What Are You Reading

[carebear]

Psychology isn't, to my mind, an exact science. For all its failings I'd rather the jury make that call for sentencing than a judge, as long as that sentence isn't irrevocable.

Prison or a looney bin, the convicted party is kept from society without the risk of killing an innocent.

Not sure when I became I bleeding heart...

On topic, one of my favorite, read daily, legal blogs.

http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/

 

[carebear]

A couple of my other daily read legal blogs.

They're what I'm reading lately, I refuse to apologize...

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/

http://volokh.com/

 

[Harp]

Psychology isn't, to my mind, an exact science. For all its failings I'd rather the jury make that call for sentencing than a judge...

A trial judge may, with sufficient grounds, overturn an unjust conviction;
and a capital punishment verdict must necessarily suffice appellate recourse,
so there exist reasonable striction.


Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs Woodward is most instructive
as regards requisite mens rea and judicial activism during trial where the
prosecution did not seek the death penalty for infantcide.
Massachusetts recognizes instant premeditation, which apparently
set the stage for-in my view-unlawful judicial intrusion which usurped justice.

.

 

[Mike1939]

Go, by John Clellon Holmes

 

[High Pockets]

"A Study in Scarlet"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Out of my dusty old Doubleday hardcover "The Complete Sherlock Holmes".

 

[Feraud]

Currently reading Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Most Scandalous Scandal Magazine"

Humphrey Bogart said of Confidential: “Everybody reads it but they say the cook brought it into the house” . . . Tom Wolfe called it “the most scandalous scandal magazine in the history of the world” . . . Time defined it as “a cheesecake of innuendo, detraction, and plain smut . . . dig up one sensational ‘fact,’ embroider it for 1,500 to 2,000 words. If the subject thinks of suing, he may quickly realize that the fact is true, even if the embroidery is not.”

Here is the never-before-told tale of Confidential magazine, America’s first tabloid, which forever changed our notion of privacy, our image of ourselves, and the practice of journalism in America.

The magazine came out every two months, was printed on pulp paper, and cost a quarter. Its pages were filled with racy stories, sex scandals, and political exposés. It offered advice about the dangers of cigarettes and advocated various medical remedies. Its circulation, at the height of its popularity, was three million. It was first published in 1952 and took the country by storm.

Readers loved its lurid red-and-yellow covers; its sensational stories filled with innuendo and titillating details; its articles that went far beyond most movie magazines, like Photoplay and Modern Screen, and told the real stories such trade publications as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter couldn’t, since they, and the movie magazines, were financially dependent on—or controlled by—the Hollywood studios.

In Confidential’s pages, homespun America was revealed as it really was: our most sacrosanct movie stars and heroes were exposed as wife beaters (Bing Crosby), homosexuals (Rock Hudson and Liberace), neglectful mothers (Rita Hayworth), sex obsessives (June Allyson, the cutie with the page boy and Peter Pan collar), mistresses of the rich and dangerous (Kim Novak, lover of Ramfis Trujillo, playboy son of the Dominican Republic dictator).

Confidential’s alliterative headlines told of tawny temptresses (black women passing for white), pinko partisans (liberals), lisping lads (homosexuals) . . . and promised its readers what the newspapers wouldn’t
reveal: “The Real Reason for Marilyn Monroe’s Divorce” . . . How “James Dean Knew He Had a Date with Death” . . . The magazine’s style, success, and methods ultimately gave birth to the National Enquirer, Star, People, E!, Access Hollywood, and TMZ . . .

We see the two men at the magazine’s center: its founder and owner, Robert Harrison, a Lithuanian Jew from New York’s Lower East Side who wrote for The New York Graphic and published a string of girlie magazines, including Titter, Wink, and Flirt (Bogart called the magazine’s founder and owner the King of Leer) . . . and Confidential ’s most important editor: Howard Rushmore, small-town boy from a Wyoming homestead; passionate ideologue; former member of the Communist Party who wrote for the Daily Worker, renounced his party affiliation, and became a virulent Red-hunter; close pal of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and expert witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, naming the names of actors and writers Rushmore claimed had been Communists and fellow travelers.

Henry Scott writes how the two men, out of their radically different pasts and conflicting obsessions, combined to make the magazine the perfect confluence of explosive ingredients that reflected the America of its time, as the country struggled to reconcile Hollywood’s blissful fantasy of American life with the daunting nightmare of the nuclear age . . .

 

[mrfish]

Got a first edition of Richard Halliburton's The Glorious Adventure and a compilation of P.G. Wodehouse over the weekend at a library book sale. $5 a bag.

I think you beans are rubbing off on me. Cool.

mrfish

 

[Ethan Bentley]

"A Study in Scarlet"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Out of my dusty old Doubleday hardcover "The Complete Sherlock Holmes".

:eusa_clap Good choice Sir. A complete collection in one volume is a neat thing to have.

