What Are You Reading

[Just Jim]

I'm on-call for work til Friday morning, so I can't get into any really deep reading. I've got an e-stack of old ('20s and 30's) detective/adventure novels, when I have time I'll read them. Currently reading T. H. White's Darkness at Pemberley.

 

[MikeKardec]

This says to me that there clearly is a market for audio entertainment which just happens to be what radio is. Hence, maybe the next generation of new / intelligent "radio" programs will start as a streaming service. The audience is already there - in a way - they just need to be made interested in radio-style programs the way they are in music, podcasts, etc. Heck, I've read that audio books are growing in popularity and, my guess, probably because this new "listening" audience is asking for stories.

There is a pretty lively community of Audio Drama Podcasters. A lot of them are operating in a training vacuum writing-wise but there are probably are some geniuses hiding in the clutter. I haven't found them but odds are that they are there.

Audio Publishing, the more formal effort by publishers, is a VERY healthy business, healthier than traditional paper publishing in many cases. I know that one from the inside, I was there in the 1980s when it sheared off from the Library of Congress efforts and Books For the Blind and turned into its own thing. I produced and directed the longest, reasonably uninterrupted, line of Audio Dramas for Bantam and then Random House. We started around 1985 and I did what will probably be the last in 2015.

Mainstream Audio Publishing has attempted Audio Dramas in fits and starts. Just about every major player tried a few in the early days, realized that more money could be made doing straight up "Single Voice Readings" and quit. Once in awhile they dip a toe back in the pond but find it difficult to bring the right sort of talent together to do anything particularly good. You can turn out Single Voice recordings like manufacturing toasters, the only tricky part is hiring the voice talent, but an Audio Drama is a completely different animal. At least it's a different animal if you want it to appeal outside the world of Audio Drama Geeks.

If we could teach the Podcasters to be better writers and help them with some of the technical aspects (not that important in all genres)
you might see some impressive shows begin to get on the popular radar. In too many cases there is an ethos that what you produce needs to sound like a cartoon of "old radio" or simply seems worried about the fact that there are things you can't see. It's also unfortunately accepted (and probably realistic) that Audio Drama writers are not going to evolve into big time film/TV/game/novel creators, therefore the truly ambitious and talented won't go there. I hired a lot of film students and would-be playwrights to do scripts and even though they were getting paid and had a guarantee of a credit if they finished the process all it took was one lunch with an agent to put stars in their eyes and lead them to tell me how they couldn't afford to waste their time with audio anymore.

I don't think I'll do another show, though I'd love to, just because doing a good job is so time consuming and I won't do anything where I don't try to out produce what I did before. But that's just me being persnickety. I'll probably freshen up a few of my old shows with a fresh mix before I pack it in completely, however.

 

[Harp]

A gift this morning: Charles Dickens' The Haunted House

 

[Trenchfriend]

Bought today:
The german crime novel "Die Schattenbucht/The Shadow Bay" from 2016, by Eric Berg (Eric Walz). The novel is set in the area of Prerow on the peninsula Fischland-Darß-Zingst at the Baltic Sea.

 

[Bushman]

Started "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I read Huckleberry Finn in high school, but always felt that there were references to Tom Sawyer in it that I didn't understand because I didn't read Tom Sawyer first.

 

[Harp]

Presidential Norms and Article II; Daphna Renan, 6/8/18 131 Harv L Rev.

The constitutional latitudes within and without the executive, a sextant read firmly fixed
across campus horizon from a review that sooner or later will need to focus upon the genesis of the inquiry itself.

 

[rocketeer]

Hemingway's Fiesta, The sun also rises. A great book about interwar Spain and an insight into Bull Fighting and the culture of Spain. I have also read Death in the Afternoon on this particular subject.

 

[rocketeer]

Some books I have read recently:
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes By Robert Stevenson. Some people actually follow in his footsteps on this one.

Guy Martin(the motorcyclist) Worms to catch. Not that interesting but my son bought it as I think Guy is a great TT motorcyclist, that is a bit like Stirling Moss, widely admired but never won a TT.

From Russia with Love and Live and let die, Ian Flemming. A bit like Hemingway in the way they are easy to read and get on with the action.
Steinbecks Cannery Row. Liked this, possibly based on real characters in John Steinbeck's life

Mein Kampf. An English translation, I could only read the first six pages before I could take no more. Why did I read it? I don't believe you can comment on films or books unless you have at least read some of it or viewed at least part of a film.

Guy Gibson, an autobiography posthumously published, Enemy Coast Ahead: Fascinating insight into one of the RAF's wartime hero's. Read back to back with Paul Brickhill's Reach for the Sky about the fighter pilot and wing commander Douglas Bader. According to various article on Bader in real life he was not as nice as portrayed in the book or film.

Thats just a few of my latest.
I am now on Stalin Court of the Red Tzar by Simon Sebag Montefiore. This one is about the inter war period and his close personel etc up until Stalins death.

 

[Fading Fast]

...From Russia with Love and Live and let die, Ian Flemming. A bit like Hemingway in the way they are easy to read and get on with the action....

