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Post by ireallyamsomething on Jun 20, 2023 7:17:14 GMT
I read a couple of crime novels by Margaret Millar recently - A Stranger in My Grave and Vanish in an Instant. While both are pretty decent as mysteries, what I found more noteworthy was the character work and how, at times, the book seems to care more about minor or supporting characters and their lives rather than the solution to the mystery. (the only thing I disliked was a forced and out-of-place romance in both books) Would like to read more of her work, though some of it doesn't seem to be easily available.
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SZilla
Badass
Posts: 1,473
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Post by SZilla on Jun 20, 2023 17:21:39 GMT
Started this chunky fella a week ago
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Post by MsMovieStar on Jun 22, 2023 21:33:51 GMT
Oh honeys, I wasn't wild about the movie, but the book is a riot!
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Post by cheesecake on Jun 28, 2023 0:47:44 GMT
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Post by ireallyamsomething on Jul 1, 2023 9:42:39 GMT
The Book of Evidence (1989) by John Banville
Just finished it. A book I really liked - which I get like 1 per year these days tbh: This Brilliant Darkness was one - a few years back (reviewed it on MAR) and Betty (reviewed it on MAR) ...... The Yellow Wallpaper short story that I had missed and read last year .......mostly old things......... The Book of Evidence is a short novel (a plus), sociopathic (because, I mean have you seen my favorite books list?), and it would make a great movie if you did it right..... This is like a pacinoyes checklist of my all-time favorite books / stories - part Crime and Punishment, part The Stranger, part Diary of a Rapist .........part Poe.........part Emmanuel Carrère's (brilliant) The Adversary
Reading The Book of Evidence currently, though not sure how I feel about it. It has some echoes of a couple of other books which are important to me - The Outsider/The Stranger and Notes from Underground. But for some reason (may be my current state of mind too) haven't been able to be as engaged as I would have liked to. Which actor would you cast as the narrator?
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Post by Brother Fease on Jul 1, 2023 10:51:32 GMT
The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 1, 2023 11:57:00 GMT
The Book of Evidence (1989) by John Banville
Just finished it. A book I really liked - which I get like 1 per year these days tbh: This Brilliant Darkness was one - a few years back (reviewed it on MAR) and Betty (reviewed it on MAR) ...... The Yellow Wallpaper short story that I had missed and read last year .......mostly old things......... The Book of Evidence is a short novel (a plus), sociopathic (because, I mean have you seen my favorite books list?), and it would make a great movie if you did it right..... This is like a pacinoyes checklist of my all-time favorite books / stories - part Crime and Punishment, part The Stranger, part Diary of a Rapist .........part Poe.........part Emmanuel Carrère's (brilliant) The AdversaryReading The Book of Evidence currently, though not sure how I feel about it. It has some echoes of a couple of other books which are important to me - The Outsider/The Stranger and Notes from Underground. But for some reason (may be my current state of mind too) haven't been able to be as engaged as I would have liked to. Which actor would you cast as the narrator? One of the fun things about the book is you could cast almost any Irish / Brit actor of the last 35 years - if you go that route - at any point since the short novel was publihed : Day-Lewis, Roth, Fiennes, Oldman in 1989 or after........Cumberbatch, Murphy, Farrell - all who now are too old imo..........maybe Paul Mescal (who is too young, but still has time to do it)........the book is highly acclaimed to actually be filmed too: - it was nominated for the Booker Prize in its day .......... it's one of those books like The Secret History - where it feels like a movie that hasn't been shot yet (directly) - it's very um .........familiarRight now - I'd cast the gifted Dónall Ó Héalai who is 35 - so just about perfect - it would be essential to get the age right since I think the character can not be too young as to appear merely foolish and not too old because you would wonder why this story happens "right now" - it's a "mid-life" story. The book has a lineage to great pre / post Taxi Driver works of Art - in addition to the books I listed above ^ - it's in that line of "(mostly) first person male ramblings of a delusional - not always criminal - mind" .......... and who doesn't like that good stuff? - all of these works are what I've referred to as aggressively dangerous, potentially lethal worls of Art - where your mental state can be driven - negatively - by the specificity of the material to cause an emotional spin-out...........some more than others..........I talked about this once with The Man Who Sleeps iirc: A Man Asleep (1967) (and its film adaptation The Man Who Sleeps (1974)........ Poe, Nausea (1938) - the films Le Horla (1966), Confessions of a Sociopath (2002) ............. Wheel of Ashes (1968) - all the ones mentioned previously etc.
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Post by PromNightCarrie on Jul 2, 2023 15:24:04 GMT
I wanted a series to delve into, so I thought I'd go ahead and finally start Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. I just hope it hooks me in and is consistent.
