What Are You Reading

[Vardeman Sneed]

Gentleman - A Timeless Fashion by Bernhard Roetzel

This book is good for a young man beginning his clothing journey. However, I do have issues with some of its content.


I just finished:

The Book of Ties by Francois Chaille

The historical information in this book is very interesting. I find that some of the "artistic" ties in the section titled "great fashion houses" rub me the wrong way.

Hats for Every Head by Ruth Garland-Dewson

This book is very informative. The photos of men and women wearing hats throughout the book are very nice.

 

[missmelly]

Ten Cents A Dance by our own Hep Kitten!
Just finished it last night. Great book and I highly recommend it to everyone.:eusa_clap

 

[Feraud]

I am reading The Autobiography of Jackie Robinson.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Reading Round-Up

My, the reading thread has been quiet lately. Let me crank it up again. I haven't done one of my reading round-ups in a while, so here goes.

Over a ten day period I finished quite a number of the books I had in progress, mostly novels.

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End -- I complained earlier that this acclaimed recent novel about a Chicago advertising agency, written mainly in the first person plural ("we"), was disappointing me, and I am afraid that is the final verdict as well. Not worth the effort.

Joe Gores, Interface -- Gores is highly rated as a thriller/detective novelist, and this item from the Seventies is somewhat renowned for its brutality and its twist ending. The twist isn't bad and the brutality is real, but Gores's prose is so poor that it took me forever to get to the end of the book. In a novel of motion, the movements need to be more adroitly described than, say, this:

"[The car] went past, on toward the next intersecting lane down the garage which was parallel to that which was sawhorsed."

That's not an unfair sample, either. The novel is full of sentences like that. I'm not saying prose quality is everything -- I admire the famously clumsy (but powerful) Theodore Dreiser, for example -- but it hampered my enjoyment here. Not recommended.

John Braine, Room at the Top -- The basis of the famous 1959 film with Laurence Harvey and Simone Signoret, Braine's first novel is quite marvelously accomplished and compelling, a standout among the rawly realistic British novels of that era. Highly recommended.

John Osborne, Look Back in Anger -- Osborne's celebrated play is part of the same literary movement as Braine's novel; I'll comment on it in the film thread, in the context of two adaptations (1959, with Richard Burton, and 1989, with Kenneth Branagh).

Rex Stout, The Rubber Band -- I can never seem to follow Nero Wolfe plots, in print or on television, but the plots are not the real attraction, which rests for me in Archie Goodwin's persona, Stout's excellent style, and the "world" created in the books (as compelling as the world of Sherlock Holmes). Wonderful stuff.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

I have been reading some Margaret Coel mysteries, also just started a Laura Lippman mystery, What the Dead Know. Good writing.

Just finished a fun book, about a woman who finds that dogs can talk to her and understand what she says, called Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. The author is Merrill Markoe. I will probably try to score some other books by her, she is funny, funny.

karol

 

[Patrick Murtha]

Just finished a fun book, about a woman who finds that dogs can talk to her and understand what she says, called Walking in Circles Before Lying Down. The author is Merrill Markoe. I will probably try to score some other books by her, she is funny, funny.

You probably know that she was once not only David Letterman's head writer, but his girlfriend.

 

[pgoat]

Mark Twain's letters from the earth, About 40 pages in and it's a hoot thus far.

 

[imoldfashioned]

I just finished Elizabeth Longford's Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed. I've read bits and bobs of it over the years but never the whole book in one go. It was very enjoyable, I'd recommend it.

 

[ShooShooBaby]

i have a 25-book "recommended reading" list for my grad program (starting in july) staring me in the face....

so i'm reading Wicked.

 

[imported_the_librarian]

I'm on the Vault this weekend! I'm going to try to read at least 3 articles! Have you had a chance to see it yet?

Sports Illustrated Vaults: Covers, Stories, the Works

Here's the link:

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/


Now I'll never get the grass mowed......

 

[CharlesB]

books on regional development in subsaharan africa and the impact of pandemic disease on AIDS/HIV

 

[jtcarrey]

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

 

[Caroline]

I just returned "Her Last Death" to the library. The first chapter of it was well written and challenged the typical memoir-peepshow syndrome, and it even reminded me of Phillip Lopate at times, but then I felt icky reading the rest.

Now I have to finish Richard Brautigan's "Sombrero Fallout" before the person who loaned it to me moves back to Indiana for the Summer!

 

[AmateisGal]

Going to start The Thirteenth Tale for my book club.

 

[DeaconKC]

Just started "Rebirth" by Greg Keyes, part of the Start Wars series. Looks like it is going to be another "just one more chapter before bed....." books.

 

[hepkitten]

Mark Twain's letters from the earth, About 40 pages in and it's a hoot thus far.

This is one of my all-time favorites. The essay on Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is one of the funniest things I've ever read (and Lord knows I try to heed it with my own writing).

Recently finished American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I liked it, but not as much as Good Omens. I'm currently tackling a stack of young adult books (part entertainment, part work). I had high hopes for The Luxe, by Anna Godberson, because I love historical fiction. But it was essentially The Gossip Girls in corsets. Anachronisms galore, not a sliver of an attempt to portray the mindset or language of 1899 New York. *yawn*

On the other hand, I'm partway through The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. Set in 1943-45 in Los Alamos, NM, about the kids of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. Outstanding so far.

 

[Sjoconn]

I recently finished reading "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. It is a story of a depression era circus. I never really found circus stories to be of interest, but really enjoyed this book. I specially found the language/slang to be of interest.

 

[Patrick Murtha]

This is one of my all-time favorites. The essay on Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses is one of the funniest things I've ever read (and Lord knows I try to heed it with my own writing).

As much as I love Twain, I love Cooper, too, and I've always felt that essay was unfair (albeit funny). Cooper was writing in a different style in a different time. Cooper's era was the relatively recent past for Twain, and we are always most scornful of the artistic styles of the recent past -- this is a well-known phenomenon in the history of tastes.

 

[dollydaydream]

The Somnambulist.

Just finished 'Towelhead'. It was good, but too much lady loving herself to be honest, I mean, it's ok the first few times but gets a bit repetative lol

 

[dollydaydream]

I do that too, I'm also half way through 'Lobster' by someone, 'Essays On Love' by Alain de Botton & 'The Reason of Things' by A.C. Grayling lol