What Are You Reading

[jamespowers]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Depressing...:doh:

 

[Wally_Hood]

Reading through a humor collection from 1949 called Fun Fair, which I think was put out by Reader's Digest. Quips, quotes, anecdotes, some very short pieces from Benchley, Walter Winchell, many others. Most pieces are bite-sized, and many are laugh out loud funny.

 

[vintage.vendeuse]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Depressing...:doh:

My tenth grade daughter just read that for school. I managed to get through high school and four years of college (including a minor in English Lit) without having to open that book.

Right now, I'm reading "Nella Last's War, The Second World War Diaries of Housewife, 49". Granted, I'm still not very far into the book, but the peek into everyday life in England during WW2 is very interesting.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Reading through a humor collection from 1949 called Fun Fair, which I think was put out by Reader's Digest. Quips, quotes, anecdotes, some very short pieces from Benchley, Walter Winchell, many others. Most pieces are bite-sized, and many are laugh out loud funny.

I've had a copy of that for many years. It's a great book to keep in the Bathroom Library, along with Bennet Cerf's "Try and Stop Me."

 

[jamespowers]

My tenth grade daughter just read that for school. I managed to get through high school and four years of college (including a minor in English Lit) without having to open that book.

I just wanted to see what was in the book Bugs Bunny used in one of the cartoons.

 

[Matt Crunk]

Right now I'm reading the Complete Novels of Dashiell Hammett, collected in one volume. I'm currently about halfway through The Maltese Falcon, a very interesting read after having seen the film so many times over the years.

In the book, when Spade tells Gutman to "keep your gunsel away from me", he clearly uses the term in it's original context - implying that the lad is Gutman's kept boy-toy. That line made it into the film, and past production-code censors because they assumed the term was synonymous with gunman. It wasn't, at least not until that film made it so.

 

[Formeruser012523]

"The Star Film Ranch Texas' First Picture Show" by Frank Thompson

About how silents came to Texas and their early film history in the state. Apparently George Melies was somehow involved. Haven't gotten that far yet.

 

[Harp]

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Depressing...:doh:

Vix- sentia, peto intra. I wanted to cry at the end.

 

[Derek Cavin]

Prisoner's Base by Rex Stout. My first by Stout and thus, first book about Nero Wolfe. An old paperback from my wife's grandfather's collection, published December, 1963.

 

[Harp]

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows

A wonderful story "about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends."

 

[The Good]

Recently, I have been reading two books, which I've yet to finish. The mysterious author B. Traven's The Death Ship, and former Kraftwerk band member Wolfgang Flur's book, I Was a Robot. I have been enjoying both, so far. B. Traven is most famously the author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which I've also read, and I've seen and own the John Huston film starring Humphrey Bogart as well.

 

[Wally_Hood]

Prisoner's Base by Rex Stout. My first by Stout and thus, first book about Nero Wolfe. An old paperback from my wife's grandfather's collection, published December, 1963.

Over the years I searched used book stores to find as many of the Nero Wolfe books and short stories as I could find. The tone of Archie's narration is consistent over decades of stories, and while the mysteries can get kind of tangled, the climactic nailing of the bad guy is always fun.

 

[edchat]

If you want something well written to open up your mind whilst being constantly entertained, I highly recommend

"A fortune teller told me" Just started reading it for the second time

Warned by a Hong Kong fortune-teller not to risk flying for a whole year, Tiziano Terzani — a vastly experienced Asia correspondent — took what he called “the first step into an unknown world. . . . It turned out to be one of the most extraordinary years I have ever spent: I was marked for death, and instead I was reborn.”

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/326931.A_Fortune_Teller_Told_Me

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Walt Before Skeezix," the latest collection of Frank King's early "Gasoline Alley" comic strips. This volume goes back to the very beginning of the strip, commencing in November 1918 and continuing thru the end of 1920. This is the formative period of King's storytelling style, and you see the concept of the strip evolve from a gag panel about four buddies who sit around the alley behind their houses talking about cars to a fascinating daily chronicle of the lives of ordinary people. The title of the collection reflects the fact that these are the years before confirmed bachelor Walt Wallet finds the abandoned baby Skeezix on his doorstep -- and you get to see just how much of a difference becoming a father will make in his life. There's sort of a dry run for Skeezix's arrival in mid-1920 when Walt's pal Bill becomes a father, and it's clear that King is experimenting with how to turn his strip into a story of family life. The art evolves rapidly -- the 1918 panels show everyone looking short and squat and doughy, but within a year or so Walt, Bill, Avery and Doc have assumed their familiar appearances.

King's work on "Gasoline Alley" is basically the Great American Novel in comic strip form, and is a priceless glimpse of what life was really like for ordinary Americans in the twenties. Everyone with an interest in the period should be following this series. New collections come out every three or four years or so, and are well worth the wait.

 

[RBH]

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher : The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis

by Timothy Egan

Its a great read so far.

 

[DesertDan]

Monster Hunter International: Legion Another rollicking good tale from Larry Correia

 

[Harp]

The Last of Chéri by Colette

It may be facetious to compare Cheri with Flaubert's Madame Bovary but the human heart can be quite as mercurial as mysterious.

 

[Hercule]

Got a few of them going:

After the fact : the surprising fates of American history's heroes, villains, and supporting characters / Owen J. Hurd.
The secret lives of codebreakers : the men and women who cracked the Enigma code at Bletchley Park / Sinclair McKay
High latitudes : an Arctic journey / Farley Mowat
Spymistress : the life of Vera Atkins, the greatest female secret agent of World War II / William Stevenson

 

[HadleyH]

Yesterday I got my book.... a lovely hardcover called "Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses" by Helen Rappaport.


I still have an unbounded craving for everything "new" that they write about "them" LOL ..... as I said I am addicted.

that's it right there ...

 

[alsendk]

Having read all of his books, this one I always goes back to.

Melville house book wrote about this novel:

The Eternal Husband may, in fact, constitute his most classically-shaped composition, with his most devilish plot: a man answers a late-night knock on the door to find himself in a tense and puzzling confrontation with the husband of a former lover—but it isn’t clear if the husband knows about the affair. What follows is one of the most beautiful and piercing considerations ever written about the dualities of love: a dazzling psychological duel between the two men over knowledge they may or may not share, bringing them both to a shattering conclusion.