. Perhaps I should read children's literature, because this book completely stressed me out. I was nearly having panic attacks at how Ms. Trunchbull was treating the students. I'm traumatized.

I obviously need meditation and sleep.
 
Finished 'The Gunslinger' on tape recently after recommendations in this thread. I haven't read Stephen King in probably 20 years. Even though the ending was kind of flat, it was great, and the narration exceeded my expectations. Thanks to someone here!



“You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them.”
 
sahlensguy said:
Finished 'The Gunslinger' on tape recently after recommendations in this thread. I haven't read Stephen King in probably 20 years. Even though the ending was kind of flat, it was great, and the narration exceeded my expectations. Thanks to someone here!



“You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them.”
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So you gonna read “The Drawing Of The Three” next?
 
Mark Edwards is a psychological thriller author out of Britain. He’s got a bunch of books on Prime reading that I enjoy, especially for “free” books.
 
Right now I’m reading the Memory Man series by David Baldacci. Really really like book one. Almost done with and then I will definitely start on book two.


Also, I love that I finally figured out how to get books on my kindle for free from the library.
 
fishonjazz said:
Right now I’m reading the Memory Man series by David Baldacci. Really really like book one. Almost done with and then I will definitely start on book two.


Also, I love that I finally figured out how to get books on my kindle for free from the library.
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Care to share?

My library has 2 different audio type books on tape. Compressed and uncompressed. The compressed ones hold maybe 4 hours of audio per disc and can be ripped on my PC where the mp3 file can then be sent to an SD card. The uncompressed CDs holds about 60 minutes of audio and can not be ripped, which is unfortunate since the selection for those books is much larger.
 
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sahlensguy said:
Care to share?

My library has 2 different audio type books on tape. Compressed and uncompressed. The compressed ones hold maybe 4 hours of audio per disc and can be ripped on my PC where the mp3 file can then be sent to an SD card. The uncompressed CDs holds about 60 minutes of audio and can not be ripped, which is unfortunate since the selection for those books is much larger.
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I use overdrive media app. It's worked on Apple and Samsung and I think I saw Kindle and other devices in the download setup.
 
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