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Post by stephen on Jul 2, 2023 16:04:09 GMT
I wanted a series to delve into, so I thought I'd go ahead and finally start Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. I just hope it hooks me in and is consistent. You're in for a wild ride.
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Post by Brother Fease on Jul 10, 2023 12:41:14 GMT
Hunting Time by Jeffery Deaver, 2022, Colter Shaw #4
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Post by Martin Stett on Jul 11, 2023 20:41:12 GMT
I am now halfway through Robert Pen Warren's All the King's Men. pacinoyes , Tommen_Saperstein - where do you stand on this book? I was not expecting a book about American religion and godlessness in a cosmically cruel universe when I started this, but I'm pleasantly surprised with how much Warren is exploring the relationship between the need for a Christ and the need for a Wille Talos. I don't think I'm smart or industrious enough to write out how this book bounces around its ideas, alas. It's too dense.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 11, 2023 22:15:37 GMT
I am now halfway through Robert Pen Warren's All the King's Men. pacinoyes - where do you stand on this book? It's a great book but I read it once a long time ago - for college (Harvard, Class of 1898 - j/k) ........it is REALLY dense ........I remembered it was cool how each character stood for different things and was embodied in the way they are written There's a 30 + year tradition in a lot of popular US novels where there's a nihilistic or "hopeless" element that each book presents and also refutes (usually by 1 character) - The Great Gatsby, Nightmare Alley, a lot of noir novels - Catcher In The Rye, Revolutionary Road - a lot more -that now would never be written like that because they are in some way about an American vastness and grandeur that either doesn't exist now or is no longer shared...... the world is dumbed down now.......in that regard at least: A young reader would misread the book now and think it's closer to Trump or something - they would think "they get it" without getting it..... that's too glib.........the book is actually closer to something like Casablanca .......or the things that Casablanca is about underneath the surface plot except in Casablanca the Willie character is a country not a person (um) .............a lot of it is about human weakness, compromise, flaws, cause and effect and the way you can't see either in the present ............functionality, messianic appeal .........and practicality (facts vs action.......... or something like that in the book).......
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Post by Brother Fease on Jul 17, 2023 22:05:20 GMT
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
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tep
Full Member
formerly known as Ban
Posts: 577
Likes: 149
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Post by tep on Aug 2, 2023 12:02:42 GMT
On the last book of both the Bill Hodges trilogy and the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Both pretty great, the latter being kind of life-changing.
And Holly Gibney is now up there with my favorite King characters.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 2, 2023 19:53:04 GMT
Crow Black The Night - Ben Foster (Ben Weasel)
I've said this a lot over the years but Ben Weasel (of Screeching Weasel) invented an entire formula for writing and playing a specific subgenre of Pop Punk - and not many people "invent" stuff in Pop music - he did though - in the manner of say Green Day who followed him to much greater success etc. I would say he - and the best core lineup of his band - not only made the best album in the niche sub-genre - immature, catchy and specifically teenage (1991's My Brain Hurts - a classic) but the 2nd best album too (1993's Anthem For A New Tomorrow - almost as good). He's written a ton of ace songs in this style - for a 50+ year old guy - an almost uncanny amount (he's emotionally stunted in the best way I guess ) Now he wrote a novel.......like his friend Dr. Frank Portman (Mr. T. Experience) who is great at Young Adult stuff.....not bad so far ......I'm reading it online and maybe will stick with it......for the curious - Chapter 1 is up for free.......:self-published btw: screechingweasel.substack.com/p/crow-black-the-night
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 4, 2023 17:13:40 GMT
Ray Davies - Americana Pretty great Rock star autobiography so far ...........not as essential as Richards and Costello's - you can just tell this is edited too tightly ......... but a lot of stuff only he could know or talk about and his POV is like always.........his own.
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Post by Martin Stett on Aug 4, 2023 17:16:13 GMT
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Post by Mattsby on Aug 10, 2023 17:14:32 GMT
DO NOT DETONATE Without Presidential Approval: A Portfolio on the Subjects of Mid-Century Cinema, the Broadway Stage, and the American West (2023) Well, at least something good has come outta Asteroid City: this tie-in collection of 27 pieces - essays, samples, articles, diaries, reviews. It's fascinating to go thru .... we're on set of The Misfits, Wellman's underrated Other Men's Women, Close Encounters (a first-hand study of Truffaut), a Playhouse 90 production madly helmed by John Frankenheimer. We're discussing atomic-age cinema, sun-starved noirs, Technicolor mellers.... There's little bios and snatches of European fiction and so on, leading to the last piece an all-timer story by Sam Shepard called Wild to the Wild where he bats artistic dreams against the ferally distracted, the spite of our instincts. Idk how involved Wes was, I think he was more of an approver than an editor. But it's an interesting curation, I hope more movies do something like it.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Aug 16, 2023 0:05:35 GMT
Started Zone One by Colson Whitehead. If anybody has recommendations for other high brow horror I would love to hear some.