Smart observation - I've felt it, but never thought of the similarity. Both have an almost staccato reporting of the facts to them at times.

I read "Octopussy" (thankfully, no relationship to the terrible movie) and "007 in New York" earlier in the year - recommend them both, my comments on them here: https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/what-are-you-reading.10557/page-389#post-2363633

....Mein Kampf. An English translation, I could only read the first six pages before I could take no more. Why did I read it? I don't believe you can comment on films or books unless you have at least read some of it or viewed at least part of a film....

I've done the same and felt dirty or evil or something just holding the stupid thing, but felt I had to read it (long time ago) for its historical significance.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I read Mein K cover to cover years ago, and still have it on my bookshelf -- 1939 Reynal and Hitchcock edition, with annotations -- with Hadley Cantril's "The Psychology of Social Movements" on one side, and "The Peril of Fascism: The Crisis of American Democracy," by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens on the other.

You can't understand the twentieth century without understanding exactly who Hitler was, what he wanted, and why he wanted it, and Mein K is where he laid it all out. And you'll still hear the ideas he laid out articulated by advocates of the "folkish state" even today. It's worth knowing where those ideas come from so you can recognize them when the dogwhistling starts.

 

[rocketeer]

I read Mein K cover to cover years ago, and still have it on my bookshelf -- 1939 Reynal and Hitchcock edition, with annotations -- with Hadley Cantril's "The Psychology of Social Movements" on one side, and "The Peril of Fascism: The Crisis of American Democracy," by A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens on the other.

You can't understand the twentieth century without understanding exactly who Hitler was, what he wanted, and why he wanted it, and Mein K is where he laid it all out. And you'll still hear the ideas he laid out articulated by advocates of the "folkish state" even today. It's worth knowing where those ideas come from so you can recognize them when the dogwhistling starts.

I shall probably have a further go at reading Mein Kampf fully Lizzy, though I may get some funny looks from other rail passengers, though my copy is just a modern edition translated by Ralph Manheim.
I also read a book titled Hooded Americanism to try to understand a little more of what the Ku Klux Clan is about, it's history from the beginnings and rise and fall to fairly recent times. I had some funny looks on that one.
Surprisingly I also had some awkward looks and a question, also reading on the train, why I was reading Uncle Toms Cabin. Obviously someone(young black west indian) who just wanted to comment and had never read it let alone knew who Harriet Beecher Stow was.
My best reaction though was from a lady who had read Travels with a donkey(mentioned in my original post) and also followed the paths as best she could, she was also delighted I had found a very old edition, around 1925 to read the story from.

 

[Harp]

Kate Chopin's The Awakening

A sensuous Creole's surrender and ultimate betrayal of soul. Comparison to Bovary though drawn differently.

 

[hatguy1]

Reading this and loving every page of it!

 

[MikeKardec]

I may get some funny looks from other rail passengers

Before Vintage picked it up, 50 Shades of Gray made it's mark as an e-book. The theory is that, especially at the time, women would never be seen in public reading the book and that the anonymity of the e-reader made the first stage of it's acceptance and success possible.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To the point where my 80 year old mother went to see the movie. I had to explain to her what certain implements featured in the picture were. I thought we were going to lose her right there.

 

[Fading Fast]

To the point where my 80 year old mother went to see the movie. I had to explain to her what certain implements featured in the picture were. I thought we were going to lose her right there.

Somewhere in her 70s, all inhibitions fell away from my "never curse, never talk to me except in the most general terms and in a G-rated way about sex" mother and F-bombs and painful questions about sex (from her to me) starting popping up all the time.

If it was possible to spontaneously bleed from your ears as your brain buckled, then mine would have as my mother started asking me detailed questions about modern sex - gay, straight, bi-sexual, you have it, she asked - and, equally bad, she would bring up a word (that she should never have encountered) and would ask me what it means. For example, she wanted to know the second definition - after spherically compressed snow - of a snowball.

After my dad died, I made an effort to improve what, until then, had been a cordial but distant relationship with my mother so as to provide her with some company. All I did was - as the saying goes - prove that no good dead does go unpunished.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Currently poring over "How To Write Radio Comedy," an exceedingly odd mail-order course in doing exactly that, put out in 1948 by one Art Henley.

Henley was a second-echelon comedy writer in postwar radio -- with his notable credits including a stretch writing for Harry "Parkyakarkus" Einstein and another contributing scripts to the Saturday-morning teen sitcom "The Adventures of Archie Andrews." This is not exactly a portfolio likely to inspire a lot of confidence that Mr. Henley is qualified to write such a text, but he does offer some interesting theoretical discussion of comedy construction, and has some interesting thoughts on what various of the comics of his day are doing -- Bob Hope he dismisses as a mere "gag comic" who's entirely dependent on his material, whereas all Jack Benny has to do to be funny is simply be Jack Benny. He understands not just that this is so, but *why* it's so, which is more than I would have expected from his resume.

