What Are You Reading

[wahine]

John Seymour's Forgotten Household Crafts. It's really interesting and entertaining, has loads of drawings and some photographs, too.

 

[Rathdown]

President Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer, published in 1936.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

T.E. Lawrence: Biography Of A Broken Hero, by Harold Orlans c.2002 http://www.amazon.com/T-E-Lawrence-Biography-Broken-Hero/dp/0786413077

-dixon cannon

 

[HadleyH]

I have already two new books I just received.... VIRGIL THOMSON by Virgil Thomson also 1920s crowd in Paris ....and Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita by Phyllips Birnbaum...

Life is good! as long as paper books and bios from the 1920s are still around!

 

[countryclubjoe]

The Common Law by Oliver Wendel Holmes.

CCJ

 

[Dixon Cannon]

After years (decades!) of sitting on my shelf, I've finally cracked the cover of the Hugh Trevor Roper's, 'The Last Days Of Hitler'. Mine is the 1957 Berkley Edition. -dixon cannon

 

[1961MJS]

Nina Hamnett bio is going good....she was wild ...the author is not a very funny writer.... I like funny authors you know? ..this one is a bit boring...nevertheless....Nina was amazing! .... lots of fun .... she killed herself at the end.... but I havent get there yet.. she was so much fun Nina was... the end was not your usual end of a life...but ...still... great bio of a 1920s typical liberated woman!

Hi Hadley

I just checked Wikipedia on her. Sounds like the entirely WRONG author wrote her biography. I can't even understand the reasoning behind writing a dull / just the facts book one someone like that. I mean it pays the bills I guess, but jeez.

Later

 

[skyvue]

I just finished The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty, a novel inspired by a true chapter in the life of Louise Brooks.

Now I'm sixty pages into In the Garden of the Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson. It's quite good.

 

[John Boyer]

Sir Walter Scott by John Buchan and;

Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element by John D. Mueller

 

[AmateisGal]

Eye of the Red Tsar by Sam Eastland.

 

[Touchofevil]

Eye of the Red Tsar by Sam Eastland.

Read it a few years back and I really enjoyed this one. I have the third in the series waiting to be read with the fourth pre-ordered and soon to be released.

 

[MikeBravo]

The American Detective: An Illustrated History, Joel Siegel

"From Library Journal
In the realms of literature and film, the only uniquely original American characters are the Wild West cowboy and the hard-boiled private investigator. Unfortunately, those native sons have received frivolous treatment, having been relegated mainly to B movies and penny dreadfuls. Siegel ( The Casablanca Companion , LJ 5/1/92) contends that the American detective as personified by Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and a few others is as worthy of respect as Huck Finn or Jay Gatsby. The text, complemented by over 300 illustrations (not seen), cover 150 years' worth of PIs, cops, lawyers, spies, and other assorted snoops and peepers from print, film, and TV whom Siegel believes fit the hard- and soft-boiled profile. Siegel delivers his information in a smart-alecky, I-don't-care-if-you-believe-me tone gumshoe fans will appreciate. Though several heavy-duty literary criticisms on the genre are available, Siegel's thorough and accessible examination helps pull the hard-boiled American detective out of the shadows and into the light. Recommended for public libraries and academic libraries supporting popular culture studies.
- Michael Rogers, "Library Journal"

An interesting read. Now I am digging up some of the authors he has mentioned

 

[AmateisGal]

Read it a few years back and I really enjoyed this one. I have the third in the series waiting to be read with the fourth pre-ordered and soon to be released.

Yes! I'm looking forward to the second one. Pekkala is quite a fascinating character.

 

[Hoofer]

Slaughterhouse Five (interesting book... [huh])

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

I'm reading "The Outfit", a mob history of Chicago. Funny how they keep mentioning mayors and police chiefs...

Later

 

[DNO]

Charles Portis' True Grit.

 

[cw3pa]

The Inimitable Jeeves. By P.G. Wodehouse.

 

[Harp]

Hi

I'm reading "The Outfit", a mob history of Chicago. Funny how they keep mentioning mayors and police chiefs...

Later

...Aldermen, precinct ward-heelers, bag boys, and other assorted political stripe straphangers
abound in this bastion of democracy, where even the dead cast cemetery precinct ballots....

 

[DesertDan]

I have a hankering to re-read "Dune" but my only copy is an autographed one that is old and a bit "crispy" so I want to leave it alone. I have not been able to find another copy yet, as strange as that may seem. The one I found new was some strange oversized thing and the used bookstore had every book in the series except Dune. *sadness*

 

[Baron Kurtz]

A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of The Second World War.

A little dated, but still uncompromisingly confrontational.