Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
CONTEST – Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack & mug
Have you seen Stranger Than Fiction? Did you note the Spoon-ful soundtrack and think, “man, I wish I could listen to this soundtrack all the time – perhaps while drinking a mug of coffee, kept warm and spill-free, on the go”? Well here’s your chance.
Courtesy of Filter, I’ve got a copy of the soundtrack and an aluminum travel coffee mug to give away. No idea what the significance of that is with respect to the film, but there you go. To enter, leave me a comment on this post telling me what the best book you read all year was. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Just recommend me some reading material. Be sure to leave you correct email address so I can get in touch with you. Contest closes at midnight, December 5 so if you haven’t read anything yet this year, you’ve got some time.
CONTEST IS CLOSED. Congratulations to Amanda who has won the Stranger Than Fiction stuff.
Trailer: Stranger Than Fiction (MOV)
Stream: Spoon – “The Book I Write” (Quicktime)
Stream: Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack (Flash)
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12/2/06 10:24 am
I really enjoyed ‘The Effect of Living Backwards’ by Heidi Julavits..you should give it a try.
12/2/06 10:53 am
i’d recommend "Image of the City" by Kevin Lynch. its a great, easy, and short read for anyone interested in city life
12/2/06 11:41 am
As for fiction: Wickett’s Remedy by Myla Goldberg and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by DF Wallace (yeah, I know it’s about 10 years old but I just read it this summer).
Nonfiction: About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made by Ben Yagoda and Always Magic in the Air : The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson
12/2/06 11:51 am
Neither are 2006 releases, but I really enjoyed John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise, and Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
12/2/06 12:10 pm
I recommend Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (‘Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly’). Come for the critical comparisons to Tarantino and Stephen King, stay for the info on what days of the week you shouldn’t order fish at a restaurant.
12/2/06 12:24 pm
I enjoyed Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl).
12/2/06 12:47 pm
My favourite book thus far this year, and consequently ever, is ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino; it’s a series of vignettes that chronicle meetings between Marco Polo (the traveller) and Kublai Kahn (um…the ruler?). Though it’s translated, Calvino’s prose is poetic.
PS. Keep up the great work. I eagerly visit Chromewaves every morning.
12/2/06 1:30 pm
Richard II.
12/2/06 2:28 pm
I enjoyed "The Book of the Damned" by Tanith Lee. It isn’t new (1988) but I just got around to reading it. Bizarre & intriguing.
12/2/06 3:05 pm
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson. Good Stuff
12/2/06 3:16 pm
Friends of Meagre Fortune by David Adams Richards. A relatively short read even though its 300 plus pages. One of Canada’s best authors turns out another east coast fable about secrets and lies and the destruction of lives
12/2/06 3:47 pm
I’ll put in a plug for Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. His writing style is not necessarily everyone’s bag of tea, but if you don’t fight it it can be really engaging, and the plot of this particular book is by far and away his best.
12/2/06 6:10 pm
There’s Flatterland by Ian Stewart for the nerd within all of us. Yes, it is a book about math, but to me it was more "sci-fi lite" than anything else. (And if you’ve ever read Flatland for geometry class, you get the gist of it.)
12/2/06 7:14 pm
If you really have too much time on your hands, "The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East" by Robert Fisk is great. Watch BBC World News and know what they’re talking about!
12/2/06 11:18 pm
I finally read Alan Moore’s graphic novel The Wathcmen recently, and thoroughly enjoyed it. With the recent success of the TV show Heroes, there is talk of adapting it into a film.
12/3/06 4:49 am
Most definitely, it would have to be The Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes by A. Conan Doyle. It’s classic and there’s just something about a man who likes to do cocaine when his mind gets idle.
12/3/06 11:33 am
Heat by Bill Buford
12/3/06 1:03 pm
The Dodecahedron or A Frame for Frames by Paul Glennon. 12 stand-alone short stories that have enough related elements with each other that it could be physically represented by a dodecahedron.
Non-fiction: The New City by John Lorinc. Tackles many city issues simultaneously that other people won’t: immigration, demographics etc. on top of hte usual suspects: Infrastructure, Economy, Environment.
12/3/06 3:24 pm
Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. One of the most creative polymaths ever: he’s a symbol freak and a librarian with a practically eidetic memory, as well as the seminal writer for the Argentinian ultraism movement, which pared down writing to the elegant, expressive essentials.
