|
Post by cheesecake on May 14, 2020 15:34:53 GMT
Started this audio book. So far seems to be a very faithful adaptation.
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on May 16, 2020 2:18:05 GMT
Memory by Donald Westlake - written in '63, not published until 2010. "He was still a stranger and wanted, here, to be nothing else." Loved this. Fascinating character study about an actor with amnesia. There will be metaphors! Has some of the paranoid existential searching of Kafka. It's so tightly following the main character's perspective that I found myself easily wrapped into his conflict, and there's a great amount of detail to keep it fresh, how every little thing becomes a tense little barrier for him. Reminded me a lot of Memento, actually, but without the revenge or crime - odd for Westlake, and side note: I need to read more from him! I've read this, The Ax, and the witty Help I Am Being Held Prisoner. Goddamn whoever didn't make this as a B&W movie in 1963 starring Anthony Perkins and directed by John Frankenheimer.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on May 19, 2020 20:14:41 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on May 21, 2020 20:24:09 GMT
Sturges has overflowing wit as a writer but this is mostly him going on and on and on about his mother, to the yawnth degree. Takes forever to get to the movie business, and even then he rushes over everything like it was nothing. But jesus the last page is a gut punch.
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on May 25, 2020 10:37:13 GMT
Rereading "Bleak House". A top 3 Dickens, meaing it's one of the very, very best novels ever written.
|
|
|
Post by TerryMontana on May 25, 2020 12:48:14 GMT
Philip K. Dick, The Golden Man.
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on May 31, 2020 3:12:39 GMT
Recently finished Hangsaman (1951) by Shirley Jackson. Not my fav Shirl, uneven but creatively draws its vaguely mad protagonist and gets into the overthinking offness of adolescence ("I have made myself unacceptable") with specific feminine fears. Would pair well with the recent horror The Blackcoat's Daughter.
Also justttt finished Serenade (1937) by James M Cain. Whoever said Cain writes with "a furious pace" is right, this thing really carries quick. With quite a progressive set-up for its time but with transgressive turns and racial descriptions - but then, it's written in the first person and that's essential to the character and his cycle of denial and artistic "wandering." Anyway, really liked this. I knew I did from the opening line: "I was in the Tupinamba, having a bizcocho and coffee, when this girl came in." I gotta read more Cain (this, my first!). I can chomp thru these writers too - it was just last summer I read my first Willeford, now I'm up to around a dozen Wills.
|
|
|
Post by Joaquim on May 31, 2020 5:40:23 GMT
A little life
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jun 2, 2020 16:46:26 GMT
These Women - Ivy Pochoda - Quite good noirish LA serial killer book so far I'm 1/3rd of the way in.....I'm sure someone is already pitching this for a movie.....it's also timely about how and why women get murdered in grisly ways and forgotten even during the investigations.
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 4, 2020 7:39:15 GMT
I read Buddha's Return by Gaito Gazdanov. The second book of his I've read and I liked them both a lot. One of the great russians if you ask me, who should be named along Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and so on. There's some influence of Dostoyevsky I'd say as his works are heavily psychological, but the style is totally different. Also has similarities with Kafka, but I like Gazdanov's style more.
Now: The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Which fits quite good thematically to the crime that happened to George Floyd.
|
|
|
Post by pacinoyes on Jun 6, 2020 16:39:19 GMT
L.A. Noir THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA'S MOST SEDUCTIVE CITY - John Buntin Almost 500 pages and there's something you'll want to refer back to on every single page .....dynamite stuff....
|
|
|
Post by DeepArcher on Jun 8, 2020 20:50:11 GMT
East of Eden: I just finished this after reading it for a few weeks, and I really have nothing original to contribute on it as I think it's just one of the best novels I've ever read. Steinbeck writes an epic that is for people who love storytelling, layering the levels of story on top of each other in a way that gives it a quality that is truly mythic in addition to being fully immersive and realized. My passion for it died out slightly in the last 100 pages, when it maybe started becoming a bit too ... obvious, let's say ... but that also might've been a "me" problem of being less patient with it. Overall a masterpiece though. Great prose, great characters, amazing storytelling.
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 9, 2020 19:16:21 GMT
East of Eden: I just finished this after reading it for a few weeks, and I really have nothing original to contribute on it as I think it's just one of the best novels I've ever read. Steinbeck writes an epic that is for people who love storytelling, layering the levels of story on top of each other in a way that gives it a quality that is truly mythic in addition to being fully immersive and realized. My passion for it died out slightly in the last 100 pages, when it maybe started becoming a bit too ... obvious, let's say ... but that also might've been a "me" problem of being less patient with it. Overall a masterpiece though. Great prose, great characters, amazing storytelling. Agree pretty much. Sometimes the story drags a bit too much, but yeah certainly a masterpiece. I find it quite fascinating that Steinbeck wrote such a majestic whale of novel, when most of his other magnificent works are about 120-200 pages. The build-up of this novel is pretty excellent.
|
|
|
Post by Mattsby on Jun 13, 2020 19:17:33 GMT
a beautiful, small masterpiece
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 14, 2020 11:45:23 GMT
Jorge Amado - Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon)
Probably the first truly great South American novel I've read.
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Jun 15, 2020 13:36:41 GMT
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 16, 2020 7:27:41 GMT
Han'ochi by Hideo Yokoyama
Not as good as Six Four, but again a very strong crime novel that is refreshingly different from most of the stuff that is written nowadays. He is not interested in solving a mystery to find a murderer, but more in his character and his surroundings as well as a strange, seemingly little occurence after his "crime". Also he again shows the problems and conflicts of diverse institutions within themselves and as opposed to others.
|
|
|
Post by TerryMontana on Jun 16, 2020 7:54:02 GMT
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 17, 2020 18:08:04 GMT
Thomas Glavinic - Das größere Wunder
|
|
|
Post by jimmalone on Jun 23, 2020 18:03:55 GMT
Stewart O'Nan - City of Secrets
|
|
chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
Posts: 1,051
Likes: 1,047
Member is Online
|
Post by chris3 on Jun 27, 2020 22:30:52 GMT
Finally reading Dune for the first time. A hundred pages in and I'm highly enjoying it. Is the whole series worth reading or is the first novel the only good one?
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Jun 28, 2020 18:27:20 GMT
|
|
|
Post by urbanpatrician on Jun 29, 2020 8:31:00 GMT
Pretty good book. Will not be the last I read from this author. It brings such a grey, foggy veneer onto 40s New York - which lately has been my default time setting to read about. The last 2 out of 3 books I've read were set in 40s New York - almost brings an entirely new perspective to me about that time period.
|
|
|
Post by Martin Stett on Jun 29, 2020 12:45:41 GMT
Slowly re-reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I've got the same opinion of it that I did my first time around: The book is slooooooow and then it suddenly gets really good once the Miss Bertrams leave the picture, setting up an excellent class based drama as Fanny struggles with her identity.
Of course, then I recall it falling apart at the very end, but I'm not there yet.
|
|
|
Post by cheesecake on Jul 3, 2020 18:24:07 GMT
|
|