Book Corner

[Freebird]

I just finished "Nowhere to Run" by Gerri Hirshey, Mac! Fantastic book, I couldn't put it down. The James Brown section is my favorite.

[Mac]

(01-10-2009 04:49 PM)Freebird Wrote:  I just finished "Nowhere to Run" by Gerri Hirshey, Mac! Fantastic book, I couldn't put it down. The James Brown section is my favorite.

I was actually very impressed by the James Brown section. He has never been one of my favorite performers/artists, but the intelligence, the depth, and the emotion he displayed when talking to the author moved me. He was a much deeper man than I had imagined.

[marymagdalene]

My perennial suggestion for a book is "The Power of One" by Bryce Courtenay...
http://www.amazon.com/Power-One-Novel-Br...654&sr=1-1

The book is set in South Africa, shortly before World War II officially begins in 1939...

The narrator, Peekay, is English, and goes to an Afrikaaner boarding school, where he is despised and abused only because he is English.

Peekay suffers for a year at the school, and finally gets to return home, permanently...

On the way home on the train, Peekay is taken under the wing by a conductor, Hoppie Groenewald, who is the Railway Welterweight Boxing Champion...
Because of Peekay's difficulties with bullies at school, Hoppie instills Peekay with the desire to become the Welterweight Champion of the World...

Once home, Peekay meets up with a German professor of music, "Doc," who happens to have a passion for cacti, who will be one of Peekay's mentors while growing up...

As Doc is German, he is arrested and sent to prison as he never registered as a legal alien in South Africa...

Peekay now goes to the local prison to visit Doc, and meets up with Giel Piet, a lifelong resident of various South African prisons, but who is an expert in boxing...

Here is an extract of the book from Bryce's website, http://www.brycecourtenay.com

Quote:This is what happened.

Before my life started properly, I was doing the usual mewling and sucking, which in my case occurred on a pair of huge, soft black breasts. In the African tradition I continued to suckle for my first two and a half years after which my Zulu wet nurse became my nanny. She was a person made for laughter, warmth and softness and she would clasp me to her breasts and stroke my golden curls with a hand so large it seemed to contain my whole head. My hurts were soothed with a song about a brave young warrior hunting a lion and a women's song about doing the washing down on the big rock beside the river where, at sunset, the baboons would come out of the hills to drink.

My life proper started at the age of five when my mother had her nervous breakdown. I was torn from my lovely black nanny with her big white smile and sent to boarding school.

Then began a time of yellow wedges of pumpkin, burnt black and bitter at the edges; mashed potato with glassy lumps; meat aproned with gristle in grey gravy; diced carrots, warm, wet, flatulent cabbage; beds that wet themselves in the morning; and an entirely new sensation called loneliness.

I was the youngest child in the school by two years, and I spoke only English, the infected tongue that had spread like a plague into the sacred land and contaminated the pure, sweet waters of Afrikanerdom.

The Boer War had created a great malevolence for the English, for the Rooineks. It was a hate that had entered their bloodstream and pocked the hearts and minds of the next generation. To their barefoot sons, I was the first live example of the congenital hate they carried for my kind.

I spoke the language which had pronounced the sentences that had killed their grandfathers and sent their grandmothers to the world's first concentration camps, where they died like flies from dysentery, malaria and black water fever. To the bitter Calvanist farmers, the sins of the fathers had been visited upon the sons, unto the third generation. I was infected.

I had had no previous warning that I was wicked and it came as a fearful surprise. I was blubbing to myself in the little kids' dormitory when suddenly I was dragged from under my horrid camphor-smelling blanket by two eleven-year-olds and taken to the seniors' dormitory, to stand trial before the council of war.

My trial, of course, was a travesty of justice. But then what could I expect? I had been caught deep behind enemy lines and everyone, even a five-year-old, knows this means the death sentence. I stood gibbering, unable to understand the language of the stentorian twelve-year-old judge, or the reason for the hilarity when sentence was passed. But I guessed the worst.

I wasn't quite sure what death was. I knew it was something that happened on the farm in the slaughter house to pigs and goats and an occasional heifer. The squeal from the pigs was so awful that I knew it wasn't much of an experience, even for pigs.

And I knew something else for sure; death wasn't as good as life. Now death was about to happen to me before I could really get the hang of life. Trying hard to hold back my tears, I was dragged off.

