What Are You Reading

[Harp]

American Radical: The Life and Times of IF Stone by DD Guttenplan

enigmatic muckracker and patron saint of investigative journalists...

 

[Benzadmiral]

Just revisited a couple of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novelettes from the 1950s, "Method Three for Murder" (which was even better than I recalled) and "The Rodeo Murder." I go back and reread different parts of Stout's work every year, even when I remember who the murderer is. As P.G. Wodehouse said about Stout, "Now that's writing."

Currently wading into a somewhat trashy novel by Irving Wallace from 1974, in which 4 ordinary guys (a writer, a mechanic, an insurance agent, and a CPA) join forces to, get this, kidnap a beautiful movie star and hold her hostage, in a kindly way, so that she'll fall in love with them. No, it's not a comedy; in fact I'm not sure how this is going to play out, except that the mechanic character is going to be trouble.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Pressure Boys: The Inside Story of Lobbying In America," by Kenneth G. Crawford.

Published in 1939, this was the first substantial look Americans got at the shadow world of corporate political influence. In the tradition of Seldes and Spivak, Crawford is very much a muckraker -- a word considered complimentary by the cultural critics of the 1930s -- and he digs deep into the layers of muck at the bottom of the pond to reveal what's really down there, and who paid to put it there. Crawford passed away in 1983, just a bit too early to see everything he predicted proven correct.

 

[Hercule]

The Making of Casablanca; Bogart, Bergman, and World War II by Aljean Harmetz

A superbly cast classic with haunting music, drama, romance, commitment and renunciation scored against
a world at war, Casablanca is as Aljean Harmetz sums, "a place and time when love and heroism
were not only possible but necessary."
Originally published twenty four years ago as Round Up the Usual Suspects before reissue title dub
for the sixtieth anniversary edition, former New York Times journalist Harmetz interviewed many
surviving production principals and scoured archives and personal papers to properly focus the
creative process that birthed the film; while searing Warner Bros corporate soul and Hollywood's
old studio system. TMC concludes with Casablanca's cultural evolve.
A wonderful read.

I read that book a while agao and remember thoroughly enjoying it. If you are so inclined, Harmetz also did a similar type books about the making of the Wizard of Oz and Gone with the wind.

 

[tropicalbob]

One of the great things about living abroad is getting exposed to writers and artists that you probably would never have heard of. When I was living in Dublin many years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. I've just finished what must have been my fourth of fifth reading of it, and I have to say it's up there, for me, with Nobokov's Lolita or Borges' Labyrinths. It's deadly, magical, unnerving, beautifully written, and really funny (in a hellish sort of way).

 

[Harp]

One of the great things about living abroad is getting exposed to writers and artists that you probably would never have heard of. When I was living in Dublin many years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. I've just finished what must have been my fourth of fifth reading of it, and I have to say it's up there, for me, with Nobokov's Lolita or Borges' Labyrinths. It's deadly, magical, unnerving, beautifully written, and really funny (in a hellish sort of way).

I read that book a while agao and remember thoroughly enjoying it. If you are so inclined, Harmetz also did a similar type books about the making of the Wizard of Oz and Gone with the wind.

Flann O'Brien ranks with Yeats and Joyce, Celine, among others. All too often overlooked.

___________

I've read her Wiz but still haven't the GWTW. Something to definitely list for later reading.

/////////////////

Now on IF Stone's The War Years, 1939-45, a chronicle of his columns written for The Nation. Stone's critical eye always followed a moral line that led to truth.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Vampyre and Other Macabre Tales from the Folio Society.

 

[tropicalbob]

The Vampyre and Other Macabre Tales from the Folio Society.

Is that Polidori's The Vampyre? That was the origin of the handsome, seductive vampire and was based on Byron. I just lectured on it two weeks ago.

 

[Wells]

Tonight, I will be snuggling up and reading "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains", a short story by Ray Bradbury published in 1950.