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
Posts: 1,053
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Post by chris3 on Aug 17, 2023 7:10:43 GMT
Just finished Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen and it is easily his best novel since The Corrections. An absolute triumph. I couldn't put it down, teared up multiple times, and in classic Franzen fashion I was in a constant state of emotional whiplash over my nonstop-fluctuating feelings about the (increasingly dysfunctional) lead characters. As with his best works (The Corrections and Freedom; his last book Purity was IMO a huge misfire) I felt legitimately uncomfortable reading certain chapters due to how much I recognized my own embarrassing neuroses within these fictional individuals.
I'm now trying to decide between two Stephen King books for my next read: Duma Key or Lisey's Story. If anyone's read them let me know which one I should pick. I've been on a massive year-long Stephen King binge and took a brief hiatus to read the new Franzen book.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Aug 17, 2023 14:31:38 GMT
Just finished Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen and it is easily his best novel since The Corrections. An absolute triumph. I couldn't put it down, teared up multiple times, and in classic Franzen fashion I was in a constant state of emotional whiplash over my nonstop-fluctuating feelings about the (increasingly dysfunctional) lead characters. As with his best works ( The Corrections and Freedom; his last book Purity was IMO a huge misfire) I felt legitimately uncomfortable reading certain chapters due to how much I recognized my own embarrassing neuroses within these fictional individuals. I'm now trying to decide between two Stephen King books for my next read: Duma Key or Lisey's Story. If anyone's read them let me know which one I should pick. I've been on a massive year-long Stephen King binge and took a brief hiatus to read the new Franzen book. Duma Key is good but derivative. Lisey’s Story is more unique but not for me. Some absolutely adore it though.
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Post by stephen on Aug 17, 2023 14:41:27 GMT
Just finished Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen and it is easily his best novel since The Corrections. An absolute triumph. I couldn't put it down, teared up multiple times, and in classic Franzen fashion I was in a constant state of emotional whiplash over my nonstop-fluctuating feelings about the (increasingly dysfunctional) lead characters. As with his best works ( The Corrections and Freedom; his last book Purity was IMO a huge misfire) I felt legitimately uncomfortable reading certain chapters due to how much I recognized my own embarrassing neuroses within these fictional individuals. I'm now trying to decide between two Stephen King books for my next read: Duma Key or Lisey's Story. If anyone's read them let me know which one I should pick. I've been on a massive year-long Stephen King binge and took a brief hiatus to read the new Franzen book. Duma Key has one of my favourite Stephen King side characters, especially in his recent output. But it is far too bloated to justify what should be a novella-length story, and while it has some great passages surrounding the main character's rehab and recovery post-accident (obviously inspired by King's own history), I haven't revisited it at all since it came out. Lisey's Story is one of King's most personal books. However, I do find some of the weird pseudo-baby language ("bad-gunky!") to be laughable and he uses it incessantly to the point of annoyance, but if you can get past that, it has some really touching and beautiful moments. Again, though, I do feel it's a hundred pages too long and could easily be pared down. But I think the Scott flashback scenes are some of King's most poignant passages ever. Between the two, I easily prefer Lisey's Story but I feel like Duma Key will be less annoying, so it's dealer's choice.
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
Posts: 1,053
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Post by chris3 on Aug 28, 2023 19:10:35 GMT
Just finished a batch of Stephen King books:
From a Buick 8 - King does HP Lovecraft. I enjoyed this a lot; breezy, creepy, and effective rumination on mortality and Man's inability to ever truly understand the greater mysteries of life. This felt tonally and thematically similar to Revival in its shaggy dog approach and darker existentialist musings, but I liked this one more. 8
The Green Mile - I mean, it's fantastic. One of the best and most well-crafted stories he's ever told. The pacing is relentless, the writing is divine (and ruthlessly focused for King; unlike most of his novels this story is all killer no filler). It's sad to admit but the only disappointment in the read was just how shockingly faithful the movie is. It almost felt like I was reading a novelization of a movie I've already seen countless times (this was the reason I put it down after the first two sections as a teen). Totally unfair to the book but it did impact my enjoyment. Still, it's an extraordinary novel and the ending had me in tears. 9
Lisey's Story - Man, where to begin? I still don't know how I feel about this one. On the one hand, through its gorgeously poetic prose, deeply disturbing digressions into horror, and wildly ambitious structure, Lisey's Story displays some of the absolute greatest writing of King's career. I ADORED how gleefully and experimentally the book bounces around between multiple timelines, memories, dreams, and magical realist excursions, sometimes all overlapped within the same chapter. Even better is the way King utilizes his trademark fantastical genre elements as a means to deconstruct and dissect all the private, hidden details of a relationship, from its in-jokes and shared slang to its most repressed and horrifying secrets, elevating all of our seemingly mundane romances into the realm of fairy tale. On the other hand, I honestly feel like King pulled out all of his greatest strengths in order to tell an ultimately flat story. I never grew attached to a single character, found the central Zack MacCool conflict extremely underwhelming, and was unmoved by the cathartic beats at the end. I really wish I liked it more than I did, because I think it's one of his most interesting and admirable novels. For now I'll go 8
