What Are You Reading

[Touchofevil]

I hope that you enjoy his works as much as I do for then you will be a very happy man.

Not that you are not already a very happy man.
And not that you will not be a very happy man if you do not find Simenon to your
liking as well.

 

[DNO]

I believe that I was one the few who enjoyed the film version of this book. The cinematography was top notch. And a pretty nicely done story with very good acting as well.

I would certainly second your opinion of the film. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps we could form a fan club of two, perhaps three (my wife enjoyed it as well). The sense of menace and instability that radiated from Brad Pitt was exceptional. Casey Affleck's Robert Ford was flesh crawlingly creepy as well. Beautifully photographed as you point out. I wish more films were of this high quality. Few are.

 

[Touchofevil]

I would certainly second your opinion of the film. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps we could form a fan club of two, perhaps three (my wife enjoyed it as well). The sense of menace and instability that radiated from Brad Pitt was exceptional. Casey Affleck's Robert Ford was flesh crawlingly creepy as well. Beautifully photographed as you point out. I wish more films were of this high quality. Few are.

A club of three it is. One of the most beautiful films I have seen in recent years. And yet another fine bit of acting by Casey Affleck. He is finally beginning to get the praise he should.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Jump in anywhere, you will not be lost or missing a thing. He is one of my favorite authors. He creates atmosphere and imagery as well as anyone I have ever read along with a nice story. There is good reason for his popularity as well as why his works have recently been rereleased. Fortunately, he was quite prolific which was rare for so many of my favorites from yesteryear.

I also went through an Inspector Maigret phase and enjoyed them.

Right now, however, I am reading "Hotel Florida" by Amanda vail. It is about "Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War". It follows three real/actual couples through the conflict and is meticulously researched. It is written in a narrative style that somehow turns it into more of a novel than a history book, if that makes sense. Two thumbs up.

 

[Harp]

I also went through an Inspector Maigret phase and enjoyed them.

Right now, however, I am reading "Hotel Florida" by Amanda vail. It is about "Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War".

Vail is a bit biased against Hemingway but Hotel Florida is impeccably researched.
__________
The Distinctive Role of Justice Samuel Alito: From a Politics of Restoration to a Politics of Dissent; Neil S. Siegel, Yale Law Journal, Vol 126, 24 Jan 2017

Justice Alito as neither Burkean nor originalist but a practical originalist at the "hinge" of American constitutional history.

 

[Harp]

The Last Battle: When US and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe, Stephen Harding

True and compelling account of 12th Armored elements and a squad of disaffected Wehrmacht that rescued fourteen prominent French captives
held by Waffen SS within a medieval castle situated in the Austrian Tyrol.

 

[ElvisOnVelvet]

Recent reads:
The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930's - Joseph Egan
Of All The Gin Joints: Stumbling through Hollywood History - Mark Bailey (if half of the stories are true, old Hollywood had strong livers!)

Currently reading:
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald - Therese Anne Fowler (after watching the Amazon series, I was intrigued)

Thank to all for the great suggestions. My Goodreads que is growing!

 

[belfastboy]

Re reading Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer". I am, when stuck for something to read, revisiting old classics to see how they hold up. I dislike Miller as a personality but I do enjoy his writing.

 

[Fading Fast]

Recent reads:
The Purple Diaries: Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930's - Joseph Egan
Of All The Gin Joints: Stumbling through Hollywood History - Mark Bailey (if half of the stories are true, old Hollywood had strong livers!)

Currently reading:
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald - Therese Anne Fowler (after watching the Amazon series, I was intrigued)

Thank to all for the great suggestions. My Goodreads que is growing!

Welcome to Fedora, we have some overlapping reading tastes. I wrote the two below comments on "The Purple Dairies..." back in October when I read it. I have "Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald" sitting in my to-be-read pile.

"Mary Astor's Purple Diary" by Edward Sorel. A, so far, breezy biography of Mary Astor (she should have shot her parents) that focuses on her divorce trial where her extracurricular marriage activity (told in the titular royal-colored diary) took center stage. I haven't gotten there yet as I'm still at the part where I'd have acquitted her if she had shot her mean, thieving, parents who used her as their meal ticket.

Will report back when I read more.

Promised an update when finished, so will do so: Mary Astor liked sex and booze and indulged in both a lot - probably nothing special about that in the 1930s (or anytime in history when both were readily available), but that the fun sex stuff (not quite fully) came out was.

Also she made one horrible choice of a husband after another and had the only decent relationship she seemed to have with a man destroyed by the events around the purple diary. And in one lesson learned that would have seemed self evident - don't keep a diary of your sex capades if you are a star in the '30s when it can ruin your and anyone's career mentioned.

But in one of those things that are explained but not really, her career survived a scandal that would have destroyed many careers up until the early '90s, let alone the '30s - who knows why really, life and public opprobrium are inconsistent.

The book is okay at best, has some fun Hollywood / Golden Era and Mary Astor stuff (I like her more now) and moves by so fast - because it is so short - you can't regret reading it. Parting shot: it would have been better if 10% shorter if the 10% cut was the author's autobiographical points interspersed with Mary's - no one cares about him and it was moral preening anyway.

 

[Fading Fast]

"Youngblood Hawke" by Herman Wouk update.

About 300 pages in (400+ to go) and it's still a solid tier-two Wouk book - think "Marjorie Morningstar," not "Winds of War."

I'll save story and character for when I finish (I'm guessing about the time the Easter Bunny appears), but for now, the thing that continues to stun me is the amount of smoking that goes on - on nearly every single page.

