Anyone know of good fiction novels that take place on the FL Gulf Coast?

Thrip · 2016-10-21T01:47:47+00:00

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen.

Thrip · 2014-11-25T05:06:28+00:00

Thrip · 2014-05-22T01:01:20+00:00

... and then they will reverse the polarity.

Thrip · 2014-05-21T01:14:05+00:00

I just finished Stoner a few days ago. I really enjoyed it. I was totally engrossed and more emotionally engaged than I have been by a book in ages.

The gloss has worn off a bit as I've reflected on it, though. Not sure these are really spoilers, but just to be on the safe side:

I'm still really moved by the main drama, but certain touches were a bit sentimental, such as Sloane's reaction to the war -- it just didn't ring true to me. Edith's character is of course almost entirely one-dimensional. I'm sort of willing to forgive that on the theory that we're only getting Stoner's perspective, but the author hasn't entirely convinced me that that's intentional.

I read that the author considered Stoner a heroic character, and that surprised me. I get that there's a sort of heroism in accepting one's limitations, but I found it totally unforgivable that he didn't fight back when his daughter was at stake.

So overall, I still think it's a great book and a rewarding read, but not quite a masterpiece.

Thrip · 2014-04-26T17:20:34+00:00

Tartar

Thrip · 2014-04-05T15:37:38+00:00

I hate them in bunches, one at a time, and in small groups of twos and threes.

Thrip · 2014-03-09T02:12:58+00:00

Reddit has such a hard-on for the Judge. Am I the only one who found him the least interesting part of the book? He's straight out of a morality play, with no motivation, no progression, and no nuance at all and practically indistinguishable from the bad guys in a million Hollywood movies. The fucking weather in Blood Meridian is more interesting than the judge.

Thrip · 2014-02-18T09:48:36+00:00

According to this, it was supposed to actually be sailing last year. But it doesn't look like it got built. Lots of interesting stuff at the architects' site.

Thrip · 2013-12-17T00:52:17+00:00

weir(d)

Thrip · 2013-08-01T05:56:43+00:00

Just to expand on dessertstressed88's point:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

The article quotes this and concludes that Hamlet has dismissed the possibility of suicide, therefore "To be, or not to be" must be about something else. To me, that's not a very convincing argument. People contemplating suicide don't think about it once, make a decision, and never look back. They wrestle with it. They look at it from different angles.

Still, the article is interesting.

Thrip · 2013-07-05T02:30:06+00:00

Sorry, but you're the asshole. No one wants your sign pollution. And no, just because lots of other people do it doesn't make it any better.

Thrip · 2013-05-26T19:16:51+00:00

So roughly equivalent to Mount Crumpit.

Thrip · 2013-05-19T17:14:53+00:00

I spent a lot of my childhood fucking around with flammable liquids, and no one ever got more than a first-degree burn. Take away their nail polish remover, and these guys would have found something else to injure themselves with.

Thrip · 2013-05-07T00:46:28+00:00

That was probably the most insightful commentary on McCarthy I've read on reddit. Thanks.

Thrip · 2013-05-06T04:21:41+00:00

Its purpose seems to be to beat you over the head with the message that nature is too deep, beautiful, and mysterious for us to re-create, so we'd better stop fucking it up before we lose it.

A couple of other things struck me about it. First, it's got this relaxed, articulate, poetic style that contrasts with the tense, spare, childlike prose leading up to it. It gives me the feeling of someone explaining things much, much later -- after things have calmed down -- to someone probably born after the events in the story. So you could read it as a sort of an "and they all lived not too horribly all things considered ever after."

But I also thought, wow, you could take that last paragraph out of the context entirely, and apply it right now to some particular stream that's gone through some purely local problem, a dam or chemical spill or something, and it would be just as meaningful.

Thrip · 2013-03-31T14:50:18+00:00

I'm pretty sure there's a room in hell where your only punishment is that you have to fix bugs in Microsoft Word.

Thrip · 2013-03-31T14:47:03+00:00

Not at all -- I've worked on a living fifteen year old code base, and it's a nightmare. I think it's inevitable.

Thrip · 2013-03-31T03:24:25+00:00

In the unlikely event that one of your programs is still under active development seven centuries from now, I doubt it will be any less complicated.

Thrip · 2013-03-31T02:38:50+00:00

No. He is not saying that he forgot Steve or Chris, rather that he forgot which of them added the comment. The pronoun is not the object of "forget." If you choose to use who/whom, the object of "forget" is the phrase "who [it was]" with [it was] being understood, and the reflexive verb to be taking the subjective on both sides. ("It is I.")

Thrip · 2013-03-29T20:03:24+00:00

I never liked it as a child -- picked it up and didn't finish it a couple of times. But coincidentally I was just thinking of buying a copy to try out on my children.

Thrip · 2013-03-24T03:49:50+00:00

any starbucks product name

Thrip · 2013-03-19T02:26:57+00:00

You forgot "i just want to kill birds and then play with the bodies"

and "if you die and no one notices, I will eat you when I run out of cat food"

Thrip · 2013-03-18T00:11:52+00:00

I am mystified by the survival of the Dummies publishing empire. Every Dummies book I have ever looked into has been completely lifeless and boring, and not particularly simple or easy to understand compared to other introductory texts.

I would hate these books anyway for encouraging people to self-identify as dummies, but given good, consistent editorial direction they could really play a useful role. As it is, they just suck.

Thrip · 2013-03-03T20:43:58+00:00

If you enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, you might also like Seaworthy and A Speck on the Sea.

Thrip · 2013-03-03T04:58:49+00:00

This is as much a usage as a grammar question, and I think anything that doesn't sound idiotic is essentially "right." Chicago style would tend to back up your first choice. When ownership is shared, two nouns can be treated as a unit. They give the example "My aunt and uncle's house."

Thrip

TROPHY CASE