cherry68
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Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
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Post by cherry68 on Jul 17, 2019 18:05:15 GMT
Commentarii de inepto puero. Latin version of Diary of a wimpy kid.
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jul 18, 2019 7:38:07 GMT
So I just finished 11/22/63. It took me a while to get through it, as I've been rather busy of late. It's a very good book and top-tier King for sure. I can finally watch the show now, as I bought it when I was about 100 pages into the book.
Today I will be starting The Green Mile.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 18, 2019 9:27:03 GMT
So I just finished 11/22/63. It took me a while to get through it, as I've been rather busy of late. It's a very good book and top-tier King for sure. I can finally watch the show now, as I bought it when I was about 100 pages into the book. Today I will be starting The Green Mile. 11/22/63 is one of King's best in the last 15 years. The Green Mile is one of his best ever!!!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2019 17:24:09 GMT
I'm at a great reading pace right now, plowing through a bunch of shit I've had lined up for ages. Currently on MOBY DICK, which I'm absolutely embarrassed took me this long to get to. It's fantastic, favorite part so far is Ishmael thinking about how people distance themselves from the dead, and how he is not afraid of death because he has a soul. This book also kind of reminds me of Citizen Kane in a funny way, and it's not even that both are up there for most acclaimed work in the English language in their respective mediums, but that it's extremely entertaining and captivating despite having a reputation among a lot of casual readers as being boring. The average rating it holds on Goodreads is a whopping 3.5, drastically lower than any of the Harry Potter books
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 22, 2019 19:09:59 GMT
(that cover!!)Understudy for Death by Charles Willeford (published Oct '61, reissued thru Hard Case Crime, July '18) I was expecting Floridian pulp, I didn't expect sexy Revolutionary Road. Only 200pg, at times plain but really picks up around halfway thru. Willeford eschews crime genre expectations, offering little in the way of conclusions or comeuppance, instead involving us in a smart and surprising portrait of the hypocrisy of the American dream, gender expectations, materialism, sexuality..... The protagonist Richard Hudson, a second-rate reporter (and wannabe playwright) is investigating why a wealthy housewife killed her children and then herself. His occupation demands one thing (copy), though we sense he probably wouldn't care if he didn't have to - he cynically asserts "If we were unable to devote a goodly portion of our pages to wholesome, violent death, our circulation would drop drastically -- and without a healthy circulation, we couldn't charge so much for ads." But right next to his inquiry is a broader questioning of values and an intimate questioning of his marriage. He's really most of all, without realizing, preoccupied with himself, the cost of things, what he can and can't afford, what he's owed and what he deserves. The way he rationalizes his bad behavior hints at an egomaniacal truth... The way he scolds his wife Beryl when she steps outside her domestic duty hints at that too; how he won't make breakfast for himself bc she's expected to, and to switch the precedent would tamper with his prized dominion. During sex he says: "As I looked down at her, I was grateful for the laws that kept her from getting an overall suntan! The white, white parts were for my eyes alone." Despite the tilted relationship, it's also a strange and poignant one - reminding me of Willeford's bleak-brilliant Pick-Up where the man (who was also a cynical wannabe artist) realizing how much he trusts and loves the woman, says "Such faith and trust were almost enough to take the curse out of the world. Almost." Note: released two months before Rev Road (GOAT book imo), they share themes, husband extramarital goingson, wife doing community theater, etc.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 22, 2019 19:16:35 GMT
So I just finished 11/22/63. It took me a while to get through it, as I've been rather busy of late. It's a very good book and top-tier King for sure. I can finally watch the show now, as I bought it when I was about 100 pages into the book. My favorite King -- absolutely love it. Curious what you think of the series!
