What Are You Reading

[Touchofevil]

A Hell of A Woman by Jim Thompson.

Like most of Thompson's, it's a helluva story.

 

[DNO]

Like most of Thompson's, it's a helluva story.

It's certainly good so far!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Just arrived today. A fascinating history of C. Matarazzo y Compania and its products which were produced between 1934 and 1959. Little known in the US but Matarazzo was the largest toymaker in South America.

 

[Fading Fast]

VC, my girlfriend's family has a tradition of given each other a tin toy at Christmas (sometimes vintage / sometime repro), so over the last 18 years, I've become somewhat familiar with them, but I hadn't heard of the brand you are reading about. I recently picked up a second hand copy of a Schuco buyers guide / informal history as I am always looking for something we haven't given as a gift before. Schuco made some very high-quality and ahead-of-their-time tin toys.

 

[Bob Roberts]

HEP-CATS, NARCS, and PIPE DREAMS. Jill Jonnes author.

 

[AmateisGal]

Just finished reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson - a perfect book for those of us on the Lounge as it covers our favorite time periods from the 1920s to the 1940s. It's a uniquely written book, and one I wasn't sure I wanted to read...but I'm so very glad I did. What a tremendous story.

 

[Hercule]

Brian Fagan: Eyewitness to Discovery: First-Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World's Greatest Archaeological Discoveries.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Unsafe At Any Speed," Ralph Nader's best-selling 1965 expose of the auto industry's disregard for safety. This is a book that just about everybody's heard of, but few seem to have actually read it. Much of what it contains is not particularly new or groundbreaking -- Vance Packard and John Keats had been equally critical of Detroit's priorities in the 1950s -- but Nader is much more aggressive in his examination of the issues.

The famous discussion of the Corvair is just the tip of this particular iceberg. He really gives the back of his hand to the "Design over Substance" ethos that took over the industry in the mid-fifties, and points out that many of the cars built under its influence were just as dangerous to pedestrians as they were to drivers.

 

[Tommy]

finished book 2 and book 3 of James Ellroy's LA Quartet, The Big Nowhere & LA Confidental (enjoyed Both). Read Herman Koch's - The Dinner (for Book Club). Working on Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham.

 

[Braz]

The famous discussion of the Corvair is just the tip of this particular iceberg. He really gives the back of his hand to the "Design over Substance" ethos that took over the industry in the mid-fifties, and points out that many of the cars built under its influence were just as dangerous to pedestrians as they were to drivers.

Lizzie, have you read David Halberstam's "The Reckoning"? It is a great narrative of the collapse of the American auto industry, and by extension the collapse of American manufacturing generally.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I haven't yet -- I've enjoyed Halberstam's other stuff, so this one will definitely go on the reading list.

 

[St.Ignatz]

Picked these up today. I think I'll have enough to read for a little while.

You may enjoy "Speed duel" by Samuel Hawley. Land speed record quests of the sixties. Simeone auto museum has it on sale for $15.


Tom D.

 

[Wally_Hood]

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version; it did make me read the parts that were left out.

 

[RBH]

"Wayfaring Stranger" by James Lee Burke.

 

[Lucky Girl]

 

[St.Ignatz]

Witness to a Century by George Seldes.


Tom D.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Excellent book. Seldes is one of my favorite authors, from his early muckraking work down to his later stuff. He knew just about everybody who was anybody, and had firm opinions on them. He also had the satisfaction of outliving just about all of them.

 

[AmateisGal]

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

 

[Wally_Hood]

Sea of Glory, by Nathaniel Philbrick, about the US Naval Exploring Expedition of the late 1820s.

 

[Hercule]

As always, several going at a time:

The 40s : the story of a decade / The New Yorker ; edited by Henry Finder with Giles Harvey
The sun kings : the unexpected tragedy of Richard Carrington and the tale of how modern astronomy began / Stuart Clark
Saving Mona Lisa : the battle to protect the Louvre and its treasures during World War II / Gerri Chanel
Eyewitness to Discovery: First-Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World's Greatest Archaeological Discoveries / Brian M. Fagan