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - THIS BOOK FUCKING RULED! Where has this been all my life? I read the entire thing in a single sitting and was utterly riveted from start to finish. Nobody tells a coming of age tale like Stephen King, oh my god. Every single aspect of this charming novel (little more than a novella) had me enthralled. I cannot believe this hasn't been turned into a movie. I read on Wikipedia that Lynne Ramsay was at one point attached and I mourn for what could have been. Suspenseful, creepy, funny, remarkably cathartic and inspirational (this book contains my favorite King ending outside of The Dark Tower), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon has it all, all within 260 perfect pages. I was rooting for Trisha with all my heart, and even loved her squabbling family. It's a very simple story told in the YA style (I wish I read this as a teen) but IMO King never hits a false note. Right now it's tied with Dolores Claiborne as my favorite short (non-DT) King novel. 10
Now I'm debating whether to start Duma Key, Under the Dome (which I've already read but over a decade ago), Firestarter, or taking a break from King and trying out The Exorcist or continuing with the Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex trilogy. Any thoughts?
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tep
Full Member
formerly known as Ban
Posts: 577
Likes: 149
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Post by tep on Aug 29, 2023 16:37:04 GMT
Just finished a batch of Stephen King books: From a Buick 8 - King does HP Lovecraft. I enjoyed this a lot; breezy, creepy, and effective rumination on mortality and Man's inability to ever truly understand the greater mysteries of life. This felt tonally and thematically similar to Revival in its shaggy dog approach and darker existentialist musings, but I liked this one more. 8The Green Mile - I mean, it's fantastic. One of the best and most well-crafted stories he's ever told. The pacing is relentless, the writing is divine (and ruthlessly focused for King; unlike most of his novels this story is all killer no filler). It's sad to admit but the only disappointment in the read was just how shockingly faithful the movie is. It almost felt like I was reading a novelization of a movie I've already seen countless times (this was the reason I put it down after the first two sections as a teen). Totally unfair to the book but it did impact my enjoyment. Still, it's an extraordinary novel and the ending had me in tears. 9Lisey's Story - Man, where to begin? I still don't know how I feel about this one. On the one hand, through its gorgeously poetic prose, deeply disturbing digressions into horror, and wildly ambitious structure, Lisey's Story displays some of the absolute greatest writing of King's career. I ADORED how gleefully and experimentally the book bounces around between multiple timelines, memories, dreams, and magical realist excursions, sometimes all overlapped within the same chapter. Even better is the way King utilizes his trademark fantastical genre elements as a means to deconstruct and dissect all the private, hidden details of a relationship, from its in-jokes and shared slang to its most repressed and horrifying secrets, elevating all of our seemingly mundane romances into the realm of fairy tale. On the other hand, I honestly feel like King pulled out all of his greatest strengths in order to tell an ultimately flat story. I never grew attached to a single character, found the central Zack MacCool conflict extremely underwhelming, and was unmoved by the cathartic beats at the end. I really wish I liked it more than I did, because I think it's one of his most interesting and admirable novels. For now I'll go 8The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - THIS BOOK FUCKING RULED! Where has this been all my life? I read the entire thing in a single sitting and was utterly riveted from start to finish. Nobody tells a coming of age tale like Stephen King, oh my god. Every single aspect of this charming novel (little more than a novella) had me enthralled. I cannot believe this hasn't been turned into a movie. I read on Wikipedia that Lynne Ramsay was at one point attached and I mourn for what could have been. Suspenseful, creepy, funny, remarkably cathartic and inspirational (this book contains my favorite King ending outside of The Dark Tower), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon has it all, all within 260 perfect pages. I was rooting for Trisha with all my heart, and even loved her squabbling family. It's a very simple story told in the YA style (I wish I read this as a teen) but IMO King never hits a false note. Right now it's tied with Dolores Claiborne as my favorite short (non-DT) King novel. 10Now I'm debating whether to start Duma Key, Under the Dome (which I've already read but over a decade ago), Firestarter, or taking a break from King and trying out The Exorcist or continuing with the Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex trilogy. Any thoughts? I also read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon recently and 100% agree. Flawless.
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Post by Brother Fease on Sept 3, 2023 14:10:30 GMT
I am about halfway done with The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Started slow for me, but now I am hooked. The book is narrated by Leslie Manville — Phantom Thread lady.
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