What Are You Reading

[Estevan]

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Never read it until now. It's amazing.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Never read it until now. It's amazing.

It has an exceptionally powerful ending that could not be included in the film version, for reasons which will be clear.

 

[Helen Troy]

"Grapes of wrath" is the only one of Steinbecks "big" novels I haven't read. I have started it several times, but somehow I just cant get past the first few pages. I have no idea why, I have devoured so many of his other books!

You just gave me the inspiration to try again.

 

[Decodence]

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters

 

[Retro Rob]

Combat Reporter-Whitehead
Blood and Champagne The Robert Capa Story - Kerahaw

 

[Patrick Murtha]

"Grapes of wrath" is the only one of Steinbecks "big" novels I haven't read. I have started it several times, but somehow I just cant get past the first few pages. I have no idea why, I have devoured so many of his other books!

You just gave me the inspiration to try again.

For a Nobel Prize winner, Steinbeck has been persistently underrated by the academic establishment. But I am detecting a welcome resurgence of interest in him.

 

[Decodence]

The trunk murderess, Winnie Ruth Judd is next on the read list, probably starting next week. 2nd book I've read on the subject, both vintage, and local (the house where the murders took place was long ago torn down, and remains as a vacant lot to this day, but the boyfriend's house is still around, and has been on the Roosevelt home tour a few years back).

 

[Patrick Murtha]

I finished Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club today. Magnificent intellectual history, well deserving of all the acclaim it received. Just one criticism: I wish someone had prevailed on LM to include a cast of characters with brief bios, because he deals with scores of thinkers, many of whom disappear for hundreds of pages and then crop up again, and a score-card would really be helpful.

 

[classyguy]

Just started The Diving Bell and The Butterfly as previously mentioned and am also delving into Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

As for John Steinbeck: I can't wait to read The Grapes of Wrath, I read East of Eden in September and it was great.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Recovering himself in a minute he opened for us two hulking patent cabinets which held his massed suits and dressing-gowns and ties, and his shirts, piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high.

“I’ve got a man in England who buys me clothes. He sends over a selection of things at the beginning of each season, spring and fall.”

He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher—shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange, and monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly, with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such—such beautiful shirts before.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Chapter Five

 

[Helen Troy]

For a Nobel Prize winner, Steinbeck has been persistently underrated by the academic establishment. But I am detecting a welcome resurgence of interest in him.

Yep! And like with Graham Green, (my other all time favourite writer,) I think critics has had a tendency to divide his books in classes of "serious"/"real literature", (for example "The Winter of our Miscontempt") and "entertainment readings"/"not really literature" . (The Tortilla Flat books would fall into this category.) That classification system does not really work, and I think might have contributed to the underrating from "the establishment:" "Well, he writes entertaining novels/spy novels/fun stories, he can't really be a serious writer."

For Steinbeck lovers, I would also reccomend William Heinesen's "The lost musicians". This writer from the Faroe Islands "almost" recieved the Nobel price. The novel has a charm similar to Steinbecks. Well worth a try!

 

[AmateisGal]

Reading Those Who Saved Us by Jenna Blum. Excellent novel, so far - set in the present day and in Weimar during WW2.

 

[Harp]

As for John Steinbeck: I can't wait to read The Grapes of Wrath, I read East of Eden in September and it was great.

Travels With Charlie is a favorite of mine.

 

[carebear]

Steinbeck does so well with so many tonalities.

I love the story in 'The Pearl', and yet also love the biology in the Sea of Cortez non-fiction. There's nothing Steinbeck couldn't do. Hell, Monterray would no more than a Motel Six without his legacy.

If any euro superioralist wanted to start denigrating American prose, I'd show him Steinbeck, then hit him while he was busy being enchanted.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

Have you read "There Once Was a War" by Steinbeck.

wow, great stuff...

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Just read People of the Book and enjoyed it. Another story that weaves in and out of the present and the past.

karol

 

[CharlesB]

Just finished this:

Brilliant and hilarious look into the way advertising, vices and indulgence work their way together in our modern world

 

[DeaconKC]

Just finished 2 excellent tomes

The Chase by Clive Cussler, might be his best since Treasure, set in 1906 and is a first rate adventure. And Tony Dungy's autobiography, Quiet Strength, a very good read.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

Thanks for the info on Cussler's new book. I love his stuff. Do you find his "partner" works as interesting as his singular works with Dirk, etc?

The other series in combination with other authors are good, but I just can't seem to get into them like when he is the only author.

Maybe I'm biased.................

 

[Diamondback]

Let's see:

NUMA Files: almost straight Dirk Pitt ripoff, just change his hair and eyes and change Al from Italian to Mexican.

Oregon Files: different kind of book entirely, just happens to be hooked into the "Pittverse" by backstory. If your yardstick is Dirk Pitt, you'll be disappointed, this series is more like a better-executed version of mercenary pulp-novels and needs to be evaluated in its own context. (Also a lot cleaner, for those sensitive to certain kinds of content.)