What Are You Reading

[Harp]

Upton Sinclair's The Journal of Arthur Stirling.

 

[Gregg Axley]

Just got in a book that was backordered called "MGM Hollywood's Greatest Backlot."
I think it came out recently. This is a big coffee table book filled with history, and pictures from the golden era.
So far I'm very impressed and thrilled to have it, which is rare for me! LOL
Mine came from Amazon for $22.60, but here's a link to the book.
http://www.mgmbacklot.info/

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Just got in a book that was backordered called "MGM Hollywood's Greatest Backlot."
I think it came out recently. This is a big coffee table book filled with history, and pictures from the golden era.
So far I'm very impressed and thrilled to have it, which is rare for me! LOL
Mine came from Amazon for $22.60, but here's a link to the book.
http://www.mgmbacklot.info/

I've seen that book at Barnes & Noble. When I was a kid in the early '70s there was a restaurant either in or near Culver City where we used to go for family gatherings. And along the way we used to pass one of the old MGM backlots before it was torn down.

 

[John Boyer]

Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India by Joseph Lelyveld and;

R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God by D.Z. Phillips

 

[AmateisGal]

The Quest for Anna Klein by Thomas Cook.

 

[Black Dahlia]

So I'm at the inlaws, staying in the backroom (has the washer and dryer in it!), keeping away from screaming kids and family.
I brought several books, a cooler to keep my wine cold (a 5 day cooler and honestly the wine is still cool without adding too much ice), and a portable A/C to keep me comfy in the TX heat. I brought a book I'm finishing on Laurel and Hardy, kind of a look at their works listing what went into each film, and why they were so funny. But I brought one out of storage, that I had forgotten about. It's a collection of all Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, as they appeared in the Strand. I got it 20yrs ago at Sams! The book is in a leather bound cover, with gold on the page edges. It's really nice. If I can find one online and find a link, I'll add it later.

I'm a huge Sherlock fan and have read the stories and novels many times. ;0 Sounds like you have a great copy of the stories!
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[Black Dahlia]

If you are a fan of Christie and haven't already read her, Dame Ngaio Marsh is a must. She was writing at roughly the same time as AC but IMHO Marsh pips the Queen of Crime with her characterisation. Worth hunting down.

A modern find which has thrilled me is Barbara Cleverly who writes traditional British Crime set in the inter-war period. Her Joe Sandilands novels are hugely enjoyable and the first few were set in British India of the 20s which are hugely evocative. Her style and pacing reminds me greatly of AC.

Hi Smithy!

I have a few of Ngaio Marsh's novels, some I really enjoyed. I must get more. I'm always looking for new authors to add to the list. I'd really like to get more Edgar Wallace novels also, but they're hard to find.
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[Gregg Axley]

A very nice book. I believe mine has 56 stories and 4 novels, roughly 636 pages.
I'll PM an e-bay one because I don't like advertising, just a quirk I have....

 

[davidraphael]

Highly recommended:

Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life

Bryson (A Short History of Everything) takes readers on a tour of his house, a rural English parsonage, and finds it crammed with 10,000 years of fascinating historical bric-a-brac. Each room becomes a starting point for a free-ranging discussion of rarely noticed but foundational aspects of social life. A visit to the kitchen prompts disquisitions on food adulteration and gluttony; a peek into the bedroom reveals nutty sex nostrums and the horrors of premodern surgery; in the study we find rats and locusts; a stop in the scullery illuminates the put-upon lives of servants. Bryson follows his inquisitiveness wherever it goes, from Darwinian evolution to the invention of the lawnmower, while savoring eccentric characters and untoward events (like Queen Elizabeth I's pilfering of a subject's silverware). There are many guilty pleasures, from Bryson's droll prose--"What really turned the Victorians to bathing, however, was the realization that it could be gloriously punishing"--to the many tantalizing glimpses behind closed doors at aristocratic English country houses. In demonstrating how everything we take for granted, from comfortable furniture to smoke-free air, went from unimaginable luxury to humdrum routine, Bryson shows us how odd and improbable our own lives really are.

 

[Harp]

R.S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God by D.Z. Phillips

Then haste thee to some solitary grove,
And bear wise Bacon's and Albanus' works,
The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament;
And whatever else is requisite...

Faustus I.i.
John,
a Welsh curmudgeon many have chosen to avoid, but-
bene disserere est finis logices-;so I will follow your example
and read this bio.
--after I stock more whisky and frog. :frog:
Thomas vaguely reminds me of Schopenhauer....certainly a far
cry from Hopkins in more ways than merely poetic.

 

[Black Dahlia]

I'm currently reading some Sexton Blake stories.
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[Antje]

Just finished a Dean Koontz storie, great writer

 

[Derek Cavin]

Wild Valley by Charlotte Paul. We're trying to pinch pennies right now, so the book was free and my wife is happy I didn't buy a book. The Stetson Open Road will have to wait.

 

[DNO]

"Lest Darkness Fall" by L. Sprague de Camp. Read this one originally as a teen in the '60's and just found a copy in a thrift store. Still a good read.

 

[DNO]

Just finished a Dean Koontz storie, great writer

I like Koontz as well, although I prefer his earlier works like "Watchers" and "Twilight Eyes". I enjoyed his Frankenstein series, despite the cliffhanger ending in part 4. I have yet to find the final instalment.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I was at a militaria show this past weekend and there I picked up a copy of the The Spitfire V Manual, a reprint of the original Air Ministry maintenance manuals.

 

[Diamondback]

Glenn Beck, The Original Argument, as I prepare to tackle the raw untranslated Federalist Papers myself.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Plot Against America," Philip Roth's foray into alternative-history fiction speculating on what would have happened if Charles Lindbergh had been the Republican presidential nominee in 1940. A fascinating conceit, and extremely well-researched, but the premise is hard to buy: there's no way Lindbergh or any other Republican could have won 46 states in that election. Lindy's own popularity had already been sullied by his dalliances with Germany, and the isolationist movement itself was largely concentrated in the Midwest -- which simply didn't have enough voters to offset the Roosevelt power base along the East coast and South. Roth takes his biggest historical stretch in suggesting the entire Southern bloc would have swung to Lindy, which is completely incomprehensible to anyone who understands the actual mood of the region in 1940. In reality, the South was a hotbed of interventionism, and support for FDR there was perhaps stronger than anywhere else in the country.

Historical whoppers aside, what makes the book most unusual is that Roth himself is the lead character -- as a seven-year-old boy just beginning to understand the world around him, suddenly plunged into an environment beyond anyone's comprehension. On that level, the story works quite well.

 

[Harp]

...as I prepare to tackle the raw untranslated Federalist Papers myself.

Some profs consider Jaywalking a crime.

 

[Diamondback]

@Harp: Beck is just the first step, as I gather other modern interpretations and scholarly works so I can consider the entire spectrum of interpretation. Besides, this is the nice thing about personally acquiring knowledge outside a curriculum... no meddling from the Ivory Tower brigade, beyond their opinions being in the pool as well.