What Are You Reading

[fluteplayer07]

Great story indeed. There is a book based on the same story written by Stephen Fry called "The Star's Tennis Balls". It could be considered as "The Count of Montecristo" for the dotcom generation. Highly recommended.

Is it as complex as "Count"? My head still hurts from trying to keep all of the characters straight. (But don't let that detract you from reading it.) Sounds interesting-I'll need to pick it up when I'm in Borders next. And as an interesting note, Fry also appeared in the film "V for Vendetta", which if I remember right has a lot of allusions to "Count".

 

[vinspired]

Hi ThesFlishThngs - is the book any good?
I have read mixed reviews.
I have read - Flapper: a madcap story of sex, style, celebrity, and the women who made America modern / Joshua Zeitz - It was okay, not great.
But it would be great to read an English side of things.

I am finding it enjoyable. Though I haven't read "Flapper", I've gone through most of the Scott and Zelda biographical material, and things like "All Night Party":

So, as you mentioned, it is nice to get the British perspective which was both very similar and very different. Of course, "Bright Young Things" has been one of my favorite films for ages, and while I accept that it veers somewhat from Waugh's original "Vile Bodies", there's no argument that the frenetic energy and atmosphere remains.
At just over halfway through, "Bright Young People" is giving me the urge to delve deeper into some of the lesser known characters of the British scene.

Sorry for the delay of a response.
have just started to read "Bright Young People" - looks promising!

 

[swinggal]

Frank Sinatra - My Father by Nancy Sinatra.

 

[RBH]

James Lee Burke's Rain Gods.

 

[Aureliano]

The third Reich; by Roberto Bolaño.

 

[HadleyH]

Just finished reading "Picasso, The Real Family Story" by Olivier Widmaier Picasso

and just started "Twiggy in Black and White" hey, gotta love the 60s

 

[Pompidou]

It's a wrist breaker, clocking in at over a thousand pages, but medieval history was what I went to college for, and I certainly didn't do so for the money. It's an interesting read for anyone interested in the Crusades - one of the few modern references on the subject that doesn't simply paint the Christians as intolerant barbarians. It paints both sides as such, or neither, but either way, does a good job at showing that A: there were no good guys here (or bad guys really), and B: trying to use the Crusades as a parallel to anything going on now is pretty silly, because it was its own, one of a kind, event that really does seem to exist in a void.

 

[Feraud]

Picked up The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs: Recrowning Baseball's Greatest Slugger for a song.

In this exhaustively researched examination of Babe Ruth's storied career, Jenkinson argues that the Bambino was the greatest slugger of all time, not Barry Bonds, not Sammy Sosa, not Hank Aaron, and not Roger Maris. To make his point, he approaches Ruth from three perspectives. First, he discusses and analyzes Ruth's historic batting power, relying on original newspaper accounts. Second, he examines Ruth's "hidden" career of about 800 exhibition games. Third, he does a degree-of-difficulty analysis between the various conditions (equipment, medical sophistication, and press scrutiny, among other factors) Ruth experienced and those of sluggers in other eras. For example, Ruth injured a knee early in his career, and it was a recurring problem. It would have been easily repaired with modern medicine. Current conventional sports wisdom holds modern athletes are bigger, faster, stronger, and therefore better. Here we have the carefully researched, imaginatively argued contrary position. Great reading for any baseball fan, but especially those whose passions are ignited by comparisons of players from different eras. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

 

[Harp]

McDonald v. City of Chicago

A cert to read with bourbon and ice.

 

[Slim Portly]

I'm currently re-reading "What the Buddha Taught" by Walpola Rahula. I have a nice collection on the subject, with good representations by Stephen Batchelor, Alan Watts, and Thich Nhat Hanh, among others, but this is the single best book on the subject that I have read in my fifteen years as a Buddhist. I skimmed it once a few years ago, but this time I am reading it very carefully and highlighting many passages.

 

[Katzenjammer]

The Seance by John Harwood, a sort of neo-Victorian mystery with suggestions of supernatural goings-on. A bit like a modern, less-complex Wilkie Collins novel.

 

[Corto]

I'm reading "From Here to Eternity" by James Jones. Wow. Let me tell you- the movie only just barely scratches the surface of this massive, sprawling story. Proto-feminist characters, explorations of male sexuality, and lots of other stuff that didn't make it into the film. Pretty heady (and explicit) stuff for having been published in 1951 America! Definitely a groundbreaking novel. I'm at the halfway point and I'm burning through it. Great book.

(However, whoever designed the cover should be fired for using a Pacific war photo about a book that only just leads up to Pearl Harbor...)

 

[Touchofevil]

"Eye Of The Red Tsar" by Sam Eastland. This mystery takes place during and around the year 1929 in Russia.

 

[Atinkerer]

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

 

[Wally_Hood]

Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe

The original version? There have been revisions over the centuries. I had a chance to listen to the original on tape as I commuted and I was drawn into Defoe's creation. No spoilers, but the tail end does not hold up as well as the first part.

 

[dhermann1]

Finally finished Rex Tugwell's "The Democratic Roosevelt". Highly recommended if you want to understand the politics of the New Deal and WW II era.
Having read that, tho, I realized you can't understand the politics of the 1930's without understanding the politics of thge 1890's. Many similarities. The 1890's were a period of severe depresiion in this country. Real hard times for many people.
So I'm reading "In The Days of McKinley", by Margaret Leech. It's about Wm. B. McKinley, and of the political times he lived in. We're taught very little about the portly gentleman from Canton, Ohio, most of it false. He was not our most brilliant president, but he was no fool. Leech makes him into a very attractive personality. It's a good read, and full of great insights into a period of American history most people tend to skip over.

 

[Mav]

It's an interesting read for anyone interested in the Crusades - one of the few modern references on the subject that doesn't simply paint the Christians as intolerant barbarians. It paints both sides as such, or neither, but either way, does a good job at showing that A: there were no good guys here (or bad guys really), and B: trying to use the Crusades as a parallel to anything going on now is pretty silly, because it was its own, one of a kind, event that really does seem to exist in a void.

Sweet- I'm ordering it.
You might also dig Dungeon, Fire and Sword by Robinson. Similar approach to the Crusades, but in the context of Templar history.

 

[Harp]

I'm reading "From Here to Eternity" by James Jones. Wow. Let me tell you- the movie only just barely scratches the surface of this massive, sprawling story.

James Jones got hit on Guadalcanal, then subsequently broke sergeant
across a Camp Campbell, KY court martial board that busted him down to
private and packed him off for a nine-month stockade before cashiering
out with a bad conduct discharge in 1944. Prew was an actual character
in Jones' Schofield Barracks pre war company, and Jones drew on his own
stockade experience, which apparently witnessed the murder of a prisoner.

 

[MrFairchild]

I am currently reading...

 

[Smithy]

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by this Afghan chap (sorry the book is downstairs) who also wrote "The Kite Runner". Absolutely brilliant thus far although heartbreaking as well. Beautifully written to top it off.