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What Are You Reading

vinspired

Familiar Face
Messages
52
Location
N.S.W. - Australia
Just finished "A lesson in secrets" - the latest book in the Maisie Dobbs series by author Jacqueline Winspear.

I am now starting "Millions like us: women's lives in the second world war" by Virginia Nicholson.
 
Messages
13,468
Location
Orange County, CA
"Walt And Skeezix -- The Complete Daily Strips, 1929-1930," the fifth volume in the hardbound series reprinting the original "Gasoline Alley," Frank King's brilliant comic strip chronicle of middle-class American life as seen thru the eyes of portly, likable Walt Wallet and his growing adopted son Skeezix. In this volume, Skeezix is eight and nine years old, dealing with the trials of school and neighborhood life, while in the background a complicated plot revolves around a mysterious bequest from his late birth father.

No comic strip ever captured the rhythm of daily life better than King's work, and watching the lives of the Wallet family and their friends slowly unfold is the next best thing to a time machine. This volume includes a wonderful bonus --- a DVD containing selections from Frank King's home movies, showing his working life in Chicago, his home life in the suburbs, and several road trips taken in during the twenties and early thirties. Fascinating footage that points up the many correlations between events in the strip and events in King's own life.

Why aren't there comic strips like this any more? "Gasoline Alley" is still running today, forty years after King's death, but with Walt now 112 years old and Skeezix turning 91 in a few weeks, the magic is long gone.

http://www.gocomics.com/gasolinealley/2011/12/30#mutable_732141

Geesh, I wouldn't even know who half the characters are now. Yes, I agree, Skeezix and Walt should have been given a long-deserved retirement.
 

Bugguy

Practically Family
Messages
570
Location
Nashville, TN
History's Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them by Stephen Ware. Chronology of bad ideas and or flawed judgement from Adam & Eve thru Gen. George Anson covering bullets with grease from sacred animals (India, 1858) to the Indonesian tsunami of 12/26/04.
 

Antje

One Too Many
Messages
1,579
Location
Schettens (Netherlands)
I just started an old novel of Louis Couperus it is in Dutch, "van oude mensen de dingen die voorbij gaan" I love it so far, but it is written in slightly old dutch
 

Chasseur

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,494
Location
Hawaii
Thomas Mann, "The Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man (the Early Years)". Excellent so far, half way through and I can not put it down.
 
Messages
15,276
Location
Somewhere south of crazy
I just finished "Tough Without a Gun" a biography of Bogie--very good, he was an interesting character. I'm
now reading "Revival" a story about a has-been folk singer in Cambridge who falls for a young up and coming singer/songwriter.
 

Down2BDapper

Familiar Face
Messages
93
Location
Coolsville
I just got finished reading Larry Doyle's new book, Go, Mutants! for the second time. If you love old black and white sci-fi movies like King Kong, The Day The Earth Stood Still, or The Blob this book should be your thing. It's a mash-up, send-up, whatever you want to call it, of the entire B movie genre.
 

Feraud

Bartender
Messages
17,190
Location
Hardlucksville, NY
Am re-reading In Search of The Third Man by Drazin. This is a wonderful book about the making of the film. The working relationship between producers Korda and Selznick is fascinating. When one considers what a collaborative effort filmmaking is and how financal, professional, personal, and national interests come into play (not to mention simple dumb luck), it is shocking to see films make it to the screen.
 

Chasseur

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,494
Location
Hawaii
Jospeh Conrad, The Secret Agent.

Duff Hart-Davis, Monarchs of the Glen: A History of Deer Stalking in the Scottish Highlands.
 

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