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Post by Johnny_Hellzapoppin on Aug 23, 2019 7:21:14 GMT
So I finished The Green Mile yesterday. A fine and rather bittersweet read, but middle of the road King for me. The film is such a faithful adaptation.
So, King Quest (I christened it, because I am a proud dork) continues with Needful Things. I read the first 20 pages on the train this morning. I'm immediately feeling it. Hopes are high.
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 23, 2019 13:07:29 GMT
So I finished The Green Mile yesterday. A fine and rather bittersweet read, but middle of the road King for me. The film is such a faithful adaptation. So, King Quest (I christened it, because I am a proud dork) continues with Needful Things. I read the first 20 pages on the train this morning. I'm immediately feeling it. Hopes are high. I love the Green Mile, I consider it one of the King's best. Needful Things is also one of his most known and acclaimed works. I'm sure you're gonna love it. What I didn't like was the ending, really. Seemed a little rushed to me. But it's true King has a thing with the endings...
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 25, 2019 12:00:50 GMT
Pearl S. Buck - The Living Reed
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Post by DeepArcher on Aug 27, 2019 18:52:31 GMT
Fiiinally just got around to finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I feel like I'd been reading forever (ironically?) thanks to the last month or so of my life being totally hectic and not really having time for it ... anyway, I went in thinking that that family tree at the beginning was an incredibly condescending inclusion, only for me to soon realize just how necessary it is and how confusing the book would be without it. Hell, it's even kind of hard to follow with that visual aid. Overall it was a bit too encyclopedic/summary-based for my liking ... yes I know there's only so much you can do when covering a century+ of material in just one book, but it's still not the way I'd have gone about doing it (but what do I know?) ... but it didn't hinder my enjoyment too much, the characters are colorful and incredibly well-realized and many passages are just beautifully written. Can totally understand its status even if it's not quite a personal favorite of mine; something I may perhaps appreciate more with age.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 30, 2019 11:29:09 GMT
Wolf Boys - Dan Slater
Unreal true story about Narcos and kids and murder....... money...... and madness for hire - would make a great movie even if you think this stuff is played out. It's not and tells it from a unique angle too. Pretty much impossible to put down once you get into it.
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Post by jimmalone on Aug 30, 2019 20:05:52 GMT
Fiiinally just got around to finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I feel like I'd been reading forever (ironically?) thanks to the last month or so of my life being totally hectic and not really having time for it ... anyway, I went in thinking that that family tree at the beginning was an incredibly condescending inclusion, only for me to soon realize just how necessary it is and how confusing the book would be without it. Hell, it's even kind of hard to follow with that visual aid. Overall it was a bit too encyclopedic/summary-based for my liking ... yes I know there's only so much you can do when covering a century+ of material in just one book, but it's still not the way I'd have gone about doing it (but what do I know?) ... but it didn't hinder my enjoyment too much, the characters are colorful and incredibly well-realized and many passages are just beautifully written. Can totally understand its status even if it's not quite a personal favorite of mine; something I may perhaps appreciate more with age. That's one of the great novels (speaking of general consensus) that really did not much for me. I don't recall why exactly, it was my half life ago when I read it, but from what I mean to recall it felt somehow soulless, just like a summary of this happened and that happened and I couldn't relate to the characters at all.
I'm at Menschen im Hotel by Vicki Baum, from which Grand Hotel was adapted.
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 31, 2019 22:06:36 GMT
Wild Wives, Charles Willeford (1956) - dare I say, a perfect little pulp. Only 92pgs really, fast-paced but packed with great characters, shocking violence, a lot of plot twists, laughs, meaningful irony, and cinematic detail.... I wish they made a movie of this right out the gate, get Joseph H Lewis or De Toth, boom. Really slyly weaved by Willeford who defies postwar success - the rich have their lunatic "investments" and the up-and-coming are too sensitive for adult doings - the protag PI Jake Blake, decent working man and war veteran, is plucked from his comfort, he's duped and undermined on all sides. The book opens with a little girl pointing a gun at a stunned Blake; turns out it's a fake water gun. It's a clever foredoomed start - fake or not, the stir inside was real.
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 6, 2019 9:17:03 GMT
La Soledad Del Manager by Manuel Vazquez Montalban
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Post by evilbliss on Sept 6, 2019 12:28:46 GMT
"Whisper Network" by Chandler Baker
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Post by TerryMontana on Sept 12, 2019 10:18:23 GMT
Jo Nesbo - Thirst.
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 13, 2019 8:23:43 GMT
Just a few days ago I bought his latest Harry Hole novel "Knife" and currently I'm re-reading one of his earlier books "Nemesis". To me Nesbo is, along with Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin, probably one of the three best living writers of crime novels.
Mainly right now I'm reading "Berta Isla" of Javier Marias though.
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Post by TerryMontana on Sept 13, 2019 10:15:00 GMT
Just a few days ago I bought his latest Harry Hole novel "Knife" and currently I'm re-reading one of his earlier books "Nemesis". To me Nesbo is, along with Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin, probably one of the three best living writers of crime novels.