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 22, 2019 19:16:45 GMT
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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Jul 23, 2019 7:48:27 GMT
So I just finished 11/22/63. It took me a while to get through it, as I've been rather busy of late. It's a very good book and top-tier King for sure. I can finally watch the show now, as I bought it when I was about 100 pages into the book. My favorite King -- absolutely love it. Curious what you think of the series! I thought the show was very good overall. The book is very complex and at times philosophical, and I think the show handled this reasonably well. I don't think it made any drastically poor decisions in what was cut, and most of what they added was fairly decent. I might have liked a little time spent on Jake's interactions with his 60's students, as they were a great bunch of characters and they made up some of the best passages of the book. The stuff with Miss Mimi was lovely. Pinkins and Franco had chemistry to burn. I like that the show stayed pretty faithfully to the books end. As it's a fairly bittersweet ending, I worried they might ruin it for TV by trying to lessen the sting, but they didn't. In fact, the scene they added with Jake speaking to a slightly younger Sadie, was quite lovely and added a little something special, before we moved on to the books conclusion.
I had my issues, but they were lots of minor things for the most part. One notable thing was that it sometimes felt like a jarring cross between a super high quality HBO style show and a lesser quality basic show. This would sometimes happen from scene to scene.
I think they mostly adapted Sadie well, and the actress did a fine job, but she's not at all how I pictured Sadie visually. I was more so picturing a Gwendoline Christie as I read it. I thought Franco was great, although again, Franco is not necessarily how I pictured Jake. I can't help wondering if Patrick Wilson has a face that would have settled more easily into the 60s, as I think Franco is too good looking to sink properly into an everyman sort of role like Jake requires, but that's not really something he can do anything about. He got the role and he mostly nailed it. He's never great a big emotion, so some moments rang a bit false, but as a fan of his I was delighted to spend 8 hours with him as a leading man. The Bill expansion was great and very welcome, but heartbreaking .
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Post by stephen on Jul 23, 2019 12:47:17 GMT
I think they mostly adapted Sadie well, and the actress did a fine job, but she's not at all how I pictured Sadie visually. I was more so picturing a Gwendoline Christie as I read it. I thought Franco was great, although again, Franco is not necessarily how I pictured Jake. I can't help wondering if Patrick Wilson has a face that would have settled more easily into the 60s, as I think Franco is too good looking to sink properly into an everyman sort of role like Jake requires, but that's not really something he can do anything about. He got the role and he mostly nailed it. He's never great a big emotion, so some moments rang a bit false, but as a fan of his I was delighted to spend 8 hours with him as a leading man. The Bill expansion was great and very welcome,
Gwendoline Christie would've been sensational. Gadon was very good, but Christie would've been so inspired. I really need for her to break out into more diverse roles beyond simply playing badass, physically imposing women (even though she's amazing at those). George Mackay was MVP with a bullet. The Bill expansion is what tipped the adaptation over the book for me in terms of quality. BTW, we all need to be keeping an eye out on Mackay this year for that Ned Kelly movie. Just sayin'.
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Post by jimmalone on Jul 23, 2019 13:07:26 GMT
Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone
Also still at the second book of A la recherche du temps perdu.
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Post by cheesecake on Jul 24, 2019 1:40:10 GMT
My favorite King -- absolutely love it. Curious what you think of the series! I thought the show was very good overall. The book is very complex and at times philosophical, and I think the show handled this reasonably well. I don't think it made any drastically poor decisions in what was cut, and most of what they added was fairly decent. I might have liked a little time spent on Jake's interactions with his 60's students, as they were a great bunch of characters and they made up some of the best passages of the book. The stuff with Miss Mimi was lovely. Pinkins and Franco had chemistry to burn. I like that the show stayed pretty faithfully to the books end. As it's a fairly bittersweet ending, I worried they might ruin it for TV by trying to lessen the sting, but they didn't. In fact, the scene they added with Jake speaking to a slightly younger Sadie, was quite lovely and added a little something special, before we moved on to the books conclusion.
I had my issues, but they were lots of minor things for the most part. One notable thing was that it sometimes felt like a jarring cross between a super high quality HBO style show and a lesser quality basic show. This would sometimes happen from scene to scene.
