NP outside reading

[Michael Bailey]

> From: rich
> Subject: Flashman
>
> in any case the flashman set is recommended
>

I've enjoyed some of those books too


> From: "Ghetta Life"
> Subject: RE: Flashman
>
> I haven't read the trilogy, and probably won't because of what I HAVE read
> by Stephenson:  _Snowcrash_  & _Cryptonomicron_ (which I gave up on half-way
> through).  I just think he's an artless writer.  I get very impatient and
> bored reading him, sometimes skimming past many predictable and poorly
> written paragraphs.  Maybe some of the IDEAS he writes about are
> interesting, but that doesn't excuse his bad writing.  Just my opinion.
>
> Ghetta
>

the trilogy was almost something that Pynchon could have tossed off
with his extra research from M&D...
Stephenson's prose isn't something to linger over, the way one does
over our hero's, that's for sure.

However, it's rewarding in its own way.  I even admit to rereading
Snowcrash and Diamond Age: parts of Diamond Age moved me emotionally,
and the "three men in a liferaft with a railgun" in Snowcrash riffs
nicely (though who's to say that's what he had in mind) on Jerome K
Jerome's "3 men in a boat"
(Connie Willis did a great extended ride through that landscape in "To
Say Nothing of the Dog" that I enjoyed more)

His early book, "The Big U" had a passage where the hero is stuck,
because of inflexible curriculum guidelines, in an intro writing
class. He rails heartily against the subjectivity of the teacher,
which is invested with the power to award him a lesser grade than
others in the class who don't observe the rules of grammar as nicely
as he.  That sort of develops into young Waterhouse's stance (in
Crypto) of seeing himself as a Tolkien dwarf vs his wife's liberal
arts friends, who are hobbits.  A rejection of pomo, and somebody who
probably finds points of agreement with Ayn Rand (the creative
hardworker struggling against the Ellsworth Tooheys of the world... A
is A after all) <lol>    Not that philosophy is a football field with
pomo at one end zone and Ayn Rand at the other, though I enjoy that
image...

I've been reading some Joyce Carol Oates books lately and finding a
lot to like...also just ordered (well, "ordered" sounds so
dictatorial, how about "purchased"?) a copy of Marge Piercy's "Dance
the Eagle to Sleep" .... it seems she has a new book out "Sex Wars"
which looked pretty good also