What Are You Reading

[Caleb Moore]

Help, Please - Astaire Bio

I am hoping someone can recommend a good Fred Astaire biography. I picked up a recent publication "Fred Astaire" by J. Epstein at the library and ended up putting it down less than twenty pages in. The author was just annoying the heck out of me.

Now, however, my curiosity is piqued and I'd like to find a really solid bio.

Thanks for any suggestions.

- CM

 

[vonwotan]

I am now reading Cobra Trap by Peter O'Donnell. I had to skip over one volume, once again, Dragon's Claw has yet to arrive...

I thoroughly enjoy these Modesty Blaise thrillers.

 

[Diamondback]

Current read: OP 03-4R #37-45, Location of U.S. Naval Aircraft, 7 Sept 1945. Very dull reading and it's a none-too-great scan of a not-particularly-good-to-start-with copy, but such old records and the drudgery of studying them are vital to an ongoing research project of mine.

Next to this, GM's SD60M Diesel Locomotive Operating & Maintenance Manual looks like it was written by Tom Clancy at his peak...

----------------
Now playing: Jerry Goldsmith - The Hotel
via FoxyTunes

 

[irb]

I just finished 'Hammett: A Life at the Edge' by William F. Nolan. It's a good read, I especially liked the chapters about the Pinkerton days and San Francisco in the 1920's. I walked away admiring Hammett the man as much as I do his writing.

Hear, hear! They sure don't make lefties like they used to. I'll have to keep an eye out for that book.

 

[Martinis at 8]

Bold Endeavors by Felix Rohatyn.

 

[Harp]

[QUOTE="Skeet" McD]...the irony is that while he spent his life consciously rejecting his native country and his ancestral religion--he spent his artistic career focusing on nothing but those very things...
...Ireland's literary claim to him is unimpeachable....
[/QUOTE]

Ironic, indeed.
While his name is certainly inscribed across Erin's literary pantheon,
JJ (like Beckett who chose exile and the French language over neutrality),
appears more solitaire. All the more so when Yeats and Heaney
are considered. Though I do not necessarily agree with academe's
scriptor desolo utriusque Templum quad terra et humanitas
sententia, in Joyce's case individuality gains some currency with time.

 

[just_me]

I am hoping someone can recommend a good Fred Astaire biography. I picked up a recent publication "Fred Astaire" by J. Epstein at the library and ended up putting it down less than twenty pages in. The author was just annoying the heck out of me.

Now, however, my curiosity is piqued and I'd like to find a really solid bio.

Thanks for any suggestions.

- CM

I've read a couple, but I can't remember which ones. I also read his autobiography:

Steps in Time: An Autobiography by Fred Astaire

I always find it interesting to read an autobiography and a good biography of the same person. Interesting to see the subject's take on his/her life and then someone else's.

 

[deadpandiva]

I am about halfway through A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. I am really enjoying it.

 

[Tiller]

I've heard of this chap, he lives on the Isle of Wight, not far from me. He's the guy that thinks the Royal Family are reptiles, I think.

Yup, that's him. The Royal Family, George W. Bush, and other "elites". I saw him on Penn and Teller's Bullshit one day when he was talking about UFO abductions.

I'm reading Rex Stout's Fer-De-Lance right now. After that I'll probably hit another Poirot novel. I'm also reading Human Action by Ludwig Von Mises, but its my "year book"lol. Reading only bits and pieces of it at a time.

 

[John Boyer]

Flush: A Biography (1933) by Virginia Woolf (1882-1941). This is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as told by E.B.B.'s cocker spaniel, Flush. Having read several biographies on E.B.B., this cross-genre attempt by Ms. Woolf tracks accurately to key events in E.B.B.'s life, while illustrating the evolution of a field spaniel into a Victorian Aristocrat.

Kahlil Gibran; His Life and World by Jean Gibran & Kahlil Gibran. This is a biography of the author of The Prophet developed from personal letters and documents. It is remarkably objective despite having been written by his wife and cousin. It is a personal glimpse into the life of Gibran, whose 20th Century writings are a wonderful blend of the nature poets (Wordsworth, Keats and Blake) and American Transcendentalists (Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman).

 

["Skeet" McD]

Willis Barnstone's THE NEW COVENANT

Heading into Holy Week, I've been reading Willis Barnstone's 2002 THE NEW COVENANT: commonly called the New Testament, volume 1: The Four Gospels and Apocalypse, newly translated from the Greek and informed by Semitic sources.

