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[Brad]

I was having trouble getting into And The Don Flows to the Sea so I decided to put it down for awhile and I'm now reading Joseph Roth's Rebellion.  I've read The Radetzky March and The Emperor's Tomb and those were excellent. If you like Stefan Zweig -- and I've read all his novels and memoir -- you'd probably like Roth. 

[ejp626]

2 hours ago, Brad said:

I was having trouble getting into And The Don Flows to the Sea so I decided to put it down for awhile and I'm now reading Joseph Roth's Rebellion.  I've read The Radetzky March and The Emperor's Tomb and those were excellent. If you like Stefan Zweig -- and I've read all his novels and memoir -- you'd probably like Roth. 

I don't think I've read Rebellion, though I've read several other of his novels and reportage.  My favorite is the fairly early novel, Hotel Savoy. 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, ejp626 said:

I don't think I've read Rebellion, though I've read several other of his novels and reportage.  My favorite is the fairly early novel, Hotel Savoy. 

I will have to check that one out. 

[Bluesnik]

Actually rereading it, because it was written in 1998 and published in 1999. I particularly enjoyed the part about Mary Quant and the start of the Swinging London at the beginning of the 60s. And the first days of Ronny Scotts. Oldham, the Stones first manager, was actually quite fashion conscious before managing the Stones. But it was he who invented that bad boy image for the Stones, as they were middle class or upper middle class made to look like thugs. Whereas the Beatles were thugs from the council estates made into nice boys by Brian Epstein, their higher class manager.

[kinuta]

I don't often reread novels. This one is an exception.

  

Hi Bluesnik 

Are you sure the Beatles were thugs from housing estates ?

Working class kids for sure but I'm not sure the facts support that idea.

Thuggish would imply someone who delights in dishing out violence.

I lived on such a housing estate from 1956 - 1966 and although there were a lot of lads with musical aspirations, none of them were thuggish at all.  I was in Sheffield and we lived very much the same way as people in Liverpool and Manchester.

Anyhow the book looks interesting. Have you read Keef's biography ?

 

 

[ghost of miles]

[Brad]

13 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

You might find the recent book "Say Nothing" by Patrick Keefe, about the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, something you may want to read. It received good reviews. 

[ghost of miles]

On 3/8/2019 at 8:51 AM, Brad said:

You might find the recent book "Say Nothing" by Patrick Keefe, about the abduction and murder of Jean McConville, something you may want to read. It received good reviews. 

Yes, I’m very interested in it, actually, after hearing this interview with the author a few days ago on NPR.

[Brad]

On 3/6/2019 at 5:40 AM, Brad said:

I was having trouble getting into And The Don Flows to the Sea so I decided to put it down for awhile and I'm now reading Joseph Roth's Rebellion.  I've read The Radetzky March and The Emperor's Tomb and those were excellent. If you like Stefan Zweig -- and I've read all his novels and memoir -- you'd probably like Roth. 

A wonderful but pessimistic book: how the state can crush you if you’re not careful. As relevant today as It probably was when first written. 

[JohnS]

[Brad]

4 hours ago, JohnS said:

My favorite of his books is Armageddon. That one was very good. 

[kinuta]

8 hours ago, Brad said:

My favorite of his books is Armageddon. That one was very good. 

Agree. Both Armageddon and All Hell Let Loose are great.

I'd add Nemesis : The Battle For Japan to the short list.

Edited March 10, 2019 by kinuta

[kinuta]

[Brad]

3 hours ago, kinuta said:

Agree. Both Armageddon and All Hell Let Loose are great.

I'd add Nemesis : The Battle For Japan to the short list.

It’s funny but over in the US they have different titles. All Hell Let Loose is titled Inferno and Nemesis is titled Retribution. 

[kinuta]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

It’s funny but over in the US they have different titles. All Hell Let Loose is titled Inferno and Nemesis is titled Retribution. 

I heard that was the case with All Hell Let Loose, but didn't know of the title change of Nemesis.

You would, like me, be at sea here, where book and film titles are more often changed than not. Not just to a directly translated title but something totally different.

Edited March 11, 2019 by kinuta

[kinuta]

[medjuck]

MacDonald's last book.   I read it because it's the one where it is most obvious that Santa Teresa is Santa Barbara.  Good story but as far as I can see two murders in it are never actually solved. And I think that the epithet for every Lew Archer story should be Faulkner's "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."  

Edited March 13, 2019 by medjuck

[GA Russell]

33 minutes ago, medjuck said:

MacDonald's last book.   I read it because it's the one where it is most obvious that Santa Teresa is Santa Barbara.  Good story but as far as I can see two murders in it are never actually solved. And I think that the epithet for every Lew Archer story should be Faulkner's "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past."  

Joe, I read most of his books in the late '70s, one after another.  It seemed like he wrote the same book over and over!

[medjuck]

27 minutes ago, GA Russell said:

Joe, I read most of his books in the late '70s, one after another.  It seemed like he wrote the same book over and over!

As Lew Archer says:  "It's all one case."    https://smile.amazon.com/Its-All-One-Case-Illustrated/dp/1606998889/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1M9OJOI0KBWHI&keywords=it%27s+all+one+case&qid=1552468915&s=books&sprefix=It%27s+all+one+%2Caps%2C477&sr=1-1

[GA Russell]

3 hours ago, medjuck said:

As Lew Archer says:  "It's all one case."    https://smile.amazon.com/Its-All-One-Case-Illustrated/dp/1606998889/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1M9OJOI0KBWHI&keywords=it%27s+all+one+case&qid=1552468915&s=books&sprefix=It%27s+all+one+%2Caps%2C477&sr=1-1

Thanks for that link!

[ghost of miles]

A question for fellow John le Carre fans on the board:  over the years I've read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (twice), recently finished the next two books in the Karla trilogy (The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People) and am now about 75 pages into A Perfect Spy.  I also have Adam Sisman's recent biography of le Carre on order.  What other le Carre novels would you recommend?  And how is The Secret Pilgrim?

[Brad]

18 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

A question for fellow John le Carre fans on the board:  over the years I've read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (twice), recently finished the next two books in the Karla trilogy (The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People) and am now about 75 pages into A Perfect Spy.  I also have Adam Sisman's recent biography of le Carre on order.  What other le Carre novels would you recommend?  And how is The Secret Pilgrim?

Did you read the recent one where he revisits The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Smiley makes a brief appearance. I didn't read a lot of the early books and have started to read them found them very good, such as Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. Among the ones I have read over the years, Little Drummer Girl and The Russia House stand out. 

[paul secor]

The Ensemble is a novel about a classical string quartet over a period of years. I expected and hoped for more, but it was a disappointment in that it ventured into soap opera/chick lit territory and the writing was over explanatory.

[ghost of miles]

[kinuta]

Quite good, entertaining fast read.

Edited March 19, 2019 by kinuta