The characters smoke all the time, they puff, they exhale, they light up, cigars, cigarettes, pipes, morning, noon, night, one after another, one for themselves and one for another, they exhale as they talk, the talk through clouds of smoke, they walk through rooms thick with smoke, they think by lighting up, they stop thinking by lighting up, they smoke to make a point or to make no point at all, they smoke all night, they wake up in the middle of the night to smoke, they smoke all day, they smoke in the shower (okay, made that one up, but I bet they'd try it).

If you were beamed in from outer space, you'd think smoking was what oxygen really is for humans - the breath of life.

If Wouk didn't collect a bundle of money from Big Tobacco, either kudos to him for integrity or he's the stupidest capitalist ever as they should have paid him a bundle. The book should be renamed either "They Smoke," or bowing a bit to Wouk, "They Smoke and Youngblood Hawk."

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough.

 

[Benzadmiral]

Re-reading Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar from 1946 or so. I understand it was done by the BBC a number of years back (just checked: 1986!). It's a crime-suspense story about an impostor who claims to be the heir to a small English horse-farm estate. The unusual element here is that not only do we like the people on the estate -- there's none of this "Lord Beacham cheated young Herbert out of his inheritance!" -- but we like the impostor himself, the title character. Personally I'd like to spend time with almost all of them.

Tey's work -- and I've read nearly all her mysteries -- was like that: She wrote, plotted, and characterized with charm and skill, and you close any one of her novels with a kind of admiring "Damn!"

 

[Doctor Strange]

A club of three it is. One of the most beautiful films I have seen in recent years. And yet another fine bit of acting by Casey Affleck. He is finally beginning to get the praise he should.

I'll join the club too, though as great as the storytelling and the performances are - and they're great - it's Roger Deakins' astounding cinematography that really distinguishes the film. (Deakins went on to very effectively use the same limited-focus lenses he created for this film for the stoned sequences in the Coen Bros. A Serious Man.) As I've said here many times, Deakins is a genius and my favorite DP working today - check out his incredible credit list sometime!

 

[Harp]

"Youngblood Hawke" by Herman Wouk update.
If you were beamed in from outer space, you'd think smoking was what oxygen really is for humans - the breath of life.

I admired Hawke's setting the alarm clock and his disciplined sleep habit. I just crash but I have a light sleep nature.///
__________

The Witches; Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem, Stacy Schiff

a bit of Hawthorne woven with history.

 

[Fading Fast]

I admired Hawke's setting the alarm clock and his disciplined sleep habit. I just crash but I have a light sleep nature....

Hawk's work ethic is to be applauded, but it's funny, his circadian clock is the opposite of mine. I can get up as early as needed and accomplish a lot, but by late at night, my work productivity drops dramatically (when his is just kicking into high gear).

Growing up, afternoons after school were time for work, chores or sports and I'd study in the evening. It wasn't until I got to college that I discover that I was better off knocking off earlier in the evening, going to bed and getting up earlier to study some more. That discovery was a huge boost to my personal productivity.

Since then, and to this day, I try and do as much work as I can early in the morning as I can get more done from 5am - 9am, than in 6 or more hours later in the day - and it's better quality work as well.

 

[Harp]

Hawk's work ethic is to be applauded...

Growing up, afternoons after school were time for work, chores or sports and I'd study in the evening. It wasn't until I got to college that I discover that I was better off knocking off earlier in the evening, going to bed and getting up earlier to study some more. That discovery was a huge boost to my personal productivity. ..

Wish I had your discipline.
A night owl, and by nature unconventional; during my college freshman year I registered for an 8:30 AM German lecture, an act of absolute insanity,
and never made that mistake again. College and law school truancy was my stock-in-trade, told the profs I didn't need lectures; only syllabus and textbooks,
which always went over like a lead balloon but I aced by all-night reading and spent too much time chasing girls.

 

[Fading Fast]

Wish I had your discipline.
A night owl, and by nature unconventional; during my college freshman year I registered for an 8:30 AM German lecture, an act of absolute insanity,
and never made that mistake again. College and law school truancy was my stock-in-trade, told the profs I didn't need lectures; only syllabus and textbooks,
which always went over like a lead balloon but I aced by all-night reading and spent too much time chasing girls.

I always marveled at you never-attend-class, study-and-ace-it guys, as I found that many of the profs gave hints as to what to focus on and what not to that it meaningfully cut down on my study time. But whatever works for someone is cool with me. Also, I liked about half of the lectures I went to.

As to girls, college is the greatest venue ever invented for meeting girls. You put a bunch of the-same-aged, sex-focused, single men and women, with teenage hormones surging through them in an unsupervised environment - where everyone has his or her own bed - for the first time and, basically, say "have at it."

High School took work - parents and teachers were in your wheelhouse / your schedule was tight / girls (at least in my day) were less open to the idea / the logistics took work. But almost all of that disappeared at college. College can basically be seen as a way for young men and women to meet and have sex with some education thrown in on the side.

 

[Harp]

Ninth Circuit's per curiam just to see what the legal hubbub's all about.
The administration's position that the states do not have standing was a bad appellate court chess board move.

 

[Touchofevil]

I'll join the club too, though as great as the storytelling and the performances are - and they're great - it's Roger Deakins' astounding cinematography that really distinguishes the film. (Deakins went on to very effectively use the same limited-focus lenses he created for this film for the stoned sequences in the Coen Bros. A Serious Man.) As I've said here many times, Deakins is a genius and my favorite DP working today - check out his incredible credit list sometime!

Thank you for the information. The cinematography is my favorite aspect of the movie. It is some of the best I have seen. I will have to look up his work.

 

[AmateisGal]

The Last Battle: When US and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe, Stephen Harding

True and compelling account of 12th Armored elements and a squad of disaffected Wehrmacht that rescued fourteen prominent French captives
held by Waffen SS within a medieval castle situated in the Austrian Tyrol.

This book is on my list! I really want to read it. Fascinating story.