Read NZ

Green Bay High School

View schoolsView schools

Top 10 team members

  1. 1

    MsRenee

    9,347 pts
    View this team member
  2. 2

    Jenny

    14,675 pts
    View this team member
  3. 3

    Lucy Edmonds

    9,708 pts
    View this team member
  4. 4

    Beate

    8,882 pts
    View this team member
  5. 5

    GreerC

    6,605 pts
    View this team member
  6. 6

    lucyhall

    6,863 pts
    View this team member
  7. 7

    Brent

    4,619 pts
    View this team member
  8. 8

    Alexa

    3,806 pts
    View this team member
  9. 9

    NatalieW

    3,765 pts
    View this team member
  10. 10

    htwigg

    2,830 pts
    View this team member

Brent

4,619 pts
(4,619 pages read)

  • All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire

    By Jonathan Abrams
    4 stars

    The Wire is probably the most profound and important television show I have ever seen. This oral history was occasionally illuminating.

  • The Fran Lebowitz Reader

    By Fran Lebowitz
    3 stars

    I love Fran Lebowitz, but this is fairly banal and repetitive. She does not have much to say here and I understand why she has put writing on the shelf for the better part of 40 years now.

  • 11/22/63

    By Stephen King
    5 stars

    This time travel book is as much a love story as a meditation on US history. This was my first Stephen King novel. I shall return.

  • The Come Up: The Oral History of Hip Hop

    By Jonathan Abrams
    0 stars

  • The Man Who Died Twice

    By Richard Osman
    0 stars

  • How They Broke Britain

    By James O'Brien
    4 stars

    I have known about many of the murderer's row of loathsome Tory politicians and media moguls brought to trial by book here by O'Brien in How They Broke Britain. The cartoonishly vile antics and policies of Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch have been hard to miss. O'Brien successfully shows what has happened to a society where accountability has vanished and the social contract has been almost completely demolished. O'Brien argues that much of the media, the political establishment and networks of think tanks promote and reinforce each other and have caused disastrous social and economic outcomes for Britain in recent decades.

  • Widespread Panic

    By James Ellroy
    4 stars

    This is another one of Ellroy's accounts of the seedy side of life in Mid-Century Los Angeles. This was in the form of a confession of a bent cop/ extortion artist, Freddy Otash, who worked at the dark end of the street where power, cash, sex and drugs met. A young Senator John Kennedy shows up, as well as the dodgy cast and crew of Rebel Without a Cause. This may not be for everyone, but it is for me.

  • Norse Mythology

    By Neil Gaiman
    4 stars

    The main characters- Odin, Thor and Loki- are familiar enough to me and Gaiman seems to emphasize some of the humour of many of the myths. Much it feels similar to American myths like Babe, the blue ox. However, Ragnorak, the end and rebirth of times was surprising to me. There was sure enough a gory brutality here that would not be out of place on the cover of a Molly Hatchet album, but there was also a kind of Zen tranquility on the return and balance of life.

  • Against Interpretation

    By Susan Sontag
    5 stars

    Sontag was a formidable intellectual and her critique of art, literature and films in these essays from the 1960's were compelling.

  • Erotic Comics

    By Aline Kominsky Crumb
    3 stars

    I recently watched a documentary featuring Aline and her husband Robert Crumb. They were part of an underground comic movement that took deeply personal obsessions and experiences and fearlessly offered to the public. I think both are (in the case of Aline- were) fine artists. With this in mind, I found this collection of work of a variety of erotic comic book illustrators to be a decent introduction. There was a significant number of these people- usually men- that were into bondage. Really, really into bondage. This is not for me, but it may be for you. It's a good jumping off point to, uh, things..

  • Shine Bright

    By Danyel Smith
    4 stars

    This combines a Smith memoir of growing up in Los Angeles and an argument. The argument is this- black women are the great unsung heroes of American pop music. She makes a compelling case. We learn about comparatively unheralded figures like Leontyne Price, the first Black woman to gain international fame as an Opera singer, as well as the giant soul and pop stars from the 1950's to Beyoncé. I have compiled an incredible playlist through this book. That's a pretty good recommendation, in itself.

  • Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever

    By Matt Singer
    4 stars

    This is a nostalgic read for me as I mourn this earlier media age when film and film criticism was taken more seriously. The anecdotes were entertaining and I learned a number of interesting things about Siskel and Ebert, as well.

  • Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Middle East

    By Michael Oren
    5 stars

    I decided to start learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside of social media. This book draws on primary source information from the Israeli, Arab and Cold War participants. It shows how chains of events leading to even so momentous occasions as war can often be random. I appreciated the insight the book gave into the complex considerations that the leaders on all sides were faced with then and now.

  • All the Pretty Horses

    By Cormac McCarthy
    5 stars

    Like most of the McCarthy books I have read, I did not know what to expect from this love story. It is a love story, but it is spread amongst many characters, relationship and ideas. The optimism, idealism and passion of youth and the sadness and regret of experience are tied together within the protagonist John Grady Cole. The scene where he intuits the death of his father and breaks down and cries in the middle of a river he is crossing will stay with me.

Add pages read