Matthew Posted January 1, 2010 Report Share Posted January 1, 2010 Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth Anger. Not too bad. I would love to have a huge book that breaks down all his films. Also, a good biography, if it's not too much trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted January 1, 2010 Report Share Posted January 1, 2010 J M Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul secor Posted January 2, 2010 Report Share Posted January 2, 2010 (edited) Read a short blurb in The NY Times today about an exhibition called "Portraits of Poets, 1910 -2010" at the National Arts Club in NYC. The exhibition includes several of Jonathan Williams' photographs, so I spent part of the afternoon looking at his words and photographs in the book Portrait Photographs. The portraits include poets, painters, photographers, composers, and writers - William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting, Aaron Siskind, Carl Ruggles, R. B. Kitaj, and Guy Davenport among them. Edited January 2, 2010 by paul secor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nate Dorward Posted January 2, 2010 Report Share Posted January 2, 2010 Lately it's been a pile of Dorothy L Sayers novels (including one that I'm reading aloud to the little one as she's fond of mysteries--Strong Poison, the one where he meets his future amour Harriet Vane & saves her from a murder rap). Judging from the 4 I've read, Lord Peter does have a curious knack for leaving death & destruction wherever he goes--in Unnatural Death he manages to get one person killed & nearly makes it two, while in The Nine Tailors he turns out to have actively (if unwittingly) participated in the murder and in Murder Must Advertise (which marvellously draws on Sayers' own career in commercial advertising for its portrait of the hothouse environment of an ad agency in the 1930s) Wimsey sends a man to his death. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaturalSoul Posted January 2, 2010 Report Share Posted January 2, 2010 hocus pocus, vonnegut Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjarrell Posted January 2, 2010 Report Share Posted January 2, 2010 I've got around 50 pages left to go in Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass. I've been reading the trilogy over the last month, and I don't want it to end... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medjuck Posted January 3, 2010 Report Share Posted January 3, 2010 (edited) Reading books I got for Chanukkah/Xmas. Finished The Jazz Loft. Great book. Now reading a collection of Michael Chabon essays called "Maps and Legends". Interesting essays in a beautifully produced book from McSweeny's. Glad I didn't get it for my Kindle. (Though I'm sure it wasn't offered as an e-book.) In fact glad I was given the hardcover edition. Also a book of essays by David Hadju whose work I like though I think he's a little too willing to sacrifice nuance for a good story. Edited January 3, 2010 by medjuck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjarrell Posted January 3, 2010 Report Share Posted January 3, 2010 I love Maps and Legends! It is gorgeous- and it's either that one (or the more recent Manhood for Amateurs) that got me to read the Pullman trilogy. Maps also has his keynote address for the Eisner awards, which spoke directly to me as I'm making a comic book aimed at the youngsters. Great inspiration if you're so inclined...And David Hadju's The Ten Cent Plague is sweet too, in a funnybooks + social history kind of way. Also if you're so inclined Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcy62 Posted January 3, 2010 Report Share Posted January 3, 2010 Georges Bensoussan - Europe. Une passion génocidaire : Essai d'histoire culturelle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Storer Posted January 4, 2010 Report Share Posted January 4, 2010 I'm reading James Ellroy's new one, "Blood's A Rover," the last of a trilogy that has included "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand." The trilogy is a violent, jumpy look at America in the 50's and 60's, centering on conspiracies leading to the Kennedy and King assassinations and beyond. Cruelty, corruption, hate, deception, intrigue, murder, drugs, sex and perversion in wave after wave. The narrative style is a mercilessly staccato accumulation of repetitive, shorthand sentences interspersed with more discursive "document inserts" representing FBI reports, bugged conversations, etc. It's highly idiosyncratic and I've talked to several people who couldn't take it, but I find it brilliantly done--very tense and edgy but almost symphonic in the way the characters and themes all flow together. Not your average thriller. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted January 4, 2010 Report Share Posted January 4, 2010 I'm reading James Ellroy's new one, "Blood's A Rover," the last of a trilogy that has included "American Tabloid" and "The Cold Six Thousand." The trilogy is a violent, jumpy look at America in the 50's and 60's, centering on conspiracies leading to the Kennedy and King assassinations and beyond. Cruelty, corruption, hate, deception, intrigue, murder, drugs, sex and perversion in wave after wave. The narrative style is a mercilessly staccato accumulation of repetitive, shorthand sentences interspersed with more discursive "document inserts" representing FBI reports, bugged conversations, etc. It's highly idiosyncratic and I've talked to several people who couldn't take it, but I find it brilliantly done--very tense and edgy but almost symphonic in the way the characters and themes all flow together. Not your average thriller. I've read several of his books. I agree there's a brilliance there, but ultimately the subject matter just drives me away, I have had enough! Right now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted January 4, 2010 Report Share Posted January 4, 2010 (edited) Outside of the British Isles I've always found this period of European history (roughly the fall of Rome to the start of the First Crusade) hard to get a mental map of...get all my Henrys, Ottos and Fredericks muddled up. I really enjoyed Holland's 'Persian Fire' and this is certainly interesting, but I'm finding it somewhat breathless and overwritten. The characters come across like cartoon figures in a perpetual state of action, the events ever-momentous. He's trying to evoke the sense of fear and anticipation in Europe as the millennium approached and the Second Coming descended. But I'm a bit irritated by it. Reminds me of quite a lot of recent TV history - high action to stop viewers switching over to special-fx films. Edited January 4, 2010 by Bev Stapleton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted January 6, 2010 Report Share Posted January 6, 2010 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Re-reading this fine novel! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ejp626 Posted January 6, 2010 Report Share Posted January 6, 2010 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Re-reading this fine novel! Of all the Atwood novels, I like Cat's Eye the best, which is so rooted in Toronto as a place. Haven't read that in ages and should give it a go, though it would have to go towards the bottom of the list. I have reasonably high expectations for Oryx and Crake and its follow-up, The Year of the Flood, but haven't read them yet. I finally wrapped up The Master and Margarita (two different translations). For most of the time, the experiment worked well and I really got much more out of comparing the two. At the last 5-10% though, my energy was flagging, and I just wanted to be done. This also may reflect the structure of the novel, which is frenetic pretty much from start until the last 15% when the bacchanal ends and the devil and his retinue leave Moscow. If you aren't of a religious persuasion, the ending can feel like a bit of a let down. Still, a great novel that I would encourage anyone to read. I am reading a very short novel by Voinovich called The Fur Hat, which is an ideal companion piece. There is this writer of turgid fiction who, upon hearing the Writers' Union is giving out hats, applies for one and instead of a fox (or even rabbit) hat is given a living tom cat as his hat. It is also very much in line with Gogol's The Overcoat, though marginally less surreal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted January 6, 2010 Report Share Posted January 6, 2010 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Re-reading this fine novel! Of all the Atwood novels, I like Cat's Eye the best, which is so rooted in Toronto as a place. Haven't read that in ages and should give it a go, though it would have to go towards the bottom of the list. I have reasonably high expectations for Oryx and Crake and its follow-up, The Year of the Flood, but haven't read them yet. I've read Cat's Eye too, but as my only experience of Toronto was to change planes once at the airport and given my fondness for science fiction, you'll appreciate that I like the others better. O and C is really good and the other very thought-provoking in what it has to say about humanity and the ecosystem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medjuck Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 And David Hadju's The Ten Cent Plague is sweet too, in a funnybooks + social history kind of way. Also if you're so inclined Then you should check out the DVD of Ron Mann's film "Comic Book Confidential". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teasing the Korean Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 On a Raymond Chandler kick. Recently finished The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, and The Little Sister. Now I'm reading The Long Goodbye. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikelz777 Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 Stephen King - Under The Dome Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 On a Raymond Chandler kick. Recently finished The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, and The Little Sister. Now I'm reading The Long Goodbye. Went halfway through the Chandler works this summer. Need to get to the other half. One of my alltime favorite things is to be in the middle of one of his novels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 Just started Nik Cohn's Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, kind of like a stream of consciousness history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sjarrell Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 And David Hadju's The Ten Cent Plague is sweet too, in a funnybooks + social history kind of way. Also if you're so inclined Then you should check out the DVD of Ron Mann's film "Comic Book Confidential". You know, I think I own one of those. I should watch it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Re-reading this fine novel! It is indeed. Have you read Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go'? Works in a similar sort of distorted near future. The title comes from the tune much beloved of jazzers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillF Posted January 7, 2010 Report Share Posted January 7, 2010 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Re-reading this fine novel! It is indeed. Have you read Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go'? Works in a similar sort of distorted near future. The title comes from the tune much beloved of jazzers. Indeed I have read it and liked it very much. I think Ishiguro must be into our sort of music. His recent story collection Nocturnes is based on the experiences of musicians, most of whom are in Great American Songbook mode, rather than classical or pop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harold_Z Posted January 8, 2010 Report Share Posted January 8, 2010 Adolfo Bioy Casares: SELECTED STORIES Casares is terrific. I'm looking for all the translations I can find but I've got an eye on some of the the Spanish editions. I need to learn more Spanish and Casares or Borges are the guys to keep me drawn in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carnivore Posted January 8, 2010 Report Share Posted January 8, 2010 'Against the Day' Thomas Pynchon. I've so far read about 100 pages, which is about a tenth of it and am totally enthralled. I just wish I could hold the damn thing for longer periods! It must weigh about 5 lbs. The pastiche of various genres is spot on and his genius for devising 'lists' is extraordinary. I don't recall seeing any reviews. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_forumlogo.png.a607ef20a6e0c299ab2aa6443aa1f32e.png)
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.