I read this story a few years ago and loved it but had since forgotten it's title. Finally, I went searching and found it. Very excited to read this tonight.

 

[MisterCairo]

Is that Polidori's The Vampyre? That was the origin of the handsome, seductive vampire and was based on Byron. I just lectured on it two weeks ago.

Yes sir! It's the first macabre tale of 12 in the collection. Mary Shelley's The Dream is part of the collection as well (the book is entirely short stories).

 

[tropicalbob]

Yes sir! It's the first macabre tale of 12 in the collection. Mary Shelley's The Dream is part of the collection as well (the book is entirely short stories).

I like the Folio Society's publications. The story behind The Vampyre is really fascinating. Polidori was a recent Edinburgh Univ. medical graduate who was hired by Byron's publishing firm to go down to Lake Geneva and keep an eye on their investment. Byron resented his presence and threw him out, but not before Polidori had scribbled down the story Byron had told about a vampire (it was a Syrian story, I believe). This happened on the famous "It was a dark and stormy night," during which Mary Shelley wrote the first version of Frankenstein. When Polidori got back to England he wrote the play, in which the title character was obviously based upon the poet, and the play was largely a huge success all across Europe due to Byron's popularity and notoriety. It's especially interesting when you consider that Byron was, in many ways, the first international celebrity - the first rock star. You've got to also hand it to Polidori for getting his own back, though: he made a fortune off the play.

 

[Harp]

Theodore White's In Search of History

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Just revisited a couple of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novelettes from the 1950s, "Method Three for Murder" (which was even better than I recalled) and "The Rodeo Murder." I go back and reread different parts of Stout's work every year, even when I remember who the murderer is. As P.G. Wodehouse said about Stout, "Now that's writing."

Currently wading into a somewhat trashy novel by Irving Wallace from 1974, in which 4 ordinary guys (a writer, a mechanic, an insurance agent, and a CPA) join forces to, get this, kidnap a beautiful movie star and hold her hostage, in a kindly way, so that she'll fall in love with them. No, it's not a comedy; in fact I'm not sure how this is going to play out, except that the mechanic character is going to be trouble.

I have almost every Nero Wolfe novel and short story collection. And, yes, I re-read them even when I know whodunnit, enjoying the writing and looking for the clues.

 

[DNO]

Just finished Michael Harris' Party of One about our last Prime Minister. Excellent book but very hard on my blood pressure. Can't say anything more without straying into the range of politics.

 

[Harp]

The Apprenticeship of Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years, Charles A Fenton

 

[tropicalbob]

Flann O'Brien ranks with Yeats and Joyce, Celine, among others. All too often overlooked.

___________

I've read her Wiz but still haven't the GWTW. Something to definitely list for later reading.

/////////////////

Now on IF Stone's The War Years, 1939-45, a chronicle of his columns written for The Nation. Stone's critical eye always followed a moral line that led to truth.

Celine's "North" has to be the most nightmarish novel I've ever read: strange that it was based on his actual experiences toward the end of the war, and stranger still that he deserved them. I can't think of another book quite like it, with the exception of O'Brien's novel, but that one's pure fiction. Fascinating writer and indubitably a genius, but his complete blindness to the effects of his own prose is very hard to understand.

 

[Harp]

Celine's "North" has to be the most nightmarish novel I've ever read... Fascinating writer and indubitably a genius....

Celine's Conversation With Professor Y struck a similar nerve; North, and his Second World War Vichy/other issues and subsequent controversy unmask a certain depravity
which swirl his canon beyond mere literary measure to eclipse contemporaries such as Joyce whom seem adolescent innocuous and delusionary scribes quite outside the cauldron
stirred by Celine.

 

[DNO]

'The Laughter Goes from Life' by Thomas Penrose Marks. A First World War memoir by a young O.R. and a compelling read.

 

[Bushman]

This summer I've promised myself to read a number of books I've always wanted to but never have. First up, I'm starting with Moby Dick.

 

[Touchofevil]

James Crumley's The Wrong Case