LibraryThing Author:
Lyza Danger Gardner

Lyza Danger Gardner is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.

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Member: lyzadanger

CollectionsYour library (1,059), Asa Merged Library (3), Books I've Read (350), Arts (18), Biology, Plant and Animal Care (11), Children's (41), Classical Works, Classical History (37), Drama and Poetry (53), Fiction (330), Food and Cooking (63), Foreign Language (18), History and Humanities (115), Instructional, Hobbies and Technical (57), Natural and Mathematical Sciences (39), Biography and Memoir (36), Portland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest (86), Reference and Language Tools (20), Science Fiction (29), Self-Help and Special Interest (20), Textbooks (27), Travel (24), Other (Humor, Eclectic, Etc.) (13), eBooks and Audio (16), Rare, Collectible, Old or Favorite (25), To read (180), Read but unowned (6), Currently reading (6), All collections (1,080)

Reviews185 reviews

Tagsverified (995), read (401), fiction (371), novel (345), tbr (203), nonfiction (194), history (146), reference (105), readin2008 (75), oregon (74) — see all tags

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Recommendations11 recommendations

Groups18th-19th Century Britain, 75 Books Challenge for 2008, Ancient History, Book Nudgers, Group Reads - Literature, I Lock My Door Upon Myself: Fans of Joyce Carol Oates, Medieval Europe, Portland Readers, Powell's City of Books, TuesdayThingersshow all groups

Favorite authorsT. C. Boyle, Willa Cather, Jonathan Safran Foer, Cormac McCarthy, David Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, Joyce Carol Oates, José Saramago, Neal Stephenson (Shared favorites)

Favorite bookstoresPowell's Books

About meI read too much.

About my libraryThings I own and generally read a lot of:
* Modern literature
* 19th-century European literature
* 19th- and 20th-century American literature
* Popular history, popular non-fiction
* Shakespeare
* Classical works (Greek/Roman)
* Geography and historical geography; multi-disciplinary histories

Everything in the "My Library" collection herein is a book that I physically own.

Homepagehttp://www.lyza.com

Also onFacebook, Flickr, friendfeed, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Twitter

Membership LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Member Giveaway

Real nameLyza

LocationPDX

Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs http://www.librarything.com/profile/lyzadanger (profile)
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lyzadanger (library)

Member sinceFeb 14, 2007

Currently readingThe Hero with a Thousand Faces (Bollingen Series) by Joseph Campbell
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (Vintage Departures) by David Grann
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier
Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart
Aristocrats: Power, Grace, and Decadence: Britain's Great Ruling Classes from 1066 to the Present by Lawrence James
show all (6)

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I appreciated your review of What We Believe but Cannot Prove.
Hi, Lyza,
I don't get around to checking out your LT page often, but while entering the Seamus Heaney Beowulf to my own collection, I saw your mention of John Gardner's Grendel. I love that book, too. I think Maggie has read it; I seem to remember her telling me that each chapter was linked to a sign of the zodiac. ] didn't pick up on that when I read it in the 1970s. Also, I'm in total agreement with you about The Alchemist. It's pretentious and preachy and not all that original.
--Mom
Thanks for your review of Aeneid. After leaving it years ago in high school Latin thanks to Gutenberg, I plan to have another stab at it. We had no context whatsoever and it seemed that it went on and on and on about libations.
From Frank Delaney: Thank you for reviewing Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show. To have one's work receive such thoughtful and intelligent attention is a true pleasure. In this new democracy we call the blogosphere, I'm assuming that all the old bets are off and we authors can now engage with those who write about our work - hence his comment. Which is: Your dear Irish aunts can relax! This book is built largely on satire and I fear I may have ignored the old directive that satire must be laid on with a brush and not applied with a pencil. (Your comments gave me the reward of remembering this: we don't always learn from our reviewers.) Thus your aunts can come to understand that in fact I'm lampooning (if perhaps too gently at times) all that I myself have found, shall we say, "difficult" about my native land (my journalism has been far angrier). This will also help to explain my point that far from writing for any audience, I write for myself - I have no other intention and would never patronise any audience, American or other, by playing to them. By way of proof that I write for myself, there are quotes from, hommages to, more than thirty mythologies throughout the novel, and many, many little slaps of pastiche. Again, thank you so much - I enjoy your reviews, and I was especially arrested (not surprisingly) by this one; it was full of insight.
I saw your review of Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Just wondering if you had read his Anathem novel?
Noticed that you liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in reviewing my new novel and posting your comments here (as well as on a few other book-related sites). I thought you might like my novel since it's been compared to that novel by a number of reviewers. I could e-mail you the novel in an e-book format if you'd like. Let me know if you're interested. Here's a link to a summary in case you're interested:

http://christophertusa.com/

Thanks,

Chris
Life is....
by Mother Theresa

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
Hi Lyza - I would like to add you to my Interesting Libraries as I have been reading some of your reviews and I like them! We are both in the Group Reads - Literature group which I have just joined which is how I came across you. Looking forward to Pale Fire.

