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Post by jimmalone on Sept 25, 2020 10:46:44 GMT
Une aventure d'amour by Alexandre Dumas (pere)
Dumas tells quite amusing of his own journey with a female friend to Germany.
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Post by Mattsby on Sept 26, 2020 0:11:56 GMT
Stoner (1965) by John Williams. I found this to be quite a commanding read, it's like a polite storm of a book, looking at a whole life (that of Stoner's) that gains so little, and its very sad, very wry, low-hum way of writing is flawlessly sustained. Casey Affleck was lined up to star a few years ago and probably would've been terrific in the part. Shoutout Viced for the recommendation.
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Post by pacinoyes on Sept 26, 2020 1:15:40 GMT
This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers - Jeff SharletThis book is pretty remarkable - photographs and accompanying essays that focus on things that often happen really late at night - dead end jobs, too much coffee, overdoses, people who don't sleep because they can't or won't and who may not wake up.........the people in the daylight have a darkness of their own or its forced upon them. I don't read new books much but I can't imagine there's been a more up to the minute book or a more Punk Rock book - all people who are on the fringe and the photos are haunting alone......feels like an instant classic and a unique one........and it spans the globe too.....it feels simultaneously hopeful.......hopeless......dangerous.......prophetic.
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Post by stephen on Sept 26, 2020 2:24:46 GMT
Check out Butcher's Crossing when you get the chance. It's even better, at least by my reckoning.
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Post by jimmalone on Sept 26, 2020 18:25:29 GMT
A reread:
Il nome della rosa by Umberto Eco
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Sept 27, 2020 9:43:54 GMT
The Last Wish was ok. A decent introduction to the Witcher but doesn't really feature any worldbuilding, just a series of episodic stories. Writing/dialogue is fine, a bit clumsy at times. But my PTSD from watching the show prejudiced me unfortunately because practically all these stories were lifted for the show so I knew what was going on and often found myself recalling the show (and how shitty it was). next up, Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. Very much looking forward to this one.
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 2, 2020 18:10:42 GMT
How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime (1990), Roger Corman. Only halfway thru, mainly compiles Corman's recaps on his directed movies, with a lot of humorous on-set stories, and I like how the book drops in first-hand memories from his collaborators, even Nicholson and Coppola write up some stuff here. Just got to The Intruder chapter - I didn't realize just how dangerous the filming of it was, and it's too bad the movie is known for being his only project that lost money bc it's better than its receipts. Corman admits that its "failure" may have kept him from other projects like it or bigger mainstream efforts. I think he was a better filmmaker than he ever realized of himself...
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Post by Deleted on Oct 4, 2020 20:43:54 GMT
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Post by stephen on Oct 5, 2020 0:35:14 GMT
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Oct 5, 2020 2:27:09 GMT
well Catch and Kill definitely stands up to the hype. Apart from a few slight quibbles with Farrow's narration (esp. with the accents) and some somewhat precious self-insert moments, the book holds up as a page-turning & incendiary retelling of Farrow's efforts to bring the allegations of Weinstein's sex crimes into the cold light of day amid resistance from NBC and Weinstein's paid operatives. The book also serves as a catch-all for examining the pervasiveness of killing these kinds of stories--Farrow also documents similar scandals with Trump (including his relationship with National Inquirer) and the NBC-contested allegations against Matt Lauer in the final section of the book. Several of the portions dealing with the women's accounts are truly heartbreaking. The book features pretty damning portrayals of key players, namely Noah Oppenheim and Kim Harris. Farrow also nods to the unwarranted conspiratorial blowback against Streep without fully letting her off the hook for what he subtly infers to be naivete. He recalls calling her and her answering the phone preparing for (or in the middle of--I forget) a party. "Sounds like a maelstrom," Farrow says. "A femaelstrom!" she responds. Anyways, a damn engaging read. Next on deck, E.M. Forster's A Room with a View. Haven't read any Forster yet but I loved the Merchant Ivory adaptation of this one and figured it was as good a place to start as any. Tantor Media, narrated by Steven Crossley.
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Post by DanQuixote on Oct 5, 2020 17:23:53 GMT
I’ve just completed my second thesis in two years, so I’m starting to read for fun again lol.
Just finished Real Life by Brandon Taylor, which was recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. I thought it was a great portrayal of isolation, trauma and race.
I’m thinking of reading The Remains of the Day next. My first Ishiguro.
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Post by jimmalone on Oct 7, 2020 15:31:53 GMT
Qiu Xiaolong - Shanghai Redemption
My first chinese (crime-)novel.
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Post by jimmalone on Oct 12, 2020 12:41:54 GMT
Erich Maria Remarque - The Black Obelisk
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 12, 2020 16:06:08 GMT
Finally I got my hands on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.