I think they mostly adapted Sadie well, and the actress did a fine job, but she's not at all how I pictured Sadie visually. I was more so picturing a Gwendoline Christie as I read it. I thought Franco was great, although again, Franco is not necessarily how I pictured Jake. I can't help wondering if Patrick Wilson has a face that would have settled more easily into the 60s, as I think Franco is too good looking to sink properly into an everyman sort of role like Jake requires, but that's not really something he can do anything about. He got the role and he mostly nailed it. He's never great a big emotion, so some moments rang a bit false, but as a fan of his I was delighted to spend 8 hours with him as a leading man. The Bill expansion was great and very welcome, but heartbreaking . Nice write up. I found it to be a pleasantly surprisingly adaptation over all -- especially with the Franco casting who I can rarely stomach. The ending gutted me and I love the We did not ask for this room or this music section.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jul 24, 2019 8:47:48 GMT
11/22/63 was a fantastic book and the series was very decent and really faithful to the book.
Very few changes were made and were not critical. And it also had some very smart easter eggs included.
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Post by DeepArcher on Jul 29, 2019 4:35:44 GMT
Finished: Pale Fire by Nabokov, which I flat-out adored. Not sure that I loved it as much as Lolita but the more I sit on it, the more I'm starting to think I love it even more. Nabokov has some of the most miraculous sensibilities with his prose that I've ever read, an uncanny knack for rhythm that allows him to compose every sentence and choose every word to absolute perfection ... his novels have this amazing flow to them and that seamlessly perfect prose is truly unlike anything else I've ever read, dare I say on a whole other level. Pale Fire is a playful literary exercise and it's also hilarious, a lot like Vonnegut (high-praise for me) in a lot of its tone and content and even in the breeziness/addictiveness of the reading itself. Pale Fire is a beauty that works on an inconceivable number of levels and can be looked at through so many different lenses ... it's a parody of literary criticism, absurd political satire, a clever commentary on masculine arrogance and dick-measuring one-upmanship, a tragedy of cruel irony, a tale of unlikely friendship ... it can be any of these novels that you choose or, best yet, all of them. It's a true treasure of literature ... and the only thing that might be better than Nabokov's prose is, well, the poem. The poem is a miracle.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Jul 30, 2019 21:42:45 GMT
I enjoyed the Patricia Bosworth biographies on Monty Clift and Diane Arbus. I was interested when I read an interview where she said that she was drawn to writing the Clift book because her brother was gay and killed himself. As a model / actress she'd posed for Arbus at the start of her career. Arbus committed suicide as did Patricia Bosworth's father. That's a lot of suicides in one family for any person to bear. Her memoir of growing up in 50s Manhattan is dark with smart, functional people propped up by pills, alcohol and hang ups... I never knew that she'd starred in The Nun's Story with Audrey Hepburn...
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Post by jimmalone on Jul 31, 2019 16:59:58 GMT
Some short stories by Rabindranath Tagore.
And I can check off another nobel prize winner.
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Post by MsMovieStar on Aug 1, 2019 19:24:57 GMT
Oh honeys, I should have posted this a while back because I've had this book now for some time. Can I just say this is the worse self-help book that I've ever read (ok, kinda flipped through)! Let me just say: I booked a table at Atera, but when I showed up and told them I was Michelle Obama they treated me like a crazy person and told me that they couldn't find the reservation... So here's the low down: if you are buying this book to become Michelle Obama, don't bother... because it doesn't work.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 5, 2019 2:05:52 GMT
Roman by Polanski (1984) Almost halfway thru. Powerful, emotional beginning recounting his childhood in wartime Poland. And then a fascinating look at the famous Lodz film school - rubbing shoulders with Wajda, Jerzy Kosinski, etc. I love how the student body across grades cherished different pockets of cinema. 1. seniors loved the early Soviets 2. middle years loved Italian neorealism and 3. Polanski and other freshmen were in awe of Welles and Kurosawa. Something else I didn't really know - Polanski's great early short films didn't give him nearly the amount of exposure as being the husband of Barbara Lass (around '59-'60 she was considered the "Polish Brigitte Bardot"). He was meeting high up execs, producers, and talents like Claude Berri and Rene Clement thru her, really. Also while in Paris around then he translated his Knife in the Water script and tried making it a French production. Anyway, so far it's a well detailed and very cogently written autobio. And I haven't even got to the biggest stuff yet, like um all of his features, Sharon Tate, the scandal....
