What Are You Reading

[Feraud]

Currently reading a fascinating biography of Lon Chaney.

 

[Avalon]

Currently reading a fascinating biography of Lon Chaney.

Let me know what/how it is, I've been wanting to get a bio of him for awhile now.

 

[KittyT]

"Strange Fruit" by Lillian Smith.

 

[larsnxd]

Just finished 'Gone With The Wind', I'm now halfway through the sequel (written by a different author) called 'Scarlett', its no where near as good as the original though!

 

[Wally_Hood]

Just finished 'Gone With The Wind', I'm now halfway through the sequel (written by a different author) called 'Scarlett', its no where near as good as the original though!

We are hard-pressed to think of a "sequel" written by someone other than the original author that is as good as the original. There is continuity of plot, characters, and setting, but the soul is missing.

Other FL'ers have a correction for me?

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

Haven't started it yet, but the hubby gave me "My Lobotomy" for Christmas. Just reading the back cover and intro was disturbing enough to almost make me tear up. It looks fascinating, but I don't feel prepared to delve into it quite yet.
http://biographiesmemoirs.suite101.com/article.cfm/review_my_lobotomy_by_howard_dully

So I've got "This Side of Paradise" on the bedside table. I can always handle Fitzgerald.

Oh, another Christmas gift was "MemoraBEALEia", though it's not exactly for 'reading'.
http://www.amazon.com/MemoraBEALEia-Private-Scrapbook-Gardens-Jacqueline/dp/1434374491

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

Currently reading a fascinating biography of Lon Chaney.

I'd like a review of this one too. Aside from being a fan of his films, there's that tale of him living in Oklahoma City when Lon Jr. was born, and having to dunk the seemingly-dead baby into the icy waters of Belle Isle Lake to revive him. I love that tale, partly because I lived right near Belle Isle when my daughter was born. (Sadly, the old amusement park and lake, and art deco power plant have all been bulldozed and replaced with a big box shopping center, because God knows the world didn't have enough of those already. )

 

[larsnxd]

We are hard-pressed to think of a "sequel" written by someone other than the original author that is as good as the original. There is continuity of plot, characters, and setting, but the soul is missing.

Other FL'ers have a correction for me?

The soul of this book if definately missing! She completely revised Rhetts character! I wonder if the author so desperately wanted Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara to get back together that she decided to write this absolute trash. But hey, I bought it at a thrift store for 50pence....mustn't grumble!

 

[Feraud]

I'd like a review of this one too. Aside from being a fan of his films, there's that tale of him living in Oklahoma City when Lon Jr. was born, and having to dunk the seemingly-dead baby into the icy waters of Belle Isle Lake to revive him. I love that tale, partly because I lived right near Belle Isle when my daughter was born. (Sadly, the old amusement park and lake, and art deco power plant have all been bulldozed and replaced with a big box shopping center, because God knows the world didn't have enough of those already. )

I believe the dunking of Lon Jr. was an apocryphal story..
Here is the book and I highly recommend it.
Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces by Michael Blake.

 

[MissMeraRose]

I just finished Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I decided I would reread my all time favorite Peter Pan by J.M.Barrie, but I soon realized that I still haven't finished Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. haha I am currently a literary mess.

 

[oneterrifichog]

Into the depths of "Bloods A Rover" by James Ellroy. I'm an Ellroy Virgin but not for long....Got to go back and read the connecting novels...

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Talk about a literary mess, MissMeraRose! I usually have three or four books going at any given time.

Which leads me to my next comment . . . Funny you should mention Ellroy, oneterrifichog. I'm about to finish reading retired LAPD homicide detective Steve Hodel's book, Most Evil. It's about his father, George Hill Hodel.

In his first book, The Black Dahlia Avenger, Steve has proven, to the point where LAPD has closed the case as solved, that his own father was indeed the Black Dahlia Avenger.

In Most Evil, he shows very strong evidence that his father was also each of several other serial murderers, as well (Zodiac, Lipstick, Jigsaw, etc.) and says that, although he's made some connections he just doesn't have enough evidence to prove that, in 1958, GHH may have also murdered a woman by the name of Geneva Ellroy . . . James Ellroy's mother.

Now I'll go back to reading, L. A. Noir, by John Buntin. This book is about two men: Mickey Cohen and Police Chief William Parker.

Then I'll finish Edith Head's autobiography and then I'll finish . . .

 

[Slate Shannon]

A little off topic but I am setting here watching the morning show talking about how all books are going digital and in hand books are becoming obsolete. Maybe we should start buying up real books so people will remember how we used to read a book.

This has made me curious - I wonder how many of the people reading this thread use a digital book device, or plan to acquire one in the future. As a moderately old geezer (50+), I do not now, nor have any plans to own one. Though I do use this inter-web machine in front of me for certain purposes, I find that for reading, there is nothing like the feel of a real book in my hands.

 

[Celia Crowson]

I am re-reading the Groucho Marx Mysteries by Ron Goulart.
There are 6 books in the series.
~ A great read and very amusing.

 

[ThesFlishThngs]

This has made me curious - I wonder how many of the people reading this thread use a digital book device, or plan to acquire one in the future. As a moderately old geezer (50+), I do not now, nor have any plans to own one. Though I do use this inter-web machine in front of me for certain purposes, I find that for reading, there is nothing like the feel of a real book in my hands.

Though I have a few friends who are all excited about Kindle, it doesn't interest me. The idea of having to rely on batteries or an outlet and adapter in order to read a book is just too disturbing. Give me dusty, musty, yellow-paged, frayed-covered real books any day. And a whole bunch of them please.

 

[High Pockets]

Amen,.......when I was a kid in New York most of the books I read were old books my grandmother would buy at Rummage Sales. They had a wonderful distinct smell to them,.....a smell that I dearly love.

Dang it's New Years, I hear the guns going off! (I live in the country)

Happy New Year to everyone!!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Though I have a few friends who are all excited about Kindle, it doesn't interest me. The idea of having to rely on batteries or an outlet and adapter in order to read a book is just too disturbing. Give me dusty, musty, yellow-paged, frayed-covered real books any day. And a whole bunch of them please.

I fear that many of the dusty, musty, yellow-paged, frayed-covered old books that we love so dearly will never be on Kindle. I know that's probably the case with many of the books that I like to read.

 

[SayCici]

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

 

[St.Ignatz]

American Theocracy.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

Dead Man's Folly An adventure of Hercule Poirot - a nice Christmas present.