We disagree about Jane Eyre but are in sync on the Alchemist and I completely understand where you're coming from on Midnight's Children - my brother had the same reaction, although I must confess that I, contrary to expectations, ended up thoroughly enjoying it.

Anyway, I'd like to see what you're up to every now and then, bookwise. Hope you don't mind.

Pummz
I just finished Out Stealing Horses and wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your review. I was very impressed with this book and loved the style, the long simply discribed scenes of completing a task or describing a setting. This is a book I will think about for a few days before jumping into to something else. I noticed that you read The Sea by John Blanville. I thought these books had some interesting similarities: the death of a spouse led to going back to a childhood residence, the narrator reviewing the events of his childhood that made a lasting change in his life, etc. Anyway thanks for the review; your insights were appreciated.
I just finished Out Stealing Horses and wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your review. I was very impressed with this book and loved the style, the long simply discribed scenes of completing a task or describing a setting. This is a book I will think about for a few days before jumping into to something else. I noticed that you read The Sea by John Blanville. I thought these books had some interesting similarities: the death of a spouse led to going back to a childhood residence, the narrator reviewing the events of his childhood that made a lasting change in his life, etc. Anyway thanks for the review; your insights were appreciated.
Your review on Midnight's Children captures exactly what I thought too! Thanks for posting it.
Lyza,
Just had to leave a compliment. I, too, am overrun with books as they now create aisles within my house. The TBR piles have run amok. My compliment is for your reviews; I am utterly envious of how brilliantly you articulate a book's weaknesses and strengths. Can't wait to read more! Just finished Monsters of Templeton and felt you hit every nail on the head. (Alas, I am cursed with weak and hackneyed metaphors.....)
Flattered that you find my library interesting. I once had the pleasure to be in Powell's, but it was during a 24 hour layover and I could only buy one book because my bags were packed and had no room.
Hiya Lyza, I started with The Windup Bird Chronicles and moved on from there. Some of the other books are quite different but still uniquely Murakami but TWBC has elements of all of them. So I would say you're on the right track. Hope you enjoy it!
Hi - Thanks for adding my library to your "interesting libraries" list. It is a pretty odd assortment, but I enjoy almost any kind of nonfiction. I hope you find some interesting ideas for your TBR list - I know I have found many while perusing other libraries here.
Hi Lyza,

I just read your comments on Manguel's book about Homer. I have had the same thoughts about Homer, feeling I have to find out more. But I did not go to Manguel's book for it (I may yet) but got from The Teaching Company audio courses by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver, one on Odyssey and one on Iliad. Since I spend a lot of time every day in the car, commuting to work, I have loved the format and each course of 12 lectures is spectacular, presented by a most knowledgeable professor. This might give you more insight if you wish it. The Teaching Company has its own site and the courses are frequently available inexpensively on Ebay. I could also be persuaded to lend them to you.
Hi there. Liked your review of the Iliad. Don't forget that the reason we 'know' everything but don't hear it in the Iliad is because the Iliad is one part of a 12 part Epic Cycle, most of which is lost. The Odyssey is the only other part we still have. Effectively, the only reason we 'know' anything about the remainder of these myths is because parts of it are reported in later sources, such as imperial Roman or later Classical Greek sources (think Aeschylus's Orestia). If we didn't have those later retellings either, we wouldn't know about the rest of the myth. Also, we really don't know whether these retellings were accurate in the first place! All incredibly fascinating stuff, no?
Hi Lyza -- I like your reviews and found I basically agreed with them on the books we have in common -- I, Claudius; Vanity Fair; Thirteen Moons -- to name a few I've recently read. Jen
Hi, Lyza. I really liked and resonated with your review of A Long Way Gone. I read it last summer, and found it disturbing...not just by its subject matter, which I think is true and horrific, but by Beah. There just seemed to be something fishy there -- maybe all that did happen to him, or maybe he added into his experiences some that he saw or happened around him. It was a lack of affect, I think, that was hardest for me to grasp. I also read a similar, but I thought much better, book along the same lines, What is the What? by Dave Eggers about one of the Sudanese "Lost Boys." Here the person's soul and spirit were really engaged in the story, though it was fictionalized and written by a very gifted professional writer, which may have been the difference between the two books. I also thought the main character's Christian faith in What is the What? made a huge difference, both in what happened and in the telling of it. Martha Huntley
Lyza, this is your Irish aunt here, just set up my account (1 book). Love your picture. C.
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