What Are You Reading

[Nathan Dodge]

The Insanity Defense- Woody Allen

A collection of Allen's prose. More absurd than funny, but always amusing.

 

[DNO]

I bought volumes 1, 2 and 4 but until I get 3 I'm stuck! I gather he's finished with that series, but he had "finished" Sharpe at one point but brought him back for more adventures. I also agonize for one to two years between his Alfred/Uhtred series set in the ninth century.

One of his latest, The Fort, is not bad. It deals with what he calls the biggest naval disaster/defeat in U.S. history...and I had never heard of it! Interesting story, though.

 

[tealseal]

The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I read it once every year or two. All the stories still surprise me for some reason.

 

[Widebrim]

Thought I had posted this before, but apparently not...Finished reading The Double Take, by Roy Huggins, who went on to greater fame as a producer. The novel (which is written in the vein of Raymond Chandler) was the basis for the 1948 Franchot Tone film, I Love Trouble, which is not as good as the book, but has a very good cast and a slightly better ending...I'm currently reading The Veteran Comes Home (1944), which describes how vets throughout U.S. history (but particularly WWI) have often found it hard to re-acclimate themselves to society, and Emma by Jane Austen.

 

[Yeps]

Right now I am reading George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. So far (one book in), I am enjoying it very much. I have been looking for another fantasy series to read and was massively disappointed by the Wheel of Time books. While Martin is occasionally crude/excessively violent (for effect/forced grittiness), he builds a very cohesive and convincing world, and is very patient in laying down plot to be resolved later. The first book (A Game of Thrones) reminded me of Dune more than anything else I can think of. It had the same type of politically (internal to the world, not commentary) driven plot. I also like how Martin does not hamper down the reader with explanation of every little detail of the world. They are gradually picked up naturally within the story (or myriad intertwining stories, more accurately.)

Here's hoping that the rest of the series is as good.

 

[TM]

Touchofevil,

After reading "Grievous Bodily Harm" you are going to need a stiff drink and a long shower.

Tony

 

[Lord Snooty]

I am reading "the mask of dimetris" by Eric Ambler and my wife is reading Anna Karenina.

 

[Touchofevil]

I am reading "the mask of dimetris" by Eric Ambler and my wife is reading Anna Karenina.

Eric Ambler is highly underappreciated. Fortunately, approximately twenty years ago Vintage Crime / Black Lizard brought him and a number of other great authors back in to circulation.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

I've recently discovered the late author Ted Lewis. Lewis is primarily known for his novel "Jack's Return Home" which became a Michael Caine film entitled "Get Carter". "Get Carter" is a great film, and the novel is even better. Lewis is kind of a 1970's Jim Thompson, but meaner. Much meaner. And yes, that is possible.

"Come on, Jack, you know you won't use it."
"The gun, he means."

LOL

 

[Lord Snooty]

The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I read it once every year or two. All the stories still surprise me for some reason.

Anytime I get stuck for a book to read I pick up Sherlock Holmes. And yes I always find something new in them.

 

[Lord Snooty]

The 39 steps is a great read, much better than any if the movies made.

 

[Feraud]

I've recently discovered the late author Ted Lewis. Lewis is primarily known for his novel "Jack's Return Home" which became a Michael Caine film entitled "Get Carter". "Get Carter" is a great film, and the novel is even better. Lewis is kind of a 1970's Jim Thompson, but meaner. Much meaner. And yes, that is possible.

If you want a really, really mean read, try his "Grievous Bodily Harm". As I mentioned in another thread, Lewis makes Jim Thompson look like Doctor Seuss.

Tony

Thanks for the recommendation. I've added Ted Lewis to my amazon watch list.

 

[Nathan]

More Vonnegut... Just finished Mother Night. Really enjoyed it this reading!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch

A strange, and fascinating, book.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Best Of S. J. Perelman," a 1947 Modern Library collection of comic essays by one of the greatest practitioners of this lost form. Perelman destroys hard-boiled detectives, the Saturday Evening Post, Santa Claus, labor relations, the advertising racket, obscure trade publications, Schrafft's restaurants, and science fiction pulps without ever taking the foul-smelling cigar out of his mouth. Under the nom de plume of "Sidney Namelrep," Perelman also contributes the preface, with a few choice words about himself:

"Denied every advantage, beset and plagued by ill fortune and a disposition so crabbed as to make Alexander Pope and Dr. Johnson seem sunny by contrast, he has nevertheless managed to belt out a series of books each less distinguished than its predecessor, each a milestone of bombast, conceit, pedantry, and strutting pomposity. In his pages proliferate all the weird grammatical flora tabulated by H. W. Fowler in his 'Modern English Usage,' -- the Elegant Variation, the Facetious Zeguma, the Cast-Iron Idiom, the Battered Ornament, the Bower's-Bird Phrase, the Sturdy Indefensible, the Side-Slip, and the Unequal Yokefellow. His work is a museum of mediocrity, a monument to the truly banal. What Flaubert did to the French bourgeois in 'Bouvard and Pechuchet,' what Pizarro did to the Incas, what Jack Dempsey did to Paolino Uzcudun, S. J. Perelman has done to American belles-letters."

In many ways, Perelman, with his columns in The New Yorker, Judge, and similar publications of the Era, was a predecessor to the snarky bloggers of today. But there hasn't yet been a blogger born with Perelman's command of invective -- and he doesn't need a single four-letter word to make his points. Truly one of the great comic stylists of the 20th Century.

 

[DNO]

C.J. Sansom, Dissolution.

 

[rayban]

'Russia's War: Blood upon the Snow' by Richard Overy. Almost finished.

Halfway in 'Bloodlands' by Timothy Snyder. I was familiar with some of the things he describes. But some information was new to me. Horrific. Some parts of this book I re-read several times because I simply could not believe/understand what had happened. If you want to know what our species is capable of: read this book.

 

[Chasseur]

Been on an early 20th Century British fiction kick lately: many short shorties by Maughan, all his "Ashenden" secret agent stories (which were excellent), EM Forester's "A Passage to India," and Waugh's "Men at Arms" (also excellent, I will read the two others in the trilogy soon), and just started "Vile Bodies". I feel so cricket, what ho!

 

[Diamondback]

John Richard Stephens, editor: Wyatt Earp Speaks! A collection of primary-source material about Wyatt, Doc Holliday, the OK Corral incident and its aftermath.

 

[Nathan Dodge]

Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip by Stuart Hample.

Reading this is part nostalgia in that I vividly recall reading it in my local newspaper circa 1979-80. Reading it now, it's oddly comforting, charming, and very much in the Woody mold, albeit with a comic strip gloss that keeps it from achieving "total heaviosity". I'm particularly amused by the emphasis on psychoanalysis (so very '70s), his striking out with women, and even the philosophical and artistic references. I'm still surprised that the Inside Woody Allen comic strip lasted until 1984. I'm pretty sure it left our local paper by then; certainly by 1982. I like how the original publication dates are included.