It must have been a full moon that night because the shower room was bathed in blue light. The stark granite walls of the shower recesses stood sharply angled against the wet cement floor. I had never been in a shower room before and this place resembled the slaughter house on the farm. It even smelt the same, of urine and blue carbolic soap, so I guessed this was where my death would take place.

My eyes were a bit swollen from crying but I could see where the meat hooks were supposed to hang. Each granite slab had a pipe protruding from the wall behind it with a knob on the end. They would suspend me from one of these and I would be dead, just like the pigs.

I was told to remove my pyjamas and to kneel inside the shower recess facing the wall. I looked directly down into the hole in the floor where all the blood would drain away.

I closed my eyes and said a silent, sobbing prayer. My prayer wasn't to God, but to my nanny. It seemed the more urgent thing to do. When she couldn't solve a problem for me she'd say, 'We must ask Inkosi-Inkosikazi, the great medicine man, he will know what to do.' Although we never actually called on the services of the great man it didn't seem to matter, it was comforting to know he was available when needed.

But it was too late to get a message through to Nanny, much less have her pass it on. I felt a sudden splash on my neck and then warm blood trickled over my trembling naked body across the cold cement floor and into the drain. Funny, I didn't feel dead. But there you go. Who knows what dead feels like?

When the judge and his council of war had all pissed on me, they left. After a while it got very quiet, just a drip, drip, drip from someplace overhead and a sniff from me that sounded as though it came from somewhere else.

As I had never seen a shower I didn't know how to turn one on and so had no way of washing myself. I had always been bathed by my nanny in a tin tub in front of the kitchen stove. I'd stand up and she'd soap me all over and Dee and Dum, the two kitchen maids who were twins, would giggle behind their hands when she soaped my little acorn. Sometimes it would just stand right up on its own and everyone would have an extra good giggle. That's how I knew it was special. Just how special I was soon to find out. I tried to dry myself with my pyjamas, which were wet in patches from lying on the floor, and then I put them back on. I didn't both to do up the buttons because my hands were shaking a lot. I wandered around that big dark place until I found the small kids' dormitory. There I crept under my blanket and came to the end of my first day in life.

Here is the rest of the extract: http://www.brycecourtenay.com/book.asp?bid=10

During Peekay's childhood, he gets to witness the beginning of Apartheid...

Up until I read this book, I was never fond of boxing, as it to be a rather brutal sport, but due to this incredible book, and the descriptions of the fights that happen, I am now very impressed with the ARTISTRY of boxing...

I also have to give this book credit, as if it had not been for this book, I would NEVER have gone to see "Million Dollar Baby," Clint Eastwood's movie about a girl boxer...

Welterweight boxers usually range from 140-147 pounds, and here is a small list of some famous Welterweight boxers: Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Ray Robinson, Oscar de la Hoya, and Floyd Mayweather, Jr (Dancing with the Stars)...

One usually does not hear about the welterweight category, as it is the Heavyweights that are the "contenders" and attractions, such as Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson , Mohammed Ali, Gene Tunney, Max Schmeling, Jack Dempsey, Joe Lewis, James J. "Cinderella Man" Braddock, Rocky Marciano, George Foreman, and Riddick Bowe...

[Georgia]

Hey everyone,

If you get a chance, check out Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller. The book is as much a social history as it is a bio about each women. The stories are woven together beautifully.

http://www.amazon.com/Girls-Like-Us-Simo...066&sr=8-1

[DeepPurple]

Man, seeing what the rest of you have read makes me feel stupid.


I read just finished all 8 books in the Southern Vampire series that the HBO show True Blood is based on, in 2 weeks. It was like crack.

I usually read biographies. Have read a TON of books on Elvis over the years. I could probally teach a class on the man.

I have one here I want to start called When A Stranger Calls.

Oh, and "Nowhere to Run", isn't that the one that was on Taylor's coffee table in the OK! mag pictures? It does sound interesting. Maybe I'll check at the library for it.

[Mac]

(02-02-2009 05:11 PM)DeepPurple Wrote:  Oh, and "Nowhere to Run", isn't that the one that was on Taylor's coffee table in the OK! mag pictures? It does sound interesting. Maybe I'll check at the library for it.

Yes, that was the book he had in his hands. You should get it, it's amazing!

[mari]

I finally ordered The Gift of Fear and it came in the mail Saturday. I'm about halfway through right now. It is really, really good and I think it's got good advice for any manager, celebrity or woman.

I also ordered the first book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (recommended by some random people on a non-Taylor site... yes, those exist) but I put it aside to work on the other one. It's got an interesting structure, Asimov skips large chunks of time between chapters (50 years, 30 years) and I wonder how they're going to make the movie.