Mainly right now I'm reading "Berta Isla" of Javier Marias though.
I thought I should read Thirst before I go to Knife as Nesbo usually gives away some so called "spoilers" for his previous Harry Hole books. For example, I read Police without having read his previous one (Nemesis I think) and some plot points were spoiled for me. In general, I love his Harry Hole books although it seems to me that many times he's trying too hard to put as many twists as possible!!!
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 13, 2019 10:53:48 GMT
Just a few days ago I bought his latest Harry Hole novel "Knife" and currently I'm re-reading one of his earlier books "Nemesis". To me Nesbo is, along with Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin, probably one of the three best living writers of crime novels.
Mainly right now I'm reading "Berta Isla" of Javier Marias though.
I thought I should read Thirst before I go to Knife as Nesbo usually gives away some so called "spoilers" for his previous Harry Hole books. For example, I read Police without having read his previous one (Nemesis I think) and some plot points were spoiled for me. In general, I love his Harry Hole books although it seems to me that many times he's trying too hard to put as many twists as possible!!! Yeah, I agree on both points. You should definitely read them in order.
And I also agree with Nesbos "sickness" of putting to many twists together. That's a weakness that hit him more recently though, he didn't do this as much in his earlier works, but in his latest two or three books he totally overblows it so much that while reading "Thirst" (which I consider one of his weaker ones) it was already blatant to me, where he would end with it.
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Post by TerryMontana on Sept 13, 2019 12:40:30 GMT
I thought I should read Thirst before I go to Knife as Nesbo usually gives away some so called "spoilers" for his previous Harry Hole books. For example, I read Police without having read his previous one (Nemesis I think) and some plot points were spoiled for me. In general, I love his Harry Hole books although it seems to me that many times he's trying too hard to put as many twists as possible!!! Yeah, I agree on both points. You should definitely read them in order.
And I also agree with Nesbos "sickness" of putting to many twists together. That's a weakness that hit him more recently though, he didn't do this as much in his earlier works, but in his latest two or three books he totally overblows it so much that while reading "Thirst" (which I consider one of his weaker ones) it was already blatant to me, where he would end with it.
I just started it. I'll let you know when I finish it. But I had heard Thirst was one of his best Hole books...
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 13, 2019 12:45:46 GMT
Yeah, I agree on both points. You should definitely read them in order.
And I also agree with Nesbos "sickness" of putting to many twists together. That's a weakness that hit him more recently though, he didn't do this as much in his earlier works, but in his latest two or three books he totally overblows it so much that while reading "Thirst" (which I consider one of his weaker ones) it was already blatant to me, where he would end with it.
I just started it. I'll let you know when I finish it. But I had heard Thirst was one of his best Hole books... Well, as always opinions differ...
To me "The Devil's Star" and "Snowman" are probably the best of the series.
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Post by TerryMontana on Sept 13, 2019 13:22:04 GMT
I just started it. I'll let you know when I finish it. But I had heard Thirst was one of his best Hole books... Well, as always opinions differ...
To me "The Devil's Star" and "Snowman" are probably the best of the series.
To me it's the Redeemer and the Snowman. If course I haven't read them all yet.
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Post by akittystang on Sept 14, 2019 9:13:04 GMT
Find Me, Andre Aciman
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 17, 2019 10:52:08 GMT
Ivan Turgenev - Torrents of Spring
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Post by DeepArcher on Sept 18, 2019 2:50:16 GMT
Re-read of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, which is ... maybe my favorite book ever? That pivotal relationship that develops between Genly and Estraven is just one of the most casually beautiful things I've ever read. This book is really just everything I want from literature ... or just storytelling in general ... even despite all the technobabble it's still perfect to me.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 18, 2019 3:47:18 GMT
Frick Collection: Handbook of Paintings
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 19, 2019 17:13:47 GMT
Simon Wiesenthal - A Life In Search of Justice - By Hella Pick Very sympathetic and loving bio with some fascinating stuff on the Nazi hunting though not deep enough. Mattsby - there is a chapter in this book "The Sleuth At Work" that gets into the rival hunter groups, the Mossad, German police and searches for Mengele and Eichmann that practically writes a screenplay itself.
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Zeb31
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Post by Zeb31 on Sept 19, 2019 17:15:47 GMT
Wait, is this available already?
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Post by MsMovieStar on Sept 20, 2019 14:05:55 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2019 16:46:47 GMT
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 22, 2019 12:52:02 GMT
Rereading The Three Musketeers for the "I don't know how many-th" time. Without a doubt one of the great literary masterpieces. And it's nearly unique in that way that you can read it as a 10-year old and enjoy it as a pure, funny adventure and then love it even more as a man (or a woman) of vast reading. Only then you can really appreciate the countless finenesses of Dumas' so well build-up story and his style, full of wit and irony as well as the broad palette of characters and the plenty of historical references.
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