books, books, books

ice nine · Post by **ice nine** » Sun May 01, 2005 10:37 pm

Has anyone read 'Assassination Vacation' by Sarah Vowell? I've been thinking of picking it up. I like the essays I have heard her do on NPR. It sounds like it may be a good read. I liked David Sedaris' 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'.

VonOfterdingen · Post by **VonOfterdingen** » Mon May 02, 2005 6:47 am

Finally read "The Great Gatsby" and though it's well written and sharp, I can't help but having a "what's the fuss" feeling about it...

millen · Post by **millen** » Mon May 02, 2005 2:27 pm

I'm currently reading:

The Gun seller by Hugh Laurie.
Very funny book, but what would you expect from Laurie? It's about an ex-soldier who gets trapped in the naughty plans of the US-weapons industry.

Adventures in Capitalism by Toby Litt.
This is a collection of short stories. Very entertaining and very original. I think even people who don't like short stories will like these.

laughingcrow · Post by **laughingcrow** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:00 am

Anyone read Charlie Brooker's Screenburn....I reccomend it highly. It is a colection of his TV reviews for the Guardian (in a similar vein to the equally brilliant, but out of print Tapehead by Jim Shelley) and is the funniest book I have ever read, and most probably that you will ever read. You don't have to know the programmes he's talking about either, which was the one weak point with Tapehead's book. Buy this now!

strangerinthehouse · Post by **strangerinthehouse** » Mon May 09, 2005 8:10 pm

I think I'm the last person in this forum to get my hands on COMPLICATED SHADOWS, i will probaly start reading it as soon as I log off too, i just got it today!

while waiting For EC's Latest Bio, i finished reading the last of my Bertolt Brecht Plays- The Caucasian Chalk Circle. I love his plays they are always entertaining, he just knows so well what an audiece wants but also knows how to turn it on them and to showcase his radical views. he doesn't just give chases and violence for kick, he creates a point and an ideology against it.

lawngnome · Post by **lawngnome** » Mon May 09, 2005 8:48 pm

strangerinthehouse wrote:I think I'm the last person in this forum to get my hands on COMPLICATED SHADOWS, i will probaly start reading it as soon as I log off too, i just got it today!

nope, thats me... I still dont have it. Wher can I get it?? I just finished All Quiet on the Western Front It... bothered me. I'm still not over the graveyard part.

Post by **BlueChair** » Mon May 09, 2005 9:12 pm

I've been reading Sideways by Rex Pickett, the book that was made into the film.

Normally when I like a film and go back to read the book I like the book better. Not the case here, many of the plot and character changes made in the film vastly improved the story and the mood, and the writing style isn't particular great. Still, it's not toss it in the trash awful, I will at least finish reading it before moving on.

strangerinthehouse · Post by **strangerinthehouse** » Tue May 10, 2005 5:19 pm

Lawngnome
I think you can order it from barnes&noble.com. it is such a good read i just finished part one last night, i want it to keep reading but my eyelids gave out.

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Wed May 11, 2005 7:44 am

or you can click on that little rectangular picture of EC up there in the right corner, next to the PayPal buttons and order it from Amazon.

I finished it over the weekend - mostly made me hungry for the book that Elvis is supposed to be writing.

mood swung · Post by **mood swung** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:36 am

besides Complicated Shadows - Lee Smith's The Last Girls, the first three Dark Tower books and I'm really excited about having the rest right there waiting to be read!, Flat Stanley Flat Again! (read by Josephine in a very expressive voice), and from the bargain bin, Broken Music - for 1.25, I couldn't pass it up. Found a copy of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life on our coffee table and read the first three chapters before my oldest took it away - gonna have to swipe that when he's sleeping.

Who Shot Sam? · Post by **Who Shot Sam?** » Thu May 12, 2005 7:45 am

mood swung wrote:Found a copy of Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life on our coffee table and read the first three chapters before my oldest took it away - gonna have to swipe that when he's sleeping.

That's a great book - remembering reading it when I was in college. So-so film adaptation with Leo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro too.

Boy With A Problem · Post by **Boy With A Problem** » Sun May 15, 2005 5:30 am

I recently finished these two -

Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker by James Gavin

As suspected, Chet Baker was a colossal asshole - a user and abuser whose only redeeming quality was the sad tone of his trumpet. It's a credit to Gavin that he's able to make this book interesting and readable, when it's really just one anecdote after another of overdoses, missed gigs, poorly played gigs, spousal neglect and abuse. A truly dark and disturbing read.

Comrade Rockstar: The Story of the Search for Dean Reed by Reggie Nadelson

A trip through the Eastern bloc as the Iron Curtain is preparing to come down, with the author trying to pinpoint the cause of death of Dean Reed - an American singer/actor who found fame in communist Europe during the Cold War. Having never seen nor heard Reed, he comes across in this book as having limited talent - but representing to the communist kids the possibilities of Rock 'n' Roll and America, while at the same time he's espousing the communist line. Nadelson does a great job of setting the mood - especially of East Berlin while the wall is still up. Another cool thing about this book is that it's told from a participatory angle - great scene of her interviewing Phil Everly in a Mexican restaurant in Burbank while they get drunk on margaritas.

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Tue May 17, 2005 5:54 pm

Just finished Notes From A Big Country by Bill Bryson.
Fun reading - the essays are both entertaining and thought-provoking. That said I prefer his earlier Notes From A Small Island, not least because I've been to UK a few times and I could compare my impressions from the visits to his observations.