The oddest part of the book, though, is Henley's attempts to reduce comedy construction to a series of algebraic formulas -- which he spells out and explains in great detail. Clearly when he came up with this system, he thought he was working for the other Einstein -- but once you penetrate the mathematical aspects of the theory you can understand what he's getting at: an argument that all comedy can be reduced to basic principles relating to diverted expectation, and once you've mastered the principle, you can turn anything into a laugh. I'm not sure I agree with this theory -- it too often yields a repetitious Bob Hope style of generic humor that doesn't really mean anything, which was, I believe, one of the things that killed radio comedy. And I'm not so sure that you can actually *teach* an understanding of comedy -- I think it's an instinctive thing that you either got or you ain't.

Mr. Henley, unlike many of his contemporaries, does admit that it's possible for women to write comedy, so I guess you could call him a progressive sort of fellow, even if he does think "the ladies" aren't any good at math.

 

[Haversack]

I am just starting The Broken Road by Patrick Leigh Fermor. This is his third, concluding, and posthumously published book journaling his walk from Holland to Constantinople in 1934 at age 18. I have just finished reading the first two of this series, A Time of Gifts, and Between the Woods and the Water. Words fail me to describe the pleasure I got in reading these. Besides chronicling his encounters with peoples, countrysides, and worlds that no longer exist, his joy in languages, stories, and life is infectious.

 

[Acererak]

I have thought about picking up some of his works

Raymond Chandler is the best. I’d start with THE LONG GOODBYE or THE LITTLE SISTER.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Fading Fast]

Currently poring over "How To Write Radio Comedy," an exceedingly odd mail-order course in doing exactly that, put out in 1948 by one Art Henley.

Henley was a second-echelon comedy writer in postwar radio -- with his notable credits including a stretch writing for Harry "Parkyakarkus" Einstein and another contributing scripts to the Saturday-morning teen sitcom "The Adventures of Archie Andrews." This is not exactly a portfolio likely to inspire a lot of confidence that Mr. Henley is qualified to write such a text, but he does offer some interesting theoretical discussion of comedy construction, and has some interesting thoughts on what various of the comics of his day are doing -- Bob Hope he dismisses as a mere "gag comic" who's entirely dependent on his material, whereas all Jack Benny has to do to be funny is simply be Jack Benny. He understands not just that this is so, but *why* it's so, which is more than I would have expected from his resume.

The oddest part of the book, though, is Henley's attempts to reduce comedy construction to a series of algebraic formulas -- which he spells out and explains in great detail. Clearly when he came up with this system, he thought he was working for the other Einstein -- but once you penetrate the mathematical aspects of the theory you can understand what he's getting at: an argument that all comedy can be reduced to basic principles relating to diverted expectation, and once you've mastered the principle, you can turn anything into a laugh. I'm not sure I agree with this theory -- it too often yields a repetitious Bob Hope style of generic humor that doesn't really mean anything, which was, I believe, one of the things that killed radio comedy. And I'm not so sure that you can actually *teach* an understanding of comedy -- I think it's an instinctive thing that you either got or you ain't.

Mr. Henley, unlike many of his contemporaries, does admit that it's possible for women to write comedy, so I guess you could call him a progressive sort of fellow, even if he does think "the ladies" aren't any good at math.

I have very strong math skills, but dated a girl in college who could tie my equations into knots that I'd never free (had a friend who was a girl in high school who could do the same). My mom was a bookkeeper (remember those) who could do math in her head faster than most. Working in finance, while there were more men than women, I never noticed - overall - any difference in the women and men I met in my life in their math skills.

My girlfriend is quick as lightening with a quip, can see and create a joke from something better than most and can tell a joke really well (a separate skill from delivering a quip or creating a joke). My grandmother had a similar skill (my mother, conversely, could be handed the funniest joke ever written and would still destroy it in its telling - she also never said an original funny thing in her life). But as opposed to math skills - and even if this is not aligned with the political pieties of today - my experience in life is that men, overall (many individual exceptions) are more joke / humor-oriented and skilled than women.

I am not making an argument that I've studied this in detail or have read any arguments and "here's the proof," but I am saying that in my life, having met (like most of us) a lot of people, I think men tend to be funnier, more humor oriented, the ones more often ready with a quip or telling a joke. Now, to be sure, that could all be do to social norms and what used to be viewed as "appropriate" behavior for women versus men. I don't know but fully respect that (1) my life experience isn't reflective of the overall population and (2) it might not be biologically based (but could be as I don't know).

As to Henley and his humor "math," I am somewhere in the middle in that I think you absolutely have to have a natural instinct for humor to be good or great at it, but one can also "up their game" from whatever level it is if they study humor and its components. For most people, once they understand something's principles, its basic structure, its historical patterns, etc., they can improve their results. Back in the early '90s, I worked with a guy who was incredibly funny and an outstanding joke teller. He showed me how when he heard a funny story or saw something he thought was funny, he would break it down into its component parts and see the best way he could reconstruct it for maximum impact. Since knowing him, if I'm going to create and tell a joke, I do the same and think my limited humor skills have improved.

I'll never have his intuition / natural skills - and I'll never be as good as him (or anywhere near a true professional) - but by thinking about humor as a discipline with building blocks and structure, I've gotten better at it.