As a translation, I find it very good (as much as one can say who does not have either Greek nor Hebrew, and can only speak by comparison, general knowledge, and appraisal of English prose style). The intent behind it is, IMHO, long overdue as well: to remind those inclined to forget (ahem) that Jesus, his disciples, and most of the earliest Christians, were....Jews. This translation restores their Hebrew names and gives us the local names of those places we tend to think of as filtered through Greek and Latin....Yehuda, Yerushalayim, and Kfar Nahum for Judah, Jerusalem, and Capernaum; Shimon "Kefa" for Simon "Peter", etc., etc. For those interested, etymological and other issues are discussed in copious footnotes--although, to a certain extent, they distract from, and are unnecessary for an understanding of, the text.

The "take" on the Gospel's presentation of Jesus' life is consistent and plausible, but (for me, at least) is too anxious to make the case that the Gospel's presentation of events is almost certain to be false, and driven pretty much entirely by the wide gap that had opened up between the Messianic Jews we call Christians and the non-Messianic Jews of the late 1st and early 2nd C AD--in other words, the time the Gospels were likely written.

While, as I say, Barnstone's take is plausible, it certainly is not the only possibility...and his commentary takes his chosen explanation and states it unequivocally as evident truth.

Nonetheless, this excellent, lapidary, translation will allow all readers used to the standard translations to see these ancient texts in a new and I think important light.

Highly recommended.

"Skeet"

 

[Mike1939]

I'm rereading The Continental Op by Dashiell Hammett. I love this nameless fat detective, it's certainly ripe material for Hollywood. A period movie set in 1920's San Francisco would sure hit the spot.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Salvaged from the recycling bin at the local dump, I'm enjoying Lee Israel's 1979 biography of Dorothy Kilgallen, one of my journalistic role models back when I thought a career in that field was actually a feasible way to make money. I actually read this back when it came out, but I'd forgotten all about how entertaining it was till I saw it on the skip.

Lee Israel ended up on the scrap pile herself, sad to say -- after her career hit the skids in the 90s, she turned to crime, becoming a master forger of historical letters and other documents which she sold to unsuspecting collectors for big money until the law caught up with her. She has since, they say, reformed, and actually had a book out a few years ago outlining her adventures on the wrong side of the law. One wonders how Dorothy Kilgallen herself might have covered that story.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

You must mean Sir Richard Burton the actor. I was thinking of Sir Richard Francis Burton the explorer.

Ah I assumed, key error there, that you were talking about Sir Richard Francis Burton and was asking which biography. So yes it is the explorer and the book is by Byron Farwell.

 

[Feraud]

Ah I assumed, key error there, that you were talking about Sir Richard Francis Burton and was asking which biography. So yes it is the explorer and the book is by Byron Farwell.

Glad we cleared that up.
Years ago I read the bio by Farwell and recall enjoying it. There are additional RFB bios out there if the subject interests you. It's been a while since I have read them and it may be time to revisit the topic.
After recently reading The Meinertzhagen Mystery I am wondering if Burton received similar treatment by biographers. Both Burton and Meinertzhagen were larger than life characters. What history has handed down to us regarding Richard Meinertzhagen was terribly wrong.

What I want to read is The Highly Civilized Man: Richard Burton and the Victorian World by Dane Kennedy.

 

[Slate Shannon]

Funny, I just picked this up yesterday. Looks to be a fascinating read.

Apparently this (The Lost City of Z) will be a Brad Pitt movie, also. Currently scheduled for a 2010 release. I imagine that it will get the typical Hollywood treatment and bear little resemblance to the book.

I've almost finished the book and have enjoyed it immensely.

 

[WH1]

Currently rereading Atlas Shrugged (50th Anniversary Edition) by Ayn Rand who is John Galt? Still one of the most interesting books and very timely with the current world social and political climate IMO.

 

[Brian Sheridan]

Fred Astaire and the Fine Art of Panache by Peter Levinson.

An excellent bio with new details and new information. Levinson's final book after some wonderful biographies including one on Nelson Riddle.

I also just ordered a "biography" of Hercule Poirot that came out in 1990.

 

[Decodence]

Can't put it down

 

[PADDY]

Jack Higgins...

...Frederick Forsythe (I do like a well scripted 'thriller' and for me it's just pure blissful escapism)..and a book I picked up at the Harvard Book Shop, called: "Unlocking the animal mind." (It's about how to give emotional happiness and contentment to animals. In my case, my dogs ).