Books a Man Has Given Me That Made Me Swear NEVER to Go on Another Date with Him EVER Again

"time to make the crazy!"

For instance, "Time to make the crazy!"

-- a.b. (aaaaaathatsfivea...), February 13th, 2007.

otm!

-- bohren un der club of gear (speeeed.to.roa...), February 13th, 2007.

no doubt, i just love the way it looks. i love sf art.

xpost YIKES

milo, it depends on the woman.

the Pevear/Volohonsky translations would have gotten me to swoon.
(my husband decided to indulge my love of Japanese rock bands, theater/film and shiny things instead).

Another great breakup book: De Profundis.

that said, dianetics kinda pwns this thread

EMO HATER

I love that dude. I remember seeing him in the Olympics and how he had to escape Communist Bulgaria so he could change his name.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0446694304.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Transformers: The Ultimate Guide is a detailed look at the fantastic world of these mechanical marvels. Follow each character's history and witness the amazing evolution of the Transformers, from physical structure and weaponry to personalities, alliances, and important battles. Detailed illustrations show exactly how each character "transforms" from warrior robot to high-powered vehicle. Special feature spreads cover all aspects of the Transformers' world and include specially commissioned maps and detailed city plans of their home planet of Cybertron, descriptions of the giant space ark in which the Transformers traveled to Earth, major wars in Transformers history, and much more.

Newest Remy Zero Release: Music for Middle Americans, February 6, 2002
The band Remy Zero released its third and newest album, The Golden Hum, under the Elektra label, striking a resonant political chord across America. Critic Gary Schaefer got it right when he said, "Bands like U2 and Remy Zero are bringing answers to a nation, which after Sept. 11 has come to ask a lot more questions." The captivating album indeed bears political significance. The lyrics reflect our national condition, and are a much better barometer of the State of the Union than any petty Beltway politician could provide.
Comprised of frontman Cinjun Tate, guitarists Jeffrey Cain and Shelby Tate (Cinjun's bro), bassist Cedric LeMoyne, and drummer Gregory Slay, the quintet began as kids in Birmingham, Alabama. Many say their style resembles that of Radiohead, U2, and Black Lab. Amazon.com's Adam Silverman describes their lyrics as simultaneously "dark and uplifting, cynical and hopeful," while other aficionados refer to them as "longing" and "moody."

The first single of the album, "Save Me," is also the theme song of the hit WB show Smallville, which chronicles the high school career of budding super hero Clark Kent. Twenty-four-year-old actor Tom Welling plays Kent, who in this period is the best friend of the young Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). The able presence of Welling on the screen matches well with the message carried in "Save Me." Welling's Kent proves that nice guys finish last, yet he remains constant and true.

"Save Me" relies on a recurrent, subtly shifting chorus whose complex depth and beauty arises from its relative simplicity. The content is just as rich as the form: "I feel the waves crash down inside/ and they pulled me under/ I would give you anything you want, but know/ you were all I wanted/ and all my dreams have fallen down/ crawling around and around/ ...Somebody save me/ Let your warm hands break right through/ Somebody save me/ I don't care how you do it/ Just save me/ I made this whole world shine for you/ Just stay, stay/ Oh, come on/ I'm still waiting for you."

Listening to these lyrics brings pictures of a world encased in ice, knocked far from the stable orbit of a warm sun. Yet, the possibility ever remains that "warm hands" will "break right through" to save us, and we are desperate enough not to worry about how it happens. Practicality and effectiveness are what matter. The stage is set and the conditions are right for the man on a white horse (Clark Kent?) to arrive, just in time. An excellent and provocative suggestion that such a strongman is necessary to restore the pre-1913 American Republic is in Michael A. Ledeen's Machiavelli on Modern Leadership.

I have debated whether the passivity that comes at the receiving end of a hero's deeds is healthy for paleoconservatives to embrace, politically or spiritually. After all, Americanism means self-reliance, and even Tom Welling says in a WB interview that he does not like sheep.

However, there is no danger here. Men can dream. It helps to have ideals to compare reality to, a Northern Star, even as we recognize that our reality is forever doomed to fall short of those ideals. The journey and the effort are what count. There may be no man on a white horse, but there can be a damn good grassroots effort by Middle Americans. It is probably better that way, since a mass movement can never collectively compromise with the special interests, "banksters," and multinationals (not to imply that any of our leaders have sold out, but merely the foreclosure of the very possibility).