12/3/06 4:36 pm
"Gravity’s Rainbow" by Pynchon.
Mother fucker too me a year and a half, but I think I get at least some of it.
12/3/06 4:42 pm
The best thing I’ve read is a Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde… it may not be the most unexpected choice but that doesn’t mean it’s not amazing. Anyone who hasn’t read this definitely should at least give the first chapter a shot and take it from there.
12/3/06 5:29 pm
We The Living by Ayn Rand was great in my opinion.
12/3/06 6:12 pm
1984 – George Orwell.
It just makes so much SENSE!!
12/3/06 7:30 pm
personae: the shorter poems – ezra pound
despite his fascist ties later in life, he was a remarkable writer and a main usher of imagism and modernism in poetry.
12/3/06 8:18 pm
I would have to say Douglas Coupland’s JPOD.
Great plot, witty than your grandma
12/3/06 11:08 pm
A History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage. He looks at how beer, wine, coffee, tea, liquor and Coke have shaped world events. Much better writing than your standard history book.
12/4/06 1:17 am
The Stolen Child by Keith Donahue…it’s a fairy tale for grown-ups, based on the old Irish lengend about changelings. Tender and sad and beautiful.
12/4/06 8:05 am
Hmm, out of the books that I read this year, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami is probably my favorite. Chester Brown also released Louis Reil in paperback this year, which is a fantastic and completely unique biographical graphic novel.
12/4/06 11:15 am
Douglas Coupland’s JPod and the Tom Robbins short story collection.
12/4/06 11:40 am
Alan Lightman’s "Einstein’s Dreams" I think it came out a few years ago but it’s short dreams that Einstein had about the nature of time before he came up with his theory of relativity. I read it near the summit of Mount Rainer, it was surreal.
12/4/06 1:14 pm
Not only is Omnivore’s Dilemma one of the most informative and engaging books that I have read in a long time, it will make you feel very different about corn. Yup corn is everywhere and it depends on us. This book dissects three meals (fast food, organic and DIY) in a humorous, thoughtful and interesting manner – from farm to mouth. There is no finger wagging or holier than thou attitude just the ‘fun’ facts.
And reading it will convince you that the truth about our food is stranger than fiction.
12/4/06 3:43 pm
Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is probably the best book about that is written and that will ever be written about September 11th 2001. The format of the book, with pictures substituting for words, and words acting as pictures, is unlike any book I have ever read.
The Road by Cormac Mccarthy is a post-apocalyptic tale a boy and his son take to the ocean. It is haunting, shocking, and disturbing and best read late a night in a dark room with a flashlight.
Chris(dot)Reath(at)gmail(dot)com
12/4/06 5:43 pm
I, too, second Chris Reath’s recommendation of "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, an absolutely harrowing and disturbing tale of devastation and despair, the hint of hope toward the end notwithstanding.
David Mitchell’s "Black Swan Green" is a touching and compelling coming-of-age story. I’d use a "Catcher in the Rye" analogy if they weren’t so overused.
Donald Antrim’s memoir, "The Afterlife", not unexpectedly contains some of the finest writing published anywhere this year. If you’ve not read Antrim, begin here and work your way backwards.
12/4/06 7:38 pm
Freakonomics
12/4/06 9:54 pm
Although it’s been a around for a while and adapted for the silver screen, "High Fidelity" by Nick Hornby is a witty jem you can’t miss.
12/4/06 10:20 pm
I wonder if the coffee cup has to do with the D Hoffman character in the film.
12/5/06 10:49 am
Best book i read was Skinny by Ibi Kaslik
12/5/06 2:48 pm
no prize for me please, i don’t need it. i just enjoyed reading folks picks from the familiar magic realists to the unknown but interesting.
i’ll add mine… journey to the west (vol.2,3,4) this year.
12/5/06 5:00 pm
One of my favorite modern authors is Jonathan Franzen. I read one of his older novels, Strong Motion,this year. I love his prose and he writes complex, interesting characters. I still think about them months after finishing the novel. As if that wasn’t enough, he throws in plot twists like earthquakes and asassination attempts without seeming melodramatic.
For nonfiction, I would recommend Franzen’s The Discomfort Zone, his memoirs of growing up in St. Louis, published this year.