What Are You Reading

[LizzieMaine]

I trust that you've seen Terry Zwigoff's 1995 film Crumb? The message that you get is that he grew up in a very dysfunctional family. Scary as it may seem, compared to his mother and his brothers Charles and Maxon, he's clearly the normal one. The other highlight of interest in that film is when then pre-teen daughter Sophie remarks regarding the décor and collectibles in the home, "Everything always has to be old." The film shows how Crumb and his wife Aline Kaminsky, growing ever disillusioned with America, end up moving to France.

I think his whole life is a cautionary lesson of how it's honestly possible for a sensitive soul to be driven over the edge by a combination of bad heredity and American consumer culture. The drugs he took in the sixties didn't help in that regard, but he was already well on that path before he started taking them. He's a truly damaged man, but between giving up drugs and getting away from the US, at least he's finally found peace.

 

[Harp]

Is France in peril?; Au contraire, John R MacArthur, Providence Journal September 11, 2014

Dated, but still a lovely article focusing mainly on the social capital that is French culture in relation to the desire
for a federalized Europe where renewed German economic domination has ossified the left and center-right, leaving the
National Front to fill the resultant void. Recent events in France and the migrant waves storming the continent will invariably affect
the nation and its culture. I miss Paris and the Rue St Dominique where the shops and stores offer a culinary education.

 

[Big J]

Rana Mitter: Forgotten Ally; China's WWII 1937-1945.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just finished "A Month in the Country" by J.L. Carr. It's a novelette set in the 1920s about a WWI veteran who comes to a small English country church to restore a previously covered up muriel in the church. The former soldier is experiencing the mental and physical (he has a facial tick) effects of shell shock and uses his time in the village as a way to both escape his former life and re-enter "normal" life in a not-challenging way.

For a short book, several characters are well drawn out - another former veteran, with other types of war scars, who is doing some sort of archeological work in the village, the church's minister and his wife and the local train stationmaster's daughter - all become complex and engaging. There are also several poignant scenes of emotional restraint, of subtle cries for help and acts of kindness that stay with you after you've finished the book.

I don't remember when I bought this book or how I heard about it - it was just in my ever-growing "to be read" pile and I picked it up. Well worth the short read. Is anyone else familiar with this one?

 

[DNO]

Just started Ross Macdonald's The Drowning Pool. I've never read anything by this author, though I'm aware of his reputation. Enjoying it so far.

I also just found a copy of Goodis' Shoot the Piano Player. This one is in the line up.

 

[Harp]

Active Avoidance: The Modern Supreme Court and Legal Change; Neal Kumar Katyal & Thomas P. Schmidt,
Harvard Law Review, June 2015

An anatomy of constitutional murder:icon_smil

 

[Hercule]

Just finished "A Month in the Country" by J.L. Carr. It's a novelette set in the 1920s about a WWI veteran who comes to a small English country church to restore a previously covered up muriel in the church. The former soldier is experiencing the mental and physical (he has a facial tick) effects of shell shock and uses his time in the village as a way to both escape his former life and re-enter "normal" life in a not-challenging way.

Have you seen the movie? - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093562/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 - Colin Firth and Kenneth Branaugh. Though it's been years, I remember enjoying it quite a bit. Thank you for putting it on my radar again.

 

[cw3pa]

"The Chinese Parrot" 1927

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Chinese Parrot" 1927

I've never read any of the Charlie Chan series and, I believe, this is the second in the series - have you read the first one, if so, what did you think of it?

 

[cw3pa]

I've never read any of the Charlie Chan series and, I believe, this is the second in the series - have you read the first one, if so, what did you think of it?

I posted this in August this year. I thought "The House Without a Key" was a good tale, not over done with too much detail or too many sub-plots, and the character development was enough and not over wrought.
"The House Without a Key" (1925) by Earl Derr Biggers. The first Charlie Chan mystery. A good murder mystery, where Charlie while the main detective does not play a major roll in the mystery.

 

[Fading Fast]

Just finished "Why Sinatra Matters" by Pete Hamill. Got side-tracked by life, so this short book took me a long time to read (and I read "A Month in the Country" in between - see earlier review post), so I didn't give it the focus it deserves, but that said, it is a fine quirky Sinatra biography.

This is not the book to read if you are looking for a definitive or traditional-in-style Sinatra bio; it is more the author's personal account of his interaction with Sinatra and his impressions of Sinatra built out to a short bio. You'll get some of the basics - born here, this went on in his youth... but it also jumps around, leaves things out (intentionally - it's not trying to be comprehensive) while being framed by a theme of Sinatra's music as enduring art driven by the man's struggles, personal shortcomings, inconsistencies, temper and talent.

Pete Hamill is a favorite author of mine who, while falling a bit short in the plot-crafting department, more than makes up for it by creating a mood and feel so evocative of the period he is writing about that you don't care about the plot flaws and just lose yourself in the atmosphere - "North River" is a personal favorite. Here he uses his, admittedly, relatively limited friendship with Sinatra over a few years to create a brief biography that flows quickly, takes you through Sinatra's key ups and downs, but also - because of that friendship - brings you just a little closer to the man than even the most well-researched biography normally does.


