This was kind of a stupid book about trains.

I mean, it wasn't that bad. William T. Vollmann, very prodigious, very brilliant, very insane writer, likes to spend his free time sleeping out by the railroad tracks, illegally hopping freight trains with his 50 year old friends, interviewing hoboes underneath bridges, and poetically pining for his lost women, his prostitutes, his Diesel Venus. This book could have been interesting, and when I purchased it on sale at a bookstore in Berkeley, this is what I was thinking. But, in the end, it really was just kind of stupid, rambling, incoherent, pointless, every once in a while dipping into some rather gorgeous prose and showing off Vollmann's handle of language, but then immediately backtracking and becoming once again, stupid. Oh well. I was going to start his 800 page book about crack cocaine and the seedy underbelly of San Francisco, but now I think I'll probably just read something else.

What to say about this book.......?

I picked this up by recommendation of my favorite oldest son (who heard it was a good one but hasn't read it himself). I question how to review this one because, as I was reading it, I was both enjoying the writing immensely but also, feeling like the writer was annoyingly repetitive and bogged down in too many unnecessary details...thus the 532 pages of story. Now that I'm finished though, it will be one of those books that I'll talk about and recommend as a work of a brilliant writer. Quite simply, it's a story about Kemal, a Turkish man engaged to be married to Sibel but he falls obsessively in love with a young, distant relative of his, Fusun, and he takes us along on his addictive journey of love for the rest of his life, collecting objects along the way to chronicle the progress of his feelings for Fusun, creating a museum for his collection...a museum of his 'heart'. I hope somebody out there reads it so that we can compare notes.

Unbroken spirit.

I try to avoid Bestsellers. I do. And to my credit, I began listening to this one before it hit every best of the best list but I must say that it deserves every ounce of praise it's been getting. Unbroken is the true story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic runner turned POW during WWII. A fascinating tale of a man whose spirit to survive will leave you in awe. (I even started to question my right to whine about the chilly weather and the cut on my heel.) Inspiring and a must-read!

Point Omega ∞ Don DeLillo

Time slows down.

Brute matter becomes analytical human thought.

There are five shower rings. No there are six shower rings.

People on line at the post office. Nannies with children.

"If you were any more intense, you'd be a black hole. A singularity," she said. "No light escapes."

The omega point. A leap out of our biology. Ask yourself this question: do we have to be human forever?

Jessie's circumstances.

Man at the wall. Up against the wall.

The film made him feel like someone watching a film.

Jessie shrugging.

Cities are built to measure time. To take nature out of time.

These nuclear flirtations we've been having.

Time to close it all down. This is what drives us now.

FREEDOM.

Franzen is the real deal.

This is a fantastic article about him and his work process (he superglued an ethernet cord into the back of his computer and broke off the wire to avoid internet distractions).

I think I may have liked The Corrections the tiniest bit more.

Both books have really excellent detailed visceral scenes about poop.

Books I read in 2010 that I liked.

As I was typing this list I noticed that kindle put the ones in my archive in alphabetical order so some from 2010 are missing and some of the following might be from 2009. Anyway I like all of these.

Just Kids by Patti Smith
Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Sueden
Life by Keith Richards
Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes
They Call Me Baba Booey by Gary Dell'Abate
The Missing by Tim Gautreaux
The Stuff That Never Happens by Maddie Dawson
My Hollywood by Mona Simpson
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
The Believers by Zoe Heller
A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
Following Polly by Karen Bergreen
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson
Angler by Barton Gellman
Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
The Beach House by Jane Green
Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell
The Bedwetter by Sarah Silverman
Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Butcher of Beverly Hills by Jennifer Colt
The Case of the Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif
Caught by Harlan Coben
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
City of the Sun by David Levien
The Company She Keeps by Georgia Durante
Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad
The Crossroads Cafe by Deborah Smith
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Deception by Johnathan Kellerman
Deeper Than Dead by Tami Hoag
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
Easily Amused by Karen McQuestion
Faith in Love by Liann Snow

Bloggedly helpless

Could somebody please add my name to the 2010-2011 Round Three Readers? I can't figure out how to do that.