I've been wanting to read this for a very long time and I just got started. It's my first Agatha so I'm very curious and excited.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2020 18:44:59 GMT
Finally I got my hands on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I've been wanting to read this for a very long time and I just got started. It's my first Agatha so I'm very curious and excited. Enjoy! Its her best and the greatest whodunits ever.
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Post by Sharbs on Oct 12, 2020 19:01:38 GMT
over the last couple of months
The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock Written with mud and blood for ink. The impact of a father and the journey of his son, some of the stories feel superfluous to that in the moment of reading them, but after the completion of this it all felt fairly necessary to understand this backwoods story.
Underworld by Dom DeLillo an incredible mosaic of America, wealth-gap, nuclear fallout of the Cold War. There wasn't a ton to keep my gripped entirely with its stories because it meanders and that's the point, but this can get riotously funny.
Dune by Frank Herbert The portrayal of the inner-thoughts kept me fully invested every character is entirely focused on second meanings of words and intentions. Very little action, which was pretty neat actually as this made up almost entirely of inner-monologues and world-building. Pretty cool book
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Post by jimmalone on Oct 13, 2020 8:11:00 GMT
Finally I got my hands on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I've been wanting to read this for a very long time and I just got started. It's my first Agatha so I'm very curious and excited. It's not her best, but certainly highly thrilling. If you want to watch a film version I'd recommend you the 1945 one of Rene Clair.
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 13, 2020 9:52:17 GMT
Finally I got my hands on Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. I've been wanting to read this for a very long time and I just got started. It's my first Agatha so I'm very curious and excited. It's not her best, but certainly highly thrilling. If you want to watch a film version I'd recommend you the 1945 one of Rene Clair. I'm lucky I haven't seen any film/tv adaptation of this so I'm totally in the dark about the book!
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Oct 14, 2020 17:08:55 GMT
as I mentioned in another thread, I finished A Room with a View. Not as effective as the film. Don't have much to say about it. I do love how obviously gay Reverend Beebe is though. Forster writes that Beebe's interest in women is purely academic and also has him shading Lucy's clothes at one point lol. The pond bathing scene plays out much like it did in the movie. Cecil is even more annoying in print. also started Book 2 of Stephen King's Dark Tower Series: The Drawing of the Three. It would feel wrong to get through October without reading at least some King. This second entry picks up right where the first left off and begins with a bizarre encounter with a malevolent lobster-like creature, and Frank Muller, like the boss he is, gives voice to its mad alien inquiries.
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Post by stephen on Oct 14, 2020 17:21:21 GMT
Aw dude, I envy you reading this and the next two Dark Tower books. Muller is an amazing narrator.
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Post by TerryMontana on Oct 14, 2020 17:27:09 GMT
as I mentioned in another thread, I finished A Room with a View. Not as effective as the film. Don't have much to say about it. I do love how obviously gay Reverend Beebe is though. Forster writes that Beebe's interest in women is purely academic and also has him shading Lucy's clothes at one point lol. The pond bathing scene plays out much like it did in the movie. Cecil is even more annoying in print. also started Book 2 of Stephen King's Dark Tower Series: The Drawing of the Three. It would feel wrong to get through October without reading at least some King. This second entry picks up right where the first left off and begins with a bizarre encounter with a malevolent lobster-like creature, and Frank Muller, like the boss he is, gives voice to its mad alien inquiries. Imo one of the best of the series and the first one that sets the ball rolling. The Gunslinger is a very nice book but only in a re-read, after having finished the whole series. When you read it for the first time, you know nothing about the background story so many things are unclear. The drawing of the three is the real starter for me. Introduces all the main characters and gets the story going.
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Post by Mattsby on Oct 19, 2020 18:17:24 GMT
rereading Feiffer's Children (1986) by Jules Feiffer, published the same year he won the Pulitzer Prize. Compiles his comic-strip depiction of kids throughout his career, with an insightful, to-the-point intro and afterword - in the former he speaks of his maturing vantage, "I've aged in the direction of the enemy" - and in the latter he amusingly charts the evolution of his movie star heroes.
Feiffer at 91 is one of our greatest living writers.... He wrote scripts for Carnal Knowledge and Little Murders, released the same year! and he wrote many plays but his comics are legendary and insanely clever. He maintained weekly strips for The Village Voice between '56-'97. His writing gave rise to the term "sick comedy" that was mass used to describe the new mold of comedian around '59 into the 60s - Nichols/May, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, etc.
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Post by jimmalone on Oct 21, 2020 8:54:22 GMT
Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis?
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Oct 25, 2020 3:07:56 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2020 17:51:16 GMT
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