Here they are – the book list for the group I am so appropriately calling GAMBLE – the Gleann Abhann Medieval Bloggers Literary Endeavor. It’s an interesting mix:
The Devil in the White City
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs
A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis
 Star: A Novel by Pamela Anderson
In a Sunburned Country
Illuminator
A World Lit Only By Fire
Sea of Faith
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Game of Thrones
Food in History
The Brief History of the Dead
The Sacred Bee
Women in the Viking Age
Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady
Bastard out of Carolina
The Great Mortality
Nerd Girl Rocks Paradise City
Size 12 Is Not Fat: A Heather Wells Mystery
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
One Good Turn:Â The History of the Screw
The Kite Runner
Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything
Eye Contact
Charlemagne’s Tablecloth
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Sophie’s Choice
The Private Life of an Elizabethan Lady:Â The Diary of Lady Margaret Hoby
A Brief History of Time
Phantoms in the Brain
The Art of War- Machiavelli
Life of Pi
The American Way of Death Revisted
Â
Wow. I really didn’t even have to do much editing after I randomized the list. It kind of fell into a pretty good assortment of heavy and light reading. So there you go. Between now and Sept. 1, your reading assignment is:
Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
Here is the Publisher Synopsis:
“Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds – a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.” The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.”
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Wow. That’s a great list. Eclectic, to be sure- but great.
Thanks! This was a great idea.
August 7, 2006 @ 2:27 pmI can’t wait to start reading.
August 7, 2006 @ 2:31 pmOf course, this means no one is going to be blogging; we’re all going to be too busy reading!
You know, with such an assorted list, the government is bound to add us to some special observation group.
August 7, 2006 @ 3:16 pmguh! just the synopsis made me NOT want to read the book. Sorry guys. I’m a fan of reading for the sake of escaping life and reality. I might join you on a few though…I’m curious to see if Pam Anderson can actually spell. 🙂 And of course the Penis book holds some curiosity for me…bwa..ha.ha…
August 7, 2006 @ 3:30 pmSheila,
August 7, 2006 @ 3:42 pmand that doesn’t count the ones that didn’t make the list. I got a little to … happy … with my list and sent like 4, the book that didn’t make the list had to do with 2nd amendment rights. 🙂
charlotte
And one more thing, did you mean to put Pamela Anderson next to the penis?
August 7, 2006 @ 3:57 pmActually, it was completely random – I did it by random number assignment. Just one of those happy coincidences.
August 7, 2006 @ 4:00 pmFolks – for some reason a lot of comments today got caught in the spam filter – I have restored the comments and hopefully fixed the issue. So if things look a little out of order, or you saw a delay in your comments posting, that’s the reason.
August 7, 2006 @ 5:20 pmGotta call B&N tomorrow before to see if they have it. Sounds rather interesting.
Oh…and is it too late to send my list? I forgot to send mine. I had even gone back through my own (very long) list and rewrote it and starred the ones that I wanted to read first. Of course by reading some of the titles listed my books sound like kid stuff.
August 7, 2006 @ 6:14 pmIf you want to get a jump on the list, I saw Star, the Pamela Anderson book, at Barnes and Noble on the discount shelf.
August 7, 2006 @ 6:34 pmOkay…one thing that is kinda scary…
August 7, 2006 @ 6:43 pmI’d actually been looking at “The Brief History of the Dead” and then decided I wasn’t going to read it. Who sent that in? Or is this an anonymous list?
Gotta go down to the library tomorrow — apparently my PIN on my online request account has expired. How that happened, I’ll never know.
August 7, 2006 @ 10:55 pmSure, send me your three and I will integrate them through the current list.
August 7, 2006 @ 11:25 pmI didn’t attribute them – the person that chose it can sound out if they like – it doesn’t have to be anonymous at all, but I would rather people ‘fess up themselves.
The good news for you, Charlotte, is that the book is 11 months out. I know there are folks opting in and out, so that’s fine. Mainly I want people to seriously consider each book. You might be surprised at what you end up liking. That may be a library-borrow-in-case-I-hate-it book.
