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Post by TerryMontana on May 20, 2021 21:10:12 GMT
Not as great as The Hellbound Heart if you ask me but a very good read. And much more Hellraiser.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on May 25, 2021 2:13:27 GMT
oh man. East of Eden was stunning.
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speeders
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Post by speeders on May 25, 2021 10:26:50 GMT
oh man. East of Eden was stunning. It's one of my all-time favorites. It's at once classic but also feels like it could be recent. Absolutely epic.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on May 25, 2021 20:17:06 GMT
now for a change of pace. Something a bit campier, a bit lighter, a bit gorier, Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires. Feels almost King-inspired so far. Guts and gore with just the right amount of self-awareness (so far). The book actually begins like a charming comedy of manners, perusing the lives of these 80s Southern housewives with their 80s houeswife problems and interests and their true crime obsessed book club. Bahni Turpin's narration brings just enough endearing Southern drawl to the experience. I hope when the blood starts flowing (I've heard this is really gory) it doesn't forget to stay fun. Some of King's most gory stories are his funniest.
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Post by Mattsby on May 28, 2021 17:47:21 GMT
Chess Story aka The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig (1941) - great novella and sadly the last thing Zweig wrote before he and his wife committed suicide.
"To devote all the force of his thought to the ridiculous end of cornering a wooden king on a wooden board!"
Very complex character at the center - where the apparition of chess gave him both the saving-grace skill and a deep psychological disturbance, kept at a buffer only by remove of the sport. But now at match, when he plays every move is a zugzwang as it brings him more narrowly into his past of practice and torment. All is countered, in a subtle way, by the train they're on which moves in only one direction, another tournament.
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Post by pacinoyes on May 29, 2021 20:08:37 GMT
Shock and Awe - Glam Rock And Its Legacy - Simon Reynolds Cool book that does a better job I think of summing up the era than assessing its legacy - not so much believable as a critique of acts but really good at assessing the audience and necessity of why that music matches the time. As usual, the NY Dolls don't fit in at all
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 2, 2021 15:43:08 GMT
going to be finishing this today. Why did Sylvia Plath not write more novels? WHY did Maggie Gyllenhaal not narrate more books? This is such beautiful prose and Gyllenhaal narrates with casual melancholy and teasing, knowing sarcasm, almost in whispers and you can hear her smile. The sorrowful piano melody that breaks up the chapters is just devastating. This is a phenomenal presentation of female coming of age and mental illness told with such intimacy that you feel you know everything about this young woman.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 2, 2021 15:46:17 GMT
btw, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires was surprisingly wonderful. Chick lit with a serious bite
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Post by stephen on Jun 2, 2021 16:09:17 GMT
Why did Sylvia Plath not write more novels? I mean, there's a reason.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 2, 2021 18:02:32 GMT
Why did Sylvia Plath not write more novels? I mean, there's a reason. true but Maggie G has no excuse anyways, fantastic book. Loved the ambiguous but semi-hopeful ending. Next on deck is The Radium Girls. Sharbs, weren't you reading this one recently?
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Post by Sharbs on Jun 2, 2021 18:20:13 GMT
I mean, there's a reason. true but Maggie G has no excuse anyways, fantastic book. Loved the ambiguous but semi-hopeful ending. Next on deck is The Radium Girls. Sharbs , weren't you reading this one recently? Nope. I read The Shining Girls in the latter half of 2020, which is probably what you're thinking of. It's a horror book from Lauren Beukes that was bone-chilling in parts and silly in its concept (in a fun/good way) in others and balances that quite well.
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Drish
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Post by Drish on Jun 6, 2021 0:28:28 GMT
Tara Westover's Educated is such an amazing book. Really looking forward to her next if she writes any. 😍
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Post by Joaquim on Jun 10, 2021 1:47:30 GMT
The anarchist handbook
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2021 22:15:32 GMT
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Post by TerryMontana on Jun 14, 2021 5:19:34 GMT
Mario Puzo's Omerta
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 16, 2021 18:13:43 GMT
well my loan on The Radium Girls expired, oops. It'll be available again with a couple weeks so I'll finish it up then. Really remarkable story. I'd heard how radium and radioactive consumer products was such a huge trend in the 10s and 20s. Can't believe people were drinking that shit. The descriptions of how radium poisoning was eating the bodies of these women alive from the inside are harrowing and disgusting, and their defiant fight for justice all the more heroic for how much pain they were in constantly. Only have a couple hours left. but in the meantime, starting on this one. "Soon to be a major motion picture."
