Now reading...

[rostasi]

Have returned to this:

Pure, simplistic, joy...

---

Now playing: Ivor Cutler - The Boo-Boo Bird

[jazzbo]

A biography of Saladin.

[Matthew]

rostasi: Who is the publisher for this? Princeton University Press is putting one volume out at a time, at $95.00 per. I'd love to get his Journals in that volume.

Have returned to this:

Pure, simplistic, joy...

[jlhoots]

James Crumley: The Right Madness

Eva Hoffman: Lost In Translation

Can't imagine 2 more different books (from each other).

[Alfred]

Max Frisch - Mein Name sei Gantenbein

[alankin]

Just finished Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Really masterful work. Previously I'd only read his more, shall we say, self-obsessed works. This one presents a wide imaginative embrace of a number of very different characters of different races, sexes, and social classes. Impressive.

Now I'll have to read his American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

←

Just started The Plot Against America. Some excellent writing. It's just about to get scary -- Lindbergh's just won the 1940 Presidential election.

[ghost of miles]

A new bio of Johnny Mercer--SKYLARK.

[Kalo]

Just finished "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet," The American Talking Film, History & Memory, 1927-1949 by Andrew Sarris

Now reading Howard Hawks, the Grey Fox of Hollywood, by Todd McCarthy.

[GA Russell]

Last night I finished Pope John Paul's Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way.

It was about his life as a bishop in Poland. What I found striking was how religion flourished under the oppressive communist regime. After communism's fall, he spoke out against the rising consumerism in Poland, and apparently the religiosity of the people seems to be on the wane.

[gslade]

More light reading

Tony Hillerman

The Wailing Wind

[paul secor]

Just finished John Dufresne's 'Johnny Too Bad'. Dufresne is one of America's greatest dreamers.

[kinuta]

Just finished Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Really masterful work. Previously I'd only read his more, shall we say, self-obsessed works. This one presents a wide imaginative embrace of a number of very different characters of different races, sexes, and social classes. Impressive.

Now I'll have to read his American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

←

' American Pastoral' is a great book, his best in my opinion.

' I Married A Communist ' is also excellent.

I thought they were both superior to ' Human Stain'.

[Matthew]

Interesting book on Emerson which gives a very good account to his thought. The Transcendentalist movement is very interesting, and something the is surprisingly revelant to our own world.

[ejp626]

Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta

This is a series of stories (fables really) told by international travelers all stranded because the Tokyo airport is snowed in. It's much closer to Boccaccio's Decameron than the Canterbury Tales, regardless of what the publisher's blurb says.

The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I went to school with her sister).

This is a really engaging love story about a man who keeps slipping around in time, usually for just a couple of hours at a time, who keeps running into this young girl, who eventually becomes his wife. Once they are united in "the present," they struggle to find a way to keep him there.

After this, I am going to read McEwan's Saturday, which is a meditation on Sept. 11 and has gotten really good reviews.

Then I will read Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which was a runner up for the Booker Prize. I wasn't blown away by his previous novel numberninedream, but I've heard this is better. The opening scene is good at least.

Anyway, this is a summer for more "serious" books.

[MartyJazz]

I like reading biographies and memoirs, so this one is the latest:

[jlhoots]

More light reading

Tony Hillerman

The Wailing Wind

←

I like Hillerman too.

He's 80 now.

Has a new one scheduled for mid-2006.

I just started Elizabeth Kostova: The Historian

Lots of press.

Hope it lives up to the attention.

[BruceH]

Just finished "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet," The American Talking Film, History & Memory, 1927-1949 by Andrew Sarris

Now reading Howard Hawks, the Grey Fox of Hollywood, by Todd McCarthy.

←

I read the Sarris a few years back. Must say, I found it a tad disappointing, though I can't say what I was expecting. On the other hand, I finished it, which says something.

How is McCarthy's book about Hawks? I've been meaning to read that for some time.

