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akujunkanFor those of you who've asked, yes, I am more or less ::DED FROM GRAD SKOOL::. (Although the awesomeness that was last week helps to compensate. Look out for a post about that in the future, assuming I manage to make it back to the library (and thus the Intranets) some time soon. At any rate, I read a ton of books I read from 9/2-9/9. I'm not joking. I had to make it through about 2,000 pages, in fact. Unfortunately, they were photocopied excerpts, and so I cannot count them as actual books read. Nonetheless, I also managed four for enjoyment--two of them in English.
1) 300 - Frank Miller
Frank Miller is my favorite gay man writing comics today. He may not actually be out, but you'd never know it thanks to the overt homoeroticism of his books and his pathological need to prove that he really is one of the guys, yuck yuck. (Miller’s stridence in affirming his manliness/heterosexuality is exactly how the gay boys I knew in school acted before they were brave enough to admit it and come out.) Maybe there are redeeming factors to 300; the art is nice. It’s just that, as a fan of historical fiction, I prefer offerings in the genre to have some connection to the historical facts they claim to fictionalise. 300 doesn’t, basic plot notwithstanding. Its characters talk and act like late ‘90’s Manly Men!; this may work for readers who don’t care or aren’t educated enough to tell the difference, but not me. Meh, at least the book’s existence gave us the movie, which is about the only softcore gay pornography available for purchase at WalMart, and thus most of The Homeland.
2) Second Chance - Zbigniew Brzezinski
This book finds former National Security Advisor to President Carter Brzezinski evaluating the foreign policy records of the last three presidents. This would be a heavy enough subject on its own, but Brzezinski argues that the decisions of these presidents have even more weight, given that they were the first individuals to fill the role in its new incarnation of “global leader.” Brzezinski does an excellent job of dissecting their actions in a non-partisan, even-handed, and considered manner (ideologues from either political pole will be surprised by some of the conclusions he draws), and overall I enjoyed the book very much. It does suffer, however, from some strange and occasionally tortured sentence structures, which often make it difficult to maintain concentration across several paragraphs. Still, the book is well worth reading for anyone interested in political analysis.
SBS: Who the hell knows anymore?
That will be all.
1) 300 - Frank Miller
Frank Miller is my favorite gay man writing comics today. He may not actually be out, but you'd never know it thanks to the overt homoeroticism of his books and his pathological need to prove that he really is one of the guys, yuck yuck. (Miller’s stridence in affirming his manliness/heterosexuality is exactly how the gay boys I knew in school acted before they were brave enough to admit it and come out.) Maybe there are redeeming factors to 300; the art is nice. It’s just that, as a fan of historical fiction, I prefer offerings in the genre to have some connection to the historical facts they claim to fictionalise. 300 doesn’t, basic plot notwithstanding. Its characters talk and act like late ‘90’s Manly Men!; this may work for readers who don’t care or aren’t educated enough to tell the difference, but not me. Meh, at least the book’s existence gave us the movie, which is about the only softcore gay pornography available for purchase at WalMart, and thus most of The Homeland.
2) Second Chance - Zbigniew Brzezinski
This book finds former National Security Advisor to President Carter Brzezinski evaluating the foreign policy records of the last three presidents. This would be a heavy enough subject on its own, but Brzezinski argues that the decisions of these presidents have even more weight, given that they were the first individuals to fill the role in its new incarnation of “global leader.” Brzezinski does an excellent job of dissecting their actions in a non-partisan, even-handed, and considered manner (ideologues from either political pole will be surprised by some of the conclusions he draws), and overall I enjoyed the book very much. It does suffer, however, from some strange and occasionally tortured sentence structures, which often make it difficult to maintain concentration across several paragraphs. Still, the book is well worth reading for anyone interested in political analysis.
SBS: Who the hell knows anymore?
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2007-09-26 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-27 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-09-28 09:42 pm (UTC)haha. so true XD
ohhh~ i just just got One Percent Doctrine before we moved! now i'm quite interested in Second Chance too. but as you mentioned that it's a heavy subject... wow. i hope i can handle it. :p
no subject
on 2007-09-30 08:07 pm (UTC)I'm actually toying with the idea of rereading Second Chance to see how much of it I missed the first read-through. I've got about 40 or so books here in Homeland Central that I need to get to first; we'll see after that!