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 7, 2019 10:35:24 GMT
Got a few days off and more time to read.
Read "The Metropolis" and its sequel "The Moneychangers" by Upton Sinclair, which show the corruption and squalidness of businessmen at the beginning of the 20th century. Shows a man who tries to survive in this toxic environment without losing his ideals (a topic I always appreciate). Certainly an interesting insight into society back then and still valid nowadays I'm afraid.
Now I'm at Milan Kunderas "L’Insoutenable Légèreté de l’être" (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), widely regarded as his masterpiece. And so far I'd conform to this verdict.
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 7, 2019 10:56:25 GMT
I'm still trying to finish this... I like the tv series but the book is so f...ng boring!!!
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 13, 2019 8:26:53 GMT
Heinrich Harrer - Seven Years in Tibet
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 17, 2019 8:18:26 GMT
Han Kang - Human Acts
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 18, 2019 23:34:02 GMT
"Who are you, and why do you skip here?"The Woman Chaser (1960) by Charles Willeford. Another I love from Willeford, after Pick-Up and Understudy for Death (that I reviewed on pg 22); though I prefer those two, this one works, a quick and surprising read at 190pg. With a whistlingly cruel protagonist, Hudson is a used car salesman who deeply rigs his own thinking with male privilege and artistic ambition - his ventures into filmmaking are pretty funny, but ultimately Willeford, inside some clever formal touches that slightly parody a script treatment, builds to pulverize this breed of autonomous American success, this man whose casual storm of ego reduces those around him, whose abrupt disobedience and extremes of violence and perversity towards family, associates, lovers, etc, signal a very embedded moral rot. Edit: forgot to thank Viced for the rec!!! pacinoyes too - I know you mentioned Pick-Up any other Wille-favs?
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 19, 2019 0:17:53 GMT
"Who are you, and why do you skip here?"The Woman Chaser (1960) by Charles Willeford. Another I love from Willeford, after Pick-Up and Understudy for Death (that I reviewed on pg 22); though I prefer those two, this one works, a quick and surprising read at 190pg. With a whistlingly cruel protagonist, Hudson is a used car salesman who deeply rigs his own thinking with male privilege and artistic ambition - his ventures into filmmaking are pretty funny, but ultimately Willeford, inside some clever formal touches that slightly parody a script treatment, builds to pulverize this breed of autonomous American success, this man whose casual storm of ego reduces those around him, whose abrupt disobedience and extremes of violence and perversity towards family, associates, lovers, etc, signal a very embedded moral rot. Edit: forgot to thank Viced for the rec!!! pacinoyes too - I know you mentioned Pick-Up any other Wille-favs? I like everything I've ever read by him and this is a good time to celebrate him with The Burnt Orange Heresy film coming to Venice next month........basically all his stuff is worth reading because he's so idiosyncratic - it's like Bukowski you just read it all and blow past the stuff that's iffy because it all whips by so fast. My Willeford books have the best covers too - the cover for Lust Is A Woman is freakin great - I'd like to blow it up to a poster tbh. Tell me that's not Nicole Kidman on the cover!
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 20, 2019 14:34:27 GMT
Flight Or Fright (2018)
Anthology of short stories, edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 21, 2019 11:43:22 GMT
James A. Michener - Sayonara
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