[Kalo]

Just finished Philip Roth's The Human Stain. Really masterful work. Previously I'd only read his more, shall we say, self-obsessed works. This one presents a wide imaginative embrace of a number of very different characters of different races, sexes, and social classes. Impressive.

Now I'll have to read his American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

←

' American Pastoral' is a great book, his best in my opinion.

' I Married A Communist ' is also excellent.

I thought they were both superior to ' Human Stain'.

←

I'm looking forward to reading them even more, then.

Just finished "You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet," The American Talking Film, History & Memory, 1927-1949 by Andrew Sarris

Now reading Howard Hawks, the Grey Fox of Hollywood, by Todd McCarthy.

←

I read the Sarris a few years back. Must say, I found it a tad disappointing, though I can't say what I was expecting. On the other hand, I finished it, which says something.

How is McCarthy's book about Hawks? I've been meaning to read that for some time.

←

The Sarris I skipped around in, though I've probably read most of it by now. I'm glad to have it, but it reminds me of Giddins's Visions of Jazz in the way it looks to be a history, but reads like a bunch of disconnected articles cobbled togther.

The McCarthy Hawks book was good. McCarthy's an average prose stylist, and Hawks himself was a bit of a cipher and sometimes a prick, but I thought it was a well-done biographical treatment and had a lot about his relationships and the business aspects of his career that I was unaware of. My favorite book on Hawks is still Gerald Mast's Howard Hawks: Storyteller, but that's another type of book altogether, being a very close reading of Hawks's best films.

Edited July 13, 2005 by Kalo

[Jad]

Nisenson's book on Sonny Rollins Open Sky. Quite engaging.

[rostasi]

Privateers and merchandisers are propellants

in this gratingly and intermittently redirecting

of savvy descendant advocacy disseminations!

---

Now playing: Jimmy Smith - Cat In A Tree

[Randy Twizzle]

I just finished "Excelsior You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd" by Eugene B. Bergmann. I don't think it was particularly well written, but it contains generous portions of Shepherd's radio monologues and extensive quotes from some of his co-workers and acquaintances. As someone who grew up desperately trying to talk, write and think like Shepherd, it's kind of disappointing to learn just how much of a Grade A prick he could be outside of the radio studio.

[kinuta]

Adam Zamoyski- 1812 Napoleon's Fatal March On Moscow.

[Matthew]

Nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Very interesting work of Emerson's trying to update Plato. It's engaging to read how Emerson handles to question of what to do with the "religious impulse" in the human person when organized religion has failed. Also in the middle of reading Walden and Thoreau's Journels. The "Transcendental Movement" does say a great deal to the modern world.

[ghost of miles]

I just finished "Excelsior You Fathead! The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd" by Eugene B. Bergmann. I don't think it was particularly  well written, but it contains generous portions of Shepherd's radio monologues and extensive quotes from some of his co-workers and acquaintances.  As someone who grew up desperately trying to talk, write and think like Shepherd, it's kind of disappointing to learn just how much of a Grade A prick he could be outside of the radio studio.

←

Is that a new or recent book, Randy? I'm interested in Shepherd esp. because of his Hoosier roots.

[brownie]

Now reading L'Affaire Joinovici by Andre Goldschmidt, a book that deals with the case of a notorious and unique jewish double agent who made a fortune in Paris during World War Two as a scrap metal dealer who was allowed to continue working during the nazi occupation. 'Monsieur Joseph' as he was nicknamed was condemned as a collaborator of the nazi regime by a French court in 1949.

During the trial, a number of jewish and non-jewish witnesses testified that Joinovici had helped save their lives.

After he served part of his sentence, he fled and went to Israel but the government refused to apply the Law of Return to such a controversial Jew. He was sent back to jail in France and died in 1965.

The book tries to clear some of the mysteries surrounding Monsieur Joseph's activities and brings a somehow positive account of his deeds for the French Resistance.

Edited July 22, 2005 by brownie