N.B Touchofevil - sorry this took so long, as noted, life just got in the way.

 

[Fading Fast]

I posted this in August this year. I thought "The House Without a Key" was a good tale, not over done with too much detail or too many sub-plots, and the character development was enough and not over wrought.
"The House Without a Key" (1925) by Earl Derr Biggers. The first Charlie Chan mystery. A good murder mystery, where Charlie while the main detective does not play a major roll in the mystery.

Thank you - it will go in the queue to be bought.

 

[Touchofevil]

Just started Ross Macdonald's The Drowning Pool. I've never read anything by this author, though I'm aware of his reputation. Enjoying it so far.

I also just found a copy of Goodis' Shoot the Piano Player. This one is in the line up.

MacDonald and Goodis are great choices! MacDonald is often overlooked/under appreciated, but for my money he is just as good as Hammett and Chandler.

 

[Big J]

The Guns of August.

 

[AmateisGal]

Does anyone go long periods without reading? This is weird for me as I've noticed in the past few years that I will go up to a month without reading anything substantive. I've never done that before - always had a book in my hand, so I'm not sure what this is.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have problematic vision -- early-stage glaucoma, possibly -- and there are times when it's just too uncomfortable to read for extended periods. It tends to worsen or improve unpredicably, and when it's in bad phase I tend to put the dense books aside for a while and either just browse magazines or reread things I've already read. Right now I'm in one of those phases. I don't like it, but what can you do?

 

[AmateisGal]

I have problematic vision -- early-stage glaucoma, possibly -- and there are times when it's just too uncomfortable to read for extended periods. It tends to worsen or improve unpredicably, and when it's in bad phase I tend to put the dense books aside for a while and either just browse magazines or reread things I've already read. Right now I'm in one of those phases. I don't like it, but what can you do?

I sometimes think mine is caused when I'm having a bad flare of my rheumatoid arthritis. Brain fog is unfortunately one of the evils of this disease and I find that concentrating for a long period of time is difficult. It also makes it difficult to do much of anything else and I hate it.

 

[Touchofevil]

Just finished William R. forstchen's "One Second After" and now starting his "One Year After."

 

[Fading Fast]

Does anyone go long periods without reading? This is weird for me as I've noticed in the past few years that I will go up to a month without reading anything substantive. I've never done that before - always had a book in my hand, so I'm not sure what this is.

Reading is my favorite thing in the world. I could live without TV and movies, music and even most of the foods I like, but not reading. As with you and Lizzie, it is only health issues - I have migraines (sometimes they cluster) and all I can do if the medicine doesn't work is lay down in a dark room / also I have some back / neck muscle issues that, at their worst, prevent concentration, etc. (it's the I-have-no-place-for-myself state because no sitting or laying down position is without intense pain) - but away from that, I read every day.

It is my refuge from the world, a way to escape to another world for a while. I have never been without a book (and a bunch of books queued up to read) since I was a kid. I look forward to the book review section of the WSJ every Saturday (it's not business related - it's a "life style" section that, overall, reviews a lot of interesting books) and hunting in old book stores is a favorite hobby. So my short answer is no, I've never gone a month without reading a book, I doubt a week, but have gone a few days do to illness and work and, even after that short break, I can feel the stress starting to leave my body as I begin reading again.

Lizzie you are an incredibly smart woman who needs no advice from me, but because I care I am going to ask, have you been to a specialists as the progress they are making in ocular medicine is incredible, so I just want to make sure you are tied into it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yeah. I'm seeing an eye doctor about the situaton, and he's in a "well, let's wait and see" mode. But I have to go more often than I used to, and my insurance doesn't cover it, which peeves me.

I also suffer from migraines -- have ever since I was ten years old, to the point of incapacitation when they hit. The last one got me Friday night at the end of a fifteen hour workday, and I ended up on the floor of the projection booth.

Recovering now, though, and last night spent some time before going to sleep browsing the February 26, 1940 issue of Life, which turns out to be a quintessential example of how the Luce publications loved to slant content as ruthlessly as publications do today. What really got me irritated was a big photo feature tied in with the release of Frederick Lewis Allen's excellent book "Since Yesterday: A Narrative History of the 1930s."

In this spread, Life proposes to boil the 1930s in America down to their essence -- but in doing so, bleaches out most of the reality of the decade and leaves mostly fashions, fads, and foolishness. The decade's continuous labor strife is reduced to a single photo of a Woolworth's shop worker sprawled on top of her counter as part of a sit-down strike -- and this photo appears in the "fad" section of the essay, alongside goldfish swallowing and miniature golf. Up yours, Henry.

That said, the essay does, at least, note the violent reaction from farmers to the wave of Depression-induced bank foreclosures, with a couple of photos of the Farmers Holiday Association in action, included the near-lynching of Judge C. C. Bradley in Iowa in 1934. I can only assume from the inclusion of these photos that Mr. Luce had had some recent problems with his own bank.