[marymagdalene]

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article...tml?cat=33

(02-02-2009 05:31 PM)mari Wrote:  I also ordered the first book in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (recommended by some random people on a non-Taylor site... yes, those exist) but I put it aside to work on the other one.

OMG, non-Taylor sites exist? REALLY?

But seriously, now, I remember seeing my brother read those books years ago, but as I did not get into the HARD sci-fi stuff, I never read those books...

I will have to read the backs of them to see if it is something that I could appreciate now...

---

Some other books that I have remembered about that are worth reading are as follows:

The Chronicles of Narnia[ books by C.S. Lewis:
1) The Magician's Nephew;
2) The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe;
3) The Horse and His Boy;
4) Prince Caspian;
5) Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the;
6) Silver Chair, the;
7) Last Battle, the...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Lewis

There is a movie called "Shadowlands" which is a based on a "chapter" in C.S. Lewis' life, starring Anthony Hopkins as himself, and Debra Winger...
**************************************************

Another series of books that I highly recommend is the following:
The Time Quartet by Madeleine L'Engle...
1) A Wrinkle in Time;
2) A Wind In the Door;
3) A Swiftly Tilting Planet;
4) Many Waters; and there is the final book,
5) An Acceptable Time...

What totally blows my mind about both of these series is even though they are geared for the 9-12 age group, they will appreciate the stories, but the sub-stories (sub-thoughts?) that both C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle are implying are much more adult, in the way that the "Harry Potter" books are...

"A Wrinkle In Time" is/was controversial in its time, as it is constantly/frequently on various libraries "Banned Books" lists due to the story's theme of Good vs Evil, again, much like the "Harry Potter" books are/were...

Another reason why both of these series (again, I think) are geared for more for the adult mind is that both C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle have extensively written books on Religion, Christianity, and to a point, Theology...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L'Engle

[sallyannlady]

Since July, I've read all 4 book in the TWILIGHT series... man, I've never gotten thru 4 books so fast in my life- I'd finish one and go right inot the next- they're incredible.

I've just finished a book by William Young called THE SHACK. It's becoming quite a popular book lately- a man has his kids camping, & the youngest girl gets stolen away by a guy who has kidnapped and killed several young girls. The dad and the authorities find her blood-soaked dress in an old delapidated shack. 3 years later, he gets a note in the mailbox from God (Papa) who tells him to come to the shack for the weekend. He's not sure about what to do, but the rest of the family just decides to go away for the weekend, so he's free to go on up. When he gets there (it's winter and snowing all around), all of a sudden the snow starts melting, grass, trees & flowers start blossoming, and the old rotten shack is a lovely country cabin. He knocks on the door, and is loving and enthusiastically embraced by a large black woman, who is thoroughly overjoyed to see him. God (Papa) is this woman, Jesus is there as a young Jewish man who loves to hang out in the workshop and always takes off his shoes and socks before taking a walk ON the lake (funny), and the Holy Spirit is a little Oriental girl whose name means "wind". During this weekend, he learns a lot about his (particularily) and man's (in general) relationship with God, and helping him work out his anger about Missy's death. One day, Papa appears to him as an older man in hiking clothes, and tells him to get dressed- they're going somewhere. They go miles back into the woods, when they come to a cave, well hidden. In the cave, they find the remains of Missy. They bring her back to the cabin, and they have a beautiful funeral ceremony for her. After, he goes into his room, finds his clothes laid out for him and a cup of coffee waiting by the fireplace. He drinks the coffee, falls asleep, and when he wakes up, the shack is back, falling apart and rotten, it's winter again, and everything is the way it was when he first got there. On the way back home, he's in a very serious accident, and ends up in hospital, where he finds out it was Friday nite when he had the accident- he thought he had spend 3 days at the shack, and was coming back on Sunday. Time means nothing to God. He tells the authorities about the cave, and in there, they once again find the body of Missy- the discovery and the funeral were strictly for his benefit. The find and arrest the murderer, and the dad can forgive him for what he did. There's a lot of things in this book that I didn't quite understand, but an awful lot that I could relate to. It's only about 250 pages, so didn't take long to get thru it. Give it a try.

[dg90001]

SAL - The Shack seems like an interesting read. I may have to give it a try.

Right now I am reading "Angels & Demons" By Dan Brown. As you can tell from my previous posts in here- I like complex 'who done it' type books that are have a 'true historical' setting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels_&_Demons