I envision a young, brooding, upcoming populist Right generation wielding Pat Buchanan's books with one hand and balancing The Golden Hum in the other. I also expect "Save Me" will play when the nominee takes the stage at the national party convention, the next time the grassroots conservatives field a presidential candidate.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0722532938.02._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

This, I just don't want to be given, at least not with any significance attached:
http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0747546290.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

that is an insane book...first lawrence i ever read after a tipoff from my english teacher.

=

ZapHershElhoff?

Actually, the book that would annoy me most would be one of those "how to write lovely journals" books, or rather, a "how to journal" book, since it has become a verb now. Thanks! I can write on my own! I'm not a baby!

OK, the lamest gift was an ex boyfriend who gave me two books - the Story of the Theremin and the Book of Moog - both of which were GRATE, but then a few weeks later, turned around and gave them (again) to a friend of his! Dude! WTF?

OTM
WORST BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD EVER

Again with the sexism :)

The only boy who ever gave me Anais Nin was P, and maybe that should have been a warning sign. If that wasn't, then the Houllebeque bloody well should have been!

I have that pink cover edition SIGNED. Suprise, suprise.

Some dude whom I dated a couple of years back gave me a phillip roth book which was a total drag. He was such a phillip roth kind of guy it was destined not to work out. A first conversation with a guy I really crushed on was about more obscure Salinger stories, ding ding ding!

My current guy struggled throughout his childhood with dyslexia and learning disabilities so never learned to enjoy reading. After teaching many such students, I do not fault him for this and have no issues with loving a man who does not read. More room on the bookshelf for me!

http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0872863107.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0802130127.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

I have received both, in separate, rapidly disentegrating dating situations.

I have been given good books by men who don't want to rapidly disintegrate, or rather date me. Including "The Giving Tree" which was a very "aw, shucks!" Christmas surprise from a ne'er do well who is one of my dearest friends. Explaining him to the women whose hearts he breaks is not easy. I rely on the anecdotal evidence that, by giving me that book, he must have a heart. Just don't ask me to find it!

I still have the "Batman" comic that the rogue who broke my heart, for the very first time, gave me in passing. I was 13 - he was 20. nothing ever happened between us - I was simply in love with him. And he knew it.

Beware Bukowski in any form! And at any age!

The Bukowski was worse than the fan fiction.

I think the only things that would put me off would be utter crap - if someone buys me Harry Potter or Bridget Jones they clearly have no idea of or relation to what I'm like or interested in.

-- bankster (reduhnekkisssss...), February 13th, 2007.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Nicole Kidman rocking the Aryan ice-queen look as Mrs. Coulter.

The initial post is what i was responding to - texts given within the first moments/days of a burgeoning relationship that just really make you go "Err..Nope."
Bukowski was almost thematic at one point in my dating life. I am not the drunk blow job giving redhead that you crave, ok? I'm the other one.
A nice guy fell in love with me because of my hair and my job. Through Robbins, "Still Life With Woodpecker (i think), he thought his purpose was to fall in love with a long-haired redheaded waitress. He gave me razor blade earrings for Christmas, and I thanked him. And then, a few years later, I ruined his wedding. But not on purpose!
The next guy fell in love with me because I slapped him before I knew him -I was drunk and hadgotten a group of people involved in hijacking a street sign to use as a battering ram - protesting the first war, the Gulf War> it is all so silly now. "No Blood for Oil!"
We ended up at my place, and i was decribing the Breughel print I had on my wall when I discovered him looking at my tits rather than the print. So I slapped him.
I, of course, have no recollection of this. So I carded him the next time I saw him, because he showed up at my bar. He thought that was pretty tough! I had no idea why. I had to card people, and I didn't like his attitude!
That's my blackout boyfriend. And Breughel boyfriend. He didn't have any books EXCEPT Bukowski. Doom!
He was extremely handsome and had a really good stereo system. And we did a lot of drugs together. Mostly acid.
he removed a nectarine pit from my vagina while tripping - I had placed it (shoved it) up there in an ill conceived moment of earth goddess hallucinations. We had eaten the nectarine.
i really shoved it up there. because I had to fake contractions to get the thing out for his finger to grab it.
It's almost like we gave birth to that nectarine pit together!
i think i should either press submit or rethink this entire post. Fuck, it's the sandbox.
I won't be puttin' that on the parenting thread!
And he didn't read good books!

this is a song by J-Lo or Gwen Stefani or someone like that?