Otis Westinghouse · Post by **Otis Westinghouse** » Tue May 17, 2005 6:05 pm

laughingcrow wrote:Anyone read Charlie Brooker's Screenburn....I reccomend it highly. It is a colection of his TV reviews for the Guardian (in a similar vein to the equally brilliant, but out of print Tapehead by Jim Shelley) and is the funniest book I have ever read, and most probably that you will ever read. You don't have to know the programmes he's talking about either, which was the one weak point with Tapehead's book. Buy this now!

I frequently find myself in tears on a Saturday reading his utterly cruel but right on the button comments. I must get my hands on this.

Am reading John MacGahern's That They May Face The Rising Sun. Such a fine writer, but have yet to find the time to get properly stuck in. It's about folk living by a lake, basically, with a very powerful sense of place. I think it needs intensive reading.

Also dipping my nose in Hip Priest by Simon Ford, which I believe is the only decent book out there about the legend that is Mark E Smith.

Post by **BlueChair** » Thu May 19, 2005 10:21 am

Just started on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. It's viewed as the quintessential film book covering the 1967-1980 period of maverick filmmaking, when American filmmakers like Scorsese, Copolla, Allen, Altman, etc. broke from the Hollywood system and took full control of their films.. or at least tried to.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Thu May 19, 2005 10:57 am

BlueChair wrote:Just started on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. It's viewed as the quintessential film book covering the 1967-1980 period of maverick filmmaking, when American filmmakers like Scorsese, Copolla, Allen, Altman, etc. broke from the Hollywood system and took full control of their films.. or at least tried to.

Also known as the "cocktacular" era.

pip_52 · Post by **pip_52** » Thu May 19, 2005 11:25 am

Have you seen the documentary based on that book?

I recently finished reading 2001 and the new EC biog, currently reading Alpha and Omega: the search for the beginning and end of the universe.

pophead2k · Post by **pophead2k** » Thu May 19, 2005 11:26 am

Just ordered the very well-reviewed Misfortune by musician John Wesley Harding (written under his real name, Wesley Stace). The book is set in the 19th century, is based on ideas from a couple of his songs, and is evidently sweeping and Dickensian in scope. He's currently working on a second novel. I believe I read that the advance he got for these books dwarfed anything he has made as a musician.

El Vez · Post by **El Vez** » Thu May 19, 2005 12:43 pm

miss buenos aires wrote:
BlueChair wrote:Just started on Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind. It's viewed as the quintessential film book covering the 1967-1980 period of maverick filmmaking, when American filmmakers like Scorsese, Copolla, Allen, Altman, etc. broke from the Hollywood system and took full control of their films.. or at least tried to.
Also known as the "cocktacular" era.

Aw c'mon. We *all* know that men just happen to be better at making films than women. It's a scientific fact.

Seriously, the book itself is kind of sleazy as it uses the love that so many of us have for that era of filmmaking as a come-on to dish a whole lot of dirt that seems to have more to do with personal grudges (or wanting to be provocative) than anything else. The documentary is a bit less incendiary although it's still kinda like Everything You Already Knew About A Wildass Decade And Didn't Really Need Any Clarification On, Thank You Very Much.

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Thu May 19, 2005 1:56 pm

I've only read small portions of it...but that's part of why I've only read portions of it!

It's a whole school of entertainment journalism that shows enjoys acting shocked. "Oh my God, Martin Scorsese did way too many drugs for a while!" "Young film directors enjoy having sex with eager starlets!" Color me disillusioned. (Although I am pretty sure that Peter Bogdonavich is a bit of a psycho and a pretentious weenie, but I didn't need Biskind to tell me that...)

My own book will be called "Orson Welles Ate Too Much and Quentin Tarentino Watches Too Many Movies While Smoking Pot!"

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Tue May 24, 2005 5:29 pm

Just started reading The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Have to check if all the praises are justified.
Starts promising : a father takes his 11-year old son to a place he calls Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where the boy is supposed to choose one book and treasure it. He will become obsessed with the book and its mysterious author.

Will be back in 500 pages.

miss buenos aires · Post by **miss buenos aires** » Tue May 24, 2005 6:39 pm

bobster wrote:My own book will be called "Orson Welles Ate Too Much and Quentin Tarentino Watches Too Many Movies While Smoking Pot!"

Tee-hee! You almost made me spit out red wine onto my roommate's computer!

There's a church near my house that sells paperbacks for 50 cents on Sundays, so I buy about 11 classics at a time and work my way through them. The last few: the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Passage to India, Portrait of a Lady.

Henry James is pretty amazing, no? Even better than E.M. Forster. At least, I liked "Portrait" much better than "Passage."

invisible Pole · Post by **invisible Pole** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 4:37 pm

invisible Pole wrote:Just started reading The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.
Have to check if all the praises are justified.
Starts promising : a father takes his 11-year old son to a place he calls Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where the boy is supposed to choose one book and treasure it. He will become obsessed with the book and its mysterious author.

Will be back in 500 pages.

Finished.
A bit melodramatic in places, but a hugely entertaining book nonetheless. What I like most about it was a delectable cast of characters, including the main hero's older sidekick, Fermin, always ready with a funny quote or life philosophy.
My edition has also got nice black-and-white pictures of 1940's/50's Barcelona, where the story takes place.

Starting Nick Hornby's new novel, A Long Way Down, next week.

pip_52 · Post by **pip_52** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 4:52 pm

Recently finished One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, Without Feathers and Getting Even by Woody Allen, and Pryor Convictions by Richard Pryor.

Im trying to start The Trials of Lenny Bruce ... but its just sooo long. We'll see ...

bobster · Post by **bobster** » Sun Jul 03, 2005 5:00 pm

Ah, the Woody books....I particularly like the literary diary parody from "Without Feathers.

"Should I marry R? Well, not if she won't tell me the other letters in her name."