Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China Mieville. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Iron Men

Day (of coincidii) 183 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and David is reading Iron Council, by China Mieville, because:

1) his brother recommended it on a cross-country road trip,
2) I found it for him, slightly out of alphabetical order at Babbitt's, and
3) he likes cool, dystopian stuff.

David is one of the SOBs, a men's book group, currently reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, though now I have recommended to them The Wishbones, by Tom Perrotta. The non-SOBs (not our real name, as we don't have one), a women's book group, has already read both.

Today I handled Iron Joe Bob, by Joe Bob Briggs, a pseudonym, a book dedicated to Bobby Bly, a comic answer to the poet Robert Bly's Iron Man movement. Many years ago, visiting Seattle, I purchased Iron John, by Robert Bly, at the Elliott Bay bookstore, for a fellow who was showing me around the city when I was there to look at the papers of the poet Michele Murray, who died young of breast cancer. He was a troubled man, the brother of a close friend, and I was glad to know what to give him, when he expressed intense interest in the book.

Yesterday, watching Shutter Island with my daughter so she wouldn't get too scared, I saw a preview for Iron Man II. And that's all the manly coincidii I can stand in one day.