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Post by jill on Jul 2, 2013 14:49:21 GMT
Not quite sure how I've managed to get to this age without reading William Faulkner, but he's now definitely one of my al time favourite writers. Just finished As I Lay Dying (1930).Brilliant. Set in the Deep South and focused on a dirt poor white family, it's beautifully written-lovely description but also written in the local 'voice.' No trace of romanticisation of the poor-scarcely an endearing character in it- but also writes the environment centrally into the characters to provide a commentary on what makes them what they are. Genius. Might be US, but somehow I think Meadows fans would really like this/him. Just bought a tome of short stories and The Sound and the Fury too. Faulkner spent some time as a screenwriter (co-wrote the Blue Dahlia-usually attributed to Chandler alone) and also won the Nobel Prize for literature-not likely to find that sort of cross-over today  |
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Post by GR on Aug 11, 2013 21:32:40 GMT
This week, I've been reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson (author of Thunderstruck and The Devil in the White City).
As he tells the story of William E. Dodd, the US Ambassador to Germany from 1933-37, Larson does an excellent job of evoking what the time and place must have been like -- from the excitement and beauty to the growing uncertainty and brutality -- for outsiders such as Dodd, his wife and their two adult children (especially flirtatious daughter Martha) who literally had no idea that the Holocaust was coming.
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Post by GR on Sept 3, 2013 22:00:25 GMT
I just started Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. I'm only a couple chapters in, but I'm already loving his use of description and sly sense of humor...  |
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Post by ramaway on Sept 12, 2013 16:05:34 GMT
Just started reading Ralph Bulgers autobiography
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Post by GR on Oct 16, 2013 21:43:03 GMT
Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson (whose In the Garden of Beasts I read this summer) -- a nonfiction chronicle of the hurricane that decimated Galveston, TX in 1900. Heavy stuff, but well done; lots of interesting info about the science and history of meteorology to start with, and then reads more like horror as Larson gets into what happened during the storm itself.
(Before this, after I finished Winter's Tale, I finally got around to reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day and Yann Martel's Life of Pi -- loved both even more so than their respective film versions, though it's been about 18 or 19 years since I saw Remains...)
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Post by GR on Jan 20, 2014 23:07:44 GMT
I'm almost finished with John Grisham's A Time to Kill sequel, Sycamore Row (which I got for Christmas). It takes place only a few years after ATTK, and once again Jake Brigance finds himself involved in a racially charged case -- this time, a contest over a will in which an elderly white man has cut out his estranged children and left the bulk of his multimillion-dollar fortune to his black housekeeper. There's some suspense, but mostly it's just oddly reassuring -- for a longtime JG fan as myself, anyway -- to catch up with Jake, his friends (Sheriff Ozzie Walls, disbarred lush Lucien Wilbanks and cynical divorce lawyer Harry Rex Vonner), his family and his community in Clanton, Mississippi. |
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Post by GR on Apr 10, 2014 23:17:59 GMT
A Week In Winter
Maeve Binchy's last book (barring any future posthumous releases). The heart of the story revolves around a hotel in a small Irish seaside town; the first three chapters lay out the backstories of owner Geraldine "Chicky" Starr and her two employees (business-minded niece Orla and bad-boy-turned-family-man Rigger), while the other seven chapters develop the various characters who would be guests at the hotel during its first week in business: a nurse and her new boyfriend's mother, an American movie star, an English couple reeling from tragedy, a Swedish accountant / musician, a couple who won their hotel stay as a 2nd-place prize in an essay contest, an ill-tempered retired headmistress, and a librarian's assistant. I spoil nothing by saying that the titular holiday will be life-changing for them, but it's sweet to see how different combinations of characters come together, share secrets, bond, make major decisions and so on.
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Post by jill on Apr 15, 2014 19:36:54 GMT
I've been reading a few things by Ali Smith lately. I read The Accidental some years back and liked it, but didn't really feel inspired to read anything else. Recently read Girl Meets Boy and Hotel World, which I really liked, but mainly been knocked out by her short stories-brilliant!
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Post by GR on May 16, 2014 21:30:47 GMT
I'm finally getting around to Moby-Dick -- I started two weeks ago, and I'm already 40 chapters in (only 95 more to go). Some amusing moments so far, but Lordy, this is going to be a tough slog...
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Post by jill on May 29, 2014 18:17:34 GMT
I'm finally getting around to Moby-Dick -- I started two weeks ago, and I'm already 40 chapters in (only 95 more to go). Some amusing moments so far, but Lordy, this is going to be a tough slog... I started to read this last year. Made it to the part where he first meets Captain Ahab, then got really busy. Been so long now, I'll have to start all over again  |
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Post by GR on Jun 20, 2014 22:52:42 GMT
I finally finished M-D earlier this month -- it left me wiped out for a week afterwards!
Yesterday, I started on Stella Gibbons' considerably lighter Cold Comfort Farm, which I've read once before -- well over a decade ago, after having seen the mid-'90s film version with Kate Beckinsale as Flora (aka "Robert Poste's child").
Flora is a young college-educated Englishwoman who goes to live with some relatives in the Sussex countryside after her parents die; she sets about trying to make their lives better, and hopes her experiences will inspire her to someday write "a novel as good as [Jane Austen's] Persuasion."
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Post by twineesi on Jul 20, 2014 10:44:09 GMT
Jason Marriner It's Only A Game. Interesting and good Read. He was fitted up good and proper by Donal McIntyre on the bbc in case you didn't know. got a signed copy too.  Got chased out of a pub in Wolverhampton once when I was there. He'll sign anything for a few bob him - mate of mine had him and Danny Dyer (before he landed the eastenders gig) at his bar for one of those after dinner villian type do's. Said he was a numpty. |
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Post by twineesi on Jul 20, 2014 10:44:54 GMT
Just finished Tim Burgess (The Charlatans) autobiography.
Not bad
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Post by GR on Jul 20, 2014 22:11:54 GMT
Currently rereading another old favorite, Pride & Prejudice.
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Post by jill on Dec 10, 2014 12:25:43 GMT
Currently enjoying this audio book via the web. Great to listen to if you have a longish commute-be warned, it's seriously addictive  serialpodcast.org/season-one/1/the-alibiThe crime/ Baltimore connections might appeal to Wire fans especially. |
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