What Are You Reading

[Dan'l]

Currently reading Suzanne Valadon the Misstress of Montemarte by June Rose.

She was a young model for Renoir and other French artists. Somewhere around middle-age she began producing her own artwork that caught the attetion of Degas and others. So far a very good read. She was a beautiful but tragic soul it seems.
I love art and art history, especially the impressionists.

 

[martinsantos]

"Woman in the Dark", by Dashiell Hammett.

Hammett is one of my preferred writers... One of the very few "detective stories" you can read, read and read again. He writes much more than a simple "murder story". But this little novel doesn't have all that punch... Looks like he wrote quickly and didn't revised the text.

 

[Harp]

Currently reading Suzanne Valadon the Misstress of Montemarte by June Rose.


I love art and art history, especially the impressionists.

Tim Dunn's miniseries The Impressionists (2006) is spellbinding.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

A Handbook of Popular Antiques
by Katharine Morrison McClinton
(New York: Bonanza Books, 1945)

Somebody back in 1945 must have anticipated present-day Loungers for the Foreword says the following...

"A hundred years from now someone will be collecting ration books, cigarette cases, comic strips, face-powder compacts, amateur kodachromes. These and many other convenient gadgets that are commonplaces to us today will be more than curiosities to the collector of the future. They will be, in their small way, a part of human history. They will be the tangible record of various aspects of everyday living which we now take for granted -- little customs and habits and passing vogues which seem so unimportant that they will never get into the history books, but which are nevertheless a quite essential part of life in America in the 1940s."

I am reading a book written by a close friend of Nicole Brown, murdered by O.J Simpson. Well, it still hasn't been proven and it probably never will be, and I know that it's 'innocent until proven guilty'....

"If the glove don't fit, you must acquit."
...Johnnie Cochrane

Being in Southern California, the epicenter of the whole thing, I remember what a media circus it was. However, in retrospect -- even though I thought the trial was a total joke -- you have to figure that if something like the O.J. Simpson trial could dominate the headlines like it did, then perhaps things weren't quite as bad as we thought back then. Well, as the school chaplain used to say, here endeth the lesson.

 

[Harp]

"The Social(ist) Networks/Facebook of China; Fast Company/Feb2011
Behind the Chinese firewall.... The proletariat complacent or... eventually restless.
China's card played within raises historic comparison and intense speculation.

 

[Eddie The Hat]

An Albany Trio...William Kennedy.
Consisting of;
Legs.
Billy Phelan's Greatest Game. and
Ironwood.

 

[Harp]

Always enjoyed Kennedy, who is also an easy screenwrite adapt.
Saul Bellow championed Kennedy and Ironweed's publication.
Kennedy vaguely reminds me of Nelson Algren, "bard of the stumblebum."

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Britain's Big Four: The Story of the London Midland and Scottish, London and North Eastern, Great Western, and Southern Railways
by Horace Greenleaf
(London: Winchester Publications, Ltd., 1948)

 

[Chasseur]

For pleasure been reading a great deal of George Simenon both ther Maigret series and also his other fiction.

For work standard mix: Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-45; Enerst May, Strange Victory: Hitler's Conquest of France; and Holmes, Winner and Yoshihara, Indian Naval Strategy in the 21st Century.

 

[Dan'l]

Tim Dunn's miniseries The Impressionists (2006) is spellbinding.

Yes it is indeed, I saw that a few years back and just sat there... well, spellbound

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Fallen Angels: Paintings by Jack Vettriano
edited by W. Gordon Smith
(London: Pavilion Books, Ltd., 1994)

A collection of Noir-inspired paintings by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano.

The Game of Life

Amateur Philosophers

 

[lynnequintana]

Audrey : Her Real Story by Alexander Walker

 

[djd]

The Saint Meets his Match - 1931 by Leslie Charteris.

Pretty good fun after a slow start

 

[martinsantos]

Charteris is probably one of the most underrated thriller writers I know. Discovered his books last year, and liked a lot!

 

[djd]

Yes, I've read a few over the years. I find the earlier ones to be harder work - the Saint is rather more cocky and unlikeable in the earlier books I think...

 

[martinsantos]

The few I readed are probably the last ones (like Sainct in New York).

I think Charteris made a kind of psichotic caracter, and this looked me very different.

 

[Black Dahlia]

The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) by Gaston Leroux (author of Phantom of the Opera).
X
BD

 

[Feraud]

I've been reading a bio of Henry Fonda that was sitting on my bookshelf for years. Great actor, not so great dad..

 

[Harp]

Audrey : Her Real Story by Alexander Walker

Next.

Now: The Tell-Tale Artist; Edgar Allan Poe turns 200 by Brooke Allen;
The Standard, September 28, 2009

Poe's pursuit of Poetry's beauty and her gift of melancholy.

 

[martinsantos]

Memoirs by Thor Heyerdahl.

That's a man who I admire a lot - as a writer, adventurer and cientist. Just loved two other book by him, Aku-aku and the Kon-tiki Expedition.