What Are You Reading

[in/y]

Dead Last: The Public Memory of Warren G. Harding's Scandalous Past by Phillip Payne.

The book looks at the things that are taken as "fact" today and looks at the where these ideas came from and what is known from the actual historical records.

Often there are conflicting "facts".

Was Harding part negro or was he a supporter of the klan or neither?

Did Harding have a "love child" with a younger woman or was he sterile?

The author does not answer such questions unequivocally as there is often no clear cut answer.

Interesting read though occasionally a bit dry.

 

[Harp]

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..
Is it ANY good?!
I do hope it is so...

Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle....

Grace Metalious' literary debut is dated and tame-compared to today's pulp fare-
of course, but Peyton Place does have its moments.

 

[spenser]

Robert B. Parker's, "Painted Ladies"

 

[Miss Golightly]

MM Personal - From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe by Lois Banner

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Havana Before Castro: When Cuba was a Tropical Playground
by Peter Moruzzi
(Salt Lake City, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2008)

 

[Wally_Hood]

The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

 

[Harp]

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

John,
Have Simone's The Need For Roots opened to its first part,
"The Needs of the Soul;" which, for some reason or other harkens back
Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man theme from TBK....
Roots, like Newman's Apologia a bit of a slog--a bourbon and
some Frog methinks necessary for the long haul. :frog:

 

[plain old dave]

The American Language by the Bard of Baltimore, Henry Louis Mencken. 1937 edition. It's a slog by any stretch , especially for somebody whose weakest subject in school was English, tied with any form of math. His chapter on slang is fascinating. Highly recommend that chapter to any student of the Golden Age (1919-1945 or so).

 

[Derek Cavin]

What Color is Your Parachute. The 225 year old company I worked for was bought out a few months ago, just preparing for the what if.

 

[Black Dahlia]

I'm still reading 'The Moonstone' (1868)

 

[martinsantos]

Last year I got some articles by Mencken - just loved his writing and polemics. Looking around for a translation of more (and this American Language too!), but still didn't find. I think I will have to try to read in English, anyway...

The American Language by the Bard of Baltimore, Henry Louis Mencken. 1937 edition. It's a slog by any stretch , especially for somebody whose weakest subject in school was English, tied with any form of math. His chapter on slang is fascinating. Highly recommend that chapter to any student of the Golden Age (1919-1945 or so).

 

[Feraud]

After a disappointing earlier read (William Kennedy's Legs) I started Defining the Wind: The Beaufort Scale and How a 19th-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry by Scott Huler.
So far this is a very engaging book.

 

[WH1]

Biography of Churchill by John Keegan, "Winston Churchill: A Life"

 

[martinsantos]

Hunter S. Thompson, again. Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. Very interesting, and make me imagine about the people's thinking about their times in 1971.

 

[Derek WC]

The Pickaninny Twins.

 

[Widebrim]

Double Indemnity by Caine. A rather short work, which is not told in flashback, and with a very different ending than the movie, the latter of which I preferred.

 

[martinsantos]

This surprized me too when readed the book. And agree with you, the movie is better and far more interesting.

Double Indemnity by Caine. A rather short work, which is not told in flashback, and with a very different ending than the movie, the latter of which I preferred.

 

[Isis]

[/IA Dark Adapted Eye] by Barbara Vine. A woman remembering her visits to her aunts in the 1940's. More exiting as it sounds as one of the aunts have been executed for murder. That is known from the outsets and then the book unravels the turns that led to it. It's actually a re-read,I like Barabar Vine's book a lot and re-read them quite regulary.

This particular book also have some interesting tidbits about British fashions during the war.

 

[cw3pa]

Dashiell Hammett's "The Dain Curse".

 

[Berlin]

We of the never never.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_of_the_Never_Never

Really amusing.