: o

i hated hollebeucq (elementary particles) so much i almost started hating the friend who lent his dog-earred copy to me. we have drifted apart, tho, anyway :/

I dumped her.

Yup. We didn't go out anymore after that. It was a sweet gesture, but creepy in content and in various other ways too.

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...) (webmail), February 13th, 2007 9:27 PM. (jaymc) (later) (link)

Did this really need to be asked?

rrobyn, Houellebecq is hard to digest but he's an interesting writer, if somewhat of a facile cynic.

Also, it kind of is endemic, but not necessarily just among men. I run into a lot of people of both genders who don't read. I am constantly amazed by them.

Why, just the other night, it turned out my housemate had never heard of Geoffrey Chaucer. I mean, I can understand not having read any, but never having heard of him?

me too. i LOVE the books, i saw the play twice and the first time it was GREBT, second slightly less grebt (but partly cos y'know you get attached... and the girl who played lyra was the first girl who was called "upstairs" or whatever in doctor who in the simon pegg episode so i got more attached). seriously hope they don't fuck this up - the prob is it *can* be done really well - if they can do lotr they can do anything, right - so it's inexcusable if they do an h2g2 on it.

http://www.jimriegelphoto.com/Images/BookCover.jpg

because this is the weirdest thing i have ever seen and i must know more.

http://www.campaignleadership.com/blogger/uploaded_images/200px-Atlas_shrugged_cover-732433.jpg

yeah, even though parts of the story and some of the writing were compelling, the facile cynic part killed it for me. esp the facile part. i think i would've been into it when i was 17 though.

ok i decided that most books as gifts are going to fly with me, somehow, but if a guy gave me a card or notebook or godforbid a framed picture of, like, a black and white photo of two little kids in hobo outfits kissing and holding a hand-coloured red balloon or some crap, well, then no more dates.

This would annoy me with almost any book. Book club or relationship, not both.

Srsly Andrew, that's mental talk.

A lot of the sort of rock boys I used to date just didn't read. They'd read magazines, but not books, and certainly never novels. (that said, some rock boys are literate, but I was surprised by how many aren't.)

Also, office people. I work with a lot of people in IT or accountancy. I swear to god, the last bloke I dated, he owned five books - 2 of which were Grisham and 2 Dan Brown. He simply did not read. I could not get my head around it.

My girlfriend in high school was forced to keep her books out of sight because her mother thought they were "messy". They watched TV in her family - even her sci fi/fantasy books were viewed with suspicion.

I kind of take it for granted that people read, because that's the kind of family I come from, and the kind of people that I have for friends. But there are lots of people that simply do not.

It's hard not to make it sound like a value judgement or snobbery, but honestly these people's way of thinking and worldview is so far removed from mine that I've learned not to even contemplate a relationship with someone who doesn't read voraciously. It just doesn't work, it's like you're speaking different languages.

And - again, this is my opinion, not a value judgement - I would never date someone whose only reading material was bestseller standards. I mean, it's one thing to read Harry Potter or Dan Brown as a supplement to a well-rounded reading diet, but quite another if that is the only thing a person reads.

-- accentmonkey (tris...), February 14th, 2007. (accentmonkey) (later)

yeah, really! there's something misaligned in your head/soul, my friend.

(Hrrmm, now that is one of my biases - I automatically equate "not reading" with "no imagination".)

I think the only books that could actually put me off someone if they were given to me would be extreme right-wing politics. I don't think I would dump someone just because they had different taste in fiction.

Cycling has kind of killed my bookreading - it should in theory get me home in time to get an hours reading in at the evening, but it never seems to work like that.

For example, many of the people in Mister Monkey's office do not read books or appear to engage in much culture beyond the internet and computer games in any way at all. And even, Andrew, a lot of the people we both know from the Place You Used to Work are not readers. As an example, I offer you the case of our friend C, who now runs his own company. He only reads books like "How to Maximize your Money" or else textbooks. My old friend Stephen C is the same. It's just how things are.

Is this our friend C who's now worked in two jobs with Mister Monkey? I didn't know he has his own company, but I'm not surprised. He's got a missus who does all the reading, no?

Framed black and white photos of two hobo children kissing made me think of this:

http://ec3.images-amazon.com/images/P/0740735403.01._BO2,204,203

It's not so much that I would dislike someone who liked this book as I would dislike someone who was so dim as to have ever spoken one word to me and yet still somehow think that I would like this book.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559120177.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

That is the very chap.

Anne Geddes wants kicking.