[Tanada]

I finally came across a copy of the book last weekend and finished it yesterday as I have been off work with the flu. I think it is worth a read, I went through it pretty quick and I think there is a sequel either done or about to be released. I remembered to look for it because I heard Kunstler interviewed on a talk show as I was driving home last week. You can listen to the interview

http://www.wspd.com/cc-common/podcast/s ... _27158.mp3

I think it was a good and fair one. I do think a couple things about the book were a little off, who would still be putting out electric power after all those years to customers who had no ability to pay? Any regional producer would have cut out all the distant circuits to make their station local and stable and able to support its maintenance from local users who bartered for it. Other than that I picture a lot of the more knowledgeable locals having someone around who could manufacture new ammunition, probably using black powder instead of cordite, to keep hunting and self defense weapons working. Surely someone would have become a local gunsmith in that cultural environment.

[MrEnergyCzar]

Here's my video review of one of Kunstler's greatest books, "World Made by Hand"....

http://youtu.be/UUZK2cBR738

MrEnergyCzar

[Subjectivist]

I enjoyed the book though there were a couple oddities about it. The story moves along pretty quickly and the personalities are more rounded than those archetypoes often used in post appacolyptic stories.

[Rune]

I've read a lot of good fiction and appreciate the art form.

And I read "A World Made by Hand" a few years ago. It was olittle more than a run-of-the-mill Western adapted to Kunstler's purposes. Kunstler can't write as well as he can bitch.

Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" was much better art. Good enough to be made into a movie.

No one would bother making AWMBH into a movie. It would flop.

[Loki]

"World" was a pretty good story, held my attention, but not the best of the modern-day collapse tales. Rune, I have to agree Cormac did a better job, but "One Second After" nails the award. The ending of "World" was so bizarre, out of left field, that I didn't even consider the next book.

I liked "World Made By Hand" better than "One Second After." The latter was a good read, too, but Kunstler is a much better writer.

I've been listening to a lot of Kunstler's podcasts the last few months, sometimes hours of them at a time while sorting tomatoes or driving the delivery truck. Given me a lot of insight into his character. He's more interested in spinning a good yarn with artfully crafted prose then he is in predicting exactly how the future will be. He's far from the dour doomer that he's often portrayed as, he's actually a really funny guy, and a bit of a trickster.

Haven't read any Cormac. Didn't care for "The Road" movie, no interest in the novel. I think Kunstler's two World Made By Hand books and "One Second After" are the only novels I've read in 4 or 5 years. I'm all about the non-fiction. My favorite new book this year was "A Distant Mirror" by Barbara Tuchman, a social history of 14th-century England.

[Pops]

Just an aside about McCarthy, I love his actual grasp of the world, it shows he has been out there and done stuff. The Border Trilogy books (All The Pretty Horses, etc) show such amazing descriptive narration and grasp of the life of the times it's amazing. There was a scene in The Orchard Keeper where someone climbs through a barbed wire fence and the description of how the rusty wire sings as it's pulled through the fence staples is something you just don't know unless you've done it and it really makes the story come to life
Someone with imagination can dream up a plot and dialog and filler but it takes a great observer and doer to really put you in the scene. IMHO.