Items about books I want to read #38

Posted by: A. Rivera on: July 5, 2013

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Welcome to another edition of this semi-regular feature where I make a list of books I would like to read at some point. I come across books I want to read in various places, and I use these posts to make a note of them for future reference. Maybe you will find a reading idea or two as well here. As always, book links go to WorldCat to help you find it in a local library (unless otherwise noted); I figure you can find a place to purchase the books if need be.

Items about books:

• If you are a parent, you might appreciate this. If you are not, this may tell you a thing or two you need to know before you consider parenting (if you were to consider it, that is). Via Boing Boing, a review of A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting.
• In recent news, China was trying to buy Smithfield Foods. The New York Times has a piece in their Sunday Review on China’s rising economic power that I found interesting. I also found interesting the authors of the piece have a book out, and I might want to read it. The book is China’s Silent Army: the Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image.
• Librarian Avengers blog recommends the book Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City, a memoir by a former resident of Flint, Michigan. As the blogger writes, sometimes you have to leave the home you came from in order to “make some peace with the goddamned place.” I can certainly relate to that sentiment.
• Like Sean Gaffney, dystopian lit is not really my cup of tea. I may read a work in the genre here and there, and that is about it. In his blog, A Case for Suitable Treatment, he finds an item in the genre that may be worth looking at, if nothing else, for the characters. The book is the manga No.6.
• Via Guys Lit Wire, a review of the new Joe Hill book NOS4A2. It sounds intriguing, but I wonder if I really need to read Hill’s previous novels to really appreciate it or not.
• Here are three review items from City Book Review. First, we have a cookbook. But it is not just any cookbook. You stuck inside, maybe in your bunker, after some disaster and are stuck with just your rations and hoarded food? Fear not. You are not stuck just eating out of the can. Now you can make good food out of the hoarded food with The Prepper’s Cookbook: 300 Recipes to Turn Your Emergency Food into Nutritious, Delicious, Life-Saving Meals. Now, I made a little light out of it, but it actually sounds like an interesting book. And speaking of disasters, how about that plutonium? As in the stuff you use to make atomic bombs? Well, during the Cold War, the material was pretty popular in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and someone had to get it out of the ground as well as process it, so on. Those folks lived in what were basically “company towns” and the book Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters tells their history. Finally for this round, they can be disastrous, tools, collector items, or sporting gear (depends on who you ask), but guns are a part of American culture. So, what happens when a guy decides to go talk and be with people who own guns and live the culture? You get this book: Gun Guys: A Road Trip. This actually does sound interesting, and being someone who knows little of the gun culture per se, I am curious to read it.
• Keeping with three books at a time, here are three reviews from BDSM Book Reviews. You guys do know I read some erotica, right? Anyhow, brief warning some of this is NSFW. That out of the way, here we go. First, a review of Violet Blue’s edited anthology Voracious: Erotica for Women. Next is a fan fiction anthology, which I will admit I am a bit skeptical about, but it is edited by Laura Antoniou, who is author of the Marketplace BDSM setting, so I am holding hope. The book is No Safewords: A Marketplace Fans Anthology (Amazon link). Finally, want a bit more Laura Antoniou? Well, her new mystery novel with a BDSM twist is out. Here she is talking about it and her work. The book is The Killer Wore Leather, and by the way, I already have it on my shelf to be read soon; I will post a review once I read it.
• Another one under erotica. This one is Best Lesbian Erotica 2013, published by Cleis Press (they do put out some pretty good anthologies overall. I tend to prefer their erotica over their erotic romance, but either works to read and share with the Better Half). There is a review of it at Erotica For All.
• Via Intoxicated Zodiac, a short review of the book Happy Hour at Home. It is a book about making cocktails and small plates of food, kind of a la tapas I guess. It does sound interesting to look at.
• Via Bookgasm, a review of Fervid Filmmaking: 66 Cult Pictures of Vision, Verve, and No Self-Restraint. According to the reviewer, the book deals with “those movies which author Mike Watt believes to contain everything but the kitchen sink, as if their creators threw in every element imaginable, just in case they never got another chance to direct again.”

Lists and bibliographies:

• This may be good for some people getting ready to watch the new Superman movie (or for after they watch the movie). Via BuzzFeed, a a list of “12 Superman Stories Everyone Absolutely Needs to Read.” I would not say everyone absolutely has to read every item on the list, but there are one or two good ones. One can also argue that there are items missing. For instance, Superman for All Seasons did not make this list, and it is an excellent work. From the list itself, I have read Superman: Secret Identity and Superman: Red Son. I am intrigued by Superman: Brainiac, which I recently placed on hold at my local public library. There may be one or two others I want to read but not as urgently.
• Also via BuzzFeed, a list of “60 Comics Everyone Should Read.” Again, it is one of those relatively subjective lists. There are some good things, and there are some not so good things, but the good things can give a reader just getting into comics and graphic novels a nice exposure. There are a few in here that I have read. One interesting thing they do on this list is give you a suggestion of what to read next if you liked a particular title.
• Book Riot offers a small list of “5 Books on the Business of Books.” That kind of book for a librarian who is also a bibliophile like catnip to a cat.
• Joshua Kim at Inside Higher Ed offers his “Summer Nonfiction Recommendations.” There are one or two titles on this list that spark my interest.

Tags: books and reading, graphic novels, lists, sex and erotica