August 8, 2006 @ 8:36 amActually, I put “Brief History of the Dead” in there. Guy in my graduating class wrote it. I just haven’t made it around to reading it yet.
August 8, 2006 @ 9:43 amBTW? Thanks to whomever did put “Star” on the list. I’ve been really wanting to read that but needed a good excuse to buy something by Pamela Anderson.
There’s nothing more beautiful than a 304-page train wreck.
Ooh, look! If you buy it together with “How to make love like a porn star” by Jenna Jameson, you can save money.
August 8, 2006 @ 9:56 amI put the “Brief History of the Dead” on my list too. I met the author at a friend’s house when he was working on it. I started reading it months ago, but havent’ finished it.
August 8, 2006 @ 10:29 amI CONFESS. IT WAS ME.
I HAD STAR ON MY LIST.
But I really feel I redeemed myself with “The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets” and also “The American Way of Death Revisited”. For those of you wondering, my thought was “I need a book that I can just sit and mindlessly read, I need something that isn’t going to require alot of thought process to read, I need a book to serve as my relaxer book”….and thus, you get STAR.
August 8, 2006 @ 10:36 amAnd with Pamela Anderson, you get a life saver. Actually, preserver. As in, flotation device.
Hell, I’ll give anything a chance once.
August 8, 2006 @ 10:44 amI think it’s great. Every once in a while, you just need somebody to grant you the permission to read a really trashy novel. One that otherwise you have that little sliver of guilt buying. I am looking forward to it.
August 8, 2006 @ 10:44 amWay to go, Charlotte. I appreciate it. My brain candy book was “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady”, and I’m hoping everybody gets a kick out of that.
I’m also pretty happy that there’s only 3 books on the list I’ve read.
August 8, 2006 @ 12:30 pmOkay okay I’m in. I suddenly have some time on my hands…
August 8, 2006 @ 12:34 pmI’ve read some of them, loved “Size 12 is not Fat” made me appreciate poor Brittany Spears. I’m happy to read some things I’d never pick on my own.
August 8, 2006 @ 12:44 pmIs “A Brief History of Time” the Stephen Hawking book?
August 8, 2006 @ 9:48 pmIs this the right book?
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)
August 9, 2006 @ 1:57 pmAuthor: George R.R. Martin
Yes. To Both.
August 9, 2006 @ 1:59 pmhm.
August 10, 2006 @ 12:14 amI’m on page 79 and to be honest it’s been a very difficult 79 pages for me to read. It just simply hasn’t caught my attention yet. Is anyone further along than I, or has already read it? Does it get better? I fear that if it does, I will be unable to finish. 🙁 But I’m trying at least.
I’m at page 93 and until someone gets further along than I and tells me there is a reason to keep reading… I think I’m done.
August 11, 2006 @ 8:20 amI’ve only made it to page 49 – but I just started last night (fast reader). Thus far, I haven’t found it that bad. He does take a bit too much time to tie the ends of thread together – he doesn’t “cut” from subject to subject that well.
But, then again, I read scientific monographs for a living and non-fiction science for amusement. My standards on readability are not mainstream.
August 11, 2006 @ 9:43 amSABINE! Page 195! A Killing! I’m in the mid 200’s now..granted, I skimmed a couple of pages…but it is SLOWLY getting better.
August 11, 2006 @ 10:26 amor is it 159? well, somewhere right around in there, I promise.
August 11, 2006 @ 10:27 amI am sadly only on page 18…I will do better and read more this weekend.
August 11, 2006 @ 1:06 pmUpdate: Page 315 – if I have to read another damn menu…
August 11, 2006 @ 4:01 pmBook is finished…
http://condoinhell.com/?p=815
August 11, 2006 @ 10:56 pmOkay, I finshed this book. However I skipped all the architect parts after the first four grueling monotonous pages and read only the muderer parts. And it gave me nightmares, thanks to the lovely descriptions of skinning chicks. But, I made it…to the very last page…and I only skipped a hundred or so….
September 1, 2006 @ 9:52 pm