 

[Lamplight]

I'm currently taking a break from reading for a few days while awaiting the arrival of my first edition copies of Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I've read The Jungle several times, but I'm pretty excited to get a first edition. It will be one of my older books.

 

[Ethan Bentley]

Seinfeld & Philosophy - actually a collection of different essay. Interested to see how it turns out.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Finished reading Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter by Edward Streeter, the same author who brought us Father of the Bride, and Mr. Hobbs' Vaction.

The book is tied very strongly to its time and place, New York City in the mid-1950s. In a sense it is somewhat insular, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Picture Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett from Father of the Bride, as I did, in the roles of George Baxter and Susan Baxter, and the story is a great deal of fun.

The part at the beginning where Mr. Baxter decides to put his foot down and tightly budget Christmas spending is hilarious. I read it aloud to my wife and I laughed so hard I had tears in my eye.

Here are a couple of outstanding thoughts about Christmas, expressed by Streeter through his characters.

Christmas was like a wedding. It consisted largely in preparation for an event that was over almost before you realized it had begun.

Christmas gave people an excuse to stop being foresighted and prudent for a brief moment. It was a time when one could be generous, almost profligate, with the full approval of the world, a time when one could satisfy the yearnings and the desires of the present without being accused of extravagance and recklessness. In fact to hang back now was to risk the label of Scroogism.

His wife Susan makes the observation that Christmas is “all so beautiful and at the same time baffling. ... I don’t mean just the day. I mean the whole thing. The whole build-up. Christmas isn’t just another holiday. It’s a force—a terrific force that we don’t understand. It does things to people. If you took Christmas out of the world it would be a major calamity. But try to explain why- try to pin it down- and it’s like trying to pick up a soap bubble.”

This is definitely part of my annual reading...

 

["Skeet" McD]

Finished reading Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter by Edward Streeter, the same author who brought us Father of the Bride, and Mr. Hobbs' Vaction....This is definitely part of my annual reading...

Dear Wally,
And I expect of mine, as well. Wonderful quotes! Just ordered a copy from a shop Down East...should be here in a day or two. Thanks for the recommendation!

"Skeet"

 

[Claireg]

I am very excited because I found a copy of Tallulah Bankheads autobiography! The original 1952 version.
Love that gal.
"cocaine, habit forming? Of course not, I should know, Ive been using it for years"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Funnymen by Ted Heller (published in 2002)

Funnymen is a wild romp through the entertainment scene of the 1930s through the 1990s as it chronicles the life and times of Fountain and Bliss, a fictitious comedy duo loosely based on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. From their Borscht Belt beginnings in the late 1930s, through their heyday in the '40s and '50s, and their decline in the '60s and '70s, the story is told entirely through the first-person "reminiscences" of a bewildering and memorable cast of agents, cousins, ex-wives, mistresses, flunkies, fellow entertainers and many others.

What's makes the book fun reading is trying to figure out what real life personalities the characters are based on. Crooner Vic Fountain is clearly a composite of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra (Vic is described in the book as having turquoise eyes), while his rotund, brillo-haired partner Ziggy Bliss appears to be an amalgram of Jerry Lewis, Lou Costello, Sid Caesar and Milton Berle (through a certain attribute) and Vic's children Vicky and Vincent bear a vague resemblance to Nancy Sinatra and Ricky Nelson. While I'm mainly a non-fiction reader, Funnymen is not only one of the few works of fiction that I've read but one that I don't mind reading over and over.

 

[Avalon]

About halfway through Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Heartbreaking, infuriating - I can't wait to see what happens to Tess. Just a brilliant book.

 

[Harp]

About halfway through Tess of the D'Ubervilles. Heartbreaking, infuriating - I can't wait to see what happens to Tess. Just a brilliant book.

Tess and Jude the Obscure are heartbreakers. :cry:

N. Kinski memorably portrayed Tess.

 

[Avalon]

Tess and Jude the Obscure are heartbreakers. :cry:

N. Kinski memorably portrayed Tess.

I read Jude first - it was my initiation into Hardy - and was so taken by his work that I immediately gathered whatever else of his I could. I have The Mayor of Casterbridge waiting for when I finish this one. He has to be one of the most jarring, intoxicating, fascinating authors I've had the pleasure to experience.

 

[JimWagner]

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard. Downloaded the complete Allan Quatermain series to my Kindle for 99 cents. Another 99 cents got the complete She series by the same author.

 

[Dewhurst]

Just started Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man last night.

I'm excited to read his thoughts on this subject in order to see how far we have come in our understanding and, even more importantly, to see how our prejudices and assumptions color our science and comprehension of fact.

Should be a long but succulent read.

 

[Harp]

I read Jude first - it was my initiation into Hardy - He has to be one of the most jarring, intoxicating, fascinating authors I've had the pleasure to experience.

I share your perspective; although I thought Jude was intrinsically
flawed and poorly structured, Hardy's grasp of the heart and soul cannot be doubted.

...who is your favorite poet?