What Are You Reading

[vinspired]

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.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

"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.

 

[RBH]

I am reading The American State Fair by Derek Nelson.
It is full of great photos from the early 1900s to the 1950s.

http://www.amazon.com/American-State-Fair-Motorbooks-Classics/dp/0760319170

 

[shazzabanazza]

I am reading Vantastic. A book all about the history of caravans in New Zealand.

 

[Alex Oviatt]

Inheritance by Christopher Paolini

 

[Bugguy]

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.

 

[Tomasso]

Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas. First time since college.

 

[Antje]

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

 

[DNO]

Just picked up Derek Robinson's Hornet's Sting. Can't wait to crack it open. Loved his Goshawk Squadron and War Story.

 

[Chasseur]

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.

 

[Aureliano]

Eco's Prague Cemetery.

 

[hatophile]

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.

 

[shazzabanazza]

At Home in Mitford - Jan Karon

 

[Gallegos]

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

 

[Chasseur]

Kazuo Ishiguro, "When We Were Orphans," always been fascinated with interwar Shanghai...

 

[Down2BDapper]

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.

 

[Derek Cavin]

Developing the Leader with You

 

[Feraud]

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]

Jospeh Conrad, The Secret Agent.

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

 

[DNO]

Joe Haldeman, The Accidental Time Machine