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Jun 18, 2021 21:40:49 GMT
Going to Maine this summer so I’m reading ‘Salem’s Lot again. Still terrifying.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 21, 2021 17:00:27 GMT
welp, I'm giving up on The Nightingale after sinking a couple hours into it. Horribly cliched writing, repetitive use of phrases and situations, waaaaay too much sarcasm from characters who are living in a warzone, and a heroine that feels grossly 21st century self-insert in the worst way possible. A girl boss for WWII. Sassing those Nazis left and right. You tell 'em girl. I know heroines like this who are spirited and defiant and independent can work in historical fiction because I read Outlander but Claire is so much more complex and fully realized and Gabaldon's writing is just so, so much better. In contrast, Isabelle's unremarkable tumblr feminism bravado feels out of place, idiotic, and precious. One of the top negative reviews on goodreads (where it has a whopping 4.6 rating) said it reads like "YA fantasy fiction," which tells you where you're at with this book. The historical setting is just that--a setting. I have a couple other Kristen Hannah books in my wishlist. Hope those are better. moving on to Lacy Crawford's memoir Notes on a Silencing
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Post by ireallyamsomething on Jun 22, 2021 10:25:18 GMT
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2021 19:40:27 GMT
I CANNOT get enough of this book about teen girls, 80s San Francisco, power, and lies. Tommen_Saperstein , you have to add this one to your Goodreads list! Oh, and LaraQ, Viced, and bob-coppola - this has Sofia Coppola fingerprints all over it.
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SZilla
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Post by SZilla on Jun 22, 2021 19:48:16 GMT
This past year has been slower for me, as I usually read on the subways and I've been using them far less than I did before the pandemic, but I'm currently reading Neuromancer by William Gibson. A friend loaned it to me while I loaned him my copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. It's dense and I'm still in the beginning of the book, but it's starting to pick up.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jun 23, 2021 16:04:31 GMT
I CANNOT get enough of this book about teen girls, 80s San Francisco, power, and lies. Tommen_Saperstein , you have to add this one to your Goodreads list! already done. I'll get around to it
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Post by jimmalone on Jul 2, 2021 9:44:58 GMT
Chess Story aka The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig (1941) - great novella and sadly the last thing Zweig wrote before he and his wife committed suicide. "To devote all the force of his thought to the ridiculous end of cornering a wooden king on a wooden board!" Very complex character at the center - where the apparition of chess gave him both the saving-grace skill and a deep psychological disturbance, kept at a buffer only by remove of the sport. But now at match, when he plays every move is a zugzwang as it brings him more narrowly into his past of practice and torment. All is countered, in a subtle way, by the train they're on which moves in only one direction, another tournament. One of my favourite books. It's as oppressive as any books I've read, since you really can feel the madness of the character.
If you read this along with his autobiography "The World of Yesterday" in which he describes how Europe fell bit by bit apart with the rise of Nationalism, then Fasicsm and Nationalsocialism and how totally different his world looked like and how despicable it had become you can sense why he didn't want to live in this strange world any longer.
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Post by jimmalone on Jul 2, 2021 11:06:47 GMT
A few books I read over the course of the last weeks which are worth mentioning:
The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez This is probably the best book I read all year and one of the best in recent years. It's about a guy, who is drawn back into memories, when he witnessed how a friend was shot amidst a drug war in Colombia. It's a very personal, psycholgical book and it's highlight is, when the main character Antonio hears the recording of the last words of a captain and co-captain at a plane crash (hence the title), which contains one of the best passages written in the last decade in my opinion. He gets obsessed with this recording and later learns to know the daughter (if I recall it right, it's a while ago I read it already) of one of the victims. A beautiful melancholic book.
I really want to read more of Vasques, so right now I'm reading his earlier work "Los informantes", which was his breakthrough, and which is great so far as well.
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly Another great Harry Bosch novel, the first in which he teams up with Renee Ballard. And I hope there will more books with this duo in the center.
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene Not quite among his very best work, but still a great thriller. I liked Fritz Lang's film adaption, but the book, as so often, is much better.
La patience de Maigret by Georges Simenon I think this was the 66th (?) Maigret novel and one that maybe belongs in the upper third. But really there are only like two or three lesser books in the whole series, which is quite unbelievable.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The tragic story of the Nigerian Civil war and the short-lived state of Biafra, shown through the eyes of three different people.
Anatomia de un instante by Javier Cercas Unusually for me this is no nevel, but an analysis of the circumstances of the happenings of the (luckily failed) military putsch of 1981 in Spain, which is a fascinating topic. And it offered a very good insight into the spanish political landscape back then and even nowadays, since fascism is sadly still a strong issue in Europe and especially in Spain (and with Trump also in the US).
Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith Third part of the Arkadi Renko cycle. I didn't read the first, the famous "Gorky Park", though I have seen the film of course, and neither the second. But while I had read a later instalment of the series, which I didn't like that much, this was great and works very well on it's own. It's set in the summer of 1991 and of course this was a very turbulent one in Russia.
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Post by sterlingarcher86 on Jul 2, 2021 21:55:22 GMT
The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell. Kind of obscure British horror. Campbell is a legend though.
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