What Are You Reading

[Shangas]

I am currently reading "THE PIANO TUNER". First time reading it. Bought it at a thrift-shop for $3.

 

[Mike1939]

Live and Let Die (1954) by Ian Fleming

 

[Pompidou]

I'm reading The Fine Art of Mixing Girls, by Jack Newcastle. It's the first fiction book I've read in years.

 

[Diamondback]

Osprey New Vanguard vol. 100, Zeppelin: German Airships 1900-1940, and Arizona Model Aircrafters blueprints for the Type P and Type R Zeppelins as I try to design a couple models from them. Frustrating... for some reason they had a love of using weird angles in their frame rings that can't evenly add up to a nice neat 360 degrees! (19 sides per ring on the P/Q zeps, 23 on the R/S/T/U/V/W/X/stretched-X "Super Zeppelins".)

 

[Chasseur]

Latest issue of the Naval War College Review, some good articles in this one.

 

[Berlin]

"Morgen mag ik huilen".
About a girl that has been sexually abused by her dad. And not only she, but her sisters and neeces aswell.

 

[Harp]

Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Compared to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, Zora Hurston quickly
flamed, then all too soon seemingly vanished from the American literary scene.
Hurston's revival-championed largely by Alice Walker-is a welcome renewal.
------

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Wilde, Irish aesthete who dared Victorian England is always worth revisit,
and his Portrait echoes the influence of Balzac, Pater, Gautier, Keats, and Flaubert.

Also, The Artist as Critic; Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde;
edited Richard Ellmann. A collection that includes Wilde's Shakespearean
dig, The Portrait of Mr W.H.; which, however perceived remains
a caustic-yet cogent analysis of the Bard and his writing.

_____

Frank McCourt's 'Tis.
Tis St Padraig's Day reading.

 

[Dr Kilroy]

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens.

Best regards, Dr

 

[John Boyer]

"Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue" by Paul Woodruff

"Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Kafka" by William Hubben

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Another thrift store find:

The Haunted Queen Mary
by Robert James Wlodarski & Anne Powell Wlodarski
(West Hills, CA: G-Host Publishing, 2000)

A collection of anecdotes of alleged ghost sightings on the Queen Mary by visitors, staff, etc. The book also identifies three of the numerous ghosts that supposedly haunt the ship: John Pedder, an 18-year-old crewman who was crushed by a waterproof door in 1966; 2nd Officer William E. Stark who accidentally swallowed poison in 1947; and Carlo Giovetti, an Italian CR-42 pilot who was shot down over North Africa and died from his wounds while a POW en route to Australia on the Queen Mary during WWII.

 

[Miss Golightly]

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

 

[Berlin]

Very interesting.

 

[martinsantos]

"Soldier's rest", by Mss Judith MacKinight Jones. About the immigration of thousands of US citzens, from South, to Brazil, just after Civil War. They mainly stayed in Americana town, where Mss Jones is born (and me, too!)

Very interesting!

 

[Smithy]

Currently reading "House to House" by David Bellavia, a memoir of the author's participation as a US Army infantryman in the Battle for Fallujah in 2004.

This is a quite frankly electrifying read and runs the rollercoaster of terrifying, sickening, touching, gruesome, exciting and a host more emotions.

The cover on my copy quotes a Daily Telegraph reviewer stating that it's possibly the most exciting book the reader will read and I have to agree. One of the very, very, very few books where you feel almost physically out of breath after reading it.

Not for the squeamish but if you want to get some understanding of modern urban combat you really cannot go past this book. Very powerful.

 

[rue]

I finally brought myself to finish Gracie: A love story by George Burns

For such a funny book, the ending was very sad:

"She was lying there so peaceful. I didn't know what to do. For the first time in forty years I was alone. So I did the only thing there was to do: I leaned over and I kissed her on the lips and whispered "I love you, Googie"
Then I gave her back her pictures and walked out of the room."

 

[Snowdrop]

That certainly sounds like a very sad read, Rue.

I just started reading 'American Prince - A Memoir' by Tony Curtis. I love his easy, conversational style and it's incredibly engaging, maybe a little sad and reflective here and there, but absolutely hilarious too.

 

[rue]

That certainly sounds like a very sad read, Rue.

I just started reading 'American Prince - A Memoir' by Tony Curtis. I love his easy, conversational style and it's incredibly engaging, maybe a little sad and reflective here and there, but absolutely hilarious too.

It was sad at the end, but it was a really funny book besides that, with a great look into the vaudeville life through the eyes of someone that was there.

I think I might just pick up that Tony Curtis book

 

[Stray Cat]

PEYTON PLACE.
So, I'm going to start this one tonight.. you have no idea how hard was it to dig this one out from our library.. Years and years have passed, and no one wanted to read it. So they stored it in the back.. until I came with the demand and a wish to have it.
Is it ANY good?!
I read that it is "mother to all soap operas". I do hope it is so...

 

[martinsantos]

"The Bureau", by Ronald Kessler. The story of FBI. Very interesting - just a little hard to me to read in English (I need always to have a dictionary near me). But Edgar Hoover always intrigued me, so it's a lecture I'm enjoying a lot.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles
by Elizabeth Ward & Alan Silver
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1987)